Oh, a good question, but a difficult one! How do you compare the 20s, the 30s and the Hollywood period? It’s impossible, but I’ll try anyway.
1. Under Capricorn. A commercial failure, this film may seem nothing special at the first viewing. However, some French critics consider this to be among Hitchcock’s best. There are cultural and religious references, as well as technical superiority, that make this work fascinating. This is one of the most important films for me on a very personal level.
The rest in no particular order:
2. Rear Window
3. Rope
4. The man who knew too much (1934) — this one looks like a surrealistic art film.
5. Marnie — the plot is as flawed as Marnie’s personality, but that’s probably the attraction. Anyway, the film brilliantly conveys this desperate sense of loss of identity.
Honorable mention:
JAMAICA INN. This is considered Hitch’s worst movie, but in fact it’s his most serious-minded film of the 30s (maybe rivaled by Sabotage (1936)). While having all the usual Hitchcock’s themes, it is also a discussion of Fascism and more generally of law, order and power in the modern world.
Someone has said here that he hated “Citizen Kane”. I don’t particularly hate it, but I wouldn’t call it the best picture ever – and serious critics do call him that!
I agree that it’s amazingly inventive in combining realism and expressionism. But sometimes for me it seems too inventive, to the point that its human side gets lost in the triumph of invention. Maybe it’s just that I hate the main character so much.
I felt the same way about Under Capricorn the first time I saw it. This film, however, needs some research, because it’s not easily apparent how all of its elements are meaningful and how well the style matches the meaning.
For example, the name of the villa is “Why weepest though?” — this is something that Jesus said to St. Mary Magdalene after resurrection, isn’t it? But how does it explains the symbolism of the film?
You might want to read an article by Ed Gallafent’s “The Dandy and Magdalene: Interpreting the Long Take in Hitchcock’s Under Capricorn”. (You can find it on google books in “Style and Meaning: Studies in the Detailed Analysis of Film.”)
I quote Wikipedea: "In Style and Meaning: Studies in the Detailed Analysis of Film, Ed Gallafent says:3
The use of the long take in Under Capricorn relates to three elements of film’s meaning.
1. Ideas of accessible and inaccessible space as expressed in the gothic house.
2. The form in which character inhabit their past
3. The divergence or convergence of eyelines – the gaze that cannot, or must meet another’s.
All of these three elements can be linked to concepts of Guilt and Shame. In 1 and 2, the question is how something is felt to be present. In 3, it is difference between representation or sharing, of the past as flashback, and of the past as spoken narrative, where part of what is being articulated is precisely the inaccessibility of the past, its experience being locked inside the speaker. As for 3, the avoided gaze is determining physical sign of shame.
Gallafent, professor of film at University of Warwick, also explains these aspects of Under Capricorn:
The inscription on the Flusky’s mansion - Minyago Yugilla – means “Why weepest thou?” St. Mary Magdalene (the patron saint of penitent sinners) in religious iconography: the bare feet, skull, the flail, the looking glass in which beholder’s is not always reflected, the jewels cast down to floor. All of these images are in the film. Sources for the imagery that Hitchcock might have had in mind are the paintings St. Mary Magdalene With a Candle (1630-1635) and St. Mary Magdalene With a Mirror (1635-1645), both by Georges de la Tour."
To conclude, in this film Hitchcock shows himself that he is a true Auteur, brilliantly and subtly representing on screen his usual themes of shame and transference of gilt, but also of sacrifice and resurrection. BTW the long monologue by Ingrid Bergman is said to be one of her best moments.
To my list of 5 best Hitchcock’s I forgot to add “NOTORIOUS”. I re-watched it about a week ago and was quite unsettled for a few days until I could properly digest the ambiguous and dark attraction of this film. Truffaut considered it to be the finest example of Hitchcock’s art, and a critic Richard Abel in “Notorious: Perversion par Excellence” called it “one of Hitchcock’s most deceptive and disturbing films”. (You can read most of this article on google books in “A Hitchcock’s reader”). The last statement feels very true to me, although I think the film is still open to a semi-optimistic explanation.
@Bobby Wise: Just google “The Dandy and Magdalene”. The first link is the right one.
This link works on my computer: http://books.google.ru/books?id=K3aXzZ_anSYC&pg=PA68&lpg=PA68&dq=The+Dandy+and+the+Magdalene&source=bl&ots=xKQyuJgPNS&sig=vk55SIm79LigGCrt9qu2IzqFcVA&hl=ru&ei=Nh8IS-uuAougmAPpvIk_&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CA0Q6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=&f=false
It’s not everything that can be said about this beautiful film, but it’s great because it sets you thinking in the right direction.
P.S. The article mentions “Gaslight” (1944), a film starring Ingrid Bergman and Joseph Cotten. It has a seemingly comparable plot, but completely different psychological meaning. I saw it yesterday, yach, so theatrical! And to think how successful and award-winning it was. Makes you understand how much Hitchcock was ahead of his time.
@Bobby Wise: Just google “The Dandy and Magdalene”. The first link is the right one.
This link works on my computer: http://books.google.ru/books?id=K3aXzZ_anSYC&pg=PA68&lpg=PA68&dq=The+Dandy+and+the+Magdalene&source=bl&ots=xKQyuJgPNS&sig=vk55SIm79LigGCrt9qu2IzqFcVA&hl=ru&ei=Nh8IS-uuAougmAPpvIk_&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CA0Q6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=&f=false
It’s not everything that can be said about this beautiful film, but it’s great because it sets you thinking in the right direction.
P.S. The article mentions “Gaslight” (1944), a film starring Ingrid Bergman and Joseph Cotten. It has a seemingly comparable plot, but completely different psychological meaning. I saw it yesterday, yach, so theatrical! And to think how successful and award-winning it was. Makes you understand how much Hitchcock was ahead of his time.
My problem with Hitch is that a lot of his films were so obviously commercially oriented that you inevitably begin to question whether he really intended them to be art. “Master of suspense”, “father of the thriller” are not exactly the titles that Fellini, or Bergman, or Tarkovsky would like to have, don’t you think?
The fact the he belonged to entertainment and art at the same time complicates discussion of his films a lot. There are, of course, less commercially successful pieces by Hitch, which are unquestionably art. There are also thrillers and spy stories, which at the same time contain most of his usual themes, such as identity search or guilt. Now, is it a good thriller if it’s so deep?
Anyway, Hitch was comfortable in both categories and maybe we just have to accept it.
My problem with Hitch is that a lot of his films were so obviously commercially oriented that you inevitably begin to question whether he really intended them to be art. “Master of suspense”, “father of the thriller” are not exactly the titles that Fellini, or Bergman, or Tarkovsky would like to have, don’t you think?
The fact the he belonged to entertainment and art at the same time complicates discussion of his films a lot. There are, of course, less commercially successful pieces by Hitch, which are unquestionably art. There are also thrillers and spy stories, which at the same time contain most of his usual themes, such as identity search or guilt. Now, is it a good thriller if it’s so deep?
Anyway, Hitch was comfortable in both categories and maybe we just have to accept it.
I hope you are joking when you say that Hitch is 1000 times better than Fillini and Tarkovsky.
It’s easy for us to agree that they are all great artists, but it’s doubtful that greatness in cinema could be objectively measured, much more so in mathematical terms. You can only say whether or not you have found the experience of this particular film enriching, and then classify the films that enrich you as “art”. This will be, of course, highly subjective.
For example, I have found “Marnie” as equally enriching as “The Lodger”, but “The Birds” noticeably less so. Does this make me a “fan-boy”? “To Catch a Thief” has little artistic value for me, although of course it’s great to identify with Cary Grant while he is being seduced by Grace Kelly. ;) But since I already know that I’m attracted to elegant blondies in vintage cars (probably because Hitch created this cultural stereotype!), there is nothing informative for me here. This is my subjective view, there are people who feel quite the opposite.
In 2009 there is a (small and saturated) market for high-brow films, so we can and should be more selective. Hitchcock had to be an entertainer, because in his day there were no art-house cinemas, as far as I understand. It is revealing that his own production company went bankrupt after having made just two wonderful films: “Rope” and “Under Capricorn”. Having said that, I still can’t help noticing that some of Hitch’s work is closer to “art” and some is closer to “entertainment” and that even in his films these categories are sometimes, but not always, inversely related.
Yes, a lot of Hitchcock is about ‘random". It’s especially noticeable (and less irritating) in his British period. (Can any of the Wise Ones here say if he was influenced by Luis Bunel and Salvador Dali?)
It is deplorable, however, that this randomness firmly established itself on screens after Alfred in every mediocre comedy/thriller/car-chase-erotic-space-western. I also have to agree with Bruce that Psycho did not open a way to a lot of good stuff. And after all, almost any movie that has a “Father figure” or a “Mother figure” could be proclaimed to represent Oedipal struggle or discuss relationship between God and man. What’s special about Hitchcock is that he inscribed his themes in numerous details of screenplay, set-design, mis-en-scene, camera, editing, lighting — thus creating an artistic unity between the form and the meaning.
Therefore, Hitch is also about trying to find order and identity in chaos. All his works are essentially the same story with different endings – sometimes order is more definitely (re)established (“The Man Who Knew too Much”, “Young and Innocent”) , sometimes the ending is more ambiguous (“Notorious”) or even quite pessimistic, like in Psycho (or Birds).
Yes, a lot of Hitchcock is about ‘random". It’s especially noticeable (and less irritating) in his British period. (Can any of the Wise Ones here say if he was influenced by Luis Bunel and Salvador Dali?)
It is deplorable, however, that this randomness firmly established itself on screens after Alfred in every mediocre comedy/thriller/car-chase-erotic-space-western. I also have to agree with Bruce that Psycho did not open a way to a lot of good stuff. And after all, almost any movie that has a “Father figure” or a “Mother figure” could be proclaimed to represent Oedipal struggle or discuss relationship between God and man. What’s special about Hitchcock is that he inscribed his themes in numerous details of screenplay, set-design, mis-en-scene, camera, editing, lighting — thus creating an artistic unity between the form and the meaning.
Therefore, Hitch is also about trying to find order and identity in chaos. All his works are essentially the same story with different endings – sometimes order is more definitely (re)established (“The Man Who Knew too Much”, “Young and Innocent”) , sometimes the ending is more ambiguous (“Notorious”) or even quite pessimistic, like in Psycho (or Birds).
@BEN SIMINGTON
Would you say then, that Hitchcock was caught in his own private trap (to paraphrase “Psycho”), not being able to deviate considerably from his audience’s expectations?
Relax, sit back and enjoy the show. “Suspicion” is a comedy, that contains a joke on the audience, but I dare say the audience wants the joke to be played on it. After all, we all fear with the wife that Grant’s character is guilty, and at the same time hope with her that he should be innocent. At some point in the film there’s no doubt that he is a killer, so a dialectical move from antitheses to synthesis (or back to slightly altered theses) is expected. A bad ending would’ve let everybody down.
I agree that the sudden resurrection of the husband makes us examine the nature of suspicion. In a broader sense the main theme is the nature of our perception of others and how it affects their behavior — and how their behavior in return affects our perceptions. The optimistic ending shows that it runs both ways: the fears of the female protagonist change the male protagonist for the worse, her love and devotion (if you permit me to be old-fashioned) save him. With a little help from the Auteur, that is. :)
Cameos are not all random. Some critics note that they often tend to represent “the desire of the film”. In Notorious, for example he is shown at the party drinking champagne. Because the desire of the film is for the champagne to be drunk and for Alicia’s husband to go down to the wine cellar so that a confrontation between the main characters would take place. Otherwise, how will the story advance and suspense increase? ;)
And this illustrates that even if he was influenced by surrealists to instill so many random scenes into his movies, he also went against them in letting some apparently random elements become important symbols. Thus, Hitchcock’s universe is not entirely devoid of meaning, it’s open-ended, it makes you take an engaged position in search for meaning (but does not guarantee you success in this search.)
I agree with Harry, this surrealism was more evident and more elegant in his British period. Hollywood somehow stole a lot of this elegance. Maybe it’s because a Hollywood movie takes itself more seriously, and demands more participation from the viewer — so a surrealist element begins to look a little dumb. It’s just how I feel, I can’t explain it.
This thread discusses a number of fascinating topics at once, each one deserving a separate thread.
= Surrealism and randomness in Hitchcock =
It’s not just plot devices when someone just happens to be at the right place at the right time. This is common in classical literature too. But there are scenes like that one in TMWKTM (1934), when characters suddenly start violently throwing wooden chairs at each other in a sun-worshiping church. It looks like a total collapse of meaning! Or remember a scene in Young and Innocent when the car falls into a mine. It’s just a celebration of pure illogical cinema, of a screen space that can be filled with anything. And his films of the 30s are full of such scenes.
Incidentally, TMWKTM and Y&I both end with a triumph of order and meaning. If you take a structuralist approach, it is the tension between meaning and lack of meaning that creates poetry in Hitchcock. You keep wondering if this key, this door, this wine cellar, this money wrapped in a newspaper are cosmic symbols or (cosmic) jokes.
= The British period vs Hollywood =
Undoubtedly, an opportunity for Alfred Hitchcock, Ingrid Bergman, Salvador Dali and Bernard Herrmann to work together is what makes Hollywood great. And often it does produce stunning results. But big stars and big budgets also mean it is almost impossible to make just a nice unpretentious movie. You either deliver a masterpiece or make a failed attempt. That, I think, put unnecessary strain on some of his American movies.
= How deep is Hitchcock =
Harry Long says above that Hitchcock doesn’t explore his topics, but just mentions them. OK, it is probably so on the narrative level, since he said himself that dialog is nothing. But through the camera, the lighting, the whole texture of the film he comes much closer to “exploring”.
Besides, if almost in every film we have different renditions of such themes as:
- relationship between God and man
- relationship between order and chaos
- search for identity
- existential anxiety, free will
- guilt, transference of guilt
- death drive, other themes from Freudian psychology
- relationship between the sexes
- relationship between a spectator and an image (this contains also communication between humans, projection of guilt and desire, nature of cinema)
etc, etc, etc —
than you may say he really explored them throughout his career.
Whether he devalues these topics by painting thrillers over them, or whether he saves them through his technical brilliance — that is the big question. And the answer would be different from one title to another.
Have seen the first few minutes of the remake and decided not to go on. Better not to be disappointed.
I agree with Musycks, the bad special effects make this movie more special – and more personal. The never ending Tokyo sequence is a great representation of modernity. The acting is good, only very very subtle — which makes it better.
I think it’s better to compare Solyaris with 2001 A Space Odyssey. To me those are two great (and frightening) films that present humanity’s passage from modernity to post-modernity and beyond.
I’ve been trying to digest D. W. Griffith’s “Intolerance” these few days and began to wonder whether it is worth it.
A provocative question of course, since the film became a powerful source of inspiration and an object of repeated study for generations of filmmakers around the world. But I could use some help with appreciating this film, because even the second viewing left me with a feeling of loss rather than gain.
The sense of loss seems to be the result of different parts of the movie esthetically and thematically negating each other, while they are supposed to support each other emotionally. What is not negated but stays there looks like an elaborate glorification of eclectism and bad taste. For example, consider that the sets of Babylon, despite thorough research, were an art-deco combination of almost every style from the Ancient East, except anything genuinely Babylonian.*
Style inevitably skews the meaning, as in the relationship between figures of The Virgin and goddess Ishtar throughout the film. In figure 1 The Virgin appears as an object of prayer in the room of The Dear One. Then we meet Mary the Mother in the Judaic section (Fig 2). In fig 3, the statue is an object of attack as an idol. Fig 4 presents an idol of Ishtar as an object of personal prayer in the room of the Mountain Girl. This technically equates Virgin Mary with a ‘Whore of Babylon’, which is quite a pathetic blasphemy, if you think of it (fig 5). But it also turns out to be a huge device to blur the difference between a Madonna and a whore in the modern section, where The Dear One and The Friendless One unite to save The Boy (fig 6). Surely, the director of ‘The Musketeers of the Pig Alley’ knew how to do this subtly. But he decides instead to solve the Madonna/whore complex on a cosmic level.
This would be far from an academic approach, but it might be tempting to read “Intolerance” as a model of a globalised world from an American point of view. This universe includes a space for current internal affairs, a bow towards Old Europe, a direct connection to the roots of Christianity, and somewhere in the East – a radically alien Other. The Other is perceived through a set of stereotypes, and domestic concerns are magnified and projected onto it. This instills a profound fear that interaction with it would ultimately result in a collapse of our system of cultural codes and moral values. This is what happens in the example above. In “Broken Blossoms” we see this collapse actually happen, when neither Buddhist, nor Christian, nor traditional family values can survive in a modern Babylon.
So how this radically unbalanced universe could be sustained? The movie offers (and undermines) a number of solutions. The last minutes presents a unification of the world through a religion revelation. The film’s nineteenth-century (or even eighteenth-century) style of narration with footnotes and moral judgments verbally expressed here and there, at times evolving into documentary-like propaganda might stand for carefully worded modern political rhetoric. And an implicit solution, which the movie makes you think of is of course to do away with the Other. This solution has been there since Enlightenment. Make everyone civilized and British; make everyone a communist; make everyone a true Aryan (or a slave); make everyone drink Cola. Such a reading would make “Intolerance” a prophetic insight into how modern ideology works, but on the level of esthetics it is still questionable to me.
What I am specifically looking for in “Intolerance”, when asking if it is art, is a unifying theme that reveals itself non-explicitly, on the level of the language of the film. A unifying theme that would sufficiently justify the grandiose form. I can’t really find that yet (any suggestions?). Meanwhile, I will have to stop criticizing, but show some of the unifying elements that I do see, though they do not seem to be absolutely effective. And the most important of them is the figure of a woman with a sword. Michael Rogin in his essay on Freudian elements in “Birth of a Nation”**points out to the psychological importance of this element for Griffith in his entire oeuvre, starting from a number of roles played by Blanche Sweet. In “The Painted Lady” (1912), we see her with a pistol, killing her lover, who turned out to be a burglar (or a rapist). She dies shortly after from shock. In “Judith of Bethulia” (1914) she cuts off the head of her lover and a father figure, Holofernes. Consequently, as Rogin puts it, in “Avenging Continence” (1914), Griffith had to throw her off a cliff. In “Birth” the women do not receive the sword, but Flora wears a flag, and so she has to be thrown off a cliff too. This however does not happen until Elsie and the mother save the Little Colonel from the father, Abraham Lincoln.
It’s easy to see the pattern: the father has to be killed, so the woman has to save the son from (killing) the father, but then she has to be subdued from a powerful woman with the sword into a sweet innocent girl again. The sword is an obvious symbol of the Father’s authority, a central element in “His Trust” and “His Trust Fulfilled”. What is new in Intolerance, is that the sweet naïve girl is set against and conflated with the whore and the sword obviously becomes an accompanying symbol of the latter. The relationship is established early in the modern section with a cut from The Friendless One to a statue across the hall (fig 7). The woman is chained to a log as the girls of the street are ‘chained’ to the Musketeer of the Slums. He is shown surrounded by nude figures to further stress his position as a primordial father (fig 8). Notice that when the Friendless One first begins to feel jealous, she is again likened to a statue, but the figure of the statue is unchained now (fig 9). So the girl is free from the Musketeer, but we will soon see her with a pistol firing at him.
7.
8.
9.
Thus, from a female perspective, the sword is both a symbol of attachment to a male, and freedom from him (or power over him). Remember Judith standing over Holofernes with his sword and fighting her love for him. The same relationship holds true for the Mountain Girl. We see her with a shovel when she swears allegiance to Belshazzar, just after he allowed her not to marry (fig 10). Princes Beloved gets a dagger in the end to kill herself as a sign of devotion to the King. But an interesting little detail, she escapes to the halls of Allat a bit earlier then Belshazzar (Fig 11). Later we see her subdued again, ‘chained’ to a leg of his throne. (Fig 12)
10.
11.
12.
In the French story Brown Eyes is loading a gun to fight the Catholics (fig 13). This however doesn’t help her escape death (or rape as well?) But she does escape marriage and, like Princess Beloved, dies a little earlier than her fiancé.
13.
As to The Dear One, after The Boy is sent to prison we see her with a broom and her husband’s cap, again freedom and devotion (Fig 15). She uses the broom against the Uplifters, but when she is overpowered turns into a Madonna (Fig 16).
14.
15.
Thus, through a moment of independence/ devotion almost all women are linked or even merged into one***.
One exception is Margaret of Valois (but she’s played by the same actress who plays the Mountain Girl); the other two are the bride and the woman taken in adultery in the Judaic section.
Birth of a Nation (1915). “A terrible beauty is born” — one line that might describe this cinematic epic.The film is both breathtakingly beautiful and terribly wrong. But, beneath the explicitly racist surface one might find a deconstruction of modern ideology and xenophobia, a prophesy about Nazism, and a cinematic representation of transition to modernity. The last 30 minutes almost invent soviet montage.
Close behind — Griffith’s 1909 short “A Corner in Wheat”, although I think it would rather be one of the last great films of primitive cinema.
Yes, the Lumieres are wonderful in a lot of their shorts: the light, the incredible sense of space, incredible use of off-screen space, never a flat composition, and often a lot to think about. It’s all well illustrated by the shorts above.
What I didn’t know, is that filmmakers of the 20s didn’t see those films? Is this true???
Top 5 Hitchcock over 2 years ago
Oh, a good question, but a difficult one! How do you compare the 20s, the 30s and the Hollywood period? It’s impossible, but I’ll try anyway.
1. Under Capricorn. A commercial failure, this film may seem nothing special at the first viewing. However, some French critics consider this to be among Hitchcock’s best. There are cultural and religious references, as well as technical superiority, that make this work fascinating. This is one of the most important films for me on a very personal level.
The rest in no particular order:
2. Rear Window
3. Rope
4. The man who knew too much (1934) — this one looks like a surrealistic art film.
5. Marnie — the plot is as flawed as Marnie’s personality, but that’s probably the attraction. Anyway, the film brilliantly conveys this desperate sense of loss of identity.
Honorable mention:
JAMAICA INN. This is considered Hitch’s worst movie, but in fact it’s his most serious-minded film of the 30s (maybe rivaled by Sabotage (1936)). While having all the usual Hitchcock’s themes, it is also a discussion of Fascism and more generally of law, order and power in the modern world.
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Movies you hated that everyone else loves over 2 years ago
Someone has said here that he hated “Citizen Kane”. I don’t particularly hate it, but I wouldn’t call it the best picture ever – and serious critics do call him that!
I agree that it’s amazingly inventive in combining realism and expressionism. But sometimes for me it seems too inventive, to the point that its human side gets lost in the triumph of invention. Maybe it’s just that I hate the main character so much.
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Top 5 Hitchcock over 2 years ago
@Bobby Wise:
I felt the same way about Under Capricorn the first time I saw it. This film, however, needs some research, because it’s not easily apparent how all of its elements are meaningful and how well the style matches the meaning.
For example, the name of the villa is “Why weepest though?” — this is something that Jesus said to St. Mary Magdalene after resurrection, isn’t it? But how does it explains the symbolism of the film?
You might want to read an article by Ed Gallafent’s “The Dandy and Magdalene: Interpreting the Long Take in Hitchcock’s Under Capricorn”. (You can find it on google books in “Style and Meaning: Studies in the Detailed Analysis of Film.”)
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Top 5 Hitchcock over 2 years ago
I quote Wikipedea: "In Style and Meaning: Studies in the Detailed Analysis of Film, Ed Gallafent says:3
The use of the long take in Under Capricorn relates to three elements of film’s meaning.
1. Ideas of accessible and inaccessible space as expressed in the gothic house.
2. The form in which character inhabit their past
3. The divergence or convergence of eyelines – the gaze that cannot, or must meet another’s.
All of these three elements can be linked to concepts of Guilt and Shame. In 1 and 2, the question is how something is felt to be present. In 3, it is difference between representation or sharing, of the past as flashback, and of the past as spoken narrative, where part of what is being articulated is precisely the inaccessibility of the past, its experience being locked inside the speaker. As for 3, the avoided gaze is determining physical sign of shame.
Gallafent, professor of film at University of Warwick, also explains these aspects of Under Capricorn:
The inscription on the Flusky’s mansion
- Minyago Yugilla –means “Why weepest thou?” St. Mary Magdalene (the patron saint of penitent sinners) in religious iconography: the bare feet, skull, the flail, the looking glass in which beholder’s is not always reflected, the jewels cast down to floor. All of these images are in the film. Sources for the imagery that Hitchcock might have had in mind are the paintings St. Mary Magdalene With a Candle (1630-1635) and St. Mary Magdalene With a Mirror (1635-1645), both by Georges de la Tour."To conclude, in this film Hitchcock shows himself that he is a true Auteur, brilliantly and subtly representing on screen his usual themes of shame and transference of gilt, but also of sacrifice and resurrection. BTW the long monologue by Ingrid Bergman is said to be one of her best moments.
Cheers!
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Top 5 Hitchcock over 2 years ago
To my list of 5 best Hitchcock’s I forgot to add “NOTORIOUS”. I re-watched it about a week ago and was quite unsettled for a few days until I could properly digest the ambiguous and dark attraction of this film. Truffaut considered it to be the finest example of Hitchcock’s art, and a critic Richard Abel in “Notorious: Perversion par Excellence” called it “one of Hitchcock’s most deceptive and disturbing films”. (You can read most of this article on google books in “A Hitchcock’s reader”). The last statement feels very true to me, although I think the film is still open to a semi-optimistic explanation.
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Top 5 Hitchcock over 2 years ago
@Bobby Wise: Just google “The Dandy and Magdalene”. The first link is the right one.
This link works on my computer: http://books.google.ru/books?id=K3aXzZ_anSYC&pg=PA68&lpg=PA68&dq=The+Dandy+and+the+Magdalene&source=bl&ots=xKQyuJgPNS&sig=vk55SIm79LigGCrt9qu2IzqFcVA&hl=ru&ei=Nh8IS-uuAougmAPpvIk_&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CA0Q6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=&f=false
It’s not everything that can be said about this beautiful film, but it’s great because it sets you thinking in the right direction.
P.S. The article mentions “Gaslight” (1944), a film starring Ingrid Bergman and Joseph Cotten. It has a seemingly comparable plot, but completely different psychological meaning. I saw it yesterday, yach, so theatrical! And to think how successful and award-winning it was. Makes you understand how much Hitchcock was ahead of his time.
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Top 5 Hitchcock over 2 years ago
@Bobby Wise: Just google “The Dandy and Magdalene”. The first link is the right one.
This link works on my computer: http://books.google.ru/books?id=K3aXzZ_anSYC&pg=PA68&lpg=PA68&dq=The+Dandy+and+the+Magdalene&source=bl&ots=xKQyuJgPNS&sig=vk55SIm79LigGCrt9qu2IzqFcVA&hl=ru&ei=Nh8IS-uuAougmAPpvIk_&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CA0Q6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=&f=false
It’s not everything that can be said about this beautiful film, but it’s great because it sets you thinking in the right direction.
P.S. The article mentions “Gaslight” (1944), a film starring Ingrid Bergman and Joseph Cotten. It has a seemingly comparable plot, but completely different psychological meaning. I saw it yesterday, yach, so theatrical! And to think how successful and award-winning it was. Makes you understand how much Hitchcock was ahead of his time.
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Alfred Hitchcock - a true Auteur? over 2 years ago
My problem with Hitch is that a lot of his films were so obviously commercially oriented that you inevitably begin to question whether he really intended them to be art. “Master of suspense”, “father of the thriller” are not exactly the titles that Fellini, or Bergman, or Tarkovsky would like to have, don’t you think?
The fact the he belonged to entertainment and art at the same time complicates discussion of his films a lot. There are, of course, less commercially successful pieces by Hitch, which are unquestionably art. There are also thrillers and spy stories, which at the same time contain most of his usual themes, such as identity search or guilt. Now, is it a good thriller if it’s so deep?
Anyway, Hitch was comfortable in both categories and maybe we just have to accept it.
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Alfred Hitchcock - a true Auteur? over 2 years ago
My problem with Hitch is that a lot of his films were so obviously commercially oriented that you inevitably begin to question whether he really intended them to be art. “Master of suspense”, “father of the thriller” are not exactly the titles that Fellini, or Bergman, or Tarkovsky would like to have, don’t you think?
The fact the he belonged to entertainment and art at the same time complicates discussion of his films a lot. There are, of course, less commercially successful pieces by Hitch, which are unquestionably art. There are also thrillers and spy stories, which at the same time contain most of his usual themes, such as identity search or guilt. Now, is it a good thriller if it’s so deep?
Anyway, Hitch was comfortable in both categories and maybe we just have to accept it.
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Alfred Hitchcock - a true Auteur? over 2 years ago
I hope you are joking when you say that Hitch is 1000 times better than Fillini and Tarkovsky.
It’s easy for us to agree that they are all great artists, but it’s doubtful that greatness in cinema could be objectively measured, much more so in mathematical terms. You can only say whether or not you have found the experience of this particular film enriching, and then classify the films that enrich you as “art”. This will be, of course, highly subjective.
For example, I have found “Marnie” as equally enriching as “The Lodger”, but “The Birds” noticeably less so. Does this make me a “fan-boy”? “To Catch a Thief” has little artistic value for me, although of course it’s great to identify with Cary Grant while he is being seduced by Grace Kelly. ;) But since I already know that I’m attracted to elegant blondies in vintage cars (probably because Hitch created this cultural stereotype!), there is nothing informative for me here. This is my subjective view, there are people who feel quite the opposite.
In 2009 there is a (small and saturated) market for high-brow films, so we can and should be more selective. Hitchcock had to be an entertainer, because in his day there were no art-house cinemas, as far as I understand. It is revealing that his own production company went bankrupt after having made just two wonderful films: “Rope” and “Under Capricorn”. Having said that, I still can’t help noticing that some of Hitch’s work is closer to “art” and some is closer to “entertainment” and that even in his films these categories are sometimes, but not always, inversely related.
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Off-topic. Is the universe infinite? over 2 years ago
to: ARI, Robert W Peabody III and Frank P. Tomasulo, Ph.D.:
— Brooklyn is not expanding!
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What am I not Getting About Hitchcock? over 2 years ago
Yes, a lot of Hitchcock is about ‘random". It’s especially noticeable (and less irritating) in his British period. (Can any of the Wise Ones here say if he was influenced by Luis Bunel and Salvador Dali?)
It is deplorable, however, that this randomness firmly established itself on screens after Alfred in every mediocre comedy/thriller/car-chase-erotic-space-western. I also have to agree with Bruce that Psycho did not open a way to a lot of good stuff. And after all, almost any movie that has a “Father figure” or a “Mother figure” could be proclaimed to represent Oedipal struggle or discuss relationship between God and man. What’s special about Hitchcock is that he inscribed his themes in numerous details of screenplay, set-design, mis-en-scene, camera, editing, lighting — thus creating an artistic unity between the form and the meaning.
Therefore, Hitch is also about trying to find order and identity in chaos. All his works are essentially the same story with different endings – sometimes order is more definitely (re)established (“The Man Who Knew too Much”, “Young and Innocent”) , sometimes the ending is more ambiguous (“Notorious”) or even quite pessimistic, like in Psycho (or Birds).
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What am I not Getting About Hitchcock? over 2 years ago
Yes, a lot of Hitchcock is about ‘random". It’s especially noticeable (and less irritating) in his British period. (Can any of the Wise Ones here say if he was influenced by Luis Bunel and Salvador Dali?)
It is deplorable, however, that this randomness firmly established itself on screens after Alfred in every mediocre comedy/thriller/car-chase-erotic-space-western. I also have to agree with Bruce that Psycho did not open a way to a lot of good stuff. And after all, almost any movie that has a “Father figure” or a “Mother figure” could be proclaimed to represent Oedipal struggle or discuss relationship between God and man. What’s special about Hitchcock is that he inscribed his themes in numerous details of screenplay, set-design, mis-en-scene, camera, editing, lighting — thus creating an artistic unity between the form and the meaning.
Therefore, Hitch is also about trying to find order and identity in chaos. All his works are essentially the same story with different endings – sometimes order is more definitely (re)established (“The Man Who Knew too Much”, “Young and Innocent”) , sometimes the ending is more ambiguous (“Notorious”) or even quite pessimistic, like in Psycho (or Birds).
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Alfred Hitchcock - a true Auteur? over 2 years ago
@BEN SIMINGTON
Would you say then, that Hitchcock was caught in his own private trap (to paraphrase “Psycho”), not being able to deviate considerably from his audience’s expectations?
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Hitchcock's Suspicion over 2 years ago
Relax, sit back and enjoy the show. “Suspicion” is a comedy, that contains a joke on the audience, but I dare say the audience wants the joke to be played on it. After all, we all fear with the wife that Grant’s character is guilty, and at the same time hope with her that he should be innocent. At some point in the film there’s no doubt that he is a killer, so a dialectical move from antitheses to synthesis (or back to slightly altered theses) is expected. A bad ending would’ve let everybody down.
I agree that the sudden resurrection of the husband makes us examine the nature of suspicion. In a broader sense the main theme is the nature of our perception of others and how it affects their behavior — and how their behavior in return affects our perceptions. The optimistic ending shows that it runs both ways: the fears of the female protagonist change the male protagonist for the worse, her love and devotion (if you permit me to be old-fashioned) save him. With a little help from the Auteur, that is. :)
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What am I not Getting About Hitchcock? over 2 years ago
Cameos are not all random. Some critics note that they often tend to represent “the desire of the film”. In Notorious, for example he is shown at the party drinking champagne. Because the desire of the film is for the champagne to be drunk and for Alicia’s husband to go down to the wine cellar so that a confrontation between the main characters would take place. Otherwise, how will the story advance and suspense increase? ;)
And this illustrates that even if he was influenced by surrealists to instill so many random scenes into his movies, he also went against them in letting some apparently random elements become important symbols. Thus, Hitchcock’s universe is not entirely devoid of meaning, it’s open-ended, it makes you take an engaged position in search for meaning (but does not guarantee you success in this search.)
I agree with Harry, this surrealism was more evident and more elegant in his British period. Hollywood somehow stole a lot of this elegance. Maybe it’s because a Hollywood movie takes itself more seriously, and demands more participation from the viewer — so a surrealist element begins to look a little dumb. It’s just how I feel, I can’t explain it.
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What am I not Getting About Hitchcock? over 2 years ago
dp
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What am I not Getting About Hitchcock? over 2 years ago
This thread discusses a number of fascinating topics at once, each one deserving a separate thread.
= Surrealism and randomness in Hitchcock =
It’s not just plot devices when someone just happens to be at the right place at the right time. This is common in classical literature too. But there are scenes like that one in TMWKTM (1934), when characters suddenly start violently throwing wooden chairs at each other in a sun-worshiping church. It looks like a total collapse of meaning! Or remember a scene in Young and Innocent when the car falls into a mine. It’s just a celebration of pure illogical cinema, of a screen space that can be filled with anything. And his films of the 30s are full of such scenes.
Incidentally, TMWKTM and Y&I both end with a triumph of order and meaning. If you take a structuralist approach, it is the tension between meaning and lack of meaning that creates poetry in Hitchcock. You keep wondering if this key, this door, this wine cellar, this money wrapped in a newspaper are cosmic symbols or (cosmic) jokes.
= The British period vs Hollywood =
Undoubtedly, an opportunity for Alfred Hitchcock, Ingrid Bergman, Salvador Dali and Bernard Herrmann to work together is what makes Hollywood great. And often it does produce stunning results. But big stars and big budgets also mean it is almost impossible to make just a nice unpretentious movie. You either deliver a masterpiece or make a failed attempt. That, I think, put unnecessary strain on some of his American movies.
= How deep is Hitchcock =
Harry Long says above that Hitchcock doesn’t explore his topics, but just mentions them. OK, it is probably so on the narrative level, since he said himself that dialog is nothing. But through the camera, the lighting, the whole texture of the film he comes much closer to “exploring”.
Besides, if almost in every film we have different renditions of such themes as:
- relationship between God and man
- relationship between order and chaos
- search for identity
- existential anxiety, free will
- guilt, transference of guilt
- death drive, other themes from Freudian psychology
- relationship between the sexes
- relationship between a spectator and an image (this contains also communication between humans, projection of guilt and desire, nature of cinema)
etc, etc, etc —
than you may say he really explored them throughout his career.
Whether he devalues these topics by painting thrillers over them, or whether he saves them through his technical brilliance — that is the big question. And the answer would be different from one title to another.
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Solyaris and Solaris over 2 years ago
Have seen the first few minutes of the remake and decided not to go on. Better not to be disappointed.
I agree with Musycks, the bad special effects make this movie more special – and more personal. The never ending Tokyo sequence is a great representation of modernity. The acting is good, only very very subtle — which makes it better.
I think it’s better to compare Solyaris with 2001 A Space Odyssey. To me those are two great (and frightening) films that present humanity’s passage from modernity to post-modernity and beyond.
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What am I not Getting About Hitchcock? over 2 years ago
Sorry for the mistake, yes of course it was Miklos Rozsa — and it was a great score, Oscar well-deserved!
Thank you for correcting me.
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What am I not Getting About Hitchcock? over 2 years ago
dp
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Meaningless Thread (Absmurdity) over 2 years ago
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Meaningless Thread (Absmurdity) over 2 years ago
I made such an exhibition of myself in my previous post
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D W Griffith's Intolerance - Is this art? over 2 years ago
Happy New Year everyone! :)
I’ve been trying to digest D. W. Griffith’s “Intolerance” these few days and began to wonder whether it is worth it.
A provocative question of course, since the film became a powerful source of inspiration and an object of repeated study for generations of filmmakers around the world. But I could use some help with appreciating this film, because even the second viewing left me with a feeling of loss rather than gain.
The sense of loss seems to be the result of different parts of the movie esthetically and thematically negating each other, while they are supposed to support each other emotionally. What is not negated but stays there looks like an elaborate glorification of eclectism and bad taste. For example, consider that the sets of Babylon, despite thorough research, were an art-deco combination of almost every style from the Ancient East, except anything genuinely Babylonian.*
Style inevitably skews the meaning, as in the relationship between figures of The Virgin and goddess Ishtar throughout the film. In figure 1 The Virgin appears as an object of prayer in the room of The Dear One. Then we meet Mary the Mother in the Judaic section (Fig 2). In fig 3, the statue is an object of attack as an idol. Fig 4 presents an idol of Ishtar as an object of personal prayer in the room of the Mountain Girl. This technically equates Virgin Mary with a ‘Whore of Babylon’, which is quite a pathetic blasphemy, if you think of it (fig 5). But it also turns out to be a huge device to blur the difference between a Madonna and a whore in the modern section, where The Dear One and The Friendless One unite to save The Boy (fig 6). Surely, the director of ‘The Musketeers of the Pig Alley’ knew how to do this subtly. But he decides instead to solve the Madonna/whore complex on a cosmic level.
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D W Griffith's Intolerance - Is this art? over 2 years ago
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D W Griffith's Intolerance - Is this art? over 2 years ago
This would be far from an academic approach, but it might be tempting to read “Intolerance” as a model of a globalised world from an American point of view. This universe includes a space for current internal affairs, a bow towards Old Europe, a direct connection to the roots of Christianity, and somewhere in the East – a radically alien Other. The Other is perceived through a set of stereotypes, and domestic concerns are magnified and projected onto it. This instills a profound fear that interaction with it would ultimately result in a collapse of our system of cultural codes and moral values. This is what happens in the example above. In “Broken Blossoms” we see this collapse actually happen, when neither Buddhist, nor Christian, nor traditional family values can survive in a modern Babylon.
So how this radically unbalanced universe could be sustained? The movie offers (and undermines) a number of solutions. The last minutes presents a unification of the world through a religion revelation. The film’s nineteenth-century (or even eighteenth-century) style of narration with footnotes and moral judgments verbally expressed here and there, at times evolving into documentary-like propaganda might stand for carefully worded modern political rhetoric. And an implicit solution, which the movie makes you think of is of course to do away with the Other. This solution has been there since Enlightenment. Make everyone civilized and British; make everyone a communist; make everyone a true Aryan (or a slave); make everyone drink Cola. Such a reading would make “Intolerance” a prophetic insight into how modern ideology works, but on the level of esthetics it is still questionable to me.
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D W Griffith's Intolerance - Is this art? over 2 years ago
A woman with a double-edged sword
What I am specifically looking for in “Intolerance”, when asking if it is art, is a unifying theme that reveals itself non-explicitly, on the level of the language of the film. A unifying theme that would sufficiently justify the grandiose form. I can’t really find that yet (any suggestions?). Meanwhile, I will have to stop criticizing, but show some of the unifying elements that I do see, though they do not seem to be absolutely effective. And the most important of them is the figure of a woman with a sword. Michael Rogin in his essay on Freudian elements in “Birth of a Nation”**points out to the psychological importance of this element for Griffith in his entire oeuvre, starting from a number of roles played by Blanche Sweet. In “The Painted Lady” (1912), we see her with a pistol, killing her lover, who turned out to be a burglar (or a rapist). She dies shortly after from shock. In “Judith of Bethulia” (1914) she cuts off the head of her lover and a father figure, Holofernes. Consequently, as Rogin puts it, in “Avenging Continence” (1914), Griffith had to throw her off a cliff. In “Birth” the women do not receive the sword, but Flora wears a flag, and so she has to be thrown off a cliff too. This however does not happen until Elsie and the mother save the Little Colonel from the father, Abraham Lincoln.
It’s easy to see the pattern: the father has to be killed, so the woman has to save the son from (killing) the father, but then she has to be subdued from a powerful woman with the sword into a sweet innocent girl again. The sword is an obvious symbol of the Father’s authority, a central element in “His Trust” and “His Trust Fulfilled”. What is new in Intolerance, is that the sweet naïve girl is set against and conflated with the whore and the sword obviously becomes an accompanying symbol of the latter. The relationship is established early in the modern section with a cut from The Friendless One to a statue across the hall (fig 7). The woman is chained to a log as the girls of the street are ‘chained’ to the Musketeer of the Slums. He is shown surrounded by nude figures to further stress his position as a primordial father (fig 8). Notice that when the Friendless One first begins to feel jealous, she is again likened to a statue, but the figure of the statue is unchained now (fig 9). So the girl is free from the Musketeer, but we will soon see her with a pistol firing at him.
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Thus, from a female perspective, the sword is both a symbol of attachment to a male, and freedom from him (or power over him). Remember Judith standing over Holofernes with his sword and fighting her love for him. The same relationship holds true for the Mountain Girl. We see her with a shovel when she swears allegiance to Belshazzar, just after he allowed her not to marry (fig 10). Princes Beloved gets a dagger in the end to kill herself as a sign of devotion to the King. But an interesting little detail, she escapes to the halls of Allat a bit earlier then Belshazzar (Fig 11). Later we see her subdued again, ‘chained’ to a leg of his throne. (Fig 12)
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In the French story Brown Eyes is loading a gun to fight the Catholics (fig 13). This however doesn’t help her escape death (or rape as well?) But she does escape marriage and, like Princess Beloved, dies a little earlier than her fiancé.
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As to The Dear One, after The Boy is sent to prison we see her with a broom and her husband’s cap, again freedom and devotion (Fig 15). She uses the broom against the Uplifters, but when she is overpowered turns into a Madonna (Fig 16).
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Thus, through a moment of independence/ devotion almost all women are linked or even merged into one***.
*http://longislandarcheology.wordpress.com/2008/05/07/artificial-archaeology-and-the-cinema-griffiths-intolerance/
**http://web.uvic.ca/~ayh/RoginBirth.pdf
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The first great film over 2 years ago
Birth of a Nation (1915). “A terrible beauty is born” — one line that might describe this cinematic epic.The film is both breathtakingly beautiful and terribly wrong. But, beneath the explicitly racist surface one might find a deconstruction of modern ideology and xenophobia, a prophesy about Nazism, and a cinematic representation of transition to modernity. The last 30 minutes almost invent soviet montage.
Close behind — Griffith’s 1909 short “A Corner in Wheat”, although I think it would rather be one of the last great films of primitive cinema.
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The first great film over 2 years ago
dp
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Lumiere over 2 years ago
Yes, the Lumieres are wonderful in a lot of their shorts: the light, the incredible sense of space, incredible use of off-screen space, never a flat composition, and often a lot to think about. It’s all well illustrated by the shorts above.
What I didn’t know, is that filmmakers of the 20s didn’t see those films? Is this true???
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