Alfred Hitchcock: Classic or Dud?

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.

also Shadow of a Doubt is almost as great as he thought it was.

(again, the worst bit is Macdonald Carey courting Teresa Wright)

humph. Too many of the performances in SOAD look indifferently directed: overstatement etc.

strangers on a train might be my favorite hitchcock, though, so...

would like to see marnie again, though. it's been a while.

actors usta be BIG, Alfred.

it's the Hitch pictures that got smaller

Family Plot is a better comedy than The Trouble with Harry, too.

That is OTM, but so is Psycho.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HxMslIwsCZU
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=opZJwGkNRMs

This looks fun and false as hell.

Which one?

I don't quite understand why these films, why now, 32 years postmortem? ALl the people who are interested in the lore have read a ton of it, can't see them interested in 2 hours of dramatization.

The audience for these films fetishize acting as caricature.

First I've heard of either of these. I dunno, I haven't really immersed myself in all that much Hitchcock lore, but they look enjoyable to me on a My Week With Marilyn or Notorious Bettie Page level.

yeah, My Week With Marilyn, ugh, but at least the T&A biopic factor is there (and Lohan as Liz Taylor) whereas it's just support here w/ Scarlett as Janet Leigh.

The Psycho censorship transgressions/battles are way more interesting than the Hitchcocks' marital dysfunctions.

the toby jones one looks fun, hopkins one looks like hot steaming shit

My Week with Marilyn was meh. Biopics in miniature form are still biopics.

Though they at least solve the problem of absent or laughably forced narrative thrust.

the anti-biopic sentiment around here is baffling, there are plenty of great ones.

not really, they hadda squeeze in as many of poor Norma Jean's offscreen tragedies as they could into that one forgotten little British film's making.

xp

Edvard Munch and Mommie Dearest, sure.

besides Andrei Rublev, what? xxp

Haynes's Superstar

My Winnipeg an entertaining bio-hazard-pic.

biopics - which ones are good?

'an angel at my table,' 'young mr lincoln,' 'lawrence of arabia' all great.

xp surprisingly short thread

unsurprisingly

Another film thread discussion shut down by ILX film snobs. All in a day's work.

hi-5

'alexander nevsky,' 'prick up your ears,' 'raging bull' of course. surely 'passion of joan of arc' ought to count if 'my week with marilyn' counts. 'w' is probably oliver stone's best film.

anyway the point is that not every biopic is 'gandhi.'

point is an awful lot of them are A Beautiful Mind

Or Ray.

yes, there is not-by-the-numbers, but pretty rare.

(and neither of these Hitch things are biopics, they cover consecutive periods in his early 60s.)

mary harron's two biopics are great too.

but yes i doubt any hitchcock biopic would be any good.

If the first thing most people are going to take away from the movie is that the actor playing the famous person gave a great impersonation, then it basically counts as a biopic imo.

there's a rash of these things made for UK TV now, basically indistinguishable, revolving around impersonations of much-loved 60s/70s TV stars and a banal run-through of some "secret" "scandal" in their private lives

anyway, Hitch bio shd be 30 minute 1-take scene of young Hitch getting locked up in the police cell and then cut straight to him throwing birds at Tippi Hedren

Behind the Camera: The Unauthorized Story of 'Three's Company' (xpost)