David Vining's Blog, page 184

Rebecca

So, Alfred Hitchcock traded an out of control actor/producer in Charles Laughton for just an out of control producer in David O. Selznick. That honestly feels like a step in the right direction. Instead of having an egomaniac try to dictate Hitchcock’s own movie to him on set, he only had the egomaniac on the phone and in the editing booth. Reading about Hitchcock up to this point in the timeline of his filmography, this is the first time I’ve seen his editing in the camera technique mentioned ...

Jamaica Inn

This movie’s reputation is surprisingly bad. Having never read the source book, I can imagine the complaints fans of Daphne du Maurier’s text. Characters who seem like they should be central get less screen time than they really should. I imagine there are changes all over the place. However, watching the film decades after it’s been labeled as one of Hitchcock’s worst films, I’m left a bit confused because when I watched it I saw a slight but entertainingly dark thriller. It’s certainly not hi...

The Lady Vanishes

There are those who really love The Lady Vanishes, often calling it one of Hitchcock’s best, and while I do enjoy it, I’ve never quite understood that level of appreciation for this light mystery. It’s certainly well constructed and fun, but it ultimately feels like shallow amusement.

The movie’s direction is obvious from the beginning as we zoom into an inn at a railroad crossing where a bevy of characters are waiting for the night to pass, the tracks to clear from the avalanche, and to contin...

Young and Innocent (or The Girl Was Young)

This movie kind of just forgets about its central mystery for about an hour, and I really like it for that. Well, it’s not completely forgotten, there’s still a search for a raincoat that is supposed to hold a key to the mystery, but it never really feels like the focus for that solid hour. Instead we get a nice little romance with tinges of tension here and there. It’s a nice little diversion of Hitchcock’s waning British era.

A woman has washed up dead on the beach outside a small English tow...

1917

If I were actually attempting to fill out my 11-20 of a top 20 of all time, Sam Mendes’ 1917 would be fighting for a spot. I adore this film. From opening frame to closing fade out, I think this is the work of a masterful voice in complete control of his technical gifts while using extreme intelligence in the use of images and telling an extremely affecting emotional story on top. This is a film I am going to be watching repeatedly over the coming years, and I think I’ll be getting more out of ...

Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street

I absolutely love this movie in all its macabre glory. I love Sondheim’s music. I love the look of the film from costumes to set design to the special effects. I love the performances. I love the story. I love how everything weaves together in a complete package. And, on top of it, while the movie seems to wallow in nihilism, it actually ends up being a rebuke of nihilism as empty and self-destructive, which is a nice bit of irony to top it all off.

Benjamin Barker was a naïve young barber with...

Sabotage

And Hitchcock makes a quick return to form with his next film after the stumble that was Secret Agent. Sabotage isn’t a thoroughly entertaining as The 39 Steps, but it’s a tense and claustrophobic thriller that goes to a surprisingly dark place. It just needs to get through the first half or so in order for that tension to really start.

My problem with the first part of the film can be encapsulated by taking a quick second out of the film and looking at how the film was marketed. It was origina...

Bill and Ted 3 Trailer!

I’m excited.

Secret Agent

I can understand why this is kind of a forgotten Hitchcock mystery thriller. It has most of the elements of a Hitchcockian adventure, but it doesn’t quite gel together all that well. I think there are a few reasons why it doesn’t really work, and they all extend back to the script. Loosely based on a series of short stories by W. Somerset Maugham, Secret Agent feels almost cobbled together from different stories or adventures and sometimes even different genres.

In the middle of World War I, Br...

The 39 Steps

Here is Alfred Hitchcock’s first complete success. After the jolt that was the advent of the sound era the cinematic language that Hitchcock and other silent directors had spent decades establishing and then lost with the new technical limitations that sound filmmaking imposed on them, Hitchcock has been able to marry the new technologies to his old aesthetics in a complete package of thrilling entertainment. The Man Who Knew Too Much was mostly there, held back by an awkward silent sequence th...