Movie Reviews
Mr. & Mrs. Smith
Not all of Alfred Hitchcock’s movies were murder, action, and suspense. Every once in a while he tried something different, and this is one of them. A lot of people don’t like this one, and I suspect it’s because they were expecting a cliffhanger at the end. No, it’s just a good screwball comedy with George Montgomery and Carole Lombard (her next-to-last picture before her death in a plane ... Read more »
Foreign Correspondent
Hitchcock went through several periods during his long career, from silents to glossy Technicolor Hollywood thrillers in the ‘60s and ‘70s. He did some of his best work in the ‘40s, and this is one of the best of those. The world is on the edge of war, and Joel McCrae is involved in trying to expose a plot to … well, it’s not always clear, but he’s a reporter after the Big Story. It is a ... Read more »
Rebecca
“Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again.” That’s one of the most famous opening lines of any book. I’ve never been quite sure why—it doesn’t do anything for me—but there it is. The movie opens that way, too.
The story is that Laurence Olivier wanted Vivien Leigh, his current squeeze, to star as the first-nameless protagonist. (All through the movie I kept trying to recall ... Read more »
Jamaica Inn
1820, George IV, Cornwall, crashing seas, piracy. It seems to me that there ought to be a different terms for these Cornish pirates (and maybe there is, and if you know what it is, I’d like to hear it). I think of a “pirate” as somebody who attacks a ship at sea, from his own pirate boat. Here, the dastards take down beacons during storms at night, confusing the helmsmen and causing them ... Read more »
The Lady Vanishes
This was something like the twenty-first film directed by Alfred Hitchcock, and the sixth made after he hit the big time in both England and America with The Man Who Knew Too Much. As such, it is from what I think of as his classic period that stretches down to Notorious in 1946. I think it’s one of his best. A frequent theme for Hitch ... Read more »
Young and Innocent
Young and Innocent (The Girl Was Young) (1937) This was not the first of Hitchcock’s innocent man movies, but it’s only the second, after The 39 Steps in 1935. This story is a bit simpler than that one, but they both have strengths. A young man finds a dead woman on the beach, and runs to get help. But he is seen fleeing, and when the police get there they find ... Read more »
Sabotage
We happened to see this one back-to-back with another Hitchcock film, Blackmail, made seven years earlier. It was interesting to note the similarities. In both films a woman kills a man. In this one, the victim was her husband who had set off a bomb that killed her brother. In the other, the man was trying to rape her. Both eminently justifiable, most people would say. In both films her ... Read more »
Secret Agent
The chief pleasure of this one is to see Hitchcock refining many of the things that became his trademarks. He always favored showing close-ups of people doing things without showing their faces, for instance, a woman hands as she packs her bags to leave her lover. He tells the story in a silent manner when he can. There is an extended scene in an incredibly loud chocolate factory. People ... Read more »
The 39 Steps
Could be the prototype for a dozen “innocent man wrongly accused” Hitchcock movies. And still one of the best. It’s got everything, as Robert Donat is swept up in spy hugger-mugger by a mysterious foreign woman who soon collapses in his arms with a knife in her back, much like the man in the United Nations falls into Cary Grant’s arms in North by Northwest. It ... Read more »
The Man Who Knew Too Much
Alfred Hitchcock liked this story so much he made it twice. The second time was in 1956 with Jimmy Stewart and Doris Day, in VistaVision and Technicolor. Both versions have their strengths, but this is the better one. And when you add it all up, the reason that one is weak is Doris, and the silly song she sings. Once I hear that goddam “Que Sera, Sera,” I can’t get it out of my head for ... Read more »