Wordless Wednesday: Hitch at the Rovers

Out On Blue Six: Busta Rhymes

End Transmission

Spellbound (1945)

The central issue with Hitchcock's 1945 film Spellbound is one of expectations which are perhaps best summed up by Francois Truffaut. The French filmmaker, in his series of conversations which led to the acclaimed book Hitchcock Truffaut, argues that one expects a Hitchcock film about mental frailty and psychoanalysis to be 'wildly imaginative' and 'way out', in a similar vein to the later Vertigo. Though I haven't read it, I believe the novel on which Spellbound is based, The House of Dr Edwardes, is apparently very wild in its approach to the notion of 'the lunatic taking over the asylum', so - like Truffaut - you'd be forgiven for thinking Hitchcock would use such a melodramatic and offbeat approach. However, Hitchcock instead turned in a 'sensible picture', full of logic and a sympathetic, somewhat earnest approach to psychoanalysis since both the film's screenwriter Ben Hecht and the producer Davis O Selznick were keen proponents of the science. However it's fair to say that we've come a long way forward from our understanding of the subject since 1945. It's commendable I guess that a Hollywood production is tackling a psychiatry in such a respectful light, but I can't help but wish Hitchcock went against the grain of his colleagues and cocked a snook at all this Freudian talk, because what we have here is a very dull picture.

Something that staves off the dullness at times is Ingrid Bergman's performance, which I really liked. It's so refreshing to see her, a woman in the 1940s working in a male dominated environment, essentially running rings around her colleagues and swatting aside their attempts at flirtation and chauvinistic remarks. However, this notion of a strong and independent woman is somewhat lost the minute Gregory Peck arrives on the scene purporting to be the asylum's new chief doctor. One minute she was effortlessly undermining all the blokes sniffing round her and the next she's sighing wistfully at the thought of Peck's liverwurst sausage on an impromptu picnic, and I'm not sure if that's intentionally Freudian or not!

As for Peck himself, he's a little stiff and unconvincing here (Truffaut voiced his disappointment to Hitch, claiming the lack of expression in his eyes, combined with a shallowness, stopped him from being a comfortable or archetypal Hitchcockian actor) and, despite both he and Bergman being attractive leads, their is surprisingly lacking given they apparently hit it off romantically off screen. Still, Hitchcock knows how to shoot them at least; look at that moment where they kiss - the doors opening. Just sublime.

Indeed, what does pretty much save Spellbound in the main is the way Hitchcock enlivens so much of the plodding nature with his trademark visual audacity; those doors, the unique use of POV - firstly inside the glass of milk Peck is drinking and later of the gun pointed directly at Bergman - and the breakthrough moment that reveals Peck's childhood flashback in all its vivid horror as both he and Bergman are skiing towards a sheer drop. But perhaps most famous of all is the film's unique dream sequence designed by none other than Salvador Dali in all his ommetaphobic glory. Hitchcock initially wanted to shoot this sequence outside with bright sunlight to break the tradition of dreams being presented in a hazy manner and to offer up something more sharp and hyper-real, but unfortunately the budget wouldn't stretch to it alas.

Whilst Spellbound is occasionally visually splendid, the same cannot be said for its aural nature. Miklós Rózsa's score is so overbearingly used, carpeting every scene and giving the action no opportunity to breathe at all. I suspect Hans Zimmer took notes from him here! Overall, this is a disappointing miss-fire from Hitch. The potential is there, but it doesn't come through to the end result. It's only because of the way he shoots the damn thing, that it bags itself three and a half stars. Under any other director, this would be easily forgettable.

RIP Alec McCowen

Yet another sad passing that has been announced - actor Alec McCowen has passed away aged 91.

McCowen's legacy may be that of a compelling stage actor, with acclaimed performances as The Fool to Paul Scofield's King Lear in Peter Brook's 1962 production, Christopher Hampton's The Philanthropist at the Royal Court with Jane Asher in 1970, the psychiatrist Dysart in the original production of Peter Shaffer's Equus, and Uncle Jack in Brian Friel's Dancing at Lughansa in 1990, to name but a few. But he also scored great and fondly remembered roles in screens both big and small; to television viewers he played the lead in the 1984/'85 cerebral espionage series Mr Palfrey of Westminster, guest starred in the Bergerac episode, Trenchard's Last Case, as the eponymous retiring detective, and in BBC adaptations of Shakespeare's Twelfth Night and Henry V. His film credits included his debut The Cruel Sea in 1953, the original adaptation of Terence Rattigan's Deep Blue Sea in 1955, The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner  (1962) the Hammer folk horror film The Witches from 1966, and perhaps most famously of all, two roles from 1972; the detective investigating a sexually motivated serial killer whilst at the mercy of his own wife's experimental cooking in Alfred Hitchcock's final British thriller Frenzy (1972) and playing the lead opposite Maggie Smith in an adaptation of Graham Greene's Travels With My Aunt. Other film roles include the randy and kinky retired RAF officer, Wing Commander Morton in Terry Jones' Personal Services (1987) Bishop of Ely in Kenneth Branagh's Henry V in 1989, and two from Martin Scorsese, 1993's The Age of Innocence and Gangs of New York, his final film role, in 2002. But it's perhaps his brief but significant role in 1983's 'rogue' non EON James Bond film Never Say Never Again that McCowen is best remembered amongst lovers of trivia who can correctly tell you that, along with Desmond Llewellyn and Ben Wishaw, he was the other actor to play gadget man Q, or, as he was also called within the film, 'Algy'

Famously, McCowen was the recipient of TV's prestigious 'big red book' in 1989 with an edition of This Is Your Life hosted by Michael Aspel. During the tribute, McCowen halted the recording to ask that the role of his late partner, the actor Geoffrey Burridge who passed away from AIDS just two years earlier, in his life be mentioned. At a time when many actors remained in the closet and the press and TV were happy to comply with the secret, this was very refreshing.

RIP

Dial M For Murder (1954)

When it comes to Hitchcock, I always seem to be out of step. Vertigo is often proclaimed to be 'the greatest movie ever made', but I've never rated it. I love Rope, and apparently that's not always held in huge esteem among Hitch aficionados. I love his early films in the UK and believe them to be terribly underrated simply because of the great critical and commercial acclaim he achieved in Hollywood. I can agree on Psycho being excellent however.

But even Hitchcock himself hated Dial M for Murder. And watching it on BBC2 at the weekend, I'm struggling to see why.

The film based on a successful play by Frederick Knott, and Hitchcock took on the screen adaptation to fulfill his contract with  Warner Brothers before making the move to Paramount. He was, as he said to Francois Truffaut in the French filmmaker's A Definitive Study of Alfred Hitchcock, "coasting, playing it safe" He believed he phoned in his direction and that the action wouldn't have been any more exciting if it was set within a phonebox. But I wholeheartedly disagree. Whatever Hitchcock's issue with the film, I know other directors would kill to make just one movie like Dial M for Murder - his 45th film.

Ray Milland stars as former tennis-pro Tony Wendice who, fearing he is about to lose his wife, Margot (the utterly divine Grace Kelly) and her money to Robert Cummings' American crime writer Mark Halliday, whom she has had an affair with, hatches a plan to have her  murdered so he can collect on her life insurance policy. Wendice  blackmails an old university friend, Swann (Anthony Dawson) to do the dirty deed, using a boys' night out with Halliday as his alibi. Inevitably, it all goes wrong and Margot kills her would-be killer, leaving the slippery and quick-witted Wendice with no alternative but to improvise.

The cast is absolutely first rate; Milland is a wonderful mix of the urbane and the devious as Wendice, portraying the kind of man who is used to falling on his feet. This is in stark contrast to his hapless patsy Swann - was there ever a better actor at portraying this type of dishonourable gentleman as Antony Dawson? With his sports jacket and pencil moustache he's like the living embodiment of some public service warning about not cashing just anyone's cheques. There was always something about him, something in those wild eyes, that suggested that, beneath the clubbable affability there was more than a hint of the cornered animal. 

Grace Kelly, acting here for Hitchcock for the very first time, is very convincing as Margot and of course utterly flawless too. But it's worth mentioning her acting chops in her final scenes; washed out, haunted, wounded and confused. There's a lovely, near scene-stealing performance from John Williams as Hubbard, the detective on the case that's a joy to behold too. Admittedly Cummings is the least interesting in the cast, but that is perhaps because he has the least to do with the role of the pure and virtuous good guy determined to saved his loved one from the hangman's noose. The fact that he's an adulterer doesn't factor into the characterisation or performance.

Like Rope and Rear Window, Hitchcock places the vast majority of the action within one single set, in this case Wendice's flat. Such a decision, whilst totally faithful to Knott's original play, could lead to charges of staginess on the big screen, but Hitchcock neatly averts these by offering up some wonderfully tricksy camera work, most notably in the scene where Wendice explains his plan to Swann - the camera rising up to the ceiling to point down over our plotters in a way that foreshadows the space as a crime scene in waiting. Equally the setpiece of the attempted murder is just as impressive; wrought with tension, Dawson strangles Kelly with a silk scarf as she scrabbles wildly for something - anything - that can save her life. When her hand grasps a pair of scissors, we're instantly relieved...only to be totally sickened a second later when she plunges them between Dawson's shoulder blades, getting further embedded as he falls to the floor.

Dial M For Murder possesses all the great strengths of Hitchcock, it is suspenseful, dark, stylish and blackly comic. He may have believed he was coasting, but it's further proof that, even on a bad day, he was utterly unique.

Mute Witness (1994)

I love a good Euro-pudding, and Mute Witness is even more of a mish-mash than most; German-financed, British-Lebanese director, filmed in Moscow, made for American distribution, starring American, British and Russian actors and with a distinctive Italian Giallo flavour, the film was pretty much in development for ten years before it finally saw the light of day. 

Writer/director Anthony Waller was a UK-based director of award winning adverts when he wrote his first full length screenplay in the mid '80s; a film set in 1930s Chicago dealing with civil authority corruption and the rise of gang law. Between that point and 1993 when Mute Witness commenced filming, Waller had totally rewritten his script to set it in Yeltsin's Moscow, a city whose sociopolitical situation was, to his mind, not too dissimilar to Prohibition-era Chicago. In the bag already was an effective cameo from Sir Alec Guinness whom Waller had convinced to appear in his film way back in 1986 and whose scenes as an underworld kingpin known as The Reaper ("see his face, and die") were shot in Germany over the course of just one morning in that year, before subsequently being edited into the final version eight years later. It was to be, technically, the legendary thespian's last feature film. Hey, it doesn't matter that he's clearly dressed as a 1930s gangland Godfather, does it?

Waller's film concerns a mute American special effects coordinator, Billy Hughes (played by acclaimed and beautiful Russian actress Marina Zudina, with the language barrier being deftly handled by her character's inability to speak), who working on a low-budget slasher horror movie in Moscow alongside her sister Karen (British actress Fay Ripley) and Andy, her sister's boyfriend (Evan Richards) who is the director of the flick. There's a case of art imitating life when Andy reveals he's filming in Russia for its cheap labour costs, which is exactly the reason why Waller based himself there too.

When Billy accidentally gets locked in at the set after the production has wrapped for for the evening, she observes the local Russian crew doing some decidedly unofficial overtime, filming what she initially believes to be a cheap porno. But when the male actor pulls a knife and proceeds to brutally murder his female co-star, Billy quickly realises she's stumbled upon a snuff movie operation. 

What immediately follows is a very long, extremely effective and utterly nail biting 'stalk and chase' sequence that would be critically acclaimed to the hilt if this were a better known feature. Narrowly fleeing the scene with her life, Billy then proceeds in her attempt to convince the Russian authorities - along with Andy the director -  that the crew are a part of a crazed killer pornography ring but, as with the best Hitchcockian traditions, the bad guys are clever enough to convince everyone that a 'hysterical' Billy only saw a fictional murder as part of Andy's shoot.

Unfortunately, Waller doesn't just stick with this perfectly serviceable plot and overeggs his Euro pudding somewhat with the introduction, in the film's latter stages, of what is presumably a left over from the original 30s Chicago draft; corruption at the highest levels and an international conspiracy thriller element, complete with a stolen floppy disk and Oleg Yankovsky's undercover detective. Coming after that impressive opening 40 minutes, it is a little frustrating.

But there's much more in the film's favour overall than it's failings. Like Hitchcock, Waller isn't afraid of injecting some wonderfully quirky,  laugh out loud black comedy into the proceedings. When faced with a murderer intent on taking out their only witness for the second time, how does a young mute girl attract the attention of her neighbour across the street - why, flash at him of course! And, whilst the murderer takes apart the flat to get at her, the neighbour downstairs is thumping at his ceiling to protest at the noise that is keeping him awake! There's also the great comic support provided by Evan Richards and Fay Ripley as Andy and Karen who run around always a step behind Billy like a wisecracking and bickering sitcom/screwball couple who have just wandered in from a Woody Allen film (Manhattan Murder Mystery perhaps?). Waller clearly has fun sending up would-be auteurs of the Gen X age with Andy, whilst Ripley is both considerably tougher than her weedy boyfriend and believably supportive of her disabled sister Billy. It's just a shame Waller insisted on his siblings being American, as Ripley's accent often slips. Why they couldn't have been British I do not know. Shortly after this, Ripley would become a household name thanks to her role as Jenny Gifford in 1990s hit comedy drama Cold Feet employing the same strengths she shows here. And I always found her to be very easy on the eye and a really charismatic screen presence, so that helps too.

Ultimately though, the film's strongest character is of course it's leading lady who is not only mute, but is also further handicapped in being an American in a foreign land; she's unable to speak and unable to understand what her enemies are saying as well. Marina Zudina is great in the central role, conveying so much with her eyes and genuinely making us care for her character. You can trace the lineage of Billy Hughes right through all the populist scream queen figures  and particular homage is due to Audrey Hepburn's role as the blind heroine of Wait Until Dark, meaning that Waller's Euro pudding like all the best Euro puddings offers a convincing and affectionately postmodern critique on Hollywood and especially so considering much of the fun is had at exploring the nature of a film within a film. 

I hadn't seen this one in ages, so glad I decided to reacquaint myself with it once more last night.

Bumday - She Put The Rear In Rear Window!

Today's bumday is a GIF of the actual rear from Hitch's Rear Window

And here's the rest of that happy dance

  

The dancer in question, aka 'Miss Torso' in the film, was played by Georgine Darcy

Darcy's story is an interesting one; born in Brooklyn, as a teenager her mother urged her to become a stripper to earn a fast buck (some parenting skills there, eh?) Like many teens Darcy didn't do what her parents asked of her and instead studied dancing with the New York City Ballet and did a spot of modelling on the side. 

In 1954, it was a modelling shoot that alerted her to Alfred Hitchcock and the famed director - who Darcy freely admitted to never having heard of! - cast her as Miss Torso, one of James Stewart's neighbours in his latest thriller Rear Window. Darcy didn't consider herself to be an actress but she knew she could dance and get the best out of the 21 inch waisted pink shorts costume designer Edith Head made for her. 

Hitchcock encouraged her throughout filming and asked her what kind of pie she disliked. When she answered pumpkin pie, the director produced one, with crude cockney jokes, to film her adverse reaction which he would then slot into the scene in which her character finds a strangled dog. 

At the close of filming, he presented her with a cake made to resemble her curvacious figure and advised her to travel to Europe and study acting under Checkov, stating that on her return he would make her a star. Presuming he was joking or just being kind, Darcy ignored his advice and enjoyed a sporadic acting career in the '60s which included roles in Chubby Checker's musical Don't Knock The Twist and a regular role in the sitcom Harrigan and Son.

But it's Rear Window that Darcy remains most famous for. A small role it may have been, one can only wonder what would have happened had she took up Hitch's offer - could she have been another of his ice cold blonde leading ladies?

RIP Rod Taylor

Vintage Hollywood star Rod Taylor, famous for roles in The Birds, The Time Machine and Giant, has passed away just days before his 85th birthday.

Australian actor Taylor's persona was that of a suave and hunky tough guy, a role he played very well. As well as his most well known films he also appeared in mercenary adventure Dark of The Sun (based on Wilbur Smith's novel) and the James Bond spoof The Liquidator (based on the novels of John Gardner, who would later go on to pen official Bond novels in the 1980s) He lent his vocal talents to Disney's 101 Dalmatians and was last seen as Churchill in Tarantino's Inglorious Basterds.

RIP

The House On Carroll Street (1988)

Whatever happened to Kelly McGillis?

I've always rather liked her in films, but watching The House On Carroll Street I was truly struck by the strong and largely independent leading lady role she embodied. There's a touch of the Ingrid Bergman in Hitch's Notorious about her, which sums up perfectly the kind of influence Peter Yates' film, from a script by Walter Bernstein, has; good old fashioned thrillers from the 40s and 50s which features an innocent getting tangled up in a deadly web of intrigue. Indeed you could watch this with the colour turned down on your TV and almost convince yourself you're watching a movie made back then. It's that good.

The House On Carroll Street is a very engaging, beautifully evocative 1950s set suspense thriller set around the backdrop of the McCarthy witch hunts (Bernstein himself was a blacklisted writer, having fallen foul of the HUAC) McGillis stars as a young politically engaged picture editor for Life magazine who loses her job when she refuses to testify before the committee. She finds work reading to an old lady (Jessica Tandy in an all too infrequent supporting role) on Carroll Street, but is hampered by a near constant tail from two FBI agents, including the laconic loping Jeff Daniels. One day McGillis goes out into the yard and overhears an angry conversation in German from the window of the house opposite and recognises one man in particular in the heated debate as the man who interrogated her on the committee; a slickly duplicitous Mandy Patinkin.

Piecing things together with the help of the young and frightened German she overheard being threatened, she uncovers the HUAC's plan to smuggle in Nazi war criminals to America to share their technical know how and experiences to help strengthen their fight against communism. 

McGillis is superb in this and really suits the 1950s style. She's a tall broad shouldered amazon who carries each outfit of with considerable aplomb. I don't think I'd ever truly noticed how big she was until this movie; she's evenly matched here with Daniels but she must have looked like a beast next to diminutive cinematic irritant and alien believer Tom Cruise in Top Gun. It's interesting and satisfying that Bernstein chooses someone whom the upper echelons of 50s America viewed with such contemptuous mistrust to be the most trustworthy, good and rational figure in this labyrinth of deceit and there's a pleasing irony to see Daniels' FBI agent come to realise that the 'bad' person he is investigating is in fact good, whilst his superiors are really the evil ones.

As befits the strong female role in the film, Daniels is not your traditional hero. He refuses to carry a gun, comes off worse in every fight, doesn't really save the day and doesn't even get the girl. His only really impressive, heroic acts are the discovery of a bomb in McGillis' stove (which he cannot diffuse because he nearly failed the bomb disposal course) and principally his growing faith and belief in McGillis and her suspicions. It's a refreshing depiction of a leading man - playing second fiddle to the heroine - and it's a testament to the likeable, open faced Daniels that he pulls it off without ever appearing weak, ineffectual or surplus to the proceedings.  With the final season of HBO's (divisive but hey I absolutely LOVE it) drama The Newsroom ending on Sky Atlantic this week I can predict a glut of Daniels films to come, just to keep my fix going.

Blow Out (1981)

Brian De Palma is a director who lovingly wears his influences on his sleeve and Blow Out certainly offers us some rich pickings of influential material, whilst revealing itself to be an intelligent and original work in its own right.

Antonioni's Blow-Up and Coppola's The Conversation, Italian Giallo and the works of Hitchcock and real life events and characters like Chappaquiddick and the tragic Mary Jo Kopechne, the Kennedy dynasty and Jack and Bobby's political assassinations, eyewitnesses like Abraham Zapruder, Watergate and shady, shadowy Mr Fix-It's like G. Gordon Liddy, all of these come together to produce a rich, deep film of conspiracy theory and cinematic flair and intelligence for our time. 

Cross referencing the likes of Blow Up and The Conversation may make the story a familiar one, but its enjoyable and smartly told nonetheless. John Travolta stars in one of his most challenging roles and one of his three personal favourites as an obsessive sound effects man for B movie slashers who, when spending the night recording sounds in the woods stumbles into an elaborate and deadly conspiracy when he inadvertently witnesses and records the sound of a presidential candidate's car crashing into a river. Launching a rescue bid, he finds the governor dead but manages to save his passenger, an escort girl, from drowning.  Pressurised by the authorities to keep the girl out of the story for the dead man's reputation, Travolta soon finds that the recording he made doesn't match the official explanation.

Like many films about the process and technologies within movie making, Blow Out revels in the art of cinema itself and De Palma stages some truly memorable and impressive set pieces that elevate the schlocky or kitsch cliches of mystery and suspense thrillers into compelling art in an intelligent and insightful manner not unlike Hitch himself. As a result of which, Blow Out earned itself the tag of 'the best of all American conspiracy movies' by Pauline Kael.

Until tonight, I hadn't watched this in a very long time (I picked the DVD up for just a quid in a charity shop last week) and I was a little worried that I may have remembered it via rose tinted glasses. I needn't have bothered worrying, and many moments I'd totally forgotten about thanks to the midst of time which made this an almost new experience. It's one my favourite De Palma's let down only perhaps by the perennial issue raised against the director; namely his depiction of women. I do wish Nancy Allen's call girl could have been less of a 'Well gee Mister, wanna buy me a lollipop' ditzy dumb broad stereotype that seems to originate from the 1930s. Surely there would be more opportunity for an emotional involvement and more punch if the character was more three dimensional and heartfelt?

Rear Window (1954)

One of Hitch's greatest talents was in creating a world unique to his storytelling and visual style. In Rear Window these talents really are to the fore, using  the teeming tenements of New York as his playground, embellishing it with great colour (both socially and cinematically) and detail.

An essay in big city loneliness and morbid curiosity, Rear Window has much to say about Hitch's gleeful reliance on voyeurism both of his audience at the cinema and of the outside world in general, tapping into how we perhaps live(d) via witty symbolism and analogy. I wonder if such a film, if made today, could grab an audiences attention and capture something of urban life now given that as a society we seem to be living a more insular and detached life, reliant on the screens of our laptops and PC's than the window to the streets outside. 

A film about 'spectacle', Rear Window gives us just that and how, thanks to the great aforementioned symbolism and the equally subtle analogies that can be made between Stewart and Kelly's characters, or more specifically, their relationship, and those they are peeping on (as cited in Tania Modleski's excellent book 'The Women Who Knew Too Much'). It goes without saying that Stewart and Kelly are at the top of their game and they're ably provided with some comedic support from Thelma Ritter, adding some of Hitch's typically ghoulish delight to the proceedings. 

All in all, this remains one of Hitchcock's finest.

- I hate that he killed the dog though :(

Grace & Danger

Grace Kelly

Just spent the afternoon watching Grace in Hitch's Rear Window on BBC2; lovely Sunday matinee stuff.

The above photograph is from another Hitch classic however, To Catch A Thief 

Smoking Hot

Tippi Hedren - The Birds

"Why would you do that? Why?" - Tippi Hedren, speaking earlier this week regarding the news of the forthcoming remake of The Birds.

Initial reactions to the remake have been suitably scathing, especially when one considers the producer of the remake is Michael Bay! Yes, really.

However, on the bright side he isn't directing. That honour falls to Diederik van Rooijen who, it is said, is close to casting Naomi Watts and will return the film to its original English setting.

The Birds was based on a fabulously spooky short story from the pen of Cornish writer Daphne du Maurier  (Rebecca, Don't Look Now to name but two) Obviously Hitchcock's film is a revered classic, but it's not faithful to the source material. As such I think there may be some mileage in this remake if it is more of an adaptation of du Maurier's tale.

The Trouble With Harry (1955)

The Trouble With Harry feels like a filler from Hitchcock, but it's a beautiful looking one nonetheless.

The delightfully dotty, frothy offbeat black comedy about the discovery of a corpse (that of the titular troublesome Harry) upon a hill in gloriously shot,on colourful Vista Vision of course, leafy autumnal Vermont leads to the townsfolk investigating, concealing and, in some cases, believing themselves to be guilty of the man's death.

The body of Harry, and the reason for his fatality, is of course simply Hitch's celebrated MacGuffin this time around; a springboard for the eccentric humour, and a distraction, as it is buried, dug up, buried, dug up... etc, for romances to subsequently to blossom. 

The superb drawing room comedy playing from the cast include the delightful Edmund Gwenn (formerly Santa Claus in Miracle on 34th Street) John Forsythe, Mildred Nantwick and, in her debut, a pixie like Shirley MacLaine, make this a passable 95 minutes entertainment but it doesn't hide the fact that the story though diverting enough is a slight one, and suitably remains one of Hitch's lesser works - not that that is in any way a criticism. After all, even a slight Hitchcock is an average director's envy.

Hitchcock (2012)

The two 2012 biopics of Alfred Hitchcock didn't exactly do the man any favours.

The Girl, which featured very good performances from Toby Jones and Sienna Miller, showed the oft rumoured unsavoury and downright creepy side to the perfectionist director, effectively stripping his genius and the reason why so many film devotees love him to this day away to present instead something a monster. It was savaged in reviews, perhaps just for that, but on the whole I found it interesting enough.

Hitchcock, is the glossy Hollywood biopic featuring very sub par performances from Anthony Hopkins swathed in a fat suit and prosthetics (but never being anything else other than Hopkins) and Helen Mirren doing her usual tiresome GILF routine rather than embody the character of Hitch's allegedly long suffering wife Alma.  It's a film that, like The Girl, seems keen to strip away the man's genius by purporting that every single great idea he had (certainly on Psycho at least) stemmed not from him but from Alma. Now, I've read Stephen Rebello's The Making of Psycho on which this is based (admittedly a while back now) and I may be wrong but I cannot recall ever reading in there how it was she who effectively cast, wrote, occasionally directed and cut the film, certainly not to the extent she's depicted as doing here.

Indeed so much of the film seems so preoccupied with 'Mrs Hitchcock' that I wonder why the title wasn't that, with several long stretches of the running time concerning itself with her seeming attraction and temptation towards professional cheesy smug chops Danny Huston as scriptwriter Whitfield Cook who seemed to want to entice Alma away from her marriage and professional career with Hitchcock. What a great shame, because one of the highlights of the book is reading how threatened Hitch felt not in this quarter, but by the likes of Henri Georges Clouzot, which is completely absent from this film, reduced to Hitchcock just reading about his competition in a newspaper in a scene that lasts about two seconds.

Sacha Gervasi's direction is all gloss and shine, which at least makes Hitchcock look good because it sure as hell doesn't sound good. When the film's first scene immediately after the titles roll includes this line of dialogue, you know you're in trouble...

Reporter at Premiere of North by Northwest: "Mr Hitchock you've directed 46 motion pictures. You're the most famous director in the medium. But you're 60 years old. Shouldn't you quite while you're ahead?"

CLUNK!

Gee thanks for that. Where would we be without a dumbed down Hollwood film script holding our hands and reminding us just what it is we're here to watch. Why, if it wasn't for that I would have thought I was watching Hitch starring Will Smith! 

I suppose some praise must be made towards Scarlett Johansson who gives us a passable Janet Leigh, James D'Arcy for doing the same for Anthony Perkins, Toni Collette as Hitch's faithful assistant Peggy and Jessica Biel as Vera Miles - the one time the film allows us to consider Hitchcock's cruel and obsessive streak towards his leading ladies. I liked the flippancy of some of the dreamier aspects of the film; such as Hitch talking direct to camera or being a voyeuristic accomplice to Ed Gein but even these felt out of place overall in the film. But ultimately like a meringue this is a nice looking fluffy affair that fails to fill you in any satisfying way. This is little more than a TV movie masquerading as a big movie of substance.

RIP Joan Fontaine

I must admit I was naturally a bit floored to learn of O'Toole's passing yesterday, so I just switched off a bit. As a result I've actually only just found out that we also lost Joan Fontaine too at the grand old age of 96.

Whenever i think of Joan Fountaine I think particularly of three movies;

The Hammer classic The Witches - her last big screen role from 1966, in which she played a former missionary who had suffered a breakdown from witchcraft in Africa, only to take up work as schoolteacher in rural England and uncover a coven there too!

Gunga Din - the riproaring Boy's Own adventure from 1939 in which she played the woman threatening to separate co-star Douglas Fairbanks Jr from his brothers in arms Cary Grant and Victor McLaglen.

And lastly of course, Rebecca - Hitchcock's 1940 classic, an adaptation of Daphne Du Maurier's novel, where she played the haunted and taunted new bride of Laurence Olivier's; the second Mrs de Winter.

Fontaine was the sister of fellow actress Olivia de Havilland, with whom she had an estranged relationship, the result of a fierce sibling rivalry. In a 1978 interview, Fontaine was quoted as remarking "I married first, won the Oscar before Olivia did, and if I die first, she'll undoubtedly be livid that I beat her to it!" 

Sadly, she got that wish yesterday.

RIP