actor profiles

animation

book reviews

director profiles

documentaries

experimental &
avant garde

exploitation

film festivals

film noir

film reviews

gay & lesbian

hong kong films

horror

interviews

japanese cinema

music & musicals

silent film

tranny cinema
 
- - - - - -
To be automatically notified when the next issue is posted, join our mailing list.

writers gone wild!
Keep up with Bright Lights between issues by visiting our companion blog, Bright Lights After Dark.

home | current issue | archives | search | about us | contact | donate | blog | links

Alfred Hitchcock

A Hank of Hair and a Piece of Bone

From the universal to the particular:
The Man Who Knew Too Much

By Alan Vanneman

See the introduction to this nine-part photo study.

In his 1953 remake of The Man Who Knew Too Much, Hitchcock created a "universal to particular" sequence that included two of his particular obsessions, staircases and houses. The sequence occurs late in the film, when distraught parents James Stewart and Doris Day have managed to gain entrance to a baroque embassy (which looks only slightly less imposing than Buckingham Palace) where their son is being held prisoner by kidnappers. While Jimmy and Doris try to develop a plan to search the place, the camera, through a series of jump cuts rather than a single tracking shot, moves silently up a massive staircase and down a hallway, finally focusing on a doorknob. Behind the door, of course, is Stewart's son. The omniscient camera knows the way, but Jimmy does not. The superhuman/inhuman opulence of the embassy's interior seems to mock the possibility of a mere mortal being able to impose his will upon it.

Click any of the links below for additional categories/motifs, or to return to the intro page:

Houses † Staircases † Women's Hair † Hands † Eyes

The Uncanny † The Vortex † Notorious Sequence

The Man Who Knew Too Much Sequence

November 2003 | Issue 42
Copyright © 2003 by Alan Vanneman

ALSO: Check out other fine articles and reviews by the author.

home | current issue | archives | search | about us | contact | donate | blog | links