Tag Archives: Alfred Hitchcock

Hitchcock and Grant: Darkness Behind the Charm

August 13, 2020 Scott T. Rivers Leave a comment

Alfred Hitchcock and Cary Grant brought out each other’s best attributes in their four collaborations from 1941 to 1959. Hitchcock was the only director who exposed the dark, brooding side of Grant’s suave image, with a sexual tension that somehow evaded the censors. Grant’s presence, in turn, lent a sophistication and elegance rarely seen in Hitchcock’s other works.

Suspicion (1941), Notorious (1946), To Catch a Thief (1955) and North by Northwest (1959) explored Hitchcock’s themes of concealment, degradation and emotional manipulation. By expanding Grant’s acting range, Hitchcock revealed a dark romanticism behind the charm — screwball humor on the edge of a precipice.

Undoubtedly, both men benefited from their partnership. However, imagine if neither had made Notorious and North by Northwest. Hitchcock’s reputation would have endured regardless, but for Grant, those films were essential. In fact, it was Hitchcock who lured Grant from an early retirement to make To Catch a Thief and, in the process, helped revive the screen actor’s career.

Hitchcock and Grant shared a common bond that became more evident with each successive film. They were lonely, insecure men who came from lower middle-class English backgrounds. Furthermore, both were somewhat fearful of women, perfectionistic in their working methods, and enthusiastic about black humor. These character traits helped provide the foundation of their professional relationship.

The element of danger in Cary Grant first emerged in Suspicion. Cut from the same stylistic cloth as Rebecca, Hitchcock referred to Suspicion as the “second English picture I made in Hollywood.” However, Hitchcock began shooting with an unfinished script, resulting in a troubled production and an uncertain dramatic tone.

Suspicion: A missed opportunity.

In this disappointing adaptation of Francis Iles’ novel Before the Fact, Hitchcock cast Grant against type as Johnnie — a reckless, irresponsible playboy who later marries the shy Lina (played by an ineffectual Joan Fontaine, who somehow won an Academy Award for her performance). Only after their marriage does the naive Lina discover that Johnnie is a habitual liar and spendthrift with no money of his own. Because of mounting circumstantial evidence, Lina suspects that her husband is a murderer.

At this point, the film deteriorates into an endless charade as Lina’s belief in Johnnie fluctuates between guilt and innocence. Lina’s psychological tug of war becomes ludicrous once it is revealed that Johnnie never was a murderer — thereby negating everything that has come before.

If Hitchcock and Grant had their way, Suspicion would have evolved into a disturbing thriller rather than a missed opportunity. Unfortunately, RKO had other ideas and altered the framework of Suspicion with the same callous insensitivity that marred Orson Welles’ The Magnificent Ambersons.

When interviewed by François Truffaut in 1962, Hitchcock expressed dissatisfaction with Suspicion and revealed his original ending: “Cary Grant [was] to bring [Joan Fontaine] a glass of milk that’s been poisoned and [she] has just finished a letter: ‘Dear Mother, I’m desperately in love with him, but I don’t want to live because he’s a killer.’ Then, Cary Grant comes in with the fatal glass and she says, ‘Will you mail this letter to Mother for me, dear?’ She drinks the milk and dies. Fade out and fade in on one short shot: Cary Grant, whistling cheerfully, walks over to the mailbox and pops in the letter.”

The illuminated glass of milk.

Seen today, Suspicion is the weakest Hitchcock-Grant collaboration even without RKO’s interference. Grant’s portrayal lacks the polish and depth that would become evident in his remaining work with Hitchcock. Furthermore, there is an absence of sexual chemistry between the Grant and Fontaine characters. Hitchcock also sensed this lack of rapport and, in future films, made certain that Grant was paired with more romantically compatible costars.

The most intriguing development in Suspicion is Hitchcock’s expansion of Grant’s screen persona. During the film’s first half, Grant plays his scenes in a screwball-comedy manner that often is grating. However, in the second half, Hitchcock slows the tempo of Grant’s performance, thus revealing Johnnie’s sinister undertones. Johnnie emerges as a seductive and sociopathic menace not unlike Uncle Charlie in Shadow of a Doubt or Bruno in Strangers on a Train. If Grant (and the studios) had been more daring, he could have played the Joseph Cotten and Robert Walker roles.

Suspicion should be viewed as a blueprint for a more rewarding collaboration: Notorious. Apart from being one of Hitchcock’s masterpieces, the film represents Grant’s strongest dramatic performance. His portrayal of Devlin remains so emotionally cold that it leaves no room for his traditional humor. Ben Hecht’s detailed screenplay also includes a self-revelatory comment by Devlin: “I’ve always been scared of women. I’ll get over it.”

Notorious: Grant’s finest dramatic performance.

In Hitchcock’s cruelest and most disturbing romance, Devlin emerges as an unsympathetic sadist. The counterspy seduces and manipulates Alicia (Ingrid Bergman), an alcoholic nymphomaniac, into helping the U.S. government obtain secrets by marrying the Nazi spy Sebastian (Claude Rains), who actually loves her more than Devlin does.

With the casting of Bergman and Rains, the love triangle in Notorious is similar to Casablanca. However, in Hitchcock’s world, there is no stirring display of patriotism or sentimentality. One feels sorrow for Sebastian when Devlin cruelly locks the car door and drives off with Alicia, leaving Sebastian to face certain death at the hands of his fellow Nazis. Ironically, the humanity of Sebastian makes him a far more sympathetic character than Devlin, who cares little about people, except for the secrets and sexual gratification he can extract from them.

Though Devlin saves Alicia from a poisonous fate, it doesn’t redeem his mean-spirited treatment of her. Even when Devlin tells Alicia that he was “a fat-headed guy full of pain,” it isn’t entirely convincing. Herein lies the brilliance of Hitchcock, who finally strips Grant of his protective charm.

A cruel romance.

Notorious should have been the start of a new dramatic phase in Grant’s career. Instead, he played it safe by starring in a succession of comedies from 1947 to 1953. With the exception of his intelligent performances in Richard Brooks’ Crisis and Joseph Mankiewicz’s People Will Talk, Grant avoided serious roles during that period. Much was lost in the process.

Hitchcock’s fortunes waned after the release of Notorious. The filmmaker would not have another major critical and commercial success until Strangers on a Train in 1951. By the time Hitchcock re-established his cinematic artistry, Grant had retired in 1953 after a string of box-office disappointments.

The retirement lasted two years. In the end, it was Hitchcock who convinced Cary Grant to return to filmmaking. The master of suspense gave the actor a script he couldn’t refuse . . . and some Hitchcockian words of encouragement: “There isn’t a thing wrong with you, old man, that a first-rate screenplay won’t cure. You’d be perfectly splendid in the part. One last thing: Grace Kelly has agreed to play the girl and a good part of the picture will be shot on the Riviera.”

Grant signed on the dotted line and began work on To Catch a Thief (only his second Technicolor feature — the first being 1946′s Night and Day). Hitchcock considered the film a “lightweight story,” yet it remains an important work from one of his most prolific periods. The director’s renewed energy is evident in the vividness of Robert Burks’ cinematography and imaginative use of the newly developed VistaVision process. Though not terribly suspenseful, To Catch a Thief ranks among Hitchcock’s most stylish and elegant achievements.

Grant in his second Technicolor feature.

Of course, the film’s soufflé-like quality would have collapsed without Grant’s flawless performance. As retired cat burglar John Robie, Grant revitalizes his screen presence. He is not playing Robie so much as he is playing Cary Grant — a suave, debonair man who looks good and knows it. This relaxed self-confidence is exactly what Hitchcock wanted.

The Hitchcock-Grant films utilize sex as a form of seduction and manipulation. To Catch a Thief is notable for the bold eroticism of Francie (played by a stunningly cool Grace Kelly) and her aggressive carnal desire for Robie. The offbeat nature of their romance adds to the lasciviousness, especially when Francie suddenly kisses Robie in the hotel corridor — her libido churning away. As in Notorious, Hitchcock effectively films Grant from behind in this brief encounter, making him the center of attention by focusing on the magnetism the viewer cannot see. When Grant turns to the camera, the look of bemused satisfaction on his face remains priceless.

Hitchcock biographer Donald Spoto credited To Catch a Thief for its “classic Freudian notion of sex as larcenous” — a theme the director further developed in Psycho and Marnie. Most apparent is Hitchcock’s equation of jewelry to women’s bosoms, especially during Robie’s foray at the gambling tables and the now-classic “fireworks” sequence. When Francie invites Robie to her hotel suite, he knows what she is after and vice versa: “Look — hold them. Diamonds! The only thing in the world you can’t resist.”

Sex as larceny.

For Hitchcock, the fireworks scene in To Catch a Thief represented the cinematic equivalent of sexual rapture. “Sex on the screen should be suspenseful,” he told Truffaut. “If sex is too blatant or obvious, there’s no suspense. Sex should not be advertised.”

Hitchcock’s fascination with the paradox between the inner fire and cool surface reached its apex in North by Northwest — his last collaboration with Grant. In this legendary cross-country chase-thriller, both men were at their artistic zenith.

Screenwriter Ernest Lehman crafted a story that he called “the Hitchcock picture to end all Hitchcock pictures” — incorporating various ideas and set pieces that Hitchcock never could fit into his previous films. Most important, the role of complacent ad executive Roger Thornhill was written specifically for Grant, who could combine fear and desperation with a light comedic touch. Without Grant, it’s unlikely Hitchcock would have made North by Northwest.

Once again, Hitchcock uses Grant’s charm in a dark and manipulative fashion. However, it is Thornhill who falls victim to a series of unpredictable, nasty surprises. North by Northwest emerges as Hitchcock’s belated revenge on the Grant persona.

The surreal Mount Rushmore climax.

Interestingly, the film has been described as an unofficial sequel to Notorious with its psychosexual relationships and espionage sacrifices. Unlike previous Hitchcock-Grant efforts, North by Northwest evolves into a travelogue of the absurd. Thornhill is mistaken for a man who doesn’t exist and spends most of the film trying to track down the elusive “George Kaplan.”

Nowhere is this surrealism more evident than during the Mount Rushmore climax, with its mind-boggling urgency leading to Thornhill’s moment of truth. The final seconds not only are a moral redemption for Thornhill in his rescue of double agent Eve Kendall (Eva Marie Saint) but also one of sexual fulfillment — emphasized in the suggestive closing shot. It is fitting that the final Hitchcock-Grant thriller ends happily.

With so much written about the Mount Rushmore and crop-duster chases, the auction sequence tends to get lost in the shuffle. This beautifully written set piece is tailor-made for Grant’s unique talents.

The auction scene works on several levels. First, there are elements of sexual blackmail and enslavement — another parallel to Notorious — emphasized in the tension between Thornhill, Eve and Van Damm (James Mason), with Eve emerging as the object of value. Also evident is the surprisingly mature love-hate relationship between Thornhill and Eve, who plays conflicting roles throughout the film. (Saint deserves recognition as Grant’s finest Hitchcockian costar — sophisticated and sensual, yet ice-cold and dangerous. Unlike Francie in To Catch a Thief, Eve is more subtle in her sexual desire.)

“I’ll bet you paid plenty for this little piece of sculpture. She’s worth every dollar.”

After Eve and Van Damm depart from the auction, Thornhill again must use his ingenuity and performing skills to extricate himself from yet another predicament (not unlike Robert Donat’s improvised political speech in The 39 Steps). When Thornhill begins his outlandish bidding, the scene turns into a rare display of “screwball suspense” — nonconformist humor with a menacing undercurrent that captures the essence of Hitchcock’s tongue-in-cheek thriller.

In retrospect, it was easy to see why North by Northwest became Cary Grant’s last film with Hitchcock. At 55, Grant managed to look younger than James Stewart in Vertigo, but knew his days as a leading man were coming to an end. By the time he made Stanley Donen’s pseudo-Hitchcock thriller Charade in 1963, Grant was unable to disguise his age — nearing 60, he looked too old as a romantic hero. When Grant turned down the lead in Hitchcock’s Torn Curtain, it was because he no longer could play “Cary Grant.” Unwilling to make the transition to character roles, Grant retired for good in 1966.

Though directors such as Leo McCarey and Howard Hawks helped unearth the full range of Grant’s comic talents, it was Hitchcock who discovered the darkness that lurked within the actor’s seemingly carefree and debonair persona. Only with Hitchcock could Grant afford to take risks. Hitchcock, in turn, transformed the elegant film star into a complex screen legend. From a director-actor standpoint, they were a perfect match.

Feature Articles

The Best Movies You’ve Never Heard Of: “The Bat Whispers” (1930)

July 8, 2014 Doug Krentzlin Leave a comment

“The Best Movies You’ve Never Heard Of” is a series of articles devoted to little-known movies of exceptional quality that dedicated film buffs may be aware of, but have somehow fallen through the cracks of the general public’s awareness.

Although it’s a crackling good thriller in its own right (if a somewhat dated one), Roland West’s little-seen 1930 “creepy old house” mystery-thriller The Bat Whispers has two main claims to distinction: (1) It was one of the very first widescreen features, and (2) Bob Kane cited The Bat Whispers, along with Douglas Fairbanks’ 1920 version of The Mark of Zorro, as his inspiration for the creation of Batman.[1] (Coming full circle, Tim Burton was obviously heavily influenced by West’s use of miniatures and mobile camerawork in The Bat Whispers when he made his 1989 version of Batman.)

Like so many old house mysteries, The Bat Whispers had its origins in a hit Broadway play. In this case, the source was Mary Roberts Rinehart and Avery Hopwood’s 1920 play The Bat, based on Rinehart’s 1908 novel The Circular Staircase. (West first adapted the play as a silent film in 1925 under its original title.) Other successful plays of the period that belong in this particular subgenre were Paul Dickey and Charles W. Goddard’s The Ghost Breaker (1914), John Willard’s The Cat and the Canary (1922), and Ralph Spence’s The Gorilla (1925). The genre also flourished on UK stages as well, particularly with Arnold Ridley’s The Ghost Train (1923) and Edgar Wallace’s The Terror (1927). All of the aforementioned plays were adapted as silent films or early talkies or both. The genre was especially popular with the studios in the early days of sound because of their limited settings and plethora of dialogue. (The form was brilliantly lampooned in James Parrott’s hilarious 1930 three-reeler The Laurel-Hardy Murder Case. And even Alfred Hitchcock got in on the act with his 1932 thriller Number Seventeen, a surrealistic semi-parody that virtually deconstructed the genre.) [2] The talkie versions of The Gorilla and The Cat and the Canary (retitled The Cat Creeps) both just barely beat The Bat Whispers to the theaters by mere days in November 1930.

A former actor, West was an ambitious, innovative filmmaker, but not a terribly prolific one. He only made 14 movies during his brief 15-year career spanning 1916 to 1931, his only talkies being his last three films. (The Bat Whispers was his penultimate movie.) One of West’s idiosyncrasies was shooting only at night, between the hours of 6:00 pm to 4:00 am. This was not an eccentricity on the part of West, but rather a deliberate effort to avoid any attempts at kibitzing from the studio suits. As Una Merkel (who played the female ingénue in The Bat Whispers) was quoted in Scott MacQueen’s book Between Action and Cut: “He just didn’t want to be bothered with anybody. When he worked at night, there was nobody but him and the company. We all ate together at midnight, everybody at the same table” [3]

Like most innovators, West was inevitably drawn to new technology and The Bat Whispers was his opportunity to experiment with widescreen photography (in this case, the process in question was a 65mm format called Magnifilm) as well as utilizing recent cinematography breakthroughs to bring a mobility to images that were particularly noteworthy in those days when supposedly all talkies were doomed to be static. [4] The state-of-the-art equipment used on the film included a dolly-mounted camera crane and a 300-foot track suspending the camera by cables from overhead scaffolding. West also made creative use of miniature sets which allowed the cameras to give the illusion of swooping up and around buildings and the remote country mansion where the bulk of the story takes place.

Because very few theaters of the period were equipped to show widescreen films, West covered himself by simultaneously filming an alternate version in standard 35mm. (The cinematographer for the 65mm version was Robert Planck and Ray June did the 35mm version.) For decades, the 65mm version of The Bat Whispers was considered to be lost to posterity, but in 1987, an excellent nitrate print was discovered in the archives of the Mary Pickford Estate, and the UCLA Film & Television Archive performed the restoration work with the result doing full justice to West’s remarkable widescreen compositions.

It’s fascinating to compare West’s silent and sound versions of The Bat. West was enamored of the visual stylization of the German Expressionist films of the 1920s, and his emulation of this approach is apparent in both versions. The silent version, in particular, looks like something UFA might’ve produced, with its deliberately unrealistic sets by William Cameron Menzies. But virtually all of the shots are stationary and relied on editing to go from one portion of a set to another. Not so in The Bat Whispers. There are entire sequences in which the camera is in almost constant motion. Also, the timelessly Gothic sets of the silent version were replaced with slick modern-looking settings, especially apparent in the film’s opening sequences in New York City.

The first 10-minutes of The Bat Whispers display some breathtakingly stunning filmmaking. Underneath the opening credits, we hear a large clock chiming eleven o’clock. The first shot fades in on the camera pulling back from a miniature of a clock tower looming over the New York skyline. The camera then swings down 90° and starts descending to the street below with its miniature cars and pedestrians. Upon reaching ground level, there’s a cut to an actual location with real cars and people. As a police car pulls up, a police lieutenant about to climb aboard is being harassed by a persistent newsboy hawking the latest news about the notorious criminal known as “The Bat.” The officer blows off the newsboy and gets into the car which pulls away with its siren blaring.

The film cuts to inside the police car as it speeds through the dark city streets. A radio broadcast provides preliminary exposition: The Bat, infamous thief and murderer, has sworn to steal the diamond necklace newly-acquired by millionaire Bell (Richard Tucker) precisely at midnight. A master shot shows the car pulling up to a brownstone apartment building. The lieutenant gets out and asks another cop guarding the building which window is Bell’s penthouse. After the cop points out the lighted window on the top floor, the camera rises straight up the side of the brownstone via an elevated crane and, with the aid of a jump cut, straight into the open window of Bell’s library and up to him as he sits at his desk. Another cut brings us to a close-up of the Bat’s threatening note to Bell: “Greetings, Mr. Bell. If you will be in your library alone at twelve sharp midnight, it will prove your nerve and test my ability to steal the Rossmore Necklace out of your safe. The Bat.”

Cut to a gun sitting on Bell’s desk and a clock reading 11:57 pm. In a wideshot, Bell gets up from his desk, pockets the revolver, and goes to a connecting door to the room beyond where a group of cops and reporters wait with a police captain (DeWitt Jennings). As Bell assures the captain that everything is all right, a radio announcer boasts that the police have obviously outsmarted the Bat because it has reached the appointed hour without the robbery taking place. Bell closes the door, goes back to his desk to check the time (12:05 am), then just to assure himself, goes to open a concealed wall safe.

Cut to a close-up of the open window. A black-gloved hand reaches in, grabs hold of the cord of the window shade, and starts flapping the shade as though a heavy wind is blowing it. Cut back to Bell at the safe with the necklace in his hands. He notices the shade flapping and goes to the window. An over-the shoulder POV shot shows the police on guard in the street below. The camera cuts to the outside of the window as Bell reaches out to adjust the shade and he’s jumped from above by the silhouette of the Bat, suspended from the roof by a rope. A cut back inside the window shows Bell’s lower body writhing as the Bat strangles him. The Bat’s hand reaches in, takes the necklace out of Bell’s dead fingers, and tosses in a folded note.

In the outer room, Bell’s butler (Wilson Benge) is calling out to his employer, accompanied by a lively fox trot coming over the radio. The captain goes to the door and starts pounding on it. Meanwhile, outside the library window, the Bat is climbing up his rope to the roof. Cut back to the outer room as the cops force the door open. Cut to inside the library. The cops and butler rush in and are horrified by the sight of Bell’s dead body slumped in the window. The captain shouts out the window for the rest of the cops to come up to the apartment, while the butler discovers the empty safe now bereft of the necklace. The captain reads the note left by the Bat aloud: “To the police, why waste time chasing rainbows? I always get what I go after. Bell was easy because his clock was fast and you boys were slow. Au revoir, leaving for the country to give the police a rest.” The captain orders his men to “get Detective Anderson” and then declares in apoplectic fury to the gathered reporters, “No cheap crook is gonna make a sucker out of me and get away with it!”

Dissolve to the clock tower as the hands, starting at midnight, start spinning to depict time passing by. Another dissolve shows us the wheels of a train racing through the night, while yet another dissolve reveals miniatures of the New York skyscrapers speeding by. A cut to a POV shot from the train’s front as it heads down the track approaching a bend with a large billboard declaring the upcoming suburb of Oakdale (more miniatures).Another dissolve has the camera dollying along a row of streetlamps leading up to a large bank (yet more miniatures). Via another dissolve, the camera darts in through an upper window overlooking a dark, shadowy antechamber containing the bank’s vault. (This shot especially reflects the film’s German Expressionism influence.) With the oversized shadow of the Bat looming above, a man enters the chamber, opens the vault, removes a valise, and closes the vault, the man and the Bat’s shadow exiting simultaneously.

Cut to the bank’s parking lot, with the lurking shadow of the Bat prominently cast over the pavement. The thief hops into his car, there’s a dissolve to an insert shot of the vehicle’s license plate (3007), then back to the master shot as the car pulls out of the lot and up the road. Cut to the Bat silhouetted against the night sky descending by his rope. He gets into his car and takes off down the road in pursuit. A cut inside the thief’s car reveals him pulling a switch activating a smokescreen, which another cut shows emanating from the exhaust. Cut to miniatures of the cars and the country road as the smokescreen envelopes the Bat’s car, throwing it off the track as the thief seemingly makes his escape. Fade out.

Fade in on the front gate of the Fleming estate (the mansion within is this thriller’s obligatory creepy old house) and the thief, with a glance over his shoulder, slipping in through the gate. Cut to further down the estate’s wall and road as the Bat’s car pulls up and a flashlight beam scans the thief’s car parked nearby. A quick insert to a close-up of the beam hitting the license plate, confirming that it is indeed the same getaway car. Silhouetted against the estate wall, the distorted shadow of the Bat lurches towards the gate. (A brief insert cut shows one of the Bat’s feet dragging on the ground.) Cut to the thief creeping up to the window of the mansion’s study. Cut to a closer shot of the thief with his back to the camera peering in the window, then a dissolve into the study, and the story finally gets underway with the film’s first extended dialogue scene. And that’s just the first reel!

Although some of the dialogue scenes betray the customary staginess of the period, there still remains a considerable amount of creativity exhibited in the scenes where the visual action predominates as the house’s occupants and visitors roam (and sometimes run) through the numerous back hallways, stairwells, chutes, hidden passages, and even the rooftops, with intrigues and double-crosses taking place among the various parties competing for the story’s two MacGuffins, the necklace and the bank swag. The characters involved include Miss Cornelia van Gorder (Grayce Hampton), a caustic, middle-aged dowager who’s rented the Fleming estate for the season; Lizzie Allen (Maude Eberne), van Gorder’s whiny, moronic, and perpetually frightened comedy relief maid; the estate’s feeble-minded caretaker (Spencer Charters, who was unequalled when it came to playing feeble-minded types); Dale (Merkel), Miss van Gorder’s niece, who serves as the traditional damsel-in-distress; Brook (William Bakewell), Dale’s fiancé, a bank teller who’s been implicated in the robbery and is impersonating a gardener in hopes of locating the loot and clearing his name; the sinister Dr. Venrees (sepulchral-voiced, Satanic-visaged Gustav von Seyffertitz); Richard Fleming (Hugh Huntley), the nephew of the estate’s owner who’s in search of a hidden room where the bank funds might be stashed; Detective Jones (Charles Dow Clark), a bumbling hayseed country constable who’s the other comic relief character; a stranger who’s injured and stricken with amnesia (Ben Bard); and a second masked fiend (S.E. Jennings). And presiding over events on that proverbial dark and stormy night is Detective Anderson (Chester Morris), a cynical, urbane sleuth obsessed with getting to the bottom of the mysterious proceedings.

After a series of melodramatic incidents, culminating in the torching of the estate’s garage, the Bat is finally captured (accidentally by Lizzie) and unmasked. But wait, there’s more! As the cast forms a tableau outside the mansion with the Bat tied to a tree, a curtain closes on the image and the camera pulls back to reveal a proscenium stage. Suddenly, an unseen stage manager starts shouting, “Wait a minute! Wait a minute! Don’t do that! We’re not through yet! Keep your seats, everybody!” A theater usher sauntering on-stage with a sign is admonished, “Don’t put out that sign! Pull back that curtain! Put on the lights!” The curtain parts to reveal a shadow of a large Oriental urn. “Where is the Bat?” the stage manger screams, to be answered with a “Coming! Coming!” from the actor playing said Bat. A silhouette of the Bat descends on his ever-present rope behind the urn. There’s a burst of flash powder. Then, the actor in question steps forward in evening clothes to address the audience with a tongue-in-cheek speech requesting them not to reveal the surprise ending to their friends who haven’t seen the movie yet because, when that happens, the Bat is “heartbroken and goes around for days killing people without the slightest enjoyment in his work.” If the audience will refrain from spoilers, the Bat “promises not to haunt your homes, steal your money, or frighten your little children. Is it a bargain?” And with that, the “The End” title fades in, with a jaunty jazz tune playing in the background. (This and the aforementioned fox trot are the only music heard during the film.)

In 1959, The Bat was remade again to take advantage of the horror revival resulting from the release of the old Hollywood horror pictures to television. Written and directed by veteran ‘B’ scenarist Crane Wilbur, this decidedly low-budget affair starred Vincent Price as the doctor (renamed Malcolm Wells), Agnes Moorehead as Cornelia van Gorder, Gavin Gordon (Mystery of the Wax Museum, Bride of Frankenstein) as Detective Anderson, and Darla Hood (the Our Gang comedies) as the female ingénue in her final film appearance. (In a too-cute-by-half touch, van Gorder was reconceived as a mystery writer on vacation.) Although this remake is the one most often seen on television, it has absolutely none of the visual style of its predecessors, and in no way threatenes The Bat Whispers’ status as the definitive version.

Fortunately for connoisseurs of classic cinema, Milestone Film & Video, an award-winning company specializing in releasing restored editions of lost and rare film classics, issued a DVD of The Bat Whispers in 1999, containing pristine prints of both the 70mm and 35mm versions. (The DVD is currently out of print, but new and used copies are still available from Amazon). The movie remains a cultural and historical artifact in addition to being a lot of fun to boot. Just remember, though: “The Bat always flies at night… and always in a straight line.”

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[1] Yes, I’m aware that it’s now well known that writer Bill Finger deserves the lion’s share of the credit for shaping the character of Batman as we now know him (even though DC Comics gave Kane the sole credit), but even Finger admitted that the initial basic idea was Kane’s.

[2] Whereas most of these films stuck to their basic claustrophobic settings, it’s typical of Hitchcock’s perverse sense of humor that the last third of Number Seventeen is devoted to an elaborate cross-country chase scene.

[3] Some of this information was derived from Bret Wood’s TCM article on The Bat Whispers. Some caveats, though. Wood claims that West “altered the identity of the culprit from that of the four-year-old silent version of the film.” This is not accurate; although the surname of the character revealed to the masked villain is different in the talkie version, it’s still the equivalent of the same character in the silent film. Also, a warning, if you haven’t seen The Bat Whispers, you should steer clear of TCM’s cast list for the film; the identity of the actor playing the Bat is given away.

[4] West wasn’t the only filmmaker determined to bring camera mobility to the early sound cinema. Lewis Milestone, Alfred Hitchcock, and William Dieterle also went out of their way to avoid the stationary camerawork that plagued so many talkies of the period.

Feature Articles

The Best Movies You’ve Never Heard Of: “The Woman Chaser” (1999)

June 7, 2014 Doug Krentzlin Leave a comment

The primordial ooze that the genre we now know as film noir emerged from was the pulp magazine fiction of the 1920s and 30s and the subsequent novels by writers like Dashiell Hammett, Raymond Chandler, James M. Cain, and Cornell Woolrich. In fact, the creation of the film noir genre was an accidental result of then-screenwriter John Huston’s decision to do a meticulously faithful adaptation of Hammett’s The Maltese Falcon, which had already been filmed twice before (both badly), as his directorial debut. Because it retained Hammett’s uncompromising vision of the criminal world and the people who inhabited it on both sides of the law (a reflection of Hammett’s first-hand experiences as a Pinkerton detective), Huston’s 1941 version of The Maltese Falcon seemed breathtakingly new and the film’s success at the box office inspired other studios to try their hand at adapting pulp novels.

The works of the aforementioned writers were particularly popular with filmmakers because their relatively linear narratives made them easily adaptable to the film medium. The works of a later generation of pulp writers from the 40s and 50s were far more difficult to adapt to a visual medium because their first-person narratives took place mainly in the heads of their protagonists and, more often than not, these narrators were psychotics and madmen. The writers that fall into this second category include Dorothy B. Hughes, Jim Thompson, and Charles Willeford. As Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo (1958) proves, in the hands of a genuinely inspired filmmaker, it is possible to translate material like this into visual terms. Another filmmaker who managed to pull off this challenge was independent director Robinson Devor in his criminally little-known 1999 adaptation of Willeford’s 1960 novel The Woman Chaser.

After premiering at the 1999 New York Film Festival, and subsequently screening at other showcase festivals such as Sundance and South by Southwest, The Woman Chaser opened to mixed reviews, had a limited distribution, and also turned up on cable via The Sundance Channel and Showtime and on VHS. Then The Woman Chaser pretty much vanished off the face of the earth, not even receiving a DVD release. Just recently, however, thanks to that new-fangled thingamabob known as on-line streaming, Sundance Institute’s Artist Services has been able to make The Woman Chaser available for viewing on iTunes (as of May 20), and also on Netflix or netflix amerika, Hulu, and Amazon Prime (starting on June 15), giving this underrated little gem a well-deserved second chance.

Willeford was a World War II veteran-turned-writer whose work had been filmed twice before, Monte Hellman’s Cockfighter (1974) and George Armitage’s Miami Blues (1990, based on the first of Willeford’s Hoke Moseley novels). Both of these films have much to recommend them, but neither came as close to capturing Willeford’s style as Devor’s The Woman Chaser. As quoted in an on-line article by Jesse Sublett, Willeford’s widow Betsy concisely articulated what makes Devor’s film stand out from the other film versions of her husband’s work: “I like it best of the three adaptations. It’s uncommercial, the way the book was, and has the courage of its outrageousness.” As Huston did with Hammett’s The Maltese Falcon, Devor wrote the screenplay himself, observing scrupulous fidelity to his source, faithfully duplicated the novel’s story structure scene-for-scene, and taking all of the dialogue almost verbatim from the book. Devor also retained the novel’s original setting and period, Los Angeles circa 1960.

Devor had only one previous film, Angelyne (1995), a documentary about actress and model Angyline Angelyne, under his belt when he decided to make his “real” filmmaking debut with an adaptation of The Woman Chaser. In an interview with Dan Lybarger for Nitrate On-Line, Devor recounted how he obtained a second-hand copy of Willeford’s novel from a couple who sold old mystery and crime books out of their home in Redondo Beach and later filmed his adaptation on weekends while retaining his day job as a vice president of a Los Angeles PR firm. Devor’s first choice for the leading role, Richard Hudson, was Jason Patric, but when Patric wasn’t available, he gladly went with Patrick Warburton because, as he put it, “I knew that we would never get anyone closer with physique and comic delivery than this guy.”

Richard Hudson, the main character and first-person narrator of The Woman Chaser, is, like the protagonist of Willeford’s first novel High Priest of California, a sociopathic used car dealer. A representative of a San Francisco repo tycoon known professionally as “Honest Hal,” Richard has returned to his home town of Los Angeles in order to start an Honest Hal franchise there. He selects a rundown used car lot near the Capitol Building, which towers over the background, and quickly scams the lot’s owner (Eugene Roche) into forking the business over to him. Richard then hires an ex-Army sergeant named Bill Harris (Ron Morgan) to be his manager and adds three burnouts to the staff as salesmen. One sweltering August day without any sales happening, Richard has an inspiration and takes it to Bill in the air-conditioned trailer that serves as the lot’s office.

Richard: “Lift the phone, Cool One, and call a costume company.”

Bill: “Any company in particular?”

Richard: “One that sells Santa Claus suits, complete with beards.”

Bill: “What sizes?”

Richard: The sizes worn by Evans, Cartwell, and Jody-boy, our three star salesmen.”

Bill: “You shouldn’t do it, Chief. It’s the middle of August. Those guys will melt out there.”

Richard: (angrily) “It’s the first day of August and they’ll wear the suits every damned day until I tell them to take them off!” (lowering his voice) “What is more unusual than Santa Claus selling used cars in August?”

Bill: “You’ve got me for the moment.”

Richard: “Nothing! Honest Hal is now Santa Claus in the middle of summer, bringing the good people of the City of Angels goodies in the form of repos. Your repos. Now, get the suits and get our buddy boys into them. Take a half-page in The Times and write some decent copy for a change. I don’t want those repos on the lot by Saturday!” (pause) “Oh, by the way, Cool One, you will inform our white-bearded salesmen that the Santy Claus suits are your idea.”

Richard takes advantage of relocating to LA to reconnect with his mother (Lynette Bennett), a retired ballerina who lives in a decaying mansion straight out of Sunset Boulevard with Richard’s stepfather Leo (Paul Malevich), an ex-film director, and Leo’s teenage daughter Laura (Emily Newman). At his mother’s invitation, Richard moves into the former servants’ quarters above the garage. Like most sociopaths, Richard has a heightened opinion of himself and regards his customers and just about every other member of society as “feebs” who live boringly ordinary lives. One night, Richard has a horrifying epiphany: his life is just as pointless as those of all the people he looks down upon. Sitting alone in his car and weeping to himself, he decides that he must “create something. Anything.”

An avid moviegoer, Richard believes that the one form of art that he’s capable of is filmmaking; he’ll write and direct his very own movie. Richard dreams up a story he titles The Man Who Got Away and writes a one-paragraph synopsis of it: “A truck-driver driving from San Francisco to Los Angeles runs over and kills a child. He tries to get away. He doesn’t.” Richard then takes his idea to Leo, who works out the minimum budget required to make the film. Richard is convinced that he and Leo can raise half of the amount needed. (Richard will embezzle his share from Honest Hal and Leo will hock the valuable painting that is his sole leftover from his glory days.) He begs Leo to contact “The Man” (Ernie Vincent), the head of Leo’s former studio Mammoth Pictures, and see if he’ll put up the other half. After reading Richard’s screenplay, The Man greenlights the project and offers the studio’s resources in lieu of cash to make the picture.

Working on a limited budget and schedule that doesn’t allow for any retakes, Richard completes his movie. But after watching the first cut, he becomes dissatisfied with his creation and decides to edit it down to a length he believes necessary to maintain the film’s tension. By the time Richard and Ruggerio (Max Kerstein), the editor assigned to him by the studio, finish pruning the film to the point Richard wants, they have a movie that runs only 63 minutes. That’s when Ruggerio breaks the bad news to Richard.

Ruggerio: “With the sound effects and the music dubbed in, it will be a little masterpiece and I’ve never seen anything quite like it before. Unfortunately, we have to put twenty-seven more minutes of film. Three minutes can be taken in titling, but the other twenty-four will have to be plain old padding.”

Richard: “Can we pad twenty-four minutes and still maintain the pace I’ve set, the mood and so on?”

Ruggerio: “Nope. But there’s no choice.”

Richard: “Why is that?”

Ruggerio: “You know that as well as I do, Mr. Hudson. A movie is ninety minutes long. Six full reels. That’s the business.”

Richard: “But unnecessary padding will ruin my movie.”

Ruggerio: “Not really. We can stretch the hell out of that chase down the highway. I’ve got stock stuff I haven’t even looked at yet, reel after reel. Scenic views, wild flowers, traffic jams, all kinds of stuff, and we can fit it in fine. I remember a western once where I stretched a desert chase out twenty-five minutes with long shots of different guys riding on horseback. Nobody knew the difference. People like chases.”

Richard: “The Man Who Got Away isn’t a western.”

Ruggerio: “Yeah, but he doesn’t really get away, either. It’s the same thing as a big chase—“

Richard: (shouting angrily) “Damn it, no! As far as I’m concerned, my movie will run as it is, twenty-seven minutes short! Period. I’m not going to ruin my movie because of some stupid ruling that it has to be ninety minutes long!” 1

Richard digs in his heels, insisting that adding unnecessary footage to his movie would be “like adding three more plates to the Last Supper or an extra wing on the Pentagon.” Unexpectedly, The Man doesn’t reject the movie outright as being too short. In fact, he and Leo have come up with an idea to salvage the film. When Richard learns what will be done with his “masterpiece” against his will, he explodes in rage, taking a perverse, self-destructive revenge on all those he believes have double-crossed him. (Re: the title, while Richard does his share of exploiting and abusing many of the female characters who are unfortunate enough to cross his path, it’s hardly the main focus of the story. Willeford’s original title for his book was The Director, but Newstand Library, the original publisher, thought that The Woman Chaser would be a more appropriately lurid title for a paperback pulp novel.)

Devor not only got the 1960 period details (costumes, cars, props, locations) down perfectly, but, aided by Kramer Morgenthau’s black-and-white widescreen cinematography, he also was successful in recreating the look of such low-budget independent films of the period as Robert Aldrich’s Kiss Me Deadly (1955) and Herk Harvey’s Carnival of Souls (1962). Also contributing to the period authenticity was Daniele Luppi’s music score, utilizing recordings by jazz artists of the time like Les Baxter, Chico O’Farrell, Dizzy Gillespie, Dave Brubeck, Tito Puente, and Jimmy Smith.

Typical of Willeford’s work, much of his novel The Woman Chaser is set inside Richard Hudson’s psyche, with long, rambling soliloquies from Richard detailing how he observes the rest of the world, his patronizing contempt for everyone he comes in contact with, and his philosophy based on his belief that movies mirror real life. Devor retained many of these soliloquies and filmed them in ways that provide visual metaphors for Richard’s life-as-film outlook. Some of the monologues are done as voice-overs accompanying either the action or close-ups of Richard looking straight at the camera with the glare of a movie projector backlighting him from behind and bathing him in a halo-like glow. Other monologues consist of Richard in a dark room breaking the fourth wall and addressing the audience directly with Richard’s head in the far background of the extreme left of the screen while the turning reels of a 16mm projector and its projected light frame Richard in the foreground.

Since the story is told entirely from Richard Hudson’s POV, Patrick Warburton appears in every single scene and he rises to the occasion by giving the performance of his career. (People who know Warburton mainly for his work in sitcoms like Seinfeld and Rules of Engagement will be in for a big surprise when they see The Woman Chaser.) The power in Warburton’s performance lies in his underplaying the role rather than going for the over-the-top approach that most actors take when playing maniacs. Warburton plays Richard as a ticking time-bomb waiting to go off, a passive-aggressive type just barely suppressing his inner rage and frustration while hiding behind a facade of macho hipness. In an interview with Jeffrey M. Anderson for the website Combustible Celluloid, Warburton gave his personal take on the character: “He’s just a brutish, self-serving ass. There’s something very boyish about Hudson. He’s dangerous and he scares you, but then there are times when he’s just like a pathetic little boy. Maybe that’s why you can empathize with him a little bit, ’cause you just see what a pathetic creature he is and how lost he is.”

For the rest of his cast, Devor went with non-experienced actors, deliberately avoiding professionals. As he explained to Lybarger: “To me, the ultimate failure in a lot of movies—and a lot of people will agree with me—is that a lot of the actors look like they’re in the 90s or 2000. They’re just too good-looking; they’re just too coifed. Their bodies are just too cut, and there are no flaws. That’s not the kind of look people had in the past, and it’s not appropriate for this project. My formula for this when I was casting—God love the actors; they’re wonderful, attractive people as contemporary human beings—but I wanted Hudson to be this kind of normal-looking guy surrounded by these grotesques. I wanted to stack the deck and to make his bullying almost more of a mismatch. I wanted to make Leo so unaggressive and so unthreatening that, when he ultimately betrays Richard, it’s very absurd. It’s difficult to find somebody. A lot of people would come in, and they’d be character actors playing [Leo] like a wacky intellectual. This non-actor [Paul Malevich] was a very down-to-earth sweet guy. He was a real person. He allowed us to film him in unflattering ways. There were very few self-conscious actors on the set, which was great.” Ironically, this paralleled the way Richard Hudson decides to cast his movie when Leo states that their marginal budget provides a pitifully low amount for the actors’ salaries. As Richard tells Leo in Willeford’s novel, “To do my movie, it has to be done with nobodies… If I can get actors nobody knows, they’ll believe in the characters as they see them on the screen.”

Although it played in a few key cities (New York, LA, Austin, San Francisco) in mid-2000, The Woman Chaser never received a general nationwide release. It didn’t help that many reviewers (including the New York Times’ Stephen Holder) dismissed it as “a film noir spoof,” which only shows how little most mainstream critics know about film noir. 2 (Despite an undercurrent of dark humor that runs throughout The Woman Chaser, it’s no “spoof,” it’s the real deal.) In the years since, The Woman Chaser has earned more respect and developed a cult following. In a Film Noir of the Week review, Kim Morgan (Sunset Gun) praised The Woman Chaser for being “faithful to its beautifully seedy genre while feeling like an entirely unique experience” and characterized it as “an arch, subversive film that remains, to the very last frame, weirdly understated.”

The jury’s still out on the merits of streaming vs. discs. (I personally share my World Cinema Paradise colleagues Stuart Galbraith IV and Stephen Bowie’s preference for the physical medium. If you own a movie on DVD or Blu-Ray, you don’t have to worry about the “streaming rights” expiring.) But steaming can atone for a multitude of sins if it brings a little-seen wonder like The Woman Chaser to a new audience. Think of it as The Film That Almost Got Away. But didn’t. (Now when the hell is this movie gonna get its long-overdue DVD and Blu-Ray release?)

[1] Actually, Willeford betrayed some unfamiliarity with the film industry here. Although they were becoming increasingly rare by the 1960s, there were still second-features being released with running times well below 90 minutes. For example, Harvey Hart’s Dark Intruder, a 59-minute long unsold pilot for a television horror series produced by Alfred Hitchcock’s Shamley Productions, was released by Universal Pictures as the bottom half of a double-bill with William Castle’s I Saw What You Did in July 1965. Also, a reel of 35mm film contained 10-minutes worth of footage, not 15-minutes, so a 90-minute film would be nine reels, not six. Nevertheless, Willeford’s fictional “90-minutes rule” was necessary for plot purposes and Devor made the right call to retain it as is. Nice in-joke: The Woman Chaser runs exactly 90-minutes.

[2] One of the reasons that it’s almost impossible to do an acceptable parody of film noir is that most great film noirs (such as The Maltese Falcon, Billy Wilder’s Double Indemnity, Howard Hawks’ The Big Sleep, and Orson Welles’ The Lady from Shanghai and Touch of Evil) contain a great deal of intentional humor and most attempts at spoofing the genre fail to be nearly as funny.

Reviews

Savant Blu-ray Review: “Foreign Correspondent” (1940)

February 15, 2014 Glenn Erickson Leave a comment

We’ve had our fill of tell-all biographies about Alfred Hitchcock’s alleged sexual obsessions with his leading actresses, a trend that came to a head a couple of seasons back with the shockingly fictitious movie Hitchcock. In the 1940s Hitch was being driven batty in a different way, putting up with David O. Selznick, the powerful producer and talent broker. Selznick brought England’s most entertaining director to Hollywood, where the creative possibilities within the massive studio factories seemed unlimited. Hitch had been on a roll with witty U.K. spy thrillers that put attractive amateurs into high jeopardy, fighting assassins on moving trains and fleeing enemy agents on the Scottish moors.

Selznick instead first assigned Hitchcock to help fashion a glamorous but overlong romantic thriller, Rebecca (1940). After a flaming finale the characters must continue talking for several minutes to clear away the story deadwood.

Selznick was so busy with his other films and with promoting Jennifer Jones that he loaned Hitchcock out several times during the run of his contract. Almost immediately came Foreign Correspondent (1940), a gutsy ‘spy’ chase given real bite by the international situation. England was already at war, and independent producer Walter Wanger was eager to strike a propaganda blow against Hitler. A committed leftist, Wanger had produced Fritz Lang’s critical crime picture You Only Live Once as well as the somewhat muddled anti-Franco drama Blockade, both starring Henry Fonda. In perhaps the most direct bit of revolutionary theater transferred to the screen, Fonda wails that the Great Democracies are doing nothing to stem the Fascist atrocities in Spain: “Where is the conscience of the World?!”

As it turned out, patriot Hitchcock was the tempering influence behind Foreign Correspondent. Wanger salted in dialogue lines referring to Hitler’s progress across Europe, but Hitch worked to keep the film’s tone as light and entertaining as possible. The movie turns to overt propaganda only at the end, in the brief but famous “The lights are going out all over Europe”.

Hitchcock critics are much better informed today, but there was a time when they debated the same rather narrow issue: is Hitch’s best work his clever ’30s spy chases The Secret Agent, The Man Who Knew Too Much, The 39 Steps and The Lady Vanishes? Or do his glossy, star-driven Hollywood thrillers show a maturity in his style: The Man Who Knew Too Much, North by Northwest, Topaz?

I’m of the opinion that Foreign Correspondent is the best of Alfred Hitchcock’s spy chase thrillers. While not blessed with top box office stars, its leading actors Joel McCrea and Laraine Day are intensely likeable, and Hitchcock puts them through a series of exciting, fresh adventures that never strain credibility, or go for cheap jokes. As with the earlier English classics, Hitchcock makes use of silent movie visual gags to involve the viewer in the action. The easiest of these is the bobbing forest of umbrellas in Holland, which both hide the assassin and reveal his escape path. Hitch also uses visual shorthand to add droll visual jokes, like the hotel sign that suddenly makes its own comment on anxious pre-war Europe. Some of these visual gags are so simple they remind us of the hand-drawn cartoons Hitch reportedly added to silent movie cards when he was just starting out.

Although filmed in Los Angeles, Foreign Correspondent is also the kind of fast moving travelogue that Hitchcock preferred. A few of his later VistaVision pictures take time out to observe flower markets, or just admire the countryside. After WW2, breaking countries down into simple references (like Switzerland = chocolate) would have been insulting. Hitch tried a ruthlessly unsentimental spy story in Topaz and nobody felt engaged in the story. The new lovers in Correspondent cuddle and kiss on the deck of a ship crossing the English Channel. He: “You see, I love you and I want to marry you.” She: “I love you and I want to marry you.” He: “Well, that cuts our love scene down quite a bit, doesn’t it?” For once every line of dialogue is a witty gem; there are no clunkers. That’s how it should be when talent like Charles Bennett, Joan Harrison, James Hilton and Robert Benchley are properly applied to a script.

With the bigger, glossier ’50s films name stars take a much bigger role. James Stewart and Doris Day’s marital relationship in the Man Who Knew Too Much remake is terribly dated. Day’s traumatized mother is sedated before being told that her son has been kidnapped; it’s assumed she can’t handle the pressure. The frightened couple also break Hitchcock’s rule by going to the police early and often. So we have to listen to the cops in scene after scene.

Finally, career adapter Ernest Lehman turns North by NorthWest into a ‘best-of’ collection of Hitch’s Greatest Chase Hits. When not wowing us with extraordinary set-piece scenes like the Corn Field Crossroads, Lehman baldly repeats situations from earlier films. It’s a great movie with marvelous characters. As in most of the ’50s Hitchcocks, the bad guys are identified from the moment they’re introduced.

This by no means is a criticism of any of these Hitchcock pictures, almost all of which are superb entertainments. Foreign Correspondent quickly breaks free of thriller conventions. Its hero Johnny Jones is not a two-fisted adventurer but a crime reporter who loves his Mom, keeps losing his hat and punches out policemen. Half the time the tone is of a screwball comedy. Harry Davenport is Jones’ grinning, mischievous editor, and co-writer Robert Benchley is on hand as an alcoholic, slacker foreign correspondent that greets Johnny’s boat.

When the spy threat becomes more intense, the humor doesn’t depart, but instead morphs into proto- James Bond witticisms and caustic observations by George Sanders’ good-guy intelligence agent. Haughty and bored-looking in all but the most unpleasant situations, Sanders’ unflappable cool is highly entertaining — and impressively original.

Finally, Foreign Correspondent has several bravura set piece scenes that for my money top anything before or since in similarly themed Hitchcock pictures. Walter Wanger secured for his director the best technical wizardry in Hollywood, starting with William Cameron Menzies, whose distinctive designs gave shape to many a shaky production. Johnny Jones’ escape out a high hotel window is only a refinement on standard matte painting techniques. But Menzies’ genius is fully realized in the Holland windmill scene. When he enters the noisy, dust-filled windmill Johnny Jones is trying to determine if the shooting of the beloved Peace advocate Van Meer (Albert Basserman) has been faked. The noise and the turning gears allow Johnny to hide, even when it seems certain that his presence will be discovered. Hitchcock and Menzies use every trick they can think of — a villain changing his sweaters give Johnny a chance to shift position, for instance. But then Johnny’s raincoat gets caught in the gears and is dangled practically in the faces of the bad guys. Every shot in this swift sequence is a complex beauty. What dialogue we do hear is irrelevant – the pictures tell the story, compelling us to share Johnny’s experience at a gut level.

Before CGI was used for everything, some of the best special film effects were little more than clever slight-of-hand-gags. To escape from the fourth or fifth floor of building under renovation, one of the heroes leaps from a window, rips through an awning and gently alights at sidewalk level. The shot looks like one take, an amazing feat. But closer examination shows the stunt to be constructed in two halves — the man making the big drop is a dummy, and the actor takes over for the drop through the awning. It always gets applause in theatrical showings.

The sequence that really wows ‘em is the crash of a flying boat in mid-Atlantic. Here Menzies uses everything he knows to inject realism (1940-style) into the spectacle of a passenger plane shot down by a warship. The ship interior tilts and hand-held cameras reflect the passengers’ panic as the cabin floods with real water. The actual moment of crash impact was an expensive “this better work” gag involving large water dump tanks — it’s better seen than explained. When the survivors climb out on the few pieces of the plane still floating, we see real water, rear-screen projected waves and other effects working that are much harder to analyze. The important thing is that the Foreign Correspondent plane crash is still one of the most effective, audience-engaging disaster scenes ever filmed.

We’re told that Alfred Hitchcock resisted letting Foreign Correspondent become an outright attack on Hitler and the Nazis. One factor might have been that patriotic films being made in England were careful not to provoke the Germans too much, for fear of reprisals against Brits already in prison camps. Our Isolationist (read: pro- Bund) congress was censuring Hollywood to curb all propaganda movies. But Correspondent does mention Hitler by name. The epilogue in the BBC radio room as the air raid begins is a message for America to get active, now. It might be too late for England, leaving America as the world’s only hope. I think it’s one of the most stirring calls to battle ever made by a movie, and all the more effective because of Hitchcock’s breezy treatment.

The Criterion Collection’s Blu-ray + DVD of Foreign Correspondent is quite a surprise. Remastered from its owner Westchester Film, the B&W HD image is gorgeous, far surpassing Warners’ earlier DVD and looking like something one might see on a screen in 1940. Alfred Newman’s great score (with an infectious little tune to represent the inexperienced Johnny Jones) comes through more strongly than ever. Shots that before were lost in darkness, leaving visual details difficult to assess, are now sharp as a tack. A photo-story Life magazine article arranged by Hitchcock shows how idle rumors hurt the war effort. Joseph Cotten appears in a 1946 radio adaptation, and the insert booklet carries an essay by James Naremore.

Effects spokesman Craig Barron provides a lengthy breakdown of the film’s wizardly camera tricks, while Mark Harris provides an absorbing visual opinion essay called Hollywood Propaganda and WWII. An episode of the Dick Cavett Show has Hitchcock as its coddled guest.

Criterion’s Dual-Edition release contains all extras on both Blu-ray and DVD. The In-House producer is Susan Arosteguy.

Life-Changing Movies

Godzilla, Luke Skywalker, Norman Bates and Me

February 8, 2014 Gary Teetzel Leave a comment

In a lifetime of watching and loving movies, there are many films that have moved me to the degree that they influenced how I view the world. The films that went so far as to change the direction of my life are far fewer in number. Among this select group I would include the films from my childhood and teen years that first sparked my interest in cinema. All movie fans have memories of special movie-watching experiences from their youth, episodes that transformed motion pictures from a casual diversion to a hobby—or even an obsession. In my case, three films in particular would resonate with me at different ages and help shape my future passion for and appreciation of film. Aside from watching films, playing games on sites like 온라인 카지노 is also a great way to spend your free time.

The earliest of these films I saw when I was about five. While watching some children’s programming on TV, an advertisement came on for a film to be shown late that night concerning, the announcer proclaimed, a prehistoric monster attacking Tokyo. I was already crazy about dinosaurs, but had never seen a dinosaur movie. Since dinosaurs were extinct, the notion that there might be a movie showing me a living, breathing dinosaur had never entered by mind, yet now an advertisement showed me glimpses of what was clearly a dinosaur’s foot and tail. Gobsmacked as I had never been before in my young life, I ran to my parents to beg them to let me stay up and let me see the dinosaur movie—the only way to see it in those pre-DVR, pre-videocassette days. They compromised: I would have to go to bed at my regular bedtime, but they would wake me up at 11:00 PM and let me watch the movie.

The film, of course, was Godzilla, King of the Monsters s impact stayed with me: I was hooked on monster and dinosaur movies. As soon as I was old enough to read I would scour the TV listings for anything with a dinosaur, giant lizard, giant bug or giant ape. At eight I discovered Famous Monsters of Filmland magazine, which taught me that there was a vast and varied treasure trove of fantastic cinema out there just waiting for me to discover. It also showed me that I was not alone: there were other boys and girls out there with the same unconventional hobby. Well before internet chat boards allowed fans to share their enthusiasm online, Famous Monsters created a sense of a fan community. Looking back, I can only wonder if my parents still would have allowed me to stay up late that Saturday night if they had known that a black-and-white Japanese monster movie would ignite a lifelong passion for movies in general and fantastic cinema in particular.

I was 11 when the next film to have a major impact on me was released. In the early spring of 1977 a Scholastic magazine mentioned an upcoming science fiction movie starring no one I had heard of save Peter Cushing, who, thanks to Famous Monsters, I knew mostly appeared in inexpensive British horror films. The accompanying photo, showing two armored figures and what looked like some pink gas, did not impress. I decided this was probably some cheap kiddie matinee fare and promptly forgot about it. A couple of weeks later, my father brought home an issue of Time saw the film with her classmates and gushed with excitement about the wondrous sites to be seen. Ordinarily, she had no interest whatsoever in fantasy or science fiction, so this really had to be something special. That settled it: I had to see this Star Wars thing, whatever it was.

Like countless children of my generation, the film struck me like a bolt of lightning; to paraphrase Obi-Wan Kenobi, I felt as if I had “taken [my] first step into a larger world.” Its impact was multifold. First, it introduced me to the genre of the space opera and led me to explore science fiction beyond the narrow realm of the monster movie. This, in turn, led to me discovering science fiction literature. George Lucas’ frequent citing of Akira Kurosawa and specifically The Hidden Fortress (Kakushi toride no san akunin, 1958) as an influence helped spark a curiosity about foreign cinema. (An interest in Japanese cinema in particular was a natural outgrowth from my days watching Godzilla and his brethren.) The then-revolutionary special effects held a special fascination. Seeking information on how they were accomplished led me to Cinfantastique magazine and their special double issue on Star Wars. My technical understanding of film grew by leaps and bounds, and in Cinefantastique I was introduced to a far more mature level of film writing than was to be found in the pun-filled pages of Famous Monsters.

The next film experience to change my life came a couple of years later, when I was 13 or so. I found myself at home alone one Saturday night, so I decided to tune in to Canadian television to catch a classic I had never seen: Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho. I was well aware of the its reputation as one of the most frightening films of all time; I knew of the famous shower scene; I even knew the twist ending, thanks to having seen it on, of all things, the short-lived movie-themed game show Don Adams’ Screen Test. None of that prepared me for the 109 minutes that followed. From the moment Janet Leigh’s Marion Crane made off with $40,000 in stolen money, I was on the edge of my seat. I kept expecting commercials to give me a break from the tension, but, to my considerable frustration, the CBC had decided to air the film uninterrupted. When Janet Leigh disrobed to get into the shower, I couldn’t stand the suspense and quickly turned the dial (yes, the TV still had a dial at the time) for a break of a second or two, then turned it back. This was repeated a few times until the scene was over. By the end of the film I was both exhausted and exhilarated. This had been unlike any film I had seen before.

Star Wars and the monster films of my youth had been exciting spectacles, but Psycho was more emotionally engaging. I knew that it was more than just the writing and acting; I knew that Hitchcock’s camerawork and editing had played a large role in provoking my reactions. But how had he done it? Why had I been caught up in this film so much more than others? I felt as if I had witnessed an elegantly executed magic trick, and I wanted to know the secret.

Shortly thereafter, I discovered Francois Truffaut’s famous Hitchcock interview book in a local bookstore. Pouring through it in the middle of the store, I finally began to grasp the artistry of filmmaking. This wasn’t photographing stories, as I had naively thought as a child; this was using the technology of film for creative expression and eliciting responses from the audience. My way of looking at film was changed forever that day. When I later got a copy of the book as a gift it became, in essence, my first film textbook, and I eagerly sought out Hitchcock’s films to further my studies. Monster films and Star Wars may have made me love movies, but it was Psycho and Alfred Hitchcock that made me appreciate them as art. The Master of Suspense’s theories of filmmaking revealed a wide world of exciting creative possibilities, and it wasn’t long before I began to long to somehow be a part of that world. It seemed unlikely; in suburban Michigan, where I grew up, the dream of working in the movies seemed as remote and exotic as becoming an astronaut. Still, when it came time to declare a major at the University of Michigan, I didn’t hesitate to opt for Film & Video Studies (admittedly I made it a duel major with English; the pragmatic Midwesterner in me wanted a backup plan). I never became the next Hitchcock, or even the next Ed Wood, but I did succeed in carving out a rewarding career in the motion picture industry. I’m privileged to be able to work in the field I love, and it would not have been possible without the passion ignited by the films of my youth and brought to maturity by Alfred Hitchcock and Psycho.

Gary Teetzel lives in Los Angeles, where he has worked in motion picture publicity, film & video servicing and film remastering/restoration. He has reviewed DVDs for the Turner Classic Movies website and been a guest writer at DVD Savant and Sci-Fi Japan.

Life-Changing Movies

“Citizen Kane” (1941)

December 15, 2013 Stuart Galbraith IV Leave a comment

A new feature here at World Cinema Paradise, “Life-Changing Movies” pays tribute to those films, festivals, and other special screenings that changed the way we look at the movies. Check back here as our contributors write about their life-changing viewing experiences.

To begin with the obvious, inevitable, but wholly justified inaugural title.

Back in the summer of 1979, I was shipped off by my parents, needing a break from their troubled teenager, for the second time to a filmmaking seminar sponsored by the appropriately named DAFT: Detroit Area Film Teachers. Held at the exclusive, historic Cranbrook boarding school in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan, teachers and students were provided all the necessary tools – camera, film, overnight processing, lighting equipment, etc. – to produce a short Super-8 film over the course of one week which would then be screened as part of a mini-festival on the final day.

The year before I had made a very modest Claymation short but somebody there, probably John Prusak, aware of my rapidly ballooning interest in movies of all kinds greeted me this year with an enormous gift: my own private Nirvana, a private classroom equipped with a Bell & Howell 16mm projector, screen, and in one corner of the room, something like 200 reels of film stacked in a pile in the corner rising five feet off the floor.

Instead of concentrating my energies on the challenge of writing, shooting, and editing a short film in just seven days, I spent all my mornings, afternoons, and nights plowing through those film cans, this effectively being the era just preceding the home video revolution. (Interestingly, however, the year before someone had gotten their hands on a VHS or three-quarter-inch copy of the still relatively new The Rocky Horror Picture Show, which we all watched one evening.)

I spent hours upon hours in that little classroom, seeing for the first time or rewatching such films as Duck Soup (1933), Lord of the Flies (1963), Night of the Living Dead (1968), untold treasures from the National Film Board of Canada and short films distributed by the late, lamented distributor Pyramid Films.

And then one evening I came across a film I’d always heard, in my teenaged naiveté, was one of the very best of its kind: Orson Welles’s Citizen Kane (1941). But by this time it was already one o’clock in the morning, far too late to watch the whole thing. But, I figured, I’ll watch the first reel, then pick up where I left off the following morning.

Needless to say that didn’t happen. I was transfixed from the opening scenes, of Charles Foster Kane (Welles) on his deathbed in the castle-like Xanadu, by the abrupt cut to a dizzying virtuosity of filmmaking as a fake newsreel summarized his fabled life, of the next abrupt cut to the newsreel company’s screening room, where reporter Jerry Thompson (William Alland) is assigned to find meaning in Kane’s last words. With short breaks to change reels I finished watching this momentous triumph of movie-making around 3:30 am. And then proceeded to watch it a second time, then and there. And I watched it twice more before the week was over.

(Built in 1922 by the famed Finnish architect Eliel Saarinen, Cranbrook, cavernous and bereft of students due to the summer holiday, was especially at night an eerie place to stay, and in its own way quite reminiscent of Kane’s Xanadu.)

Alfred Hitckcock’s Vertigo (1958) last year famously bumped it from Sight & Sound’s 50-year-old poll of the Greatest Films of All-Time but, for my money, there’s still no movie finer than Citizen Kane. I won’t attempt to explain its greatness – people have been doing that for decades – but on a personal level it’s perhaps the most startlingly entertaining of Great Movies. It’s crammed to the gills with so much creativity and ingenuity that, even when one has seen it close to 50 times as I have, there are still always new things to discover. And it still dazzles. It’s as fresh in 2013 as it was 70-plus years ago.

Seeing it that first time was an overwhelming experience, one that demonstrated how far filmmaking conventions could be stretched and even shattered to good effect, and – an especially important lesson in this day and age – how it’s possible to infuse a film with a deeply personal, original vision yet also so involve the audience that they lose themselves completely in the picture they’re watching, and not consciously aware of all they are seeing.

I can’t say watching Citizen Kane that week had any positive impact at all on my own filmmaking ambitions, try as I might, but it reshaped forever the way I look at movies, and made me recognize the limitless possibilities of the medium.

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