The Man Who Knew Too Much (1956)

4/5

Alfred Hitchcock's remake of his own The Man Who Knew Too Much is engaging from beginning to end. It is essentially the same mistaken identity tale that Hitchcock loves to tell. It isn't ground-breaking work by any means, but it is entertaining and thrilling. Hitchcock is a master craftsman, an expert at spinning yarns and pulling out the tension from any premise, and he keeps us spellbound with his filmmaking. The final orchestra scene is still as edge-of-your-seat as it was almost 60 years ago. Hitchcock has lost none of his touch. Despite the occasional innocent old-timey racism and brown/whiteface, it manages to stay fresh and feel novel. The Man Who Knew Too Much is a classic Hitchcock film that will delight any modern fan.

IMDb link: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0049470/

North by Northwest (1959)

4.9/5

Hitchcock's North by Northwest is a genuinely satisfying movie from start to finish. It is probably not one of Hitchcock's best, but it is certainly one of his most enjoyable. The plot follows everyman Roger Thornhill (Grant) after getting kidnapped by Mr. Vandamm (Mason) and his goons. They have confused him for a spy named George Kaplan and thus attempt to murder him. But he escapes (in an exhilarating and hilarious getaway) and then retaliates by trying to find out who his assailants were and who the real George Kaplan is. But they are one step ahead of him and frame him for murder! He leaves town on a train that is crawling with cops, but he gets to Chicago undetected with the help of Eve Kendall (Saint), who we later learn is not at all the stranger she appears to be.

The plot is surprisingly complicated in its typed-out retelling, but it's actually quite easy to follow when you're watching the movie. That is one of Hitchcock's strengths: to think in the shoes of someone watching the movie for the first time, to tell it exactly according to what they are thinking, and to engage the audience every step of the way. The acting is pitch-perfect as you can expect from the stellar actors. Cary Grant is witty in his jokes and charismatic in his delivery. Eva Marie Saint is just the right amount of sexy in her subtle innuendo without being slutty and just the right amount of hurt in her furious indignation without being melodramatic. The special effects are a bit dated, but they still work because they're not essential to the story/experience--they just add to it. Hitchcock flexes his suspense muscles and puts them to good use in this film. Overall, this is an incredibly engaging and stimulating movie by the true master of suspense.

IMDb link: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0053125/

Vertigo (1958)

5/5

Alfred Hitchcock's Vertigo is a tantalizing masterpiece. The answers to its mysteries ebb and flow beyond your grasp, always so close but always out of reach. It opens itself up to various interpretations, letting you come to your own conclusions without ever affirming or rejecting them. The movie tackles a great many intertwining topics: for me, the most potent one is the need for people to control their own lives, sometimes by controlling others' lives as well. It contorts itself into a tale of obsessive love, of purity and perversion, and of deception and dual identities. It is dark, often morbid, and unsettling, but it is the kind of work you will never forget.

The movie starts in the middle of a cop chase. Leaping from rooftop to rooftop, Scottie Ferguson (Stewart) slips and barely catches a gutter. Perilously hanging on for dear life, he looks down more than five stories and a crippling vertigo paralyzes him. Another policeman reaches down to help, only to fall to his own doom. Scottie's fear of heights is cemented through this traumatic event and he quits the police force. Soon after, he is contacted by an old college buddy who requests his assistance in tailing his wife. He suspects her of being possessed by a ghost and is afraid that the spirit inhabiting his wife, who committed suicide at age 26, will cause her to do the same thing. As he begins following her, Scottie develops an attraction for her that soon turns into an unhealthy fixation. But that is only half the story. After that, it spirals more and more out of control, beyond anything you could have predicted.

Watching Vertigo again, and thinking about it next to Notorious and Psycho, I am struck by Hitchcock's mastery of structure. He seems attracted to scripts with unconventional story arcs and plot progression. Most directors would struggle against invoking boredom with such an uncertain framework. Hitchcock uses it to his advantage to generate suspense, manipulate your expectations, and telegraph events to their breaking points. You have never seen a story told this way, and so you have no idea what might come next. In a horror movie like Psycho, that's the most terrifying fear you can imagine. In Vertigo, that's the strongest, most mesmerizing pull you will ever experience.

The casting of Jimmy Stewart, originally maligned by critics and by Hitchcock himself, turns out to be one of the film's greatest strengths. Stewart is America's hero, the original Tom Hanks, the everyman, the good guy; he is Mr. Smith at Washington and George Bailey with his wonderful life. And here he is deeply disturbed, twisted so far from his off-screen celebrity persona that you feel a torment brewing inside yourself. You want to care for him, you want to believe he is the sweet, kind-hearted soul you know and love, but witnessing his repugnant actions sickens you. No other actor could have pulled off that necessary duality.

The cinematography is, as always, remarkable. The signature track in, zoom out shot reminds us of his technical abilities, but there are many more scenes where his sense of atmosphere defines how he shoots. In the scene at Ernie's where Scottie first sees Madeleine (Novak), the camera moves as if in a dream. The room brightens when she passes by and dims after she leaves. Her platinum hair, pinned up into a spiral, and all-gray suit give her an eerie aura. Hitchcock's use of colors is entrancing; they are inserted into scenes with such presence and purpose that it makes you wonder what they mean. Because it has to mean something, right?

The movie has some flaws. The special effects, both in the opening credits and nightmare sequence, severely date the film. Several key plot points remain unexplained and some of the dialogue rings a little off to our modern ears. (Are people really diagnosed with "acute melancholia, coupled with a guilt complex"?) And for some reason, which may be entirely circumstantial and outside the realm of the film, the movie wasn't as gripping on this viewing as it has been in the past. Still, this is one of Hitchcock's finest movies. I'll now admit that Psycho is my favorite Hitchcock, but I would not have any cause to disagree with someone who placed Vertigo or Notorious in that spot. Vertigo is a masterpiece that would define the entire work of any other director and is essential viewing for anyone interested in cinema as an art form.

IMDb link: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0052357/

Fahrenheit 451 (1966)

1/5

In Truffaut's bizarre vision of Ray Bradbury's dystopian novel Fahrenheit 451, Guy Montag is German. I presume it's because they got a German actor and for no other reason. This futuristic world is not so much futuristic as it is impossible. They've created a new salute and handshake for the movie, which look ridiculous. They drive a fire truck that looks like a toy and they can slide up the fire pole. Technically, it's a mess, with obtrusive editing, garish colors, preposterous dialogue, and hammy acting! Which all make it so severely dated. This movie is the epitome of all that is ludicrous. Which makes it hilarious, in the same way Plan 9 from Outer Space is hilarious.

To be fair, it did look much better than the movies Truffaut made before this one. There were actually some pretty impressive shots. The filmmaking techniques are much more traditional than they usually are, which makes the movie easier to watch. Also, the story itself draws you in and keeps you interested. It's a shame that it starts off with such insane details that distract from Bradbury's brilliant story. Despite these relatively scattered positives, you just can't ignore how bad the rest of the movie is. Don't waste your time.

IMDb link: http://imdb.com/title/tt0060390/

The Wrong Man (1956)

4.9/5

The Wrong Man is the true story of Manny Balestrero, a musician falsely accused of armed robbery. The film, shot on location in New York City, is strikingly authentic. In this story, Hitchcock has found the epitome of everything he has searched for during his entire career. Bernard Herrmann's score is absolutely wonderful and a perfect fit for this piece. The acting by Fonda and Miles is phenomenal and unforgettable. Hitchcock makes you feel for the characters, and then twists your heart again and again with every turn his life-changing predicament takes. Hitchcock has almost outdone himself in terms of cinematography and shot composition. The framing is beautiful and the camera movement is natural. He knows what we want to look at and he shows us exactly that in the exact manner we expect to see it in.

Four scenes stand out in my memory. The first is when Manny goes to the insurance agency. The tellers' suspicion is evoked almost too perfectly through flawlessly tense editing and simple, silent shots. The second shows Manny being taken to prison in a paddy wagon, the shame he experiences from being with criminals forces his head down and his eyes on everyone's shoes. The third, though, is my favorite in the entire film. As Manny is taken to his jail cell, the camera follows him until it gets stopped by the cell door, then it peeks in through the peephole and continues through the peephole to see him investigate his new home before backing back out. It is an unbearably haunting moment. The fourth I don't want to reveal, but suffice it to say that it reminded me of the end scene in Kurosawa's High and Low.

I'm conflicted about the ending. I know it's limited by the facts, but it almost seems as if everything the movie was building up to was flipped over and turned on its head with the final words. As Hitchcock was a part of the Hollywood studio system, it may have been forced on him by his producers. And the human side of me does appreciate those last words, but my artistic sensibilities remain irked by the about-face at the end. Either way, this is definitely one of Hitchcock's best, both technically and thematically. I was enthralled the entire time and loved it immensely.

IMDb link: http://imdb.com/title/tt0051207/

The Trouble with Harry (1955)

3/5

The Trouble with Harry is another one of Hitchcock's lighter films, but it doesn't work as well as his others. It doesn't play like a Hitchcock at all, but like a very British black comedy. As a Hitchcock, it's a bit disappointing; as a British black comedy, it's only slightly above average. The shot compositions were simple yet elegant, and the cinematography captured the colors beautifully. There are some very clever moments, some extremely witty dialogue, and a truly inspired red herring. But there are also pacing issues, worthless scenes, flat characters, and no build-up or anticipation. The characters' back stories were bland and the plot and dialogue often wandered into nonsense. And there's a score by Bernard Herrmann that, while good on its own, doesn't quite fit the mood of the piece. But I love the closing title card they use to replace THE END. If you want to know what it is, you'll have to watch it!

IMDb link: http://imdb.com/title/tt0048750/

Psycho (1960)

5/5

Psycho is a brilliant masterpiece, unharmed by its age, the spoofs, and the gorier flash of modern horror movies. We all know the infamous shower scene, with its shrill, staccato strings, and yet this movie is as shocking now as when it first came out. Hitchcock knows that suspense is not about showing the grotesque, but telegraphing out the events leading up to said violence. That is how this picture achieves its longevity: it does not show the newest, grisliest, most realistic deaths ever filmed up until that point in time, but rather it reveals the timelessness of evil as a wolf hiding in sheep's clothing. It shows how simply such evil can creep up on any one of us, a well-intentioned wrongdoing that escalates and escalates until it completely consumes us. And all from a desire to do good.

The acting by all parties is superb, but Anthony Perkins is simply unparalleled. His nervous habits, his innocent persona, his sometimes subtle, sometimes shockingly violent changes in demeanor--all interwoven in an unforgettable and painfully believable performance. He is able to garner your sympathy at once and you never want to doubt him for a second. The other actors stood their ground quite well. The most memorable part of Janet Leigh's acting was her piercing, powerful eyes as she drives away with the stolen money, staring down the camera and defying us to say she made the wrong decision. But she only has herself to convince, and she cannot do it.

There is so much in this movie for filmmakers to love. Hitchcock, the consummate showman, peppers it with needlessly difficult shots as if to prove his master status. A low shot showing Arbogast ascending a staircase, with the ceiling visible and even focused on, then the camera lifts up weightlessly to that same ceiling we saw, and sits there, perching down as if a bird watching the ensuing events. From that same spot where we know no rig resides. Other shots are beautiful in their own right, yet more subtle in their genius. The shifts in view when a character stands up or sits down, the close-ups, the resistance to editing. Bernard Herrmann's score is a perfect companion, and stays in the mind of any who have (or even haven't) seen this film. And yet none of these aspects are the best part of the movie.

In fact, Hitchcock's brilliance lies in the overall structure of the film. He sets it up as a typical mystery thriller about Marion Crane stealing $40,000 and running from the cops. We relate to her because she does it for love. As she runs, the paranoia infiltrates her entire being. Her actions become suspicious and the net tightens ever closer. The anxiety is palpable, even putting Polanski to shame, until she gets to the Bates Motel and, after a short discussion with Norman, decides to return the money. Feeling cleansed of her mistake, she gets in the shower and then ... is killed. Hitchcock knows that none of her feelings and changes in character make a difference in the end, because she is not the main character, but he doesn't want the audience to know that. And so he directs it as such. A third of the way into the film, Hitchcock switches main characters on us. Where he succeeds is in getting us to immediately sympathize with Bates. When he tries to sink her car in the swamp and hide the evidence, our heart skips a beat because the car stops sinking. Will it stay visible? Eventually it sinks, but aren't we twisted to want this man to get away with murder? The murder of a character we grew to love and respect, no less.

The movies does have its flaws. Some edit-heavy scenes, some dated special effects, some meandering dialogue. Much has been said about the ending with the psychiatrist. Many critics despise it, considering it to almost ruin this perfect film with its banality and overtness. But I do not have such qualms with it. I think it wraps up the story nicely and it humanizes Norman Bates by explaining in scientific terms without judgmental bias what happened to his mind. Hitchcock has always loved the psychology and motivations behind his characters, and suggesting that this part should be removed would be dismissive of Hitchcock's own interests. I agree that it is a bit blunt, but not without merit and not so bad as to warrant such ferocious antagonism. It grounds the film in reality, distinguishes Bates from pure evil, and gives our hearts a chance to beat more slowly.

For the past couple of years, both Psycho and Vertigo have shared for me the title of Best Hitchcock Film. Vertigo started with the title, but recently, Psycho had been edging ahead. But now I feel a strong desire to watch Vertigo again and give it another shot because it opens itself up much more readily to significant analysis. Either way, these two films are without a doubt his best, and by far my favorite of them all.

IMDb link: http://imdb.com/title/tt0054215/