The ALFRED HITCHCOCK Thread

[flickchick85]

Anyone remember when David Fincher was going to remake this?

David Fincher, Ben Affleck, Gillian Flynn Reuniting for 'Strangers on a Train' Remake

Definitely would've been on board for that. Though with Affleck, it might've felt a little too similar to his role in Changing Lanes. Not that anyone remembers that movie, lol.

 

[Dark Raven]

I could see Holden working in that role. Though I agree he likely wouldn't have projected the same nervous energy as Granger.

Apparently though, in the book, Guy DOES go through with the murder. Maybe Holden would've been better for that version, though I could also imagine that working still with Farley Granger in the role as well.


It's the 2nd gif I used!


Another one I have not seen. Gotta add it to the list.

Oh I didn't see the gif.

Definitely would've been on board for that. Though with Affleck, it might've felt a little too similar to his role in Changing Lanes. Not that anyone remembers that movie, lol.

I don't feel Affleck would be enough of an everyman pulled into some crazy scheme, unless he's the one who initiates it.

Who is now more nervous like Granger?

 

[flickchick85]

I could see Jake Gyllenhaal doing well with that role.

 

[Dr.]

Just a cutesy "lolpic." But folks in this thread are more likely to get it.

 

[flickchick85]

Ok I actually did laugh out loud at that.

 

[flickchick85]

Almost the end of the road.

2.) Shadow of a Doubt (1943)

Here we arrive at the film that Hitchcock himself named as his own personal favorite of his filmography, and for me, it is very easy to see why. Shadow of a Doubt is the purest embodiment of Hitch’s assertation that the audience’s imagination remains the most powerful driving tool in generating suspense, as this film’s horrors remain almost entirely implied, maximizing the engagement with the minds of the viewers to provide the necessary thrills and intrigue. Every sinister action in this film until the very, very end, happens completely off-screen, and so much of it is left intentionally vague so the audience is left to fill in the blanks. And Hitchcock knows they will imagine the worst-case scenario each and every time he plants a suggestion.

The plot to Shadow of a Doubt is another one that’s extremely simple. Charles Oakley (a brilliant Joseph Cotton) who’s been away from his family for many years, returns home to them rather unexpectedly in their idyllic suburban town of Santa Rosa, California. The family is thrilled, especially his teenage niece (Teresa Wright in a wonderfully nuanced performance), who was named Charlotte after him (both go by “Charlie”), as she just adores her Uncle Charlie. For the purposes of this review, since both our protagonists share the same name, I’ll now refer to her as “Young Charlie,” and him as “Uncle Charlie.” Uncle Charlie’s return was a surprise and begins to feel suspicious, especially when two detectives (Macdonald Carey and Wallace Ford) suddenly seem to be extremely interested in the family, and the longer he stays, the more Young Charlie suspects he’s hiding a dark and sinister secret - that he may in fact be the “Merry Widow Killer” that’s currently making headlines as the target of a nationwide manhunt. Unlike other films of this nature, it’s not really a spoiler to say that yeah, he totally is. The movie doesn’t even really try to hide it, and gives us plenty of evidence in the first half. Though again, we never see him kill anybody, Hitchcock knows that the more certain the audience is that this family has a serial killer in their midst, the more tense each otherwise mundane exercise becomes. He knows we’ll be scrutinizing Uncle Charlie’s every reaction and behavior more closely, and reading into each action and line below the surface. Hell, every scene of this film feels like Hitchcock is daring us to take it apart to analyze it. It’s absolutely delicious. Because thematically, that’s what this film is all about – looking below the surface of something to see the true ugliness underneath, and realizing the world you thought you knew was a lie. It’s no secret that at this point in his career, Hitchcock was extremely critical of America, and their idealized little suburban bubble – the idea of the perfect, traditional American family and community – while they sat on their hands for the early years of WWII as atrocities were being committed. While this film was made after America entered the war, that resentment and cynicism toward the “American ideal” is very much manifested in this film. Here, Hitchcock get to tear apart the perfect, peaceful American town, and expose the ugliness that’s lying just underneath the surface that everyone would rather turn a blind eye to than acknowledge. Every scene in this film, from the comedic to the creepy, feels like a personal indictment of the very notion of the perfect, peaceful, suburban America.

And here’s where I address what is truly the elephant in the room of this film, because it’s one of those things that a lot of viewers pick up on but aren’t sure if it’s something that was intentional or just strange acting choices. I’m however quite confident, given the driving theme of this movie, that yes, it is entirely intentional on Hitchcock’s part: there are some deeply disturbing incest vibes in this film that are never directly addressed. This uncle and niece do not in any way behave like uncle and niece. Their scenes are romantically coded, even for 1943 family dynamics on film. I’m not sure they ever say how old Young Charlie is, but she’s graduated high school, so we’ll say she’s about 18 (Wright was 25 at the time), which is way too old to be this affectionate with a family member you haven’t seen in years. The two of them are constantly mentioning how they aren’t a normal uncle and niece. There’s also the way her mom, Uncle Charlie’s sister, behaves during his stay. The way she immediately seems so dependent on her brother she hasn’t seen for ages, and becomes hyper-focused on her cooking to the point that she’s oblivious to what’s going on right under nose. When Uncle Charlie announces he’ll be leaving again toward the end of the film, she has such a disproportionate response, it almost seems like some sort of mental break. There are just all these red flags suggesting there’s a story between them we’re not getting. Then there’s the recurring memory Young Charlie keeps having of some sort of party with people twirling in dresses, triggered by the song, “Merry Widow Waltz.” We soon learn that whatever she’s remembering, Uncle Charlie shares the memory, and is not too keen on the fact that Young Charlie seems to be recalling it. The textual reason for this is for her to connect the dots between that song and the “Merry Widow Killer,” but subtextually, it’s very much played like repressed memories that could be masking something traumatic, and Hitchcock uses that vision as a motif over scenes outside of Young Charlie’s POV, as a general indicator that something’s rotten in Denmark. I do believe he encouraged Joseph Cotten to play up up these vibes in his performance, too. The signs are there, and Hitchcock just leaves them there, for people to draw whatever conclusions they may. It’s not as if he could get away with much more in that arena in 1943, but he gives us enough to make their dynamic even more unsettling than if we thought he was “just” a serial killer.

No offense to Norman Bates, but for me, that extra, unspoken layer makes Cotten’s Uncle Charlie the slimiest, creepiest villain Hitchcock ever put on screen. From the moment he’s introduced, lying on a bed in the city in a nice suit in the city, rising like a vampire once the curtains on the windows are drawn, Hitchcock uses shadows and camera angles on this character to make him appear as sinister as possible. He had no intention of making us doubt this guy was a monster. So watching Uncle Charlie charming the whole town is stressful to watch, and it’s actually scary whenever he switches over to threatening mode, because he does it so quickly, naturally and abruptly, it makes every other interaction he has feel like a carefully-practiced façade that he struggles to maintain every day. When we finally get Uncle Charlie’s worldview, in a fantastically-delivered monologue illustrating his very specific misogyny towards the types of “city women” the Merry Widow Killer preyed upon, during a completely casual dinner conversation where he’s seemingly praising the women of this small town, Young Charlie is the only one who sees the killer in him come out. We see it through her POV, and it is chilling. That scene also again perpetuates the driving theme of the film - the toxicity of the perfect image of the ‘American Dream’ - as we learn his false image of suburban women is really the root of the psychology behind Uncle Charlie’s violence. He kills the city women because they didn’t live up to the standards he was raised to believe women should live up to. His disillusionment over the shattering of his suburban ideals is what made him a nihilist and led him to murder. The theme is further pushed in a later scene in the film, when Young Charlie confronts Uncle Charlie about what she is now certain to be true. He brings her into a seedy club that she insists she’d never set foot in, descending into the unsavory underworld of their own little “perfect town,” to finally have an honest conversation where the masks come off. They even find that one of her old school friends is now a waitress there, displaying an attitude that directly references Uncle Charlie’s previous description of those tainted “city women” he likes to kill. And Young Charlie realizes in that scene, that nothing in her boring, "normal" life was ever what she thought it was. She's mourning the the loss of an innocence that was only ever an illusion to begin with.

Hitchcock and his screenwriters (which again included his wife, Alma Reville) masterfully drive this theme home throughout the rest of the film and wrap it up with a beautiful exclamation point in the closing scene, which is downright poetic in its stark contrast between the beautiful words being said in a church, and what the ugly, unsavory truth of the situation really is. There’s a not a frame of this film that doesn’t feel extremely carefully considered, both for what it’s saying, and for what it’s not saying. That quality makes it one of Hitchcock’s most layered, engaging, and fascinating films to re-watch and re-analyze, and for my money, easily one of his greatest of masterpieces.

 

[Dark Raven]

You know, I haven't seen Shadow of a Doubt before. In fact, I even forgot about that film, so was surprised it was this high up. I'm not sure why I haven't watched it. I think I have all of Hitchcock's films somewhere so I could watch it at some point during this lockdown.

It certainly sounds intriguing from what you've described, although I had to skim read your review so that it didn't spoil me too much on the plot.

 

[flickchick85]

You know, I haven't seen Shadow of a Doubt before. In fact, I even forgot about that film, so was surprised it was this high up. I'm not sure why I haven't watched it. I think I have all of Hitchcock's films somewhere so I could watch it at some point during this lockdown.

It certainly sounds intriguing from what you've described, although I had to skim read your review so that it didn't spoil me too much on the plot.

Not surprised, as I think it's one of his more low-key classics. But I definitely recommend checking it out ASAP!

 

[ComicChick]

another great one Flick

 

[flickchick85]

Thanks, CC!

 

[Shinobi Shaw]

I forgot how demented Uncle Charlie was. Now it’s time for a rewatch, and then Strangers On A Train for a double Hitch noir feature. Thanks for planting the seed Flick!

 

[Dark Raven]

I think I was going to watch Shadow of a Doubt once one summer, but then ended up watching Strangers on a Train instead.

Strangers on a train is how everyone needs to behave towards each other now in this time of social distancing. If that film had happened now during the time of pandemic, they wouldn't have even spoken to each other. But then even The Lady Vanishes probably wouldn't have had all these people in the same carriage.

 

[flickchick85]

I forgot how demented Uncle Charlie was. Now it’s time for a rewatch, and then Strangers On A Train for a double Hitch noir feature. Thanks for planting the seed Flick!

Glad to be of service! Sounds like a great double feature to me.

 

[flickchick85]

Well, I tried get to this posted before the end of 2020, but I rambled on too long because I can't shut up about this film (and I still left out a lot), and it turns out its hard to focus when you're also celebrating New Years with the family. Oh well, Happy 2021 folks, and while I may be done with Hitchcock's filmography, I look forward to watching and discussing many lesser Hitchcock remakes this year. Gotta say, this little cinematic odyssey has been quite the long and winding journey, but it's been a blast. If anyone else is considering watching all 52, I highly recommend it. There are some truly hidden gems in his filmography, and even the worst ones are kind of fascinating for different reasons, lol. Anyway, onto my fave:

1.) Notorious (1946)

David Fincher once described Notorious as “a magic trick of epic proportions,” and I’d say he was pretty spot-on with that assessment. It’s a magic trick not only on the technical wizardry levels we’re used to from Hitchcock, not only from the sly infusion of deception and suspense playing the audience like a fiddle as the filmmaker would become known to do, but on a meta-level, this film seems especially difficult to fathom. It depends on all of its major players operating duplicitously on some level - not unlike Shadow of a Doubt – saying one thing while not saying something far more important, and challenging the audience to read between the lines of every choice. The plot is borderline obscene, especially for those times (at least obscene to the point that, as Fincher pointed out in that same interview, the film itself can’t talk about what it’s about), and on paper, it sounds like the absolute last thing a female viewer in 2021 would want to see from a filmmaker as infamously misogynist as Hitchcock. And yet, the result is pure cinematic magic, even to this female viewer in 2021.

Though it’s basically a streamlined four-person character piece, it begins by throwing us into the middle of a complicated situation. Alicia Huberman (Ingrid Bergman) is coming out of the courtroom where her father, a wealthy businessman, has just been convicted as a Nazi collaborator. Alicia is in full-on self-destructive party girl mode when she meets the mysterious T.R. Devlin (Cary Grant), who turns out to be a federal agent, crashing a party to recruit her for…an unusual mission. Alicia is arguably Hitchock’s most interesting and complex heroine. As Devlin breaks through her tough, jaded exterior, we discover that Alicia fought against her father and everything he stood for, and while she was considered “patriotic” in her government’s mind, she was the “reprehensible ungrateful daughter” in her own mind and we start to realize her whole party girl persona is the merely the mask of a woman filled with self-loathing. So while she reluctantly agrees to further help her country, she has lost all sense of self-preservation and is basically just looking for a reason to soldier on. Devlin gives her that purpose, though neither of them even knows what it is yet, but just the promise of doing something that matters gives her drive, even after learning that her father has killed himself in prison. The two are sent to Rio de Janeiro to await further instructions, and during that time, unfortunately for both of them, they fall in love. Which makes the next part awkward, because when they finally get their instructions from on high, we learn Devlin is basically meant to be her handler while she serves as a honey pot for an old family acquaintance (read: Nazi) played by the brilliant Claude Rains, who’s hiding out there in Brazil and still making nefarious plans with his fellow Nazi’s. So yes, the notion of a filmmaker with Hitchcock's misogynist rep handling a story in which Cary Grant pimps out Ingrid Bergman to a Nazi sounds like the absolute worst idea ever, but it shockingly…works. Amazingly well.

I think there are a few reasons it ends up a masterpiece instead of a sexist dumpster fire. First, as mentioned, this premise was so unsavory by the standards of the time, that they weren’t really able to address it directly in dialogue or on screen, so they were kind of forced to talk around it and speak through implication, making the whole scenario come across surprisingly respectful. In fact, much like Shadow of a Doubt, this again is Hitchcock at his most admirably restrained, as even all the violence in this film (and yes, people are murdered) happens completely off-screen. A second reason I think it works so well is that both Bergman and Grant are played completely against type here. While you’d expect Grant to play Devlin as some sort of smooth operator, charming, male wish-fulfillment type of spy as he first comes across, it turns out that his character - as both we and Alicia discover together - is actually kind of a socially awkward dork whose “cold” exterior is masking an emotionally stunted guy who really doesn’t know how to navigate human relationships or express his own feelings at all. When she teases him about things, he gets awkward, because he genuinely doesn’t know how to handle it. Throughout the movie, you’re just kind of rooting for the guy to express himself, because you can tell he wants to. Meanwhile Alicia, despite her “promiscuous party girl” reputation that leads to her being labeled as expendable trash by the U.S. Government (the agency goes unnamed and this was a few years before the CIA actually existed) officials, is clearly portrayed as the most noble and heroic character in the movie. She hates herself and is self-destructive to a fault, the world has written her off, and yet, she does the right thing because it’s asked of her. Because she’s knows it’s right. She makes no apologies for who she’s been or what she’s done. It’s strange seeing Bergman playing a character viewed as a “floozy” but she infuses the character with such dignity and nobility, there’s a not a point in this film where the viewer would not be on her side, even as she does morally questionable things. This is where I come back to my strong belief that Hitchcock simply held Ingrid Bergman in a higher regard than his other female leads, because despite the premise, this film is dripping with respect for Alicia and her inner life and struggles. Together, with Devlin being all emotionally repressed, and Alicia being all “feel something, dammit!,” their chemistry is palpable. I’m rarely invested in a Hitchcock romance, but this one had legitimate angst that had me really hoping these two kids would just be honest about their feelings and work it out. In some ways, by the end of the film, Alicia’s life is literally dependent on it.

As I previously mentioned, despite being a film set in an exotic locale, featuring Nazi’s, murder, and a potentially world-threatening plot, this film is essentially an intimate four-person character piece. Alicia and Devlin being two of our leads, with Rains’ Alexander Sebastian and his mother, played by Leopoldine Konstantin, rounding out the main the cast. That’s right, this film has just about everything we look for in a Hitchcock film – complicated shades of gray morality, murder, deception, a MacGuffin – and that includes mommy issues. Konstantin’s Anna Sebastian definitely goes down as one of Hitchcock’s most memorable scary moms. All four are fascinating characters. Rains’ performance as a Sebastian is especially notable, as his Sebastian comes across surprisingly human for a Nazi – not in that weird “let’s make movies about sympathetic Nazis!” way that seems to be a Hollywood trend as of late, but in the way that you can see how he would’ve fallen in line with the Nazi’s. His relationship with his controlling mother kinda explains it all – he’s ultimately weak and pathetic and will always cave to those he considers a higher authority. The movie humanizes him while never trying to excuse him. I think Hitchcock mainly allowed him some sympathetic qualities in order to highlight how some "good guys" in the US Government aren't much better. After all, we know Hitch loves to skewer the authorities and the notions of America’s “inherent goodness” that Hollywood loved to promote, and this being his real first post-War Hollywood film doesn’t hold back in doing so. The argument could certainly be made for this being one of the early examples of film noir, since that's a genre defined by that jaded post-war disillusionment (though to be fair, Hitch displayed that attitude in his work well before the post-war era). Sebastian also serves as a great contrast with Devlin, as they both love Alicia, but while Sebastian is more open and expressive about his feelings for her, it ultimately means squat because he’s still willing to let her die for his cause. Devlin is the opposite – he refuses to express or acknowledge his love for her, and yet, he also refuses to let her die for his cause, even after his superiors insist she’s expendable. One of my favorite things about this film is how much agency Alicia has throughout. Despite being seen as a pawn by everyone else, she’s never clueless, she’s always more savvy and aware of the situation than anyone expects her to be, more aware of these men’s motives than sometimes even they are themselves, and every thing she does here is ultimately her choice.

I’d be remiss if I didn’t take a minute to appreciate the technical aspects of this film, because, they are dazzling. Coming right on the heels of Spellbound, to me this is the era where Hitchcock’s technical and creative visual ambitions really kicked in, and they were never more impressively employed than in this film, as far as I’m concerned. The visuals may not be as flashy as the camera work and style in his later films, but to me, they’re even more effective because it serves a fantastic story, rather than commandeering it. That’s why this was my favorite era of his career - the story and characters still very much came first. The camera work is SO expressive here – whether it's sweeping the viewer up in every moment of suspense, lingering on every romantic moment or gesture, highlighting any vital object or MacGuffin in genuinely inventive ways, or changing the way a character is lit when our feelings about said character are meant to change. It’s just a master class in visual storytelling. Of course, I could go on and make comparisons with Mission: Impossible 2, since that movie’s literally attempting to be a straight-up Notorious-as-an-action-movie remake, but…why sully something so timeless and elegant with talk of a film that’s so…Tom Cruise-y and not? Instead, I’ll just close on saying this is my go-to comfort Bergman classic the way Casablanca is for others. Both have a sort of simultaneously romantic and tragic ending, but instead of ending on a tearful goodbye like that film, this one ends on a surprisingly optimistic note given everything that came before. There is sort of a promise at the end of the film that says yeah, humanity may be s*** right now, but…things can get better - people who dabble in evil can get their comeuppance eventually, the coldest hearts can be thawed, and even those written off as lost causes by society can find redemption, and maybe even happiness. And that’s a story that never gets old for me. This is not just my favorite Hitchcock film, but also one of my very favorite films of all-time. It just gets better every time I see it.

 

[Dr.]

My "like" button isn't working. So for the record, I like.

 

[Dark Raven]

Well, I tried get to this posted before the end of 2020, but I rambled on too long because I can't shut up about this film (and I still left out a lot), and it turns out its hard to focus when you're also celebrating New Years with the family. Oh well, Happy 2021 folks, and while I may be done with Hitchcock's filmography, I look forward to watching and discussing many lesser Hitchcock remakes this year. Gotta say, this little cinematic odyssey has been quite the long and winding journey, but it's been a blast. If anyone else is considering watching all 52, I highly recommend it. There are some truly hidden gems in his filmography, and even the worst ones are kind of fascinating for different reasons, lol. Anyway, onto my fave:

1.) Notorious (1946)

David Fincher once described Notorious as “a magic trick of epic proportions,” and I’d say he was pretty spot-on with that assessment. It’s a magic trick not only on the technical wizardry levels we’re used to from Hitchcock, not only from the sly infusion of deception and suspense playing the audience like a fiddle as the filmmaker would become known to do, but on a meta-level, this film seems especially difficult to fathom. It depends on all of its major players operating duplicitously on some level - not unlike Shadow of a Doubt – saying one thing while not saying something far more important, and challenging the audience to read between the lines of every choice. The plot is borderline obscene, especially for those times (at least obscene to the point that, as Fincher pointed out in that same interview, the film itself can’t talk about what it’s about), and on paper, it sounds like the absolute last thing a female viewer in 2021 would want to see from a filmmaker as infamously misogynist as Hitchcock. And yet, the result is pure cinematic magic, even to this female viewer in 2021.

Though it’s basically a streamlined four-person character piece, it begins by throwing us into the middle of a complicated situation. Alicia Huberman (Ingrid Bergman) is coming out of the courtroom where her father, a wealthy businessman, has just been convicted as a Nazi collaborator. Alicia is in full-on self-destructive party girl mode when she meets the mysterious T.R. Devlin (Cary Grant), who turns out to be a federal agent, crashing a party to recruit her for…an unusual mission. Alicia is arguably Hitchock’s most interesting and complex heroine. As Devlin breaks through her tough, jaded exterior, we discover that Alicia fought against her father and everything he stood for, and while she was considered “patriotic” in her government’s mind, she was the “reprehensible ungrateful daughter” in her own mind and we start to realize her whole party girl persona is the merely the mask of a woman filled with self-loathing. So while she reluctantly agrees to further help her country, she has lost all sense of self-preservation and is basically just looking for a reason to soldier on. Devlin gives her that purpose, though neither of them even knows what it is yet, but just the promise of doing something that matters gives her drive, even after learning that her father has killed himself in prison. The two are sent to Rio de Janeiro to await further instructions, and during that time, unfortunately for both of them, they fall in love. Which makes the next part awkward, because when they finally get their instructions from on high, we learn Devlin is basically meant to be her handler while she serves as a honey pot for an old family acquaintance (read: Nazi) played by the brilliant Claude Rains, who’s hiding out there in Brazil and still making nefarious plans with his fellow Nazi’s. So yes, the notion of a filmmaker with Hitchcock's misogynist rep handling a story in which Cary Grant pimps out Ingrid Bergman to a Nazi sounds like the absolute worst idea ever, but it shockingly…works. Amazingly well.

I think there are a few reasons it ends up a masterpiece instead of a sexist dumpster fire. First, as mentioned, this premise was so unsavory by the standards of the time, that they weren’t really able to address it directly in dialogue or on screen, so they were kind of forced to talk around it and speak through implication, making the whole scenario come across surprisingly respectful. In fact, much like Shadow of a Doubt, this again is Hitchcock at his most admirably restrained, as even all the violence in this film (and yes, people are murdered) happens completely off-screen. A second reason I think it works so well is that both Bergman and Grant are played completely against type here. While you’d expect Grant to play Devlin as some sort of smooth operator, charming, male wish-fulfillment type of spy as he first comes across, it turns out that his character - as both we and Alicia discover together - is actually kind of a socially awkward dork whose “cold” exterior is masking an emotionally stunted guy who really doesn’t know how to navigate human relationships or express his own feelings at all. When she teases him about things, he gets awkward, because he genuinely doesn’t know how to handle it. Throughout the movie, you’re just kind of rooting for the guy to express himself, because you can tell he wants to. Meanwhile Alicia, despite her “promiscuous party girl” reputation that leads to her being labeled as expendable trash by the U.S. Government (the agency goes unnamed and this was a few years before the CIA actually existed) officials, is clearly portrayed as the most noble and heroic character in the movie. She hates herself and is self-destructive to a fault, the world has written her off, and yet, she does the right thing because it’s asked of her. Because she’s knows it’s right. She makes no apologies for who she’s been or what she’s done. It’s strange seeing Bergman playing a character viewed as a “floozy” but she infuses the character with such dignity and nobility, there’s a not a point in this film where the viewer would not be on her side, even as she does morally questionable things. This is where I come back to my strong belief that Hitchcock simply held Ingrid Bergman in a higher regard than his other female leads, because despite the premise, this film is dripping with respect for Alicia and her inner life and struggles. Together, with Devlin being all emotionally repressed, and Alicia being all “feel something, dammit!,” their chemistry is palpable. I’m rarely invested in a Hitchcock romance, but this one had legitimate angst that had me really hoping these two kids would just be honest about their feelings and work it out. In some ways, by the end of the film, Alicia’s life is literally dependent on it.

As I previously mentioned, despite being a film set in an exotic locale, featuring Nazi’s, murder, and a potentially world-threatening plot, this film is essentially an intimate four-person character piece. Alicia and Devlin being two of our leads, with Rains’ Alexander Sebastian and his mother, played by Leopoldine Konstantin, rounding out the main the cast. That’s right, this film has just about everything we look for in a Hitchcock film – complicated shades of gray morality, murder, deception, a MacGuffin – and that includes mommy issues. Konstantin’s Anna Sebastian definitely goes down as one of Hitchcock’s most memorable scary moms. All four are fascinating characters. Rains’ performance as a Sebastian is especially notable, as his Sebastian comes across surprisingly human for a Nazi – not in that weird “let’s make movies about sympathetic Nazis!” way that seems to be a Hollywood trend as of late, but in the way that you can see how he would’ve fallen in line with the Nazi’s. His relationship with his controlling mother kinda explains it all – he’s ultimately weak and pathetic and will always cave to those he considers a higher authority. The movie humanizes him while never trying to excuse him. I think Hitchcock mainly allowed him some sympathetic qualities in order to highlight how some "good guys" in the US Government aren't much better. After all, we know Hitch loves to skewer the authorities and the notions of America’s “inherent goodness” that Hollywood loved to promote, and this being his real first post-War Hollywood film doesn’t hold back in doing so. The argument could certainly be made for this being one of the early examples of film noir, since that's a genre defined by that jaded post-war disillusionment (though to be fair, Hitch displayed that attitude in his work well before the post-war era). Sebastian also serves as a great contrast with Devlin, as they both love Alicia, but while Sebastian is more open and expressive about his feelings for her, it ultimately means squat because he’s still willing to let her die for his cause. Devlin is the opposite – he refuses to express or acknowledge his love for her, and yet, he also refuses to let her die for his cause, even after his superiors insist she’s expendable. One of my favorite things about this film is how much agency Alicia has throughout. Despite being seen as a pawn by everyone else, she’s never clueless, she’s always more savvy and aware of the situation than anyone expects her to be, more aware of these men’s motives than sometimes even they are themselves, and every thing she does here is ultimately her choice.

I’d be remiss if I didn’t take a minute to appreciate the technical aspects of this film, because, they are dazzling. Coming right on the heels of Spellbound, to me this is the era where Hitchcock’s technical and creative visual ambitions really kicked in, and they were never more impressively employed than in this film, as far as I’m concerned. The visuals may not be as flashy as the camera work and style in his later films, but to me, they’re even more effective because it serves a fantastic story, rather than commandeering it. That’s why this was my favorite era of his career - the story and characters still very much came first. The camera work is SO expressive here – whether it's sweeping the viewer up in every moment of suspense, lingering on every romantic moment or gesture, highlighting any vital object or MacGuffin in genuinely inventive ways, or changing the way a character is lit when our feelings about said character are meant to change. It’s just a master class in visual storytelling. Of course, I could go on and make comparisons with Mission: Impossible 2, since that movie’s literally attempting to be a straight-up Notorious-as-an-action-movie remake, but…why sully something so timeless and elegant with talk of a film that’s so…Tom Cruise-y and not? Instead, I’ll just close on saying this is my go-to comfort Bergman classic the way Casablanca is for others. Both have a sort of simultaneously romantic and tragic ending, but instead of ending on a tearful goodbye like that film, this one ends on a surprisingly optimistic note given everything that came before. There is sort of a promise at the end of the film that says yeah, humanity may be s*** right now, but…things can get better - people who dabble in evil can get their comeuppance eventually, the coldest hearts can be thawed, and even those written off as lost causes by society can find redemption, and maybe even happiness. And that’s a story that never gets old for me. This is not just my favorite Hitchcock film, but also one of my very favorite films of all-time. It just gets better every time I see it.

Great review Flickchick!

I think I've only watched this film once, but don't remember it too well. I couldn't think what was coming next as your number 1 film. I'll have to watch it again. I vaguely remember the wine cellar scene. I don't recall thinking of the whole movie as a potential dumpster fire that had somehow gone right though, but more of just a spy caper.

I didn't know that Mission Impossible 2 was meant to be Notorious with action. But then I have only paid more attention to that series of films from #3 onwards because I didn't like the first two.

I look forward to your reviews of the remakes of Hitchcock films. I think you might enjoy the Thirty Nine Steps (1978) the most as that feels more like a Hitchcock film than maybe even the original, and certainly the ending is pure Hitchcock lifted from films like Saboteur or North by Northwest.

 

[ComicChick]

this was a great start off to 2021. as always i enjoy your reviews

 

[flickchick85]

Great review Flickchick!

I think I've only watched this film once, but don't remember it too well. I couldn't think what was coming next as your number 1 film. I'll have to watch it again. I vaguely remember the wine cellar scene. I don't recall thinking of the whole movie as a potential dumpster fire that had somehow gone right though, but more of just a spy caper.

I didn't know that Mission Impossible 2 was meant to be Notorious with action. But then I have only paid more attention to that series of films from #3 onwards because I didn't like the first two.

I look forward to your reviews of the remakes of Hitchcock films. I think you might enjoy the Thirty Nine Steps (1978) the most as that feels more like a Hitchcock film than maybe even the original, and certainly the ending is pure Hitchcock lifted from films like Saboteur or North by Northwest.

I definitely recommend giving it a second look! There's a lot to unpack in this movie, in just about every scene.

And yeah, Mission: Impossible is actually my favorite ongoing franchise, but #2 is definitely the black sheep.

The Thirty Nine Steps remake is probably the one I'm most looking forward to. I won't be doing long reviews for those like I did for these, but I'll definitely be posting my thoughts here.