1959 - NORTH BY NORTHWEST, on the big screen

Attended a revival of Hitchcock's North By Northwest, part of the Hitchcock at 125 celebration going on in our city.  North By Northwest is kind of a turning point in Hitchcock's career, in many ways  it's the summit of his talent as a storyteller.  His decline starts with his move to Universal studios from Paramount where for various reasons he seemed unable to capture the success of his Paramount films.  After this, he films Psycho and follows it up with the interesting but flawed The Birds.  However it's all downhill from this point.

Anyway here are some behind the scenes photos.

The film was written by Ernest Lehman, his only original film script.  Lehman was one of the prime movers of the film version of The Sound of Music which obviously made a bundle of money for him later in his career.

Hitchcock wasn't allowed to film much of the famous Mt Rushmore climax on location, so it was recreated at MGM studios. 

The crop duster scene was filmed in California not Illinois.  Film buffs have looked for the location for years but the area has been so built up with home construction since the early 1960's no one seems completely sure where it was filmed.

 

Another behind the scenes still from the Mt Rushmore climax.  Bernard Herrmann's score added a great deal to the excitement of this famous chase scene.

Contrary to popular belief Hitchcock's production team did film on location at Mt Rushmore before the Park Service banned him from the location.  No making fun of Mt Rushmore even for a Hitchcock film I guess.

 The last surviving member of the cast, Eva Marie Saint is 99 years old as of this date.

The running time on North by Northwest is 136 minutes but you would never know it the film really well paced.

1951 - STRANGERS ON A TRAIN, one of Hitchcock's best films

Saw this at a revival theater the other night, the 35 mm print was in excellent condition. This film is basically review proof.  Strangers on a Train was adapted from the novel by Patricia Highsmith which is even more perverse than Hitchcock's movie.

Robert Walker in the best performance and probably the best role of his career is the obviously gay villain Bruno Anthony who latches on to the unsuspecting Farley Granger and traps him into a murder plot.

 

This film is extremely well written and needless to say well made. This film marked the beginning of Hitchcock's association with Robert Burks the cinematographer who was really responsible for the "Hitchcock look, " for the next fourteen films.  Burks died in a house fire in 1968.  Hitchcock's films never looked so good again, a great loss.

Robert Burks

Hitchcck's daughter Patrica shows up in a featured part along with the actor  Leo G. Carroll best remembered as Mr. Waverly in The Man From Uncle series.  Carroll must have been a favorite of Hitchcock's he appeared in 6 films.

It's well known that Raymond Chandler has a screen writing credit on this film but none of his material was used.  He apparently didn't get along with Hitchcock at all.

 

Hitchcock was unhappy with the actor Farley Granger as Guy Hanes, however he was wrong in this case Granger gives a very good performance. 

 

Again one of Hitchcock's best films, he was about to enter a run of 11 excellent films from 1951-1963.

The writing credits on the film are, Raymond Chandler, Czenzi Ormonde, Whitfield Cook and Hitchcok's wife Alma Reville who is uncredited.  The running time is 101 minutes

1940 - FOREIGN CORRESPONDENT - one of Hitchcock's best films

Rebecca was Alfred Hitchcock's first American film. Hitchcock had been contacted by independent producer David Selznick the mastermind behind Gone With The Wind.  Selznick had recently purchased the novel Rebecca which had been a best seller. Hitchcock signed on with Selznick to direct the film version and the rest as they say was history.  Although Rebecca was a success, Hitchcock was under the very close supervision of Selznick who always believed the producer was the author of a film.  The resulting finished film seemed more like a high class Hollywood movie than a Hitchcock film.

Selznick loaned Hitchcock out to another independent producer Walter Wanger who turned out to be a more hands off executive than Selznick.  Wanger essentially left Hitchcock alone to make his movie.  Given more control over the script and production,  Hitchcock turned out his first real American Hitchcock film, Foreign Correspondent.  This was the real start of the American phase of Hitchcock's  career.

 

Foreign Correspondent bares some relation to Hitchcock's 39 Steps and the later North By Northwest with it's whirlwind plot and dazzling set pieces.  Unlike his English films he was working with a large budget and some of Hollywood's best technicians courtesy of Wanger.  In later interviews Hitchcock complained about the casting of Joel McCrea and Laraine Day but in many ways they are the prototypes for future Hitchcock protagonists and they both give charming performances.

 

This is the master director in his prime about to create some of the best pictures of his career using the superior technical resources of the Hollywood studio system while at the same time bringing his personal style to his films. 

The film was written by Charles Bennett and Joan Harrison with contributions from James Hilton and Robert Benchley.  The running time is 120 minutes.

1931 - RICH AND STRANGE, early Hitchcock comedy/drama

Another interesting restoration of an early Hitchcock picture.  Rich and Strange continues to show Hitchcock's progress as a filmmaker.  His career really doesn't start to take off until 1934 with his film, The Man Who Knew Too Much.

This is a rather typical romantic comedy where the husband and wife on an ocean cruise fall in and then out of love with other people and finally get reunited.  The film contains plenty of Hitchcock's humor and amusing situations.  But I would rate this as a minor Hitchcock film.

There's nothing wrong with restoring Hitchcock's early films but I wish the BFI would lavish some attention on some of his really quirky films like The Secret Agent, Young and Innocent and Sabotage.  These are the some of the most interesting pictures from Hitchcock's British period.  Rich and Strange is enjoyable enough but it would nice to have decent copies of the above mentioned films.

Of interest in this film is the actor Elsie Randolph who plays a very annoying passenger on the ocean cruise.  Randolph shows up again in Frenzy the film Hitchcock made towards the end of his career.

The screenplay is by Hitchcock his wife Alma Reville and Val Valentine.  The running time is 83 minutes.

1929 - BLACKMAIL, Hitchcock begins his transition to sound films.

Hitchcock's Blackmail exists in two versions, silent and sound.  The studio producing Blackmail had Hitchcock shoot some of the scenes with sound, so this film is generally considered the first British sound film

This is a story that Hitchcock adapted himself based on a play by Charles Bennett.  Hitchcock was always good at integrating the visual elements in his films with dialog and for a director coping with early sound film technique, he did surprisingly well although the film is creaky at times.

 

The story is about the girlfriend of a Scotland Yard detective who has to cover up the murder of a man who was attempting to rape her. The story focuses on her attempts to keep from being blackmailed by a man who witnessed the crime. Considering the age of the film and the constraints Hitchcock had to deal with the film is reasonably watchable.  When it came to making movies Alfred Hitchcock always knew where to place the camera in a scene and how to edit it for maximum impact even in an early film like this.

The running time is 85 minutes on the sound version that I watched.

1972 - FRENZY. HItchcock at 73 years old.

 After a series of not so great to pretty bad films for Universal Studios, Hitchcock managed to put together a fairly decent film.  For a man in his 70's and not in particularly great health this was a considerable achievement.

With a fairly decent British writer in Anthony Schaffer and a very good British cast, Hitchcock returned to London to film it away from the interference of Universal Studios.

 

The film is one of Hitchcock's "run for cover" stories he had done successfully before  Frenzy follows a serial murder running around London strangling women.  Hitchcock pulled it together for a couple of okay to good Hitchcockian scenes and the London locations did seem to invigorate his storytelling.

 

Frenzy is not up to some of Hitchcock's greatest films but it is a fairly good film to wrap up his career with,  Family Plot excluded in this case. Running time 116 minutes.

1954 - REAR WINDOW, the Hitchcock classic

Alfred Hitchcock and his writer John Michael Hayes created this film about voyeurism and didn't miss a trick incorporating a murder mystery and a love story into the plot.

 

James Stewart playing a photographer with a broken leg has noting to do but spy on his neighbors with his binoculars and eventually a telephoto camera.  Each different apartment window has it's own little story.  Eventually Stewart becomes aware that all is not right with the apartment directly across from his.  It seems the invalid wife of a salesman has suddenly vanished.

Hitchcock was always able to bring out the best in established actors.  James Stewart is very good as the photographer.  Thelma Ritter is the home health care nurse and Grace Kelly looking great as usual in her third Hitchcock film is good as Stewart's on again off again girlfriend.

Considering the dramatic and technical challenges this is an impressive and very entertaining film.

112 minutes.

1949 - UNDER CAPRICORN, a very odd Hitchcock failure

The dream of many of the major Hollywood film directors after World War II was to set up their own production company and film stories they were interested in.  John Ford, Frank Capra, William Wyler, George Stevens and Alfred Hitchcock took the plunge in the late 1940's.  For a number of reasons these companies failed.  Hitchcock is somewhat typical of what happened to these directors.

For his company "Transatlantic Pictures," Hitchcock chose two films.  Rope and Under Capricorn.
Rope was hardly going to be an "audience pleaser."  A play about homosexual murders filmed in very long takes, the film was a financial failure.  Hitchcock moved on to Under Capricorn.

  

Even with one of Hollywood's biggest stars this film is just a dull mess.  For a director who probably spent more time in the office working on his screenplays it's hard to believe Hitchcock even read this one.  There is just lots and lots of talk.  The story is secondary to this chatter.  Joseph Cotton and Ingrid Bergman live in 1800's Australia.  Cotton is an ex-convict who has built a fortune for himself.  Bergman is his wife who has a mysterious past.  Into this mix comes Michael Wilding as some sort of aristocratic fop who stirs things up.  However I'm not sure of the plot since my eyes glazed over about an hour into this thing with the constant gabbing of the main characters.

Probably the only noteworthy aspect of Under Capricorn is Hitchcock's continued use of the long take.  The camera rolls around flying past doors and walls to what seems little purpose other than to call attention to itself.  It may be an interesting experiment for movie nerds but it seems completely pointless for storytelling.  If fact most of the rolling camera shots were apparently cut from the film because they tended to slow the action down.

It can be appreciated that Hitchcock wanted to get out of the suspense genre occasionally and he did do that with Rebecca.  But in this case it would seem that Under Capricorn was just a completely failure to understand what he was getting into.  This film was just a real ordeal to sit through

117 minutes, written by Hume Cronyn and James Bridie.

1963 - THE BIRDS, probably the last good Hitchcock film.

With the death of Rod Taylor it was a good opportunity to look at one of Taylor's better films, The Birds.  The Birds is the beginning of Alfred Hitchcock's association with Universal Studios.  It also stands out as the last good Hitchcock picture.  Everything starts to go downhill for Hitchcock after this film. 

Hitchcock directs The Birds

The Birds is the first appearance of Hitchock's ingenue Tippi Hedren, who it appears Hitchcock developed a supposedly unhealthy obsession with. Hedren was a model who Hitchcock personally groomed for stardom.  Her lack of acting experience really hurt Marnie and her career never really recovered.   Here she seems OK in the role of a spoiled playgirl, she was clearly carefully directed by Hitchcock.

 

 

The Birds is a very good film, extremely well directed by Hitchcock.  The special effects are now routinely criticized but considering the number of challenges just getting live birds to do anything  would have to had been a significant achievement.  

Hitchcock very deliberately kept the motivations and actions of the birds a mystery and the film has been frequently described as Hitchcock's end of the world film.  There is certainly an apocalyptic subtext that runs throughout the film.  In any case, this is a film made by a master film maker.

119 minutes, screenplay by Evan Hunter.

1954 - DIAL M FOR MURDER, a very good Hitchcock film.

Not very much to write about on this one.  Dial M for Murder is now regarding as one of Hitchcock's best films.

As previously discussed by a lot of film scholars and critics, Hitchcock took a one set play by the author Frederick Knott and with clever use of camera angles and lighting was able to make the play look like a film.  A lot of film scholars think this is the Hitchcock film to study if you want to learn about his film technique.

Hitchcock always claimed that he could have phoned this film in.  He apparently was planning Rear Window while making this film but re-watching this film it's hard to believe he wasn't engaged in this production.  The film was made during the 3-D craze and Hitchcock got stuck with filming in 3-D which he used rather subtlety probably a little to subtlety as it turned out.  I saw the film in 3-D many years ago and after watching it I wasn't exactly sure what the 3-D brought to the film going experience.

Dial M for Murder is a very good film made by the master of the film medium. It's also Hitchcock's first film with Grace Kelly who looks like a million bucks.

105 minutes screenplay by the author of the play.

1956 - THE MAN WHO KNEW TOO MUCH, the Hitchcock remake of his 1934 film.

Hitchcock remakes one of the British thrillers that made his reputation in the 1930's and doesn't do a very good job on it.  The film is long and the suspense sequences are unusually flat.  All the old tricks are present with Hitchcock building suspense with camera angles and cutting but they don't seem to come off this time.  The famous Albert Hall assassination scene is probably the best part of the film but everything else doesn't work.

The casting of the film is pretty good with the exception of James Stewart as the blustering American father.  Stewart stumbles on an assassination plot and has to find and save his son from the team of assassins who have kidnapped the kid to keep Stewart from going to the police.  Stewart really piles on the "as shucks I'm just an average guy from the states" stuff.  He also blunders and blusters around searching for the assassins when it is clear he should have went to the police for help.  By the 1950's Stewart had a tendency to parody himself in his performances if he wasn't careful.

The female lead is Doris Day who isn't bad.  However she has the worst scene singing her popular hit "Que Sera Sera" over and over as a signal to her son.  This song make the climatic rescue scene seem rather ridiculous.  Considering the large budget Hitchcock was working with it seems that he could have been a little more inventive with this scene.

Hard to know what went wrong with this film.  Hitchcock had wanted to remake The Man Who Knew Too Much off and on throughout his career.  When he finally got around to doing it he didn't seem to really care about reinventing the film. 

 This is a very long and boring film. 120 minutes, written by John Michael Hayes.

1964 - MARNIE, Hitchcock loses the light.

 Marnie is a Hitchcock film that has it's defenders but I wonder if these defenders have actually watched this film recently.  It's not very good but very fascinating.  Exactly what Hitchcock ever saw in this story completely escapes me.  Hitchcock had been critical of Spellbound a film that he felt had a lot of psychological mumble jumble.  However Marnie has as much pseudo psychological garbage in it as Spellbound.

If there is any insight to be gained in Marnie, it's mostly watching Hitchcock load the film up with loving closeups of the actor Tippi Hedren.  She is carefully photographed in about every conceivable way and clothed and gowned to the "nines".  It's been well documented that Hitchcock had an almost pathetic infatuation with Hedren needless to say this situation did not end well.  The problem with Tippi Hedren was that she couldn't act her way out of a paper bag.  At least Spellbound for all its issues had Ingrid Bergman an actual performer.  About the only one who survives this mess is Sean Connery who at least turns in a real performance.

The other major problem with Marnie was the terrible script that Hitchcock put together with the writer Jay Presson Allen.  Hitchcock always claimed he was a visual director but almost every actor in this film yaks away in scene after scene.  Marnie would probably have worked better as a stage play than a film.

Marnie marks the end of Hitchcock's association with Bernard Herrmann.  Hermann wrote a very melodramatic score for the film.  Apparently Herrmann felt that Tippi Hedren was completely miscast in the film and tried to boost the film with a lot of over the top music.  Hitchcock was  not pleased with the score.

Hitchcock's previous film The Birds had it's issues but at least it was an interesting film.  Marnie marks the beginning of Hitchcock's very depressing decline at Universal Studios.

130 minutes.

1945 - SPELLBOUND, another Hitchcock vs Selznick film collaboration

Spellbound made a lot of money for producer David Selznick.  Selznick had the idea of producing a thriller using Freudian psychoanalysis as a background.  Selznick had Alfred Hitchcock and Ingrid Bergman under contract and they were both hot proprieties.  Ben Hecht a legendary writer wrote the screenplay (which Selznick probably rewrote).   Since it was a Selznick production everything everything was at a very high caliber.  Watching it this weekend, Spellbound now comes off as a hopeless naive film with lots of unintentional laughs particularly at the expense of psychoanalysis.

  The pictures in this post are from the deleted Salvador Dali dream sequences.

 

Hitchcock had brought in surreal artist Salvador Dali to help visualize the dream sequences but Selznick didn't really understand what Hitchcock and Dali were up to so he had the whole thing modified and re shot.  What's left of these scenes are probably the only interesting parts of the film.

Ingrid Bergman and Salvador Dali chat before filming a dream sequence that was cut by Selznick

It's well know that Hitchcock and Selznick fought throughout production of the film.  Selznick insisted on using his own psychiatrist Dr. May Romm as the technical advisor during the film.  Considering the ridiculous prattle that comes out of the mouth of Ingrid Bergman playing a therapist it's entirely understand that Hitchcock had a lot of concerns about the screenplay.

Spellbound is basically just a murder mystery with a bunch of psychiatric goobly gook double talk.  The film has a few Hitchcock touches but the film is a mess and has a real dated 1940's quality to it.

111 minutes.

1953 - I CONFESS, one of Hitchcock's very underrated films.

Alfred Hitchcock had a lot of problems making I Confess.  Warner Brother's studio found the story of a priest caught in a murder/love triangle a little too hot of a subject for their taste.  Hitchcock had to modify the story and change the ending of the film.  Hitchcock wanted to use Swedish actress Anita Bjork but Bjork had a rather messy personal life which the studio thought would have been fodder for the gossip columns.  

For his male lead, Hitchcock cast Montgomery Cliff a method actor who was also a very emotionally tortured person.  Hitchcock was a director who preferred actors who worked to his carefully preplanned visual pattern.  With Montgomery Cliff, Hitchcock had to wait for him to get into the mood.   But for all the problems Hitchcock had with Cliff, it is a very impressive performance

I Confess is one of Alfred Hitchcock's best directed films.  He shot much of the film in Quebec and brought a real feeling of atmosphere to the film.  This was a story that the Catholic director put a lot of himself and his feelings about religion into the film. 

I Confess is one of the few films that does not feature singing nuns or comical Irish priests but instead focuses on the individual's personal spiritual relationship to their religious beliefs.

92 minutes, written by George Tabori and William Archibald.

1969 - TOPAZ, another disappointing later period Hitchcock film

After flopping with Torn Curtain,  Hitchcock tried again in the spy genre with Topaz.  Hitchcock's plan was to make a "realistic Bond" film. 

This supposedly realistic James Bond thriller basically comes down too guys in suits sitting around talking about stuff, in this case the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis.  A 30 year old political crisis with guys talking was just the sort of film that screamed "out of it."  Hitchcock once the master of providing entertaining films had really lost his way as he wandered around in some sort of film making senility.

The cast was made up mostly of unknown and character actors.  Hitchcock picked an unknown European actor names Frederick Stafford as his lead.  Stafford had the look of a James Bond type but his acting left a lot to be desired.  The rest of the cast was made up of French actors who just don't seem to click in the film.  The only recognizable name is John Forsythe not really much of a big name in the movies but an actor Hitchcock could probably get along with.

Hitchcock had a lot of personal and professional problems to deal with during the making of Topaz.  He never seemed to get a focus on the script and the film had enough plot for about 4 spy thrillers.

Some critics championed the film, Leonard Maltin in the video introduction on the DVD comes off more as an apologist than an actual critic.  But do not be fooled this is a very poor film.

143 minutes, written by Samuel A. Taylor.