criterionforum.org

Alfred Hitchcock wrote:"It will be done comedically"

Big Ben wrote: Wed Apr 30, 2025 1:50 am Hitchcock was at, some fundamental level taking the piss at every available opportunity

Big Ben wrote: Wed Apr 30, 2025 1:50 am Frenzy is on a whole other level of nasty

Big Ben wrote: Wed Apr 30, 2025 1:50 am The humor that his films employ is readily apparent and it was something that I even grasped as a small child

The Paris Theater wrote:The Paris Theater is proud to present HITCH! The Original Cinema Influencer ("influencer," why saddle Hitchcock with that shit?), a six-week series running from May 16 through June 29, featuring nearly 60 films—36 directed by the Master of Suspense himself, along with many that trace the stylistic influences behind Hitchcock’s filmmaking, and more than a dozen others that stand as homages to his legacy...

Thirty-five films in this series will have showings in 35mm, including Hitchcock classics like Rear Window, Vertigo, North by Northwest, and The Lady Vanishes, as well as enduring masterpieces like Francois Truffaut’s The Bride Wore Black, Fritz Lang’s M, and Henri-Georges Clouzot’s Diabolique, screening on an imported 35mm print courtesy of Institut Français. We’ll also have special treats like two episodes of Alfred Hitchcock Presents, featuring memorable small screen roles for stars like Steve McQueen and Peter Lorre and the directing prowess of multi-hypenate Ida Lupino. And those curious to learn more about the filmmaker’s history can take in two featured documentaries: Kent Jones’ Hitchcock/Truffaut, and My Name is Alfred Hitchcock by Mark Cousins...

Plus, a collection of classic Hitchcock films will be available to stream on Netflix in the US featuring some of his most iconic works starting June 1.

Finch wrote: Wed Apr 30, 2025 1:21 am FWIW, Frenzy didn't feel joyless to me and I found it very darkly funny at times. I was actually more disturbed by Mark's rape of Marnie in the cabin than anything in Frenzy. Admittedly been a while since I've seen both films but I remember Frenzy conditioning us not to expect any good from the killer while Mark in his better moments does want to help Marnie so I found that scene really shocking. Maybe I am misremembering both films but I definitely saw Frenzy as a very dark comedy.

Randall Maysin Again wrote: Tue Apr 29, 2025 11:28 pm I've always hated Frenzy so what the heck, I think I'll just dump my negative thoughts on it here. Frenzy is, along with The Last of Sheila (a film that if anything I revile even more than the Hitchcock) and maybe a film or two more, one of the few genuinely morally offensive films from the 1970s that I've had the displeasure of watching. Hitchcock being kind of a bad guy just makes his films (except this one) more fun when you're a kid, but as an adult I've found these aspects of his films a bit more off-putting and chilling, although never fatally so except with Frenzy (and there's only a couple of his other films that I've watched which I think are at least largely failures, namely Spellbound and sorry, I Confess, which is the mostly powerfully and unbearably boring film I've ever seen, but I digress). There is something even about the manner in which the film's plot itself slowly, viscously and smugly uncoils and displays itself, with a cold, repulsive self-satisfaction, like an obese, ancient, smugly smiling housecat with big, sagging nipples (okay, maybe the housecat is turning into Hitchcock himself with this metaphor) who has just eaten a baby, that I find gloatingly evil and genuinely revolting. The murder scenes are unusually cruel and unpleasant, not so much because of any gratuitous cruelty (I don't remember any) but because of the feeling they are imbued with. You don't reprehend the murderer while you're watching these murders, you reprehend the director. The enormously and ludicrously deck-stacked misogynistic depictions of almost all of the film's women (there is something about the infantile misogyny of Hitchcock and at least one other relatively old-timey British artist, Rudyard Kipling, that I find kind of hilarious and laughable as well as objectionable), combine with the laughably out-of-date and hokey tone of most if not all of the characterizations, and the resulting lousy performances from pretty much every cast member IIRC, with the exception of Barry Foster as the murderer, who is not far short of superb and whose perf was the only thing I enjoyed about this, to create a tone that is at once morally objectionable, aesthetically laughable and preposterous, and not actually entertaining at all. I suppose I'm a bit of a hypocrite as I write this; I greatly and mostly unabashedly enjoy some sick items, like Killer Joe for example; but even there I think there are considerable aesthetic and even moral distinctions to be made, between something like that, which is basically just good sick fun and not thoroughly imbued and soaked in evil and harmful beliefs, and something like Frenzy, and I still can't help wondering if there must be something a bit wrong with someone who just gobbles up this viscous, gloating film. There is a gloating, no-holds-barred hideousness to the film's tone and outlook, as well as its evil, yellowed cinematography, that is just not my idea of a good time. It's certainly not my idea of escapism, except maybe of escaping into a world that is (much) worse, as well as stupider, than reality. Some somewhat-better-than-decent nippy dialogue by whichever Shaffer brother wrote this crap film as well as some i suppose kind of impressive camera movements here and there make this a more eye-catching late Hitchcock than, I don't know, Family Plot or something, but blech.

domino harvey wrote: Thu Nov 27, 2025 2:03 am Are there any books devoted to the projects which Hitchcock tried and failed to make?

beamish14 wrote: Thu Nov 27, 2025 3:06 am Edit: oh, and The Lost Hitchcocks by John Law