The Lady Vanishes (1938 Alfred Hitchcock)

To round off our most interesting and enjoyable Hitchcock quadruple bill.

Reviewed here.

Family Plot (1976 Alfred Hitchcock)

Immediately gripping but bizarre plot follows two independent storylines involving medium and taxi-driving boyfriend (the great Barbara Harris and Bruce Dern) and kidnappers William Devane and Karen Black.

Film is one of his light-hearted and frothy affairs with a splendid but funny automobile incident in the vein of NBNW and a true Hitchcock moment when a priest enters a cafe with his five young study group charges, only to be joined a minute later by a stunning brunette... And a gripping finale.

Story derives from Victor Canning's The Rainbird Pattern via Ernest Lehman (one of his last). The music's by John Williams (using a synthesizer for colour) and shot by Leonard South.

The film's last shot - and thus Hitchcock's last moment to audience - is Harris winking to us about the con she's just played: I found that extremely fitting.

The Man Who Knew Too Much (1955 released '56, Alfred Hitchcock & prod)

We missed him again - he's watching the acrobats in the Marrakech market. Though Herrmann also appears, as the conductor of Arthur Benjamin's Storm Cloud.

Tons of fun viz. Stewart's uncomfortable episode in (beautifully recreated) Moroccan restaurant, stabbing in market, escape from chapel, hilarious episode in taxidermist (reminiscent of Hitch's thirties British period), incredible silent-movie sequence in Albert Hall. And best of all, the hotel guests who don't leave! (Writer John Michael Hayes.)

Good cast as usual, Bernard Miles unrecognisable, Brenda de Banzie (Hobson's Choice), and particularly Yves Brainville as a suspicious police inspector.

Strangers on a Train (1951 Alfred Hitchcock & prod)

From Patricia Highsmith novel, published a year earlier, adapted by Whitfield Cook, written by Raymond Chandler (unsatisfactory, apparently) and Czenzi Ormonde, film unravels like a bad dream in which elegant psychopath Robert Walker attempts to trade murders with Farley Granger. Good cast includes Marion Lorne as mother, Leo G Carroll, Patricia Hitchcock, Ruth Roman, Kasey Rogers (Granger's wife) and Norma Varden (strangulee at dinner party). Walker was dead of an alcohol-drug overdose inside a year.

Shot by Robert Burks and scored by Dmitri Tiomkin. Several outstanding moments including a bizarre fight on an out-of-control merry-go-round which is both funny and frightening at the same time.

Peeping Tom (1960 Michael Powell)

 

The film that all but killed Powell's career is no more violent or shocking than the same year's big hit Psycho, and shares with that film a sympathetic killer, here played by the recently deceased Karl-Heinz Böhm, a seriously nice man who devoted his later years to African charity projects.

In my ignorance I once thought that the gorgeously muted colour palette was borrowed from Cardiff, but it's clearly the work of Otto Heller.

Briskly put together by Noreen Ackland film has some humour but misses Pressburger, who when asked for his opinion claimed never to have seen it, which I find difficult to believe. Anna Massey finds herself on our screens once again; piano score by Brian Easdale

This Happy Breed (1944 David Lean)

Kay Walsh gives one of the great screen performances; Celia Johnson ain't half bad too. Love the story that the latter liked to go home punctually and after making cast and crew cry over reunion scene (one of the great emotional moments in film) upped and casually buggered off.

From this viewing these lines have become embedded in my head:

"Chuck us the crackers Vi."

and

"Go and cherish yourself off home."

Quite why this is one of the best films ever made I can't properly explain.

The Sailor Who Fell From Grace with the Sea (1976 Lewis John Carlino)

I was always intrigued by the title - from Mishima's novel, adapted by the unprolific Carlino. And I still don't understand it having finally seen the film. But it's just great. First class performances from Sarah Miles and Kris Kristofferson, but just as crucially, from Jonathan Kahn and chilling Earl Rhodes, without whom the film would be devoid of bite.

Absolutely brilliant Panavision photography of Devon locale by Douglas Slocombe, strikingly edited by Tony Gibbs, who gives us the longest dissolves, but cuts scenes like the finale with savage precision.

Two for the Road (1967 Stanley Donen)

What I'd really like to ask Frederic Raphael - and he is still alive, so I could - is: was your original script written in this jumbled up, non-linear way, or did Donen do that? (Since asking that question I bought the published screenplay. It is written exactly in this way, making it one of the best and cleverest screenplays ever.)

This even includes the trick of seeing the different time periods overlap within the same scene, viz. where the newer versions of themselves pass the old ones by on the road. It's very clever, and manages an insightful, trenchant look at a relationship along the way.

Also very funny, not just in Hepburn's ghastly wardrobe, but in lines like "The girls were absolutely potty about you and so - heaven knows - were you" and the shot of lobsters followed by the sunburned couple.

They were certainly happier in the old days.

Claude Dauphin is the client and Nadia Gray his wife, William Daniels and Elenor Bron the offensive Manchesters ("Howie, you're the biggest untapped pocket of natural gas known to man"), Georges Descrières the smooth lover and it's not in fact Jacqueline Bisset's debut (she had already been in The Knack, Casino Royale, Drop Dead Darling  and Cul-de-Sac).

Far too easily dismissed as a star vehicle travelogue romcom, film fully embraces the nouvelle vague and is dazzling, sardonic, tender, loudly funny and unbeatable.

First saw it on TV on 25 July 1977 and grew increasingly to love it over many viewings, including a memorable cinema screening in Paris on 24 October, 1992.

The line that we keep misquoting is in fact "No Ruthie, I didn't. I did not. No. No, I didn't. No."

But where is that hotel?

The One and Only (1978 Carl Reiner)

Henry Winkler (fantastic) and Kim Darby. With Gene Saks, Hervé Villechaize, William Daniels, Polly Holliday. Written with the unmistakeable pen of Steve Gordon, and as funny and wacky as you'd expect ("Haven't we met before? You were taller, and older.")

Shot by Victor J. Kemper (Last of the Red Hot Lovers, Tycoon).

I Walked with a Zombie

It wasn't really hot enough, or quite late enough (10 past 10), to put this on, but its atmosphere is unbeatable...

http://nicksfilmjottings.blogspot.co.uk/2013/07/i-walked-with-zombie-1943-jacques.html

21 Jump Street (2012 Phil Lord, Christopher Miller)

Michael Bacall's screenplay is a hardly subtle yet knowing subversion of eighties genre pics with a particularly foul-mouthed black detective stereotype played by Ice Cube, though it becomes rather silly (if that isn't in itself a contradiction) in story of high school dealers of HFS (shown in amusing stages of effects). Watch this Oscar-nominated, Scorsese-acting Jonah Hill fellow. With Brie Larson, David Franco.

Favourite moment though is Channing Tatum diving through a gong.

Fargo (2014)

Ten part TV series, with Coens acting in exec prod roles, is faithful to the tone of the original though totally reinvents the story - as such a great credit to writer Noah Hawley. None of the original crew are involved - Jeff Russo is the composer.

Martin Freeman is as great as ever in subtly shifting role, Billy Bob Thornton electrifying as souless killer, Allison Tolman and Colin Hanks also great as our homespun police officers.

Favourite shot is in episode 9 where camera tracks along a country road, picks up speed and is then joined by a passing truck..  and it's a year later.

Ending is slightly anti-climactic, but satisfying. Love also the irony that it takes the entire series for the police chief to realise he's in the wrong job.

Gideon of Scotland Yard (1958 John Ford)

We accompany tetchy, efficient and cool in a crisis Scotland Yard detective Jack Hawkins as he deals with corruption in the ranks, payroll snatches and murder - the latter two triggered somewhat implausibly by an impoverished artist, with comic relief from former army colleague (and David Niven's great mate) Michael Trubshawe and a salmon (which must have gone off by the end of the day).

Anna Massey debuts aged 21 (we later saw one of her last performances in Lewis in  2007). Cyril Cusack, considering he is top billed support, is in it as little as he is in any film.

Ealing's TEB Clarke comments on a woman who 'went from pro to dopey'... I wonder if that in itself was a censorship issue?

Photographed by the fabulous Freddie Young in a largely location-set London by Western specialist Ford.

The Darjeeling Limited (2007 Wes Anderson)

Whimsical family character study written by Anderson, Roman Coppola and Jason Schwartzman and populated by the latter, Owen Wilson and Adrien Brody, with Amara Karan, Waris Ahluwalia (snake loving guard), Wallace Wolodarsky, Anjelica Huston and Bill Murray.

Richly photographed as always by Robert Yeoman.

Episode involving drowning of village boy is the unexpected depth at the centre of the film.

You can't help smiling throughout a Wes Anderson film. Also most interestingly shot and staged e.g. succession of bizarre railway carriage compartments at the end.

A Bout de Souffle (1960 Jean-Luc Godard)

The film that irrevocably changed the rules of editing is rarely emulated in style: the numerous cuts within scenes and across times is just as riveting as it must have been when it first appeared. In a way, a blueprint for all Godard's films that followed.

Jean-Paul Belmondo and Jean Seberg star and most weirdly there is a character called 'Laszlo Kovacs'... Raoul Coutard's naturalistic lightning is in its own way as revolutionary as Cecile's Decugis' fabulous cutting (she is credited for Shoot the Pianist but we know she didn't in fact edit it).

Truffaut gave him the idea and wrote the screenplay to help support him getting started, the same way Rivette had encouraged him to make a short (and Resnais to make a long).

Adventureland (2009 Greg Mottola)

Jesse Eisenberg is very good as a diffident young man working in fun park, romancing Kristen Stewart and being led astray by Margarita Levieva (who I guess we recognise from Revenge). Able support from Apatow regulars Bill Hader, Kristen Wiig and Martin Starr, with Ryan Reynolds and obnoxious friend Michael Zegen, who joyously finally gets his.. That Jesse doesn't drop his alky dad in it is a subtle touch.

Also written by Superbad Mottola (a serious film lover - as evidenced by his Top 10 list for Criterion) and very colourfully shot by Terry Stacey.

Anne and Muriel / Les Deux Anglaises et le Continent (1971 François Truffaut)

Emerging from a depression over failed love affairs with Françoise Dorléac (died in car accident) and her sister Catherine Deneuve (rejected him), Truffaut returned to beloved author Henri-Pierre Roché (Jules et Jim) and tried for a novelistic approach to film - which results in a somewhat talky hour-long exposition, rightfully though dwelling on the insufferable weight of moral behaviour which causes Claude to declare love and marriage to Muriel without having even touched her hand.

Nestor Almendros lights the cottage and rural atmosphere realistically, and it makes you reflect on how much more used to the cold were people of these times.

Anyway, we shift up a gear when Claude returns to fin du siècle Paris and starts an affair with suddenly liberated Anne, with those familiar moments of lightning editing, and changes of both scene and scenery (including a leisurely tracking shot from a moving boat) and the introduction of new characters. Then Muriel comes to stay... In the swinging of romantic fortunes between sisters, film makes me think of Woody Allen.

The moment where Almendros catches the latter two lovers against the sun reflecting water on the bow of a ship is a true and beautiful case of 'see it, capture it' (Cartier-Bresson's 'the decisive moment').

The girls are Kika Markham (with whom inevitably Truffaut had the obligatory affair) and Stacey Tendeter and Claude is of course Léaud. This was the 130 minute director's cut. And it's rather good (iris dissolve on 'good').

Good Neighbor Sam (1964 David Swift)

Good to finally see this, copy from Spain, as the US version that I had bought twice was in fact Operation Mad Ball, despite the packaging!

On the cusp of pop art and Sgt Pepper, film is quite wacky, with mad inventions and paintings on top of a sort of sneaky double-affair plot which Hollywood is so good at, involving ad exec Jack Lemmon (with several classic Lemmonisms), wife Dorothy Provine, neighbour Romy Schneider and her ex Mike Connors.

Film is fun but too long though e.g. dinner scene with client Edward G Robinson doesn't add anything, mad drive around San Francisco is well filmed but irrelevant sub-plot. Plus painting over ads could have led to even funnier payoff with agency (if they'd turned out really popular).

Edward Andrews - Lemmon's boss - is familiar to us from Avanti.

Music de Vol, ph. Burnett Guffey, ed Charles Nelson (incredible credits, looks like was long at Columbia).

And the interesting looking hotel is the Bradbury, which crops up in all sorts of films, such as Chinatown, The Artist, (500) Days of Summer, DOA and even Blade Runner!

The Black Windmill (1974 Don Siegel)

Self-controlled MI6 agent Michael Caine attempts to free kidnapped son with boss's diamonds. Donald Pleasance good as his immediate superior, with a great cast comprising Janet Suzman (his ex), Delphine Seyrig (who I stupidly didn't recognise under efficient English accent), John Vernon (baddy), Joss Ackland, Clive Revill, Catherine Schell and even Joyce Carey as a receptionist!

Liked scene where Pleasance is barely interested in kidnap story but more enthused by exploding briefcase; Tony Gibbs' cutting round a table where Pleasance inadvertently describes a target's name as 'Sean Connery'.

Leigh Vance's screenplay doesn't bother to wrap up the plot too well, but who cares? Source novel 'Seven Days to a Killing' is by Clive Egleton. It was shot by Ousama Rawi in Panavision (thus do not watch ITV4's cropped version), the only Iraqi cameraman I'm aware of, who is still working making prestigous TV mini-series. Roy Budd's music is the only non-event.

Dallas Buyers Club (2013 Jean-Marc Vallée)

Matthew McConaughey looking startlingly unlike himself; Jared Leto the drag queen (both won Oscars); Jennifer Garner a doctor; Steve Zahn is the familiar faced cop.

Seems to peter out a bit, like it doesn't have a proper ending.... Like this review....

Vallée (a Canadian, who also made Young Victoria) also briskly edited, assisted by Martin Pensa.