Rope

 

 The Filming

 

This film is one of Hitchcock's most experimental and one of the most interesting experiments ever attempted by a major director working with big box-office names abandoning many standard film techniques to allow for the long unbroken scenes. Each shot ran continuously for up to ten minutes without interruption. It was shot on a single set.  It was also the first film he ever shot in color.  Working in color was new and Hitchcock shot the last 4 or 5 segments over and over again because he didn't like the color of the sunset.

Camera moves were carefully planned and there was almost no editing.  The walls of the set were on rollers and could silently be moved out of the way to make way for the camera and then replaced when they were to come back into shot. Prop men constantly had to move the furniture and other props out of the way of the large Technicolor camera, and then ensure they were replaced in the correct location. A team of soundmen and camera operators kept the camera and microphones
in constant motion, as the actors kept to a carefully choreographed set of cues.  Also, the cords of the equipment were massive and plentiful.  The actors had to not only shoot these takes perfectly, but had to avoid tripping over copious amounts of cords on the floor of the set without looking down at all.  The cords were hastily moved constantly so as not to appear in any scenes where the floor was shot with the camera.

The set

 The extraordinary background was the largest backing ever used on a sound stage.  It included models of the Empire State and the Chrysler buildings.  Numerous chimneys smoke, lights come on in buildings, neon signs light up, and the sunset slowly unfolds as the movie progresses. Within the course of the film the clouds—made of spun glass—change position and shape eight times.  All of which was "fake".  Using these long takes, Hitchcock couldn't take any chances that the scenery or weather would change, it had to look like it was shot from start to finish in one continuous take, even though the cameras of that time could only film for 10 minutes at a time.

This is the size of the camera used

Long takes

 

Hitchcock shot for periods lasting up to ten minutes, continuously panning from actor to actor.  Every other segment ends by panning against or tracking into an object—a man's jacket blocking the entire screen, or the back of a piece of furniture, for example. In this way, Hitchcock effectively masked half the cuts in the film. However, at the end of 20 minutes (two magazines of film make one reel of film on the projector in the movie theater), the projectionist—when the film was shown in theaters—had to change reels. On these changeovers, Hitchcock cuts to a new camera setup, deliberately not disguising the cut.  He was the first to ever attempt this.  He wanted the film to look like one long take, a neverending scene.

Since the filming times were so long, everybody on the set tried their best to avoid any mistakes. At one point in the movie, the camera dolly ran over and broke a cameraman's foot, but to keep filming, he was gagged and dragged off. Another time, a woman puts her glass down but misses the table. A stagehand had to rush up and catch it before the glass hit the ground. Both parts are used in the final cut.

Stewart

 

Of course Jimmy Stewart is amazing.  In many scenes, you can actually see his thoughts, so to speak.  His eyes are all he needed to tell the audience that he had it all figured out.  Strangely, it was the only film he later stated that he didn't like doing with Alfred Hitchcock.  He thought he was horribly miscast.  

His final soliloquy is outstanding....

"By what right do you dare to say that there's a superior few to which you belong? By what right did you decide that that boy in there was inferior and could be killed? Did you think you were God, Brandon? Is that what you thought when you choked the life out of him? Is that what you thought when you served food from his grave?! I don't know who you are but I know what you've done. You murdered! You choked the life out of a fellow human being who could live and love as you never could, and never will again!"


Until next time....

The Lady Vanishes

"You're the most contemptible person I've ever met in all my life!"

" Confidentially, I think you're a bit of a stinker, too."

Ahhhhh....doesn't all love start with words like this??  Well, at least that's how it begins with Margaret Lockwood and Michael Redgrave.  The above is my favorite banter between them from The Lady Vanishes.  

What....is it?

It's a spy movie, it's a love story, it's a thriller....it's a political message wrapped inside a thriller...??  Let's talk about it in the latter sense.  That's how I view it.  If I analyze this movie as any of the other ways, I lose interest.  But it's a movie, done in 1938, a time of world turmoil, death camps, war, bombs, deaths, drafts....and of course...spies! 

Miss Froy (centered).  An unlikely spy.

Hitchcock liked to play with censorship as best he could for the time his movies are made.  He did his best to show how the world was changing.  That people were not people to Hitler, but something to dominate and overcome.  But the people, in 1938 were just a couple of years shy of knowing that.  But it was coming.  Their innocence to world politics was changing.  And Hitchcock didn't put this message in this movie by accident.

The Lady Vanishes was made largely in 1937, and released in 1938. In England at that time, the big political question of the day was should we appease Hitler or prepare to fight him?  The shootout scene at the end of the movie shows the audience just what Alfred Hitchcock wants England to do.

In one scene, one of the English passengers shouts amidst the gunfire with the conspirators outside the halted train, “They can’t possibly do anything to us, we’re British subjects”. It is especially disheartening to see how naïve people of the 1930s and 40s were toward the evils going on around them. Another passenger storms out of the train waving a white-flag in the direction of the foreign conspirators, only to be shot dead in his tracks. The director’s point is clear – England can not appease Hitler and survive.

More...

Ok.....next time Rope....I promise!

North By Northwest

Who would think that a movie about the game of  "Tag, you're it!" could become such a classic?  This movie has so many facets to it that I had a hard time coming up with just a few things to say about it.  I have a few friends who think this is Hitchcock's most boring film.  I couldn't disagree more.  Ok, I've got a lot to say, so here goes...

Cary Grant
 

Grant started a craze for this drink from this scene alone.  Its a Gibson, its 6 parts gin, 1 part dry vermouth, and garnished with a pickled onion.

Now, you may have noticed a bit of a pattern with me, always featuring the actors or actresses as the best parts of Hitchcock's movies.  Well, then, this is no exception.  I'm a massive fan of Jimmy Stewart in Vertigo, Rope, and Rear Window.  But, Cary Grant as Roger Thornhill is my favorite leading man in any role of any movie I've ever seen.  (I realize how bold of a statement that is).  He's charming, dashing, so funny, witty....Men want to be him, and women want to be with him.  He's not just a handsome man (even though he felt at 55 he was too old for this film and almost turned it down), he has the ability to turn this movie from suspense, murder, and intrigue, to a comedy in just one line, or in just one expression. 

"I've got a job, a secretary, a mother, two ex-wives and several bartenders that depend upon me, and I don't intend to disappoint them all by getting myself 'slightly' killed."

A conversation between Grant (Roger) and his leading lady, Eva Marie Saint (Eve):
Roger: Oh, you're that type. 
Eve: What type? 
Roger: Honest. 
Eve: Not really. 
Roger: Good, because honest women frighten me. 
Eve: Why? 
Roger: I don't know. Somehow they seem to put me at a disadvantage. 
Eve: Because you're not honest with them? 
Roger: Exactly.

While filming Vertigo, Alfred Hitchcock described some of the plot of this project to frequent Hitchcock leading man and "Vertigo" star James Stewart, who naturally assumed that Hitchcock meant to cast him in the Roger Thornhill role, and was eager to play it. Actually, Hitchcock wanted Cary Grant to play the role. By the time Hitchcock realized the misunderstanding, Stewart was so anxious to play Thornhill that rejecting him would have caused a great deal of disappointment. So Hitchcock delayed production on this film until Stewart was already safely committed to filming another movie before "officially" offering him the North By Northwest  role. Stewart had no choice; he had to turn down the offer, allowing Hitchcock to cast Grant, the actor he had wanted all along.


The Scenery

Rather than go to the expense of shooting in a South Dakota woodland, Hitchcock planted 100
ponderosa pines on an MGM soundstage.  Evidently, this was cheaper.

Also, during filming, the Department of Interior disagreed with Hitchcock’s decision to show a killing on top of Mount Rushmore. The director compromised by showing no fighting on the presidents’ faces.


Being Dapper In this Film Was No Coincidence

Hitchcock was also quite obsessive with his leading lady in this film as well.  When he saw the dresses the studio and costume designer had made for her, he marched her to Bergdorf Goodman and personally picked out clothes for her to wear. 

Also, Martin Landau, insisted that all of his suits in the film be tailored by Cary Grant's personal tailor.  In a bit of a smirk, Hitchcock made certain Landau's first line in the movie when speaking to Grant was, "He's a well-tailored one."

That's it for now....

Up next, I received a request for something a bit more...obscure?  Rope is on the way!

Dial 'M' for Murder

Let's start with this...

The Scissors

This image, from Hitchcock's Dial 'M' for Murder, is widely recognizable.  It depicts a wild Grace Kelly, desperately reaching for anything she can get her hands on to defeat her attacker.  The Scissors.  Just a pair of scissors.  Barely in reach, she's so close to not getting them...but she does, and then what happens next, is not just the death of the man hired by her husband to murder her, but a scene no viewer will ever forget.

After flopping over Margot (Grace Kelly), apparently dead, he snaps back to life, his arms twisting helplessly as he tries to withdraw the blades, before he turns over and hits the floor . The impact drives the scissor blades further into his back. Not only was Hitchcock so excited for his viewers to see this scene, but he celebrates the moment ....the scissors, slip slowly and neatly into his back.  The scene is shot from the floor, but not from the floor up.  He had a special pit dug into the carpet, to make the lens flush with the floor.  That way, we didn't miss a thing.

Just a side note:  after several unsuccessful attempts to film this scene, Alfred Hitchcock said, "This is nicely done but there wasn't enough gleam to the scissors, and a murder without gleaming scissors is like asparagus without the hollandaise sauce - tasteless." 


The Players

Cary Grant was supposed to play Tony Wendice, the murderous husband, but Warner Brothers wouldn't allow it.  They felt that the character was too dark and they didn't want Grant to be type-cast as a villain.  Instead, Ray Milland takes over brilliantly.  Just enough "mad" behind his eyes to believe so calm a man wants his wife brutally strangled after finding out she was having an affair.

"I thought of 3 different ways of killing him.  I even thought of killing her.  That seemed a far more sensible idea, " he says as calmly as if he were giving the time

This was Hitchcock's first time working with Grace Kelly, who would go on to co-star in Rear Window.  She was, in my opinion, Hitchcock's most beautiful leading lady. 

Alfred Hitchcock had chosen a very expensive robe for Grace Kelly to wear when she answered the phone during her attempted murder. The actress balked and said that "no woman would put a robe on to answer the phone when she was sleeping alone but would answer it in her slip". Hitchcock agreed to do it her way and from then on, she was in charge of her wardrobe.    In Dial 'M',  Kelly wanted her outfits to start out bright and beautiful, and then begin to get darker and more bleak.  She felt that clothes and emotion were connected.  Her choices are shown below:

Her opening scene

Her final scene

That's it for now....

Next up...North by Northwest??

Vertigo

 

 

"Good Evening....."

 

 

Welcome to my blog.  I have become a very apt pupil on several genres of mystery movies.  But my main love is Alfred.  And if you are reading this...he may be a love of yours as well.  I'd like to feature a different random thought on one of his movies as often as they pop into my head.

I think the place to begin is in the middle.  Lets go with "Vertigo".  If you haven't seen it, I think you should feel shame and embarrassment.  If you have, let's move on!

 

The Film

 

This is the film Hitchcock regarded as his most personal.  He became obsessed with it.  He dreamed of it while making it, had nightmares while deciding how to portray the film's most compelling theme throughout, the vertigo that the main character Scotty (played by James Stewart) suffers from, and became so obsessed with his leading lady (Kim Novak) that she was not allowed to date or see men socially during its filming.  She was HIS for this period of time and he wanted her to focus on nothing but that.

Camera trick

The film is famous for a camera trick Hitchcock invented to represent Scotty's vertigo - a simultaneous zoom-in and pull-back of the camera that creates a disorientating depth of field.
The visual, often imitated, has become known as a "dolly zoom" or "trombone shot".  It was the first time an audience could see and almost feel the loss of equilibrium that the character could feel.  The fear.



Watch the effect here...

 

James Stewart as 'Scotty'

 

If you watch the above video, and I hope you do, you can see how genius James Stewart was portraying the film's main character.  He breaks from his norm.  He becomes a character the world has never seen him be.  A man...obsessed...haunted...out of his mind.  In watching that video, I'm compelled.  How would you portray "obsessed, haunted, out of your mind?"  Norman Bates did it one way...James Stewart did it another.  Both were wonderful, but Stewart is delicious.  He perfectly portrays a normal man, one with no problems to speak of, (could be you...or me..) to eventually becoming an obsessed mad man.  He's perfect.

 

For now..

I'll leave you with these images.  And this tidbit of information:

Alfred Hitchcock's Vertigo has replaced Orson Welles's Citizen Kane at the top of a poll that sets out to name one film "the greatest of all time" - British Film Institute's Sight and Sound

I'm sure Vertigo will come up again in this blog, as it is one of my favorites, so this is just a little teaser.

Stay tuned.  I'm thinking some Dial 'M' for Murder may be coming soon.