The Foul Sty Underneath: The 5 Greatest Small Town Noirs
If film noir is defined by any single image, it is the dark city. Yet a film doesn’t have to take place in the dark city to be noir. Any fallen world[…]
Tagged: Alfred Hitchcock
The 10 Most Devastating Film Noir Endings: Pre-Code to the Present
A film noir doesn’t have to have an unhappy ending … but it helps. Here are 10 film noir endings that pack an emotional wallop. I Am a Fugitive from[…]
More
WALTZES FROM VIENNA (Alfred Hitchcock 1934)
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[…]
For Midge (Barbara Bel Geddes)
The Down-to-Earth must know She cannot rival the Sky We move on suspended Between Reality and Dream Between Oblivion and Eternity Through a Labyrinth of Evergreens cjk 8/10/05
Double Take
Double Take Dir. Johan Grimonprez The documentary Double Take is bookended by two of the scariest moments in American history: the launch of Sputnik and the release of The Birds.[…]
Hitchcock meets Hitchcock in DOUBLE TAKE
[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[…]
Oscars I: That Damn Helen Mirren!
I mean, DAME Helen Mirren. (Photo via Associated Press. Joke via Oscar co-host, Steve Martin.) Very happy for Kat B and The Hurt Locker. Worst Award of the Evening – The[…]
Robin Wood (1931-2009)
The publication of Hitchcock’s Films by Robin Wood in 1965 (shortly after the release of Marnie, a Wood favorite) was the moment when English-language film criticism truly came of age.[…]
Carl Dreyer says Drive Safely and Save Lives!
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NhxCmm2kh44] They Caught the Ferry (1948) is a short highway safety film – much like the ones we used to watch in Drivers Ed. – produced by the Danish Film[…]
The Vertigo-Narcissus Connection
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UrQIV3aYfiw] In celebration of the birthday of director Michael Powell (1905-1990) today, I’d like to share with you this clip from Powell & Emeric Pressburger’s 1947 color masterpiece, Black Narcissus,[…]
What is it about this sign that disturbs you, Marnie?
It’s amazing to me that some fellow Jews who were so indignant about Sophie’s Choice (by which I mean the Styron novel , arguably his best , and not the[…]
Welcome Back, Rod Taylor
One of the many incidental pleasures of Quentin Tarantino’s Inglourious Basterds is the reappearance after far too long an absence of the wonderful Rod Taylor. Taylor, who was born on[…]
Two More for the Movie Bookshelf
Having already submitted a list of ten to Movieman’s Movie Bookshelf meme, a “gathering of all the movie books that influenced, enlightened, and excited me, you, and everyone else,” I[…]
PM Gets Box Set From POTUS
According to the U.K. Guardian, President Barack Obama, upon leaving Great Britain, gave Prime Minister Gordon Brown a very special present, a box set of 25 classic American films (see[…]
10 (or More) Film Books That Made Me What I Am Today
Speaking of books – having been invited by Movieman to contribute to his Reading the Movies meme, I submit a list of the 10-plus film-related books that had the greatest[…]
Maurice Jarre, Film Composer (1924-2009)
Everybody knows the music Maurice Jarre wrote for Lawrence of Arabia and Doctor Zhivago (“Lara’s Theme”). Much less well known are the scores he wrote before Lawrence – including one[…]
Actors & Personalities · Reviews
Charlie’s Little Sister (Shadow of a Doubt)
Erich Kuersten’s younger sister series (starting here) inspired me to think about the younger sisters in Hitchcock films, particularly Pat Hitchcock in Strangers on a Train (1951), and her bespectacled[…]
Young Alfred
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zl6SMOSXa7A] I had no idea there was anything like this out there. But here we are – and the year could not be any later than 1930, maybe as early[…]
Women in Wonderland, Part 3 – Psycho (Alfred Hitchcock 1960)
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, and[…]
Farewell, Suzanne Pleshette (1937-2008)
Actress. Comedienne. Talk show personality. And in The Birds (above, screenplay by Evan Hunter), perhaps the most fully realized of Alfred Hitchcock’s dark-haired girls. GreenCine Daily has links to to[…]
