| The Lady Vanishes (Alfred Hitchcock, 1938) |
[Aug. 31st, 2009|05:18 pm] |
Yesterday I was talking to Suie about technical failures in the cinema. Like when I saw American Gangster (2007) and the projectionist didn’t mask the frame and the boom mic was visible for the whole picture. Or when, for The Darjeeling Ltd (2007) the first 10 minutes were marred and stretched because the projector was set to the wrong aspect ratio. “This would never happen fifteen years ago,” she said, “when the projectionists were all licensed and unionized.” But another factor, apart from labour, has also come in to mess up the flow of some of the best films ever made: digital. I went to the Bloor cinema to see this Hitchcock classic and the film was shown on DVD. The only other time that I saw a film shown on DVD that was a non-avant garde or activist space screening was at the Canadian Film Institute in Ottawa during their Buñuel retrospective. Although the non-member price there can be pretty steep at $10, I didn’t really mind too much because the film was thoroughly watchable. The screening of The Lady Vanishes, however, was a disaster.
To begin with the audio was seriously messed up. Between the echo and the accents it was virtually impossible to understand 80% of the spoken dialogue in the film. Secondly, about 1/3 into the film, it began to slow almost to a pause, and then skip. This happened about three times. Even after moving from the balcony to the many area (and I almost never move or get out of my seat during a movie) it was still impossible to understand.
So we fell asleep.
I’ve seen some pretty stellar stuff at the Bloor. Was this a back up for a damaged print?
Thinking of other weird happenings at the cinema – of the analog variety – I recall that time we saw the movie Romance (1999) - a French art film with some pretty explicit depictions of sexuality throughout – and someone in the cinema had a seizure. The house lights were brought up and it’s the first time in real life I heard someone utter the phrase, “Is there a doctor in the house?” “I’m a nurse!” someone called up and came down to assist.
That’s all I can think of aside from projector fuckups in smaller, avant garde showings which, somehow, occasionally add to the experience. Like when you could hear 16mm reels crashing to the floor and cursing in the back of the gallery followed by, “we’re going to take a 10 minute break!” and smoking cigarettes in the winter night the patrons discuss the upcoming program and their mutual admiration of rockers like Jem Cohen and Joyce Wieland. What a rush. |
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| Notorious (Alfred Hitchcock, 1946) |
[May. 28th, 2009|04:48 pm] |
I watch this again and again. And everytime I forget how painful it is watching Cary Grant send Ingrid Bergman into a marriage with a Nazi in exile in Rio. Also Cary Grant's character's demands are too proud and cruel. He doesn't even want to know how she feels. He assumes the worst and punishes her for it again and again. That's what's great about Notorious. Their love is putrid and hideous but indestructable at the same time. But my favorite scene is the very end when Sebastian (Claude Rains) is sent back up the steps of his house where death awaits him by the Nazi agents. There's something really dark about the certainty that he's going to die and Grant's just like, "that's your headache." Yeah. |
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| To Catch a Thief (Alfred Hitchcock, 1955) |
[May. 18th, 2008|12:10 pm] |
I watch these again and again over the years and I each time it's like the first time. I can never remember what they're about, who the culprit is, or what's going to happen.
I want to age as well as Cary Grant. It makes me want to take better care of myself. Or start a life of crime, either way. |
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| Notes on recent pop culture consumption... |
[Aug. 27th, 2007|09:12 pm] |
Mika Miko live at Zaphods: A majorly slept-on show for Ottawa. They played for a hyperactive 25 minute set and said, "we have stuff for sale" a stopped. Still they were so damned good and made it look so easy. It was funny whey almost stopped the set two songs in to pee. Wesley Willis is the only performer I've seen do that.
Hiroshima Mon Amour(Alain Resnais, 1961): I've been meaning to watch this forever. It did not disappoint. In fact it's almost a perfect synthesis of Night and Fog and L'Année dernière à Marienbad. It's a poetic meditation on (relatively) recent traumatic history but also a mysterious love story. Only unlike Marienbad there's no maddening mystery behind it all. Aspects of the characters are mysterious - they're not named - but it's not hard to follow.
The film looks at a love affair that is fundamentally framed by history and trauma. It reaches a summit at the mid-way point when she's (Nevers) running away from him (Hiroshima) and he's pursuing her. They're on the set of a film ("about peace") that portrays the bombing of Hiroshima. He loses her running against the current of a reenacted protest march complete with traditional Japanese music, and placards portraying the scorched body parts of bomb victims - larger than life. It's like they're running through the landscape of their own psychosis.
Resnais' camera is perfectly measured. His trademark tracking shots are used a lot. I wondered if he was influenced by Mizogouchi (whose films are over my head, I find). I like the use of landscapes in the film. In the end when "Nevers" decides she'll maybe stay in Hiroshima and the panning camera switches from France to Japan, France to Japan. Then to Nevers.
Rear Window (Alfred Hitchcock, 1954): Getting to see it in the theatre was cool. The only thing I'm going to say is that scene when Lars Thorwald comes into James Stewart's room and he tries to ward him off by firing his flashbulb caused chuckles throughout the cinema. But whenever I've seen the movie on my own I found that scene really really suspenseful and tense.
Telegraph Avenue: A bad impulse buy on my part. I had $20 burning a hole in my pocket and so I went to the record store to drown my sorrows. This lp looked like it might be interesting: a South American psych band from the 70s that sings in English. It sounded great at the record store but when I got it home it sounded like bland American hippie music complete with corny vocal harmonies and wanky guitar solos. When will I ever learn? EDIT!!!: actually, I think it's growing on me. Maybe it is good to take a chance now and again... |
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| Suspicion (Alfred Hitchcock, 1941) |
[Jan. 7th, 2007|10:24 am] |
[movie ends]
Cd2006: So, did you love it?
Rekha: No, it was terrible!
Cd2006: Really? [pause, speechless] Really??
R: Agh, the characters were so stupid, I just stopped caring what happened to them.
Cd2006: What about Cary Grant? Wasn't he awesome as a murderer? And he can get away with anything because he's such a charmer!
R: Sorry. |
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| Charade (Stanley Donen, 1963) |
[Jan. 3rd, 2007|11:00 am] |
Rekha brought in the new year by getting the stomach flu. That put a bit of a damper on the festivities, but no worry. I still got to wear my suit before she totally fell ill. Now we're in video lockdown while she convalesces.
The colour fading is terrible and the aspect ratio is all wrong. Too bad Elgin Street Video didn't have the Criterion version. Still, every time I see this I am totally amused. It's like late Hitchcock but more campy and less cynical. |
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| Les Quatre cents coups (Francois Truffaut, 1959) |
[Dec. 13th, 2006|09:46 am] |
This makes a wonderful Christmas movie. Watching it again I really really appreciate it more. The scene on that spinning ride, when he steals the milk, or when the detention officers ask if he's a virgin – so amazing. What I also love about Truffaut, which, I think he may have picked up from being obsessed with Hitchcock, is his little incidental scenes. Like when he goes to buy milk and he runs into two women on the street who are talking about pregnancy. Like Les bonnes femmes it looks like it was shot silent and dubbed later giving it a great feel, free and rich looking. When Antoine sleeps in the printing factory and get woken up and his walking the streets of Paris a dawn, its sorta of unlike I've seen in any film before or since. It really looks like a town at 5 in the morning. I'm thinking also of similarities to a lesser film of last year as well, The Squid and the Whale, which dealt with rich kids, but a similar idea. |
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| Tonari no Totoro (Hayao Miyazaki, 1988) |
[Aug. 25th, 2006|02:53 pm] |
Someone in IMDb said something funny. They compared Miyazaki to Hitchcock. Apparently Miyazaki was a huge fan. The scene at the bus stop, they pointed out, is similar to the waiting scene in North By Northwest when James Stewart is waiting by the roadside. I think that one thing that Miyazaki took from Hitchcock is pacing. Your can't really compare story because Totoro doesn't really have one (which is the key to its brilliance!!). The pacing is - obviously - much slower than average but the film is set up so hat details that pass through the frame become really sublime and surreal almost. An acorn lying on a stair, through Miyazaki's gaze, is as magical is a giant meowing Cat Bus. Hitchcock was known to take his camera out into the locations where he set his films and he would know the spaces intimately. The rural neighborhood in Totoro is really really richly detailed as well. When Mei goes missing you see the same familiar bridges, pathways and houses. Miyazaki makes you wait and get to know the space you're in before he shows you anything the same way that Hitchcock does in the slower scenes in North by Northwest. In that way they both made use of the revelatory potential of the cinema, in the Bazinian sense. Using the cinema to represent time - even in animation - through long takes and detailed setting while somehow not being boring is so great. |
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| Rebecca (Alfred Hitchcock, 1940) |
[Aug. 21st, 2006|01:48 pm] |
I still find this painful to watch. Melodramas were never my thing. Still I like it better the second time around. It's harder to pick out the hitchcock influenced moments, and it's not really clear until toward the end with the character of Jack Favell. Also, more obviously, the whole motif of events being influenced by the presence of dead person (as in Psycho). I just read that during the filming and the obvious war of egos between Hitchcock and Selznick, Germany invaded Poland, England declared war on Germany two days later, and the crew participated in a wlldcat strike.
--
Totally unrelated: where the hell is everyone? Is it a holiday or something and no one told me? There's nobody here! |
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| Torn Curtain (Alfred Hitchcock, 1966) |
[May. 14th, 2006|11:20 pm] |
| [ | Tags | | | hitchcock | ] |
| [ | mood |
| |  VHS (ottawa public library) | ] |
There are some great Hitchcock moments but for the most part it was kind of a drag. The most amusing thing was the character of Professor Gustav Lindt. |
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| The Crying Game (Neil Jordan, 1992) |
[Jan. 18th, 2006|05:52 pm] |
I'm short on time so forgive the unstructured nature of this entry.
There was this period in the 90s when Channel Four FIlms seemed to be producing all these gritty, exciting films. Naked and Trainspotting are films that came out of this period. The Crying Game. is another. Briefly looking at imdb.com the Channel Four list of productions seems to be a fraction of what it used to be. There was the 24-Hour Party People and a documentary about Mel Gibson. Maybe in a decade of Harry Potter there is less of a need for innovation their local film practice.
Watching The Crying Game again I was really into the part in which Fergus goes to London to seek out Dil as Jody's last request. Now I haven't seen Vertigo in awhile and I suck at psychoanalytic film theory but there's something like Scottie's obsession with the blond woman in Vertigo in the character of Furgus. Neil Jordan's London is small and claustrophobic. While never really covert, we share in Furgus' gaze as he follows and watched Dil. He is out of his element and we're following the plot through his eyes. There's some scopeaphilic identification going on. The first scene in The Metro is great. They look at each other though the mirror and communication is mediated through the bartender. there's something perversly exciting about discovering things through Fergus' eyes as he sleuth's around London dropping into these peope's lives.
I also liked Fergus because his hard-boiled character lacked any charisma and seemed unsure of what he wanted throughout. Whenever someone says somthing to him he'd blankly reply "must be" but offer nothing new to the equation. His character seems to have grown out of the ruins of Thatcherism and he doesn't seem to have any family, career, or anything to hold on to except the IRA. After that doesn't work out the only source of meaning in his life is this connection to this dead person. That seems to be the other Hitchcockian motif: the ability of a character to influence events from beyond the grave (as with Rebecca, Psycho). |
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