Hitchcock Appreciation Thread

I probably like SHADOW OF A DOUBT BEST.

Rear Window or Strangers On A Train

There was a very good one with Edmund Gwenn (Kris Kringle) in a supporting role as a hired killer (!), but the title escapes me.

Can't name just one but SHADOW OF A DOUBT, VERTIGO, and PSYCHO are my favorites, with STRANGERS ON A TRAIN, NOTORIOUS, and NORTH BY NORTHWEST as my second tier.

Foreign Correspondent (1940) was the movie with Edmund Gwenn as a hit man.

My fave is Psycho, which from the first scene casts a spell of intrigue, darkness, and evil.

Vertigo, the San Francisco treat.

Did someone say evil?!

Wasn't "Rebecca" Hitchcock's only Oscar winner?

"North By Northwest." The UN murder; the "crop duster" attack; the repartee on the train with EMS; the terrific drunk-driving scene; James Mason's plummy voice; the matchbook toss; Mt. Rushmore!

And don't forget creepy Martin Landau as evil homo Leonard!

So many to love, but the one that made the biggest impact was Psycho.

Marnie is underrated.

I especially love all the memorable supporting and minor characters, like Roger Thornhill’s mother in North by Northwest, and the sadsack waitress who went to high school with young Charlie in Shadow of a Doubt. Who are your favorites?

George Sanders in REBECCA, calling Judith Anderson "Danny."

Strangers On A Train. Dial M For Murder, Rear Window, Vertigo, Psycho, The Birds.

He's overrated.

In terms of my favorite “Hitchcock” movies, I love The 39 Steps, Saboteur, The Lady Vanishes, Stage Fright, Notorious, and Suspicion. The Birds is campy but so unique and captivating, and Suzanne Pleshette was so good in her small role.

In general, my favorite film from any director or genre is a tie between Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf and Vertigo.

Oh and I think my favorite supporting Hitchcock player is Mrs. Bundy, migratatory expert from The Birds.

I find The Birds to be the easiest to watch. It's almost like a dream. I often put it on at bedtime and I drift off to sleep in no time. Not because it's boring, but because it's so calm and comforting.

North by Northwest and To Catch a Thief. Both star the dashing Cary Grant and the delightful Jessie Royce Landis playing mother characters.

Strangers on a Train is my favorite.

The best secondary characters are Thelma Ritter as the insurance nurse in Rear Window and Pat Hitchcock as Barbara in Strangers on a Train.

The only Hitchcock movie I cannot watch is Family Plot. It’s terrible.

R19 Jeff: She sure is the eat, drink and be merry type.

Stella: Yeah, she'll wind up fat, alcoholic and miserable.

Psycho is the finest example of the craft of filmmaking. Every aspect fits perfectly.

THE BIRDS was a sensation when it came out; audiences were not used to the special effects we have today. It was obvious those were real birds in so many scenes, like the one where they gather on the jungle gym behind an oblivious smoking Tippi. The scene with the guy's eyes pecked out was sudden and very graphic for the times. Same with the scene where that flood of sparrows come rushing out of the fireplace. Lots of suspense and pretty shocking for a 1963 audience.

R21 = Jamie Lee Curtis

"Shadow of a Doubt" written by Thornton Wilder, in a kind of bizarre askew look at the kind of people he wrote about in "Our Town" with great performances by Joseph Cotten and Teresa Wright. Love "Strangers on a Train" with Robert Walker and Farley "Farfel" Granger at their best, "Psycho", "Foreign Correspondent" with the divine Joel McCrea, Herbert Marshall and George Sanders, the remake of "The Man Who Knew Too Much" with Doris "Dodo"/"Eunice" Day and James Stewart with the warbled "Que Sera Sera" being a very pertinent plot point, "Vertigo" and "Rear Window", even though James Stewart is rather miscast as a love interest aspects of these last two. So many wonderful film to choose from though. "Family Plot" at least has the wonderful Barbara Harris.

R22, The Birds is very suspenseful and shocking at times, but it's also peaceful and restful. For instance, the scene where Jessica Tandy finds the man with his eyes pecked out is done with an eery silence. Same with the Tippi Hedren scene in the upstairs bedroom where the birds attack her.

Despite the suspense and subject matter, I find the film to be calming in a way. That's what keeps compels me to watch it over and over again.

I was just going to say "Family Plot" as well with Miss Karen Black, who should be a "DL Favorite."

IMO, Vertigo was dumb.

Also liked "Rear Window."

"Rear Window" is one of my favorite movies, period, and definitely my favorite Hitchcock. Grace Kelly and Thelma Ritter are both outstanding, and the set is almost like another performer. Every minute is riveting.

I'm also fond of "Strangers on a Train," "Saboteur" and "Shadow of a Doubt," Pat Hitchcock said that her father usually HATED location filming, yet "Shadow of a Doubt" (filmed mostly on location) was his personal favorite. That seems like a great recommendation from Hitchcock himself.

Sexual deviant and known perv.

Forgot about The Man Who Knew Too Much. Great film, with wonderful plot twists and red herrings. Who knew Doris Day could hold her own with Jimmy Stewart?

Am I the only one who liked Family Plot? Karen Black and Barbara Balsam are excellent in it. It's not his best by any means, but it's very entertaining. A great movie to watch on a rainy day with a big bowl of popcorn.

The songwriter in Rear Window was played by Ross Bagdasarian. He later became better known as Dave Seville, the father of Alvin and the Chipmunks.

REAR WINDOW is such a pleasure to watch. And the themes are so beautifully developed--marriage, men & women, men vs. women, beauty, voyeurism, cinema itself, the struggle to make a work of art, on and on. Just incredibly satisfying. And the dialogue has never been bettered, in my opinion, for that style of movie. Hitch was certainly lucky that John Michael Hayes came along, though they eventually had a falling out.

VERTIGO is less pleasurable, I suppose, but a great psychological, personal film for the director. It's a real masterpiece, but admittedly full of artifice.

Hitch's films are quite funny; I always think the humor in his films is underrated.

My first Hitchcock film was North by Northwest so I'll say that. Second best is Rebecca.

What are the best scenes in his worst films?

A toss-up between North by Northwest and Rear Window

I've never been able to watch more than 10 minutes of either Spellbound or Vertigo. Strangely, though, I was able to sit through all of Under Capricorn, undoubtedly his worst movie. Michael Wilding was just that charming.

R32 - I think you’re my soulmate! Agree totally!

I know Vertigo has been hyped massively among film cognoscenti - didn’t it get voted best movie evah - like a decade or so ago on a BFI poll? It looks really stylish in places and has its moments - but always feels too overwrought and just a bit...silly?

Rear Window blew me away when I first saw it years ago - and in every viewing since. To me it’s one of those perfect films where there’s not a single scene that needs to be cut or added. Everything is satisfactorily resolved - and the dialogue is superb! I think Stewart is slightly older than the character should be - but leading men then tended to that - so willing to overlook. Besides - he’s very nice in it!

Ritter is fabulous as always - Burr is suitably menacing - and did Kelly ever look better? The camera loves her - and that scene where Stewart wakes and sees her - as if still in a dream - gives me goosebumps every single time. Such a beautiful piece of cinematography! (I know: Mary!)

It’s also a lot more straightforward and less tricksy and doesn’t go about signalling plot twists and foreshadowing danger in the usual Hitchcock way. Not overly complex to the point of needing to suspend disbelief. Just feels like a sophisticated drama for grown ups.

There’s so many others I love as well - even the tricky and overwrought, unlikely and silly - but always feel Rear Window is just in a class of its own.

Though not yet my favorite, I'm going to go with The Birds as his best. It was his final peak. Every time I watch it, it gets better for me. After The Birds, he did some decent work, but nothing better.

I love North By Northwest. I want to live in Phillip Van Damme's stunning mid-century, split-level, cantilevered home behind Mount Rushmore.

He also gave us Paul Newman and Julie Andrews in bed together.

[quote]r30 Am I the only one who liked Family Plot?

That film was a hit. (His last, I believe.)

Many enjoyed it.

Rear Window and The Birds are my favorites.

I also have a soft spot for Notorious - great performances from Bergman, Grant and Rains.

And the actress who plays Rains’ evil mother is a camp wonder.

Strangers on a Train (on Netflix right now, which is rare, so get to watching) Shadow of a Doubt, Psycho.

R27 I wonder if the fact they lived in Santa Rosa (Shadow's filming location) was why he liked it. They lived there for a good while.

Rear Window. "Which one of you killed my dog?"

Another vote for Vertigo (beautiful San Francisco before the ship-ins destroyed it), Marnie, Dial M for Murder and To Catch a Thief (both with the incomparable John Williams)

The 39 Steps

I love Hitchcock. particularly the technicolour period running from Dial M for Murder through to Marnie. Vertigo is definitely my favourite, and one of my absolutely favourite movies of all time, a fever dream of a film..."Here I was born, and there I died...." Rear Window & North by Northwest are right up there too, for me, though.

No mention of the gayest of them all, Rope yet?

The first that comes to mind is Shadow of a Doubt and I love the small town atmosphere of the whole film. We get so many scenes of it - the bank, the library, Charlie showing the detective around. It was the same thing I liked about The Birds - the way the small town is almost like a travelogue.

It's hard to pick just two though - I love Suspicion, with another small town quaint English village.

Believe it or not, my preference is for his tv anthologies, because even though he doesn't direct the main body of the show, as host he appears in every episode, with a different droll short sketch, or darkly humorous commentary. It's not cinematic, but it's a lot of short, fun doses of the man himself.

Favorite secondary characters are the cricket mad duo in The Lady Vanishes.

I love Notorious, Rear Window and Psycho. I hate Shadow of a doubt because it looks do hammy and overblown now, and Theresa Wright was a terribly saccharine and whiney actress. Cannot bear her. That kind of "virgin "acting is the most dated now.

I have some affection for Family Plot since it was the first Hitchcock film I ever saw. And I loved Barbara Harris's performance as Blanche.

I also have affection for Marnie since it's so marvelously flawed.

I took a Hitchcock class in college and I've seen a ton of his films though there are still a few I haven't seen. About a year ago I saw Jamaica Inn.

Didn't like it at all but I guess it was interesting as an historical film artifact.

R44 Oh wow, I love Rope, I can't believe I forgot about it. Yes, for shame!

I think my top two would have to be Rebecca and Rear Window - I can (and do) watch them repeatedly.... and the supporting casts are simply fantastic - Florence Bates, George Sanders, Judith Anderson, Thelma Ritter - their presence in the films are a large part of its success....

Vertigo, Shadow of a Doubt, Rope and Strangers on a Train are my great favorites but so many of the rest are masterpieces.

Hitchcock was perverse and the master of gay subtext even though that's not his main interest.

Vertigo is about a straight guy who can't get off unless he kills the pussy he fucks. It's there in the text and visually. How many times and when does Stewart step through a stylized vagina to get completion?

Sorry, I meant to say "it's there in the SUBtext and visually." Still it's such a sick yet visually lush film. What's not to love?

Scottie achieves "completion" in Vertigo.

I love so many of Hitchcock's films, but another vote for "Shadow of a Doubt." A few plot points may be a little shaky, but who cares when you have the wonderful Joseph Cotten, Teresa Wright, and Hume Cronyn among others. It's a terrific ensemble cast and with Hitchcock's directing and Thornton Wilder's script it's pretty near perfect.

I also enjoyed Rope, r44.

I took a Films of Hitchcock class in college, too - it introduced me to so many of his films that I probably wouldn't have seen.

I think there are probably 12-15, most of them already mentioned, that are equally outstanding. My personal favorite is North by Northwest because it feels like Hitchcock having fun with all of those action-packed locations. A close second is Psycho because, as someone already said, every scene is perfectly constructed, and Anthony Perkins' performance is every bit as iconic as Anthony Hopkins Hannibal Lector.

My choice for most underrated would be Frenzy. Somehow he managed to make a story about a serial killer suspenseful, funny and surprisingly graphic for the time.

My least favorite is Family Plot. It's so bad it makes me sad.

And to the person who finds The Birds comforting and falls asleep to it, I do, too, and I think the reason is because it has no score and other sounds - birds, water, even normally minor background noise, often substitute for it and are oddly soothing.

Psycho in 1960 is the kind of movie that you'd think would be a director's first film. Bold, genre changing, rule breaking, sexual. But it isn't, it has all those elements handled by a master. It is a remarkable, unique film, and the crowning achievement of Hitchcock's amazing career.

My favorite is To Catch A Thief, not for any profound reason but just for its glossy representation of life on the Riviera. I loved his farmhouse in the hills, I loved her evening gowns. I liked the reminder of the marquis comradery in the midst of all the contemporary wealth. I didn't actually see this movie until I was an adult because I always assumed I had _already_ seen it (got it mixed up with NxNW) so it was like getting a present when it's not your birthday.

Rear Window is my next favorite, again because of the setting (and her clothes). I like that it was based on a real backyard in Greenwich Village and how each window tells a neat miniature story of the inhabitants.

For r39. "I have expected it." Never mind that they are speaking in English even though it is clearly not her mother tongue...

Shadow of a Doubt, OP.

Others that I love:

PSYCHO

Rear Window

The Trouble With Harry

Rope

Notorious

The Man Who Knew Too Much (1956)

R57, Tony Perkins in "Psycho" is iconic; Anthony Hopkins in "SotL" is merely famous.

Besides "NxNW," I love "Dial 'M' For Murder." The thrilling line by the Inspector when Tony can't unlock his door, leaves, gets to the sidewalk, stops.... "He's remembered."

Then there's my #3, "Strangers on a Train," with the fabulous Robert Walker ("Bruno! You're such a naughty boy!") and the handsome Farley Granger. Love the juxtapositions, from the opening scene of the men's shoes as they exit their respective vehicles to the resemblance between the murdered wife and the prospective young sister-in-law. And have you ever looked closely at the visages of Merry-Go-Round horses?

I also really like "Frenzy," but mostly for the beautiful Jon Finch.

I hated Vertigo when I first saw it. It's grown on me.

I still hate Vertigo. Very misogynistic, sick film. Speaks volumes that whoever votes at BFI voted for this. And I used to like BFI.

I love movie where a bunch of strangers have to work together, so “Lifeboat” is one of my favorites.

Hot priest Monty in I CONFESS.

Louche, glam Dietrich in STAGE FRIGHT.

Barefoot, woozy Bergman in UNDER CAPRICORN.

R64 You're wrong about Vertigo. Just because a piece of art portrays a behavior doesn't mean it's endorsing that behavior. It's actually a critique of the male psyche.

I love Vertigo. My favorite, actually.

The thing I always found odd about Shadow of a Doubt is that there seems to be a piece edited out. When Charlie and the detective go out together, they're laughing and talking- she has no idea who he is. Then suddenly, they're outside and she says "I know who you are, you're a detective". But there's no scene before that to give any kind of indication of how or why she's figured that out.

They are remaking Rebecca with Armie Hammer and Lily James with very talented director Ben Wheatley. North by northwest is my fave but can always watch Hitchcock. Incredibly talented.

Notorious is an excellent movie about a trio of twisted relationships:

Bergman and Grant Bergman and Rains Rains and his mother

Psycho is my favorite, and I have appreciation for The Birds and Vertigo.

I don't like North by Northwest as much; the scenes between Cary Grant and EMS are great, but most of the film seems contrived, and the sequence with him driving drunk just goes on and on.

Haven't seen Rebecca in a long time and would like to see it again.

I've never enjoyed North by Northwest. Eva Marie Saint is vapid.

I can't watch Rope without imagining John Dall and Farley Granger having hot sex, and that's quite thrilling. I also get the sense that Jimmy Stewart's character would like to watch them get it on.

NbyNW has maybe my favorite opening title sequence. So brilliant and entertaining. Then it starts in a rush of pedestrian traffic racing through midtown Manhattan looking so glamourous and sophisticated I wish I had known New York City then. Then Cary Grant enters into the Plaza and it turns into a very different film.

[quote]I was just going to say "Family Plot" as well with Miss Karen Black, who should be a "DL Favorite."

Karen Black IS a DL favorite.

NOTORIOUS: there are several lines uttered by Rains to indicate that he finds Grant sexually attractive.

Hitch really got a lot of "perverse" stuff past the Production Code.

"We are protected by the enormity of your stupidity... for a time."

Rains' mother in "Notorious"

Glad to see a few mentions of FRENZY; a good example of humor juxtaposed against the serial killer plot. I remember the scenes with the police inspector's wife who couldn't cook, and kept serving him these awful meals. And the woman's dead body bouncing around in that truck full of potatoes.

STRANGERS ON A TRAIN, IMO, is his homoerotic masterpiece. Robert Walker is great in it; and I have posted this before, but he reminds me so much of Spacey in that film. There are shots of him when he's at that carnival stalking the ex wife where he looks EXACTLY like Spacey. Also love when he breaks the kid's balloon with his lit cigarette. AND it features my favorite "minor character" performance - Marion Lorne as Bruno's mother. The scene where he laughs hysterically at her painting is super creepy!

Marion Lorne doing her befuddled old lady shtick years before "Bewitched"?

Here she is, in a GREAT scene! (and look how Spaceyesque he looks!)

He really looks like Spacey with the hat on -

Vertigo is very good and was my favorite for a long time. My favorite ones now are: The 39 Steps and The Lady Vanishes

The ones I really like are: The 39 Steps, The Lady Vanishes, Vertigo, Suspicion, North by Northwest, The Man Who Knew Too Much (1956), Strangers on a Train, Rebecca, Dial M for Murder, Rope, Lifeboat, Notorious

The Birds, Marnie, Spellbound, I Confess - are ok.

I did not like Psycho. I really did not like Frenzy.

R46, I am addicted to "Alfred Hitchcock Presents" which airs nightly in my area from1am to 2am (two episodes). Hitchcock's opening and closing shtick is always entertaining, at times moreso than the actual tale it bookends.

My favorite AH film? "The Birds."

Any time Psycho is shown on TV, I find myself drawn back into the whole atmosphere of it, even though I've seen the whole film 4 times I just find it irresistible. The others are all good but they don't have that same irresistible quality.

By the way, if you're ever in Bodega Bay, California, where The Birds was filmed, there is a small general store in Bodega, just a few miles inland. It sits almost across the street rom that church in the film. They had a 50th anniversary celebration of The Birds and they have turned the whole front half of their store into basically a Hitchcock museum and gift & memorabilia shop.

I found Frenzy cruel and misogynistic, especially in the light humor flirting around multiple scenes of rape and murder. I remember it as an ugly smirk in the Hitchcock filmography.

Family Plot is one of my favorites, with a play on plot wrapping one story about a missing heir that could have been lifted from his thirties films around another with a devious villain - the missing heir! - and his accomplice, Karen Black in a blonde German terrorist wig and oversized sunglasses. The final shot with a winking, delightful Barbara Harris shows Hitch at his most playful and sympathetic.

Also a big fan of Stage Fright with the upending of our femme fatale expectation of Marlene Dietrich and the introduction of an unreliable narrator and duplicitous protagonist.

Regarding the request for good scenes in a bad Hitchcock film, I’d argue for Torn Curtain, though I think of it as more middling than bad. Two scenes are spectacular. One, Lila Kedrova as the Polish countess pleading to get out out of the country, showing how to steal a movie with a single scene. And two, the brutally long, brutally graphic scene with Paul Newman and a farmer’s wife attempting to silently murder an East German agent, showing how hard it is to kill a human being.

This thread makes me want a Hitchcock marathon.

Trivia:

Faye Dunaway turned down the role of Fran in FAMILY PLOT, choosing to do NETWORK instead.

R15 Who do you rate over Hitchcock?

R21, R58 The first half of ‘Psycho is brilliantly taut; the second half falls into tele-movie.

R28 According to silly, Tippy Hedrenite, publicity-seekers. But R46 Those droll TV appearances make me think he MAY have been a closet exhibitionist

R42 What is a ‘ship-in’?

R44 ‘Rope’ wasn’t a film; it was a perverse experiment trying to anticipate a Iive TV play. It made lousy cinema.

I remember enjoying Rich and Strange very much. Though it's been quite a while.

Anybody seen it recently?

R88 must be fun at parties.

^ Hitchcock praised Clouzot to Truffaut.

vertigo is the best film ever made

Vertigo, Psycho, Rope.

[quote]r28 Sexual deviant and known perv.

[quote]r88 According to silly Tippy Hedrenite, publicity-seeker.

No, that's the accepted truth. Everyone knew. She wasn't the only one on those sets who saw his behavior toward her. It's been talked about forever before she gave the explicit details. And aside from rage there's no other explanation as to why he would suddenly go cold on her, then sandbag her career. THE BIRDS was a huge hit and she was well recieved in it. And her performance in MARNIE is good.

Don't rewrite history just because you like his films. He can be a brilliant director AND a sick fuck.

Psycho

Rear Window

Vertigo

North by NW.

In that order. Love Hitchcock.

I still say SHADOW OF A DOUBT.

Second on my list might be FRENZY, which is quite horrifying.

Hedren was employed to do what Hitchcock wanted.

She was hopeless on screen. Suzy Parker was a skinny clothes horse but Hedren was a comatose clothes horse.

Was Hedren chosen because her skinny head matched the skinny head of Jessica Tandy??

Ali Macraw was hopeless on screen. Hedren is a whirlwind of talent in comparison.

[quote]r97 Hedren was hopeless on screen. Suzy Parker was a skinny clothes horse but Hedren was a comatose clothes horse.

Well, if that's true, it doesn't say much for Hitchcock as a director, does it? And why would he use her in a second starring role, and be planning MARY ROSE with her, if she were so awful?

Everyone needs to support our Tippi tomorrow with [bold]Tippi Tuesday[/bold], in her makeup!

Love Mitch's queeny San Francisco neighbor that gives Melanie that "I know what you're after" look. There were a lot of great co stars and minor characters in Hitchcock films. Also love that old bat in Pyscho: "Norman took a wife?"

R34, that's a great question. I always feel with Hitchcock that even in the lesser films there's at least one sequence to admire, if just technically.

The original version of THE MAN WHO KNEW TOO MUCH (1934) is quite stunning; the Albert Hall sequence is a little different than the remake and is interesting to watch. The end, where the mother's sharpshooter abilities come to the rescue, always tears me up.

YOUNG AND INNOCENT (1936) has a great crane shot leading into a drummer in blackface with a twitchy eye--that's how we know he's the killer.

Even THE PARADINE CASE (1947) has that awesome tracking shot in the courtroom.

Most of the posters here mention the films from the great Technicolor period of about 1954 to 1963 -- though ROPE is 1948 and STRANGERS ON A TRAIN is 1951 -- however, you really should try some of the early British films like THE LADY VANISHES and THE 39 STEPS. They're unbelievably good films.

Funny that Hitch has such a reputation as a misogynist, because his films feature strong female leads who often save the day. Certainly Doris Day's character in TMWKTM, also Vera Miles in PSYCHO sticks to her guns. Grace Kelly takes all the risks in REAR WINDOW, too, as Jimmy Stewart's character says in the dialogue.

"The theatre is the last place he would be seen. Now stop acting like a silly schoolgirl. The only murderer here is the orchestra leader!"

The earlier version of The Man Who Knew Too Much. No qué será será there!

Dear TeamTippi at R100. Hitchcock only chose Hedren because the Grimaldi family forbade 'Her Serene Highness' to play a frigid psycho thief in 'Marnie'.

'MARY ROSE was one of those projects that Hitchcock had on the back-burner for decades until he died.

[quote]r106 Dear TeamTippi. Hitchcock only chose Hedren because the Grimaldi family forbade 'Her Serene Highness' to play a frigid psycho thief in 'Marnie'.

That's true. But he could have used practically any actress in Hollywood that was available. Still, he stayed #TeamTip.

And he was rich as Croesus at that point. So it's not like he had to use her just because he was paying her the lousy $500 a week.

The silent film of "The Lodger" is quite good, and actor/composer Ivor Novello as well, plus he looked gorgeous.

I love this brief exchange from Rear Window because it captures perfectly the mid-century East Coast WASP aesthetic as well as the social divide between the two main characters:

Lisa (Grace Kelly) walks towards Jeff (Jimmy S) carrying a cigarette box.

LISA: You know, this cigarette box has seen better days.

JEFF: I picked it up in Shanghai -- which has also seen better days.

LISA: It's cracked -- and you never use it. And it's too ornate. I'm sending up a plain, flat silver one -- with just your initials engraved.

Interesting because Kelly was only any good in her Hitchcock movies. Talk about somebody who couldn't act her way out of a paper bag. Otherwise she seems to be always acting like she came from the dentist and the novocaine hasn't worn off yet.

I think this is an amusing yet respectful version of Strangers On A Train

North by Northwest

R112 What did you like about North by Northwest?

A lot of actors did some of their best work with Hitchcock. Bergman and Grant and Raons in Notorious. Walker in Strangers. Stewart in Vertigo. Perkins and Leigh in Psycho. So whatever he might have thought of actors...

He could take a no- talent like Hedren and make her look good, in part because the characters were stiff, tight-assed bitches, so she didn't have a big stretch. Horrible strangled voice that worked fine for the parts. IF she's not lying, he tried to carry the manipulation from screen to real life. But no way were any others fighting to employ her in films.

Surprised at the paucity of love for NOTORIOUS. It’s the story of a ruined girl who everyone believes to be a slut. Cary Grant, In one of his most serious and certainly most romantic roles - PENNY SERANADE excepted (as always) - not only saves Alicia’s life, he saves her virtue. That was hot stuff in 1946.

^. The divine Ingrid was wonderful as the giantess bad-girl who towered over Cary.

R115 It's a very profound film about love and trust. The Rains/mama thread is fascinating. Madame Konstantine was just a few years older than son Rains. Hitchcock said that the lengthy kissing scene, where Grant and Bergman can't pull apart, was inspired by his once catching a glimpse from a train of a young couple in the country, holding hands while the guy was peeing.

As for Cary saving Ingrid's virtue. Well, not really. It's made clear that, in the service of her country, she's fucked Claude. At one of the B and G meetings he asks her how things are going and she says, in effect, mission accomplished. His face falls. Then he reproaches her for doing what he set her up to do. A real swine, until he redeems himself.

R116 actually it was wee Claude Rains who was towered over.

R115 I love Notorious. Hitchcock got around the three second kissing rule by instead have them kiss lightly over and over again. The end result is far more erotic than three seconds of lip mashing. Great shots, too. The zoom from the top of the stairs to Bergman's hand, the cool trick shot with the demitasse and the scene where she passes out are all great.

Devlin: Don't you need a coat?

Alicia: You'll do.

OP, while The Birds was one of his biggest hits, it's certainly not a 'great film'. The special effects, even for that year, weren't so special.

Can't wait for the remake with Brad C. and Kate Hudson.

^ Wha-a-a-h ? ! ? !

R121 twit. It's Brad and Lady G.

[R100], [R106]:

I was intrigued by Hitchcock’s interest in MARY ROSE for years, yet never getting around to filming it. Having read the play, I can understand why. J.M.Barrie wrote it as a kind of time-bending reverie, about a woman who disappears on a reputedly haunted isle, then reappears in what she thinks as minutes later, only to encounter her grown son. It skirts all kinds of situations, without really delving into them. There is actually more drama in the stage directions, which spell out much of the psychological subtext.

A 2005 production of the rarely staged play at the Vineyard Theatre in New York solved this dilemma by creating a Narrator/Chorus character, who watches the action, and speaks the author’s many musings. At the Vineyard, this role was played by Keir Dullea, who effectively handled it with his own otherworldly presence.

It’s a delicate, almost haunting piece. (Is she a ghost, or lost in time, or what?) Any filming of it would perfectly benefit from a Bernard Herrmann score. But, apart from that, it’s more of a mood piece than an actual story, and I can’t see how that can be handled in a film.

Looks like Hitchcock couldn’t figure it out either.

[quote]r114 He could take a no- talent like Hedren and make her look good, in part because the characters were stiff, tight-assed bitches, so she didn't have a big stretch. Horrible strangled voice that worked fine for the parts ... no way were any others fighting to employ her in films.

You keep skirting the fact that Mr. Hitchcock adored her. If she was so horrible, why was your great idol so invested in her?

You know the answer, and so do I.

And she did have other offers ... including FARENHEIT 451.

R124 Your description of Barrie's Mary Rose's time-travelling sounds very much like those Time Plays that J.B.Priestley was doing in the 30s.

I've seen three of them and they're intellectually-interesting, surreal and Pirandello-esque.

Does OP's photo of Jessica Tandy remind any one else a little, unexpectedly, of Ann B. Davis?

R127 I'm a snobby cinema-queen so I assume your pic is of Rosalind Knight.

It might be Shirley Booth?

R127 That picture is obviously the delightful Judy Campbell.

Judy starred with Noël onstage and splayed a splendid nymphomaniac madwoman in that film which Hitchcock admired called "Green for Danger" in 1945.

It is clearly a young(ish) Hermione Gingold.

Wasn't he preparing to make some film starring Liv Ullmann at the time of his death?

Here you go, girls

He wanted to, but from the beginning the writer(s) were creeped out by the violent, extended rape scene he envisioned for her character, and a few quit over it.

His attraction to that rape scenario scared Audrey Hepburn off the unfilmed NO BAIL FOR THE JUDGE in 1959, too.

As he aged, his frustrations started poisoning his vision.

OMG, Ivor Novello was stunning!! I know him mostly from Gosford Park...

I think Hitchcock used Novello just the once. But the film is so primitive that it's hard to watch.

I wonder if Novello moulded Hitchcock's ideas of homosexuals as weird, shadowy, two-faced deceivers.

Novello wasn't really pretty—he was as pretty as Gladys Cooper.

R120 = Sandra Dee

If you have a Kanopy subscription (via your local participating public library), you can see a real rarity: CHAMPAGNE (1928) in the BFI's 35mm print (a strike for Studio Canal). It's one of Hitch's comedy of manners, and it pulls out all the technical stops, which was possible before sound cameras stopped everything dead for a couple of years.

Hitch used Novello a second time in DOWNHILL (27): he's a most unconvincing schoolboy. It's available as an extra to the Criterion Collection edition of THE LODGER.

REBECCA and SHADOW OF A DOUBT if I can only choose two.

I love his screwball film MR and MRS SMITH (1941) with Carole Lombard. Carole directed the Hitchcock scene.

Spellbound

You must be a Gregory Peck fan, R140.

Since no one has mentioned it: "The Trouble With Harry" which was Shirley MacLaine's film debut, also starring John Forsythe, Edmund Gwenn, the wonderful Mildred Natwick and Jerry Mathers as Not the Beaver. It's very British in the way it's so matter of fact about a corpse, but it's a rather cute little comedy. Shirley did have acting chops from the start though. It's not a favorite, but it's worth checking out sometime.

It might not be his best film but I can watch The Birds over and over, whereas some of his acknowledged masterpieces like Rebecca and Vertigo I don't ever want to see again because they're essentially about people being shitty to each other.

Vertigo is so dreamy. It's such a pleasure to watch. Kim Novak was perfect for the role, even though she wasn't a great actress. Just like Tippi was perfect for The Birds.

Barbara Bel Geddes doesn't get enough praise for her performance in Vertigo. She's sublime in it. I can't understand why she didn't get an Oscar nomination.

Gladys was pretty, r136.....

I prefer Tippi Hedren to the fashion plate she replaced. Grace Kelly never convinced me as a human or an actor that she was interested in anything other than being pretty.

Tippi had the brittle iciness needed for Marnie and the keen sexuality minus flightiness needed for The Birds. She wasn’t a great actress, but she was ideal for both roles.

And she was far more fascinating as a person, getting Vietnamese immigrant women a start toward dominating the nails industry and founding a big cat preserve in the US.

I mentioned it @ R61.

If Sean Connery got any hotter, he might have spontaneously combusted.

Barbara Bel Geddes plays the only character I enjoy in Vertigo. The others are just miserable, and Judy is dealt a terrible hand from even before when the film begins. True that Rebecca is just as horrible in terms of interaction and relationships, it's just more stylish in that the photography is stunning.

Get up Marnie, you're aching my leg.

I told my friend years ago that I thought Kim Novak was rather good in"Vertigo" despite her not always great reputation as an actress, and he said, "Yes, she's very good considering that she's playing a zombie!"

His loss.

I rather like Novak in "Picnic" as well. I wonder how Vera Miles would have been in "Vertigo", as she was Hitchcock's original choice, but she got pregnant around the time it was going to be filmed. She was under contract to him for years, and did a couple of films with him, including "Psycho", but I don't think she's ever been too willing in later years to talk about working with Hitchcock.

My favorite Hitchcock is and always has been "Rebecca", but for his British films, 1938's "The Lady Vanishes" is completely riveting. The beautiful Margaret Lockwood would go onto play some quite sinister characters in British films, and could have been the archetype for the real Rebecca. But here, she's quite gentle. The film, however, is stolen by Dame May Whitty in a humorous and touching performance. I also love the opening shot of the little miniatures with the camera closing in to show it as an ever increasing in size village.

There were many greats, but I'll go with Psycho, since he invented modern horror with it.

I also love and adore NOTORIOUS, not only for the famous kiss, but the brilliant crane shot leading to the key clutched in Bergman's hand, Ingrid at the height of her beauty, Grant's devilishly dark performance and the chilling (but wickedly hilarious) moment when Leopoldine Konstantin opens her cigarette case, lights up and turns from Mama to Nazi-gangster.

Lesser Hitchcock: The Paradine Case, Under Capricorn, I Confess, The Trouble With Harry, The Wrong Man, Stage Fright, Torn Curtain, Topaz, Family Plot.

I love the Priestley plays as well, r126. You can find a number of audio versions on YT, which BBC productions of AN INSPECTOR CALLS, etc.

Kim Novack is good in The Notorious Landlady by Blake Edwards - which owes a lot to Hitchcock

Tippi orders coffee and a frank in the Howard Johnsons scene in Marnie much like Joan orders Lobster Newburgh and coffee in Torch Song.

Regarding good scenes in a bad Hitchcock film, I love the scene in TOPAZ where Cuban revolutionary John Vernon confronts and kills Karin Dor. The murder is highly stylized with Karin's Dor's deep purple evening gown spreading out over the floor like a pool of blood. It's a brilliant visual effect.

I also agree with the poster who cited the murder scene in TORN CURTAIN where Paul Newman silently kills the East German agent in a kitchen. Most Hitchcock murders tend to be somewhat or very stylized, but this one is drawn out, brutally graphic and very realistic.

As for a favorite incidental character, Ethel Griffies as Mrs. Bundy in THE BIRDS is beloved and often cited, but I like two others from the same movie. Ruth McDevitt as the saleslady in the pet store always makes me laugh. Much like Marion Lorne, she excels at playing daffy, and she elevates every movie and TV show with her appearance.

But my favorite is Doreen Lang, the hysterical mother in the diner. Whenever I encounter someone I don't like, I find myself imitating her in my head - "I think you're evil. EVIIIIIIL!!!"

[quote]My choice for most underrated would be Frenzy. Somehow he managed to make a story about a serial killer suspenseful, funny and surprisingly graphic for the time.

Agree r57. It's one I keep going back to and enjoy it each time.

I think in "Frenzy" the necktie-wearing guy was on the British tv series "Doctor in the House" along with Barry Evans which used to be on syndicated tv in the US years ago; it was very funny,and that actor played a very different type of role.

Forgot about The Trouble with Harry. I’ll add it to my list, but at the end.

It is brilliant, r160.

R144/R149 #TeamMidge

Midge is a dusty, superannuated also-ran.

LOCK 'ER UP!

R164 memorable. They used threads to pull out the dress.

R161 and Jon Finch was so cute.

R165 ever see her in the Hitch TV "Lamb to the Slaughter"? It's a classic.

Didn't Vera Miles later complain that Hitchcock never let her look glamorous like his lead actresses? Made her buy her own clothes for Psycho and stuff like that?

R6 R12

That' Doreen Lang in the clip. In NORTH BY NORTHWEST she's in the very beginning scene as Roger's (Cary Grant) secretary who follows him out of the office building while taking dictation. She gets in a cab with him; he's headed to the Plaza.

In THE BiRDS, Doreen plays the hysterical mother of 2 who loses her composure and tells Melanie (Hedren) that she's "evil....EVIL..." SLAP.

The Birds is basically an anti-stalking PSA. Tippi stalks the dude to his house and mother nature attacks

R169 he knew he wouldn't make a silk purse out of that sow's ear.

R169

She was his original choice for VERTIGO, so she would have had a nice wardrobe as Madeleine anyway. I recall that she told him that she'd recently found that she was pregnant so he couldn't use her for that. Miles is very very talented & he knew it. She never got the role that would've put her over. She too however had drawn unwanted attention from Hitchcock so she didn't really want to be under his control. Plus, unlike Hedren several year later Miles was already a known actress so she could distance herself better than the new ingenue who was under 'exclusive contract'.

[quote]r171 The Birds is basically an anti-stalking PSA.

If only Hitch could have heeded his own film's message - -

I still can't get over how Tippi just walks into Rod Taylor's unlocked house like she owns the place. I've seen the movie dozens of times, and I STILL think that someone is going to catch her.

Shut up Tippi! You have your own crimes to atone for!

Hitchcock - you can't eat just one. My favorite is SHADOW OF A DOUBT. Also a shout-out to THE 39 STEPS (1935) & THE LADY VANISHES (1938).

[QUOTE]Made her buy her own clothes for Psycho and stuff like that?

Hitchcock tried to be realistic and the characters she had played would in reality not have had a closet full of fantastic clothing from Saks & Bergdorf's.

He did the same with Janet Leigh in PSyCHO. The two went to a department store and pick out her 2 outfits befitting a secretary of the middle class.

If Hitch had tried to fuck with Vera, husband-muscleboy Gordon Scott would have crashed the set and killed him.

[quote]Also a big fan of Stage Fright with the upending of our femme fatale expectation of Marlene Dietrich and the introduction of an unreliable narrator and duplicitous protagonist.

Not to mention being the inspiration for Lili Von Shtupp.

(r161) Glad to see there are a few of us here who have seen and like Frenzy! My picks for Hitchcock's most underrated films:

1. FRENZY - story about a serial killer that manages to combine graphic violence (and yes, misogyny), suspense and humor

2. THE TROUBLE WITH HARRY - low rated by critics but it’s surprisingly charming and full of cheeky British humor

3. LIFEBOAT - somewhat experimental like Rope but with better results. A really impressive cast, with a mesmerizing Tallulah Bankhead showing everybody how it’s done.

4. MR. AND MRS. SMITH - if for no other reason than you get to see Jack Carson in a spa with his broad shoulders, hunky chest and silky smooth skin. The movie itself is light and breezy fun.

5. THE LADY VANISHES - not in terms of appeal, but in terms of reach. Most everyone who has seen it agrees that it’s one of Hitchcock’s best. Unfortunately, like the similarly underrated THE 39 STEPS, it’s one of his oldest movies and very few have had a chance to see it. It's a shame, too, because it's one of Hitchcock's most entertaining movies.

[quote]r169 Didn't Vera Miles later complain that Hitchcock never let her look glamorous like his lead actresses? Made her buy her own clothes for Psycho and stuff like that?

Her clothes in THE WRONG MAN are very ordinary and might have been off the rack, as she played a lower middle class housewife.

But Miles' 2 outfits in PSYCHO were custom made by Edith Head, and the designer conscientiously used a very heavy, expensive fabric for the matching dress and coat she spends the most time in, so it would feel good and move well.

While it can never match the original, I think Psycho II (and Vera's performance) has to be one of the greatest sequels in the horror genre.

Except for the wig, Vera looked pretty damn good in Psycho. Too bad she had to carry the rest of the film in Janet Leigh's shadow. Janet was beautiful and a tough act to follow.

[quote]r175 I still can't get over how Tippi just walks into Rod Taylor's unlocked house like she owns the place. I've seen the movie dozens of times, and I STILL think that someone is going to catch her.

I understand it would have been normal in that era, but I'm always shocked that Melanie shows up as a stranger in town and the postman (or is it the guy in the store?) just blithely gives her Mitch's address and directions to his house.

If some rando asked for a neighbor's address because they wanted to "surprise them," I'd tell them to get the FUCK away from me or I was calling the cops.

R179

That sounds sweet but do your research and you'll find out what Vera' experience was.

The scenes between Perkins and Leigh (except for the last) are very tender. She spoke rather reverential of Hitch (if I may be so bold). She also said that he was not getting the performance he wanted from Gavin in the opening scene, so asked Leigh to maneuver in bed so as to get Gavin excited.

She was in at least two other classics: Manchurian Candidate and Touch of Evil.

I love Joan Fontaine in Rebecca as well as the more famous scene stealers like Judith Anderson and George Sanders. Joan's transformation from frightened bird when she tells Mrs Danvers that she's Mrs DeWinter now and after he's revealed what really happened are my favorite scenes. Of course Mrs Danvers caressing the lingerie is always creepy fun.

R185

Are you under 40 ? I don't think that you appreciate that era. There's lots of things that are in the film that wouldn't be done now like a girl dressed to the nines with an obviously expensive fur coat and gold jewelry driving around with the top down with a handbag sitting in the passenger seat.

(And) although it was ballsy of her, she found out who he was ahead of time and if you recall she originally was just going to leave the birds at his apartment door. A know it all queen, not unlike yourself, played by the late Richard Deacon informs her that he's gone home for the weekend to Bodega Bay an area she's apparently unfamiliar with as she asks him where it' located. Once she arrives in the little fishing village she stops by the general store which is also where the post office is located. The two older men working inside are taken by the beauteous young woman so it's not really a stretch. When the two men argue about the little sister's name (the gift of the birds is for her birthday) the one advises her to go see the schoolteacher to confirm the girl's name ("it's either Alice or Lois") who lives next to the schoolhouse (and where it appears later that the teacher only teaches 1, 2 grades as all of the kids look about 10 yrs of age !). The teacher (Pleshette) tells Melanie that the girl's name is Cathy. Annie (Pleshette) quickly realizes that this blonde stranger is really there because she obviously is interested in Mitch Brenner (a young humpy Rod Taylor). Those times were so long ago now but it was more innocent at least much more so than today where & when people are constantly on guard and aware of everything whenever they leaves their homes.

R187

Whoever said that he'd go after all of the actresses ? I agree that Leigh only spoke glowingly of him, so did Suzanne Pleshette. The only ones that I know he gave a hard time to were Vera Miles, Tippi Hedren & Grace Kelly.

We know Olivier had wanted Leigh for the part, so was cool to Fontaine, which probably helped her to get in character. Does anyone else remember hearing that Hitchcock told the other actors to be distant with Fontaine, for the same reason? I believe she is the only actor in a Hitchcock film (Suspicion) to win an Oscar.

[quote] I don't think that you appreciate that era. There's lots of things that are in the film that wouldn't be done now... know it all queen

I did write:

[quote]I understand it would have been normal in that era...

My point was how differently we might react to a stranger asking for another's personal information today.

It's impossible for me to choose a favorite Hitchcock film. He has a filmography like no other. I could say PSYCHO -- but then I'll watch VERTIGO and change my mind. Or I could say STRANGERS ON A TRAIN -- but then I'll watch NOTORIOUS. Or THE BIRDS, REAR WINDOW, THE LADY VANISHES, FRENZY, LIFEBOAT, etc., etc. And so, my "favorite" Hitchcock film is likely to be the one that I've seen most recently.

One of my absolute favorites, that has gotten scarce attention in this thread, is FOREIGN CORRESPONDENT. Joel McCrae, Laraine Day, Herbert Marshall and George Sanders star in a WWII precursor to NORTH BY NORTHWEST. It was Hitch's second American film (after REBECCA) and is far more "Hitchcockian". There are so many fantastic set pieces in this flick: The assassination in the rain, the reversing windmill, the fall from Westminster Cathedral, the plane crash in the Atlantic. Though not as well known as other of his films, it belongs in the top tier.

Remember the cautionary tale of Strangers on a Train...

R195

Yes, I sure do: if you're bi or have some gay interest

you must be super fucking careful who you play with ! !

R194 I mentioned it back at R24 It's a great film and turns into a precursor to those Irwin Allen disaster films ("Poseidon Adventure", "Towering Inferno", etc.) at one point.

What about the 1940s film with Robert Cummings? I can't even remember the title. I don't think it's gotten a single mention yet.

R198...if you know the director's name and an actor...

Not my favorite, but I want to put in a good word for Jamaica Inn, which everyone dislikes. On its own terms it's a fun costume drama, and Charles Laughton gets to overact delightfully.

Saboteur ! I like it a lot. I often get it mixed up with Foreign Correspondent, but this is the one I like. It's a really good movie. I only saw it once or twice.

Laughton is one of the greatest actors ever. Billy Wilder who did not suffer fools gladly adored him.

I simply do not want to believe Scotty.

Last time I watched "Strangers on a Train," I was struck by all the incredibly cool men's hats.

And Laura Elliott is just super as mean Miriam. Other than that, her career was okay, but she's electrifying in SOAT. I think she was Larry's wife in Bewitched.

I'm surprised no one has mentioned Alma Reville. Before Hitchcock arrived on the scene, she was already an experienced scriptwriter, editor's assistant, and director's assistant. They met when he was hired as intertitle writer (the dialogue and description cards used in silent movies), and recognizing his talent, encouraged and helped him learn the craft. After they were married, they collaborated on all of his films, from story selection, scriptwriting, casting, music, really everything - sometimes with screen credit, sometimes not. "The Hitchcock touch had four hands and two of them were Alma's." There would be no Alfred Hitchcock without Alma Reville.

Laughton was in "The Paradine Case" too. Good performance!

I was watching Psycho sometime recently, and it struck me that the film begins with the camera voyeuristically gliding through the window in the first shot, to catch the protagonist in the aftermath of a sweaty post-lunch, workday, quickie (pre-marital sex! in 1962 or so). We then see that she's embezzling from her employer. It struck me that Hitchcock is setting her up for this slaughter at the hands of the insane hotel clerk because of her being such a "sinner". She's doomed, from the beginning of the story, because of her 'loose morals' - any viewer in the US, when this movie first came out, would have known that she was bound to come to a bad end... It plays right into the expectations of middle-class American morality at the time.

Gay coding in Hitchcock films.

Slightly OT but both the original Law & Order and Criminal Intent did episodes with the plots lifted directly from Strangers on a Train. In L&O, when the prosecutors figure out what's going on, someone says "You mean like Strangers on a Train?" and on CI the plot unravels when an unreturned rental DVD of the film turns up.

John Gavin's glorious naked chest in Psycho reminds me of the exposure of Bruce Dern's naked chest in Family Plot. The former is driven by the specifics of the scene but the latter is totally gratuitous.

Yet, I'm not complaining, mind you.

SABOTEUR is pretty negligible, except for the memorable finale on the Statue of Liberty. Cummings and Lane are the quarreling-cute couple from Hell.

Another treasure chest

Torn Curtain

Hitchcock on Dick Cavett was on a couple of nights ago. Lord that man was disdainful of actors.

MURDER! (1930) has a biracial, queer, cross-dressing, suicidal circus performer/murderer. It's a very weird and slow early talkie courtroom drama.

Not to mention Jimmy Steeart's chest in REAR WINDOW. Really, let’s not mention it.

R213, to be fair, any actor who hasn’t won three Oscars is pretty useless.

Vera Miles was a lush.....

Shadow Of A Doubt - so kinky! I love Joseph Cotten and totally relate to how his Type-A niece - too savvy for her sleepy town, too responsible to ditch her oblivious parents - was disillusioned by him.

I love the moment in The Lady Vanishes when Miss Froy writes her name on the train window as her voice is drowned out by the train whistle and noise of the tracks.

Shadow of a Doubt also has the spectacular performance of Patricia Collinge as Joseph Cotten's sister. She was a big Broadway stage actress who played opposite Tallulah Bankhead in The Little Foxes and got to repeat her performance opposite Bette Davis in the film version (where Teresa Wright, in her first screen role, played her niece). I don't think she made many other films, unfortunately.

An incredibly empathetic actress on the order of Laurette Taylor.

Last night the Vera Miles episode of Alfred Hitchcock Presents ran on MeTV. I'd forgotten the slightly predictable but still nasty twist at the end. And that Aunt Bea is featured as a comforting neighbor. It's very good.

That tv show scared me to death when I was about 8. A couple of the episodes are among the scariest things I ever saw (e.g. "The Baby in the Jar")

Teresa Wright and Joseph Cotton played husband and wife in The Steel Trap. Good thing they waited a few years after Shadow Of A Doubt to do that, otherwise it would have been kind of creepy to watch.

This is why it's good to have a DVD collection on hand. It's something that Netflix can't give you. Now I can pull out my collection and do a twin bill of Shadow of A Doubt and Suspicion.

I need to re-watch ROPE and THE LADY VANISHES. Also THE 39 STEPS. I almost bought the book once but didn't. I regret it now.

SHADOW OF A DOUBT!

I like to pick my movies, that's why I'll never go for their stupid subscriptions.

There's an incestuous subtext between Uncle Charlie and his niece.

Much as I agree with the love for Shadow of a Doubt, was anyone else put off by the daughter, Ann Newton (Edna May Wonacott)? If I remember, she was picked as Ann after coming into Hitchcock's orbit as he was drifting about Santa Rosa. Her every line seems rushed and inflectionless. I cringe when she's on screen--such a little Know-It-All.

I think of Uncle Charlie's line about the world being a sty and ripping the fronts off houses far too often.

I LOVE Edna May!] Didn't Hitchcock say SOAD was his favorite of his films?

Patricia Collinge had been in Little Foxes and in both films she has a touching monologue about the past.v

I love the scene in the library when Young Charlie has learned the truth and there's an overhead shot of he small, lonely figure leaving the library.. I think the musical score has stopped too and the silence is oppressive?

Hitch saved the real actors for the supporting roles. The supporting actors in his films are always stellar and memorable. But for the leads, he wanted beautiful and vapid actors that were nice to look at, but would not become the main focus of the film. Most importantly, the leads could not outshine his direction.

Hitchcock was always the star of his films.

Psycho starts with a post-coital embrace and his previous film, North by Northwest, ends with a train going into a tunnel. Symmetry!!!

Highly recommend this doc for Hitch/Psycho fans.

Truffaut, who I love, idolized Hitchcock. But I think his work is better than Hitchcock's overall.

r232 Do you have a link for the full documentary?

r232, Hitchcock is someone I would definitely NOT want to see in a shower scene!

I've always wondered why Melanie Daniels spelled Cathy's name with a C instead of a K. Annie Hayworth told her Cathy's name, but she never told her how to spell it, so what made her decide to use C instead of K?

These are the sort of questions that keep me up at night.

Take Sominex tonight and sleep, r236. Safe and restful sleep...sleep....

[quote]I LOVE Edna May!

So do I. There are many reasons - innumerable reasons - to love her.

I don't have time to search for a source but I distinctly remember an interview where Hitch said that one actress he had really wanted to work with with was Norma Shearer. He said he thought she was the perfect screen actress. Unfortunately she went into permanent retirement at just about the same time Hitch came to Hollywood.

And who was the actress who asked him her motivation for doing a certain piece of business he gave her and he replied "Your salary"?

R239 You may be thinking of Tippi Hedren, who asked Hitchcock why would her character go into the attic near the end of The Birds and he replied, "Because I told you to."

Another classic story about Hitchcock was from the set of Lifeboat. Actress Mary Anderson asked him what he thought was her best side. "My dear, you're sitting on it," was his reply.

Hitch's classic if apocryphal Lifeboat comment was about Tallulah. By all accounts she wore no panties and brazenly flashed crew and cast when she was being assisted on and off the lifeboat for takes. Allegedly the situation got so bad that an Assistant Director had to take the matter to Hitch who reputedly replied "I don't know whether it's a matter for wardrobe or hairdressing."

He told the Lifeboat story on Cavett but didn't mention her name, r240.

He made so many great movies. I can't pick a permanent favorite. Right now I think Psycho may be the best: it's so haunting in the way it shows how parents destroy their children. Marion and her lover can't get married because of his mother; the money Marion steals comes from a horrible man who clearly has incestuous longings for his own daughter. And then there's Norman, who at the very end, is completely, horribly annihilated by his mother.

I thought Sam Loomis (Marion's lover) could not marry easily because he was paying alimony to his ex-wife in "Psycho." '

R244 I think that might be right.

Chabrol is sometime called the French Hitchcock. While I like his work, I don't think he is that. Then there's Diabolique by Clouzot, and based on a novel by the same team, IIRC, that wrote the book on which Vertigo was based.

Marnie and North by Northwest are my favorites.

Is there some quality that they share that interests you?

One of my favorite Hitchcock supporting actors is Roscoe Lee Browne in [italic]Topaz[/italic] as the Martinique florist-spy. The Cubans have delegation in NYC for a UN event and have booked a hotel up in Harlem. Browne's handler tasks him to pose as a magazine reporter, go to the hotel, and interview the Cubans to get access to their secrets.

Philippe Dubois: I think I'll go as a reporter. I'm loaded with press cards. Ebony, Playboy, Newsweek...

André Devereaux: Ebony.

Philippe Dubois: I think Playboy is more my style.

André Devereaux: (shakes head) Ebony.

Philippe Dubois: Man, you're square!

[QUOTE]He made so many great movies. I can't pick a permanent favorite. Right now I think Psycho may be the best: it's so haunting in the way it shows how parents destroy their children. Marion and her lover can't get married because of his mother; the money Marion steals comes from a horrible man who clearly has incestuous longings for his own daughter. And then there's Norman, who at the very end, is completely, horribly annihilated by his mother.

R244 is correct. The 'Sam Loomis' character (Gavin) doesn't want to marry again so soon because most of his income is going to his ex-wife.

I don't think that the somewhat drunken client who hits on Marion (Leigh) showed any signs of something incestuous in regards to his (unseen) daughter.

[quote]Truffaut, who I love, idolized Hitchcock. But I think his work is better than Hitchcock's overall.

Not even close. (And I say this as a fan of Truffaut.)

Truffaut's work was brilliant, but Hitch's and Truffaut's work are as different as pears and carrots.

Truffaut made the idiotic comment that no one in Psycho was likeable.

Was it really idiotic r252? Norman was in his own weird way "likeable" and that's a stretch, but I can't think of anyone else.

Teresa Wright was a genuine talent, with skill and depth yet making it all seem so simple and natural. Very gifted and certainly a very interesting woman. A favourite of mine. I can watch her in anything, often wish more of her work were available today.

Agreed that the little sister was annoying AF!! Cringe everytime she's on screen, yet still love the movie. Everyone else is wonderful.

Shadow of a Doubt fans, be sure to watch the short clip at r96 about the making of the film. So much good info!

I love Pat Hitchcock's comments. She seems like a wise woman. Did she ever make a statement about Tippi and her father, defending one or the other? Is Pat still with us?

Older Teresa Wright is lovely here. And Hume Cronyn was kind of adorable as a young man!

Watching the clip at R96 - isn't Peter Bogdanovich supposed to be this great expert in American cinema? He claimed SoaD was Hitchcock's first "American" film. Ok - Rebecca and Suspicion were set (mostly) in England, featuring English characters, Foreign Correspondent was set in Europe' I'll give him that, but Mr. and Mrs. Smith and Saboteur, which preceded SoaD, were as American as they come too. But he didn't let this fact get in his way of making a point, I guess.

R255 Yes, Patricia is still with us at 90! Love her!

The Man Who Knew Too Much (1934)

The 39 Steps

Young and Innocent

The Lady Vanishes

Rebecca

Foreign Correspondent

Suspicion

Saboteur

Shadow of a Doubt

Lifeboat

Notorious

Strangers on a Train

I Confess

Dial M for Murder

Rear Window

To Catch a Thief

The Man Who Knew Too Much (1956)

The Wrong Man

Vertigo

North by Northwest

Psycho

The Birds

Frenzy

r258 In order of preference, or just as they came to mind?

He was the Jordan Peele of his day.

That’s Hitchcock's best, in chronological order, R259. The poster skipped over the not-so-good ones. Great list.

Seeing John Vernon in that clip from Topaz made me think, "What is Dean Wormer doing in an Alfred Hitchcock movie?" It's a bit distracting, because I'm expecting him to say something ridiculously villainous, like "double secret probation." It takes me out of the movie.

Then I remembered that I have the same reaction every time I see Ted Knight at the end of Psycho, even though he is on screen for only a few seconds.

Any love for Sabotage starring Miss Sylvia Sidney around here? Apparently Hitchcock always regretted filming that bus scene. For those of you who haven't seen the film - there's a ticking bomb on the bus and Hitchcock said scenes like those should never end the way he filmed it, because it cheats the audience (or something like that).

By the way, here's a list of films he wanted to make but never did. Some interesting projects mentioned there.

Hitch put some kind of voodoo in his films so that you never tire of watching them over and over again.

He's the greatest of all time, period. Spielberg started out just as strong, but he petered out when he started to make dramatic films. Other than Schindler's List, he hasn't made a classic film since E.T. I like that Hitchcock stayed with the thriller genre that made him a legend.

RR263 I like the bread knife scene in 'Sabotage'.

But I find Sylvia Sidney's Kewpie-Doll appearance slightly disconcerting as the wife.

I'm guessing that Hitchcock used two Hollywood imports that year to help attract an American market (Wiki says 'Sidney was one of the highest paid actresses in the industry earning $10,000 per week' at the time).

[quote] I LOVE Edna May!

Can you imagine giving a child that name today??

Definitely not R266

Vera Miles was set for Vertigo and shot costume tests in January, 1957. However the production got delayed when Hitchcock needed two operations in hospital which also required an extensive period of recuperation. He was ready to work again by April but then Miles learned she was pregnant with the baby due in October. Hitchcock was not prepared to wait for her, though he had pushed production back for James Stewart who wanted a break after finishing his previous film. Hitchcock re-cast with Novak and production finally began on September 30.

Here's a movie: "By sheer coincidence three of Miles' four ex-husbands died within a short timespan of each other. Her third husband, Keith Larsen, died on December 13, 2006; first husband, stuntman and small-part actor Bob Miles died on April 12, 2007; and second husband, actor and bodybuilder Gordon Scott, died 18 days later on April 30, 2007."

R241 I agree it's apocryphal, but Hitchcock himself, in a newspaper interview, claimed he said it to actress Mary Anderson.

Miles later worked with James Stewart in The FBI Story.

[quote]Hitch put some kind of voodoo in his films so that you never tire of watching them over and over again.

When discussing the title sequence to [italic]North by Northwest[/italic], with the credits against the skyscrapers, Hitchcock discussed film being a visual medium, that the director should fill the screen. (I can't find the interview.) I think part of the voodoo is that there's always something to look at in his movies: monuments, windmills, gorgeous mid-century homes, beautiful actresses, all the arrows in [italic]I, Confess[/italic], etc. Mix that with lurid murders and very talented supporting actors: voodoo.

[quote] R264 Hitch put some kind of voodoo in his films so that you never tire of watching them over and over again.

I don’t know ... for me, while I appreciate it, PSYCHO just isn’t as interesting after wooden John Gavin takes over, with that shrew Vera Miles. And i’m Not really in a rush to rewatch REAR WINDOW or TO CATCH A THIEF very often at all. Even REBECCA gets less interesting about halfway through.

But, it all depends on what you personally respond to. I find SHADOW OF A DOUBT and FRENZY to be the most chilling - the characters really are in peril right up to the end, and the villains are great.

That shrew Vera Miles?! How would you behave in Lila's situation?

Love this thread!

Gotta recommend Patrick McGilligan's incredible biography of Hitchcock. It's my favorite biography of anyone, hands down. A superb book, esp for Hitchcock lovers.

I've never liked The Birds, it's not one of his best. It has some good scenes but the motivation of Tippi Hedrens character is off. Why does she travel miles to see a man she's known 5 mins? It a bit nonsensical.

Rod Taylor needed a nude scene. There, I've said it. What a hunk! And a good actor too.

R277 She sensed Big Dick Energy?

Tippi gave one of the most effective performances ever put on film in The Birds. Notice, I said "effective" and not "best."

That bitch was ethereal. You couldn't take your eyes off of her.

Another supporting actor who doesn't get enough credit is Ruth McDevitt who plays the flustered pet shop employee in The Birds. She's amazing.

"Why does she travel miles to see a man...?"

She's proud, arrogant and egotistical, part of the human condition AH is censuring.

R281 Do you think the Catholic Hitchcock chose Hedren to be a cold, heartless, unobtainable blond bitch so he could punish and humiliate her with blood and birds?

No.

r277, I think Melanie travelled for miles to pay Mitch back for recognizing her in the pet shop and not satisfying her curiosity about how he knew her. She, in her own way, was going to turn the tables on him by finding out who he was, stalking him to his house, and leaving the birds he mentioned to her in passing. It was a practical joke on her part to show that she, too, could discover who he was without asking him directly.

I would do something like that if I were piqued enough. I liked her spunk.

R268 we owe a lot

To Gordon Scott.

Though Kim Novak was never considered a good actress, I honestly don't think VERTIGO would be nearly as revered today if Vera Miles had played the lead. That was a very fortunate piece of casting.

There was something truly hypnotic about Novak's looks that made her a true screen icon. She was at her best playing love objects, like here and in PICNIC.

Yes, there was something unknowable about her in Vertigo which suited the role.

I'm sure I've shared this in another thread, but this is a special Hitchcock memory.

I was a teenager when I first saw Vertigo. It was playing on TV as part of a week long Hitchcock festival, and I was watching it with my mom, who of course had seen it before. After Madeline died, I got confused and a little restless. I asked out loud, "where is this going?" My mom said, "just keep watching."

Then Scottie starts seeing this red-headed Judy girl from Salina, Kansas, and I wondered out loud, "what is this about? why is he attracted to her?" My mom said, "just keep watching."

Then we see a close up of Judy's face and she looks directly into the camera, and now I'm freaking out. We hear her letter to Scottie about how she loved him, and then we see her tear it up. Then my jaw dropped open and I looked at my mom and said, "WHAT?! She's the same girl?! Played by the same actress?!" I was totally duped into thinking there were two different actresses playing two different characters. My mom loved it. I can only imagine what it was like to see this movie in the theater and have the same reaction.

Vertigo: Judy's transformation into Madeleine. Composer Bernard Herrmann always freely admitted that parts of the score were adapted from a theme from Wagner's Tristan und Isolde, the most famous opera of love, desire, obsession and compulsion.

Hitchcock's notes to his staff were that the sound effect designers should be totally silent here as he suspected that Mr. Herrman would have something to say.

Vertigo's score is in the top handful of great film music.

R266 - YES! Only second in 2019 to Birdie Mae!

The scene I posted above of Judy's Transformation won't be nearly as effective if you haven't seen the film. All the context of the relationship of the characters and how it ties together plot points are lost. And if you have never had your lover/partner die in your arms and still fantasize of seeing him walk just once more through the door, much less embrace you. I posted it for the music.

I still would have liked to see Vera Miles in Vertigo because she was such a good actress. She is superb in The Wrong Man.

Novak is better because she has the blank-faced/'hypnotised'/empty-headed/dumb look suitable for the old policeman to mould into his obsession.

Vera Miles has a whiff of intelligence in her face; Hitchcock used her in that frequently-overlooked/mildly-uninteresting/pseudo-documentary film 'Wrong Man' in '56.

"Novak is better because she has the blank-faced/'hypnotised'/empty - -headed/dumb look suitable for the old policeman to mould into his obsession."

in other words, a zombie

No. First of all, she does not have an empty or dumb look. She has a rapt look. What is this obssession with disparaging Kim Novak? What did she ever do to you? She's an old lady who paints and loves animals, ffs.

Remember when "The Artist" used some of the "Vertigo" score and Kim rightly protested? Someone wrote that it was ok, since Herrmann had made a reference to Wagner in HIS score, but I think that's a flawed comparison. A reference is not an exact quote. That was shoddy film making.

That's very interesting, R289, because I fucking hate Tristan und Isolde too. Not necessarily Wagner's version, just the tale in general. Hate it with every fibre of my being - just like I do Vertigo.

R295 Not disparaging Novak. I think she's very good in the role and liked her in "Picnic", too. But I think Hitchcock wanted her to be something of a blank canvas and a mystery woman, and perhaps coached her the way Rouben Mamoulian directed Garbo to make her mind a complete blank in the final scene of "Queen Christina", but in the case of Novak , for a lot more of the film.

Do we hold Alma complicit in Hitchcock's crimes?

We know she's co-responsible for his success ... but she did nothing we know about to protect actresses from him. She once saught out Tippi Hedren by an evelato to apologize for Hitchcock's harrasment. But when Hedren pointed out that Alma herself could stop it, the older woman just walked away.

Was Mrs. Hitchcock afraid of their joint careers drying up? Or did she maybe resent the attractive women her husband hounded and abused, and just bitterly chose to leave them in the storm?

Would she have protected Patricia if she were being abused, or just complicitly looked the other way?

R298, what's an evelato? Sounds kinky!

[quote]r299 what's an evelato? Sounds kinky!

Sure, Alma, pick on the typing.

That's a GREAT way to refute something!

The thing that works for me about Novak in VERTIGO besides her mesmerizing beauty is the fact that you know she's a major movie star. As crazy as that might sound I think the film needs the presence of a STAR to push the hokey plot forward. I don't think it would work as well with an unknown or with lovely but drab Vera Miles.

Someone's triggered...

I'm so sorry I never noticed the woman playing Judy in that movie Vertigo was supposed to be a star. The blonde one I guess falls into "classy woman", albeit a super boring one, whereas the dark redhead is just a woman in a movie.

R288 nice story

I don't think the redhead coloring suited Kim Novak in "Vertigo"; her blondness made her look like a goddess.

She was supposed to look trashy as Judy. The makeup was garish too. That way Scotty could make her over into Madeleine.

According to Dan Aulier's book on the making of Vertigo Hitchcock was considering Novak before he had Miles come in for hair, wardrobe and makeup tests after he had scree-tested her. Another concern over Miles was the poor box office of The Wrong Man, whereas Novak had had box office hits. There was also the idea that Stewart preferred Novak because he considered Miles at the time to be a nobody after he had co-starred with Grace Kelly and Doris Day for Hitchcock. so when Mils withdrew because of her pregnancy Novak was brought in without hesitation.

... screen-tested.

[quote]r307 There was also the idea that Stewart preferred Novak because he considered Miles at the time to be a nobody after he had co-starred with Grace Kelly and Doris Day

Wow, you don't usually think of Jimmy Stewart as being a [italic]little bitch.[/italic]

R307 Stewart and Miles co-starred in the FBI Story in 1959, I guess after Vertigo.

Novak and Stewart made two movies together, both released in 1958; Vertigo and Bell Book and Candle.

That was the result of Novak's loan-out agreement; Paramount could have her for VERTIGO if Columbia got Stewart for a follow-up pairing.

Steward and Novak were drab and bland. The film belonged to Kovacs, Lanchester and the Siamese.

^^^StewarT^^^

R313 I agree that the ancient Stewart and dumb Novak were drab and bland and kinda like a pedophile and his prey in the comedy 'Bell Book and Candle'.

But that creepiness is more appropriate in 'Vertigo' because that old policeman is kinds psycho.

Vertigo was a financial failure on its initial release. Hitchcock told friends privately that he blamed Stewart for his aging looks and they never worked together again.

But it was much more complicated in reality. Vertigo might have made a slight profit if it hadn't gone massively over budget for numerous reasons, including Hitch's illnesses that delayed production and Miles' pregnancy and the need to recast. Hitch was allegedly furious that Miles refused his demand that she have an abortion so as not to hold up production further. He had intended to make her the next Grace Kelly and thought she was incredibly ungrateful.

And for the poster above who said Miles wasn't hot enough for the film, catch that Alfred Hitchcock Presents episode she did a year or two before Vertigo. She's hot as hell, which is kind of a plot point.

The problem with Novak for me is that Judy needs to be an intelligent and calculating person in order to play Madeleine and Novak is such an inept actress that I don't buy her being that smart. Miles on the other hand always comes across as smart, so that's why I think she could have done it.

Judy in the film comes across as manipulated, not manipulative.

Had Grace Kelly been available for Vertigo, I wonder how she might played Judy. Clearly she would have made a perfect Madeleine. Could she have pulled it all off?

Stewart's age completely ruins Spirit of St Louis. What were Hitchcock and Wilder thinking? And then they blame his age? Who cast him?

Also that little bitch Stewart blamed the box office failure of It's a Wonderful Life on Donna Reed and though she was going to be used on his next film he dumped her for the bigger June Allyson. After it became a big TV success he praised her but she never forgot the way he treated her after its failure.

'Why don't they get June Allyson!' Supposedly said by Reed after she was asked to speak at a Stewart tribute.

You needed a great actress to play both the blonde woman and Judy. Hitchcock appreciated wit and style, but a true chameleon would have distracted from his direction and as said above, he might not have wanted that.

It's heartbreaking that Miles wasn't in "Vertigo." It would have been a great film...

What is Miles best movie? I have never seen her in anything. (And I love Vertigo).

NOTORIOUS is his most satisfyingly sexy film. Bergman and Grant are blessed with tons of sexual chemistry.

Miles is quite wonderful as Cliff Robertson's evil wife in Autumn Leaves. I didn't know it was Vera and I was like who the hell is this nasty beauty?

POLL: Would you put up with the 300 lb. Hitch stalking and slobbering all over you, to keep working for him?

And what if he demanded sex?

Yes, I would.

R323 - You haven't even seen Psycho?

"There's an incestuous subtext between Uncle Charlie and his niece."

No, honey, there isn't. The movie doesn't need it. There are plenty of creepy things about Uncle Charlie without bringing that into it.

Someone upthread mentioned Lamb to the Slaughter, the episode of Alfred Hitchcock Presents that he directed. It is a much better version than the one done for Tales of the Unexpected where Susan George plays the lead and blubbers annoyingly. In the Hitchcock version Barbara Bel Geddes is much more subtle and effective.

Is there a Golden Age (male) star more controversial in his post-death legacy than Jimmy Stewart?

I hate Stewart and his squeaky voice. Nil Sex-appeal.

I enjoy Stewart but don't quite understand his stardom. Much like Spencer Tracy.

I wish the policeman in Vertigo was played by an actor with some intellectual depth. Someone like James Mason.

Jimmy Stewart is the worst. He has ruined several Hitchcock films.

Mason wasn't the star that Stewart was. Mason didn't seem to be a first choice for anything.

The scene where she finishes him off with mint jelly was cut.

Stewart was adorable and the perfect All-American Boy Next Door in the 1930s and early 40s. But after he came back from WWII he became a dreary middle aged parody of himself.

And what about all these rumors that he was bisexual and Cole Porter's boy toy?

James Mason was Kubrick's first choice to play Humbert Humbert.

Stewart's persona changed much like Glenn Ford as they aged, both turning into stuttering codgers. They had more sexual threat when younger.

Stewart, in his youth, was immensely sexy. Watch his banter with Margaret Sullavan in THE SHOP AROUND THE CORNER or the shared phone call with Donna Reed in IT'S A WONDERFUL LIFE...very erotic, perhaps because it was so unexpected from the gosh-gee-toe-the-dirt persona he usually projected (he also seemed to do ok for himself in the boudoirs of Hollywood, so he must have had something going for him). And that sexy underside what AH was capitalizing on in VERTIGO, IMHO.

Hitchcock joked about actors being cattle but I wonder how conscious he was of men's sex appeal.

He said he wanted Gary Cooper for 'Foreign Correspondent' but he had to put up with lame lightweight Bob Cummings. He had the clout to hire Connery and Newman in the 60s when he was losing his abilities.

Not sure Spencer Tracy is considered a star these days. Is Bryan Cranston considered a star? A character actor playing lead roles, sure.

There's nothing sexy about Stewart in Vertigo. Agreed about Shop Around the Corner, and many others of his movies from the 1930s.

I don't like Stewart but I remember his anecdote about urinating with Hitchcock.

Hitchcock washed his hands afterwards and then proceeded to wipe down and dry the hand-washing basin sink.

R341 Ginger Rogers popped his cherry.

"There's nothing that's sexy about Stewart in Vertigo."

I don't necessarily disagree (I find his lust more desperate in Vertigo). Nonetheless, you don't become a star of Stewart's magnitude without the embers of libido still smoldering in his later years.

Spencer Tracy not a star? He and Hepburn remain as iconic as Bogie and Bacall.

He wasn't sexy, but his obsession seemed real.

Cary Grant was the only sexy male in Hitchcock movies

Farley Granger is attractive in Strangers on a Train

Hitch absolutely had a sense of male sexuality.

He launched one of my first boners with John Gavin’s introduction in Psycho.

R336 Your words cut me to the quick.

I am a James Mason fan, and while he was second choice to play Norman Mayne I think most would agree he's better than the first choice (Cary) would have been.

I nurture the fact that James wasn't a top star because he was rather intellectual, passive and railroaded by his shrew of a wife.

Cary Grant was the only sexy male in Hitchcock movies

I guess Sean Connery , Paul Newman and John Gavin were chopped liver.

[quote]Cary Grant was the only sexy male in Hitchcock movies

Rod Taylor was sex on a stick.

Yes, I agree, R353

Sean didn't have a lot to do in Marnie. All I can think of is the fake ship.

I agree about Rod Taylor, but the trouble is, he had no sexy scenes in The Birds.

Paul Newman looked like a store-dummy in Torn Curtain. And Julie was just as bad.

It's lifeless exercise.

I have a theory that Hitchcock was very fragile and going blind while making this movie. The sets all look fake and the lighting is very bright and shadowless.

Similarly, Charles Chaplin was fragile and almost dead while making 'Countess from Hong Kong'. There's no 'stage-blocking' and the camera is almost completely stationary, as though Chaplin was too ill to get out of his chair.

R353 and Jon Finch was a stud in Frenzy.

I think James Mason was too short to be a leading man.

James was 1.81 m

Cary was 1.87 m

Bogart was 1.73 m

Alan Ladd was 1.68 m

Glenn ford was 1.8 m

But James had a big presence!!!

R351 I didn't say Mason wasn't wonderful. It just seems that whenever you read about one of his films the producer or director initially wanted somebody else who they couldn't get.

Cary Grant was FIRST choice as lead actor for 70% of films producers between 1946 and 1960.

Bergman was FIRST choice between 1944 and 1950. Hepburn was FIRST choice between 1953 and 1962.

And thank fucking goodness, R360. A Star Is Born. Lolita. The Reckless Moment. The Deadly Affair. The Shooting Party. The Pumpkin Eater.

That would be Audrey, not Kate, r361?

R337 - I like how in the Hitchcock version the husband is mostly silent as he listens to Bed Geddes, as if he cannot stand her.

R364 I was just reminded that the husband was a cop and Hitchcock had his famous fear of cops. Someone said that he directed that episode, so maybe the cop factor was a reason for that.

Bel Geddes. Sorry Barbara.

Did Mr. Hitchcock ever employ a single black actor?

I can’t remember any.

^. Yes he did. So you can rest easy.

He also employed homosexuals, so there.

I just watched The Jar of the Alfred Hitchcock Hour and William Marshall plays Jahdoo.

The most sympathetic character in Lifeboat was played by Canada Lee.

Did Canada Lee play the 'Magical Negro' that Spike Lee goes on about?

Not sure. But he's the only one in the lifeboat who doesn't murderously set upon a traitorous passenger at the end.

R367, yes - the otherwise middling Topaz features a really good sequence set in Harlem with at least one black spy, but unsurprisingly, no black actors made the poster.

Stewart was funny looking and very one dimensional in his performances. His Oscar win , and his nominations, were supreme jokes.

I love Jimmy.

R342 Hitchcock used the excellent Joel McCrea for "Foreign Correspondent".. He used Bob Cummings for "Saboteur". I think Cumming is rather under-rated; he's very good in the film and perhaps a bit lightweight, but I think that is also partly because he mainly is remembered for his more appreciated skill in comedies.

I loved reading Camille Paglia take on THE BIRDS.

What are the least essential Hitchcock movies?

Well, among some of the most cited for his weak films seem to be "Under Capricorn" and "Jamaica Inn" but those do have some wonderful actors in them.

[quote]What are the least essential Hitchcock movies?

Everything after Marnie

Or to be more honest, everything after North by Northwest

Five Least essential: JUNO AND THE PAYCOCK. JAMAICA INN. TOPAZ. WALTZES FROM VIENNA. THE TROUBLE WITH HARRY.

Five Most essential: VERTIGO. PSYCHO. NOTORIOUS. THE 39 STEPS. MARNIE.

What? THE PARADINE CASE trumps THE TROUBLE WITH HARRY?

MARNIE trumps SHADOW OF A DOUBT or REAR WINDOW?

You're crazy.

too many greats to choose from. even his 'lesser' films are enjoyable.

I now want to see every "lesser" Hitchcock movie. I believe he excelled at comedy, especially dry wit.

Stage Fright, Juno and the Paycock , Murder! are on my list.

Champagne, The Skin Game, and of course MARY (1931) were all made for DL.

There is lesser...and there is lesser. I want to see those, too, R385.

MARNIE and FRENZY are his two greatest "Dirty Old Man" Movies.

KALEIDOSCOPE would have trumped even those two.

Other great DOM movies: THE OTHER SIDE OF THE WIND (Welles); PEEPING TOM (Powell); BELLE DE JOUR (Bunuel); EROS (Antonioni).

Check out "The Lodger" with the very handsome Ivor Novello. I saw the silent one, though I think Hitchcock remade it also with Novello. Has anyone seen that one?

Oh, actually Hitchcock didn't direct the sound remake with Novello apparently. But I still wonder if it is good?

THE LODGER (44) starred 20th Century Fox gay fattie Laird Cregar, who died soon after it was made. It's not much related to Hitchcock's 1926 silent.

psycho is a dirty old man film too,a masterful, influential film.

There's a 1932 British remake with Ivor Novello, too. Perhaps it is hard to see.

Apparently Novello's sound remake flopped, while the Hitchcock 1927 original silent had been a big hit. There's a film on YouTube of Novello in a sound comedy called "I Lived With You", and he was very good in it.

Champagne brief clip

Link to some obscure ones here

Avoid Hitchcock's silent version of homosexual Noel Coward's rather tacky immature play called "Easy Virtue" from 1928.

It could have been interesting. Some scenes are set on the French Riviera where he would later do "To Catch a Thief'.

It stars Isabel Jeans playing a glamorous vamp. (Isabel Jeans, Mrs Claude Rains, would later reappear in Hitch's 'Suspicion' and play the senior prostitute in 'Gigi'.)

She seduces a pretty naive young man (played by young Robin Irvine who had married Ursula Jeans and then died from some illness in the Caribbean).

Hitchcock can't do much with this silent wordy play. The production is very primitive and there's one scene on a Riviera balcony where it seems a though the crew just walked away for 5 minutes and left the camera running.

Re: Vertigo. I know it's not supposed to be completely realistic or logical, but:

Why would the cold-blooded murderer husband leave Judy alive after she'd served her purpose? How could he trust her not to blackmail him or make a deal with the police?

After Judy does die, are we supposed to assume the husband gets away with his crime? She can't testify against him, and anything she told Scotty would be hearsay.

Homosexual Arthur Levine, who used the goy name Arthur Laurents, wrote 'Rope'.

He said Hitch was ‘intrigued by the varieties of sexual life. . . in fact he was like a child who’s just discovered sex and thinks it’s all very naughty’.

Kanopy (with your local participating public library) has most of Hitch's British silent films and early talkies available for your streaming pleasure in pristine strikes from BFI's 35mm prints for Canal Plus.

I just saw CHAMPAGNE and MURDER! this way. He was constantly pushing the British film industry to advance itself technologically.

YT Hitchcock playlist

Many turn out to be unavailable, but it's worth a try

I’ve been a Hitchcock fan since I was a little kid. The first 3 Hitchcock films I saw on TV were 39 Steps, Saboteur and. Shadow of a Doubt. I’ve never liked Vertigo or North by Northwest.

Rope and Dial M for Murder were just filmed plays, no matter what kind of camera techniques he may have used. He was bored and it showed.

You know how they have Twilight Zone marathons at holidays? I’d wish they did Alfred Hitchcock tv show marathons .....but it would be even better if they did Alfred Hitchcock movie marathons at holiday time.

Hitchcock's silent films are so primitive as to be unwatchable.

Even the restored ones are painfully out of rhythm.

R390, he was huge.

Huge and homosexual.

He would crushed that mulatto gnat Merle Oberon.

Cregar was was a fine and popular actor. He was told he could be a major star if he lost weight. He went on a crash diet, accompanied by amphetamines. It put such a strain on his system, he had to have emergency surgery. Before he could recover, he died of a heart attack.

Adam Roche's podcast series The Secret History of Hollywood had almost 20 hours dedicated to Hitchcock. The series used to be completely free to listen but soon after I'd found it Roche announced he's made a deal with Audible and the series would be available only for the paid subscribers from that point on. Weidly enough I can only find the series on Audible UK now. Too bad I deleted the episodes after listening to them. Roche had used tons of time to go through the history and then writing it all as a docu series. He also has a fantastic voice.

I loved the Hitchcock episodes but I loved almost more the tales of the Warner brothers and the crazy early days of Warner Bros. After listening to the history I can clearly see why WB makes so dark movies. It's been in their DNA from the start.

It’s so funny how, growing up, we considered Alfred Hitchcock to be enormously fat. Seeing him on tv now, interoducing his teleplays, he looks fat, but not terribly so. I guess I watched too much of My 600 lb Life.

One weird interpretation of I've read of Vertigo involves when Scottie has a mental breakdown after Madeline's death midway through the film and is sent to a mental hospital to recover. In a famous scene he wakes up screaming from a nightmare while there. The theory posits that he was never released and the second half of the film is a continuation of Scottie's nightmare.

He was considered fat at the time, of course. By current standards, he'd be merely "curvy", R407

Do you remember if the author made a convincing case for that? Any more info on the source of that?

Maybe Hitch should have taken some tips from George Cukor, who was a fattie when young but seemed to keep the weight off in later life. I read that at one time Cukor did exercises with Garbo.

Nope, I don't remember, sorry r410. But knowing much of the history of the film's production I don't think it is a valid interpretation, or at least a deliberately intended one.

Vertigo was based on a French novel. It's co-authors wrote it hoping to sell the film rights to Hitch. It's somewhat different from the film.

Another interpretation of VERTIGO is that everything following the fade out of Scotty hanging from the rain gutter is a dream. Hitchcock was fascinated by "An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge", and produced a TV version in 1959.

R411 he kept the weight off with all that cocksucking.

Would anyone agree that most Hitchcock fans are divided between those who favor his b&w films and those that favor the color films?

I've always been far more partial to the b&w. The Technicolor films all have a gaudiness that just doesn't work well with most of his stories, IMHO.

It was Truffaut who claimed that the writers of the French novel, From Among the Dead, had deliberately tailored their tale to be of interest to Hitchcock, but one of the writers later denied it. Hitch had bid for the film rights to their previous novel but lost. Clouzot won the bidding and turned the book into his classic Les Diaboliques.

Hedren in the attic is rape by animal.

Or by Hitchcock himself in full view of a paying audience.

Oh boohoo.

When Scotty visits Madeline in the Hotel, how does she disappear from the room?

I’ve come to think she paid Grandma Walton to say she hadn’t seen her.

The weak plot point to me is that Judy thinks Scottie won’t recognize Carlotta’s necklace. If she’s breaking the truth to him, either consciously or subconsciously, that could be made clearer.

Because as it stands, she just looks like an idiot.

Hitch bid on the film rights to D'entre les Morts before it had even been translated into English, much less published in the US. He was obviously very interested in the work of the writers. And yes, the film is very different from the original novel.

I think 'The Lady Vanishes' is pleasantly entertaining.

The added bonus for me is pretty Michael Redgrave in a scene in the train's boxcar. He wears a suit with nice fabric and spends quite a few minutes rooting among the boxes and presenting his shapely (clothed) buttocks to the camera.

Love the nun in high heels!

Cybill Shepherd did a cable remake of THE LADY VANISHES. Of course, it was terrible.

R420, but how did she get away, and her car was gone so quickly?

I thought Jimmy Stewart looked younger in Bell, Book & Candle, even though it was filmed after Vertigo.

Hitchcock has to take some of the blame for how Stewart was lit in Vertigo. It didn't do him any favors.

This scene sold me.

"Hitchcock has to take some of the blame for how Stewart was lit in Vertigo. It didn't do him any favors."

Neither did the hairpiece.

Either Madeleine was hiding somewhere in the hotel or she had slipped out by another staircase, either she drove the car away, or Elster or someone working for him drove it away, and/or the proprietor was in on the deception. It is called the McKitTRICK Hotel after all. My bet is she was still in the building, and someone else took the car.

And Madeleine is framed above the sign, with a"TRICK" spelled out to clue us in.

For me it is Vertigo

Scratch Vertigo it is Rebecca

It's been so long since I've seen Vertigo. What does Judy get out of the whole ruse? It doesn't seem to be money. If it was she certainly didn't get much ending up as she does.

She got a free dye job and Edith Head wardrobe.

Considering the life she returns to the Edith Head wardrobe won't be of much use.

She got head? Well, that's not too bad.

I didn't know she designed for The Wizard of Oz...

He was Catholic and a bit kinky. A showman and a craftsman.

But I think we need to dig deeper to find out why he did some of his odd things.

His interest in the "Ten Minute Take" is incomprehensible to me. It goes against the very principles he pursued in his early —and, indeed, most of his career.

The U.N. wouldn't let him film their headquarters in North by Northwest, so Hitchcock stuck a camera in a van and parked across the street. He then had Cary Grant take a cab to the U.N. and walk up the steps toward the building. If you look close, you can see a guy coming down the steps do a double-take as he realizes he just walked past Cary Grant.

In "The Birds", Mrs. Brenner asks Melanie to pick up Cathy at the school. She does, then leaves her with Annie to go to the diner alone. Why?

So Melanie can be in the diner scene.

Or, R440, he recognized him from The Rambles the night before.

[quote]r331 Is there a Golden Age (male) star more controversial in his post-death legacy than Jimmy Stewart?

What's controversial about him?

I missed the scandal.

I hated Torn Curtain, Topaz and Family Plot. His talents were wasted in those films. I think that it’s because he spent too much time doing television and merchandising. He lost his touch.

Jimmy Stewart’s father, grandfather and several uncles were members of the local KKK in his hometown of Indiana, PA. Stewart himself was an arch conservative. Actors Woody Strode and Hal Williams complained about receiving racist treatment from him.

And supposedly he slept with Cole Porter to "convince" Cole to let him sing Easy to Love in Born to Dance.

Eleanor, that sounds a teensy far-fetched.

I love Hitchcock's use of children for comic results: the birthday party in YOUNG AND INNOCENT (37). The kid who gets his balloon popped in STRANGERS ON A TRAIN (51). The four-eyed cub scout who freaks Dietrich out in STAGE FRIGHT (50). The noisy kids in SHADOW OF A DOUBT (43). It's obvious he loved kids, and really was just a big naughty boy himself.

The lines from the kid in THE TROUBLE WITH HARRY are very funny too.

What about the kids in The Birds? Attacked by gulls and crows.

I think his ideas of women's beauty are interesting, He had a thing about women who wore glasses, with the best example being Miriam and Barbara in Strangers on a Train. Fun fact: Grace Kelly wore glasses at home but never in public, except for The Country Girl where they were used to add to her dowdiness.

Psycho - still get freaked out taking a shower

Vertigo and Marnie are my top picks. Hitchcock loved his stylized, brunette to blonde "makeover" scenes.

I'm partial to Der vaginale Symbollismus at 1'58".

^^ I always wonder what unbilled person turned the pages in old movie credits like that.

Did it require special skills? Did they become famous for it within the industry??

I've never had a thread go passed like 60 replies. Crying as I type.

Jodie as Melanie

Pity her hair and the suit is the wrong color.

This is one Barbie I can totally get behind.....

Good lord, R455.

[quote] I thought Jimmy Stewart looked younger in Bell, Book & Candle, even though it was filmed after Vertigo

He was made to look older — and somewhat unhealthy — in Vertigo. Scottie is a guy who never got what he wanted in life and in middle age, he has developed delusions. His vertigo is a delusion. The world isn’t really spinning around him. The light classical music played by his girlfriend Midge makes him dizzy. He’s psychologically unhealthy.

When he meets beautiful, mysterious Madeleine, she is his delusion of perfect love, a perfect woman. But perfection is unattainable. Madeleine is only perfect because she is false. People have faults, they’re real. Scottie doesn’t want real women like Midge or Judy, who are very interested in him as a real person despite his faults. He wants Madeleine, who is a mannequin. (When “Madeleine” dies, she is literally a mannequin thrown off a tower. ) He has a fear of real women and, like his vertigo, it is unhealthy.

I never thought Stewart was right for Vertigo. I thought someone darker, more brooding and less “midwestern Americana” would’ve been better in the role. But maybe Hitchcock cast him because people wouldn’t expect someone who looks and sounds like the proverbial gee whiz, cornfed American swell guy to be as obsessive as Scottie is. I don’t know.

Sorry, I meant Madeleine is a mannequin, in that she’s not really alive. When she “dies” she’s already dead, and dressed to look like someone who is alive, like a mannequin is.

Did people really not see that looooong, lingering close up of the pussy purse at R455?

R464 Did Alma Reville approve that pussy purse?

Would Grace Kelly have displayed that pussy purse?

Please. Grace Kelly would have displayed her own pussy if it got her in the movies.

R462 Maybe the problem with Vertigo IS James Stewart. I couldn't understand why this leading man was playing what seemed, to me, almost a villain. Maybe James Mason or somebody like that would have worked much better. The whole vertigo thing makes no sense to me either, so there's that.

Curiously, the guy who set it all up, Gavin Elster (Tom Helmore), is more sexy than Scotty.

^ Tom Helmore has a vague resemblance to the pretty Michael Redgrave whose buttocks I gushed over back at R422.

R456 Probably. I know they had people for close-ups of handwriting sequences.

[quote]Scottie doesn’t want real women like Midge or Judy, who are very interested in him as a real person despite his faults. He wants Madeleine, who is a mannequin. (When “Madeleine” dies, she is literally a mannequin thrown off a tower. ) He has a fear of real women and, like his vertigo, it is unhealthy.

Sounds like you're describing Hitchcock himself.

Interesting production shot of 'Tippi' Hedren in Marnie wearing the brunette wig she wears at the beginning of the film. I had always wondered if that was her in the opening shots or a stand in.

I love these kind of candid, on-set pictures that give alternate views and angles.

Speaking of Marnie, apparently,after an appearance on "Alfred Hitchcock Presents," Hitchcock wanted to originally cast Elizabeth Montgomery as "Liz Mainwaring" but she was unavailable.

It would have been interesting to see if Hitchcock would have started in on Montgomery,trying to remold her into his perfect "type". She certainly had the cool,stylized demeanor and blonde, "Hitchcock" look.

R457 congrats. You picked a sure-fire topic.

R460 maybe they did a Marion Crane crane. And of course there are all the stuffed birds in Psycho...Come to think of it, when Melanie is attacked by birds in the attic, it's like Marion being stabbed in the shower, with all those same jabbing motions. Too bad the wrong blonde was offed.

R473 that's news to me. She could have been wonderful, as she was in the Lizzie Borden TV movie. She was a great friend to gays.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but MARNIE is the first American movie to deal with "recovered memory" of sexual abuse.

R472, my eyes were immediately drawn to the porter's crotch. I'm sure Hitchcock would approve.

Because of this thread I realized I don't have anything from Hitchcock in my collection. I used to have a few on VHS but that was ages ago. Thankfully there was a deal on the blu-ray box sets of Hitchcock Vol. 1 & 2 for €10 a piece in a local online store. A great price for 14 films. I haven't seen all of his films, e.g. Family Plot, so it will be interesting to see how I'll react to them.

Charlize as Grace in Dial M for Murder.

R477 I don't know, but I do know that Psycho was the first film to include a shot of a toilet.

A disturbing shot.

I believe though it's so long ago I don't remember it well that there is a shot of a toilet in the silent classic The Crowd. You also find an occasional 'damn' in pre code talkies though admittedly very rare. In a pre code talkie Cagney runs into a men's room and you see him in front of a row of closed stall doors. In Once in a Lifetime a playwright about to have a nervous breakdown tells the secretary of a producer he can't get in to see that he needs desperately to take a dump. Though not in so many words. But his meaning is clear. A few years later after the Hays code it would have never been allowed.

Stewart also almost ruined REAR WINDOW, but Grace Kelly and Thelma Ritter salvaged it. Stewart was not an attractive man and I am perplexed as to why people thought so. It was totally ridiculous to see foxes like Grace Kelly, Kim Novak and even Doris Day as his leading ladies. He was also a damned lousy, one-note actor.

R473 what a babe!

[quote]r433 What does Judy get out of the whole ruse? It doesn't seem to be money. If it was she certainly didn't get much ending up as she does.

SPOILERS, OF COURSE

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

In Scottie's climactic speech in the final scene he theorizes:

[italic]"You played the wife very well, Judy. He made you over ... You were his girl, huh? What happened to you? Did he ditch you?"[/italic]

We can guess that Elster had a plan to murder his wife, and somehow spotted Judy in San Francisco, noting her resemblance to her. She became his mistress and he gave her a makeover to look even more like her, bringing her into the plan. Judy imagined they would then stay together afterwards, but he ditched her, knowing she couldn't speak out as she was now an accessory to murder.

There could have been variations on this, and we don't know HOW complicit she was in the actual murder. But as Judy seems tender and needy, I think it's safe to say she did it because she believed she'd have a future with Elster.

[quote]This is one Barbie I can totally get behind....

I bought every one of the these Barbies I could find when the first came out in '08. I knew they were gonna be huge collector's items and I was right. The routinely sell for over a hundred bucks on Ebay and I've sold most of mine.

I don't collect Barbies and have no intention to start but I though "The Birds " Barbie was so cool and interesting I was hoping for s whole series of Hitchcock Barbies.

Of course, they did have a "Rear Window" Barbie and "To Catch a Thief" Barbie which I also own but that was part of Grace Kelly collection not a Hitchcock one .

I really wanted to see a Barbie as Marion Crane, Barbie as Marnie and Barbie as Madeline AND Judy series of dolls but Mattel never delivered.

Here's 'Tippi's' screen test in which Hitchcock made the determination between her, Joanna Moore(Ryan O' Neal's ex)and Claire Griswold (Sydney Pollack's widow) as to who would win the part of "Melanie Daniels". With her stylized, almost pantomime modeling gestures, ability to present and move well in Edith Head's clothes, quick wit and deftness in fending off and even dominating Martin Balsam at times, it's easy to see why Hitchcock thought she would be the perfect embodiment for his heavily posed, "mannequin" style of presenting actors.

Watching the barely competent Sienna Miller try to recreate this test in "The Girl" was like watching a simpering 5 yo trying on mommy's high heels for the first time.

a real Scotty-fashions-Judy-into-Madeleine dynamic

"The whole vertigo thing makes no sense to me either, so there's that."

It's a metaphor for a fear of loss of control, of castration anxiety, of falling...which hearkens back to the lapsarian Fall from grace, Original Sin and its attendant guilt...which, for the very Catholic Hitchcock, was something that probably haunted him his entire life and informed his art.

[quote]r486 I don't collect Barbies - -

Here's the test in it's entirety. I really love 'Tippi's well enunciated, mid Atlantic style accent. Interesting how Hitch directs her to "fix that voice lower' and make it "gawky". (at least if I'm hearing that correctly). I actually think her voice was more attractive and pleasant sounding in her normal range. Bad direction from Hitch as I've encountered several people who specifically complained that her voice annoyed them in "The Birds".

So glad they didn't put her in that awful, short wig for the film.

You could say VERTIGO is about a man who can't do anything right.

Scottie is kind of a massive screw up that repeatedly loses everything (including Midge, years ago.)

I think Scottie dodged a bullet when he lost Midge.

VERTIGO had an alternate ending. I'm sure most of you know that, but here it is in case it's new to you:

Very cool!

What could make that ending work would be if Midge started slowly pinning her hair up in the Madeleine style as Scottie watched.

R483 He was cute when he was young, in the 1930s.

Scottie is a puritan creep. He should have been played by someone also playing The Collector or something like that. Maybe Keir Dullea would have been great.

Claire Griswold had a memorable role in the Hitchcock directed episode of his Hour TV series called "I Saw the Whole Thing". She had a lovely voice.

R494 I don't get it.

R483 the idea that men were supposed to be worthy of hotter women didn't exist back then. (Still doesn't exist in sitcomville.). Women were "lucky" to get a man. Men weren't supposed to be gym rats either i.e. They didn't have to work at keeping a woman.

VERTIGO casting issue: Stewart and Bel Geddes supposedly were in college at the same time. Which is laughable, since he was 14 years older than she was in real life.

Hi.....

I wonder what Gregory Peck would’ve done with the role of Scottie?

I wonder what Gregory Peck would have done in bed with Scottie.

Maybe stupid Scottie would have finally calmed down.

Why does Judy go back to looking like cheap Judy, with bad clothes, bad hair and bad makeup after she learned that she looked beautiful with pinned up blonde hair and good makeup? She could’ve gotten her air bleached and worn it in a bob, or worn it in a flip.

You can take the girl out of Salina, Kansas, but you can't take the Salina, Kansas out of the girl.

She has bad associations with the whole incident, having been dumped. Plus she's participated in a criminal act, and still lives in the same city as her dupe.

Because, R505, she was sick of being a fantasy person.

Funny how REAR WINDOW is the only Grace Kelly film I love. I was underwhelmed by her two previous Hitchcock films. But she was absolutely beguiling in REAR WINDOW.

R467, Yeah Stewart is a little old and creepy for the part, but the problem is mainly Novak, SO out of her league. And then there's her gawdawful wig.

And then the cheezy special effects. Hitchcock was never great when it came to using them. Even rear projection...

I thought Vertigo was great just as it was.

Strangers on a Train, largely for a scene where the magician's birds burst out of a crate someone opens and they proceed to cruise around in an out of the shots as the scene goes on.

It's so awful of me to say, but the scene in SOAT where Bruno strangles Miriam is perversely satisfying.

I feel like the rest of you don't praise Barbara Bel Geddes's sublime performance as Midge as much as you should. She deserved an Oscar, don't you think?

It was small part and she isn't in the last third of the movie.

I really do, r514.

Midge is another girl with glasses that signify ugly in Hitchworld.

I love this thread. I rewatched Strangers on a train, on Netflix. Thanks poster who told us it was on Netflix. I remember reading years ago that Hitchcock was deliberate in offering roles to either Stewart or Grant. Each had certain qualities he wanted for specific roles. Stewart wanted either North by Northwest or To Catch a Thief. Hitchcock said no. In Rope, Vertigo, Rear Window and the man who knew too much the protagonist is fearful of women/life/something and more a watcher than doer. Maybe Hitchcock saw the underlying repression people have mentioned. Anyway what a great thread.

Stewart works better for me in "The Man Who Knew Too Much" and "Rope" rather than in the other two, because in "Man Who Knew Too Much" he's a settled family man, and in "Rope" as a professor without a very strong significant other, he doesn't have to play the romantic kinds of things which just come off as a bit unbelievable to have Kim Novak and Grace Kelly all over him in the other two. He's just miscast in them. I'm not sure who would have been better casting for them, perhaps Gregory Peck or even, think of the possibilities, Marlon Brando?

[quote]He's just miscast in them. I'm not sure who would have been better casting for them, perhaps Gregory Peck or even, think of the possibilities, Marlon Brando?

Gregory Peck I can see because,despite his handsomeness, had kind of a conservative, rather asexual vibe like Stewarts that I can totally see being swept away with a woman like Novak. But unlike Stewart he had the good looks and fatherly demeanor that Novak's character would have naturally been drawn to.

Like Paul Newman, Brando, to me, was much too young,hip and worldly to ever be believable as a lonesome, romantically starved obsessive who loses touch with reality under the spell of a mysterious, gorgeous woman.

The same thing would apply to Cary Grant and William Holden. These guys were just too big of playboys to ever be plausible as Scotty. The only thing that didn't work with Stewart was that he just wasn't that fuckable. But Judy DID have daddy issues so the casting was appropriate ENOUGH.

Robert Mitchum would have been a REALLY interesting choice for Scotty. In '58 he was still good looking and virile but not so much that you wouldn't accept that he could be a lonely, undersexed weirdo. He had played numerous roles before in which he had been duped by deceitful, beautiful women so he could definitely act the part.

He always had great sexual chemistry with his leading ladies. He and Novak would have been FIRE.

[quote] r517 Midge is another girl with glasses that signify ugly in Hitchworld.

In the script it says, [italic]"Midge wears glasses but does not whip them on and off as they do in the movies."[/italic]

haha

I think I can see Brando more in "Vertigo" since that character is kind of kinky getting off on all those dramas he sees going on in all the windows, and I have a feeling Brando was kind of kinky. Plus Grace Kelly and he would have made a very attractive couple; he's so much more animalistic than Stewart so that's one reason such a patrician, elegant gal like her might hang around.

R523 Correction: I mean in "Rear Window".

I prefer Joanne Genthon to Barbara Bel Geddes.

R521 I shouldn't know this, but that gif is from the point Brando rolls his eyes after being asked about working with Bankhead in a play. He's uncannily gorgeous there. I think he would have been a good Madeleine in a gender-switched Vertigo. The ultimate object of desire.

R520 I would have loved to see handsome Gregory Peck in 'Vertigo' but 20th-Century-Fox wouldn't release him.

I forget if we ever see the real Madeleine to compare how close an approximation Novak makes.

Another vote for Peck as Scotty. How about James Mason? That might have worked. Or if I could go out on a limb, how about Frank Sinatra? Think about it. Or don't.

well Mason depicted obsession very well in Lolita. Sinatra was with Novak in two films, but I don't think he had the substance. Peck was an admirable, gorgeous and limited actor.

understatement of the day: Brando was kind of kinky.

[quote]I forget if we ever see the real Madeleine to compare how close an approximation Novak makes.

Yes, we DO see the real Madeleine but it's kind of hard to compare how close an approximation to Novak she makes with the side of her head caved in.

If I had a Great Gay Wayback Machine, my first selection would be to transport myself to a 1946 pre-Broadway performance of Cocteau's THE EAGLE HAS TWO HEADS, starring Tallulah and Marlon.

It would have been a train wreck inside a dumpster grease fire. But it would have been good for a Datalounge thread.

So was the wife already dead before Scotty was hired?

Scotty was mixed up in a murder? I thought he just fucked a lot.

I think so, R534. I don't like that story anyhow.

I think Elster must have killed his wife up in the bell tower just before he threw her body off. If she had been killed before, he would have had to carry her body into the church and drag her up that staircase, without being seen. And if she had been killed before Scotty was hired, her body would have been pretty ripe — it’s at least several days between his first meeting with Elster and Madeleine's death, maybe more like a week or more.

The alternate ending for Vertigo was filmed just in case any censors demanded that it be made explicit that Elster didn't go unpunished. It's been called the "European ending" and the "international ending" but in reality it was never used anywhere. It was discovered in the 1990s and first used as an extra on a laserdisc edition of the film. It has since been included as an extra on DVDs and BluRays.

Dare I bring up......

Stewart was no sexpot by today's standard, when every new hunk with a gym body is considered "desirable" - he was seen as a sort of lightweight, affable partner before the war. (PHILADELPHIA STORY)

His experiences during the war changed him, and until the Method guys came along shortly thereafter, Stewart cornered the market on a sort of unfocused rage and angst. (WONDERFUL LIFE)

His Mann Westens show a complexity that his pre-war career would never have indicated. Chances are he was suffering from undiagnosed PTSD.

A rather creepy and comical performance by Stewart in THE MAN WHO KNEW TOO MUCH. Creepy: sedating his wife against her will so she can't "make a scene" when they learn the kid is abducted. Comical: the Moroccan restaurant, in which Hitchcock submits him to numerous indignities.

Didn’t the Hays code forbid movies showing characters getting away with murder? I remember at the end of every episode of Alfred Hitchcock Presents he always came on and recited some bilge about how the criminals were caught and went to prison, especially if the teleplay seemed to show good guys plotting and sneakily killing off bad guys. He had to do it because of the code.

Right, the Code insisted that killers were apprehended by the police to be brought to justice. Suicides were absolutely condemned by the Code, as well.

The Production Code Administration was headed by an Irish-American Catholic (Joseph Ignatius Breen).

Yes, crime wasn't allowed to pay. See for example "Red-Headed Woman" with Jean Harlow, who after breaking up a marriage, leading people to ruin, she's seen enjoying herself with a new guy (I think Charles Boyer) at the end, living it up. That kind of thing wouldn't happen at 1934 with the Production Code being enforced.

R533 I don't know if I could have coped seeing Cocteau's 'THE EAGLE HAS TWO HEADS'.

Marlon was a mumbler.

And we may think Tallulah was fun but she wasn't a proper actress. She could deliver one-liners. But she had a painfully monotonous delivery in a full role with a tenor voice that sounded like a drain.

There's a reason she appeared in only 3 known movies and her 'Milk Train' play failed.

Well, I got away with murder and never looked back!

Anne Baxter was and always will be 'a supporting actress'.

She shouldn't have played Eve or Nefretiri or Rebecca!

I don't know if there's a heaven or not, but if there is, I like to think it has a movie theater where you can watch movies as they would have been with other actors in certain roles; Anne Baxter as the second Mrs. de Winter in "Rebecca," Peter Sellers as Toddy in "Victor/Victoria," (he died during pre-production) or best yet, "The Manchurian Candidate" with Frank Sinatra's choice to play Raymond's mother...Lucille Ball!

Robert Preston is quite terrific in "VIctor/Victoria"'; the shame is that Henry Manini didn't give him good musical numbers at least as good as he gave Julie Andrews in "Le Jazz Hot".

Mancini

In Vertigo the police must have been pissed to have to get two separate bodies off that roof only days apart.

Well we have The Mirror Has Two Faces for all eternity.

Separate but strangely similar bodies, r551!

Two bodies with the same blonde hairdo, dressed in the same grey suit, on the same roof.

All of them, and his wife should get equal credit as well.

How could Judy/Madeleine know Scottie would jump into the bay after her? And how convenient tha5 there just happened to be a ridiculous stone stairway leading out of the water. When was the last time you saw a stone stairway leading into a bay in a major city?

“Come on you guys, I dare you to go swimming under the bridge. We can jump off the stone stairway into the water, and then run up the stairs out of the water!” - every little kid in SF if such a thing existed.

If Hitchcock shows a stone stairway leading out of the water though I've never been to SF I know it's there.

Otherwise the whole plot goes kablooey.

For a detective Scotty wasn't very discreet at concealing his presence when he was following someone. Like in the flower shop where he was peaking through the door, it was obvious she could have seen him.

That’s what Hitchcock called an "icebox scene", R556. He loved to put these things into his movies - moments that you let go by while watching the movie, but that “hit you after you’ve gone home and start pulling cold chicken out of the icebox.”

As for the flower shop R568, the whole point is that she intended to be followed, so whether she saw him or not is irrelevant.

r389 - I like obscure ones, too. Love the silents. Here the infamous murder scene in The Pleasure Garden (1925), start at the 51:05, the first time where Hitch showed his hand. The Lodger was great, but surpassed by M.

I thought Bankhead showed acting chops here in a mini-play on the Milton Berle Show; skip to 2:09 for the start of the drama. Natural and affecting.

[quote]Two bodies with the same blonde hairdo, dressed in the same grey suit, on the same roof.

She wasn't in the same suit. It was a dinner dress...an evening dress......short, black, with long sleeves and a kind of square neck.

----Scotty

On TCM right now, DIAL M FOR MURDER.

Thanks for the correction, R562. Of course it was the black dress.

OK, R561. I will concede Tallulah does do some vocal inflection in that clip but I'll say that 'A Royal Scandal' (in 1945) is very limp and she sounds like a complete zombie in 'Fanatic' (in '65).

And there must have some reason why this uber-gay play was pulled after just 5 performances ! ! ! ! !

R563 I love Ray Milland's voice.

You can tell it was released in 3D because in almost every shot, Hitchcock has something in the foreground.

Perhaps because the play sucked, r565?

Hitch did love his charming villains: Milland, Cotten, Walker, Mason, Sanders, Grant (in Suspicion, where he originally was supposed to be a murderer).

I've enjoyed this thread as much as a good Hitchcock movie. Thank you guys.

IMHO Kim Novak had every right to complain about her costuming in VERTIGO, which she apparently did. She looks very horsey in most of her costumes. Granted, she had a horsey figure but Edith Head was no help whatsoever.

She felt blondes don't look good in gray but Doris Day wore gray on The Man Who Knew too Much #2 . I think it is even the same style suit.

I know nothing about ladies clothes but I heard that George Cukor had some uber-gay colour advisor tell him that Cinemascope demanded a much more strict control of colouring which is why 'Star is Born' and 'Funny Face' have quite a few characters wearing grey and other muted tones.

That gray suit did not suit her and you rarely see photos of her in that suit that show her whole body, from head to toe, in the front. You mostly see photos of her in that suit taken from the side, or if they show it from the front, the photo is cut off at the waist

Doris Day looked horsey in the grey suit, too.

[quote]Suicides were absolutely condemned by the Code, as well.

Really?

Real blondes wear grey.

R573 maybe that's why he wanted her to wear it--to help set up a feeling of discomfort in the audience. The guy knew exactly what he was doing cinematically, always.

Edith could have saved time by dropping in at Lilli Ann's and purchasing a suit!

It must have being weird going to the pictures in the 50s.

You could sit in the back of the audience of a CinemaScope movie and see some members of the audience with their heads pointing to the left and others to the right.

The director and the clothes designer had to lure the audience to look at that side of the screen they wanted to tell the story.

[quote]Edith could have saved time by dropping in at Lilli Ann's and purchasing a suit!

No, NO! None of them are right!

---Hitch, oops, I mean Scotty.

Kim in the gray suit.

Kim's suit looks nothing like Edith's sketch.

The shape and length of the lapels are entirely different.

The suit has a self belt in the sketch.

The suit in the sketch has interesting seams under the bust.

There are no pockets in the sketch.

There's no turned-back cuffs in the sketch.

Kim's blouse is severe and makes the suit look like a nun's habit.

No hat!

WTF?

Almost like a prison uniform. Inmate or warden. Very effective, and no wonder she didn't like it.

[quote]Kim's suit looks nothing like Edith's sketch.The shape and length of the lapels are entirely different.WTF?

And who do you think was responsible for that?!

Doris' gray suit.

I always thought Dial M for Murder was boring because of memories when I was a kid. But I just watched it and it's really fun. I love that the whole plot turns on SPOILER ---------------------------------------------------------------------

a latchkey that is put back under the staircase carpet before entering and committing murder instead of putting it back after the murder. So now the unexpected dead hired murderer has a latchkey in his pocket but it's his own latchkey to his house instead of the one he already put back on the stair.

Oh, and Hitch makes sure to let you know just in time for the reveal that all latchkeys look alike. It's fun.

Grace Kelly had Dial M for Murder, Rear Window, and The Country Girl out all in 1954 - which helped her beat Judy for that Oscar.

Critical consensus says Vertigo is his best. But it always left me feeling Hitch did the Kim Novak reveal to early. And it was a bit slow for me in spots.

I think is all time classic is Rear Window. That one is perfection.

^too early

This thread of retrospective musing is almost up the Thread Closing limit.

The ending of this thread is sure to be dark and disturbing...

Hitchcock's favorite was "Shadow of a Doubt". And for good reason. Just the shot of the train billowing black clouds of smoke as it pulls into town is a classic in itself.

That film, and "Strangers on a Train" are probably his best, although it could've been better if only he could've gotten the cast he wanted.

Vertigo is probably THE most overrated 'classic' of all time.

Vertigo is probably THE most overrated 'classic' of all time.

r589 - Discussions on Hitchcock's extensive work can go on forever.

Re Novak's grey suit - Hitchcock chose to represent different aspects of the character - rooted in San Francisco, the color of grey fog, structured to indicate a woman of wealth and taste, and later represents something lost, a ghost of a dead woman. During the final transformation she is bathed in green light, traditionally the color of spirits in theatre. Novak did not like the grey suit b/c it was too constricting, but afterwards mentioned it helped find the Madeline character.

Re Doris Day's grey suit - the character was a retired singer, her husband forced to give up her career to marry him. The grey suit, not well fitted, represents the greyness of her new life. Note that in the film, Day is the most active of the couple, following leads, screaming during the assassination attempt and getting into embassy by using her fame a singer. She also tells the child she's near him by singing "Que Sera, Sera" very loudly under the cover entertaining guests.

[quote]The ending of this thread is sure to be dark and disturbing...

Well, think on this:

A PERFECT MURDER is actually a far better film in every department than DIAL M FOR ...

AS this thread has drawn to a close I would like to congratulate ourselves on such an an informative and civilised thread for an Englishman who died almost half a century ago.

The end credits roll...

Bajour!

Ok, Que Sera Sera!

Let's just go into that so Freudian tunnel.

Stewart being racist is hardly shocking for the timeframe. A lot of actors, like john Wayne were white supremisist. I mean it hardly makes Jimmy the most controversial.