I don’t know that we can chalk it up to being old-fashioned, necessarily. There are films made before most of Hitchcock’s famous films that I like significantly better than any of his: Citizen Kane, Double Indemnity, and even way back to The Passion of Joan of Arc.
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You know some movies "made before 1990." Good for you, you are a "rare breed" today!
I can't speak to "The Passion of Joan of Arc," but "Citizen Kane" used to be "The Greatest Movie Ever Made" in the Sight and Sound poll....until "Vertigo" replaced it in 2012 . But eh...Citizen Kane has a greater claim to "Greatest Movie Ever Made" in my estimation, and it is Psycho in the Hitchcock canon, not Vertigo, that comes closest to displacing Kane. Some have written that "Psycho is the Citizen Kane of horror films" to which I say "Psycho IS Citizen Kane." Two movies of equal cinematic invention and power; but one made people scream, too.
As for "Double Indemnity," Billy Wilder seems to have 'tracked" Hitchcock as a Great Director for Hitchcock's last four decades but I have to give Hitch the "nudge." Greater cinematic skills than Billy; more great films (Billy has one of the BIGGEST collections of great films around, but there's stuff around it like Spirit of St. Louis, Love in the Afternoon, Irma La Douce, Kiss Me Stupid, The Fortune Cookie, The Front Page, Buddy Buddy....ranging from too stolid to too Borscht Belt, for my tastes.)
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ecarle (14979)
4 years ago
My beef with Double Indemnity has always been that the murder plot seemed pretty risky and full of holes. Dumb, even. Convince the authorities that a man fell about four FEET off a train and broke his neck? Plus the need for a witness to a not-very-convincing MacMurray as the "victim." And Robinson is on to things pretty damn fast (I guess that's part of the THEME of the movie, isn't it?) Where Double Indemnity DOES win is its Hays Code dodging sexuality(Hitch AND Wilder loved to do that), its rat-a-tat dialogue, and the comparison of the love-and-sex driven MacMurray/Stanwyck couple with the love-and-friendship driven MacMurray/Robinson couple. I like "Double Indemnity" very much -- its one of my favorite Wilders -- but I find it rather flawed despite its reputation.
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For that matter, in 1957 (when most film historians would say Hitch‘s muse was in full flower), Elia Kazan‘s A Face in the Crowd vastly surpasses any of Hitchcock’s output in my view.
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Well, here -- as with Double Indemnity and the others above it, I have to say "OK, that's fine with me." Which is different than "OK, if you say so." A lesson many of us should have learned by the time we are the ages some of us have become("pretty old") is...."that's why there's 31 flavors."
Its funny in my case: I am a major Hitchcock buff without really CARING about maybe 2/3 of his work. He won my eternal love with, say , 15 movies. And two above all , the two that matter more than other movies to me: North by Northwest and Psycho. Alas, those are from that "peak" period and not too long after 1957 and "A Face in the Crowd." Irony: Hitchcock didn't HAVE a film out in 1957. Sometimes that release year is listed for "The Wrong Man" but it actually opened in NYC for Oscar consideration in late 1956. So there are TWO Hitchcock films in '56: "The Man Who Knew Too Much"(entertainment) and "The Wrong Man"(drama) and NO Hitchcock films in '57.
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SlackerInc (1104)
4 years ago
I’m not holding Wilder up in general, as I have checked out a couple of his other films and was not that impressed. But yes, it is the incredible dialogue in Double Indemnity that blows me away every time.
As for Psycho, the opening act is masterful indeed. But I feel that it goes downhill once Janet Leigh leaves the film, and the ending is flat out risible IMO.
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ecarle (14979)
4 years ago
I’m not holding Wilder up in general, as I have checked out a couple of his other films and was not that impressed.
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Well, he and Hitchcock are from a different era, but what they shared at the time was a certain "pushing of the envelope" on matters sexual and violent (not to mention a sort of deadpan cynicism about people and the world).. that felt nicely at odds with the more censored and "nice" films of the time(plus, in Hitchcock's case, a real cinematic prowess.)
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But yes, it is the incredible dialogue in Double Indemnity that blows me away every time.
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I love MacMurray and Stanwyck talking superfast and sexually about parking tickets, crying on shoulders..her husband. MacMurray's "that tears it" to end the discussion.
And I love the final dialogue between Robinson and MacMurray.
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As for Psycho, the opening act is masterful indeed. But I feel that it goes downhill once Janet Leigh leaves the film, and the ending is flat out risible IMO.
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Well, I have a long history with Psycho that isn't really going to be of any help here. I will offer these "tidbits" that I try to use from time to time to defend the film:
After Janet Leigh leaves the film, it becomes more of a traditional mystery film(the detective arrives), but that detective(who could have been played by Edward Robinson 10 years earlier) gets slaughtered too and Hitchcock again turns tradition on its head. Psycho was meant to be seen with a screaming audience, and I've seen it that way, and believe me, almost ALL the screaming is in the final hour of the film. Nobody HEARD the psychiatrist at the end of the film,they were too busy screaming. The final shot of Perkins is immortal.
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ecarle (14979)
4 years ago
I take it that the flat out risible ending is "the infamous shrink scene." It is what it is, but I like to point out that the shrink isn't just "telling us what we already know." No, he has three vital pieces of new information:
ONE: Norman killed his mother and her lover. We'd been told that Mother killed her lover and herself in a murder-suicide.
TWO: Norman dug up his Mother's corpse, took it home and stuffed it. That was horrendous information in 1960...and told us she wasn't just a corpse in the fruit cellar.
THREE: Norman/Mother killed two women BEFORE Marion. This wasn't a "one time thing." And Norman got away with THOSE murders. His mistake this time was killing an embezzler with a private eye on her trail and a boyfriend nearby.
There's more on Psycho but..that's enough. I'm not looking to change minds but to illustrate why it works better than people think it does.
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SlackerInc (1104)
4 years ago
I didn't remember the "shrink scene" until you reminded me. I was talking about when Norman shows up in the wig, channelling his mother. It just comes across as silly to me.
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ecarle (14979)
4 years ago
I didn't remember the "shrink scene" until you reminded me. I was talking about when Norman shows up in the wig, channelling his mother. It just comes across as silly to me.
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Ha. Oops. I spend all the time "defending" the shrink scene and...its that other scene.
I will offer this(not to refute):
The one time I got to see Psycho with a "full house" screaming audience(in "revival in the 70's" -- before VHS and DVDs we had theaters showing old movies back then)
there were big screams during the shower scene, and even BIGGER screams when Mother ran out at Arbogast (the screams lasted into the next scene; you couldn't hear and Lila talking) and then.
...at the end, when Lila spins Mother around and see the skull face of Mrs. Bates..even BIGGER screams and then...
when Norman runs in -- with that bloodthirsty leer on his face -- the biggest screams fo the movie. It was evidently THAT terrifying to THAT audience that Norman was the real killer and that evidently, as Mother, he really LIKED killing people.
I've read that similar screams greeted the "Norman/Mother reveal" way back when it opened in 1960.
But...without that context, and "today," yeah, maybe it looks kinda silly.
I like to point out that two things look kinda silly in classic thrillers: (1) Anthony Perkins in Mother's dress and (2) the shark fully seen in Jaws. But because we had seen the bloody, merciless killing they were both capable of...they weren't THAT silly.
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ecarle (14979)
4 years ago
This "veer" off to Psycho -- and how it plays -- can be "brought back" to the ending of The Birds.
Hitchcock had had the biggest hit of his career with Psycho and was also the darling of "French critics" who declared him an artful genius. With "The Birds," we find Hitchcock trying to "out-do" the cheaper, more compact Psycho...and to make an "art film" to please his critical fans. The ending reflects, I think "the art film" sensibility of The Birds.
And is among the reasons that The Birds earned less than half what Psycho(with its PERFECT ending) made at the box office.
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Gubbio (3893)
4 years ago
I've never liked "The Birds" because of the ending. I wanted to know WHY the birds were acting\reacting, and it was never explained.
"Psycho" was fantastic -- but it was clearly possible that those events COULD have happened in real life.
"The Birds" just left us hanging..... 🥱
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ecarle (14979)
4 years ago
I've never liked "The Birds" because of the ending. I wanted to know WHY the birds were acting\reacting, and it was never explained.
"Psycho" was fantastic -- but it was clearly possible that those events COULD have happened in real life.
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Hey, gubbio!
It has been noted that one of the reasons Psycho scared so many people is its plausibility -- it COULD happen..and perhaps to any of us who stopped at the wrong motel. (What was "fantastical" about the tale was the filming of the two murders and the views of the house.)
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"The Birds" just left us hanging..... 🥱
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Yes it did. Hitchcock was largely influenced by the popular European films of the time -- many of which didn't particularly end(or BEGIN, for that matter). I think that the final SHOT of The Birds is a magnificent achievement -- all those birds all the way to the horizon , as the little car snakes through them and turns a corner and disappears. But it isn't conclusive, is it?
All that said, I think Hitchcock painted himself into a corner with the ending of The Birds. It is as if , since he is depicting "the end of the world"(with an analogy to nuclear war)...he had to end the movie with the world "in a nuclear winter" so to speak(all those birds in charge.)
Hitch was equally perplexed by the desire to explain WHY the birds were doing what they were doing. I think he felt the "analogy" -- to nuclear devastation, to nature gone wild(storms and hurricanes are an analogy in how the birds have periods of calm before the storm) -- should have been enough. He told someone, "in real life, it could be a form of rabies driving birds crazy but I didn't want to show that."
And so the outcome: of all of Hitchcock's films, The Birds is the one that falls over the edge to "supernatural fantasy." Which Psycho does NOT.
Oh well. It was the time of "The Twilight Zone."
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ecarle (14979)
4 years ago
"There was an ending. As you can see, the birds stopped attacking. Why? Well, that's for you to ponder on. That was Hitchcock's intention."
Yup. We don't find out why they suddenly attacked, and we don't know why they suddenly stopped, that's for us to ponder.
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I'm not all sure that the birds HAVE stopped -- for good.
By this point in the story it has been established that the birds "take long restful breaks" between attacks. Mitch realizes that he MUST get Melanie to medical care(where? is a good question) and that the family HAS to make their break NOW, while the birds are "at rest."
When the car turns that corner and the birds have taken over...I feel that the birds are just waiting for their next attack. (Truth be told, Bodega Bay has been pretty much destroyed, there's nothing left there TO attack. Where is going to be NEXT?)
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[email protected] (6027)
4 years ago
Maybe I am in the minority, but I loved the ending to The Birds. It fit in with the entire "what the heck is going on" scenario of the movie.
No one knew why the birds attacked. The main characters were not scientists or animal experts. They were the usual Hitchcock "everyman" characters caught up in events beyond their control or even comprehension.
If a scientific explanation and a solution had been offered or presented, it wouldn't have been a suspense movie. It would have been a documentary!
The way a movie like The Birds works is because of the suspense, fear and panic. The victims are in the dark about what is going on.
At the end, they drive away, birds all around, not attacking, very calm...what will happen next? Did the birds just have a group meltdown and now they aren't angry any more? Or are they going to allow Mitch and the others to get away before they attack their car?
It's a creepy ending with no answers. But it works.
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ecarle (14979)
4 years ago
At the end, they drive away, birds all around, not attacking, very calm...what will happen next? Did the birds just have a group meltdown and now they aren't angry any more? Or are they going to allow Mitch and the others to get away before they attack their car?
It's a creepy ending with no answers. But it works.
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...though I like Psycho(and its ending) better than The Birds and ITS ending, I will come in here to join you in support of the ending for The Birds as being "right for the movie."
And I will again underline that a lot of people both in America(where movies made most of their money back then) and the world felt that THE REAL WORLD was like the ending of The Birds.
In short, we had all been told that "the world could end at any time -- the US and Russia will fire missiles at each other and we will all die, immediately or from lingering fallout."
In short, the audience in REAL LIFE, was in the same boat as the escaping family at the end of The Birds -- tensely waiting to see what comes next -- will the world end? "Nukes, not birds."
(The October 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis had people terrified about nuclear war -- and this happened when The Birds was in pre-production, I believe. Hitchcock later made a movie about the Cuban Missile Crisis, called "Topaz" in 1969.)
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SlackerInc (1104)
4 years ago
I agree and I consider it a much better ending than “Psycho”.
Although my favorite part of the movie is still the kind of meet-cute romantic comedy stuff at the beginning.
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