Target #260: You Can't Take It with You (1938, Frank Capra)

TSPDT placing: #992

Directed by: Frank Capra

Written by: George S. Kaufman (play), Moss Hart (play), Robert Riskin (screenplay)

Starring: Jean Arthur, Lionel Barrymore, James Stewart, Edward Arnold, Ann Miller, Spring Byington, Donald Meek

I'd forgotten how therapeutic a bit of Capra-corn could be. I sat down to a pleasant romantic comedy about two lovers overcoming their class differences, but ended the film practically in tears – tears of joy, as only Frank Capra could produce. You Can't Take It with You (1938) was the first of the director's collaborations with Jimmy Stewart. However, the heart of the film actually centres around another familiar Capra face, Lionel Barrymore – who, never to be forced into retirement by his painful arthritis, acts the entire film on crutches. Forget the dastardly Mr. H.F. Potter, his Martin Vanderhof is the "richest" man in town, not because he has very much money, but because his kindness and sense of community has made him more friends than he can count {this is a theme that Capra used regularly; see Mr. Deeds Goes to Town (1936) and It's a Wonderful Life (1946)}. But the daughter (Jean Arthur) in the hopelessly-eccentric Vanderhof family has fallen in love with the son (Stewart) of a rich banker (Edward Arnold), incidentally the poorest man in town.

An evening with the Vanderhofs is something akin to a Marx Brothers movie, with each character doing their own thing without regard for what outsiders might think. While some family members test fireworks in the basement, sister Essie (Ann Miller) practices her ballet to the xylophone music of her husband (Samuel S. Hinds), as her uptight Russian instructor Boris (Mischa Auer) complains that everything "stinks." Mother Penny (Spring Byington) attempts to finish writing a play, and Alice (Jean Arthur) slides down the staircase banister. With twelve activities happening at once, it's the farce of Arsenic and Old Lace (1944) without those troublesome murders. But behind all this chaos is the unmistakable unity of a close-knit family, and (as in many Capra films) it only takes a recognisable musical tune to bring together the Vanderhofs – and the snobbish Kirbys – for a collective performance that is genuinely charming in its sincerity. At least you can always be assured that a Frank Capra film will always leave you feeling good about yourself, the world, and the people in it.

Alongside the compassionate performances of Barrymore and Edward Arnold, enjoyable performances are also given by James Stewart and Jean Arthur, such that they repeated their love affair in Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1939). You Can't Take It with You was adapted by Capra-regular Robert Riskin from a successful play by George S. Kaufman and Moss Hart. I found it interesting that the screenplay bore what appeared to be a socialist slant, with Martin Vanderhof decidedly rejecting capitalist labour in favour of performing his preferred tasks for a minimum wage. This approach, we are shown, leaves one happier and assists the wellbeing of the entire community. I'm not so certain, however, of Vanderhof's insistence on not paying income tax, on the basis that he's not getting anything back from the government – this doesn't seem socialist, nor does it sound particularly "American," either. Even so, everybody can sympathise with the notion that money isn't everything, and that a single kindhearted gesture can go much further than a thousand dollar bills.

9/10

Currently my #2 film of 1938:

1) Angels with Dirty Faces (Michael Curtiz)
2) You Can’t Take It with You (Frank Capra)
3) The Lady Vanishes (Alfred Hitchcock)
4) The Adventures of Robin Hood (Michael Curtiz, William Keighley)

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Target #234: The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (1962, John Ford)

TSPDT placing: #85

Directed by: John Ford

Written by: Dorothy M. Johnson (short story), James Warner Bellah (screenplay), Willis Goldbeck (screenplay)

Starring: John Wayne, James Stewart, Vera Miles, Lee Marvin, Edmond O'Brien, Andy Devine, John Carradine, Jeanette Nolan, John Qualen, Woody Strode, Strother Martin, Lee Van Cleef

WARNING: Plot and/or ending details may follow!!! [Paragraphs 3 + 4 Only]

A Western like The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (1962) could only have been produced by a man reaching the twilight of his career. Suddenly, all those gunfights, bar brawls and romantic quarrels, to be found in abundance in John Ford's previous efforts, don't seem quite so exciting anymore, and all we're left with is the lingering melancholy of nostalgia, the memory of wasted years and missed opportunities. Many critics say that Ford reached full maturity with The Searchers (1956), the powerful tale of a cowboy plagued with guilt and racial prejudice. However, even that film required a lighthearted romantic subplot to break up the drama, a typical Ford inclusion that rather thinned the emotional intensity of the primary narrative. Liberty Valance offends similarly – Edmond O'Brien's drunkenness and Andy Devine's cowardice are clearly played for laughs – but this does little to detract from the story at the film's heart, a wistful reminiscence of the Old West, before it became civilised, and the untruths that helped build the core of the Western legend.

John Wayne and James Stewart were, of course, no strangers to the Western genre. Their casting, aside from adding commercial appeal to the picture, was made with a very deliberate intention in mind – after years of defining these two actors' Western identities, Ford would then systematically break them down, to reveal the bitter truths about life, love and death in the Old West. But, in a way, Ford seems to prefer the "uncivilised" and "lawless" lands prior to the arrival of the educated man – we watch with disdain as a fast-talking politician (John Carradine) carelessly spouts lies to add dramatic effect to his speech, and refers to Liberty Valance (Lee Marvin) as "the bullet-ridden body of an honest citizen." Just how did the scholarly law-man, who arrives in town without a gun, manage to conquer the West, to defeat the likes of Liberty Valance? The truth is that he could only have done it with the aid of true men like Tom Doniphon (Wayne), who compromised their values and later lived to regret it.

The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance comes at the cross-roads of a radical transformation in the Western genre. That same year, young director Sam Peckinpah released Ride the High Country (1962), a key landmark in the development of the Revisionist Western, a subgenre that critiqued the idealistic themes of the traditional Western, and favoured realism of romanticism. Ford's film is wholly traditional in terms of film-making style, with the majority of filming taking place on studio sets rather than on location. This decision, a departure from the director's other famous Westerns (which often made excellent use of Monument Valley, Arizona) was made to stress the film's greater emphasis on characters. At the same time, however, Liberty Valance is a reflection on the fallacy of Ford's Old West, a mournful footnote to decades of the director's work. Here, the villain isn't killed in a fair fight, but he's gunned down from the shadows; the hero doesn't win the girl, but dies lonely. In fact, I'm not even sure there are heroes in this story. Only legends.

This is, without a doubt, one of Ford's saddest Westerns; rather than looking towards the future with hope, its characters are instead looking back with wistful regret. The West, which was once a wilderness, has been transformed into a garden, and a well-meaning politician has built a career upon an act that he can't claim to be his own. Wayne's Tom Doniphon perhaps comes closer to heroism than any other character, but he shot his foe, unseen, from a side-street, and thus his reward is not the respect and admiration of a nation, nor the love of the girl (Vera Miles) whom he adores. Instead, the courageous but foolish educated man, Ransom Stoddard (Stewart) reaped the benefits of his "achievement," and his life is forever tinged with the guilt of his own success. We can almost see Stoddard's conscience tearing itself apart when the railway conductor good-naturedly quips, "nothing's too good for the man who shot Liberty Valance." Perhaps Stoddard did shoot Liberty Valance. The legends tell us that this is the case, and so now the truth, whatever it may be, doesn't make an ounce of difference.

9/10

Currently my #6 film of 1962:

1) Lawrence of Arabia (David Lean)
2) La Jetée {The Pier} (Chris Marker)
3) Le Procès {The Trial} (Orson Welles)
4) To Kill A Mockingbird (Robert Mulligan)
5) Birdman of Alcatraz (John Frankenheimer)
6) The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (John Ford)
7) Cape Fear (J. Lee Thompson)
8) The Manchurian Candidate (John Frankenheimer)
9) Dr. No (Terence Young)
10) Ride the High Country (Sam Peckinpah)

What others have said:

"The contrast between charismatic and legal authority in John Ford's The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance is even more interesting, because it parallels the difference between the values of the West or Wilderness (John Wayne) and the values of the East or Civilization (James Stewart). Stewart's Ranse Stoddard embodies rational-legal authority, symbolically as well as practically. A decent lawyer from the East, he comes to practice law and bring order to the West. Wayne, by contrast, is the uneducated leader who believes that "You make your own justice here and enforce your law." He is the rugged individual, using physical force, not laws, in fighting Liberty Valance, an outlaw, because it is the only efficient way."

Emanuel Levy

"The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance is a drama that shreds the fabric of legend, as well as man's need to cling to simplified, inspirational stories that separate good from evil. The film examines how the truth of history is always obscured by hearsay, assumptions and outright deception, and observes how legends rise from the ashes of grit and pain.... The crux of the film involves Stoddard's own showdown with Valance, and a secret surrounding the specifics of what exactly went down. Doniphon shows true heroism by putting aside his own interests for the common good. Of course, the purpose of the movie is to explain that ideas and spirit mean a whole lot more than facts. Ideas and symbols are more powerful than bullets."

Phil Villarreal, 2006

"But I can't get all misty eyed over Ford's legendary take on the Old West and his attempt to show that the greatness of the country came from those heroic roots, as he dismisses in importance whether all the stories are true or not and how short memories are for Americans. The way Ford sees it Stewart had the vision what America should be like, but if it wasn't for Wayne's gun that vision would never have happened. I found this history lesson less than genuine and far too simplistic and chilling, even though the film had some value as entertainment fodder."

Dennis Schwartz, 2003

Also recommended from director John Ford:

* Drums Along the Mohawk (1939)
"When production of Drums Along the Mohawk began to run behind schedule and over-budget, producer Darryl F. Zanuck, knowing that a great battle had yet to be filmed, became understandably anxious.... Ford decided to abandon the entire sequence; placing Fonda in front of the camera, he gently put forth a succession of questions concerning the conflict, and the actor improvised from there... In a deliberate, deadpan tone of voice, Fonda recounts the horrors of skirmish; the horror of comrades falling beside him; the terrifying war-cry of the enemy; the appalling waste of life. This was the slice of Ford genius for which I had been waiting."

* The Fugitive (1947)
"Unlike many of the Westerns that brought director John Ford his greatest fame, The Fugitive is entirely unconcerned with any form of action or dialogue; Ford's film-making is so concentrated on establishing the correct emotional atmosphere for each scene that it occasionally strays into tedium. However, it was obviously a very personal project for the Ford – who once called it "perfect" – and it's difficult to criticise a film into which the director poured so much passion and resolve.... A visual masterpiece this film may be, and certainly an overall interesting watch, but The Fugitive remains inferior Ford."

* Fort Apache (1948)

"Prior to this film, I'd always seen Henry Fonda as a decent and honourable everyman, so it was interesting to see him depart from his usual upright persona. Conceited and stubborn, Lt. Colonel Thursday is a tragic pillar of eroded military integrity, his once-impressive leadership abilities now overshadowed by an unyielding desire for immortality; the young men whose lives he sacrificed in order to imprint himself in history's pages will never be remembered by name, but, as Capt. York muses at the film's conclusion, their spirit will forever live on in the plight of their successors."

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Target #229: The Shop Around the Corner (1940, Ernst Lubitsch)

TSPDT placing: #238
Directed by: Ernst Lubitsch
Written by: Miklós László (play), Samson Raphaelson (screenplay), Ben Hecht (uncredited)

Starring: Margaret Sullavan, James Stewart, Frank Morgan, Joseph Schildkraut, Sara Haden, Felix Bressart, William Tracy

The Shop Around the Corner (1940) is a pleasant romantic comedy, not the sort that I will hold dear to me until the end of my days, but nonetheless a film thoroughly deserving of its reputation. By 1940, director Ernst Lubitsch had long ago taken Hollywood by storm, and his famed "Lubitsch touch" had become a sparkling commercial trademark. This film was planned for a 1939 release, but scheduling conflicts meant that James Stewart and Margaret Sullavan were unavailable for filming. Rather than substituting either of his main stars, Lubitsch decided to postpone production, in the meantime directing Greta Garbo in Ninotchka (1939). When it was finally completed, The Shop Around the Corner appears to have been met with relative indifference, receiving zero Oscar nominations despite an excellent screenplay by Samson Raphaelson and fine performances from its two leads and Frank Morgan in a supporting role. Time, nevertheless, has betrayed the film's massive and enduring influence, with high-profile remakes including In the Good Old Summertime (1949) and You've Got Mail (1998).

At its surface, one might assume The Shop Around the Corner to simply be the story of two lovers, Klara Novak (Sullavan) and Alfred Kralik (Stewart), who love each other without knowing it. However, Lubitsch's film runs much deeper than that. It's the story of Matuschek and Company, a stylish gift shop in Budapest, and the various human relationships that make the store such a close-knit family. When store-owner Hugo Matuschek (Frank Morgan) begins to suspect his oldest employee of having an affair with his wife, we witness the breakup of two families. There's absolutely no reason why the story should not have been set in the United States – perhaps in the blustery streets of New York – but Lubitsch was deliberately recreating the passions and memories of his former years in Europe, the quaintness of love and life before war brought terror and bloodshed to the doorstep. This subtle subtext brings a more meaningful, personal touch to the film – in fact, even as I write this review, I'm beginning to appreciate the story even more.

Sullavan and Stewart are both lovely in their respective roles, but I think that it's the supporting cast that really make the film. Each character brings a distinctive personality to the mix, and their interactions are always believable and enjoyable. I especially liked how Lubitsch knowingly directed much of our sympathy towards Hugo Matuschek, who, in any other film, would have been restricted to an underdeveloped, two-dimensional portrayal. Matuschek may have lost the love of his family, but he recaptures it in the affection of his employees, and you experience a heartwarming glow when, in the bitter cold of a Christmas Eve snowstorm, he finds companionship in the freckle-faced young errand-boy (Charles Smith). This genuine warmth towards a supporting character strikes me as being similar to several of Billy Wilder's later creations, for example, Boom Boom Jackson in The Fortune Cookie (1966) or Carlo Carlucci in Avanti! (1972). Of course, it doesn't really need saying, but Billy Wilder learned from the best.

7/10

Currently my #7 film of 1940:

1) The Great Dictator (Charles Chaplin)
2) The Grapes Of Wrath (John Ford)
3) Rebecca (Alfred Hitchcock)
4) Fantasia (James Algar et al.)
5) Pinocchio (Hamilton Luske, Ben Sharpsteen)
6) Foreign Correspondent (Alfred Hitchcock)
7) The Shop Around the Corner (Ernst Lubitsch)
8) His Girl Friday (Howard Hawks)
9) The Philadelphia Story (George Cukor)

What others have said:

"Who but Ernst Lubitsch could have pulled off such a winning romantic-comedy classic that dares to include, but is not marred by, such tragic undercurrents, with a frank subplot involving adultery, attempted suicide, and the collapse of a marriage? ... With consummate deftness, Lubitsch scratches the surface of ordinary characters and circumstances and reveals the reality behind the deceptive appearances — the substance and doubts beneath the vain posturing, the false heart behind the smiling face, the poetic soul behind the prosaic demeanor — and serves all of it up with soufflé-like lightness."

Steven D. Greydanus

"When I watch a romantic comedy, I’ve come to expect certain things – a formulaic plot (usually some variation of the boy meets girl, boy loses girl, boy gets girl back in some wild situation), one-dimensional supporting characters, and over-sentimentality. Ernst Lubitsch is one of the few directors able to make a romantic comedy and avoid all of the genre’s negative aspects. The Shop Around the Corner is charming without being manipulative, fun without being repetitive, and witty without being pretentious."

Derek Smith, Apollo Guide

"Teaming Stewart, Sullavan and Morgan, just as in Borzage's The Mortal Storm (made the same year), this also deals with troubled romance in Central Europe, though here the threat is not Nazism but pride and the interference of others... It's a marvellously delicate romantic comedy, finally very moving, with the twisted intrigues among the staff also carrying narrative weight, Morgan's cuckolded proprietor being especially affecting. Thoroughly different from To Be or Not To Be but just as exhilarating, it's one of the few films truly justifying Lubitsch's reputation for a 'touch'."

Geoff Andrew, Time Out

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Repeat Viewing: Rope (1948, Alfred Hitchcock)

TSPDT placing: #955

Directed by: Alfred Hitchcock

Written by: Patrick Hamilton (play), Hume Cronyn (adaptation), Arthur Laurents (screenplay), Ben Hecht (uncredited)

Starring: James Stewart, John Dall, Farley Granger, Cedric Hardwicke, Constance Collier, Douglas Dick, Edith Evanson, Dick Hogan, Joan Chandler
Alfred Hitchcock, despite his commercial popularity, was perhaps one of cinema's most audacious technical innovators. Even very early in his career – Blackmail (1929) was the first British film to make the cross-over into "talkies" – the Master of Suspense was forever searching for distinctive new means of telling a story and furthering his craft. Hitchcock was particularly interested in film-making that unfolded almost exclusively in a single restricted location, perhaps because of its likeness to a traditional stage play, or, more tellingly, because it allowed him to place the audience "in the room" with his nefarious characters. The director's first such endeavour was the radical Lifeboat (1944), which took place entirely on a small boat in the middle of the Atlantic, and similar "one-room" thrillers include Dial M for Murder (1954) and Rear Window (1954). Of course, the most experimental of these experiments was undoubtedly Rope (1948), a tense and intimate suspense tale that utilised extraordinarily-long takes to unfold the story almost in real-time. Against all odds, it's one of Hitchcock's finest.

Rope was adapted from Patrick Hamilton's 1929 stage play of the same name, itself inspired by the true-life story of Nathan Leopold and Richard Loeb, two wealthy University of Chicago students whose desire to commit the "perfect crime" culminated in murder in 1924. The film opens with the strangling murder of David Kentley (Dick Hogan) by two friends, Brandon Shaw (John Dall) and Phillip Morgan (Farley Granger), who have come to consider murder an art-form, a privilege bestowed only upon a select few superior individuals. In order to crown their masterpiece, and flaunt their superiority before colleagues, the pair have organised a dinner party in their apartment – attended by David's friends and family – the buffet served over their victim's lifeless body in an unlocked chest. As Brandon narcissistically drops vague hints as to David's fate, and Phillip descends into a restless drunken binge, former prep-school housemaster Rupert Cadell (James Stewart) senses that his students have been up to something, and that his own teachings on the philosophy of the Übermensch (Nietzsche's "Superman") may have been responsible.

All this action unfolds through ten continuous long takes, of between four and ten minutes in length, with around half of the transitions made "invisible" by dollying forward into the darkness of a character's back. As the characters move back and forth across Hitchcock's set, their lines and movements precisely choreographed, the cameramen and sound recordists track smoothly with them, constantly moving props and furniture out of the path of the filming equipment. This was the first occasion that such an audacious film-making technique had been trialled, and Rope wouldn't be bettered until digital technology allowed Aleksandr Sokurov to film the entirety of Russian Ark (2002) in a single take. Some have subsequently termed Hitchcock's film to be nothing but a gimmick, but to do so would be grossly unfair to all involved – indeed, when I first viewed the film, such was my immersion in the story that, unbelievably enough, it took me the bulk of the running time to even notice that I was watching unbroken takes.

Rope deliberately carries the air of a stage play, though the addition of a camera necessarily amplifies the intimacy of every situation. By eliminating almost all editing from his film, Hitchcock suspends the artificiality that is inherent in the art form – effectively flouting the wisdom of Eisenstein and Vertov – and allows the actions of his characters to tell the story. Characteristically, this technique also adds an element of voyeurism to our viewing the film, the unbroken takes suggesting that we, the audience, are actually standing in the room observing the proceedings. As the third perpetrator in the murder, we watch through anxious eyes as Brandon Shaw smugly offers dangerous insinuations, Phillip Morgan shakes uncontrollably at every item that might give away his crime, and Rupert Cadell thoughtfully begins to put the pieces together, despite his disbelief that such a cold-blooded murder could have been committed. Exhausting, exhilarating and, above all, entertaining, Alfred Hitchcock's Rope finds the Master of Suspense at the top of his game, a shining example of experimentation turned into great art.

9/10

Currently my #3 film of 1948:

1) The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (John Huston)
2) Ladri di biciclette {The Bicycle Thief} (Vittorio De Sicae)
3) Rope (Alfred Hitchcock)
4) Oliver Twist (David Lean)
5) Macbeth (Orson Welles)

What others have said:

"The novelty of the picture is not in the drama itself, it being a plainly deliberate and rather thin exercise in suspense, but merely in the method which Mr. Hitchcock has used to stretch the intended tension for the length of the little stunt. And, with due regard for his daring (and for that of Transatlantic Films), one must bluntly observe that the method is neither effective nor does it appear that it could be. For apart from the tedium of waiting or someone to open that chest and discover the hidden body which the hosts have tucked away for the sake of a thrill, the unpunctuated flow of image becomes quite monotonous. And the effort of application to a story of meager range becomes intense. The physical limitation of the camera to one approach compels it to stay as an eavesdropper on lots of dialogue and lots of business that are dull. And the yarn, by the nature of its writing, is largely actionless."

Bosley Crowther, 1948

"To Hitchcock's credit, Rope never feels much like a stage play despite the lack of edits and its apartment set. It's too alive for that. It's a movie through and through. The director dresses it up in every possible way he can: the sound design is particularly smart, splitting the party into separate conversational layers. There's a great sequence with only one actor, the hired help, walking to and from the foreground cleaning off the living room chest cum coffin as the murderers and the guests continue their conversations. The amount of tension Hitchcock manages to build by doing so little is admirable. He also makes elegant use of music. Another great moment occurs in a conversation between James Stewart and one of the killers, with the canny use of a metronome to add to the time bomb effect of the deadly evening."

Nathaniel Rogers

"Given Hitchcock's sensitivity to the anxieties upon which order is unnaturally erected, however, it is just as valid to see the murder as not so much a perversion of their mentor's teachings as a perversion of the feelings they are not allowed to express for each other. Hitchcock dutifully restores normalcy by sending estranged lovebirds Joan Chandler and Douglas Dick home at the end of the party, but his real interest lies with the society-whelped "monsters" and the smug teacher who comes to realize his own inescapable role in their condition. It's fitting that Hitchcock's themes of death and sex culminate in a pistol's climatic ejaculation out the window, a moment of necessary exposure that, leaving the three characters alone with their sobering revelations under the camera's non-dodging gaze, feels paradoxically liberating."

Nathaniel Rogers

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Repeat Viewing: Vertigo (1958, Alfred Hitchcock)

TSPDT placing: #2
Directed by: Alfred Hitchcock
Written by: Pierre Boileau (novel), Thomas Narcejac (novel), Alec Coppel (screenplay), Samuel A. Taylor (screenplay)
Starring: James Stewart, Kim Novak, Barbara Bel Geddes, Tom Helmore

WARNING: Plot and/or ending details may follow!!!

John "Scottie" Ferguson has a fear of falling. As the detective dangles precariously from the unstable guttering of a tall building, he impulsively looks downwards to glimpse the distant ground seemingly rushing towards him, all the while paradoxically shifting further and further downwards to maximise his inevitable plummet. This optical effect, sometimes known as a "contra-zoom," "trombone zoom" or even the "Vertigo effect," was invented by Irmin Roberts, a Paramount second-unit cameraman, and Alfred's Hitchcock's use of the technique is pivotal to the success of Vertigo (1958), the director's final collaboration with James Stewart. Human eyes interpret the relative dimensions of objects using a combination of size and perspective signals, and the simultaneous forward zoom / reverse track, which alters perspective while maintaining object size, instantly perplexes our eyesight, triggering sensory confusion and successfully mimicking the dizzying sensation of acrophobia. It may not be an incredibly subtle means of communicating Scottie's vertigo, but it's effective, and, particularly in the film's second half, Hitchcock employs a seamless combination of subtle and blatant film-making techniques to polish his landmark thriller.

Just a few nights ago, I was fortunate enough to attend a double-bill cinema screening of Alfred Hitchcock's classic thrillers Rear Window (1954) and Vertigo (1958), both starring James Stewart and both among the finest pictures in the director's distinguished repertoire. Both films deal quite substantially with the notion of voyeurism, a topic further explored in Hitchcock's crowning masterpiece, Psycho (1960). Rear Window was the greater crowd-pleaser among the two, replete with gleefully-dark dialogue and a delicious murder mystery glimpsed through the rear window of Stewart's cluttered apartment. Vertigo succeeds on distinctly-different terms: though rather lumbering and morose in comparison, the film is easily the Hitchcock's most intense thriller, with little of the playfully-black humour to be found in most of the director's acknowledged classics. This being my second viewing, it was interesting to note a film divided into two rather-incompatible halves, one a leisurely, borderline-supernatural ghost story, and the other a vivid exploration of loss and obsession. It's a curious combination – and one that I fear contradicts some commentators' claims of "perfection" – but it's also an altogether fascinating one.

The film's opening half concerns acrophobic detective Scottie Ferguson (James Stewart), who has retired from the police force after his disability caused the death of a colleague. An old colleague, Gavin Elster (Tom Helmore), hires Scottie is surveil his wife Madelaine (Kim Novak), whom he tentatively suspects of having been inhabited by the spirit of a tragic-afflicted ancestress. Hitchcock confidently strings together a series of surveillance episodes, as Scottie tails Madelaine across San Francisco, observing her fixation with her nineteenth-century counterpart, culminating in an attempted suicide at the base of the Golden Gate Bridge. These sequences move at an unhurried pace, usually with extended periods of silence, underscored by Bernard Hermann's eerie soundtrack. However, to one with prior knowledge of the story's eventual conclusion, these comprehensive episodes of observation seem rather superfluous, a deception that exists as a trifling footnote to the film's primary concerns, of obsession and doomed passion. In any case, Scottie soon finds himself falling in love with Madelaine, and, when she is tragically wrenched from his grasp, his own grip on reality begins to falter.

The film's second half, following Madelaine's apparent suicide, marks a crucial turning-point in both the story and our perception of the major characters. James Stewart, long considered the "everyday man" with his shy and polite demeanour, suddenly descends into darkened territory, emerging from his cocoon of self-pitying isolation only after attaining a streak of relief from the face of a passing stranger, Judy Barton (Kim Novak again). In a wretched bid to recapture the passion of his lost love, Scottie forcefully alters Judy's appearance to reconstruct Madelaine's image, and, in one of Hitchcock's all-time most powerful moments, the pair embrace in a hotel room, the camera spinning deliriously about them as their surroundings modify to momentarily evoke the memory of Scottie and Madelaine's final, blissful kiss. However, in choosing to construct a superficial duplicate of his love, Scottie has effectively thwarted any romantic future, and, when it is revealed that Judy and Madelaine were the very same person – the fabrication of an elaborate murder plot – he comes to realise that, not only had he initially "fallen" for an illusion, but his own self-made illusion was equally unviable, if not more so.
9/10

Currently my #1 film of 1958:
1) Vertigo (Alfred Hitchcock)
2) Touch of Evil (Orson Welles)
3) The Fountain of Youth (Orson Welles) (TV)

Currently my #4 film from director Alfred Hitchcock:

1) Psycho (1960)
2) Strangers On A Train (1951)
3) Rear Window (1954)
4) Vertigo (1958)
5) Rope (1948)
6) Rebecca (1940)
7) North by Northwest (1959)
8) I Confess (1953)
9) The Lady Vanishes (1938)
10) Spellbound (1945)

11) Dial M for Murder (1954)
12) Frenzy (1972)
13) Foreign Correspondent (1940)
14) The Birds (1963)
15) Stage Fright (1950)
16) Shadow of a Doubt (1943)
17) Lifeboat (1944)
18) Notorious (1946)
19) The 39 Steps (1935)
20) Sabotage (1936)

21) The Man Who Knew Too Much (1934)
22) Torn Curtain (1966)
23) The Man Who Knew Too Much (1956)
24) The Trouble with Harry (1955)
25) Blackmail (1929)
26) Under Capricorn (1949)
27) Secret Agent (1936)
28) The Lodger (1927)
29) Number Seventeen (1932)
30) Family Plot (1976)

31) Suspicion (1941)
32) Murder! (1930)
33) Rich and Strange (1931)
34) Easy Virtue (1928) What others have said:

"Vertigo (1958), which is one of the two or three best films Hitchcock ever made, is the most confessional, dealing directly with the themes that controlled his art. It is about how Hitchcock used, feared and tried to control women. He is represented by Scottie, a man with physical and mental weaknesses (back problems, fear of heights), who falls obsessively in love with the image of a woman--and not any woman, but the quintessential Hitchcock woman. When he cannot have her, he finds another woman and tries to mold her, dress her, train her, change her makeup and her hair, until she looks like the woman he desires. He cares nothing about the clay he is shaping; he will gladly sacrifice her on the altar of his dreams."
Roger Ebert, October 13, 1996

"Hitchcock makes crafty use of Stewart's all-American image by casting him as the anxious, struggling anti-hero. It's a setup for the classic story in which the hero rescues a distressed woman. But the director takes pains to make us see just how culpable Scottie is, to the extent of having him castigated at length for his negligence by the coroner (Henry Jones) at the inquest after Madeleine's death. I've never before been quite so struck at the accuracy of the coroner's devastating monologue. It's small wonder that Scottie soon finds himself under professional care."
Walter V. Addiego, San Francisco Examiner, 1996

"Vertigo is an enjoyably duplicitous film, full of artificiality in both the film-making (lots of back projection) and the story (things not being what we thought), in other words: pure Hitchcock. Added to this is composer Bernard Herrmann's particularly haunting score, with its falling and rising melody representing Scotty's giddy state of mind as his obsession with Madeleine escalates, and also the heights of the San Francisco locations he roams... Hitchcock's Vertigo is a psycho-drama where he replaces the suspenseful set-piece with bitter emotion and twisted motive; and the absence of virtually any humour makes the relentlessness of Scotty's fated obsession all the more dark and harrowing."
Martyn Glanville, 2000 Also recommended from director Alfred Hitchcock:

"Just like in many of his films, in Dial M for Murder (1954) Hitchcock heightens the suspense by subversively enlisting our sympathies for the villain. Nobody in their right minds would wish for the lovely Grace Kelly to be murdered, but somehow we are manipulated into almost hoping that Tony's plan is a success, and we revel in his sly brilliance as he recovers from his initial failure to implement an equally-devious Plan B. By doing this, Hitchcock makes the audience feel as though they are, themselves, a part of the crime, and as though their own fates hinge on the outcome of Chief Insp. Hubbard's (John Williams) investigation."

"A lesser director might have baulked at the task of making a continually-suspenseful 96-minute film set entirely in a lifeboat. Hitchcock, however, used the situation to his advantage, and the tiny set on which Lifeboat (1944) was filmed (allegedly the smallest in film history), creates a constricting, claustrophobic atmosphere. The surrounding ocean landscape, presumably simulated using the director's favoured rear-projection, is surprisingly convincing throughout... During filming, the cast members were exposed to the elements, which aided the realism of their performances, but also led to frequent illnesses such as seasickness and pneumonia."

"Foreign Correspondent (1940) is most fondly-remembered for its various incredible set-pieces, and the dramatic/romantic subplots that link them are almost immaterial. Your heart will pound during the assassination in the rainswept street; your heart will stop as Jones creeps silently and perilously through the enemy-occupied windmill; your heart will explode as the trans-Atlantic clipper dives terminally into frigid depths of the ocean, cascades of seawater charging through the cockpit of the aircraft. The resultant sequence on the floating aircraft wreckage would no doubt influence Hitchcock when he directed Lifeboat (1944), one of many moments in which Paul Eagler's visual effects left me speechless."

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Repeat Viewing: Rear Window (1954, Alfred Hitchcock)

....Just last night, I was lucky enough to enjoy a double-bill of Alfred Hitchcock's classic thrillers Rear Window (1954) and Vertigo (1958) - the latter in 70mm - at the Astor Theatre in St. Kilda, Melbourne.
....Rear Window was the more crowd-friendly of the two films, with John Michael Hayes' darkly-humorous dialogue getting plenty of laughs throughout. The climactic sequence also got an unexpected laugh, when one overly-enthusiastic female audience member let out a scream as the villain came in for the kill. Even after all these years, the Master of Suspense still hasn't lost the power to thrill us!

TSPDT placing: #41
Directed by: Alfred Hitchcock
Written by: Cornell Woolrich (short story), John Michael Hayes (screenplay)
Starring: James Stewart, Grace Kelly, Wendell Corey, Thelma Ritter, Raymond Burr, Judith Evelyn

WARNING: Plot and/or ending details may follow!!!

There can be absolutely no doubt that Alfred Hitchcock was one of the most gifted film directors ever to work in Hollywood, and Rear Window is one film that demonstrates most exhaustively his enormous talents. I must admit that, on my first viewing of the film, I was quite new to his work, and, whilst I thought it was a solid achievement, it didn't strike me as being anything particularly special. How wrong I was! With subsequent viewings of Rear Window, I was able to better appreciate its intricacies: the flawless performances, the 100 minutes of subtle, wonderfully-executed suspense, the shades of delightfully-dark humour, the manner in which Hitchcock places the viewer inside Jeff's tiny apartment. Released in 1954, Rear Window was the second of four Hitchcock films to star James Stewart (the others being Rope, Vertigo and The Man Who Knew Too Much), and the second of three to feature one of Hollywood's greatest beauties, Grace Kelly (Dial M for Murder, To Catch a Thief).

On the surface, the plot to Rear Window is deceptively straightforward. The screenplay was written by four-time Hitchcock collaborator John Michael Hayes, and based loosely on the short story "It Had to be Murder," by Cornell Woolrich. Confined to his apartment with a broken leg, successful adventure photographer L. B. "Jeff" Jefferies (Stewart) passes the tedious days and weeks by peering through the window at his neighbours, watching and learning their daily activities and rituals. When he is not being a voyeur, Jeff is distracted by visits from an embittered insurance company nurse, Stella (Thelma Ritter), and his beautiful, glamorous socialite girlfriend, Lisa (Kelly). Jeff's "peeping tom" activities have become considerably more serious than simply a means of passing the time, and he is soon immersed in the triumphs and failures of his neighbours. On one particular night, Jeff notices a man in the apartment across the courtyard (Raymond Burr) acting in a suspicious manner, and, despite the doubt of his friends, he begins to suspect that this man has committed an absolutely heinous crime.












The sheer genius of Rear Window is not just how well-executed this storyline is, but how Hitchcock ties it together with numerous other narratives, making all of the strings equally-interesting to watch. Each of the apartments visible from Jeff's window acts like a different world – a separate movie – and the combination of all of these creates a rich tapestry of lifestyles, and a range of human relationships that mirror that of Jeff and Lisa. For example, there is hard-working salesmen Lars Thorwald, who arrives home each day to the incessant nagging of his invalid wife (Irene Winston); the woman in the floor below, dubbed "Miss Lonelyheart" (Judith Evelyn), is a hopeless romantic who, in her depression, is addicted to alcohol and sleeping pills; a young music writer (Ross Bagdasarian) struggles to make an income; a sexy young dancer, "Miss Torso" (Georgine Darcy), practises her dance moves and battles various suitors; two newly-weds frequently culminate their marriage with the blinds drawn, though, by the end of the film, the wife has begun the nagging that is arguably characteristic of the gender!












Despite obviously being in love with Lisa, Jeff is apprehensive of approaching marriage, fearing that his gritty, adventurous, globe-trotting lifestyle will not be compatible with Lisa's love of socialising and high-fashion (she is never caught wearing the same expensive dress twice). At first, we notice Jeff using the lives of those in the other apartments to distract from the troubles in his own, and he often uses the examples before him to support the decisions that he must make in his own life. As the film progresses, Lisa reveals a daring, audacious streak in trying to solve the mystery, and Jeff realises that, when love is concerned, small compromises can and should be made in order to make a fateful relationship work. As the film closes, we notice Lisa lying on a bed in common, unglamorous clothing, reading the book, "Beyond the High Himalayas," no doubt in preparation for the couple's next adventure. However, though some compromises have been made, Lisa still remains her own women, suddenly casting aside Jeff's reading material and raising her own "Harper's Bazaar" magazine to her face.

Despite the multitude of little narratives that comprise the film, the most significant – and, indeed, the one we remember best – is that of Lars Thorwald and his missing wife, Anna. After witnessing the former acting suspiciously during a stormy night, Jeff suspects that the over-worked and under-appreciated Thorwald has brutally murdered his wife, decapitated her body into several pieces and carried out the remains in a suitcase. Though Jeff's police detective ex-War buddy, Thomas J, Doyle (Wendell Corey), believes Jeff's story to be fantastic, Stella and Lisa soon come to accept the theory as fact, helping an immobile Jeff to solve the mystery. That we never fully understand the motivations of the murderer, having to be content with brief glimpses from afar, is crucial to Hitchcock's storytelling, and, by making the audience complicit in his characters' voyeurism, we feel as though our safety is being placed in jeopardy. The entire film possesses a very subtle air of unrelenting suspense, but the final ten minutes or so are among the most thrilling in cinema history.
9/10

Currently my #1 film of 1954:
1) Rear Window (Alfred Hitchcock)
2) Dial M for Murder (Alfred Hitchcock)
3) Sabrina (Billy Wilder)
4) The Maggie (Alexander Mackendrick)
5) The Caine Mutiny (Edward Dmytryk)

What others have said:

"Jimmy Stewart’s broken leg is a simple enough device – and metaphor – that glues him to the window overlooking other windows. He even questions his prying himself: but when he does, we find ourselves excusing him so we can keep watching with him.... All those characters we glimpse across from Jeff’s window are real people, given dimension by basic but brilliant filmmaking techniques. These are valid even today, when their distant actions may differ, but their characters would be much the same. So if you combine the observant, voyeuristic joys with the subtle, sliding grip of tension that Hitchock generates, you will be glued to the screen. It’s not the best position to be in, unless you love cinema. The point is, you can’t help yourself – and that’s Alfred’s point, too."
Andrew L. Urban, Urban Cinefile

"There's a mystery at the center of Alfred Hitchcock's Rear Window and it sure ain't whether the traveling salesman murdered his wife. That Macguffin merely sets us up to ponder the strange romance between Grace Kelly and Jimmy Stewart. Kelly's character is, at least to the audience, irresistible: a perfectly turned-out society girl, all goodness and style on the outside, all seething passions on the inside.... One of the most profound delights in Hitchcock's masterpiece is the witty, seductive performance Kelly fashions as she slyly campaigns to convince Stewart that, in all her perfection, she's just as "bad" as Miss Torso, the undulating dancer across the courtyard whom he finds so appealingly imperfect."
Joshua Mooney, Movieline

"Steeped in fetishism, concerned with l'amour fou, and structured by dream logic, Vertigo is Hollywood's surrealist masterpiece; Rear Window showcases another side of Hitchcock's vulgar modernism. It's a blatantly conceptual movie, self-reflexively concerned with voyeurism and movie history, the bridge from Soviet montage to Andy Warhol's vacant stare, as well as a construction founded on the 20th-century idea of the metropolis as spectacle—or, more specifically, on the peculiar mixture of isolation and overstimulation the big city affords. Reveling in the simultaneity of the 8 million stories in the Naked City, Rear Window is the slyly alienated precursor of multiple narratives like Short Cuts or Magnolia."
J. Hoberman, Village Voice, January 18, 2000

Also recommended from director Alfred Hitchcock:

"Rebecca (1940) isn't the sort of thriller that lulls you into a false sense of security and then shocks you, since that was simply not Hitchcock's style. Like another Gothic thriller of which I am fond, George Cukor's Gaslight (1944), the main character is forever at ill-ease with her surroundings, and we, as the audience, are never afforded the luxury of feeling safe and secure. Rebecca de Winter is one of the most meticulously-detailed unseen characters in the history of cinema, and, without the story ever straying into supernatural territory, it seems as though her lingering presence is somehow orchestrating the disturbing events of the film."

"Stage Fright (1950) certainly isn't one of Alfred Hitchcock's greatest films, but I like it – quite a lot, in fact... Hitchcock's whimsical sense of humour, evident in a great many of his pictures, is allowed to permeate the traditional drama/romance storyline, and the film would certainly have felt comfortable alongside the Ealing comedies of the late 1940s and early 1950s, many of which employed darkly comedic overtones. Both Rope (1948) and Under Capricorn (1949) had made pioneering use of long-takes, sweeping the camera across the room with astonishing style and grace. For the first time, Hitchcock and cinematographer Wilkie Cooper integrated these techniques into a more traditional film-making style."

"Despite Hitchcock later dismissing Spellbound (1945) as "just another manhunt story wrapped in pseudo-psychology," I'm willing to slide the film into the director's top ten, albeit in the latter section of the list. Rather than delivering the nail-biting suspense for which Hitchcock was best known, the film offers a lighthearted romance and adventure story, mixed with some memory-orientated mystery and intrigue. What happens when you fall in love with a man who might be a cold-blooded murderer? Even more tantalisingly, what if you yourself suffer amnesia and are faced with the very real possibility that you've killed a man?"

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