Those are great films to be a fan of. What gets lost sometimes, I think, is the stages of Hitchcock’s career, since the 1950s Paramount masterpieces coincided with the emergence of the politique des auteurs.
But AH was doing amazing stuff in Great Britain in the 1930s, and his later work shows him still experimenting and growing as an artist. It is just that these later films do no resemble those of the 1950s peak period, so they are (incorrectly) seen as a sloughing off.
I finally got around to seeing Reagan. Firstly, @Dustin you are right in more ways than one. It is a bit off putting how much it seems to portray Reagan as a positive person in politics. He had some dirty people who did some bad things, and he always did the right thing, when he didn’t. So, the biopic is VERY flawed in that part. Robert Davi is truly unique, and was perfect in his casting. You might not recognize him at first! Olek Krupa is seriously one of the most underrated character actors out there, and he could have easily been used in Bond. Dennis Quaid should win an award or two, his mannerisms as Reagan were borderline perfect. At least, Nancy Reagan was not portrayed mostly positive. As she was known for being quite rude to staff members. But, I’m not writing this as a political lesson. The acting overall saves this movie on so many levels. Overall, much like many people’s opinions of Ronald Reagan, I could go either way recommending this biopic.
Having rewatched FRENZY now I am, sadly, underwhelmed (it never was one of my favorite Hitchcocks but I was full of hope to discover things I had missed).
The second murder and the sequence on the potato truck are great. The rest is astonishingly pedestrian, for my taste, and lacking in tension, mostly just going through the motions.
Blaney is a bland, not very interesting wrong guy, Rusk is the slightly more interesting villain - but even he has no mystery and almost feels like a caricature of typical Hitchcock tropes (“Hey, have you met my mother?”) to hint at his problem with women. The film only kicks into gear in the second hour, but at that time I was not invested in Blakey’s fate at all.
One might argue that Hitchcocks point was making the audience realize how little they cared about Blaney despite being completely innocent, just a sad sack caught in the circumstances.
But reading about Hitchcock´s dislike for Finch (even deciding to give him no closeups) it makes me wonder whether the actual idea had been different before filming: giving the audience someone to identify with and then wringing suspense from seeing this character getting deeper and deeper into trouble while the killer seems to get by easily.
The dinner scenes with the inspector and his wife are amusing at first but the actress so overplays it that she seemed to think she is on stage during a silly farce.
And the plot construction with the old friend giving Blaney a place to stay after accidentally seeing him in the park is so wobbly - if the point was to have even friends turn on him because they don’t want to be implicated and punished, too, there would have been lots of better ways to achieve that.
Also: was it really the intention to criticize the old guy in the pub talking about the rape before the murder being the “silver lining”? Or was it the kind of ugly snickering at that time, diminishing women who were raped with the disgusting idea that “oh, they got something out of it”? The first rape is depicted as fear turning into submission and hoping it will end before the murder happens. And maybe the slim Mrs. Blaney indeed was no match for the bigger and more powerful Rusk - but wouldn’t it have been more effective, especially for Hitchcock, to show how she screamed and struggled - and outside nobody really cared? The way it is shown Mrs. Blaney is rather quick to decide she has to endure the rape. Maybe that’s what many women in that time were taught to think, the “close your eyes and think of England”-idea. But on the other hand Mrs. Blaney is characterized as a strong independent and successful business woman. Something just does not feel worked out well here.
Great review.
But so nasty in his wrongness that he becomes interesting (to me). The non-star version of a Hitchcockian wrong man. AH is pushing the envelope here most effectively.
Not so much a caricature, but a resizing (if you will). First with PSYCHO (making a feature film with his television crew), followed by TORN CURTAIN (natural light, and emphasis on supporting actors, and not the stars he was saddled with–to the point where at the end costume baskets stand in for them), to TOPAZ (non-stars, but hobbled by the star-centric mise en scene/cinematography), Hitchcock was transforming his old tropes. He could not un-see Antonioni: “I’ve just seen Antonioni’s Blow-Up. These Italian directors are a century ahead of me in terms of technique! What have I been doing all this time?” As stromberg helped me understand, FRENZY is Hitchcock’s first European film.
I take that line as AH critiquing the mother explanation in PSYCHO (which contains its own muted critique of it), declaring that mother issues do not explain violence against women in society–it is baked into culture (which is the viewpoint of FRENZY).
I do not think we are supposed to be invested in the characters of FRENZY the way were were in Devlin and Alicia or Scottie and Judy.
FRENZY is one of the few AH films where there was one scriptwriter, and a solid script was finalized before shooting began. Hitchcock wanted to work with Anthony Shaffer on FAMILY PLOT, but it seems that agents could not agree on a price. My source for this is “Alfred Hitchcock’s Frenzy: The Last Masterpiece” by Raymond Foery, a fine “making of” tome, and worth seeking out (not all works in this category are as good).
Agreed. Even on this most recent viewing, there is the problem that even if Hetty and Johnny choose not to help Dicko in the moment, wouldn’t they have been (at minimum) interviewed after Blaney was arrested? Also, that brush still has potato dust?!?
I think it was AH demonstrating that this is the world in which women must exist. While the doctor and the solicitor would never commit such a crime, they can also be cavalier about it. Hitchcock is presenting the spectrum of societal misogyny (expressed visually by having Blaney sit at a table behind the two men during their exchange).
No. That would have turned the sequence into the exact kind of spectacle cinema Hitchcock was making FRENZY in opposition to.
I do not agree that Brenda makes a quick decision. There is struggle, but Rusk is shown to be stronger. What I found powerful is how Hitchcock shows her trying to maintain some control/dignity, and how dissociation occurs when a person is sexual assaulted (the reciting of the 91st Psalm). That is new for Hitchcock–and new for cinema as well. It is this reorientation that makes the scene so difficult to watch, as it acts as a rebuke to all previous (and future) cinematic depictions of violence against women, where technique diverts (intentionally/unintentionally) attention from the horror.
Exactly. Patriarchal society strikes even successful women–none are safe. Additionally, despite her success, Brenda eats a frugal lunch in the hope of better conforming to the physical beauty standards society has for women. Women are often in a no-win situation–in 1972 and today.
My source is Patrick McGilligan‘s „Alfred Hitchcock: A life in light and darkness“, and it depicts Hitchcock‘s scriptwriting process as months of meetings with writers, always serving and eating a steak for lunch, and Shaffer was also one of those he eventually despised (like Ernest Lehmann) but invited back when numerous others were „used up“. Shaffer‘s too high price was something Hitchcock probably invented to get rid of him, but who knows? Those last decades were extremely difficult for him, with Alma‘s illnesses and his own sabotaging him.
But thanks for pointing me to that Making Of book - I will check it out!
I have read two versions: a) AH asked Shaffer, who thought the approach to the material was too much like “Blithe Spirit”; and b) agents could not come together on money, with Hitchcock later expressing to Shaffer disappointment about the fact.
If you can find a copy, it is well worth it. Foery is so diligent that he read the daily production notes, and reports to us how many set-ups were achieved each day (skirting “Do I really need to know this?” territory). He does a lot to combat Donald Spoto’s calumny that AH lost interest in the picture after Alma’s stroke (Spoto’s work is one of the wellsprings of anti-FRENZY criticism, and anti-Hitchcock criticism in general).
Also not helping the case was Robin Wood, who had a distaste for the movie, while recognizing its merits. Here is a link to an article he published in “Film Comment” under the pseudonym “George Kaplan” (the article is worthwhile beyond Wood’s take on FRENZY. For me, Wood is always a must-read on Hitchcock):
Pro-FRENZY reviews of interest (from the time of release):
Let me conclude with the words of Francois Truffaut:
That is very much appreciated, thank you!
We watched Sideways last night. Not quite the feel-good ending of The Holdovers … but then, we don’t know exactly what happens at the end since it’s left to our imagination. After such a bleak trajectory, I felt hopeful that there’s light at the end of the tunnel for Giamatti’s character.
If you’re curious, SIDEWAYS is a part of a book trilogy. The sequel is called VERTICAL…
Ah, I did not know that! OK, I will have to look it up. Thanks!
DUNE - Part II
Some of Frank Herbert’s world building in his first Dune novel - before the later books expanded and fleshed out that creation - was not just highly imaginative but quite counterintuitive.
Interstellar travel by spice? Spice that only exists on Arrakis? How did humans get there; how did we learn about the spice and where did we get the technology? Shield technology and knives/swords, really? A breeding program to create a human messiah?
Some of these contradictions Herbert explained in the text, others he just left standing - and our bizarre reality 8000 years before the world of Dune seems to prove Herbert’s vision right already, warts and all.
Villeneuve tries to have it both ways, staying true to the book and modernising it by adding, changing, emphasising different parts of the tale. Visually, we get a stylised adaptation that ever so often quotes images from the Schoenherr illustrations, but also some other classics of sf art from the 60s and 70s.
Story-wise, Villeneuve shrinks the time frame and alters the Chani-Paul dynamic, perhaps in the knowledge that the story would need one protagonist not being peachy with the prospect of a holy war across the galaxy (that we won’t see; that happens mostly offstage even in the books).
Much of this second part feels…inevitable. And not just because I know the books. From the first few scenes onwards everything has already been prophesied by Bene Gesserit doctrine, the characters have just to go through with it. Paul is reluctant (because of the holy war), but naturally comes around. As he’s supposed to be.
My problem with it all is that I don’t buy Paul’s reluctance, nor how he changes his mind. The idea that it all happens in months, Paul and Jessica arriving as outsiders in the Fremen world and taking them over with ease, hurts this part considerably.
The other big change, cutting out Paul and Chani’s child that dies in Sietch Tabr, also robs them of their motivation and depth. Here Villeneuve updates Chani from a willing subject of the tale to having her own mind - but ultimately she just refuses the djihad because she doesn’t want to play concubine. Understandable but not really setting her apart from the believers departing Arrakis to conquer the universe.
And, as Paul already predicted, she too will come around.
All in all I remain one of those Dune fans that wouldn’t have needed this adaptation. DUNE - Part II is technically a proficient blockbuster - but I wasn’t able to care for the characters or the world. And having a finale with thousands of fanatical warriors setting off to fulfil obscure prophecies doesn’t help a lot.
So much more money than the David Lynch version, but everything is flat out boring where Lynch´s version was at least scary, crazy and overacted…
I was so hoping for these two films to be the extraordinary event they were hyped to be.
But both were boring, uninvolving, pretentious and unbearably overlong.
At the time I was very cross with Lynch and Laurentiis for butchering the book. Over the years Lynch’s DUNE grew on me, in spite of its shortcomings. And other projects like the stalled Jacobs and Jodorowsky ones began to intrigue me much more. Especially that last one would probably have been a huge absurd happening - that might have nonetheless captured the spirit of the later more esoteric books and probably influenced Herbert in return (Harkonnen as a giant feeding on thousands of humans eerily anticipates the books after God Emperor of Dune).
That Jodorowsky production was bizarre in scale and ambition - he more or less put his own son through a martial arts school to resemble the Bene Gesserit prana bindu training in an attempt at method acting/casting - and possibly an even bigger disappointment than Lynch’s. On the other hand, this book and its offspring is just that, bizarre and ambitious, and every literal adaptation will likely fall short in some respects.
Villeneuve made a point of approaching his DUNE for the most part as faithfully as can be expected from a fan and devotee of the source material. On a purely formal level his work is the closest to the story and the liberties he took were mostly due to the restrictions of a modern Hollywood production and its limited time frame, like not being able to show Paul growing up/ageing a lot. This is the adaptation most Dune fans probably wanted for decades.
And yet I have to say emotionally these films don’t grip me. This is an adaptation that delivers many of the images - but little of their power. Most of the story, not a lot of its impact. Somewhere along the process the fantastical dimension as well as the relatable qualities seem to have been lost in the sand dunes.
Super/Man: The Christopher Reeve Story (2024).
As I said above, the world truly needs this movie. Happily, I stand by my opinion. We need more people like Christopher Reeve in the world. This will make you tear up, and even laugh at certain points. Anyone can be a hero by their actions, who help others. Christopher Reeve (and his family) proved that in this life. Not just with people with disabilities, but even creative risks as well. Superman was thought to be a big flop in the making, in more ways than one. CR (among other talented people in front and behind the camera) proved them wrong. But CR always tried to show his range. In more ways than one. Let’s hope this gets a wide release, because people need to see this. Highly recommended to everyone.
Wolfs
Surprisingly entertaining, Clooney and Pitt still are effortlessly movie stars who know exactly what to do and what not to do. This is fantastic acting, not the LOOK AT ME, I AM TRANSFORMING MYSELF FOR HIGH ART-award bait.
And Jon Watts directs flawlessly.
A very satisfying „After Hours“ meets Coen crime comedy in a mainstream cocktail.
Megalopolis (2024). Unique, that’s all I can say. To describe this is to quote Q in Skyfall: It’s like solving a Rubik’s cube that’s fighting back. It’s going to take a couple of days to think this one over. It’s no Godfather 1 & 2, that’s for sure, Coppola!
SALEMS LOT
It’s frustrating. There’s a lot to like here. The cast is very good. The look of the film is outstanding (there’s a shot involving the Glick boys that could be hung in an art gallery).
But they just moved too damn fast. The lure of the book is that you got to know the town and the characters, then vampires slowly and methodically infest all of it. There isn’t time for that here.
The vampire stuff starts in the very first scene (Barlow gets screen time before Ben Mears!). Scenes feel like they start in the middle and end abruptly. I can smell the tinkering studio execs from here.
What’s left isn’t bad by any means and is enjoyable enough, but you also walk away feeling like with this much technical skill and a nice cast (in my opinion) it was a missed opportunity to really make something special.
Maybe the three hour cut will be released at some later date.
Unique is an understatement. As wacky as it is personal and passionate, I definitely need a second screening (at minimum) to begin to respond coherently.