This week, I've continued to watch films from the Hitchcock Masterpiece Collection, have been to the cinema, had a large delivery from 88 Films, and am making good headway with the Columbo boxset. I won't comment on the latter here, but stick to the films in the order I watched them.
After making Torn Curtain (1966), TOPAZ is another spy-thriller, this time partly set in Cuba, with John Vernon playing a character seemingly based on Fidel Castro. It is exceptionally well-made, but suffers from the lack of star power – no James Stewart, Cary Grant, Grace Kelly, Henry Fonda, Tippi Hedren, Sean Connery, or Kim Novak as charisma, and I couldn't help but feel that the story was a bit over-plotted. Apparently Hitchcock wasn't well at the time and felt this (and Torn Curtain) was "forced" on him by the studio. It's a great film, but has no sense of fun and even the scenes which should have the most tension or psychosexual underpinning feels slightly flat compared to his earlier films.
FAMILY PLOT is probably well known as Hitchcock's last film, released four years after Frenzy (1972) and comes close to the screwball comedy of The Trouble with Harry (1955) at times, though with at least one suspenseful action sequence. I think that this is the only Hitchcock film with two clearly defined narratives, though the double plot in Rear Window is close. This is different as it has two clearly defined narratives, one involving a fake psychic and her taxi driving boyfriend who want to find an elderly millionaire's nephew – the heir to a fortune – and collect the reward. The other couple in the film are kidnappers who demand a ransom to be paid in jewellery, particularly gem stones. Where the twin narrative pays off is the revelation that the mystery nephew is one of the kidnappers, something neither party initially knows. Although this is distinctly second tier Hitchcock, it is still extremely well done and much more engaging than Topaz or Torn Curtain, with Bruce Dern, Barbara Harris, William Devane and Karen Black making a fine cast.
THE MAN WHO KNEW TOO MUCH (1956) is an interesting example of a director re-making one of his own films. I'm not sure whether it is objectively 'better' than the 1934 film, but I really like James Stewart and Doris Day as the main couple, the emotional impact of 'Que Sera, Sera', and the climactic at the Royal Albert Hall or make this very memorable. However, and it's been many years since I saw the 1934 version, I remember preferring the third act in Wapping, with the criminal gang surrounded by the police and the mother saving her child (and daughter in that film) with her sharp shooting prowess. Both films have their merits and I don't think there's a right or wrong answer as to which one is better as they are both brilliant in different ways.
Made to look as if it takes place in real time and shot in a single take, ROPE is as audacious as it is masterful. Based on the Leopold and Loeb murder of a 14-year-old boy, something which was also the inspiration for Compulsion, Richard Fleischer's superb crime drama with a powerful performance by Orson Welles as their attorney. Anyway, I digress, and one of the most overlooked aspects of Rope is the rather startling beginning, with John Dall and Farley Granger struggling someone to death – I'm struggling to think of another Hitchcock film which opens with anything so audacious and unsettling. It is a technical masterpiece with the camera work and design to make it appear as if it shot in one take groundbreaking for the time, and quite difficult to do 70 years later.
REAR WINDOW is one of Hitchcock's most celebrated and loved films, one which is so influential it's been referenced everything from The Simpsons to The Tenant, Dirty Harry to Dead of Winter. I mentioned the double plot earlier and this has the relationship drama between "Jeff" Jefferies and his girlfriend Lisa, and the murder investigation where Jeff believes a man in an apartment opposite his has murdered his wife, slowly convincing Lisa, his nurse, and a friend (a sceptical detective) that it's more than a fantasy developed by an adventurers photographer with a bit of cabin fever. This is one of the top tier Hitchcock films, one in which every element works to perfection, and the commentary about voyeurism and the morality of taking pleasure in others' misfortune (a main theme in Michael Powell's Peeping Tom) is relevant in these days of social media and YouTube.
LADY BIRD is a film I wanted to watch before the Oscars and was amazed it wasn't showing anywhere near me prior to the ceremony. With Greta Gerwig nominated for Best Director and Original Screenplay, Saoirse Ronan the Best Actress and Laurie Metcalf for Best Supporting Actress, I had high expectations about its quality but, due to the sparse trailer, since very little about the film's content. It's quite strange because Lady Bird is a film in which not much happens but there are many memorable moments. The film largely takes place in Sacramento during the titular character, Christine "Lady Bird" MacPherson's senior year at a Catholic high school. The main themes are similar to other films about high school children: relationships, friends, drugs, parents, growing up, financial struggles, applying to college, extra curricular activities, academic pressures and are so well written and delivered that they feel authentic and really meaningful and pack an emotional punch. Although this is very much around a fractured relationship between a mother and daughter, with both actors rightfully recognised by their award nominations and wins, there are notable performances by Tracy Letts as Lady Bird's sympathetic father, and Lucas Hedges (who was superb in Manchester by the Sea last year) as her first object of affection; Letts should feel agreed that not being Oscar nominated alongside his co-stars.
For a debut film, it's an astonishing achievement for Greta Gerwig who handled the directing duties with aplomb and some of the dialogue is so good it's not hard to imagine Tracy Letts being impressed and jealous. This is a funny, moving, and insightful film which I look forward to watching again when it is released to buy in a few months.
BLOOD HARVEST is about as far from Lady Bird as one can get in the same week, featuring Tiny Tim, best known for singing Tiptoe through the Tulips, in his first (and possibly only) serious film role, playing 'Marvelous Mervo', a man who is permanently dressed in a clown costume and seemingly has brain damage. The film follows Jill, a young woman who returns home from college to see her parents who are nowhere to be seen. As her father was the bank supervisor who for closed many local farms, just about everyone in town hates her family, and it seems the only people who are pleased to see Jill are Gary, an ex boyfriend of hers and his brother, the aforementioned Marvelous Mervo. With her parents missing and townspeople close to Jill disappearing and murdered by being knocked out with chloroform, hung upside down and their throats cut, the killer could be any of the agrieved farmers.
This has so many weird and offkilter elements that I was frequently wrongfooted and surprised; there are some scenes which are genuinely unnerving and suspenseful, others which are strangely comedic, and some which are not quite gruesome, but definitely nasty. Anything which involves someone being hung from the rafter is in a barn and thrashing about with blood pouring from a slit in the throat is (intentionally) unpleasant. Throw in a surprising appearance by a young Peter Krause (perhaps best known for playing Nate in Six Feet Under) as Jill's boyfriend and Marvelous Mervo's occasional Greek chorus with his song about Gary and Jill, to the tune of 'Jack and Jill' then you have a very strange mix of ingredients which, when used inconsistently, don't give you much chance to settle.
This new 88 Films Blu-ray release looks and sounds remarkably good for a low-budget film of its age and I'm not sure if it's because I was expecting something truly awful, but I thought this had a strange sort of charm and although I could quibble with the 'Slasher Classics' designation, it's a curio which benefits from it weirdness and something I'll revisit in a few days, if not before.
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