The Paradine Case (1947)

I wanted Hitchcock's The Paradine Case to be an intriguing curiosity and, well, I guess it is that; it's just not very interesting. There was lots of behind-the-scenes drama with this film. Hitchcock and David O. Selznick did not get along, and Hitchcock didn't want to cast Gregory Peck or Louis Jordan or Valli. (Incidentally, only Louis Jordan really works for the movie; Peck is definitely miscast.) But the trouble is that this screenplay just isn't that good. What should be an intriguing and tense mystery film with high stakes in the present becomes a kind of melodrama about the main lawyer and his wife and their relationship. It's not even interesting, although that gets most of the screen time.

The other very strange thing about the film is its runtime, which, once upon a time was 3 hours, was apparently cut down to 2 hours and 20 minutes, and then later 2 hours and 5 minutes and finally 1 hour and 55 minutes. Now, I'm not saying the whole thing wouldn't have been better at a longer runtime, because I seriously have a lot of doubts, but, well, maybe I am. I trust Hitchcock more than I trust Selznick, but with Peck in the lead...? I think the reason I would like to watch a longer cut (which, apparently, will now be impossible because the negatives have been destroyed) is that Ethel Barrymore got the film's lone Oscar nomination in 1948 for a supporting performance that lasts all of about 3 minutes in the current cut. Apparently much of this performance has been cut (and, I would imagine, much of Charles Laughton's work as well), and it definitely feels as though it's missing from this trimmed version.

Shadow of a Doubt (1943)

Creepy as hell and actually downright troubling, Shadow of a Doubt is a solid Hitchcock thriller from 1943 based on an original story by Thornton Wilder, author of Our Town and The Bridge of San Luis Rey.

This film is leaving the Criterion Channel at the end of the month, so I wanted to watch it before I missed the opportunity.

Obsession (1976)

I felt like the timing in De Palma's Obsession was really off. But... well, this is just a weird movie all around. Cliff Robertson is the star, and though he's very attractive, he gives a very strange, wooden, almost amateurish performance.

John Lithgow is also in this – he is the villain in De Palma's Blow Out too, and is creepy as ever here – doing a questionable southern accent. Geneviève Bujold is great, as always – I will never understand why she wasn't a bigger star. And Bernard Hermann's final (or almost final) score is... insistent and very Bernard Hermann. Obsession's most important intertext is Hitchcock's Vertigo, which Hermann also scored. 

This was my selection this week for my unseen movie club, and we all thought it was a very silly, unintentionally campy movie. De Palma makes some very strange choices, although they're not all his fault. The script is by Paul Schrader. (Both Schrader and Hermann will work on Taxi Driver this same year.)

Charade (1963)

So... this is weird. I watched Stanley Donen's 1963 film Charade late last night, and I was delighted by the whole thing. The screenplay by Peter Stone, especially, is very, very good. It is witty and very clever, and there are a great many twists and turns. But the whole thing is played for laughs, even though it is a Hitchcockian-style thriller.

Cary Grant and Audrey Hepburn are an absolute delight, and Walter Matthau and Jacques Marin round out the hilarity.

The strange part is that I've seen this movie before. In May of 2011, to be precise. But I didn't remember having seen it last night (or I wouldn't have (re)watched it), and there were several parts that I feel certain I hadn't seen before.

Either way, my pleasure at seeing it (apparently) again was undiminished, and I thoroughly enjoyed myself once again. 

Train Movies: Part 2

So, as I am watching train movies, lately – there will (at least) be a part 3 of this post – I thought I would finally watch John Frankenheimer's 1964 picture The Train. I was cool with it. It is ostensibly an action movie (most of these train movies are), but The Train is also trying to be a picture about "doing the right thing" and "the value of art to the nation" and other things I care a lot less about.

But don't get me wrong; this is a really exciting picture. Frankenheimer doesn't have the reputation he does for no reason. There are some awesome explosions and very cool train crashes. There is also a really, really exciting sequence where the people on the train and the people in the French resistance in local towns all trick the Nazis who are riding on the train. In other words when it is an action movie, it is exciting action movie. The down-time is less interesting. (Do I say that about every action movie? Pretty much; yeah.)

One more thing: Jeanne Moreau is in this, and goddammit I love her. She is not the largest part, but she is riveting for every moment she is onscreen.

And now here's where you start to think I am a crazy person. I also watched Danny DeVito's 1987 film Throw Momma from the Train, which is a kind of comic adaptation (perhaps a spoof) of Hitchcock's masterpiece Strangers on a Train. DeVito directed this comedy and Billy Crystal is the star. And Anne Ramsey got an Academy Award nomination for playing DeVito's hateful, shrill, mustachioed mother. (A nomination that I completely fail to understand. She just screams and looks ugly. Wash your hair!)

I was never into these Billy Crystal comedies – City Slickers, Mr. Saturday Night, etc. – they all are geared toward these life lessons that we're supposed to learn. You know: the importance of friendship and get out of the city and back to nature and family is all that matters. I hate that kind of stuff, mostly because I don't believe any of it. But the real cardinal sin of these films, of course, is that they aren't funny. I mean, this is a problem, guys. (I've posted about this before, so I will shut up about it now.)

There are, sadly, not really a lot of trains in the movie, either, although they are a kind of motif that runs through the whole film.

Okay, one more thing, and it was 1987 so I deserve a break for this, but I kinda thought Billy Crystal was hot in Throw Momma from the Train. Seriously. I mean, it isn't a reason to watch the movie or anything like that, but he really is kinda sexy.

Rope

Has everyone heard of Alfred Hitchcock's 1948 film Rope? It's a milestone for several reasons.
It's the first film Hitch made in color.
It also has (not so?) latent homosexuality as an undertone of the film. Definitely a curiosity in 1948.
It also is a continuously shot movie. Well, to be precise, the movie consists of nine extended shots. They couldn't shoot the entire film without cutting because the cameras couldn't hold enough film to do that back in the forties. The camera, instead, will move close in on the back of one of the actors and then move away and the cuts are hidden (well, they're totally obvious, but still...) while the screen goes black for a second before we move away from the actor's back.

The film stars John Dall (The Corn Is Green) and Farley Granger (Strangers on a Train) as murderers (and lovers?) who conspire to commit the perfect murder and then throw a dinner party. The first guest arrives fifteen minutes later. James Stewart is the one guest at the party who just might be able to solve the murder. It's suspenseful and really intriguing. Farley Granger is pretty near excellent in the picture, the dialogue sparkles and the way the film is shot is so extraordinary that it's worth a rental just for Hitchcock's technique.

Lazy Saturday

Yesterday. I went to Danny & Ashley's new place in the city of Whittier, which, I was surprised to find out, is not at all far from my own humble abode, about as far as, say, my parents' house or most of my other friends' houses. I arrived at the new pad around 7:30p and was delighted I was on time because it was only me and Danny and Ashley and Romeo & Juliet for a good twenty or thirty minutes before the deluge. People began arriving unceasingly after that and the party started really hopping. The apartment is absolutely enormous and thank goodness it is or all of the people that came (30-40) wouldn't have fit. I had a great time and it hadn't felt like I'd been there for any time at all by the time I left around 1:00a.

This Morning. I woke up, wrote my morning pages, text-messaged a few theatrical suggestions to my friend Justin and sat myself down to watch Psycho, which I never had seen before. I know, I know, but you could pave a street with important films I've never seen. Sometimes I think of all the books I haven't read and all the films I've never seen and all the plays I've never witnessed and I just get overwhelmed. But I digress. Psycho is fucking great and I loved everyone in the cast. Janet Leigh is pure star-power, giving a subtle, riveting performance and Anthony Perkins is so adorable it hurts. I just wanted to comfort him throughout the whole film. I have seen Is Paris Burning? and Murder on the Orient Express but I, frankly, don't remember Perkins in either film and I can't believe I've never seen any of his other work. I'm renting William Wyler's Friendly Persuasion next just to catch a glimpse of him.

This Afternoon. I read Allen Ginsberg's Howl out loud: a moving, wrenching exercise... not sure why I decided to do it, but I just started and before I could think about it I was done. And I've been researching graduate schools for at least an hour and a half now. It's painstaking and (quite frankly) boring as Hell, but there is an ultimate goal in sight and I have found a few true gems and added them to my list. I keep meaning to get back into Hard Times, but... well, I don't know. I'm tired. I feel tired.

I want to leave you with a little Allen Ginsberg. This is from his poem America, written in January 1956. It makes me think of a discussion I had with a woman at work about what she considers the probability and evil of Chinese hegemony:

America you don't really want to go to war.
America it's them bad Russians.
Them Russians them Russians and them Chinamen. And them Russians.
The Russia wants to eat us alive. The Russia's power mad. She wants to take our cars from out our garages.
Her wants to grab Chicago. Her needs a Red Readers' Digest. Her wants our auto plants in Siberia. Him big bureaucracy running our fillingstations.
That no good. Ugh. Him make Indians learn read. Him need big black niggers. Hah. Her make us all work sixteen hours a day. Help.
America this is quite serious.
America this is the impression I get from looking in the television set.
America is this correct?
I'd better get right down to the job.
It's true I don't want to join the Army or turn lathes in precision parts factories, I'm nearsighted and psychopathic anyway.
America I'm putting my queer shoulder to the wheel.