Hitchcock Double Bill: Shadow of a Doubt (1942) / The Birds (1963)

Two films linked by small town Americana, and Jessica Tandy.

Shadow of a Doubt started with a short treatment by Charles McDonell about a man who goes to visit his family, seemingly respectable and successful, but his niece begins to suspect he is a serial killer. Hitch engaged the respected novel and playwright Thornton Wilder (his 1940 Our Town has been an early success for William Holden) to develop the screenplay, which was then rewritten by Sally Benson (and Mr & Mrs Hitchcock) to give it more humour.

The small town location is Santa Rosa, California

The visiting Uncle Charlie is Joseph Cotten and his niece is the fabulous Teresa Wright, who had caught Sam Goldwyn's attention in theatre. Henry Travers is the father, Patricia Collinge is reunited with Wright from The Little Foxes, and the younger sister is Edna May Wonacott, who had never acted before, and is the smart bookish one of the family. Hitch also worked for the first time with Hume Cronyn as the neighbour; Cronyn was marred to stage actress Jessica Tandy.

A stand-out shot is Wright descending the stairs and the camera rushing in to a big close up of an emerald ring which links Charlie to the murders. Joseph Valentine is on camera, the score is by Dmitri Tiomkin.

It's full of delicious humour and tension and Hitchcock touches, like the black smoke of a train creating a foreboding atmosphere:

These two shots reflect that Cotten and Wright are often shot like mirrors of each other. These are in fact from two different scenes.

Uncle Charlie is suspicious of visiting journalists...

...Charlie knows her uncle is the killer.

Whilst filming there, Hitch was invited by locals to visit Bodega Bay, half an hour away, a location which struck him as a good one, which he used 21 years later for The Birds. It was originally a short story by Daphne Du Maurier, written by Evan Hunter but then rewritten by Hitch himself. It begins a bit like a rom com with supposedly spoiled rich girl Tippi Hedren trying to impress solicitor Rod Taylor by visiting his home town. There's indeed quite a lot of character development, involving the couple and - this is where Jessica Tandy comes back in - Rod's mother, who's scary, but it does all play off by the end.

Tippi's look was molded entirely by Hitch, as was her performance. There's not the slightest hint of any impropriety between them from McGilligan's intensively researched book and she was, of course, then in his next film Marnie. And she makes a creditable appearance.

I've mentioned before the ten minute diner scene. It's like a little play within the film, as almost all the people in it we haven't met before. It's also beautifully staged and blocked and is worthy of study on its own. The ornithologist is veteran stage and screen actress Ethel Griffies (debut on London stage in 1899 aged 21!)

The birds attacks are really quite well done, and increase in intensity with the final one on Hedren a quite terrifying scene, brilliantly edited from a week's worth of filming. (George Tomasini is the editor.)

And Hitch got his wish to make a film without music, which makes the ending all that more effective.

Evil Under the Sun (1982 Guy Hamilton)

Anthony Shaffer adapts Agatha's 1941 Poirot novel deliberately, so that no one is killed for 50 minutes. Instead we're checking out all the staff and guests: Maggie Smith, Colin Blakeley, Diana Rigg, James Mason, Jane Birkin, Nicholas Clay (the weak link), Roddie McDowell, Sylvia Miles, Dennis Quilley and Emily Hone. Poirot is Ustinov.

A most satisfying story but made with nowhere near the imagination and style of Murder on the Orient Express. Also the decision to use only Cole Porter as incidental music a mistake. Liked the umbrellas though.

Mallorca beautifully shot by Christopher Challis, interiors at Wembley.

The Best Years of Our Lives (1946 William Wyler)

Just about one of the greatest films of all time, as fully jotted here.

We were focusing on Daniel Mandell's Oscar winning editing this time, there certainly is a lot to it - his neat dissolves from face to face, for example, or the sequence shot from the taxi where they arrive back in Boon City. A former acrobat, Mandell went on to edit several later Billy Wilder films including The Apartment.

All the cast are great. Myrna Loy never looks like she is acting - she just is the character she's playing. Teresa Wright is so subtle, she totally makes the scenes she's in - my favourite with Virginia Mayo in the mirrors, which is so beautifully worked out, in which we she realises quite what a bitch the other woman is. Neither of them were even nominated, which is absurd. It is I think Wright's best performance.

It's quite subtle - Dana's dad is clearly an alcoholic. Where's his mum? Hortense is Gladys George, also The Maltese Falcon, the father is Roman Bohnen. Steve Cochran is the wannabe boyfriend, Dean White the ex-serviceman farmer.

Robert Sherwood's screenplay is also beautifully nuanced, such as when the morning after Dana asks  Teresa why she isn't married already and she says 'The good ones are all taken' suggesting she already thinks he's one of the good ones - a spark early on. Also the number of sequences that are silent.

Murder Is Easy (2023 Meenu Gaur, writer Sian Ejiwunmi-Le Berre)

Agatha's 1939 novel has been given a racial spin: our hero is now a Nigerian, David Jonsson, seemingly the best dressed man in England, with an inexhaustible wardrobe, and the dodgy doctor (Mathew Baynton) seems to be promoting ethnic cleansing (with his book 'Racial Hygiene') - a storyline that doesn't really go anywhere (now I think about it).

Set in 1954, the protagonist has met a nice old lady on a train, Penelope Wilton, who's shared her thoughts that villagers are being murdered - before being murdered herself. Jonsson investigates, quickly running into feisty individualist Morfydd Clark. Douglas Henshall is a nice Major with Nigerian connections. Plus: Mark Bonnar, Nimra Bucha, Kathryn Howden, Sinead Matthews, Tamzin Outhwaite, Tom Riley, Phoebe Licorish.

The cast don't quite gel for me. Meenu's work seems to have been limited in India, with a couple of World on Fire episodes here, and maybe that inexperience is the cause. Still we enjoyed it more than those dark Sarah Phelps versions of late. Reviews were generally unfavourable. That this was the writer's only credit does not help matters either. In fact the more I think about it, I don't know what the BBC thought they were doing entrusting their flagship Christmas show to two such inexperienced people.

Lot 249 (2023 Mark Gatiss & scr)

A 30 minute adaptation of a Conan Doyle short story with recognisable elements. Only - the ending is a bit of an anticlimax. Suggestion this may be budding Holmes and Watson is of course a red herring.

Well acted by Kit Harrington, John Heffernan, especially Freddie Fox, Colin Ryan. Photographed by Kieran McGuigan.

The Man Who Invented Christmas (2017 Bharat Nalluri)

Nothing much to add to this. Dan Stevens holds it together well. Jonathan Pryce stands out as his feckless father. Christopher Plummer as Scrooge, Justin Edwards as his friend, Morfydd Clark the faithful wife, Anna Murphy, all good, as are Miles Jupp, Ian McNeice, Bill Paterson, Donald Sumpter (Marley), Simon Callow, John Henshaw. Nalluri had been a TV director of the Spooks, Torchwood variety.

君の名は。 / Your Name. (2016 Makoto Shinkai & co-scr)

A romantic, time travel, body-swap animation (!) intended I guess for young adults, is nevertheless most interesting and stunningly designed and animated.

Voices: Ryunosuke Kamiki and Mone Kamishiraishi. Animation director: Masahi Ando.

It was the third largest grossing Japanese film of all time.

Animation certainly has become an exalted art form. 5 Centimeters Per Second (2007) and The Garden of Words (2013) also look fabulous. Feelings of young people, background design, lighting all Shinkai trademarks. He draws and animates his own storyboards with his own voice doing the character parts, and that is then handed over to the animation team.

The Mirror Crack'd (1980 Guy Hamilton)

An uninteresting adaptation, not well written or directed - for example, when film star Elizabeth Taylor arrives at the fete, we see close ups of kids holding out autograph books, but in the wide shot they're not there. A starry cast doesn't really help, with Geraldine Chaplin taking the First Prize for me. With Angela Lansbury, Edward Fox, Rock Hudson, Kim Novak, Tony Curtis, Wendy Morgan, Charles Gray.

That wasn't Christopher Challis playing the DP. Filmed in Kent: Shoreham plays St Mary Meade and the big house is St Clere Estate, Heaverham (location also for The Great and Gangs of London). As they were filming in real interiors, the old school system of key lighting had to be abandoned, and Novak begun to be suspicious that she was being badly photographed, and complained to the producers. They arranged for everything they had shot to be shown to her. The next day she threw her arms around Challis and apologised, saying she looked fabulous, and from then on their relationship was great. (Source: Challis's book 'Are They Really So Awful?')

Did like the beginning though - a film being projected in the village hall breaks down before the end, and Marple reveals to the audience who the killer was!

The Lady Vanishes (1938 Alfred Hitchcock)

The chaos of the opening - an avalanche in an obscure European country has caused a train cancellation - seems to me reflective of the pre-war tensions and chaos of 1938. This becomes more evident as foreign powers are behind the mystery of the vanishing lady. And - a tip to the kind of war we're going to get - holding up a white flag (handkerchief) won't stop you getting killed.    

I am an idiot because it's taken me this long to realise the strangled singer is the one passing on the code to Dame May Whitty.

It's very funny, particularly in the attitudes of the two Brits, whose references to Britain 'being on the brink' aren't talking about war (well, of course that is the sub text) but cricket!

There's very cheeky humour throughout. And that chaos is reflected elsewhere - the messy scrap between Redgrave and magician Philip Leaver makes one think ahead to the very messy murder in Torn Curtain. And a railway carriage full of birds? Ok that may be stretching things too far, but the bird getting into the crate with the calf is hilarious.

And there's Hitch at the end at the railway station!

Lots of good humour throughout. Cab driver to kissing couple in back: "Are you going anywhere?"

Fisherman's Friends: One And All (2022 Meg Leonard, Nick Moorcroft & scr)

Clearly rushed out to capitalise on the success of the first part, this isn't as good - the storylines are thin, barely existent. Good songs again, though we're in danger of being repeated upon. Mainly about James Purefoy's reaction to Dad David Hayman having died, romance with wild Irish singer Imelda May, getting to Glastonbury.

Port Isaac is the setting.

Toy Story 4 (2019 Josh Cooley)

Now in the company of a little girl, Woody feels he needs to look after her new toy, which she has made out of items in the trash, Mr Forky, which leads the cowboy on to an encounter with another fifties doll and her rather sinister ventriloquist dummy henchmen. The jokes and animation are up to the usual Pixar standard. Loved the three slightly gay action figures.

There are rather a lot of story / screenplay credits, well eight for original story - the screenplay is credited to Andrew Stanton & Stephanie Folsom.

It's Lightyear (the origin story) that features a same sex kiss which has caused it to be banned in certain silly countries, like the UAE, Egypt, Malaysia and Indonesia. Wouldn't it be fun to be gay in one of those countries?

Planes, Trains and Automobiles (1987 John Hughes & scr)

 I like the guy in the second motel who takes the watch as part payment, Martin Ferrero. Also think the 'Automobiles' the most successful part of the story.

There's something slightly scary about Martin's wife, played by Laila Robins.

This is an interesting interview about the editing of the film by Paul Hirsch. It confirms what I'd read elsewhere, that the ending - Martin on his own on the train figuring out Candy is single - was constructed out of the material and makes a much better ending (even if it is slightly odd that the train seems to come back into the same station). Also that it was a three and three-quarter hour original assembly.

The film I was thinking of which references this, where Candy cameos and helps someone to get home is... of course... Home Alone.

A Christmas Story (1983 Bob Clark & co-scr, co-prod)

I thought this and Black Christmas (1974) were back-to-back - I was wrong. Clark also directed the infamous Porky's (1981). Covered here.

I had only been thinking of the scene where the boy is so wrapped up against the cold that he can barely walk - and not remembering what it was from. And Q had had the same kind of deja vu moment with the leg lamp!

I read that Clark made a sequel in the nineties, It Runs in the Family, also based on Jean Shepherd's reminiscences, but it doesn't work nearly so well.

Room For One More (1952 Norman Taurog)

Can't argue with this. Though I do think Max Steiner's amazing - for example the scene with the highly strung girl (Iris Mann, not known for anything else) where Betsy tries to kiss her good night and she flinches away there's a wonderful powerful rumble from Mr Steiner. Clifford Tatum Jr is the angry young man.

You wonder whether Cary Grant's ad libbing in places.

Friends (1994 - 2004)

I always forget that Friends is set in Greenwich Village - it's nice seeing those wide shots that show you it's less skyscrapery than a lot of the island. Their apartments seem to be situated on the corner of Grove Street and Bedford Street. The average rental price for apartments in the Village is now about $5000 a month.

Ross is such a whiny shit, thus we love the episode in Season 9 where Joey keeps punching him in the face.

The Long Kiss Goodnight (1996 Renny Harlin)

It IS a Christmas film, written by Shane Black, as housewife recovers from amnesia, discovers she's an ass-kicking government agent - who is now a nuisance. Geena Davis' transference of character is fun, as is burgeoning relationship with Samuel L Jackson. Baddies are a mixed bunch. Ending is preposterous.

William Goldenberg leads the editing team, which comprises two first assistants and eight assistant editors, which I think is a bit excessive.

Photographed by Guillermo Navarro.

Decline and Fall (2017 Guillem Morales)

I feel that James Woods' adaptation and Guillem Morales' direction of actors renders Evelyn Waugh broader than he might have been; I sense (from reading a little of the opening) that in William Boyd's hands, the material would have been darker and less farcical.

Jack Whitehall is fine in lead role, Stephen Graham good as suspicious criminal character. The  overplaying starts to make itself felt with Douglas Hodge, David Suchet, Vincent Franklin. With Oscar Kennedy (good as the son), Eva Longoria, Matthew Beard, Steve Speirs.

The music's too solemn, also.

Episode in prison with decapitating man could arguably be omitted; ending though in which he's saved (by being 'killed' in an operation) very satisfying.

And why is his former friend now a spy who relishes sending him to prison? I feel we should know.

So overall, a bit of a failure.

Couldn't track down the house

Remember the Night (1939 Mitchell Leisen)

Yes, the 'Aw shucks' film. We were entertaining each other by unnecessarily explaining Preston Sturges' sub-text to each other. When you think of Stanwyck in Double Indemnity you realise how great she is - you're sucked so into this story by her and her thinking face. No doubt Billy's future editor Doane Harrison is also a good contributor to the film.

Cast includes Beulah Bondi (Make Way for Tomorrow, It's a Wonderful Life), Elizabeth Patterson, Sterling Holloway (a notable Disney voice actor), Fred 'Snowflake' Toones. Photographed by Ted Tetzlaff, music by Frederic Hollander.

Vigil Season 2 (2023 Tom Edge)

In a training exercise, armed drones turn on and murder soldiers. Cops Suranne Jones and pregnant girlfriend Rose Leslie are called in to investigate. It's complicated by the fact the exercise was orchestrated by teams in both Scotland and a fictitious Arab country, played by Morocco. It turns into a complicated but engaging tale of corruption in high places.

With Dougray Scott (a little wooden?), Gary Lewis, Romola Garai (who doesn't seem quite right as a C.O., or even as a soldier, to be honest - too emotional), Chris Jenks, Hiba Medina, Oscar Salem, Amir El-Masry (dodgy MI5 colleague), and Tommy Sim'aan, rather good as the imprisoned activist.

6 x 1 hour for BBC.

Your Christmas Or Mine 2 (2023 Jim O'Hanlon)

Actors must have been offered a lot of money to appear in script that just isn't funny, and totally predictable. My takeaway feeling was just boredom.

Whether it's really Austria or a green screen studio I really couldn't be bothered to find out.

With Angela Griffith, Asa Butterfield, Cora Kirk, David Bradley, Alex Jennings, Jane Krakowski (30 Rock, Ally McBeal), Daniel Mays, Rhea Norwood.

Films of the Year 2023

 The Banshees of Inisherin.

Babylon.

Living.

Iranian cinema: Abbas Kiarostami's 'Koker' trilogy, twice. And Hit the Road and Three Faces. AND Taxi and Offside.

My last two Tarkovsky's:The Sacrifice. Ivan's Childhood.

Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse. Just didn't expect how much I would love this.

The Uncle So good considering we'd never heard of it before.

Bedlam. The last Val Lewton is a corker.

Drive My Car.

Rye Lane and Saltburn (two films connected by our great Vic Boydell).

John Carney's Flora and Son.

TV's Blue Lights. The Gold. Endeavour. The Woman in the Wall. You & Me. Get Shorty. Boat Story.

Streaming: The MMM finale. Perry Mason: Season 2. Poker Face. Only Murders in the Building. And the amazing Atlanta.

No Man Of Her Own (1932 Wesley Ruggles)

A very thin story idea which barely fills 80 minutes. Bored small town girl Lombard is dated (bothered is another word, pestered is yet another) by card sharp Gable and ends up marrying him. She discovers his dirty ways and sets out to reform him - which she does, as she loves the guy!

Mainly worth seeing for Lombard, who's as fresh as usual. She and Gable got on well - this is the film on which she presented the actor with a ham, with his face on it!

She's photographed in her pre-code undies by Leo Tover. With Grant Mitchell, George Barbier, Dorothy Mackaill, Elizabeth Patterson (Remember the Night, Dinner at Eight, Bluebeard's Eighth Wife).

Blackwell's Island did have a prison in those days - it was later renamed Roosevelt Island.

Lombard appears to be wearing a calculator

Ms. Lombard was still married to William Powell then - the great Gable-Lombard romance happened after.

Paramount.

Nader and Simin, A Separation / جدایی نادر از سیمین (2011 Asghar Farhadi & scr)

The opening: passports and official papers being photocopied, from the POV of the copier! Yes, I don't think I've seen that before.

A powerful, devastating film in which things go from bad to worse as a mother moves out of the house, leaving her husband and teenage daughter to look after his Alzheimer's father and an unreliable carer. Great acting, all seem totally believable. Particularly should mention the carer's unstable husband Shahab Hosseini and his daughter Kimia Hosseini (I don't think they're related). With Payman Maadi, Leila Hatami, Sareh Bayat.

In particular you feel for the couple's daughter, played by the director's daughter Sarina Farhadi (they were also reteamed in 2021's A Hero), who experiences everyone lying and has to make difficult decisions alone.

Won the Oscar for Best Foreign Film, making Farhadi the first Iranian winner.

The beginning...

...and the end. The symbolic separation couldn't be clearer.

Photographed by Mahmoud Kalari. Very distinctive from the other Iranian films we're been watching, this is fast paced and incisively edited by Haedeh Safiyari, who also cut Farhadi's The Salesman - one of our Invisible Women. Because of her I've just bought No One Knows About Persian Cats! The framing and filming within the couple's apartment feels very claustrophobic.

The one thing I knew about Farhadi before watching this is that one of his favourite films is The Apartment.