Spellbound

One last cameo, one last film... My Hitchcock season drew to a close this afternoon with screenings of the Master's final two films. The season began in mid-June with The Lodger and 2 months later, and 50 years worth of film-making, I bow out with the breezy and brilliant Family Plot. Notorious, Rope, Dial M For Murder, Rear Window, Psycho, Frenzy are old friends but there were plenty of surprises too - the re-discovery of Vertigo, and two new favourites step out of the filmography - the stark, disturbing noir The Wrong Man, and the thrilling Cold War film Torn Curtain - both first time screenings too. Perhaps the most enjoyable films were the bookends. Hitch's Silent pictures proved hugely impressive (he was obviously taking notes during his stint at UFA), and I really enjoyed Hitch's final decade which contain some of his more overlooked films, like the terrific globe-trotting espionage thriller Topaz, which can at least boast having a black actor - Roscoe Lee Browne, in a small but key role - apart from Canada Lee in Lifeboat, black actors are unfortunately a rarity within Hitchcock's filmography. Despite the season suffering a few unavoidable omissions along the way (Under Capricorn, and most glaringly To Catch A Thief), I'm in good shape to pick up Hitchcock/Truffaut, Patrick McGilligan's 2003 biography and Peter Cowie's Hitchcock Murders...

A dream of dark and troubling things

"You're my second chance, Judy, you're my second chance.."

My Hitchcock season continues with Vertigo, and I came back to the film this morning like a prodigal son. Despite its status as a canonical work, I've never cared much for the film, but this latest screening, the first in over a decade, was something of a revelation, evidently maturity brings a greater appreciation for the dark currents that flow thru the film - the sequence where an addled James Stewart outfits Kim Novak in her predecessor's clothes is genuinely excruciating to watch. This is surely one of Hitchcock's most misanthropic films - exploitation, murder, manipulation - at least Henry Fonda's Wrong Man was given a last minute reprieve from his shattered life, but no mercy is afforded to Stewart's character who ends the film literally staring into the abyss...

Incidentally, I spotted a nice visual reference in the scene where Stewart tracks Novak to the Empire Hotel. Alongside the hotel, one can see a sign for a bar that reads "Twelfth Knight", presumably, a sly pun on the Twelfth Night, Shakespeare's riotous comedy about a set of twins and mistaken identity...

The Lost Voice of Anny Ondra

One more Hitchcock post for today… A short screen test shot during the production of Blackmail featuring Hitch and actress Anny Ondra speaking with her own voice. Ondra’s Teutonic tones were the first casualty of talking pictures, when Blackmail was reconfigured for sound, Ondra who plays the daughter of a Cockney newsagent, was re-voiced by an actress standing offscreen. Ondra’s lip movements are actually quite synchronous with the disembodied voice although her pantomime gestures don’t quite gel. Anny Ondra appeared in two Hitchcock pictures – before Blackmail, she appeared as a sultry temptress in The Manxman, and should be considered Hitchcock’s first great blonde. Her brief stint in English Cinema ended with the demise of Silent pictures but she continued to appear in European productions up to the mid-40’s. Glancing at her filmography I see she made a film in 1928 called Suzy Saxophone, a great film title and one that would not sound out of place as a sexy female spy caper as directed by Jess Franco.

Early Hitchcock

I finished off the first stage of my Hitchcock season yesterday evening with the completion of Studio Canal’s 2007 Early Hitchcock Collection boxset which contains 9 films made between 1927 and 1932, a whirlwind period of activity which saw Hitchcock make the transition from Silent to Sound and direct some of his most uncharacteristic films. Among them the genuinely bizarre and delightful 1931 sound film Rich and Strange (pictured below), a picaresque tale about a bored married couple who take a sea voyage from Marseilles to Singapore and encounter exotic strangers, Chinese pirates, and cat stew. What’s more, the film includes ill-matched stock footage, jolting jump cuts, and witty intertitles (Jean-Luc Godard was probably an admirer).

The Studio Canal set has some omissions from this 5 year run of films - the 1928 Silent, Easy Virtue, the 1931 German language version of Murder! (re-titled Mary), and 1929’s Juno and the Paycock, a very early sound adaptation of Sean O'Casey's great Dublin play. I’m particularly interested in seeing Juno and the Paycock, not the most fondly regarded film of the director’s British years, but the long takes that Hitchcock devised for his run of play adaptations makes the film as near a record of what the play might have been like on the Abbey stage in the mid-twenties. There’s several public domain DVDs to choose from but all reports suggest the film looks and sounds like it was taken from a ragged 16mm print. The next Hitchcock on the list is the original 1934 version of The Man Who Knew Too Much, where the Master finds his mojo…

Hitchcock spotting

My Hitchcock season is underway and I’m looking forward to, among other things, the director cameos which to my surprise began in the Silent era. I was under the impression that Hitchcock’s appearances in his films didn’t begin until The Lady Vanishes, but he can be glimpsed sitting at a desk in the 1927 film The Lodger. I’ll refrain from posting screengrabs of the cameos as they appear, there are plenty of fine websites out there dedicated to that very thing. Still, I couldn't resist mentioning the Master's ingenious cameo, his 1944 film Lifeboat...

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Hitchcock toyed with the idea of appearing in the opening scene as a corpse drifting among the debris of the torpedoed ship, but instead settled for the faux advert which Hitchcock liked to claim resulted in several thousand letters from people inquiring about the miracle weight-loss product. Interestingly, Hitch's original idea for his cameo was revived some 28 years later for the very amusing trailer of Frenzy which opens with a dummy of Hitchcock drifting down the Thames. Worth mentioning too Hitchcock’s cameo in Last Year At Marienbad, or rather his appearance in Resnais’ film. Hitchcock can be glimpsed early on in the film (at the 11:08 to be precise, so your attention won’t be diverted from Marienbad’s puzzle), lurking in the shadows as a cardboard cut out. I'm sure Hitchcock was flattered by the gesture, he was very keen on the auteur films emerging from post-war France and Italy. Hitchcock's unmade film Kaleidoscope was said to be influenced by Antonioni's Red Desert and later Blow-Up

Hitchcock Season

I can attribute this epic undertaking to Kate Bush… I caught the half-hour Sensual World promo film last week and listening to Kate wax lyrical about Alfred Hitchcock has inspired me to revisit the Master’s filmography, kicking off this past weekend with the Silent films, beginning with the 1927 proto-serial killer film The Lodger, thru to The Ring, Downhill, The Farmer's Wife, Champagne and The Manxman. The next film to see is the 1929 feature Blackmail, which I have in both Silent and Sound editions so this is a nice segue way into the Sound era. Apart from The Lodger, this has been my first pass at the Silent films and they have been something of a revelation, seeing Hitchcock’s remarkable command of the medium on such early films as Downhill and The Ring (the best of the Silents). It’s always a treat to watch a director’s early films and draw connections with later work and the Silent films are pleasingly filled with pre-echoes of familiar Hitchcock obsessions. One element in particular I honed in on, given my love for Rope, is the apartment set of The Ring which features a similarly artificial, illuminated citycape beyond the window. The later film features a much more elaborate design and production, but it’s nice to see Hitchcock adding these decorative details to his sets even at this early stage…