version

Well-known member
But I suppose Hitchcock was someone who was recognised as being amongst the very first to deliberately and explicitly (sometimes too explicitly for my liking) put than in as part of the story, to really acknowledge that as a major part of the story (this is just the impression I get - please correct me if I'm wrong, but I can't immediately think of many huge classic films of the era that did the same).
Depending on what you mean by "huge classic films"; Bergman?; Peeping Tom?
 

IdleRich

IdleRich
And of course, chronologically working through a single director is just one way to slice it. Is it more instructive to compare and contrast a Hitchcock film from 1965 with a) another of his from 1940 or b) A Chabrol film from the 60s?
The point is moot really cos I never really curate loads of films and watch them according to plan... but imagining that I did, I mean.
 

version

Well-known member
There is something particularly iconic about Rear Window I think, there are so many circumstances or views or whatever that can suddenly make someone say "it's like Rear Window".
It happened on here the other day,
woke up at 3:30 am this morning and very clearly remembering what i was dreaming, that i could fly and that i used my ability to deliver packages and cargo for people who were in a hurry.

anyway, i quickly realized i had been woken up by the noise coming from the neighbors living opposite the courtyard. their kitchen is opposite my sleeping room and in summer when all windows are open you can hear a lot. they fought and yelled and screamed and it terrified me. i couldn't decide whether to go over, call the police or wait for a bit. i did the latter and eventually it became silent again.

i couldn't sleep anymore though so at one point i went to the bathroom and had a look in the courtyard and saw the guy smoking a cigarette out of his kitchen window and i saw that the door to the basement had been opened and someone had turned the light on. which is weird. why would you go into the basement in the middle of the night? every tenant has a storage space in the basement and it's where the boiler and other technical stuff can be reached, it's a long labyrinth of narrow corridors bending in different directions. there's only one way in.

this morning i went in to have a look, the door was still open and the lights were still turned on. i went in quite deep and made some sounds to see if i'd get a reaction. went back at one point because i thought if someone closes the door from the outside now i'm fucked.

anyway, i haven't slept as bad as last night and i feel like i should've done something. on the other hand, a few months ago one of my other neighbors got murdered so i might just be completely paranoid.
This is almost the plot of Rear Window.
 

IdleRich

IdleRich
Depending on what you mean by "huge classic films"; Bergman?; Peeping Tom?
I suppose I intended the word "huge" to mean films that penetrated the mainstream. And classic... was really such a vague and woolily used word here that I feel guilty for the internet ink that I used up in writing it.
What I wanted really was to mean films that were seen by the general public - available to all and many used that availability. I'm thinking if someone says (for example) that X was the first ever film with gay themes, or Y was the first film shot entirely from the POV of the protagonist, then some clever clogs can often find an avant-garde thing that came earlier but was only seen by three people (including the director and the cast) and I wanted to rule that out.
So... Peeping Tom - it is often said to be like Psycho but before it... but Hitchcock was making other films about the psyche and the subconscious long before that. With Bergman, I dunno, again I'd say that Hitchcock was making such films before Bergman and also that I'm not sure that Bergman had the same penetration to the average man on the Clapham Omnibus.
But I'm getting bogged down in the exact thing I didn't mean to. The point is he was early in doing that and a lot of people saw those films in which he did that, and for a large proportion of them, it was the first film they'd seen explicitly addressing those themes.
 
You seen that film based around the making of Psycho with Hopkins and Mirren playing Hitchcock and his wife? Looked pretty terrible.
Fucking woeful. The "suspense" of the film is whether or not Psycho will be a success (apparently it was a risk at the time, what with the transgressive subject matter; hence being shot in b&w) because the Hithcocks mortgaged their house to help fund it...

I have not. Is that the one mainly about his relationship with his female stars, or is that another one again?

That was The Girl, with Toby Jones as creepy Hitchcock and Sienna Miller as Tippi Hedren. Ahead of the cancel culture curve, that. Remember it being quite good, but that might just have been in comparison to the other one
 

craner

Beast of Burden
I also like Shadow of a Doubt, The Birds, Notorious, Spellbound, The Paradine Case and Rear Window. I don’t really love Hitchcock, though, and I can’t quite work out why.
 

IdleRich

IdleRich
I also like Shadow of a Doubt, The Birds, Notorious, Spellbound, The Paradine Case and Rear Window. I don’t really love Hitchcock, though, and I can’t quite work out why.
But is it a bit similar to what I said just above? Loads of good films, some even great... but I said he's never REALLY REALLY killed it and you said that you don't love him. It feels that we're both saying that somehow he falls just short of the very highest level - and there's a reasonable chance that it's the same thing that makes us say that, even if we can't identify precisely what it is.
 

IdleRich

IdleRich
Fucking woeful. The "suspense" of the film is whether or not Psycho will be a success (apparently it was a risk at the time, what with the transgressive subject matter; hence being shot in b&w) because the Hithcocks mortgaged their house to help fund it...
That was The Girl, with Toby Jones as creepy Hitchcock and Sienna Miller as Tippi Hedren. Ahead of the cancel culture curve, that. Remember it being quite good, but that might just have been in comparison to the other one
That first bit does kinda make sense in that with Peeping Tom (mentioned above) which was, for the time, a very hard and shocking serial killer film, it pretty much ruined Powell's career even though he was a very successful director at the time. This is what it says about it on wikipeda

Peeping Tom's depiction of violence and its lurid sexual content made it a controversial film on initial release[28] and the critical backlash heaped on the film was a major factor in finishing Powell's career as a director in the United Kingdom.[29] Karlheinz Böhm later remembered that after the film's premiere, nobody from the audience went to shake the hand of him or Michael Powell.[30] A contemporary assessment of the film published in The Telegraph noted that the film effectively "killed" Powell's career.[3] British reviews tended towards the hyperbolic in negativity, an example being a review published in The Monthly Film Bulletin which likened Powell to the Marquis de Sade.[31]
Derek Hill, reviewer of the Tribune suggested that "the only really satisfactory way to dispose of Peeping Tom would be to shovel it up and flush it swiftly down the nearest sewer."[32] Len Mosley writing for the Daily Express said that the film was more nauseating and depressing than the leper colonies of East Pakistan, the back streets of Bombay, and the gutters of Calcutta.[33] Caroline Lejeune of The Observer wrote: "It's a long time since a film disgusted me as much as Peeping Tom," ultimately deeming it a "beastly film.
So yeah, I can well believe that it was a risk even if it's hard for us to imagine that now. I agree though, it doesn't really sound like a premise for an amazingly tense film.
I (like everyone else) do like Toby Jones so I could imagine him pulling Hitchcock off better than most. Dunno if I'm amazingly interested in the film though to be honest. I'm not generally a big one for biopics (if that's what this is).
 

craner

Beast of Burden
But is it a bit similar to what I said just above? Loads of good films, some even great... but I said he's never REALLY REALLY killed it and you said that you don't love him. It feels that we're both saying that somehow he falls just short of the very highest level - and there's a reasonable chance that it's the same thing that makes us say that, even if we can't identify precisely what it is.

Yeah, I guess so. I did the same thing as you and Liza, I watched all of them chronologically and got a lot out of doing so. Do I ever want to go back and relish them time and again like I do with films by Mario Bava or Powell and Pressburger or Ghostbusters. Never, but I haven't even bothered thinking about why. But then, also, the specific films I mentioned I would go a long way to defend. Sorry, I am not constructing an argument here at all.
 

craner

Beast of Burden
No, I've just done my mother's shopping and I'm waiting in a Waitrose car park for my girlfriend to come out with ours. This is the exact opposite of being drunk.
 
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