Posts Tagged ‘Alfred Hitchcock’

Becoming Hitchcock – The Legacy of Blackmail (2024)

Dir: Laurent Bouzereau | Doc 72′ 2024

A new documentary exploring the Hitchcock’s debut career in England during the 1920s and 1930s is directed by Laurent Bouzereau and narrated by American radio host and film critic Elvis Mitchell.

As the title suggests the first part of this dense doc is dedicated to his first British talkie Blackmail (1929) highlighting the English director’s predominant style as a visual filmmaker whose talents and enjoyment lay in setting up the scene and crafting the interplay between light and shadow. For Hitchcock image was king and drove the narrative forward with the dialogue coming second. By his own admission he found writing a task.  

Blackmail, starring Andy Ondra as a woman who kills in self defence, was first released in 1929 as a talkie with although the first part is largely silent with minimal dialogue, the silent version following, 

Hitchcock always made an appearance in his own films suggesting he possibly wanted to be an actor, but this was far from the case. So he always staged these vignettes early on in the narrative so as not to draw the viewer’s attention away from the film as a whole.  

Becoming Hitchcock moves steadily through its paces with a focus on lead actors and main themes: of violence, intrigue, blackmail and, of course, love, with the thriller being a particularly English passion. Hitchcock was also a master of psychology and his villains were invariably charming and often smiling as they inveigled their victims.

So the spoken word was of lesser consideration for Hitchcock. But for Bouzereau the opposite is true. The film’s narration is verbose and dominating. The radio celebrity talks continuously throughout the film as if reading from a prepared script, with plentiful images and black and white sketches added almost as an embellishment, and clearly emphasising Mitchell’s talent for broadcasting. Becoming Hitchcock would perhaps work better as a radio broadcast. The criticism here is the lack of time given over for quiet reflection, let alone digestion, in a spare running time of 72 minutes.

A shame, also, that Bouzereau chose an American rather than an English voice to narrate this quintessentially English story, given that the Leytonstone-born Hitchcock spent a good fifteen formative year’s crafting his career in Blighty before moving across the pond in 1939 and taking US citizenship in1955. @MeredithTaylor

NOW ON BLURAY FROM 13 DECEMBER 2024

Jamaica Inn (1939)

Dir: Alfred Hitchcock | Cast: Maureen O’Hara, Robert Newton | Drama 108’

Hitchcock’s period dramas tend to get a bad press but ‘Under Capricorn’ at least is worthy of considerable respect.

‘Jamaica Inn’ – the last of the British phase of Hitchcock’s career and the first of three adaptations of made of the work of Daphne du Maurier – was even included in the book ‘The Fifty Worst Movies of All Time’ and both Hitchcock and du Maurier personally disliked it; in the case of the latter probably not helped by liberties taken like the addition of Sir Humphrey Pengallan.

Possibly Hitchcock’s most violent film, this rollicking yarn boasts sumptuous production design, mobile photography by Harry Stradling, a bizarrely made up performance by Charles Laughton as Pengallan (although he predictably proved difficult to direct, especially since it was made for his own company), a game young heroine played a by Irish actress Maureen O’Hara, who gets an ‘Introducing’ credit and promptly accompanied Laughton to Hollywood; and distinctive supporting contributions from Leslie Banks, Robert Newton, Emlyn Williams, Marie Ney, Basil Radford and Hay Petrie, to name but a few; and a memorably harrowing scene at the conclusion in which Stephen Haggard pleads for his life. @RichardChatten

NOW ON DIGITAL

 

Rich and Strange (1931) | Celebrating Hitchcock’s 125th Anniversary

Dir: Alfred Hitchcock | Cast: Henry Kendall, Percy Marmont, Joan Barry | Comedy Drama 93’

Although not well known Rich and Strange is to be cherished as one of the very few out and out comedies Hitchcock ever made: witness the literally sick humour of Henry Kendall curled up in bed with ‘mal de mer’, his eyes widening as the indigestible items leap off the menu and the horrified reactions of the young couple when they discover what they’ve just had for dinner.

Hitchcock’s earlier experience as an art director is apparent in the skill with which the various foreign locations that serve as the story’s backdrop are so convincingly evoked; while anyone familiar with his films of the fifties will recognise vivid set-pieces like the hero’s struggle with traffic on the Underground (which anticipates the depiction of bustling New York life that opens ‘North by Northwest’ with Henry Kendall as the bewildered innocent abroad like James Stewart in The Man Who Knew Too Much while Joan Barry is suitably sleek as one of the first Hitchcock blondes. @RichardChatten

RICH AND STRANGE is one of a box set of eleven Special Edition BLU-RAYs to celebrate Hitchcock’s 125th Anniversary | Out 16 December 2024

Hitchcock (2012) ****

Director: Sasha Gervasi

Writers: John J McLaughlin/

Cast: Anthony Hopkins, Helen Mirren, Scarlett Johansson, Toni Collette, Jessica Biel, James D’Arcy, Richard Portnow, Michael Stuhlbarg, Michael Wincott,

98mins   Drama BIOPIC

Alfred Hitchcock has been having a hard time of it lately with Julian Jarold’s portrayal of our most notorious English film director as being something of a dirty old man. This Hitchcock, though, based on Stephen Rebellos’s non-fiction book, is more uplifting and entertaining than Jarold’s TV offering as well as being fascinating for its sparkling treatise on the Hitchcock marriage. It will certainly go down well with anyone interested in how Psycho came into being and how it ushered in a new level of acceptable violence and sexuality to cinema screens in the early sixties.

Anthony Hopkins brings his subtle charms to the role of Hitchcock and gives an insight into a man who, according to this version set in Hollywood in 1959, felt mystified, misunderstood, and misled by the female of the species.  On one hand, it has him giving in to his uncontrollable urges as if he’s some kind of psycho himself; possibly due to a strict upbringing marked by lonliness and obesity, and on the other dressing his difficult behaviour up as the natural personality profile of a creative genius just trying to get a film made.  I tend to side with the latter but that’s for you to decide.

 

 

 

 

 

 

And apart from flirting with Scarlett Johansson’s delightful Janet Leigh (which man wouldn’t) and looking through a peephole at scantily clad Vera Miles (Jessica Biel) in her dressing room, ‘Call me Hitch (hold the cock)’ confines his real emotional cut and thrust to his relationship with his savvy wife and erstwhile assistant director, Alma Reville. Helen Mirren excels herself in this role despite being physically unlike the real Alma; described as small and birdlike.

There’s definitely a complex chemistry between this couple and it plays out with consummate ease by two watchable, heavyweight talents portraying with humour and emotion the strengths and weaknesses of a marriage that had endured 33 years when Hitch decided to remortgage their mansion to finance Psycho (1960). The picture had been turned down for financing by Paramount and the Censors due to issues of nudity and the notorious shower scene because it involved a lavatory….rather than the web of political intrigue that had gone down so successfully in North by Northwest the previous year.

So, not surprisingly, Hitch is starting to feel the need for the support of his canny wife who is getting very chummy with a younger screenwriter, elegantly played here by Danny Huston. Sacha Gervasi’s film places the battle for Psycho as a delicate counterpoint to the crisis in the Hitchcock marriage.

Jeff Cronenweth’s cinematography is not quite up to his usual standard in rendering the sixties technicolor feel to the piece.  The trick of having Ed Gein (the serial killer who inspired the original novel by Bloch) haunting various scenes as Hitchcock’s nemesis, is also questionable as is the drift in tone from comedy drama into psychological thriller that this entails.  James D’Arcy is edgy as the shy and diffident Anthony Perkins but lacks the characteristic spooky voice that was his calling card for the role. Support is well-cast and wonderful: Scarlett Johansson has poise and sparkling star quality as Janet Leigh, Toni Collette is a perky and switched-on studio girl Peggy Robertson, and Michael Stuhlbarg’s portrayal of Hitchcock’s shrewd agent has style and believability although none of these roles is really given much scope for character development.

As Alma, Helen Mirren is subtle in the quiet moments of pain she experiences as a woman who knows her relationship is in jeopardy to Hitchcock’s flirty blondes as much as her glorious Hollywood home and swimming pool. But she shines out as a strong and capable woman who punches above her well-toned weight in the creative partnership despite their very un-starry domestic arrangements.

Although lacking Hitchcock’s dark looks, Anthony Hopkins brings a layered sensitivity to the part, portraying him as a naughty boy in a marriage to Mirren’s ‘mean mummy’ who couches her frustration at always being the unseen contributor to his success.  But the in studios Hopkins evokes our pride and respect for this cinematic national treasure who comes across as very much his own man, who, despite human failings, pulls off a stroke of genius and is endowed with much more than just creative flair. MT

HITCHCOCK IS SCREENING AT CINEWORLD ACROSS LONDON FROM 8TH FEBRUARY 2013

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