Tag: Bernard Hermann

Vertigo (1958)

The worst thing that can happen to “Vertigo” after being named the Best Movie of All Time by Sight and Sound is that the movie will turn into homework.

For decades, “Citizen Kane” carried the burden of being seen as a good helping of cultural vegetables. I know how people are. They think they’ve seen a lot of movies in their life, then stumble across a list like Sight and Sound and proceed to boastfully challenge the top choice.

“I don’t see what makes it so great.” Maybe if the Sight and Sound poll weren’t treated like a figurative film canon, then maybe people wouldn’t be so quick to write off masterpieces as stodgy, arty, no fun movies for critics and old people.

So naturally upon rewatching “Vertigo” with my family, I quickly asked my dad if he knew why “Vertigo” was considered worthy of the number one spot. He gave the best answer I could’ve imagined. “Because other movies just aren’t as good?”

In terms of film auteurs, Alfred Hitchcock is far and away the most approachable, the least “challenging,” the least stodgy and often the most fun. His films are technical flourishes. Where other directors fail to set the mood, where other directors use a plot device that is all too obvious or where other directors incorporate a twist that is all too ridiculous, Hitchcock never stepped wrong.

We call him the master of suspense because he brought no-nonsense thrills into the cinema and became a household name before anyone else. If his movies lacked the emotional heft of other Old Hollywood classics, it’s because he played his films with such virtuosity and perfection that stray feelings never got in the way.

“Vertigo” on the other hand is his most personal and his most emotionally complex. That’s why this is in the number one spot; because it’s excellent. Continue reading “Vertigo (1958)”

Rapid Response: The Trouble With Harry

“The Trouble With Harry” has to be the damnedest film Alfred Hitchcock ever made. Although all of his films have witty elements in their carefully constructed and orchestrated screenplays, this is one of his few movies that is a straight comedy.

Of course it is not without Hitchcockian elements, but it is at times a maddening film with the plot of a screwball and the dry delivery of an Ealing comedy.

As the tagline goes, the trouble with Harry is that he’s dead. A little boy (Jerry Mathers, before he was in “Leave it to Beaver.” Did the Beaver ever trade a dead rabbit for a frog and two blueberry muffins?) stumbles across a dead body in the lovely and idyllic Vermont forest. It’s poor Harry Wolp, and Capt. Albert Wiles (Edmund Gwenn) believes he shot him while hunting for rabbits. He’s about to move the body, but person after person walks by before the Captain can hide it, including the boy with his mother, Jennifer Rogers (Shirley MacLaine, in her debut film role). Continue reading “Rapid Response: The Trouble With Harry”

Rapid Response: The Birds

If Hitchcock knew that a group of crows is actually referred to as a murder, do you think that would be enough to attract him to making “The Birds?”

Viewed as his last important and “unflawed” film in his otherwise spotless canon, it is unarguably one of Hitchcock’s most gimmicky pictures, but at times it is also one of the most gruesome and bloody he ever made.

The first stand out segment for me was the gory glimpse of a man with his eye sockets picked out by birds that had attacked his bedroom. Hitch paces this scene brilliantly, starting with Lydia’s (Jessica Tandy) slow walk down an eerily centered corridor and then first giving us a glimpse of a bloody pair of legs on the floor, the pajama pants poked through with tiny beak-shaped holes. Three quick edits that bring us closer and closer to the body confirm our suspicions in the best way possible without allowing it to linger on the shocking image for a second too long.

It’s a good example of how technically perfect “The Birds” is, despite some special effects and puppetry that aren’t quite up to today’s standards. We see his precision in the absolutely gripping finale as the birds attack the Brenner household as well as when Melanie (Tippi Hedren) silently approaches their house to leave young Cathy her present of two lovebirds. Continue reading “Rapid Response: The Birds”

Rapid Response: The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951)

Robert Wise’s “The Day The Earth Stood Still” is one of the finest ’50s B-Movies of its time.

In terms of ’50s, campy, sci-fi B-movies that are actually pretty good, you don’t get much better than “The Day the Earth Stood Still.”

This is your pinnacle Cold War B-movie. Dozens if not hundreds were released in the ’50s, some are remembered, some are exceptionally bad, and a select few, like “The Day the Earth Stood Still,” actually have some merit.

The films played on the fears surrounding a potential Soviet attack and the many forms they could find to strike. We see such methods as toxic shrinking gas in “The Incredible Shrinking Man” and aliens embodying exact replicas of people we know and love in “The Invasion of the Body Snatchers.”

“TDTESS” reverses the assumption that there will be an invading force aiming to destroy mankind. In this film, the enemy is blatantly mankind itself and our lust for violence amidst ignorant fear. Continue reading “Rapid Response: The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951)”