Spellbound

This week for My Friend Amy's Summer of Hitchcock, we watched Spellbound.  The movie stars a very handsome-looking Gregory Peck and Ingrid Bergman, who has the weirdest hair ever.  It's not even like hair, it's like playdough she just pushes around her head.  She's the only female psychoanalyst at a mental institution in Vermont, and is a tad bit uptight.  But then Mr. Tall Dark and Handsome shows up, and she's like, Rawr!!!  I want me some o' that! 

Unfortunately, Gregory Peck's chacter--who is alternately known as Dr. Anthony Edwardes, John Brown, and John Valentine--is a freakin' psycho.  Or maybe that's fortunate, since Bergman (aka Constance) is a head doc.  It turns out Dr. Edwardes isn't really Dr. Edwardes, but a patient of his with amnesia.  And... Edwardes is dead!  And Peck might have murdered him! 

This movie was surprisingly sexy.  Constance traipses into "Edwardes" room in the middle of his first night at the mental institution (they have their doctors living there? Yay. Sound like a great job.), and she's all like, "I'm here because... of this book?"  And he's all like, "I know why you're here *smirk*," and then they start making out.  There's another scene when they're staying overnight at Dr. Alex Brulov's as a supposedly married couple, and he asks, "Have you ever...?"  And Bergman says, "No, of course not."  Then Peck says (you're probably getting a good idea of why I don't write novels right about now), "Well, I don't remember anything, so as far as I know I've never, either."  Huh.  Thanks for putting that in there, Hitchcock!  Nice to establish both parties are virgins right before... they decide he sleeps on the couch?!?!?  Wat?!



My favorite character was Dr. Brulov, Constance's mentor.  Pointy facial hair for the win!  I also appreciated the fact that he told Constance she was acting like an idiot.  Finally, a sane character!  He also gets the best lines in the film.  For example, "Vomen make the best psychoanalysts--until they fall in lofe.  Then they make the best patients.  Hohohoho!"  Ahhh, psychoanalyst humor.

The one other really interesting thing about this movie is the dream sequence, which was designed by Salvador Dalí.  This was the first time Surrealism was exposed to a wide, general audience.  If you had never seen a Surrealist painting before, I guess the scene would be pretty shocking.  Personally I was kind of underwhelmed by it.  Dalí basically quotes from his previous paintings and doesn't really use a lot of imagination.  It was a little too quote-y for me.  The eyes, the shadows, the melty wheel... yawn. 

In case you've never seen this movie or need a refresher, here's the dream sequence:

Other than the romance, Dr. Alex, and the dream sequence, this movie was actually pretty boring.  I didn't really like the characters except for Burlov and Peck's yumminess; and the story didn't really grab me at all.  Not to mention that Edwardes'/Brown's/Valentine's psychological breakthrough was way too easy.  This movie was 100x better than The Birds, don't get me wrong; but I still wasn't as involved in it as I was with Psycho or Dial M for Murder.

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Take a Chance Challenge: The Birds

I watched the movie and read the short story The Birds (by Daphne du Maurier) for Amy's Summer of Hitchcock; but I decided it also could satisfy the requirements for the tenth part of Jenner's Take a Chance Challenge at Find Your Next Book Here:

Movie/Book Comparison
Find a book that you haven't read that has a movie based on it that you haven't seen. Read the book and watch the movie within a few days of each other. Write about your reactions to both the book and the movie and compare the two.

I read the story by Daphne du Maurier first, online.  It was incredibly creepy and atmospheric.  It takes place in post-WWII England, in a small farming villiage.  The main character, Nat, is retired but has two young kids and works on a farm part-time. 

The short story begins with Nat's tiny cottage being attacked by birds in the middle of the night.  The next morning, he goes to the farm to see if anyone else was attacked, but they hear his story with disbelief and incredulity.  However, it soon turns out Nat wasn't the only one who was attacked.  As he hears on the radio, birds gathered and attacked all over the country, perhaps even all over the world. 

As Nat hunkers down with his family in their cottage and services start to disappear, a claustrophobic feeling invades the story.  It's not so much a horror story as it is a struggle for survival against a completely unexpected and unstoppable enemy.  Birds, which no really notices that much in their daily lives, have suddenly become kamikaze terrorists attacking anything human with no concern for their own well-being or safety.  There's also a sense that they're doing this under the control of some higher power, following the tides and grouping together to attack specific places--what that higher power might be is never said.

After reading the story, I had high expectations for the movie, but Hitchcock basically changed everything.  He kept a lot of the arresting visuals in the short story, such as the black cloud of birds rising on the horizon; but instead of post-war England, we find ourselves in 1960's San Francisco, in a... bird store?  Huh.  Basically, Tippi Hedren (aka Melanie) is some sort of hieress, and she spends the first half hour of the movie chasing down this gross lethario named Mitch to a tiny seaside town so she can give him some lovebirds he ordered for his sister's birthday.  Um, one, why; and two, if he ordered the birds for his sister, why didn't he pick them up himself or make sure he was at his apartment when they were delivered?  I mean, that is just incompetent, not to mention a painfully weak opening for a movie.  So the characters have pointless conversations for about an hour and a half (or that's how long it felt), and then finally birds attack, and I'm like, "Yay!  Finally!"

Basically, the movie was full of lulz.  It was way too long, the "plot" was ridiculous, Hedren kept lolling her head about when there were no birds around at all, and the script was just lame.  Even though I had fun with the fake birds, there were hardly any bird attacks in the movie at all until the very end.  Overall, I was pretty disappointed.



Next week on Summer of Hitchcock, we're watching Spellbound.  So start polishing up your Dr. Freud accents, everyone!

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Psycho

This movie is really good and really scary. I think it shows just how much a great a director and talented actors can do with what could be termed a typical horror script.

Janet Lee is an attractive blonde named Marion who is in love with a guy named Sam. Aw. But he won't marry her because they don't have that much money. Doesn't he realize they can live off anything as long as they have each other?!?! Apparently not. So on a whim one day, Marion steals money from her prat employer and gets the hell out of Dodge (Phoenix, actually).

Since Marion didn't really plan this out at all, she behaves very suspiciously. Has she never seen a cop show? Now, I know you're thinking that's the biggest mistake of her life, BUT IT ISN'T! Her biggest mistake is staying at the creepy Bates Motel just outside of a small town, where the nice young man at the desk asks her if she'll have dinner with him (OMG don't do it!!!!!)



I need to take a quick aside to say that Anthony Perkins, who plays Norman Bates, is ah-may-zing in this picture. He has just the right balance of charm that makes you think he's harmless, and then he says something to get your alarm bells ringing. And then, just like that, he's back to being harmless and you're willing to trust him again. I could completely see why Marion would accept his usual offer to eat with him; and then still stay in the motel, even after he admitted he "likes to stuff things." O.O

I also have to say... the Bates' house is hilariously Gothic. Yes, it is moody and atmospheric. But, um, this is the middle of Arizona? Two-story Victorians without air conditioning are not meant to be livable in that environment. No wonder Norman was crazy; his brains were cooked! (I also found out on Alberti's Window that the inspiration for the Bates' house came from House by the Railroad by Edward Hopper. Art historieeeeee!)



So Marion goes back to her hotel room to take a nice, relaxing shower, and then--screech! screech! screech! She's stabbed by Norman's mother... or who we're led to believe is Norman's mother. My Friend Amy asked if the fact that Marion dies at this point made the narrative of the film lose energy. I don't think it did at all; Marion was resolved to go back to Phoenix and repent of her sins at that point. In effect, her narrative was already over. And our sympathies quickly shift to poor Norman with the psycho mother, as he tries to cover up her evil deed.

One thing I really liked about the movie--aside from the acting--was the sound track. It was flipping beautiful and perfect for the film. The composer was worth every penny Hitchcock paid him.

I think of all the Hitchcock movies we've watched so far, this one is the best. It is an absolutely gripping, perfect piece of story telling. Even though I knew pretty much what was going to happen, I was still shocked and scared. This is definitely a movie I'm going to be thinking about for a long time.



Next week on Summer of Hitchcock, we're watching The Birds and twittering about it! The event will take place on Friday night at 9 PM EST. Amy will be giving away an Amazon gift card to the people who tweet the movie and read the short story by Daphne du Maurier beforehand.

But before I close this post, I have to ask: if you were on a road trip and ran across a hotel named The Bates Motel, would you stay there just for s&g's, or would you keep driving?

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Rear Window

I'm pretty sure everyone, even those who haven't seen the film, know the plot to Rear Window: photographer Jeffries (or Jeff) is holed up in his apartment with a broken leg. To pass the time, he watches his neighbors, and one day he starts thinking a man across the way has murdered his wife.

This is one of Alfred Hitchcock's most famous films, and one of his most admired--for good reason. The screenplay is spot-on and the direction is amazing. You know that old adage, show don't tell? Well, ever since cinema first got started, filmmakers have been obsessed with playing to the strengths of the medium and telling--or rather showing--a narrative purely through visual movement. That obsession didn't change with the arrival of talkies; it only became commercially more difficult! Rear Window is able to tell stories about Jeff's neighbors using almost no talking at all, just by showing them going about their business. I think that's part of the reason this movie is such a filmmaker's film.

One of the things I really like about this movie--that no one else has talked about yet, anyway--are the references to marriage and relationships. Both Jeff's editor and nurse (the always-fun Thelma Ritter) mention marriage to him at the beginning of the film. This is to set up for the entrance of committophobe Jeff's gf, Grace Kelly... or Lisa. Whatever (like how many people remember her character's name at the end of the film? I'm just saying). But I also think the idea of relationships is central to the voyeuristic aspect of the movie. The dynamics of relationships are almost impossible to understand unless you're actually in the relationship. Have you ever wondered how two people can possibly stay together; or thought of two people as the perfect couple, only to find out they're cheating on each other?



And speaking of, one of the things I've never gotten about this movie is the whole relationship between Jeff and Lisa. Note to Jeff: you have a beautiful, rich woman who is at least fifteen years younger than you are (may actually be more like twenty--yikes!) throwing herself at you. It's not going to get any better than that, buddy. Wake up and smell the roses. And why in the world is Lisa so into him, anyway? o.O I do like how sexually aggressive Grace Kelly is in this movie, though. Go, Grace!!!

Anywho, this is a really good movie. It's the type of film you can watch over and over and not really get bored because you always notice something different. That being said, it's not one of my favorite Hitchcock movies. *ducks* The whole relationship between Lisa and Jeff just bothers my brain. And I spend most of the movie thinking, "Why don't these people close their curtains?" and being more annoyed with the fact that Jeff isn't minding his own biznass than how the guy murdered his wife (which I'm always quite skeptical about). But then I'm from the West where we try to ignore the fact that we have neighbors--if we have them--so maybe that's part of my problem.

But either way, this is a really great, classic, entertaining film that everyone should see.



Next week on My Friend Amy's Summer of Hitchcock, we'll be watching Psycho!

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Dial M for Murrrrrrder

On Sunday, I watched Dial M for Murder as part of My Friend Amy's Summer of Hitchcock.

I've actually seen this movie a few times before, and it's one of my favorite Hitchcock films. It's about a woman who is having an affair with an American mystery writer. Meanwhile, her husband, who is something of a ne'er-do-well, has decided to kill her. He hatches what he thinks is the perfect murder; but of course things happen that put all his carefully constructed plans to ruin.

This is not a mystery--we already know whodunnit before it's even done--but it does have a very Agatha Christie feel to it. I think that's because of the great characters and the claustrophobic feel of the film. Almost the entire movie takes place in the tiny flat that the Wendices call home. The setting can be mainly attributed to the fact that the movie was adapted from a play; but I also think it works to help tell the story and keep the narrative flowing. In the end, the resolution of the story rests on how one can get into the Wendices' flat.

The camera angles in this film are very interesting--there's always objects between the viewer and the actors. I didn't notice this too much until it was pointed out in the special features on the DVD, though. :) The reason was that Hitchcock originally shot this movie in 3-d, so he always shot with a foreground, middleground, and background, to enhance the viewers' sense of depth. Pretty ingenius if you ask me.

There are so many great actors in this film. By far my favorite is Ray Milland's performance as Tony, the homicidal husband. He's completely smarmy, but also weirdly charming. I also like the fact that he doesn't portray Tony as completely unfeeling; you can tell that he's not unaffected by the idea of his wife dying.

The other character I loved was the Inspector. He's smart, and he knows there's something fishy about the situation from the very first. It's so nice that a DI would care enough to follow up on a case even after it's been to trial. ;)

Some of the things I didn't like were that you never truly understand why Grace Kelly (aka Margot) married Tony in the first place. What was she smoking? They don't feel like much of a couple and there absolutely no chemistry between the two. Also, I'm not entirely sure that the Inspector's "proof" that Tony planned to kill his wife would stand up in court--but it's a great ending anyway.

Overall this is a great film that I would recommend to anyone who enjoys suspense or mystery movies.



Next up on Summer of Hitchcock is Rear Window. Feel free to join in!

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