A Review of "Darkness Visible: Hitchcock's Greatest Film"

With Darkness Visible: Hitchcock's Greatest Film, author Brian Hannan attempts the daunting task of selecting and justifying Alfred Hitchcock's greatest motion picture.The inherent challenges in this endeavor are obvious: Hitchcock made more than 50 films over six decades, to include many of American cinema's most acclaimed works. How can one anoint a single film above all the others? The second challenge is coming up with a standard definition of "greatest." Most influential? Most enduring? Most representative of his recurring themes?

Author Hannan tackles the first challenge by reducing the number of films in the running for the "greatest" title.  He explains his methodology:

"In arriving at a shortlist, I have had to be ruthless and so I have first of all removed from the equation the early silents because of their technical limitations and also the later films, from Marnie onwards because, although many of the films have fine moments and certain Hitchcock touches, they do not hang so well together. With some regret, I have also omitted the 1940s Hollywood films like Rebecca and Spellbound because of the influence of producer David Selznick on the finished article (it is his name above the title not Hitchcock’s) and also his British films of the 1930s because they lack the moral dimension that was a hallmark of his later films."

While I can't argue with Hannan's six remaining "finalists," his explanation contains some pot holes. Hitchcock's 1930s films are ripe with moral dilemmas: the hero's involvement in the murder of an innocent man in Secret Agent; the heroine shielding an accused murderer in Young and Innocent; and Hitchcock's own decision to explode the bomb in the bus in Sabotage. Likewise, it's hard to dismiss Hitch's 1940s filmography because of Selznick's involvement. Thematically and in terms of overall impact, any discussion of Hitchcock's greatest films must include Shadow of a Doubt and Notorious.

After narrowing the finalists, Hannan devotes a chapter each to: Strangers on a Train; Rear Window; North By Northwest; Vertigo; Psycho; and The Birds. To his credit, the author avoids plot summary and focuses on providing an analysis of each film. There are some interesting insights (i.e., in Rear Window, "a full seventeen minutes, spread over several scenes, are silent apart from incidental music playing from different apartments"). However, there has been so much written and discussed about these films that it'd be hard to come up with anything new. 

Hannan waits until his three-page conclusion to state his case for which of the six finalists is Hitch's greatest film. Then, he dismisses Rear Window, Strangers on a Train, and North By Northwest in a single paragraph because "despite lingering undertones, they are not dark enough." When did "darkness" because a criterion for "greatness"? And how can Strangers on a Train not be considered "dark" when it features one of the most disturbing characters in the Hitchcock canon?

I won't reveal Hannan's pick for Hitchcock's greatest film, but admit that it intrigued me--I just wanted more in-depth justification for his selection. While scholars may scoff at the premise of Darkness Visible: Hitchcock's Greatest Film, I have no issue with it. I'm always game for a good discussion, even it requires a great deal of subjectivity--that's part of the fun of being a film buff. However, at a little over 50 pages, Darkness Visible: Hitchcock's Greatest Film kicks off the discussion, but cannot sustain it en route to a fully-supported conclusion.

The Cafe received a review copy of this e-book published by Endeavour Press.

Lightness and Darkness: The Two Sides to Hitchcock's "Secret Agent"

Spoiler alert: This review reveals a key plot twist.

Made between the lighthearted The Thirty-Nine Steps (1935) and the dark Sabotage (1936), Secret Agent reflects elements of both. The combination is not always a successful one, but that doesn't keep Secret Agent from securing its place as an important work in the Hitchcock canon.

John Gielgud portrays an Army officer who agrees to undertake an important espionage mission during World War I. After a fake funeral, he is given a new identity as Richard Ashenden and is paired with a veteran agent simply known as The General (Peter Lorre). Their mission is to travel to Switzerland, uncover the identity of an enemy agent staying at the Excelsior Hotel, and ensure the spy does not reach Constantinople--even if it means murder.

John Gielgud and Madeleine Carroll.

Upon his arrival at the hotel, Ashenden discovers that he has a "wife." She turns out to be Elsa Carrington (Madeleine Carroll), another British agent with even less experience than him. Although part of her job is to enhance Ashenden's cover, Elsa has been flirting extensively with Robert Marvin (Robert Young), an American businessman. Unfortunately, she has failed to discover any information about the German spy's identity.

Ashenden and The General gain a valuable clue when they uncover a corpse in an Alpine church, the dead man's hand clutching a button apparently ripped from the murderer's clothes. That evening, Ashenden meets Mr. Caypor, a British tourist traveling with his mother and who is missing a familiar-looking button. Unable to confirm that Caypor is their man--but aware that he will soon leave Switzerland--Ashenden and the General murder him in the mountains. That evening, Ashenden receives a telegram that reads: "Your message is received. You are after the wrong man. Look elsewhere." Guilt stricken over having helped kill an innocent man, Ashenden also realizes he has failed in his mission.

Peter Lorre and Gielgud.

The first half of Secret Agent reflects the light tone of The Thirty-Nine Steps. After Ashenden's death is faked and he has received his mission, his superior asks: "You love your country?" "I just died for it," quips Ashenden. Likewise, the playful banter between Elsa and her two suitors--Marvin and later Ashenden--reflects the earlier film (which also starred Ms. Carroll). Even The General is portrayed as a slightly humorous character as the screenplay plays up his fondness for the opposite sex. But this good-natured approach is tossed out the window once Ashenden and The General murder Caypor.

Ashenden's view through the telescope.

The murder sequence is a Hitchcock tour-de-force. Ashenden accepts the role of accomplice, but cannot do the dirty deed himself so he watches through a telescope as The General pushes Caypor off the mountain. Hitchcocks intercuts this scene with Elsa and Marvin visiting with Caypor's mother and dog. As The General edges his victim closer to the precipice, Caypor's little dog goes to the door and begins to whine. Hitchcock doesn't show us the actual murder, opting to letting us see:  Ashenden's shock as he pulls back from the telescope; a long distance shot of The General standing alone in the snow; and Caypor's dog as it begins to howl with grief.

The second half of Secret Agent reflects the dark tone of Sabotage, as Ashenden and (especially) Elsa struggle with the guilt over the death of an innocent man. Elsa wants no further involvement with the espionage mission, one she undertook naively for "excitement and danger." The General, on the other hand, is prepared to do whatever is required and if there's some collateral damage, then so be it. That leaves Ashenden in the middle, torn between his guilt and his sense of patriotic duty.

The chase through the chocolate factory.

Like other great directors who made the transition from silent films to talkies, Hitchcock uses sound creatively. During a key scene in a chocolate factory, Hitchcock drowns out important dialogue with the sound of the chocolate-making machines. The scene's revelation--the identity of the real spy--is revealed later in a written note. Likewise, Hitchcock exploits natural sounds to great advantage: the dog howling in response to its owner's death and bells sounding in a tower where Ashenden and The General are hiding, almost deafening the two men.

Thematically, many familiar Hitchcock plot devices can be found in Secret Agent:  the amateur thrust into an espionage plot (e.g., Saboteur, North By Northwest); the use of false identities (e.g., Spellbound, Stage Fright, Vertigo); the outwardly charming villain (e.g., Notorious); and moral dilemmas (e.g., Vertigo,  I Confess).

In conclusion, Secret Agent may not be top-tier Hitchcock, but it's a thought-provoking film and required viewing for any fan of the Master of Suspense.

Hitchcock's Swan Song: "Family Plot"

Following a number of commercial and artistic successes in the 1950s and early 1960s, Alfred Hitchcock's career took a plunge after The Birds (1963). Starting with Marnie (1964), Hitchcock often found himself out of favor with the movie-going public and the critics. An exception was 1972's Frenzy, which some reviewers hailed as a comeback for the Master of Suspense. Personally, while I admire elements of Frenzy, Hitchcock's sole R-rated film leaves something of an unpleasant aftertaste. Thus, I was enthused that  his follow-up--and final film--was a Hitchcockian mix of suspense and humor. Make that a little suspense and a little humor.

Devane as a crafty kidnapper.

Family Plot (1976) unfolds with two parallel stories that predictably intersect at the halfway point. In the first, fake psychic Blanche Tyler (Barbara Harris) and her taxi driver boyfriend George (Bruce Dern) learn that one of Blanche's wealthy, elderly clients wants to make amends for forcing her sister to give up a child for adoption years earlier. Blanche and George can earn $10,000 by finding the now-adult nephew. In the second plot, high-class criminals Arthur and Fran Adamson (William Devane and Karen Black) abduct rich people and hold them for ransom--the payment always being in the form of hard-to-trace diamonds.

George (Dern) in the cemetery.

The persistent George tracks Edward Shoebridge, the missing nephew, to a grave in a small-town cemetery. Initially bummed that Shoebridge apparently died in 1950, George realizes that the tombstone looks newer than others in the graveyard. When he later learns that the headstone was purchased with cash in 1965, he suspects that Shoebridge is still alive--but doesn't want to be found.

Family Plot has its admirers. Donald Spoto, in The Art of Alfred Hitchcock, calls it "the purest film Hitchcock has given us since Psycho, and it is this meticulous structure and the lightness of tone that make it unique among recent Hitchcock works." Certainly, there's a comic element to the relationship between Blanche and George that recalls the offbeat humor of The Trouble With Harry. Indeed, Barbara Harris sometimes acts as if she was starring in a screwball comedy. Her broad attempts at humor seem totally at odds with the rest of the film, especially the scenes featuring sinister Arthur Adamson, who--in the capable hands of Devane--is one of Hitchcock's most heartless (if perhaps one-dimensional) villains.

Harris and Dern in the runaway car.

Surprisingly, Hitchcock struggles to generate any palpable suspense. A scene with Dern driving down a twisting mountain road without brakes starts out well, but its impact fades as it becomes too long and repetitious. Still, there are some trademark Hitchcock touches, such as Devane trying to hide a priest's body quickly, only to have a piece of a bright red robe peek out from under a black car door.

Hitchcock and screenwriter Ernest Lehman (who penned North By Northwest) reward discerning viewers with some subtle in-jokes: a street named Bates Avenue, someone smoking at a gasoline station, and discussions about having a "bird in hand." The film's best joke, though, lies with its ironic plot twist (not revealed here!). Interestingly, Lehman had earlier rejected an opportunity to make his own version of The Rainbird Pattern, the 1972 novel on which Family Plot was based.

Hitchcock was 75 when he completed Family Plot, his 53rd film and a modest success. During the final years of his life, he worked with Lehman and James Costigan on the screenplay for a spy film tentatively titled The Short Night. Hitchcock died in 1980 of renal failure.

The Five Best "Alfred Hitchcock Presents" Episodes

In terms of longevity, Alfred Hitchcock Presents was the most successful American television anthology series. It ran from 1955 to 1962 in a half-hour format and then from 1962 to 1965 as The Alfred Hitchcock Hour. The list below includes only the 268 half-hour episodes.

Barbara Bel Geddes looking calm.

1. Lamb to the Slaughter - When a meek housewife (Barbara Bel Geddes) learns that her cheating husband is leaving her, she whacks him--fatally--with a frozen leg of lamb. She then calmly calls the police to report that her husband was murdered by an intruder. This darkly amusing tale, written by Roald Dahl, works to perfection--right down to the killer punch line. It was one of only 17 episodes (of the total 268) directed by Hitchcock.

2. Man from the South - Based on another Roald Dahl story, this episode stars Steve McQueen as a young man who bets a wealthy oddball (Peter Lorre) that he can light his lighter ten times in a row. If he can, he wins Lorre's snazzy convertible. But if the lighter fares to produce a flame just once, he loses a finger. A suspenseful, well-acted classic featuring another one of Dahl's trademark twists.

Vera Miles in Revenge.

3. Revenge - The very first episode of Alfred Hitchcock Presents raised the bar very high. A distraught woman (Vera Miles) tells her husband she has been assaulted. When the police investigation goes nowhere, the couple seek their justice and go looking for the assailant. In a long-running series featuring a number of memorable twist endings, "Revenge" features perhaps the most potent one. Directed by Hitchcock.

4. The Glass Eye - Director Robert Stevens won an Emmy for this haunting tale of a middle-aged woman (Jessica Tandy) who falls in love from afar with a ventriloquist she has never met. After they begin exchanging letters, he agrees to meet her--with disastrous results. This beautifully written teleplay (by Stirling Silliphant) provided underused actor Tom Conway (George Sanders' brother) with his last good role. It's ultimately a very sad story of two lonely people.

Billy Mumy with loaded gun.

5. Bang! You're Dead - Hitchcock directed this wonderfully tense episode about a young boy (Billy Mumy) who mistakes a real gun for a toy pistol and spends the day playing with it. The worst part: the gun is loaded. Mumy's success as Will Robinson on Lost in Space has obscured his finest TV work, as in this episode and the "It's a Good Life" episode of The Twilight Zone.

Honorable Mentions:  Breakdown (a Hitch-directed episode with Joseph Cotten as a man paralyzed in his car), One More Mile to Go (a man with a corpse in his car trunk), and Victim Four (a Paul Henreid-directed episode about a woman whose bad headaches are really bad). It's interesting to note that both Alfred Hitchcock Presents and The Twilight Zone featured adaptations of Ambrose Bierce's An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge. However, The Twilight Zone episode was actually a short French feature filmed two years before its broadcast on Twilight Zone.

Stage Fright: Hitchcock, Lovely Ducks, and a Controversial Flashback

Spoiler Alert:  The following review reveals the film's ending.

As the film that preceded Hitchcock's "comeback" classic Strangers on a Train, Stage Fright (1950) is typically glossed over in the famed director's filmography. While it's true that it doesn't rank with his masterpieces (e.g., Vertigo, Rear Window), Stage Fright has much to offer: a clever opening, a playful homage to acting, a pair of delightfully quirky supporting performances, and--of course--that infamous flashback.

The proceedings get off to a fast start when two people in a convertible exchange the following dialogue as the car whisks through the streets of London:

EVE: Any sign of the the police?

JONNY (looking over his shoulder): It looks like we're getting away with it.

EVE: Good.

Jonny enters the apartment--the start of
a memorable, single-take tracking shot.

It quickly becomes apparent that Jonny (Richard Todd) is in trouble and has turned to Eve (Jane Wyman) for help. When probed by Eve, he explains that his lover Charlotte Inwood (Marlene Dietrich), a famous stage actress, came to him after murdering her husband following a quarrel. Charlotte needs Jonny to destroy her bloodstained dress and fetch a new one from her flat. Jonny does more than that--he restages the crime scene but is spotted by a maid and transitions from accomplice to suspected murderer.

Eve, who believes she's in love with Jonny, deposits the wanted man with her oddball father (Alastair Sim). She also becomes determined to prove Jonny's innocence. After a chance meeting with Charlotte's dresser, Eve hatches a risky scheme to go undercover and collect the evidence that will clear Jonny.

The twist in Stage Fright is that Jonny is not Hitchcock's typical innocent-man-on-the-run. Indeed, Jonny murdered Charlotte's husband and everything he told Eve at the start of the film--shown to the viewer via a flashback--was a lie. This revelation slips out as Eve and Jonny hide from the police in an opulent theatre at the film's climax. In a matter of seconds, Jonny evolves from hero to villain.

Jonny reveals the truth in
the theater.

Much has been written about the "lying flashback," chiefly that it doesn't play fair with the audience--a view postulated by Francois Truffaut in his book of Hitchcock interviews. However, this contention assumes that everything we see in a film is the "truth" as presented by the filmmakers. Hitchcock makes it clear that we are hearing and seeing Jonny's version of the events. It's not dissimilar from the various versions of the truth recounted (also in flashback) by the different characters in Akira Kurosawa's Rashomon. The key difference is that Jonny is an actor and he casts himself in the role of the framed innocent man--a part he plays not only in the flashback, but also in his post-murder dealings with Eve.

Alastair Sim, as Eve's father, paying
off blackmailer Kay Walsh.

Acting and the theater are a recurring motif in many Hitchcock films:  Judy played the role of Madeleine in Vertigo; Uncle Charlie was just a character masking a serial murderer in Shadow of a Doubt; and the mini-plays in Rear Windows were framed by windows, an analogy to the confines of a theatrical stage. However, Stage Fright trumps them all in the number of characters playing parts. In addition to Jonny playing the innocent man, Eve assumes the roles of newspaper reporter and Charlotte's dresser. Since deception is acting, too, Eve's father gets in the act by lying about Jonny to Eve's mother. The theater motif is emphasized too strongly perhaps, with opening credits against a stage curtain and a backdrop that crushes Jonny at the climax.

One imagines that Hitchcock was drawn to the source material because it stands one of his favorite themes on its head. Quick, how many Hitchcock films can you name about men wrongly accused of a crime who set out to prove their innocence and/or stop the bad guys with the aid of a strong woman? It's dominated his career from Young and Innocent to The 39 Steps to Saboteur, North By Northwest, and others. But in Stage Fright, the innocent man really is a killer--a point that must have amused Hitchcock.

Marlene singing: "My poor heart is
aching to bring home the bacon..."

In Truffaut's interview with Hitchcock, the Master of Suspense maintains that the two great flaws in Stage Fright are that the villain is weak and the characters are never in any tangible danger. I disagree with the villain being weak--when Jonny finally reveals his true self to Eve, he becomes an acceptable villain. I maintain that the problems are that: (1) Jonny is a minor character who disappears from the film for long stretches; (2) since Jonny is role-playing a good guy, there is no villain until the climax. And, as a standard mystery, Stage Fright puts forth few legitimate suspects: Charlotte, Jonny, Charlotte's manager, or the dresser Nellie (with the latter two in very little of the picture).

Joan Grenfell promoting the chance to
to shoot "lovely ducks."

While the principals in Stage Fright carry the load admirably (especially a charming Michael Wilding), two marvelous character actors almost steal it. Alastair Sim injects the film with some much-needed dry humor ("What sort of father are you?" asks a police inspector. The reply: "Unique.") Yet, even he is upstaged in a delightful scene with Joyce Grenfell manning a fund-raising booth for an orphanage at a garden party ("Half a crown to shoot a lovely duck!)". These two veteran British comedians play off each other brilliantly, providing the perfect levity for the classic Hitchcock scene that follows them: a young child carrying a bloodied doll through the crowd as Charlotte performs on a stage.

While the entertainment value is high in most Hitchcock films, I have a soft spot for the lighthearted ones that seem to show the director in a playful mood (this one, To Catch a Thief, and I'm slowly turning the corner on The Trouble With Harry). That's one of the reasons why I find Stage Fright methodically moving up my list of favorite Hitchcock films with each viewing.

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. 

Dial "H" for Hitchcock: "Blackmail" on the big screen

A special screening of the original silent version...with the Alloy Orchestra

The era of talking pictures arrived while Alfred Hitchcock was working on his crime thriller, Blackmail, in 1929. The film had already been shot as a silent feature but during post-production the studio asked the director to convert it to partial sound so it could be marketed as a talking picture. Hitchcock, as was his way, had his own ideas. He began to tinker; scenes were reshot with dialogue, additional scenes with dialogue were added. In the end, Hitchcock had two films - his and Britain's much touted "first full length all talkie film" - and the original silent version. In 1929, most theaters in Britain were not equipped for sound, so it was the silent Blackmail that was for a long time the most widely seen and popular of the two films.

On Monday night, July 19, the California Film Institute presented a special screening of a 35 mm British Film Institute archive print of the silent version of Blackmail in Theater 1 at the Rafael Theater in San Rafael, California. Accompanying the film with an original score was the Alloy Orchestra, one of the world's foremost silent film orchestras. In attendance was an enthusiastic sold-out crowd.

Blackmail was Hitchcock's second film of the thriller genre; the first was The Lodger (1927), the picture that first brought him widespread acclaim. Blackmail, a film that critic and Hitchcock author/scholar David Sterritt declared "has a strong claim to being his first masterpiece," is a clear forerunner of Hitchcock's later work. Visually sophisticated and gimlet-eyed in its observation of human nature and motives, it includes a delicately lovely blonde in grave danger (who spends much of the film in a dazed fugue state) and a grisly murder; the climactic chase scene at a landmark location, the British Museum, is the first of such Hitchcock signature set-pieces...and there is no shortage of moral ambiguity.

The story, which Hitchcock conceived as a conflict between love and duty, centers on a middle-class young woman of London, Alice White. Alice lives with her parents, helps out at their neighborhood tobacconist's shop and is dating a dedicated Scotland Yard detective. After a tiff with him over dinner, she recklessly goes out with an artist/Casanova and ends up involved in a killing; as a result her straight-arrow beau is drawn into a blackmail plot.

Blackmail stars Anny Ondra as Alice, John Longden as her detective boyfriend, Cyril Ritchard as the artist and Donald Calthrop as Tracy, the not-so-innocent innocent man. The plot is well constructed, the action is tight and Hitchcock's early mastery of suspense is unmistakable.

Though clever and fast-paced, Blackmail is a film of depth and darkness. Ultimately, the integrity of both central characters is permanently compromised and the ending is bleak (closer to Vertigo than Shadow of a Doubt, to which Blackmail, with its depiction of bourgeois life, has been compared). Though a messy situation is conveniently resolved, the truth comes out between the girl and her man and the film's ending implies an unsettled future for the two who now share a terrible knowledge and guilt.

The performance of the Alloy Orchestra artfully accented Blackmail's action and moods with inventive virtuosity. The Orchestra was in the Bay Area not only for this performance but also for the annual San Francisco Silent Film Festival which ran July 15 - 18. The Alloy Orchestra is a group of three musicians whose instruments include keyboards, accordion, clarinet, musical saw and a famous "rack of junk." A combination of percussion and electronics allows them to create an array of sounds and effects. The Orchestra has performed worldwide - for major film festivals, AMPAS and even at the Louvre.

The Art Moderne Rafael Theater, a 1938 renovation of the fire-damaged 1918 Orpheus Theater, was closed after being heavily damaged in Northern California's 1989 earthquake. It was renovated, largely rebuilt and reopened in 1999 by the California Film Institute. It now houses three screens and specializes in independent and foreign films; it is one of the few non-profit theaters in the United States.

Dial H for Hitchcock: Hitch and Cary

By 1941 Alfred Hitchcock had achieved startling success in the U.S. with his first two American films, Rebecca and Foreign Correspondent. Both were box office hits and both were nominated for Best Picture/1940, with Rebecca taking the award.

In 1941, Cary Grant was a relatively newly minted top star. He had broken through in 1937 with The Awful Truth, but had much more recently starred in George Cukor's sensational The Philadelphia Story as well as the George Stevens hit Penny Serenade, a film that brought him his first Best Actor nomination.

The director and actor came together for the first time that year on Suspicion. It was the first film that Hitchcock produced as well as directed and, though flawed, it has some brilliant touches. One neat trick was the casting of Cary Grant in an ambiguous role, one of the first in which he portrayed a character with shadowy, menacing facets. The plot concerns a charming rogue who marries a plain-jane heiress. Throughout the film the storyline strongly insinuates that this dapper man is much worse than unreliable and, by the end, may be plotting to kill his wife.

In a 1963 interview, Hitchcock complained to Peter Bogdanovich about Suspicion, blaming the studio for making him change the ending, "...you see, Cary Grant couldn't be a murderer." Years later New York Times critic Elvis Mitchell observed that the ending destroyed the film "...by negating what has come up until that point." Regardless, the film was a success, garnering Oscar nominations and a Best Actress award for Joan Fontaine.

Five years and World War II came and went before the two men worked together again. In the intervening years Grant had made half a dozen pictures and gotten another Best Actor nod. During that period Hitchcock had also made a half-dozen films and earned two Best Director nominations.

Their second film was Notorious (1946), one of the most acclaimed of Hitchcock's films and one of Cary Grant's most complex performances. A true masterpiece, Notorious is another perfect showcase of the director's technical genius, includes a textbook example of the "MacGuffin" plot device and contains some of the best performances in any of his films; Grant and his co-stars Ingrid Bergman, Claude Rains, Louis Calhern and Leopoldine Konstantin all stand out. Critic James Agee shrewdly perceived the "cultivated, clipped puzzled-idealist brutality" in Grant's characterization of agent Devlin. Notorious was a huge box office success, Rains earned a Best Supporting Actor Oscar nomination and Ben Hecht's screenplay was also nominated.

Nearly a decade would pass until Hitchcock and Grant collaborated again. The year was 1955, and Grant had been moving away from the sort of roles that were his trademark. Among the parts he'd been playing were the harried suburban husband in Mr. Blanding Builds His Dream House (1948) and the quirky middle-aged chemist in Monkey Business (1952). Hitchcock's career had suffered a decline following Notorious but he rebounded forcefully with Strangers on a Train (1951) and most recently enjoyed the enormous box-office success of Rear Window (1954).

With Hitchcock's To Catch a Thief (1955), Cary Grant returned to type as 'John Robie the Cat' and remained there for most of the rest of his career.

Alfred Hitchcock often referred to To Catch a Thief as "champagne," and it was a bubbly, stimulating confection. The Riviera and Grace Kelly were never more beautiful than in this VistaVision/Technicolor fantasy, and Hitchcock's fine, frothy tale of suspense, romance and double-entendres became a smash hit that was nominated for three Oscars, with Robert Burks taking one home for Best Cinematography.

The final pairing of Hitchcock and Grant was North by Northwest (1959), a spectacular ultimate-Hitchcock thrill-ride leavened with clever comic moments and a tricky romance. Grant stars as a very sophisticated innocent man on the run. It is the most popular of the films Hitchcock and Grant made together and was the one, Grant said, that fans mentioned to him more than any other. Besides being a blockbuster, North by Northwest was Oscar-nominated for film editing, art direction and Ernest Lehman's screenplay.

Hitchcock was approaching the twilight of his career at this point, though he still had one of his very best films, Psycho (1960), ahead of him. Grant was also winding down but his biggest box office hit, Operation Petticoat (1959), would be his next project, and the "most popular Hitchcock film Hitchcock never made," Stanley Donen's Charade (1963), was yet to come. Grant would retire in 1966 and, though Hitchcock reportedly wanted him for Torn Curtain (1965), the actor made Walk Don't Run (1966), his final film, instead.

By the time they worked on their last collaboration Cary Grant, not an especially trusting man, completely trusted Alfred Hitchcock and would follow whatever advice the director gave him because, as Grant put it, "he was always right."

For Hitchcock's part he, who was not so very fond of actors, would look back and call Cary Grant "...the only actor I ever loved..."

Though neither of these two film giants ever won a competitive Academy Award, Hitchcock was honored with the Irving Thalberg Award in 1968 and Grant received a Lifetime Achievement Award in 1970.

Dial H For Hitchcock: Strangers on a Train - the better the villain, the better the picture...

It was the middle of the 20th Century and Alfred Hitchcock's last major film had been Notorious (1946). Four years and four films later, he was in a slump. Though The Paradine Case, Rope, Under Capricorn and Stage Fright were all interesting attempts, each one had its problems and each had bombed.

For his next project, Hitchcock looked to the first novel of young Patricia Highsmith. Intrigued by its clever "criss-cross" murder plot, he bought the rights to Strangers on a Train.

Raymond Chandler was tapped to tackle the screenplay, though Czenzi Ormonde, a protege of Ben Hecht, rewrote most of it. Cinematographer Robert Burks collaborated with Hitchcock for the first time and earned an Oscar nomination for his efforts. He was nominated again for Rear Window and won for To Catch a Thief. Dimiti Tiomkin, who had last worked with the director on Shadow of a Doubt, composed the film's nimble score. Hitchcock produced and directed for Warner Brothers.

A thriller of mature scope and depth, Strangers on a Train (1951) is also considered one of Hitchcock's most accessible films; its overwhelming success revived the director's reputation at a crucial point. It also signaled the beginning of his final great filmmaking period.

Strangers on a Train is pure and classic Hitchcock. It begins as two young men meet very cute in the first class club car of a commuter train. One is a tennis celebrity, the other a wealthy ne'er-do-well, and what seems like casual chit-chat has deadly consequences. A study in Alfred Hitchcock's mastery of visual storytelling and technical wizardry, the film bears all the hallmarks of his style...

There are spectacular visual set pieces, among them...1) Bruno stalks Miriam at a fairgrounds and, in a stunning shot, strangles her on a secluded island, 2) Guy makes a stealthy visit to Bruno's darkened home where a large growling dog adds even more suspense, 3) An intense tennis match is cross cut with scenes of Bruno's harrowing journey to plant evidence, 4) a carousel disaster comes to a breathtaking climax.

Prominent historical sites appear; Washington, D.C., landmarks are woven into the scenario with the Jefferson Memorial in a stark cameo.

There is an "innocent man accused" theme and a powerful doppelganger motif.

Though there are no marquee names, the cast is solid. Farley Granger fleshes out handsome, guileless and beleaguered tennis star Guy Haines; Laura Elliott (Kasey Rogers) is delicious as his estranged wife, Miriam; Marion Lorne stands out as Bruno's discombobulated mother. Leo G. Carroll is credibly senatorial as a U.S. Senator and Patricia Hitchcock gives one of her best performances as his quirky younger daughter.

Alfred Hitchcock once told Francoise Truffaut, "...the more successful the villain, the more successful the picture. That's a cardinal rule..."

The bold, unforgettable performance of Robert Walker as psychopathic Bruno Anthony is proof positive of that rule. Remarkably, Walker had mostly been cast as male ingenues up to then.

Like Joseph Cotten's Uncle Charley in Shadow of a Doubt, Walker's Bruno is a glib, self-possessed charmer - who is also a remorseless killer. Walker is riveting onscreen. His Bruno is confident, slick, erratic...and very, very creepy. His smooth veneer barely masks a simmering rage. With a voice that ranges from sensual as velvet to cold and hollow as tin, his eyes glitter, glare, caress.

From the moment Bruno is first seen in the club car insinuating himself into Guy's life, to his final seconds of life, when he mercilessly implicates Guy with his dying breath, Walker dominates and energizes the film. Pat Hitchcock once observed that for all her father's genius, it was Walker's daring performance that 'made' the picture.

Walker died tragically at age 32 less than two months after the film was released. He had appeared in more than 30 films in his career, but it was only Strangers on a Train that allowed him to unleash the devastating range of his talent.

Farley Granger later reflected, "he was great in the film; his potential was limitless, his career was just beginning to take wing."

Robert Walker's life had been short and often troubled, and his early death sent shock waves through Hollywood. In time, though, it became clear that he had a bit of good fortune after all; his greatest role, his single virtuoso performance, was preserved within one of Alfred Hitchcock's finest films.

British film critic and historian David Thomson noted in a piece on Strangers in 1999, Hitchcock's centennial year, that Walker's was "...a landmark performance. You see it now and you feel the vibrancy of the modernity...he had had that one chance..."

This Saturday, April 17, TCM features Strangers on a Train on this week's edition of The Essentials. Robert Osborne and Alec Baldwin will discuss the film before and after it airs. 8:00 pm Eastern, 5:00 pm Pacific.

Dial H for Hitchcock: Foreign Correspondent...an underrated gem

In 1941 Alfred Hitchcock became one of a select few who have directed more than one film nominated for Best Picture in the same year. What makes this especially significant in Hitchcock's case is that the two of his films nominated for the 1940 award were his very first Hollywood movies: Rebecca and Foreign Correspondent.

Rebecca won the golden statuette, one of nine nominations and two wins, and it remains highly respected today. Foreign Correspondent was nominated for six Oscars but eventually fell into a relative obscurity. Though not one of the director's ultimate tours de force, it is nevertheless a well-made classic that deserves recognition.

The story is set on the eve of World War II. A newspaper publisher (Harry Davenport) is fed up with the fluff his correspondents in Europe have been sending back. He decides to assign an ambitious crime reporter (Joel McCrea) to London in hopes of getting the real story as events unfold. The intrepid reporter eagerly pursues his assignment and in the process uncovers an espionage ring, befriends a trusty pair of cohorts (George Sanders and Robert Benchley) and falls in love with a beautiful woman (Laraine Day).

The film harkens back to Hitchcock's earlier British films and connects with his later films in various ways. As with The 39 Steps, The Lady Vanishes and other of his British movies, foreign intrigue drives the plot (a scenario Hitchcock returned to several times on later films including Saboteur, Notorious and North by Northwest). The director's penchant for 'doubles' also surfaces here (the diplomat and his imposter, McCrea's character has two names, Herbert Marshall's character leads a double life). Hitchcock also makes effective use of landmark locations, another trademark device.

Foreign Correspondent is a showcase of Hitchcock's cinematic artistry, particularly his mastery of the set-piece. One of the film's most striking features is a series of famous set-pieces that established a high-water mark to that point and set the standard for his later films.

The first involves a political assassination on the steps of Amsterdam Square during a downpour. The sudden, shocking murder is followed by pursuit of the assassin through a visual sea of bobbing umbrellas and into rain-washed city streets.

The next takes place in the Dutch countryside, where McCrea and two others have tracked the assassin. As McCrea takes in the scene from a Frankenstein-ian windmill, he notices that one of the windmills is turning backward, against the wind, and this tips him off that things are amiss. He moves in closer to investigate...

A third is set back in London, where McCrea agrees to take on a bodyguard who is actually a killer (Edmund Gwenn). This jovial henchman repeatedly puts the reporter in harm's way, and their final harrowing scene together takes place in the tower of Westminster Cathedral. The entire sequence is both amusing and terrifying.

Finally, and most dramatically, is the crash of a transatlantic clipper into the sea. Devised long before the advent of sophisticated special effects and CGI, the scene was magnficently and simply conceived. The crash is viewed from the back of a cockpit set. Footage filmed from a stunt plane diving over the ocean was rear-projected onto rice paper at the front of the set. Behind the rice paper were water tanks with chutes aimed at the cockpit windshield so that, at the precise moment Hitchcock pushed a button, water would burst through the paper giving the effect that the plane is crashing nose-first into the ocean. The action surrounding the crash encompasses the chaos and hysteria aboard the clipper when it comes under attack as well as the struggle of passengers to escape the sinking plane and survive on a floating wing.

Though Hitchcock's first choice for the lead was Gary Cooper, Joel McCrea hits all the right notes as the dedicated news hound, a slightly rumpled American everyman. He is ably assisted by Sanders as a wry and eccentric newsman, and Benchley as another quirky reporter. Edmund Gwenn's turn as the affable would-be killer is marvelous; Albert Basserman was Oscar-nominated for his role as an abducted diplomat. Herbert Marshall delivers his usual fine performance as the head of an international group and Harry Davenport is always an asset. Laraine Day is fetching as Marshall's daughter and McCrea's love interest, but doesn't bring much more to the part. In this case either of Hitchcock's original choices, Barbara Stanwyck and Joan Fontaine, would've better filled the bill.

Foreign Correspondent has sometimes been called a propaganda film, and foremost among those making the claim was Nazi Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels. Although McCrea's final speech is an impassioned wake up plea to America (and was reportedly added by producer Walter Wanger), it hardly characterizes the film as a whole. In my view, Foreign Correspondent is one very fine brew of mystery, suspense, romance and wit.

What do you think? Love it or hate it, take it or leave it..what are your impressions of Foreign Correspondent?

Dial H For Hitchcock: "Shadow of a Doubt" - Norman Rockwell with a Twist in Hitchcock's America

Shadow of a Doubt (1943) was Alfred Hitchcock's fifth American film and the first of his films that he believed truly depicted America. Hitchcock's "first draft" attempt at this had been Saboteur (1942), but he hadn't had the cast he'd wanted, he felt the script was weak and that he'd been rushed into the film before he was ready...none of this was the case with Shadow of a Doubt.

The narrative was based on a story called "Uncle Charlie" by Gordon McConell. For the adaptation, Hitchcock got Thornton Wilder, convinced that the author of Our Town possessed the concept of small-town America he wanted for Shadow of a Doubt. Wilder, who helped Hitchcock select Santa Rosa, California, as the setting, wrote a prose outline of the story before being mobilized into World War II. Hitchcock then turned to screenwriter Sally Benson, another writer deeply steeped in Americana. Her "5135 Kensington Avenue" stories had been the basis for Meet Me in St. Louis.

The opening scenes of Shadow of a Doubt make it clear that the man we come to know as Charles Oakley (Joseph Cotten) has sinister secrets and a dark side, so when he descends on pristine Santa Rosa and his sister's family, the Newtons, we already know that something is quite wrong, but we don't what it is. Oakley is handsome and smooth. His voice is velvet and his manner is insinuating; he has seen the world and flaunts his style and money with confidence. When he comes to stay with the Newtons, their staid community is bedazzled and responds by immediately embracing him.

Santa Rosa, scene of much location work, is blissfuly serene, a spotless tree-filled little town of quaint houses with broad porches, lush flower beds, friendly neighbors, fussy librarians, crusty traffic cops, immaculate churches, a stately and bustling bank and every trapping of the ideal American town in the 1940s.

At the heart of the film is a doppelganger motif personified by young Charlie (Teresa Wright) and her Uncle Charlie. They are admitted "doubles," she was named for him and adores him; he obviously favors her. The two Charlies seem to have a psychic link, share a restless spirit and other traits. But one of the pair is pure while the other is corrupt, and the two eventually come to an unbridgeable abyss and a stand-off. Teresa Wright delicately renders Charlie as an intelligent and decent girl impatiently verging on womanhood. Intuitive and strong, she has her mettle tested and must grow up quickly and profoundly when she realizes her beloved uncle is a cold-blooded killer. Uncle Charlie, intricately wrought by Cotten, is a ruthless sociopath of indecent charm. His view of humanity is far beyond cynical:

"Do you know the world is a foul sty? Do you know if you ripped the fronts off houses you'd find swine?"
Wright and Cotten contrast and play off each other beautifully; their scenes together are rock solid. Backing them up is an excellent supporting cast that includes Hume Cronyn making his memorable film debut as the Newton's eccentric next-door-neighbor; Henry Travers, cozy and congenial as small-town-dad Joe Newton; Patricia Collinge, note-perfect as fluttery and sentimental Emma Newton. Also very watchable are Edna May Wonacott as the cheeky little sister and Wallace Ford as a detective on Oakley's trail. (See this week's "Underrated Performers" blog, posted January 10, to learn more about Collinge and Wonacott)
Shadow of a Doubt has been called Hitchcock's first fully-realized masterwork. I'm not so quick to write-off his direction and overall imprint on Rebecca, but agree that Shadow of a Doubt, multi-layered and meticulously orchestrated, is among his very best films. The juxtaposition of a simple and complacent American small town with the lethal killer creeping toward its heart is neatly executed, and the early kinship that becomes a battle-to-the-death relationship between the two Charlies ensures that the dramatic tension never eases up.

What are your impressions of Hitchcock's vision of America in Shadow of a Doubt? Any comments about his style and technique or technical aspects of the picture? Which of the performances are standouts for you and why? Does it seem to you that the film is referencing the international situation of the time? What other films owe a debt to this one? ...And have you heard about or noticed the repeated use of "twos" or "doubles" (starting with the two Charlies) in Shadow of a Doubt?

(Note: Shown at top left, "Freedom From Want" (1943) by Norman Rockwell aka/"The Thanksgiving Picture," it is one of Rockwell's "Four Freedoms" paintings inspired by President Roosevelt's 1941 State of the Union Address; the color photo is "The Newton House" on MacDonald Avenue in Santa Rosa, California)