Rear Window (1954 Alfred Hitchcock)

The film was at least nominated for Oscars for the Director, Writer (John Michael Hayes) and Cinematographer (Robert Burks), and also for sound recording (Loren Ryder). Not sound mixing you note, they didn't give awards for that then. They lost to Elia Kazan for On the Waterfront, which is in no way comparable to this, George Seaton for The Country Girl, which was in itself an adaptation of Clifford Odet's play, Milton Krasner for Three Coins in the Fountain, a lush widescreen film that is in no way as technically as good, and The Glenn Miller Story respectively.

As we saw in an accompanying documentary, Hitchcock on Sound, the director made careful and specific notes about exactly what and where his sounds were planted and shaped. 

I personally would have thought James Stewart and Thelma Ritter should have been nominated - Stewart's performance, all reactions to things that probably weren't happening around him, is fantastic.

Finally tracked down the painting as Henri Matisse, Still Life With Asphodels 1902, (Nature morte aux asphodèles) - not I think one from Hitch's own collection. Are we expected to think that photographer L.B. Jefferies owns the original?

The couple sleeping on their fire escape and it starts to rain makes me think Will Eisner.

The feeling of the argument in which Stewart keeps trying to talk but Kelly talks over him is very real-sounding.

Young and Innocent (1937 Alfred Hitchcock)

Here. I don't mind Nova Pilbeam or Derrick De Marney, though Percy Marmont (her father), Edward Rigby ('Old Will') and Mary Clare (the suspicious aunt) get the acting honours. Hitch teased De Marney incessantly but treated 18 year old Pilbeam with deference, and they both adored the dog (who is saved from the mine, if you pay attention.)

Charles Burnett helped develop the screenplay, originally known as A Shilling for Candles but then Myron Selznick nabbed him for Hollywood. Many other writers contributed, including Joan Harrison, the Hitchcocks and others, all overlooked by Angus MacPhail. Hitch is at his most sarcastic about the workings of the English police (perhaps thinking back to that practical joke played on him as a child when he was 'imprisoned' at the local police station).

Charles Frend is the editor, Bernard Knowles the remarkable cameraman.

Stand By Me (1986 Rob Reiner)

The film that put Reiner and Castle Rock on the map (and - film-wise - Stephen King). And River Phoenix. So a landmark film for several reasons. Raynold Gideon and Bruce Evans adapted it.

Will Wheaton and his grown-up alter ego Richard Dreyfuss narrate an expedition to see a dead body. Apart from Phoenix, Corey Feldman makes a good impression as the slightly deranged member of the gang. (Sadly his later films are of the Z Grade variety - who did he piss off in the business?) Jerry O'Connell makes the fourth. Plus Keifer Sutherland who had been in a few things including the now-disappeared The Bay Boy (1984 Daniel Petrie). And John Cusack.

To be honest they seem too old to be talking about Donald Duck et al. But the sad epilogue still tickles the olfactory passages.

Photographed by Thomas Del Ruth, son of director Roy Del Ruth (the 1931 Maltese Falcon, Blonde Crazy, Lady Killer, Topper Returns, many musicals). Tom is of course best known to us for shooting 107 episodes of The West Wing. Robert Leighton edited and J Dennis Washington was the production designer.

Our Town (1940 Sam Wood)

An impossibly young William Holden and Martha Scott star in this respectful adaptation of Thornton Wilder's play, giving it a happier ending. The screenplay is credited to Wilder, Frank Craven and Harry Chandlee. Craven also plays the omniscient narrator as he did the stage manager in the original play. We watched the restored version.

"I'll trust you for ten years, George. But not a day more!"

Holden's parents are Fay Bainter and Thomas Mitchell, Scott's are Beulah Bondi and Guy Kibbee. Philip Wood makes an impression as the drunkard organ player.

It's really good.

Music by Aaron Copland, photographed by Bert Glennon, production design by William Cameron Menzies, visual effects by Jack Cosgrove, edited by Sherman Todd. An independent Sol Lesser production released by United Artists.

L.A. Confidential (1997 Curtis Hanson & co-scr)

From a James Ellroy novel, adapted by Brian Helgeland and Hanson. Screenplay won Oscar, as did Kim Basinger. Great screenplay hooks you in  and never lets go.

Directed with a brilliant momentum - the editor is Peter Honess, also Oscar nominated, as was cinematographer Dante Spinotti (some of the focus pulling is wonderful). Music by Jerry Goldsmith and production design by Jeannine Oppewall.

Great cast: Guy Pearce, Russell Crowe, Kevin Spacey, Basinger, James Cromwell, Danny DeVito, David Strathairn, Ron Rifkin (corrupt DA).

This all came about because we were watching Mulholland Falls, which may be a kind of wannabe, same period, same tough LA cops thing - but it was in the wrong aspect ratio, and it made me think to put this on instead. More about Curtis Hanson here.

Stuff about Pearce's short sightedness good too

This Gun For Hire is playing in Veronica Lake lookalike Kim Basinger's house.

A follow up, based on another James Ellroy novel, White Jazz, was announced, but never came to fruition.

Under Capricorn (1949 Alfred Hitchcock)

There are kind of reverberations of other Hitchcocks too, like Rebecca and Notorious - not to mention Gaslight, also with Bergman. Michael Wilding (An Ideal Husband, Stage Fright, In Which We Serve) arrives in Australia with uncle Cecil Parker, immediately runs into brutish ex-con Joseph Cotten and his crazy wife Ingrid Bergman, and their scheming maid Margaret Leighton.

As I mentioned before, the long takes, an overspill from Rope, are absolutely fascinating and actually make it look ahead of its time. I mean you can see cinematographers like Robert Surtees using a crane elegantly in something like The Bad and the Beautiful, but this goes way beyond that.

"I had to light many sets in one go. the sets were mostly in sections which slide open electronically so that the giant electric crane could enter and exit. Good recorded sound was impossible; the noise was indescribable." When the camera tracks down the guests on the dining table, each one fell onto a mattress with their section of table so the four foot Technicolor camera could get by! (Jack Cardiff, 'Magic Hour'.) It was filmed at Elstree - the Hitchcocks did go home before Frenzy. The cast hated the way it was filmed.

Our 2006 Orbit Media copy is fuzzy and sludgy. The Kino Blu-Ray is apparently the way to go. It seems like in the ball scene that all the actors are wearing green make-up.

Hitch is so in the background it's no fun. And for a number of reasons it doesn't quite come off - the script is lacking, there's no humour, it isn't suspenseful enough - but most interesting and well acted.

The Night of the Demon?? (1957 Jacques Tourneur)

We were about five minutes in when this happened:

And we thought 'Really?' and turned it off.

And the most disappointing thing about it is that Tourneur - director of Cat People and The Leopard Man - knows not to show the monster, but maybe without Val Lewton to influence him, he lost his nerve.

It's weirdly a film of high reputation too (7.4 on IMDB, for example). 

No, Honestly (1974-5 Terence Rigby, Charlotte Bingham)

John Alderton and Pauline Collins in their first tailor-made series. Each begins with a live chat between the couple. John delivers his mad lines in the manner of Eric Morcombe. Pauline's character is quite posh. James Berwick good fun as her dotty father (though only in three episodes).

The Man Who Knew Too Much (1956 Alfred Hitchcock)

Nothing much to add to this. Stewart's discomfort in restaurant scene is splendid. 

There he is!

There's not as much evidence of his complex set-ups in this one, though occasionally he will emphasise a shot:

The taxidermy scene has to be one of his very best.

Ambrose Chappell aka a dodo!

Great sound as usual (plane taking off as kidnapper rings off, echoes of footsteps in London street scene). Great cast.

Hitch had been thinking of 'Americanizing' the film as early as 1938, had even got the Marrakesh murder scene worked out.

He had befriended Angus MacPhail, Michael Balcon's script editor, at the time of the original, and when they met again during the war they had talked about rewriting it. (MacPhail worked on Whisky Galore, Dead of Night and Went the Day Well?) By 1953 the writer had become an alcoholic mess, and Hitch employed him as a way of helping him out, and much of the story outline was worked out between them before John Michael Hayes joined to flesh out the characters. Unaware of how much MacPhail had contributed to the script, Hayes didn't credit him and it caused a falling out between him and the director.

The Albert Hall scene is a marvellous piece of 'Pure Cinema' / silent movie making (I get the irony).

I subsequently learned in a great documentary on Hitch and sound that he made a detailed note that the sound of the opening cymbals should fade into the sound of the coach in the opening shot - what attention to detail.

Confess, Fletch (2022 Greg Mottola & co-scr)

A real mess from Mottola (Adventureland. The Daytrippers), a failed attempt as a wisecracking private eye mystery / thriller involving murder, kidnapping and stolen art. It just isn't funny, and that's the fault of the script, written by Mottola and Zev Borow, based on Gregory McDonald's 'Fletch' books from the 1970s. Terrible title, too.

Jon Hamm, Roy Wood Jr., Ayden Mayeri, Lorenza Izzo, Kyle MacLachlan, Marcia Gay Harden, Annie Mumolo, Lucy Punch, John Slattery.

Love & Death (2023 Creator David E Kelley)

1978. Married (but not to each other) Church folk very deliberately plan to have an affair, which in itself is quite bizarre. They are Elizabeth Olsen (Martha Marcy May Marlene) and Jesse Plemons and their other halves are Lily Rabe and Patrick Fugit, neither of who seem to care about their spouses at all.

On part three of seven and it's already feeling like it's taking too long to tell the story, which is peppered throughout with montages to MOR music of the time. It's based on true events. 

Kelley was a lawyer who wrote the now rare From the Hip, with Judd Nelson, Elizabeth Perkins and John Hurt, co-written and directed by Bob Clark. This got him into L.A. Law on which he ended up as a producer, and also worked on Dougie Howser and Chicago Hope. He's married to Michelle Pfeiffer.

When I woke up, I found it had finished.

Forever Green - Season 2 (1991-2)

It's two years later. The series has published writers and the kids have grown up a bit. This one's 12 episodes.

Good, involving stories, written by Douglas Watkinson, involve wily locals' property development schemes, river pollution, dumping chemicals etc. And does Hilly have a potential boyfriend on the horizon? Freddy definitely needs one - and not dishy sociology teacher Richard Lintern either..

Photographed by Peter Greenhalgh (Clocking Off, Morse  etc.)

Though mainly written by Watkinson, the story involving the suspect provenance of their house was written by Upstairs Downstairs' Jeremy Paul. Interesting that John's character Jack thinks he's one of 'them' whereas Pauline's Hattie thinks they will never be accepted. Episode featuring dead Civil War soldier is nuts!

At the end we waved sadly goodbye.

Spellbound (1945 Alfred Hitchcock)

Ben Hecht's script throws out some inspiring psychobabble, but then also becomes quite credible from the mouth of psychiatrist Michael Chekhov. (This is perhaps a deliberate touch.) Hecht had been undergoing psychiatry himself and he turned the original plot's devil worship theme into 'a manhunt story wrapped up as pseudo-psychoanalysis' (Hitchcock.)

He was Oscar nominated, lost to James Dunn for A Tree Grows in Brooklyn. Miklos Rozsa won for his score, which incorporated a theremin for the first time. (He went on to use it again for The Lost Weekend. Selznick complained to the composer, who said "Yes, I had not only used the theremin but also, the piccolo, the trumpet, the triangle and the violin, goodbye!" (Double Life, Miklos Rozsa.) Selznick's grump was that Wilder's film came out first.)

"Any husband of Constance is a husband of mine."

The Hitchcock appearance, not the only time he's holding a musical instrument:

Loved in the dream scene how far away he appears from the other card player. The scene was reworked once by William Cameron Menzies then again by Jack Cosgrove and the producer was still not really happy with it. Otherwise he gave Hitchcock very little interference.

Edited by Hal Kern. George Barnes shot it. A Selznick picture.

Truffaut didn't like this - he thought it tedious, and that Peck wasn't a 'Hitchcock actor' - his eyes weren't expressive enough!

Shadow of a Doubt (1943 Alfred Hitchcock)

 

Mirrors. The casting of small parts is as great as ever (e.g. landlady at top).

The Hitchcock appearance:

In a great joke, Hitch is holding an unbeatable hand of bridge.

Charlie and Charlie:

I love the elegant way Hitch moves Joseph Valentine's camera around, his graceful pans, or the way he follows characters into rooms or doorways.

Hitch had spotted Teresa Wright (and Patricia Collinge) in The Little Foxes. By way of an audition, Hitch told her the story of the film in full detail, "including the sounds and the music. When I went to see the film, after it was all over, months after it was completed, I watched it and I thought, 'I've seen this film before.' I saw it in his office on that day." (Quoted in Projections 7, 1997.)

Another perfectly cast small role - Janet Shaw. She's a former classmate of Charlie's but it feels like the weight of the world is on her shoulders already:

And (male) Charlie's next victim, Mrs Potter, Frances Carson (also in Foreign Correspondent, Saboteur). And (female) Charlie's flirtatious friend (Estelle Jewell, her only film)... and these are uncredited parts..

Dial M For Murder (1954 Alfred Hitchcock)

Hitch's only film in 3D. He was very experimental. One of his early silents - Champagne I think it was - features a very early example of freeze frame. Blackmail was the first British talkie, and also featured off stage dubbing of the lead actress Anny Ondra. Decades before Bird Man and 1917, Hitch made the first 'continuous take' film, Rope, and in Lifeboat managed to concentrate the action into the one single setting. And in Psycho he innovatively killed off the leading lady a third into the picture. And don't forget that single frame of red in the ending of Spellbound. Not that there's no music in The Birds.

No attempt has been made to 'open out' Frederick Knott's play - like some of Hitch's others, it's set almost exclusively in the apartment of Ray Milland and Grace Kelly (it's not a very big apartment, either); even the court room scene is almost abstract - just Kelly and the Judge in close ups. But it's still very cinematic.

Also features John Williams' most substantial performance. With Robert Cummings and Anthony Dawson. Shot by Robert Burks, edited by Rudi Fehr (Hitch's next film, Rear Window, was the first cut by George Tomasini), music by Dmitri Tiomkin.

And it's not just Truffaut who loves it. Here's Martin Scorsese in 'Projections 7', 1997:

"I like watching Dial M For Murder. It's wonderful to watch because it's a lesson in cutting... Watch how Hitchcock changes the camera angles; watch how the size of the frame changes, on what line of dialogue. It's not just that they change; it's when Hitchcock chooses to do a different set-up. And how different that set-up is. It's very subtle...It's like listening to a fugue by Bach, trying to figure out where the next phrase is beginning and where it ends."

Ring of Bright Water (1969 Jack Couffer & co-scr)

Gavin Maxwell's story, adapted by star Bill Travers and the director. Who's Jack Couffer? He was an animal / nature nut who after the war joined a class led by Slavko Vorkapich, where he collaborated on  a project with Conrad Hall! This led to working at Disney as a cameraman. After this, he ended up living in Africa, where he worked on the second unit of The Ghost in the Darkness and Out of Africa.

Beautifully photographed by Wolfgang Suschitsky with the most mobile of camera operators in Mike Dodds. Lovely music too - Frank Cordell - not just in the main theme but also Mij's theme, played on an oboe, is just perfect. Edited by Reginald Mills.

Bill Travers and Virginia McKenna were a real life couple.

Not another fucking bus! It's another Bedford, the 1955 SB

And not much more can I tell you, other than it's absolutely delightful.

The Shooting (1966 Monte Hellman & co-prod)

A most bizarre and interesting Western. A grubby and mysterious woman Millie Perkins pays Warren Oates and Will Hutchins to accompany her to a remote town for no reason. They end up in the bleakest desert, with gunman Jack Nicholson (who co-produced) tagging menacingly along.

The ending is a real head scrambler, then just fades into white, anticipating the end of Two Lane Blacktop.

Liked the comedy when Hutchins runs for cover, spilling a bag of flour as he runs. And memorable encounter with bearded man in desert.

After Blacktop, Cockfighter is probably Hellman's most successful film, though the unfucked China 9, Liberty 37 is also good.

It was written by Carole Eastman (Five Easy Pieces), photographed by Gregory Sandor and edited, uncredited by Hellman. The scenery is desolate indeed.