Hitchcock - the man and the movies

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There is very little (if anything at all) wrong in terms of the depiction of women in Hitchs actual movies.

Having said that, Tippi Hedren's account of his behavior towards her is at the very least, problematic.

I am of course aware that this behavior was hardly unique for directors, and continues to be so to this day (it's not like Hollywood Hacks à la Brett Ratner and Michael Bay even try to deny their extensive use of the casting couch).

Side-note: it is somewhat amusing that De Palma ended up casting her daughter.

Erica Ambler wrote:

There was a brief critical reprieve some years after his death, but then feminism took over film studies and made his personal life more important that his art. I can't say how much I despise most of those so-called academics - Camille Paglia is about the only one I have time for.

I've spent a lot of time with academic treatments of Hitchcock. Feminist criticism is only a small portion of the vast sea of academic work written about Hitch's work. Even so, feminist criticism doesn't speak with any level of uniformity regarding Hitch's achievements.

At any rate, I think Hitch's decline was mostly the result of ego. He tossed aside his best collaborators and his work suffered.

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Interesting list. I would have expected a few of them to be listed higher: "Secret Agent", "Rope", "Shadow of a doubt". Though I was pleasantly surprised that "Saboteur" made the top 15.

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Erica Ambler wrote:

an artform revered by continentals desperate to believe Germany is the bastion of civilisation rather than the home of Zyklon B

Say what?

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All this Hun-bashing is gonna get Ambler into trouble after the EUrth Reich successfully launches #operationsealion.

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But Hitch was heavily influenced by German cinema, surely you must give them a tiny bit of love for that?

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Erica Ambler wrote:

Watching the people on the continent pretend these things never happened is simply inexplicable. Won't you ever learn?

I don't think that is what is going on.

I do think that it was a historical error of giving so many of the WWII war criminals a free pass and some of the post-war problems can certainly be attributed to that.
On the other hand, the mistake came from an understandable place: after years of bloody and costly war, the desire to have a lengthy and possibly bloody and calamitous repression movement was limited in all but a small minority of people. Not coincidentally, the same people who had been part of the active resistance, mostly.

Harry Mulisch's book "The Assault" deals with this frustration to a certain extent.

I went out of my way to revisit as many Hitchcock films as I could this year. Criterion has since released THE LODGER and REBECCA. I'm hoping they do work on more of Hitchcock's early films or perhaps release an entire box set.

I was also able to catch a screening of SPELLBOUND on nitrate film in May. Not Hitchcock's best work and even a bit boring, but it looked fucking gorgeous on nitrate.

Control wrote:

I went out of my way to revisit as many Hitchcock films as I could this year. Criterion has since released THE LODGER and REBECCA. I'm hoping they do work on more of Hitchcock's early films or perhaps release an entire box set.

I was also able to catch a screening of SPELLBOUND on nitrate film in May. Not Hitchcock's best work and even a bit boring, but it looked fucking gorgeous on nitrate.

The degree to which I'm jealous of you not only seeing nitrate but SPELLBOUND at that...geez...I would have likely fainted with delight. Did it indeed have the red frames intact at the end? I'll bet it looked more like the older Criterion DVD and all three they had from the ABC library (also Notorious and Rebecca) had far more lush black levels and beautiful appearances on their old transfers vs. the overscrubbed and brightened MGM ones.

Criterion did a new BD box of 39 Steps, Lady Vanishes, TMWKTM '34 and Foreign Correspondent. They may likely do a second or a larger one with Rebecca and The Lodger and of course I'm dying for Notorious and Spellbound to return as they were on the same deal as Rebecca and thus the whole DVD boxset would be back in the collection. They also apparently have the rights to the restored Hitchcock Nine but are taking their darned time releasing them in the States.

hegottheboot wrote:

Control wrote:

I went out of my way to revisit as many Hitchcock films as I could this year. Criterion has since released THE LODGER and REBECCA. I'm hoping they do work on more of Hitchcock's early films or perhaps release an entire box set.

I was also able to catch a screening of SPELLBOUND on nitrate film in May. Not Hitchcock's best work and even a bit boring, but it looked fucking gorgeous on nitrate.

The degree to which I'm jealous of you not only seeing nitrate but SPELLBOUND at that...geez...I would have likely fainted with delight. Did it indeed have the red frames intact at the end? I'll bet it looked more like the older Criterion DVD and all three they had from the ABC library (also Notorious and Rebecca) had far more lush black levels and beautiful appearances on their old transfers vs. the overscrubbed and brightened MGM ones.

Criterion did a new BD box of 39 Steps, Lady Vanishes, TMWKTM '34 and Foreign Correspondent. They may likely do a second or a larger one with Rebecca and The Lodger and of course I'm dying for Notorious and Spellbound to return as they were on the same deal as Rebecca and thus the whole DVD boxset would be back in the collection. They also apparently have the rights to the restored Hitchcock Nine but are taking their darned time releasing them in the States.

SPELLBOUND was intact and in absolutely STUNNING condition. I watched it at The Nitrate Picture Show, which is hosted by the George Eastman Museum in Rochester, NY every year. The museum holds a lot of nitrate prints in its own collection and also screens prints from international archives for its film festival. SPELLBOUND is in Eastman's collection and was donated to the museum by Danny Selznick, son of David O. Selznick. IIRC, it was from Selznick's personal collection.

I know of the Criterion Hitchcock boxset that you mentioned. I owned all of the titles before they decided to throw them all together in their own box. Their release of FOREIGN CORRESPONDENT is just exceptional. I welcome any future Hitchcock releases from them.

Wow that sounds incredible! That'd be like seeing nitrate from Jack Warner's vault.