Sustained!

239) The Paradine Case (1947) Dir: Alfred Hitchcock Date Released: January 8, 1948 Date Seen: July 28, 2012 Rating: 3.75/5

I didn't read up on The Paradine Case before I checked it out at the IFC Center and I'm glad I didn't. The reputation that surrounds the last Selznick/Hitchcock collaboration is a bit dispiriting. Until Farran Nehme Smith said she also liked the film, I felt rather freakish for enjoying this courtroom melodrama. And now I feel even more silly for having ever felt silly in the first place! The Paradine Case is, for my money, not only typically well-directed but also admirably tense and well-acted. I've heard a couple of people say that some of its cast were, um, mis-cast, particularly Gregory Peck, but I don't see it. Peck plays a hot-shot and a pillar of virtue whose fascination with Alida Valli, whose performance reminded me of Simone Simon's in Cat People (1942), concerns and worries everyone around him. I can't comment in depth about why other people felt this because again, I have avoided reading anything except the opinions I solicited on Twitter. But I never felt like Peck didn't play his part well or that he was the wrong man for his role. 

Also: Charles Laughton was perfect as the corrupt judge Peck's character has to convince. And the ladies in this film really impressed me. I absolutely loved Ann Todd as Peck's perceptive but doting wife, particularly when she gives that worried speech to him about how he doesn't really love Valli. And Ethel Barrymore's impassioned speech to Laughton at the end was really moving, even if the speech itself is a bit pokey. 

I don't know, I feel like the film's plot may be a bit contrived and its main thematic revelations--a damsel in distress does not always need rescuing and a cavalier affair based on projection is doomed to failure--are ho-hum, but only when considered in the abstract. While I was watching this film, I was totally absorbed. Two hours really did fly.

Strangers In Our Midst

222) Shadow of a Doubt (1943) Dir: Alfred Hitchcock Date Released: January 15, 1943 Date Seen: July 11, 2012 Rating: 4/5

RV!: E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial (1982) Dir: Steven Spielberg Date Released: June 11, 1982 Date Seen: July 11, 2012 Rating: 4.5/5

An unusual but fruitful double feature. See my rather silly but fun comparison between the two films over at Capital New York.

94) A Song is Born (1948) and 95) The Man Who Knew Too Much (1935)

94) A Song is Born (1948) Dir: Howard Hawks Date Released: October 19, 1948 Date Seen: March 16, 2011 Rating: 3.25/5

95) The Man Who Knew Too Much (1934) Dir: Alfred Hitchcock Date Released: April 15, 1935 Date Seen: March 16, 2011 Rating: 3/5 

Both pretty noice, even if they are both dry runs for superior remakes. See my piece for Capital New York.

59) The Lady Vanishes (1938), RV!: Spellbound (1945) and 60) Rope (1948)

59) The Lady Vanishes (1938) Dir: Alfred Hitchcock Date Released: November 1938 Date Seen: February 19, 2010

RV!: Spellbound (1945) Dir: Alfred Hitchcock Date Released: December 1945 Date Seen: February 19, 2010

60) Rope (1948) Dir: Alfred Hitchcock Date Released: August 1948 Date Seen: February 20, 2010 Rating: 4/5

When I watch any of Hitchcock's monolithic films, it's impossible to ignore his consummate playfulness. The thematic cruxes of his films--the emphasis on national pride in The Lady Vanishes, the amateur psychology in Notorious or the morally dubious notion of an ethical application of murder in Rope--are all played to the hilt but that's all that can be said about them. They're just the means by which Hitchcock can tinker around with cinematic form. His film's central ideas are, at times, borderline incoherent in the double standards they create. For example, the dramatic rigor with which Hitch's camera snakes around its subjects in Rope suggests a persistence of vision, or in this case a pre-deterministic certainty that the truth/corpse will out, that is absent in any of the film's characters. In Notorious, a double standard that smacks of involuntary misogyny is created when a feminine curative touch is emphasized as Peck's character's only hope of becoming cured while Bergman's continually dismissed as just a weak-minded female in the eyes of her superiors and her mentor, who considers her only fit to make his coffee.

This puts the viewer in the unique position of seeing the world from the eyes of an omniscient and sometimes tyrannical authorial god. Hitchcock sees all and treats his stories like wonderful games whose rules he can bend or ignore the consequences of so long as they achieve their intended effect. Its hard to argue with the seductive nature of the screwball banter in The Lady Vanishes or the tracking shots in Rope. And for that, these films, as purely formal exercises, are somehow able to sustain themselves as accomplished cinematic works, even if they are so impressive because they have more skill than soul.

RV!: To Catch a Thief (1955)

RV!: To Catch a Thief (1955) Dir: Alfred Hitchcock Date Released: August 1955 Date Seen: August 15th, 2009 Rating: 3.75/5

Even for a formal exercise, To Catch a Thief remains an exciting, though emotionally uninvolved, thriller.  For Hitchcock, the film is a means of showing off his love of visual games, drawing the viewer's attention through various playful but never tense chases scenes, like the opening flight from Cary Grant's villa  filmed from distant helicopters or the flower market chase. The flowers, the countryside, the women and of course the fireworks are more pressing than the absolution of Grant's wrongfully accused master thief. Grant's character is not a harried victim but rather an expert joueur, making capture never really imminent. It's why Hitchcock lingers a little bit at the end of several scenes prominently featuring the non-chalantly embroiled, leathery Brit, to prove that he'll never be caught by a woman or the police. He, like Hitchcock, will keep playing unencumbered by opposing players, making the memorable scene where Grant incredulously eyeballs Hitch a coy act of self-recognition.