Doris Day in Hitchcock and Hitchcock-Lite

In regard to his two versions of The Man Who Knew Too Much (1934 and 1956), Alfred Hitchcock famously quipped: "Let's just say that the first version was the work of a talented amateur and the second was made by a professional." These days, it's fashionable to prefer the earlier film, though I firmly believe the 1956 version is the stronger of the two.

Doris Day and James Stewart as the McKennas.

James Stewart and Doris Day star as Ben and Jo McKenna, American tourists spending three days in Marrakesh with their young son Hank. They encounter a mysterious man named Louis Bernard as well as Lucy and Edward Drayton, a friendly British couple. In the middle of a bazaar, an Arab--who has been stabbed--approaches Ben. As the dying man staggers to the ground, Ben realizes it's Bernard in disguise. He whispers to Ben that there will be an assassination in London and that Ben must tell the authorities about "Ambrose Chapel."

Later, at the police station, Ben receives a phone call that his son has been kidnapped and will remain safe as long as he says nothing to the authorities. When they return to their hotel, Ben and Jo realize that the Draytons kidnapped Hank. They follow them to London, determined to find their son.

Brenda De Banzie as Mrs. Drayton.

The opening scenes in Marrakesh set up the plot nicely (though Hitch's use of rear screen projection is distracting at times). However, once the action shifts to London, the tension unexpectedly lets up, punctuated by a goose chase in search of Ambrose Chapel that seems like filler material. Still, The Man Who Knew Too Much ends on a high note with a suspenseful extended climax at Albert Hall and a foreign embassy.

There are still sequences featuring Hitchcock at his best, such as when the face of the disguised Bernard slides through Ben's hands, leaving brown make-up on his fingers. The Albert Hall scene, in which an assassin's shot must be timed with the crash of cymbals, shows Hitchcock at the height of his craft. It also features composer and frequent Hitch collaborator Bernard Herrmann as the orchestra's conductor.

James Stewart and Doris Day are fine as the determined parents and Doris even gets to sing the Oscar-winning "Que Sera, Sera," which would become her signature song. Acting honors, though, go to the marvelous Brenda De Banzie as a reluctant kidnapper.

Doris walking in the fog.

Made four years later Midnight Lace (1960) is a Hitchcock wannabe starring Doris Day as heiress Kit Preston, an American newlywed in London. Even before the credits roll, she hears an eerie voice threatening her during a heavy night fog. Her husband, financier Tony (Rex Harrison), tries to convince her it was just a practical joke. However, when she starts to receive similar phone calls, Kit and Tony go to Scotland Yard.

Kit's problem is that no one else hears the disturbing phone calls. Is she delusional and imagining the voice? Or is someone really planning to kill her? There are certainly plenty of suspects: the housekeeper's creepy son (Roddy McDowell); the handsome construction chief (John Gavin) working on a nearby building; the strange man hanging around the neighborhood; or even her husband Tony.

Doris Day and Rex Harrison.

Unfortunately, the outcome becomes apparent early on in Midnight Lace. That doesn't keep it from being moderately entertaining. The supporting cast, which includes Myrna Loy as Kit's aunt and John Williams as (what else?) a police inspector, is first-rate. The London setting is both atmospheric and contributes to Kit's uneasiness (until the arrival of her aunt, she has no real friends in town).

Unlike The Man Who Knew Too Much, Midnight Lace is a "Doris Day vehicle" and she's in almost every scene. For the most part, she carries the picture, although her histrionics in the later scenes verge on overacting. Director David Miller compensates by keeping the narrative to a crisp 103 minutes.

Midnight Lace was remade for television in 1981 with Mary Crosby in the lead role. Carolyn Jones has a supporting role in that version, just as she did in The Man Who Knew Too Much!

Ray Harryhausen's 7th Voyage of Sinbad

The cyclops on Colossa.

"Nothing quite like its contents had been seen on the screen before."

That's special effects wizard Ray Harryhausen's assessment of his own 1958 fantasy adventure The 7th Voyage of Sinbad. The usually modest Harryhausen knew what he was talking about --7th Voyage shines the spotlight on his incredible stop-motion animation. And for the first time in his feature film career, it was all displayed in glorious color and with a splendid music score to match, courtesy of Bernard Herrmann.

Princess Parisa and Sinbad.

The film opens with Sinbad transporting Princess Parisa to Bagdad (sic) where he plans to marry her and seal an alliance between their countries. Along the way, Sinbad (Kerwin Matthews) and crew land on an island where they encounter a magician who has stolen a magic lamp from a cyclops. They help the magician, Sokurah, escape, but he loses the lamp in the process.

Once they reach Bagdad, Sokurah (Torin Thatcher) tries to convince Sinbad to return to the island of Colossa to retrieve the lamp. Sinbad refuses--at least until Princess Parisa (Kathryn Grant) is mysteriously reduced to doll size. Sokurah claims he can restore the Princess to her normal height, but his potion requires the egg shell from a Roc...meaning that Sinbad needs to transport the magician back to Colossa. Once there, they encounter cyclopes (that's plural), a two-headed Roc, a fire-breathing dragon, and--most famously--a sword-wielding skeleton.

A cyclops and the dragon battle on the beach.

The credits for The 7th Voyage of Sinbad tout that it was filmed in Dynamation. The term was coined by producer Charles H. Schneer to describe Harryhausen's painstaking process of combining live action with his stop-motion animated creatures. At the risk of simplifying the process, it consisted of filming the actors alone and then projecting that footage one frame at a time as Harryhausen animated his creatures in front of it. Obviously, the actors' movements had to be precise, which makes Sinbad's swordfight with a skeleton the film's highlight.

Sinbad against the skeleton.

In an interview (included as a DVD extra in some boxed sets), Kerwin Matthews describes the complicated "choreography" of the duel. He and Italian Olympic fencing master Enzo Musumeci-Greco rehearsed the sequence until Matthews knew it by heart. Then, Matthews had to replicate it with precision and by memory without Musumeci-Greco. In post-production, Harryhausen animated the skeleton opponent. Matthews didn't see the finished sequence until he watched the film at a theatre in France the following year. It truly is an incredible sequence and Herrmann's music, which is synchronized with each physical movement, is the perfect complement.

Torin Thatcher as the magician.

Of course, a film with nothing but great special effects would grow tiresome eventually. Thus, it's fortunate that The 7th Voyage of Sinbad benefits from enthusiastic performances. Matthews makes an appropriately dashing hero (though maybe not the brightest...Sinbad doesn't seem to suspect Sokurah of shrinking the Princess). Torin Thatcher makes a delightfully evil villain and Kathryn Grant--the future Mrs. Bing Crosby--is charming as the plucky princess, whose resolve saves Sinbad from being a cyclops snack.

The 7th Voyage of Sinbad isn't Ray's Harryhausen's most jaw-dropping fantasy adventure. That honor belongs to the excellent Jason and the Argonauts (1963), in which the hero battles an army of skeletons. However, it's a colorful, exciting fantasy adventure with enough visual marvels to make you feel the wonderment of childhood again.

10 Classic Movie Things to Do This Month

1. Watch a classic foreign-language film, such as Federico Fellini's Nights of Cabiria (TCM, June 18, 10:00 PM EDT), which features a moving, charming performance by Giulietta Masina (aka Mrs. Fellini).

2. Listen to Bernard Herrmann - The Essential Film Music Collection. You get to experience the rapturous themes of Vertigo, The Ghost & Mrs. Muir, The Day the Earth Stood Still, and others.

3. Watch a cult movie, such as The Horn Blows at Midnight (TCM, June 8, 11:30 AM EDT). Jack Benny made fun of it for years, but it's surprisingly amusing.

4. Read Hitchcock by Francois Truffaut, an incredible series of in-depth interviews with the Master of Suspense. Even if you're not a Hitchcock buff, you'll be fascinated by the insights shared by these two great filmmakers. And if you are a Hitch fan...well, you probably own this book already.

5. Watch a movie with a non-Beatles soundtrack by Paul McCartney. Well, there aren't many choices here, but you're in luck! TCM is showing The Family Way with Hayley Mills on June 27th at 6:00 PM EDT. By the way, Hayley went on to marry director Roy Boulting, who was 33 years her senior.

6. Host an Inspector Clouseau party, show A Shot in the Dark, and require all guests to talk like Clouseau. I recommend placing a stuffed monkey somewhere in the room just so a guest can make a remark about the "min-key."

7. Watch a famous movie that you don't like, but haven't seen for years. Then, re-evaluate it to determine if you like it now. I call this the "Marnie experiment," because I went from a Marnie detractor to a big fan over the span of several years.

Susan Hamphire in The Pallisers.

8. Watch one of the classic British TV miniseries of the late 1960s and early 1970s. While that's not technically movie-related, you'll see lots of past and future British stars such as Derek Jacobi, Roger Livesey, Susan Hampshire, Patrick Stewart, and Jeremy Irons. My personal recommendations include Poldark, The Pallisers, and Lord Peter Wimsey (start with "The Nine Tailors").

9. Support feminine Japanese monster equality by watching Mothra (TCM, June 15th, 11:00 PM EDT). She proves she's just as tough as Godzilla...but still loving enough to raise two offspring. You may want to break out the mothballs, however.

10. Build an elaborate tree house like the one in Disney's Swiss Family Robinson (the only tree house that can rival it is the one in the 1999-2002 TV series The Lost World).

You may need a big backyard!

Dial H for Hitchcock: Torn Curtain (1966)

Under the pretense of attending a conference in Copenhagen, Michael Armstrong (Paul Newman), an American physicist, defects to East Germany. His fiancee and assistant, Sarah (Julie Andrews)--confused by his suspicious activities in Copenhagen--follows Michael behind the Iron Curtain. He tries to persuade her to return to the U.S. It is only when Sarah refuses that Michael reveals his true intent: to steal information about an atomic formula from a Communist scientist and somehow escape.

Hitchcock hatched the idea for Torn Curtain after reading about the defection of two British diplomats. In Hitchcock, Francois Truffaut's superb book of interviews with the Master of Suspense, Hitchcock said that he began to wonder what the wife of one of the diplomats thought of the defection. The premise of a wife questioning her husband's true motives can be seen as a variation of Suspicion. The difference is that Torn Curtain dispenses with this plot in the film's first third. All that is left is the quest for the MacGuffin (the secret formula) and the escape. This is familiar Hitchcock territory, but it comes off as uninspired and weary in Torn Curtain. The result is a suspense film that generates very little suspense.

In Truffaut's book, he writes that "Hitchcock was never the same after Marnie, and that its failure cost him a considerable amount of self-confidence." That lack of confidence is magnified in Torn Curtain, in which the studio influenced Hitchcock's decisions on the cast and music.

Eva Marie Saint in 1966 in The
Russians Are Coming. 

By the mid-1960s, most of Hitchcock's favorite stars--James Stewart, Grace Kelly, Cary Grant--had either retired from show business or moved on to different roles (i.e., instead of romantic leads, James Stewart begin playing fathers). Hitchcock had also failed to create new stars, the most famous example being Tippi Hedren, whom he once envisioned as one of his classic "blondes" (personally, I think Hedren's performance in Marnie is widely under-appreciated). According to some sources, Hitchcock wanted Cary Grant and Eve Marie Saint to reunite for Torn Curtain. However, Grant felt he was too old for the part and the studio nixed Saint for the same reason. In the end, the studio convinced Hitch to cast two hot, young talents in Newman and Andrews.

Unfortunately, neither seems comfortable in their roles and, as is apparent in their opening scene in bed, they dearly lack chemistry. Hitchcock implies to Truffaut that Newman's "method acting" approach hindered him in key scenes. Certainly, Newman desperately wants to make us understand Armstrong's motivations, a serious approach at odds with a movie composed of a thin framework (e.g., Armstrong undertakes this incredible mission on his own without the government's sanction). Julie Andrews tries hard as Sarah, but the script makes her character extremely naive (the audience is always ahead of her) and she is relegated to an accessory in the final the final two-thirds of the film.

Sadly, Hitchcock was also convinced to jettison the original soundtrack composed by long-time collaborator Bernard Herrmann for what was considered a more commercial, upbeat one by John Addison. I find Addison's title theme to be almost playful, more appropriate for a black comedy. In contrast, the Herrmann theme is punctuated and more disturbing. 

Trying to kill Gromek.

Yet, despite its flaws, there are flashes of the typical Hitchcock brilliance in Torn Curtain. The film's most famous scene is the death of Gromek, an amusing but dangerous enemy agent played by Wolfgang Kieling. When Gromek confirms that Michael is a spy after following him to a rural farmhouse, Michael and the farmer's wife are forced to murder him. It's a lengthy, brutal struggle involving kitchen utensils and ending with Michael forcing Gromek's head into an oven as the gas is turned on. Earlier in the film, there's a visually stunning scene--reminiscent of Vertigo--in which Gromek trails Michael through the streets and buildings of East Berlin.

Hitchcock left a scene with Gromek's brother on the editing room floor, a decision based solely on the film's running time (a too long 128 minutes). Truffaut's book contains a description of the omitted scene: Michael visits a factory where the dead Gromek's brother (also played by Kieling) is a foreman. Gromek's brother picks a kitchen knife (like the one used in the farmhouse fight), cuts off a piece of sausage, and tells Michael: "My brother loves this kind of sausage. Would you be kind enough to give it to him in Leipzig?" It sounds like a classic Hitchcock gag, similar to one from Young and Innocent.

It's interesting to speculate what Torn Curtain might have been with a better script, more compatible actors, and perhaps a more engaged Hitchcock. Unfortunately, all that remains is a misfire with just enough interest to make one depressed over the reality that it isn't a very good film.