Tippi Hedren

  • Roar (1981)

    Roar (1981)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On Cable TV, October 2019) Oh boy, what a movie. The story of the making of Roar is amazing in itself, but even if you see the movie absolutely cold you’ll be gobsmacked at what you will be seeing: a family of actors in their own rural home, interacting with a menagerie of wild cats running all around them. If you’ve grown up (like, well, everybody) with a healthy respect and primal fear of lions, tigers and panthers, that’s amazing enough. It’s hard not to be impressed by the way the actors and the animal share physical space with seemingly no barrier or protection: Far from the usual treatment of actors sharing the screen with dangerous animals, our protagonists make full physical contact with the beasts. It’s so captivating that it does take a while to realize that the story here hangs on only by the flimsiest of threads: It’s about a family joining their father in a big cat-infested house in Africa, and learning to like the animals. (Animal psychology is arguably more important in Roar than human psychology.) The scene-by-scene plotting is disjointed at best, with very little narrative cohesion from one shot to another. The editing is choppy. It feels improvised. These impressions are not accidental when you start reading about the amazing behind-the-scenes story of Roar and how it came to be. The quick version goes like this: While shooting a film in Africa, wife-and-husband Tippi Hedren and Noel Marshall came to like big cats and decided to illegally host as many of them as they could in their remote California residence. After altering the terrain to look like Africa and bringing together as many at 71 lions, 26 tigers, 10 cougars, 9 panthers and a host of other dangerous animals (including four Canadian geese potentially being the worst of them), they started shooting a movie with the noble goal of bolstering preservation efforts for big cats in Africa. Things, however, did not go as planned: The shooting took five years, not helped along by the animals’ lack of acting cooperation. There was a catastrophic flood, ruining sets, film, equipment and the producer/director/star’s own home. The finished film went unseen in North America. They went bankrupt. Animals died, either after escaping and being shot by authorities, or through illness. Roar’s five years of shooting extended to eleven years from pre-production to the final cut. Then there’s the fact that 70 people were injured on-set (some seriously, such as daughter Melanie Griffith and then-cinematographer Jan de Bont), because (as anyone knows) humans and big cats aren’t meant to live together. Imagine the crew turnover under these conditions. Hilariously enough, the film begins by the standard “No animals were harmed during the shooting of this movie”—when the film was re-released in 2005, the tagline added, “70 Cast and crewmembers were.”  The resulting footage is frankly amazing—By the time the characters share their beds with lions and tigers, it’s hard not to be scared and envious. (While nothing bad happens in the film, it was broadcast on a horror channel and my daughter flat-out refused to watch it, showing better self-preservation instincts than any character in the film.) But it does raise the question of whether this has been worth it—it’s easy to laugh in amazement at the kind of madness that led to the existence of the film, but only because nobody died along the way. Still, it exists, and its 2005 re-release did much to remind people of the fact: in the annals of moviemaking, you’d be hard-pressed to find a more amazing making-of than the story of how Roar came to be.

  • Marnie (1964)

    Marnie (1964)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, December 2017) While Alfred Hitchcock remains an essential director even decades after his death, his individual films haven’t all aged as gracefully, and Marnie seems to have been more damaged than most by the passing of time. Part of it has to do with the absurdity of its premise; parts of it have to do with evolving social standards; parts of it have to do with now-outdated filmmaking. In narrative terms, Marnie not only piles on bits of silliness as premises, but also pushes the “psychologically damaged protagonist” angle pretty hard, with childhood trauma explaining aberrant behaviours in ways that haven’t been convincing in decades. But that pales in comparison to the ways the characters treat each other, with a marital rape sequence that pretty much kills any sympathy for anyone in the movie. Then there’s the atrocious has-to-be-seen-to-be-believed horse sequence in which a flurry of disconnected shots can’t quite convince us of a horse-riding accident. Take all of that (and a score of smaller annoyances), blend together and the result is barely palatable. While there is some coolness to seeing Sean Connery in a Hitchcock film (playing a much harder version of even his Bond persona), and Hitchcock is trying something more blatantly stylistic here, the result seems disjointed and unlikable even as a dark thriller. Tippi Hedren stars as the ice blonde, although Diane Baker is more striking as the brunette foil. Opinions differ as to what is Hitchcock’s best period (I’ll put my chips on 1954–1959), but as far as I’m concerned, Marnie is out of it.

  • The Birds (1963)

    The Birds (1963)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, December 2017) I remember seeing at least a good chunk of The Birds as a kid, but I’m surprised to find out, upon revisiting it, that I like it far less than I’d thought. Oh, the basics of the movie are there: the suspense sequences involving the birds themselves are strong, and the dread of the film’s second half is still striking. Director Alfred Hitchcock’s mastery of suspense remains unquestionable, and it’s a testament to his skill that the film remains effective even when the scenes don’t make much sense from a logical perspective. You can recognize in this film the prototype for two or three subsequent generations of horror movies, even when these strike out “birds” for “zombies” in their scripts. Where The Birds doesn’t work as well is when it’s considered as a complete movie. The lack of an ending is as troubling as it’s meant to be, but it doesn’t offer much closure. It’s even worse when considering that the first half of the film focuses heavily on a romance (dramatic or comic remains open to consideration) only to trash that subplot once the birds attack and never really come back to it. This is all intentional—but even intentional frustration remains frustration. While The Birds may remain distinctive even today, it doesn’t feel finished from a narrative perspective. Even arguing that it’s not the point of the film isn’t much comfort. It’s true that much of what made The Birds special back then is now commonplace today: The electronic soundtrack and special effects are either substandard or invisible by today’s standards. Fans of the film will note that HBO’s The Girl recreates the making of The Birds in service of an effective suspense thriller in which Hitchcock is an unrepentant sexual harasser toward Tippi Hedren. Speaking of which, Hedren is as good as it gets as the icy blonde protagonist, while Rod Taylor is effective as the square-jawed protagonist. (If icy blondes aren’t your thing, then Suzanne Pleshette is the brunette for you).  But even with flaws, The Birds remains an interesting film—the Hitchcock touch is obvious, and its lack of narrative satisfaction becomes daring at a time when everything is neatly wrapped up for mass consumption.

  • The Girl (2012)

    The Girl (2012)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, January 2013)  The example set by Alfred Hitchcock still looms large over the entire suspense genre, but as the years go by the filmmaker seems to be remembered more as a cultural icon than a man.  That makes him ripe for a re-interpretation:  The Girl uses the director’s troubled relationship with actress Tippi Hedren as a way to explore his weaknesses and the result is damning.  Here, Hitchcock is portrayed as an unapologetic harasser, blending unwelcome advances into the power dynamic between director and actress, abusing Hedren under the guise of filmmaking as a way to take revenge against her unwillingness to play along.  The Girl is obviously told from Hedren’s point of view –Sienna Miller spent some time with Hedren in preparation for her role, and Toby Jones seems fully committed to presenting an increasingly unlikable portrayal of the director.  For a TV (BBC/HBO) film, the film has acceptable production values and decent direction.  Both Miller and Jones turn in good performances, and film enthusiasts will appreciate both the recreation of The Birds’ shooting process alongside an unusual look at the dynamic between actor and director.  While Hitchcock’s portrayal here is one-sided (numerous other associates of the director have spoken against the film; the competing Hitchcock biopic is said to be more sympathetic), it’s certainly not uninteresting.  As such, the film warrants a look even as a dramatized exaggeration of real-life events: we may not know the true story, but the way it’s presented here is enough to make anyone wonder about what went on in 1960s Hollywood.