Alfred Hitchcock

[domino harvey]

ASMR for lonely Hitchcock fans (SFW, but you’re going to get weird looks regardless)

I almost fell off my chair laughing when she shushed me. And then she brings out... the popcorn. And we all know what she's going to do with it, don't we? That's right. Eat it. With her mouth open.

The script is unparalleled:

Oh you're so dreamy. So, so dreamy. I mean come on, straight from the fridge, all the girls love you. But you chose to go out on a date with me. Why?
That vibrates me. That vibrates me a lot.
.
.
.
I'm just glad this night didn't end with us screwed, blued, and tattooed.

So, what you're revealing is that you watched the whole thing



I suspect she used Straight From the Fridge, Dad, a book of "hep slang," mostly influenced by or originating in black culture spanning from the twenties into the fifties, the majority of which was probably about as prevalent in actual day to day 50s life as "deck" or "fetch" was ten years ago. I used to use the book with my students for a fun daily vocab thing, though, and they loved it.

Honestly, if this video gets some preteen/teen fans of ASMR Darling to watch Rear Window (which, based on her comments, she does appear to at least have had on in the same room that she filmed this, despite the royalty-free music she overlaid), it will have served a greater purpose beyond allowing young people to engage in some mild fantasy dating roleplay. I also enjoyed the YT comment from a black viewer who expressed his inability to relax while watching as he knew a date with a white woman in the 50s wasn't going to go unnoticed!

[bottled spider]

No, honest, I skipped ahead to the end to see how it finished... honestly...

But wait a second... how did YOU know that was the last line of the clip???

[dda1996a]

On the other hand, I was sure The Wrong Man was on course to becoming my favorite film of all time, not just Hitchcock's. I saw some people complaining on it's seriousness, but I found Hitch's themes being given the neo-realism once over, while also feeling like the sequel to Bresson's brilliant A Man Escaped had me floored. Fonda couldn't be a better casting, and I swear I could have watched their family life for another hour. But then goes full "end of Psycho" pop psychology, diverting the movie to the most unnecessary sub plot ever that I lost interest immediately. Just goes to show how sticking slavishly to real life facts could ruin a movie completely.

[dustybooks]

Upon finally seeing the silent Blackmail and Mary (the German Murder!) through the new KL releases, I found myself a little underwhelmed -- somewhat predictably in the latter case, as Hitchcock himself outlined the problems with that film: it's terribly rushed, further obscures one of the main plot points that was already coded in euphemism in the English version (

Spoiler

Handel Fane is not gay or bisexual, as anyone watching the film today will assume and as Hitchcock agreed when talking about Murder!, nor is he a "half-caste," the actual given reason for the scandal in the familiar version of the film; he is, as stated in the very last moments, an escaped convict!

), and almost entirely drops the humor and characterization that gave the story flavor with the original cast, rendering it surprisingly generic and pointless apart from the sets and camera work. Alfred Abel is off-putting in the Herbert Marshall role, as you can imagine if you know both actors' work well.

It's conventional wisdom I know, including here, that Blackmail is far superior as a silent film. But perhaps because I've known and loved the talkie for so many years now, i couldn't help missing the narrative innovations. It's not that different in most respects, but it felt a little ponderous to me -- especially in the sequences with Calthrop as the blackmailer -- and unlike Lucas on the commentary, I didn't think the breakfast scene was nearly as effective without the "knife" trick, and I felt Cyril Ritchard was a bit less of a memorably eccentric horror without his weird piano routine. Chances are, though, that with my expectations tempered I will like the silent version more when I revisit, and I'm grateful to finally have it on the shelf, and glad I waited to be able to see it in its full BFI-restored glory.

Incidentally, I think I've now seen everything Hitchcock directed except the two Free French shorts, two of the three hour-long TV shows, and maybe some of his bits in Elstree Calling (a piece of which is on Youtube, but I'm not sure if that's all of his contribution). Oh, and The Mountain Eagle, Number 13 and An Elastic Affair, of course.

[DeprongMori]

Incidentally, I think I've now seen everything Hitchcock directed except the two Free French shorts...

The Eureka release of Lifeboat contains the two Free French shorts (with commentary).

[barnyard078]

Image Entertainment also released the Free French shorts on an older DVD back in 1998. There are third party sellers on Amazon that are selling them, currently. The quality will be inferior to the Eureka Lifeboat release, but just putting it out there.

[dustybooks]

I appreciate it. The Eureka Lifeboat is on my list and I have access to the Image disc through the library, but I have to admit I've kind of delayed them because I don't want to be completely out of Hitchcock, as silly as it sounds. I finally watched "Incident at a Corner" last year and keep procrastinating on "Four O'Clock" and "I Saw the Whole Thing."

[senseabove]

A UHD box of The Birds, Rear Window, Psycho, and Vertigo coming in France in September: https://4k-ultra-hd.fr/coffrets-blu-ray ... films.html

[Glowingwabbit]

A UHD box of North by Northwest, Rear Window, Psycho, and Vertigo coming in France in September: https://4k-ultra-hd.fr/coffrets-blu-ray ... films.html

The Birds is the 4th title... not North by Northwest

[senseabove]

Oh, indeed! Whoops. I think I'd just read someone's comment complaining NxNW wasn't included when I went to type...

[Glowingwabbit]

Haha. No problem. I actually went looking because I was going to complain about The Birds not being included. I wonder why N×NW isn't in the set.

[EddieLarkin]

Unlike the other 4, it is not a Universal title.

This is essentially a UHD best of of the old 14 film Uni BD set.

[Glowingwabbit]

Unlike the other 4, it is not a Universal title.

This is essentially a UHD best of of the old 14 film Uni BD set.

Oh I didn't realize it wasn't Universal. Thanks.

[domino harvey]

Universal made a deal with Warners to include it in their Blu-Ray box, so easy mistake to make!

[domino harvey]

Wow, I never even heard of this, but in 1959 Hitchcock appeared on camera as himself in Tactic, a series of television specials about cancer, directing a scene of a doctor (William Shatner) telling his patient that she has cancer. Here’s the only circulating footage and more info here

[dustybooks]

That's quite a find, I had never heard of it either. I'm a bit unclear on what's happening in the (remarkable) footage -- did the TV special actually incorporate the creation of the scene? If it's not staged, it's the only pre-1970 film of Hitchcock actually directing that I've ever seen!

[Roger Ryan]

That's quite a find, I had never heard of it either. I'm a bit unclear on what's happening in the (remarkable) footage -- did the TV special actually incorporate the creation of the scene? If it's not staged, it's the only pre-1970 film of Hitchcock actually directing that I've ever seen!

I'm pretty sure Hitchcock's direction is a staged part of the scene (note how the camera tracks to follow him - something that wouldn't have happened if this was spontaneous). Since the "impromptu" scene is so basic, it's likely that having the director make an appearance (and he would be a bigger name than either of the actors) was a deliberate addition to give the scene more dimension.

[domino harvey]

There’s more info in the second link I posted:

The first section of the programme, which lasted about 12 minutes, featured Alfred Hitchcock talking about the subject of fear and supervising a short improvised scene with a doctor (played by William Shatner) and a patient (played by Diana Van der Vlis). The patient is a model who has been diagnosed with breast cancer but is initially scared of undergoing a mastectomy.[2]

Portions of Hitchcock's dialogue are reproduced in Hitchcock Lost and Found (2015):

First let me clear up one important point. In my opinion it is not fear that stops people doing what they should about cancer, it's the avoidance of fear. Fear is a perfectly normal response to a real threat. The best combat soldiers are those who know they are afraid and can handle their own emotions. I think that dread and horror and terror are all based on our attempt to avoid the experience of fear.

In Rope, for example, we have a rather charming scene in which a cocktail party is being held by two young men who have just strangled their companion. Drinks are being served from an antique chest, his temporary coffin. By all odds, these two murderers ought to be in a state of panic. The reality is that they are in danger of being placed inside another kind of furniture, that quaint piece of Chippendale with wiring by Thomas Edison, known as The Chair. But are they reacting with fear? Hardly. They're cold as custard. What might be normal fear now gives way to a feeling of horror. Now if I were to play the same scene with both young men in a crying sweat, there would be very little picture. In fact, both murderers would have realized their plight and boarded the nearest train for Outer Mongolia before the first reel was shot. And Rope would have been another travelogue.

At first I thought I might make a film about someone who suspects he has cancer and proceeds to torture himself in an attempt to avoid his own fear. Then I thought, I have to help put across an important idea. I have a limited time to develop the idea, and a limited time to demonstrate it. So instead of making a film I decided to stage an impromptu drama... Several weeks ago, I told the NBC property department that I would need one door, one desk, two chairs, a paper-knife — and a partridge in a pear tree. I also requested a young woman and a young man.

[jsteffe]

DVD Beaver has posted reviews and screen caps of Rear Window and Vertigo from The Alfred Hitchcock Classics Collection (4K UHD). I received the set too.

Vertigo looks very lush and saturated. (A bit too saturated, possibly)? I know that VistaVision can have a fine grain structure, but I still wonder whether the underlying restoration didn't end up removing too much grain in some shots. Individual shots can look overly processed, as they did on Blu-ray. That said, I am seeing details in the image that I haven't noticed before. (The same is true for Rear Window.)

My initial impression of The Birds is that it looks more solid here than it did on regular Blu-ray. Even on good 35mm prints the film looks uneven because of all the process work and special effects. The studio-based scenes look consistently better, based on what I have seen so far.

Visually, I can see the benefit of watching the UHD versions over the standard Blu-rays. The grading manages the overall tonal range better, and the highlights stand out while at the same time being precisely rendered.

A number of users have commented that the mono soundtrack for Psycho is not the original, but a downmix of the multitrack remix. It won't stop me from watching this version, but I thought you all might want a heads-up.

Lastly, a complaint about the packaging... All of the discs are jammed in tight book-style sleeves. You cannot take them out without getting fingerprints all over the discs, and you will have to clean them before putting them in the player. I have some spare paper CD sleeves, so I stuck the UHD discs inside those as a solution. Even with the paper sleeves added the inner book still fits into the outer cardboard sleeve OK, so I can keep everything together.

[senseabove]

So happy to see that they've toned down Rear Window's unnaturally vibrant color scheme. It's always bothered me that the BD has such a neon-underlit color scheme that's nothing like what I've seen the many, many times I've seen it on film. I've read claims that it more closely matches the grading of IB Tech prints, which may be true, but it's just not fitting for the movie.

Now I'm just annoyed the new grading isn't ported to the BD, which is apparently just the same as the old BD we all have for all movies except Psycho. This and my aging projector might actually be a tipping point for me to start really looking into a 4k TV...

[dustybooks]

I greatly enjoyed this recent Guardian profile of Kim Novak, but I found myself annoyed by one specific passage and I'm wondering if I'm offbase.

The piece says: "Hitchcock had a reputation for mentally torturing his female stars, but Novak says he was fine with her." I think it's universally agreed that Hitchcock had a cruel streak, especially his misguided predilection for practical jokes, and I certainly don't see any reason not to believe Tippi Hedren that he made sexual advances on her and treated her badly after being rejected. But did he really have a "reputation for mentally torturing" actresses? As far as I'm aware, most of the actors Hitchcock worked with had overwhelmingly positive things to say about him -- the major exceptions I know of all being from the British era: both stars of The Lady Vanishes (Margaret Lockwood and Michael Redgrave) disliked working with him, as did Sylvia Sidney, and there's a story in Spoto's book about him throwing a tantrum directed at Robert Donat and Madeleine Carroll during the filming of The 39 Steps. Otherwise, the likes of Ingrid Bergman and Grace Kelly seemed to have stronger rapports with Hitchcock than most of his male stars save Cary Grant and James Stewart. (A caveat is that Joan Fontaine's gushing remarks about Hitchcock to Leonard Leff include her claiming that he slapped her -- she asked him to, but even so, something that definitely would not be accepted now and that Leff casts pretty strong aspersions on in his book. Another is all the rather cruel remarks about actors' physical characteristics he makes in the Truffaut interview, though to be fair he does this to men and women.)

I've been reading endlessly about Hitchcock since I was in grade school but I admit it's been a while since I read the major biographies cover to cover, and of course they were almost all written in another era... so it's possible I'm misremembering how his ego played out in these relationships. It does seem like the entire widespread view of Hitchcock as a tyrant and sexual deviant is set by Donald Spoto, but I must say that every time I turn to that book to check some basic fact about one of the films I'm frustrated by how lackluster his research and fact-checking seems to have been, so it's hard to fully trust the things in his work that are more difficult to independently verify. Talking of Vertigo specifically, while I certainly concur with the consensus that it's interesting to view the film in light of some theorizing about the director's own sexual preoccupations and thirst for control, it seems that few writers who go long on those interpretations wrestle with how much of the story comes directly from its source material -- and one thing Spoto does a lot, with Rich and Strange for example, is pretend that stories were generated wholecloth from Hitchcock's imagination when they weren't so that they can then be used as commentary on his private life.

Defending Hitchcock on a personal level doesn't really interest me that much; my love of his work doesn't really hinge on whether he was a decent man by the standards of his time or ours, but throwing out comments like this as though they are conventional wisdom just rankles me a bit. Maybe it shouldn't!

[TheKieslowskiHaze]

Going through the supplements on the Fellini boxset, I see similarly divergent reactions about working with him. Some paint him as a tyrant, others as wonderful to work with.

My guess is, in both cases, those claiming "tyrant" are probably closer to the truth. Hitchcock and Fellini were considered Godlike even in their time. I'm sure it wasn't easy to speak negatively about either of them. When someone asks about the most famous director in the world, I'm sure it's much easier to just say "oh he's wonderful" than it is to rock the boat. I'm not saying I disbelieve Joan Fontaine and Kim Novak; maybe they did have good professional relationships with him. I'm just saying I do fully believe Tippi Hedren, who risked more by speaking out.

This is unpleasant, but it does not really change my view that both were great, important artists, and that there are cases to made that much of their work is legitimately feminist.

[dustybooks]

It crossed my mind as well that the positive recollections of many of Hitchcock's collaborators might have been down to some degree of social pressure. (I notice, conversely, that no one ever minced words about how abusive Henri-Georges Clouzot was on his sets, but Hollywood of course is different.) I remember a cringeworthy moment about fifteen years ago when Larry King (RIP) interviewed a group of Hitchcock-associated actresses as well as his daughter, and very ungracefully asked Hedren shortly before the end of the hour about her having struggled with his "obsession" with her, and in a context and surroundings like that, and on live television to boot, Hedren understandably played down the incident, which I suppose is a perfect illustration of how women's experiences often get sanded down or outright erased.

[knives]

Man, ‘50s Hitchcock sure loved his neon green filters.

[Tom Amolad]

I just tried the "preview version" (not the right name, apparently, but that's the least of the problems) of Strangers on a Train for the first time, on the Warner Blu-Ray and was disappointed to discover that, unless I'm being technologically inept, it's only given in widescreen, with the top and bottom cut off. Am I just failing to manipulate my remote correctly, or do others find the same problem with it?