Director: Alfred Hitchcock
Hitchcock’s Sabotage is among his most uncompromising films, the rare example of the showman toying with the audience’s expectations in ways that are almost entirely unpleasurable. The film’s controversial setpiece, in which a boy unwittingly carries a bomb on a bus and many innocent people are killed, was a sequence that the director later regretted, feeling as though it alienated audiences too much. Sabotage is indeed more confrontational than many of Hitchcock’s films—whereas his portrayals of violence were often extraordinary in that they were the culmination of emotional passions, Sabotage views violence directly and with a disturbing indifference. The scene in which Sylvia Sidney stabs her husband (Oscar Homolka) has no cathartic aftertaste—it’s unclear whether Homolka has walked into the knife or Sidney has stabbed him, and the film’s cold portrayal of the act foregrounds the effect it will have on Sidney’s character rather than serving as a cheap thrill. If Sidney and Homolka are unconvincing as a couple and the detective played by John Loder is dull, the film’s larger concerns—about both the indifference of a violent act and the lasting effect it has on the survivors—are successful enough to rank Sabotage as one of Hitchcock’s very best British films.
Director: Alfred Hitchcock
Hitchcock admitted in interview that To Catch a Thief was a “vacation movie.” That was indeed the case for Cary Grant, who after briefly considering retirement returned to the screen for the promise of co-starring with Grace Kelly and filming on the French Riviera. Similarly, audiences have noted that To Catch a Thief is arguably among Hitchcock’s lightest and most pleasurable works, rife with sexual innuendos and comparatively little violence. There is slightly more going on than beautiful French vistas and erotic dialogue, however–it marks a nicely compact turning point in Hitchcock’s career, both looking back to The Birds with a self-referential cameo and looking forward to later masterpieces like Vertigo (with the meaningful insistence upon jade lighting) and North By Northwest (with a scene involving a threatening plane looming overhead). Kelly is used remarkably well as a bored socialite. She enjoys toying with Grant with a certain detachment in the early-goings, but by the time he invites her to participate in a car chase, she’s completely aroused by the excitement of it all. Rarely in a Hitchcock film is someone so openly titillated about the idea of participating in the narrative. Similarly, it is a picture in which the characters revel in the their disguises, whether that be as a means of discarding past identities (Grant’s wish to retreat from his thieving past; Jessie Royce Landis asking to be referred to by her first name) or opening the possibilities for new ones. The fireworks scene is among the most outrageous erotic moments in Hollywood cinema–so much so that some of the sensuality is lost among the inevitable snickering–but it is a microcosm of the film itself, lightly amusing and still occupied with such radical, distinct touches.
Director: Alfred Hitchcock
The theme of deception in Hitchcock is explored in all of this films, both as a stamp of his directorial authorship and as an element that exists within the narrative. Role-playing, in particular, crops up often–Alicia posing as Sebastian’s lover in Notorious, Scottie’s obsession with recapturing the past in Vertigo, the strange case of Norma Bates. If Stage Fright has not maintained the reputation of the director’s greatest work, it is nonetheless an indispensable artifact in the analysis of Hitchcock in that the theme of deceit is foregrounded with an impertinent cheekiness, amounting to what might be the purest example of Hitchcock’s obsession with the fraudulence of cinema. Nearly every element in the film involves, if not direct role-playing (a huge element in the picture), the suggestion of artifice. As the woman who makes performance her occupation, Marlene Dietrich’s Charlotte Inwood is perhaps the most forthright character in the picture in that she’s the only one who’ll cop to her disguises. Hitchcock requested that Dietrich play to type, which distinguishes her completely from any female character in a Hitchock film. Importantly, the Dietrich persona is one which carries a certain level of fraudulence in that her image is shaped entirely by lighting and costuming, making her a brilliant fit for the material. If Stage Fright is fascinating in these respects (its reputation is also attributed to the gimmick of an unreliable flashback, the most “Hitchcock” of narrative games), it is not quite as sensually pleasurable as his best–the performances leave much to be desired, and one wishes that he met this obsession with duplicity with a more distinguished script.
Director: Alfred Hitchcock
The opening sequence of Mr. & Mrs. Smith introduces its two title characters independent of each other. He (Robert Montgomery) is disheveled, clad in a bathrobe with a cigarette loosely hanging out of his mouth. She is face down in the bed, clearly exhausted after a night of emotional unrest. Their reunion will happen when he bounces off the couch and joins her in bed to embrace. To see a couple embracing in bed during this period of Hollywood history is a rare sight indeed, and if one is pressed to distinguish what about Mr. & Mrs. Smith is particular to director Alfred Hitchcock, the answer might lie somewhere in its games of sexuality. As with Ernst Lubitsch, sex is an ongoing undercurrent, often mistakable for arguments–the characters speak of being locked in the bedroom for a week at a time in order to “work out” their arguments. Later, when their marriage is determined to have been invalid, there is a tremendous drama about whether he will choose to propose yet again before the couple enters the bedroom. They get as far as the bedroom door before she is shocked by his indifference to carry through with a sexual act if they are indeed out of wedlock! One can see traces of Notorious in the bantering of the couple, as well as how they torture each other throughout the movie. Just as Devlin (Cary Grant) tested Alicia (Ingrid Bergman) in that film to see if she’d actually carry out an affair, Mrs. Smith tests her husband’s morality before finally making him repent and prove his love (and chastity) all over again. Of Hitchock’s non-thriller outliers, Mr. and Mrs. Smith is perhaps the least typical of his films, and yet the relationship dynamic feels appropriate in his canon–if the stakes for these lovers aren’t quite as high, Hitchcock’s interest is in seeing how far couples are willing to go in order to show themselves as being worthy of their partner.
Director: Alfred Hitchcock
Alfred Hitchcock’s penultimate British film continues to be listed alongside his finest achievements in some circles. It has a rough around the edges appeal, a distinct tone of spontaneity that seems unmatched by his masterpieces to come. That’s not to say that his later films aren’t playful (if he was a master of anything, it was reinventing himself), but The Lady Vanishes crudely navigates between genres in a manner that somehow feels cohesive. It’s perhaps his first successful blending of the personal and the political–that is, the lovers’ journey is inextricably linked with the circumstances they find themselves in. Michael Redgrave must believe in Margaret Lockwood not only to move the plot along, but to show her that he loves her. One of the most memorable scenes involves Redgrave playfully putting on a deerstalker cap and holding a pipe in an imitation of Sherlock Holmes. He recounts the recent developments to Lockwood, catching up the audience and confirming the very genre he’s participating in. Although contrived, it feels entirely off-the-cuff and impossibly romantic–a nice summation of what works about the picture as a whole.
Filed under: Reviews | Tags: 1934, alfred hitchcock, the man who knew too much
Director: Alfred Hitchcock
The original The Man Who Knew Too Much is a key film in Alfred Hitchcock’s British period in that it not only was a much-needed financial success for the director, but it started to establish and expand on several key motifs that would permeate throughout the rest of his career. It seems like a transitional film in that way–the surreal, direct address of the giant teeth sculpture above a dentist’s audiences remind one of the jester in Blackmail, while scenes like the Royal Albert Hall assassination are familiar of later films in which Hitchcock utilized larger-than-life landmarks as the setting for his climactic moments. Perhaps the most unusual aspect of The Man Who Knew Too Much is the casual, even naive approach to violence. An early murder happens just as a man pulls away from his dancing partner, addressing his bullet wound with a simple, “oh.” Later, the climactic shootout involves the purposefully restrained Peter Lorre behaving in a way that is seemingly indifferent to the never-ending barrage of bullets. It’s an unusual stylistic choice, one that Hitchcock doesn’t return to in quite the same way throughout his career. The picture mostly works as a curiosity for moments like those (there’s also an amusing but inexplicable diversion involving a sun-worshipping cult), but it seems less complete and thematically coherent than is usually expected of the director.
For Reel 