Drama · Theory · Writers & Critics
Bazin would always harbor reservations about The Third Man, but, due to that film, Greene’s presence would continue to loom large in discussions of Orson Welles, who was, of course,[…]
Hitchcock’s one-word titles have never been so instructive. Psycho is the feeling of being preyed on by your self, as by one of Norman’s stuffed birds. It is the primal[…]
Notwithstanding the absence of spy plots, murders, or homicidal maniacs, WALTZES FROM VIENNA is very much a film by Alfred Hitchcock. It was co-scripted by his wife, Alma Reville. It displays[…]
The Alices in flight, those beautiful women alone in their cars on the run – Sylvia Kristel in Alice ou la Dernière Fugue, Candace Hilligoss in Carnival of Souls,[…]
“Mother … my mother … um, what’s the phrase? She isn’t quite herself today.”
For almost fifty years, Alfred Hitchcock filled his films with a select group of images, including houses, staircases, women’s hair, the human hand, the human eye, the “uncanny,” and the[…]
Hitch’s – and by now the whole damn culture’s – seminal Oedipal nightmare revisited Read the companion photo essay “Alfred Hitchcock: A Hank of Hair and a Piece of Bone”[…]
Costume Drama · Drama · Horror · Literature and Film · Women in Film
In transposing Rebecca, notice how Hitchcock’s camera attends to shadows – bisecting faces and bruising frames – to approximate du Maurier’s disorienting syntax and looming dread. Or watch as his[…]
In movieland, there is also the kind of coincidence where someone indeed has planned it, someone acting from behind the scene, manipulating appearances. In this case, a coincidence is a[…]
Documentaries · Experimental & Underground · Reviews
“The doubled Hitchcock mirrors the Hitchcock double, who in turn reflects Hitchcock pretending to play himself.”
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-UIonNH-rz8] So this filmmaker, Johan Grimonprez, who teaches at the School of Visual Arts in New York, gets the idea of creating a fictional film about Alfred Hitchcock constructed largely[…]
“It is the search for explanation itself and the experience of the alien, disturbing, and frightening that thrills audiences.” In The Pervert’s Guide to Cinema, directed and produced by Sophie Fiennes,[…]
We have met the cross-dressing closeted maniac, and he is us
“On one level, Vertigo bewitches us with eerie fascination; on another, it leads us on a wild goose chase in search of Scottie’s character. But could the latter really have been Hitchcock’s[…]
Hitchcock has always been considered a director sui generis. John W. Hall looks at Psycho and Touch of Evil to show that even Hitch couldn’t resist the charms — and stylistic strategies — of Orson Welles.[…]
Directors · Essays · Romance · Writers & Critics
But these reflections bring Vertigo down to “depressing” reality. The view that reality is a downer redeemable only by “exalted seeing” is the basis for James Harvey’s disparagement of 1950s[…]
Actors & Personalities · Comedy · Drama
You would never guess either from looking at him or from the “aw shucks” way in which he’s remembered that Stewart is responsible for some of the most erotic romantic[…]
Counterculture · Music & Musicals · Noir
In noir, tales of wrongful accusation tend to play out on mean streets that reflect social inequalities, which at times do have a nasty way of tilting normally upright people[…]
Activist & Political · African American · Societal Trends
Fredric March stands alongside four other mid-century drum majors for civil rights during the 1943 national radio broadcast of “Race-Relations Sunday.” Left to right: concert soprano Dorothy Maynor, actor Canada[…]
