Reasons to love Hitchcock

[seany t]

1. In 'Psycho', where the guy is creeping up the stairs to check out the mother's bedroom, and the camera switches to an overhead view and then - out of nowhere - she rushes out knife in hand. ***** me up just thinking about it.

2. For that amazing shot in 'Frenzy' where you realise that the neck-tie killer is about to strike again and the camera just moves out of the door, down the stairs and across the market square making your realise how alone the girl is.

3. 'Vertigo', for totally flummoxing it's audience with a twist out of nowhere.

4. 'Stage fright', for being one of the most forward thinking and funny films of it's period.

5. 'Rear window'. For being the utterly perfect mix of timeless, romantic, funny and vaguely dark.

6. How great his trailers were, like this one for 'The Birds': http://www.imdb.com/video/screenplay/vi1056113433/

7. 'Notorious', for being both totally far fetched and believable at the same time and confusing you even past the final credits.

8. 'The 39 Steps', for loads of reasons but ultimately being the best 'chase' film ever.

9. For the scene in 'Rear Window' where he told both under-performing extras to make sure they got the mattress inside when it started raining. He told them to use different windows though, knowing that they'd panic and start fighting; exactly what the scene needed. He supposedly sat there laughing and the scene is in the finished film.

10. 'To catch a thief', for having the most beautiful background locations ever.

I've missed out about 100 others. I like Hitchcock, a lot. Do you?

(Psycho is being remastered and re-released at the BFI next month btw)

 

[Napster]

The Birds - the bit where she's waiting outside the school, and then as she's waiting, the birds congregate behind her. Absolutely chilling.

In Rope, he used one roll of film for the whole film

His cameos - even in the lifeboat film, he was in a newspaper ad.

His marketing - he created a brand.

Hitch used to eat the same thing at restaurants - steak, then ice cream. Then steak again, then ice cream.

Saul Bass deserves a lot of credit as well, as does Bernard Hermann.

Ps the shower scene used chocolate - and it wasn't Perkins playing the murderer, he was ill. Plus the scene was drawn out by the storyboard artist and filmed by the AD. Although the idea was Hitch's the execution wasn't at all.

 

[Napster]

Dial M for Murder; Notorious and Strangers on a Train - all underappreciated but masterpieces of tension. Notorious in particular when she's downstairs and you see him heading the same way...

 

[C C Csiders]

Great at organising coaches in the 80's, dressing as a bumble bee, and antagonising Vic Jobson.

Or was that Hancock?

 

[seany t]

Dial M for Murder; Notorious and Strangers on a Train - all underappreciated but masterpieces of tension. Notorious in particular when she's downstairs and you see him heading the same way...

Good choices mate.

Those are 3 great little films there. I only saw 'Lifeboat' for the first time the other month and it's very good I thought. I know it's a propaganda film to make the Brits hate the Germans, but it was still very balanced and fair to make sure that people realised that the Germans were just fellow human beings too.

I'd forgotten about the chocolate sauce thing too. How gutted would you be if you did that shower sequence and no-one knew it was you?

 

[haveaguiness]

In Rope, he used one roll of film for the whole film

Saul Bass deserves a lot of credit as well, as does Bernard Hermann.

Sorry to disappoint but there is no way on Earth that he shot it on one roll of film. It was edited to look as though it was shot on one roll of film and was almost shot in real time, but film rolls were only 10 minutes long when this was shot.

I do however like the fact you picked out Saul Bass. I studied him a lot at uni and the man was a genius and pioneer of Film Intro's. He was telling a story rather than just giving the names of actors. He was truly original!

 

[Mad Cyril]

Dial M for Murder

I prefer Dial P for Psycho - starring Troy McLure.

 

[MK Shrimper]

North by Northwest, Vertigo, Psycho...superb.

Strangely never really got "The Birds". Found it a bit tedious.

 

[Supernaut]

2. For that amazing shot in 'Frenzy' where you realise that the neck-tie killer is about to strike again and the camera just moves out of the door, down the stairs and across the market square making your realise how alone the girl is.

I love the scene just before that, where Babs walks out of her job and the camera zooms in on her, the sound disappears, then you hear Rusk saying "Got a place to stay?" behind her. Stunning, I really love Frenzy.

Hitch's entire output is an embarrassment of riches - I enjoy his low-key, lesser known films like Foreign Correspondant and I Confess just as much as I love the big guns like Psycho, The Birds, Vertigo etc.

 

[seany t]

I love the scene just before that, where Babs walks out of her job and the camera zooms in on her, the sound disappears, then you hear Rusk saying "Got a place to stay?" behind her. Stunning, I really love Frenzy.

Hitch's entire output is an embarrassment of riches - I enjoy his low-key, lesser known films like Foreign Correspondant and I Confess just as much as I love the big guns like Psycho, The Birds, Vertigo etc.

Definitely!

A lot of his lesser known films are almost more interesting. When you watch 'The Saboteur' (I think that's its title?), you can see so many of the things about it that made 'North by North West' so great. But as it's of a different era it's themes are totally different.

I think even the most stinkingly bad Hitch films like 'The trouble with Harry' or 'Topaz' still have at least controversial (for their time) ideas / themes at their heart or else a clever camera trick.

The only thing I think he did a bit badly was sometimes his love stories. He did some great ones, but too many couples in his films meet and marry within about a week. But then, most films around this time were even worse than that...

That scene you mention is great by the way. Need to watch 'Frenzy' again!

 

[phsend]

Theres a shooting scene at the end of North by Northwest which was obviously filmed a few times as a little kid in the crowd can be seen putting his fingers in his ears to muffle the noise of the shot before the gun is even drawn!

 

[overseas shrimper]

In Rope, he used one roll of film for the whole film

Not actually true. Maximum film reel length limited Hitchcock to segments of 10 mins max (10 mins and 6 seconds to be exact for segment 8).

He shot the film in such a way as to 'blind edit' the joins so that it 'looked' like the film was shot on long takes. He actually employed obvious cuts where the projectionist would need to change reels anyway.