Lesser Hitchcock

I like I Confess.

I wound consider these under appreciated these days: YOUNG AND INNOCENT, SABOTEUR and FOREIGN CORESPONDENT.

The Wrong Man is good. But it has a sad ending.

The only one I've seen is Frenzy and I didn't like it much. The focus on the policeman having to eat his wife's disgusting food was just gross and didn't add to the plot.

Frenzy is said to be based on the Hammersmith nude murders.

Frenzy has that horrible rape and murder which I can't get past. It's early torture porn.

I Confess is a good, but odd, film. It is so specific as to its setting (Quebec!) it doesn’t really seem like a Hitchcock film…or it seems like a throwback to his very early stuff.

I like The Paradine Case, but the film’s casting is off. Alida Valli is gorgeous and holds the promise of mystery in her first lengthy scene. But after that, there is no compelling mystery to her character. She becomes a void in the film when she should have been its principal element. Louis Jourdan, one of my favorite actors, is incredibly sleek and handsome, but he’s so wrong for the role. Hitchcock wanted a rough trade-type for the role, but was overruled by Selznick.

The film’s real appeal to me is never-handsomer Gregory Peck, Charles Laughton, Charles Coburn, and a sublime Ethel Barrymore.

THE WRONG MAN was based on a true story, correct?

The second "hot priest" in US film history: Monty in I CONFESS.

(The first: Gregory Peck in THE KEYS TO THE KINGDOM).

TOPAZ I remember as being, basically, unwatchable. Like a really bad nighttime TV serial, which did not make sense.

"I, Confess " is a good movie, but always misses a Hitchcock beat. I love " The Wrong Man". One of Hank Fonda's best performances. It's a sad, dark picture that makes a solid point about mistaken identity but more importantly how a mistake can totally obtain and ruin your life. I also like " The Trouble With Harry" though it is boring. I like the actors. " Torn Curtin " is the worst. Newman and Andrews have no chemistry, and New Man looks uninterested in his role. Meanwhile Andrews acting is never there.

What about STAGE FRIGHT with Jane Wyman and Marlene Dietrich? I think they miscast Wyman.

I liked "The Wrong Man" too. It was based on the case of Manny Balestrero, who went on "To Tell the Truth" to help promote the movie; he thought Hitchcock did a good job telling his story.

- JAMAICA INN, the last of Hitch’s British films, has an interesting premise, but not much pacing, despite a hammy Charles Laughton and Maureen O’Hara’s debut.

- MR. and MRS. SMITH is just dull, a weak attempt at comedy, whose stars, Carole Lombard and Robert Montgomery, are wasted.

- ROPE is gimmicky, more about “ten minute takes” than about maintaining any kind of suspense in it’s predictable plot, with overly theatrical performances.

- I CONFESS has a fascinating plot, but no way to resolve it; so the villain just starts shooting, causing a climactic confrontation. But there are some marvelous touches.

- UNDER CAPRICORN has 3 costumed stars in a murky nod to GASLIGHT, i.e. Let’s drive Ingrid Bergman crazy!

- TOPAZ has, as I recall ,3 separate sections, connected by the bland Frederick Stafford, who is just blank.

- FAMILY PLOT has a certain charm, i.e. Barbara Harris and a John Williams score, but is otherwise just not capable of maintaining interest.

[italic]Topaz[/italic] doesn't make a lot of sense, but it does have Roscoe Lee Browne as a florist/spy. At least watch until he goes to the Harlem hotel to interview members of the Cuban delegation, just for fun.

I would count Marnie as lesser Hitchcock. Tippi was just not up to the part.

"Saboteur" is actually my favorite Hitchcock - I just love anything set in WWII with spies, etc., and it's really an excellent little film.

Frenzy is one of his great films.

If you want something obscure, watch his two short French films.

The Trouble With Harry is pretty bad.

I'm of the fascinating failure, regarding "Marnie." Tippi was not an actress.

Love Marnie.

Love I Confess - don't like the others. I saw Topaz on a transatlantic flight from London to NY. Half-way through the film broke down (and this was in the old days when the stewards pulled down a movie screen from the roof of the plane cabin. Nobody complained.

I confess is quite interesting, but production code ruined it as original script Monty was convicted, but the Code would not allow for a priest being falsely convicted. Also Anne Baxter is not exactly a top notch Hitchcock blonde.

R17 - Saboteur has that void of a leading man called Robert Cummings. Unbelievably Hitch cast him again in Dial M for Murder.

How is not OP did NOT include "Torn Curtain"? A miserable experience--Paul Newman and Julie Andrews--talk about chemistry!--only redeemed by a murder scene in a kitchen. Unpleasant but memorable.

Marnie wasn't bad. Not his finest work, but it has some interesting moments. Tippi looks beautiful, but yes, she was never much of an actress. She's honestly not very good in The Birds either.

Stage Fright is mid-level Hitchcock. The casting is good, with Dietrich and the always delightful Alastair Sim. But it's not one of Hitch's best.

I wish more people were familiar with The Lady Vanishes and Foreign Correspondent, two films that really stand the test of time.

I’m also a fan of Marnie. But it’s true that Tippi Hedren can’t act. However, Diane Baker is one of my favorites, and she’s wonderfully sly in this film. I used to occasionally see her socially and she’s also a delightful person.

I think "Stage Fright" is flawed but still entertaining, while "The Paradine Case" is just a misfire.

Torn Curtain is terrible, but it’s got my favorite Hitchcock cameo.

R28 - did Diane smile like she had a mouthful of broken china?

Foreign Correspondent - so much is so good, especially since it's basically a message picture, telling Americans that they was bubbling up in Europe is one they need to join. Plus, there are several very interesting sequences... the first murder and the chase, the plane being shot out of the sky toward the end, and Edmund Gwenn planning McCrea's death from a tower.

The cast is terrific... I love Joel McCrea

FAMILY PLOT.

Lots of lesser Hitchcock but one bad one was definitely Topaz. I liked the Wrong Man with Hitch's cameo/narration at its beginning his best.

R32, spot on. And the idea of Edmund "Kris Kringle" Gwenn as a hit man is fantastic.

No love for YOUNG AND INNOCENT?

Someone needs to point out that "lesser Hitchcock" is still better than most other people's hits.

Topaz and Torn Curtain are not great films, but they have a lot of redeeming values, especially in some of the secondary roles.

I love Family Plot and rewatch it a couple of times a year. I love the humor in it, and Harris and Dern were absolutely wonderful together!

The Trouble with Harry is a classic with excellent performances and a marvelous score. It's slowly paced, but it always knows what it's doing.

I love Frenzy. Jon Finch is so hot in it.

Jamaica Inn is the least favorite that I've seen.

I've seen some of the early obscure ones in a film class but I don't remember much about them like "Young and Innocent" which seemed fine but formulaic in a standarad non-Hitchockian way.

The one I remember most is "Murder" because the killer is coded as gay. Although his "secret" is his race and not his sexuality.

I have a soft spot for Marnie because it has some really odd bits and I think Hedren is good at portraying someone with a thin cold exterior just barely keeping their crazy shit together.

Also Sean Connery is allegedly portrayed as Marnie's savior and protector and he's just another rapist in her life. It's just so fucked up.

"Torn Curtain" was just awful and made work by the cheap back projection.

"Topaz" was not bad, not great. Ditto "Family Plot".

"Marnie" was panned when released and has gotten a better rep over time. "Rope", beyond noting the innovation of the long takes, seems to have had a similar trajectory. Both seem flawed but watchable to me.

"Champaign" isn't that great, although I love Betty Balfour, as we all do.

Err - Champagne.

^ correction. Much of what you are.

Why’d he make UNDER CAPRICORN anyway?

^$$$, silly.

Have they restored this film yet? All the copies I have seen are pretty wretched, like a low level B movie by a Poverty Row studio.

[quote]"Torn Curtain" was just awful and made work by the cheap back projection. "Topaz" was not bad, not great.

I agree with this. Torn Curtain is the pits. The miscast and uncomfortable leads sink it.

Topaz at least has extended episodes when it goes on the boil (like the Roscoe Lee Browne section), but one can feel Hitchcock's lack of enthusiasm for the book and the dogged way he's slogging through it.

I've seen about 40 of his 54-or-whatever surviving films. The most famous one I have not seen is "Under Corny-Crap" (as Joseph Cotten called it on the set, unfortunately within earshot of the director, who was not amused).

My least favorites of the ones I've seen are Torn Curtain, The Paradine Case, and The Ring (a romantic melodrama involving boxers in love with the same woman, from the silent era). I'd put I Confess pretty low too. In my estimation, this director who did so many things well always stumbled with courtroom sequences and protracted shootouts, and this one has both. Besides which, although I often like Anne Baxter, she's as miscast here as Julie and Paul are in TC.

The Wrong Man is my underappreciated pick. It was something unusual for him, about as close as he ever got to vérité. I remember being struck by the authenticity of the bit players, and then not surprised to learn that some of them really were whatever they were playing (cops and store clerks and such). It's not as much FUN as most of the Hitchcock films of that period, but it's harrowing and memorable.

And I find Family Plot a charming coda. It just suffers from being the last.

I had read a long while ago that Hitch himself actually had very little to do with all of these movies. More than 70 years old, and had been grossly overweight for decades, he probably was kind of exhausted by this point...He had production companies doing the work, as well as handling 2 successive television programs for many years. Supposedly he had nothing to do with "Frenzy" except for one of the strangulation scenes, and I remember how the movie suddenly comes to life when the murdering starts, you can really tell that finally someone who gives a damn is behind the wheel, and then it reverts to same old dull lifelessness...I just don't think H saw these pictures as anything but money-makers to be commercially produced under his name. He was past caring.

^I'm talking about his last films, obviously, not his earlier, "lesser" work...

Even with the clarification, you’re still wrong^

Hitchcock, more than any other director, was notorious for storyboarding each and every scene in his pictures..literally shot for shot.

Believe what you want, but based on the results, there is no way that H closely supervised the making of Topaz, Frenzy, or Family Plot. They are just too disjointed, sloppy, and uninvolving to have been overseen by him personally. He had assistants doing the work and the results are long-winded and tedious, lifeless, except for the rare sequences when you can tell his interest was piqued. I've never seen Torn Curtain, but I doubt that with a star of Newman's caliber, H would have just let others handle the production on that one...

You write fiction, and not very well.

Frenzy is at the level of many of his films of the 40s and 50s. It’s not disjointed and boring. There are a number of distinctive scenes in addition the sexual assault scene you menton.

R36, I love Young and Innocent. I know it’s not great, but it’s charming in many places. The birthday party, the little dog, the heap Nora Pilbeam drives around in, that great scene with her younger brothers at lunch. I also like that the leads are not particularly beautiful. I love the overacting between the murdered woman and her husband at the very beginning.

^ I agree with all of that. Young and Innocent is a good time, one of my favorites of his British sound films.

Plus, "No One Can Like the Drummer Man" (the original song the band plays during the flamboyant, proto-Notorious crane shot that lands on the villain) is great '30s earworm. The composer of the tune, Samuel Lerner, had a couple of better-known songs of that era to his credit, and this one should have been a hit.

Thank you, R55.

I'd forgotten that Young and Innocent is based on a story by Josephine Tey ("A Shilling for Candles"). That's another reason to enjoy it. And the kid hanging from the gas pump when his crate falls over! And the quiet visual humor of the road workers removing the detour sign as soon as the hero and heroine have driven past.

Hitch's endings were often terrific. Off the top of my head I can think of the endings of Frenzy, The Man Who Knew Too Much and To Catch A Thief as being outstanding.

Definitely Stage Fright.

Like mother, like daughter.

George Curzon, who played the drummer in "Young and Innocent," actually learned to play the drums for the role. He also appeared in Hitchcock's "The Man Who Knew Too Much" and "Jamaica Inn."

The song "No One Can Like the Drummer Man" reminds me of "Puttin' on the Ritz."

I cannot watch "Frenzy" His misogyny was way out of control by this time. Watching a woman being strangled in close-up.....no. It's not amusing.

R61 doesn’t mind movies where men’s brains are blown out graphically. We’re desensitized to men’s pain, but yet we want them to cry and share their emotions.

Hitchcock did seem to have issues with women…he seemed to enjoy putting them in danger or humiliating them. I believe that is why Audrey Hepburn turned down a script that he sent her, where her character has to set herself up to be raped in order to prove her father’s innocence in a murder case. He was talented but a real sadist.

Didn’t Tippi Hedren tell Mrs. Hitchcock about his aggressive behavior towards her and she ignored her or disbelieved her?

R63 Alfred Hitchcock was born in 1899… get a fucking life

To me is Family Plot, which i find boring and unfunny. I saw Topaz later on and had read it was so horrible, but it still managed to have some good scenes. Torn Curtain has some good scenes as well and a great one.

I always loved Marnie, i strange movie with some great moments. Tippi Heddren is not a good actress but I think shw works quite well in both Hitchcock movies. In the Birds she is an artificial character, who is acting as well through most of the movie. It is more or less the same in Marine, plus she is seriously disturbed, so it works both times. I think the same could be said of Kim Novak in Vertigo, she is not a good actress but she is a character that is acting in the movie, so her stilted performance is great for the movie.

Frenzy is a great film.