Alfred Hitchcock: Classic or Dud?

They're hard to compare, being so different...I'll concede that there's probably more going on visually in The Birds, even though James Wong Howe's black & white cinematography in Hud has a nice spare, classical look to it. But when you get down to performances, it's not even close. Taylor and Hedren are typically wooden, whereas Newman and O'Neal are fantastic. Especially O'Neal--she'd be on my short-list of favourite female performances ever. Anyway, I'm glad you guys have a favorable opinion of it; I feel like it's an unfairly neglected film. (Love The Spy Who Came in from the Cold, too.)

The Birds always strikes me as Hitchcock challenging himself to see if he could make a suspense flick using the most outlandishly silly premise he could imagine. It only works if you allow yourself to swallow (no pun) the premise entirely. I never can, so it has always seemed to me a very silly film.

read a good book saying he was shooting for a 'real art-film' with the birds, having realized all these serious young men took him seriously now -- had its debut at MoMA iirc

Yeah, you have to turn your brain off a bit. I do like The Birds, though, especially how it clears the ground for something like Night of the Living Dead.

I've been getting Hitchcock Presents discs from Netflix for a while now, I'm up to season 4 (though they stream on Hulu too.) Absolutely love them. (Season 1 #1 "Revenge" is ultra-awesome.)

One more vote for Hud > Birds, but yeah they're so different stylewise it's really oranges/apples. (I just prefer oranges.) I just saw Hud for the very first time not long ago, so the "newness" of it for me may color my judgement a bit. Great, great film.

I've been getting Hitchcock Presents discs from Netflix for a while now, I'm up to season 4 though they stream on Hulu too.

YES!!! :D

Just this image gives me all sorts of warm fuzzies -- conjures up late night TV as a kid:

http://epguides.com/AlfredHitchcockPresents/logo.jpg

sorry, I like the CHARACTERS in The Birds, and the way the fantastic menace comes out of their interpersonal tensions. (It took me awhile to look at the film this way, I guess Robin Wood gets the credit.)

I mean, you don't think it's ABOUT birds massing and attacking people, do you?

that's the problem!

read some Robin Wood, yo

Jessica Tandy and Suzanne Pleshette ("How do you like our little hamlet?") are particularly amazing, and the Cartwright girl.

I didn't find Wood particularly convincing on The Birds; he trod suspiciously auteurist ground.

Wood's regard for The Birds and Marnie was...off the charts. I think it's fine to approach the The Birds either way. But because Taylor and Hedren are so bland, to me it's not worth the effort to parse out what's going on psychologically; I think it's a better film if you stick with the birds massing and attacking people.

I suspect you are a Paulette, Soto!

I think it's fine to approach the The Birds either way. But because Taylor and Hedren are so bland, to me it's not worth the effort to parse out what's going on psychologically;

otm

how do you feel about Hedren and Sean Connery? I think she's quite good in Marnie particularly.

I've only seen Marnie once, about 10 years ago (introduced by Wood). It's one of those films where I'll finish reading Wood and think, "Wow, I'd love to see that," and then you see the film and it's "Huh?" I hesitate to say any more because it was so long ago. Another major Wood puzzler: Rally Round the Flag, Boys!

weird, just today i was reading david thomson's bk abt psycho etc, including this paragraph abt The Birds: "The screenwriter, Evan Hunter, who had witnessed Hitch's indifference to what the birds might mean firsthand, was now amused, yet distressed, by the way the director was available for any and every parable of significance. Hunter had known that Hitch had no other aim except to frighten the audience. But the subject of earnest interviews needed more weight. And so The Birds - which was in postproduction during the Cuban missile crisis of October 1962 - became a story about the end of the world and man's complacency. In truth, of course, it was a strange sadomasochistic transference between actress and director."

i think 'the birds' is great, and agree with morbs about the supporting performances being excellent. plus it's the only hitch i've ever found genuinely scary --- the last scene with hedren coming up the stairs espec.

also tbi i don't find the premise 'silly' at all -- i mean, hell, it could happen! if anything it strikes me as more plausible than the setup of 'vertigo.'

The Birds is also very much a companion piece to Psycho, in themes and obv the shower scene's resemblance to some of the Tippi-attacked scenes.

I thought growing awareness of his reputation among cineasts triggered Hitch's about-face. When were his interviews with Truffaut?

around the time of Torn Curtain, I think.

That's kind of a weird quote from Thomson. Hitch didn't talk with the screenwriter about subtext, so therefore there isn't any?

the truffaut interviews were in 62 or 63

don't trust thomson much these days

"In truth, of course, it was a strange sadomasochistic transference between actress and director."

in truth. of course.

Yeah, the Thomson bk is a big mess - there's a horribly under-researched chapter on films that were directly inspired by Psycho that ends with the Red Riding trilogy and doesn't mention Mario Bava, ffs - and liable to enrage you, history mayne. Funnily enough, by far the best chapter is on Hitchcock's critical reception post-Psycho, that takes in the Cahiers crowd and the Truffaut interviews (mainly recorded in August 1962, just after Hitchcock had finished the Birds, published 1966), VF Perkins and Movie, Andrew Sarris, Pauline Kael (the Birds is 'a bad picture at every level'), and Penelope Houston's similarly anti-auteurist essay 'The Figure in the Carpet', published in Sight and Sound, and (in truth, of course) Robin Wood.

that penelope houston essay is rly good iirc. i 'used it in class' the other week

but if you only get one book about psycho...

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Long-Hard-Look-Psycho-Silver/dp/1844573583/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1301991166&sr=8-3

DT reviewed it the first time it came out

Cool, don't know that partic durg text so have added it to my wish list

avoid at all costs: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Psycho-Shower-History-Cinemas-Famous/dp/0826427693/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1301994329&sr=1-1

Evan Hunter, source of THE TRUTH on Hitchcock.

The H/T book was published in '67, I'm pretty sure they discussed the oven scene from TC.

There were some follow-up interviews conducted after the 1962 session

i love how dirty the jokes get in his 70s movies

"Evan Hunter, source of THE TRUTH on Hitchcock"

Yes - I just like how they discarded the very simple possibility that Hitchcock couldn't be interested in discussing a possible subtext of the movie with Hunter.

but if you only get one book about psycho...

http://www.hitchcockwiki.com/wiki/1000_Frames_of_Vertigo_%281958%29

Despite all the reading of Vertigo as Hitchcock's "confession," on seeing it for maybe the twelfth time I prefer to see him as Gavin Elster rather than Scottie.

btw never saw this 'foreign censorship ending' to Vertigo til lately (obv SPOILER):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=imbLXT2K--M

Watched Dial M for the first time via Netflix Instant the other night. Was kinda "meh" about it. It can't avoid looking and feeling stagebound, obvs, but at least he got some interesting camera angles in at times. Liked the wordless, economical setup at the beginning, Milland was appropriately sleazy and not-as-clever-as-he-thinks-he is, Anthony Dawson was so unappealing and unctuous you would've been crazy not to be thrilled when Kelly killed him.

the Siren's quest to help the National Film Preservation Foundation stream the unearthed Hitch silent The White Shadow (he was AD and writer):

http://selfstyledsiren.blogspot.com/2012/02/for-love-of-film-iii-last-night-i.html

sounds like the kind of project Kickstarter was designed for - likely to get more publicity (thus donations) via that route, too

http://i.imgur.com/y8gkL.jpg

how is that not don rickles

That's what she said.

Final day of the Hitchcock Blogathon

it's his 113th birthday.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=okLiLsncyi0

I guess he'll be having a big party and then leaving the Shire forever. :(

also, there's a new (well, recent) edition of this book I didn't know existed:

http://www.hitchcockwiki.com/wiki/%22Writing_with_Hitchcock%22_-_by_Steven_DeRosa

Didn't look at this, so didn't realize it was his birthday till they mentioned it on the radio. Happy birthday, Alfred--we argue about your retired-detective film like every single day.

and damn, Marnie is so much better than Strangers on a Train.

I used to think that too. The last viewing wasn't as kind.

MORBS OTM

feh

Marnie is like the Ruth Roman bits in SOAT giving precedence.