Alfred Hitchcock

(In French, On Cable TV, February 2019) In the Alfred Hitchcock filmography, Topaz stands out as one of the least liked later-era Hitchcock films. The reason quickly becomes obvious as the film unspools: Despite a few typical Hitchcockian touches—the long shots, the unconventional presentation, a few striking images—, the entire film feels like a perfunctory slog. Adapted from a Leon Uris novel that presented a complex but ultimately boring spying triangle between France, Cuba and the United States, Topaz fails to take off, fly or land. The emphasis on this being a pseudo-realistic take on events that may have happened seems to be an excuse to try nothing interesting and to mute down anything that could have been exciting from a more fictional story. Hitchcock, clearly, was far more at ease in twisted thrillers than the minutia of romantic espionage thrillers. Even the mere two-hour running time feels punishing considering the slow pacing and striking lack of humour in the results. This is mediocre Hitchcock—polished, but long and scattered to the point where it would be more difficult to guess that this is coming from Hitchcock. I did like some of the early-1960s atmosphere, but otherwise I’m joining the popular opinion: Topaz goes straight to the director’s bottom tier.

(On DVD, November 2018) The early 1970s were a grim and depressing time for American cinema as filmmakers over-embraced the new freedoms of the post-Hays Code era and tried to reach younger audiences with what would have been unthinkable even a few years earlier. The Old Hollywood was gone and the New Hollywood featured grime, gore and nudity. Even old veteran Alfred Hitchcock got in the game in Frenzy, which remains the bloodiest and grimmest of his films. The story takes place in London, where a serial killer is stalking victims through a matchmaking service and framing our protagonist for the murders. As a premise, it’s standard Hitchcock fare. In execution, however, Frenzy plays harder and darker: There are two murders in the movie and while the first one is graphic and grisly and upsetting, the second one is far more muted and far more disturbing as the camera moves away from the crime and into a busy street with passersby unaware that something terrible is taking place right next to them. There is also nudity (rare in the Hitchcock oeuvre) and an overall grittiness that clearly marks this film as being from the 1970s. Frenzy is often described as Hitchcock’s last great movie and while I’ll be able to confirm this only once I see his last film (1976’s Family Plot), it does strike me as an above-average entry for him, and an intriguing glimpse at what kinds of movies he would have kept making had he had lived longer. But make no mistake: Frenzy is grim, and even its humour is more macabre than a relief.

(On TV, June 2018) Even though Hitchcock worked steadily throughout the film-noir period, most of his movies aren’t as closely associated with the subgenre as you’d think: Hitchcock was his own subgenre, and his preoccupations were usually not those of classic film noir. But some Hitchcock movies often approach noir, and Shadow of a Doubt (along with Strangers on a Train) is often mentioned in that vein. I’d argue that the film was closer to the paranoid domestic thrillers of the 1940s (alongside Rebecca and Gaslight), but no matter the subclassification, Shadow of a Doubt remains a decent entry in the filmmaker’s oeuvre. It’s about a teenage girl who comes to suspect that her uncle, newly arrived as a house guest, is a serial killer. She’s unsurprisingly right, of course, and much of the film’s last act is spent surviving her uncle’s murderous plans. It’s a decent enough film, although perhaps one of Hitchcock’s least surprising ones. Still, his mastery of suspense is better than any inclination toward surprise, and the results speak for itself. Much of the plot was later reused and pushed to an extreme conclusion in Park Chan-wook’s far more disquieting Stoker (2013).

(On TV, June 2018) On some level, The 39 Steps is a basic, almost unremarkable thriller, the likes of which we often see. But take a step back to look at the date of the film, and realize that Alfred Hitchcock has mastered the form years before WW2. It’s hard to fault The 39 Steps for executing a good recipe well: here we have themes familiar to Hitchcock (an innocent man being stuck in an impossible situation and going on the run to clear his name), using methods and techniques to crank up the suspense in ways that would be reused by countless other directors. There’s a close affinity with the first 1934 version of The Man Who Knew Too Much here, competently handling material that would be overexposed later on. The result is that you can still watch The 39 Steps today and be engrossed in the story despite some weirdness such as the hypnotism material—it feels decently modern, and still enjoyable despite its flaws and limitations. It’s movies like this one that would bring Hitchcock to popular success, critical appreciation and Hollywood’s attention: he’d move to the United States a few years later.