Will the Real Alfred Hitchcock Please Stand Up?

It's Alfred Hitchcock's birthday today—he would have been 125. And there was a day last year, when I suddenly became besieged with a lot of Hitchcock documentaries, all purporting to use his words to get at the mystery behind the director of so many mysteries and thrillers. Even the names of the documentaries were creepily similar, confusingly so, which would have made the old guy sniff at the lack of originality, rather than chuckle.

But, the name is the thing. The name "Alfred Hitchcock" was a brand and more people knew his name and the type of entertainment he made than any other director. Like an irony in one of his movies, it was both a blessing...and a curse.

I Am Alfred Hitchcock (John Ashton McCarthy, 2021) A career overview, the type you're likely to see if someone has no real access to the subject and merely a large collection of clips to cull from. Think of it as an "Entertainment Tonight" career overview...with a little bit of speculation about what made Hitch "tick." But, not much.

 

And it's extensive: from home movies to his interviews—both filmed and merely audio as well as with some confederates, old and new—starting from Hitchcock's childhood, including (invaluably) his time in early British silents and German studios. And a lot of unseen talking heads. A couple of snatches of past Spielberg interviews are included, but most of the comments are from Eli Roth (for some reason), William Friedkin, Edgar Wright, and John Landis. Ben Mankiewicz weighs in. Much mention is made of Joan Harrison (as it probably should be, given the work she did for him in his American transition and on his television shows) and there is a lot of nice footage from the AFI salute to the man, including his extensive tribute to his secret weapon, wife Alma Reville. There are nice touches throughout, and it's quite entertainingly put together. But, as an exploration of the man, his movies, and how they all relate, it's pretty basic stuff.

 

 

My Name is Alfred Hitchcock (Mark Cousins, 2023) The iconoclastic Irish documentarian (he made The Story of Film: An Odyssey and The Eyes of Orson Welles) makes his look at Hitchcock (for his first film's 100th anniversary) with a conceit that he's used in some of his lesser-known films, as a conversation between the filmmaker and the director-subject (voiced by Alistair McGowan and quite convincingly). Oh, some of the things that McGowan-Hitchcock says in the film are a matter of record, but Cousins uses this conversational version of "Alfred Hitchcock Explains It All To You" to build on themes that might have gotten lost in the chases and cameos, the Blondes and the wrong men and the usual accoutrements of a Hitchcock film—"the core of things" (as the faux-Hitchcock states). These are Cousins' personal thoughts and observances being seduced and manipulated by Hitchcock, who used the mechanics of cinema, the psychology of photography, and his own neuroses to dredge up our fears, raise our blood-pressures, and ponder our natures (while pandering to them, as well).

And so, though they're Cousins' observations through the voice of Hitchcock, one could hardly help thinking that Hitchcock is being misinterpreted ("You do know that movies are lies, don't you?" says the faux-Hitchcock at one point) as he was one of the most obvious of directors—what he intended he put on the screen. It's just that nobody had done things quite like that before, made movies like that before, thought thoughts like that and confessed them so nakedly like that before.

Cousins is generous with clips as he focuses on six themes that thematically run through the director's films: Escape, Desire, Loneliness, Time, Fulfillment, and Height. Just reading that list, one can tick off random instances from Hitchcock films that will prove the point, but that they run consistently through his work, even fleetingly more than proves Cousins' point.

 

At the same time, Cousins' Hitchcock has a marketer's point of view on making films. This version emphasizes "stars and glamour" as the motivator for attracting audiences, as they already have a sympathetic, empathetic view of the actors, doing a lot of the leg-work to get them on "their side." To the point where Cousins' Hitchcock avatar never mentions character's names in his movies, only the thespians. "When Cary Grant" does this or "when Grace Kelly does that."

 

Double Take (Johan Grimonprez, 2009) 

"You think all the way through that cinema is going to be killed by television or television is going to kill cinema or America is going to kill Russia or Russia is going to kill America. But at the end, it’s the third one, the new one, the younger one, the YouTube version, that comes along and kills them all."

Jose Luis Borges' initial short story August 25, 1983 

 

"They say that if you meet your double, you should kill him. Or, that he will kill you. I can't remember which, but...the gist of it is...that two of you is one too many. By the end of the script, one of you must die."

 

The wildest of the Hitchcock documentaries, Double Take is a "found-footage" documentary using even the very grain of the image to tell the story. Based on a Jose Luis Borges short story, "August 25, 1983" and expanded from Grimonperez's* earlier short Looking for Alfred, it is a long story, narrated by another Hitchcock sound-alike, Mark Perry, of an encounter a fictitious Hitchcock has in 1963 with himself from 1980. It's a shaggy-dog story, recreated with a Hitchcock lookalike, and a lot of editing between Hitchcock footage...from "Alfred Hitchcock Presents" and other sources, interspersed with news coverage of geo-political events and Instant Folgers commercials (which turn bad coffee into domestic drama). It's a bit of a satire about the new replacing the old, but not changing much for the transition. It doesn't precisely nail its thesis, events being difficult to bend to one's advantage. But, there are moments of wit and some lost opportunities.

 

Becoming Hitchcock: The Legacy of Blackmail (Laurent Bouzereau, 2024) Writer-director Bouzereau has made a career out of directing films in support of other films; watch any DVD of any "important" film of the last 30 years and Bouzereau has directed or produced it, even producing anniversary-soundtrack expansions of some film scores. His work has given him a rolodex of contacts and access to some of the great directors and the archives of many a film. His style is breezy, entertaining and imaginative—when he wants to get to the bottom of a story, he'll get there and make it as memorable as its subject. And when doing a documentary of, say, Mark Harris' Five Came Back, he'll shed the customary upbeat promotional stance required to gloss up the subject to a glittering press-release, and risk being too revelatory, even to the subject's disadvantage, in order to drive home his point and make it the definitive word on the subject. He's good. Very good. It's no wonder so many high-profile directors and producers trust him telling the story of their work.

And in his film for StudioCanal and TCM, Becoming Hitchcock, he also tries to get to the depths of what made Hitchcock not only unique but "a brand."  His thesis being that Hitchcock's 1929 film Blackmail was the first of what one could call "a Hitchcock film" with the tropes of wronged people, distinctive weapons, arresting blondes, landmark chases, eroticism, food fetishes and such being firmly in place as they would be for the rest of Hitchcock's career (what, no mothers or enclosed places?)

It's true to a certain extent, even considering there is some cherry-picking going on. But, if one is looking for "the" first "Hitchcock" film, Blackmail is the most likely suspect (the only reason it doesn't loom larger in peoples' memories is it was in his British period, on the cusp of the sound era, and—being in the public domain—it seems less valued as a marketable property than his other films (which is a bit ironic).

 

But, some elements that are discussed—the tropes—are in his earlier films, because what made Hitchcock Hitchcock were his obsessions and his neuroses, which were there in little sparks at the beginning with even his first film, his vulnerabilities only growing full-flower when he had more confidence in the control of his films (how's that for irony?).

But, sure, say it was Blackmail because of the chase through the British Museum (all done in studio, by the way). But, the film is also notable for being the director's first sound film—he did another version for silent cinemas that were not speaker-wired-up while making this one, sometimes shooting alternate footage for scenes where title cards needed to do the talking. There are, frankly, radical transitions using only sound, showing how freakishly ingenious Hitchcock could be playing with new toys. 

 

And how's this for radical? Hitchcock's "blonde" for this one was a Czech actress named Anny Ondra whose English was so heavily-accented that she was directed to just mouth the words while actress Joan Barry performed the vocal part out of sight of the camera. The illusion is almost flawless, noticeable only if you're looking (and listening for it). You come away from Bouzereau's film maybe not so assured that Blackmail set the template for what was "Hitchcockian" in the future, but certainly convinces that the man was a genius for figuring out ways for telling stories pictorially, psychologically...but also sonically.

But, then...we already knew that.

* Grimonperez was nominated for the "Best Documentary Feature" Oscar last year for his documentary Soundtrack to a Coup d'Etat

 

I'm Still Here (2024)

All I Have is a Photograph (And I Realize...)
or

"Hey, Hey, Dee Dee, Take Me Back to Piaui"

 

Rubens Paiva was taken from his home in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil by armed men on January 20, 1971 for questioning about seditionists to the military dictatorship in power at the time and about a recent spate of kidnap cases involving foreign ambassadors to Brazil, including the representatives from the U.S., West Germany and Switzerland.

 

He never came home.

 

In fact, despite his car being found at a prison facility run by the military, there was no sign that he had ever been taken there, and officials denied he was in custody. It was like he never existed. Except that he left behind a wife and five children, one of whom, Marcelo, grew up to write about the incident in his 2015 book "Ainda Estou Aqui". 

That translates to I'm Still Here, and Brazilian filmmaker Walter Salles—he made On the Road—has made a film of it, to put a face on one of the people "disappeared" due to governmental malfeasance throughout the world. The Paiva story is just one of thousands; there were 434 such "disappearances" during Brazil's military dictatorship alone.

Salles doesn't sensationalize things. He starts with family activities, the kids interacting on the beach not far from their back door, playing volleyball, finding a stray puppy, while mother Eunice—her full name is Maria Lucrécia Eunice Facciolla Paiva—(Fernanda Torres) floats in the ocean, peaceful and calm, when a military helicopter passes not far overhead interrupting the tranquility. Salles cuts between his footage and recreated 16mm "home movies" that the kids make to document their lives, serving as the movie's "B"-roll. They'll become important later. 

It's every day life. Parties, new dog, music, dancing. But, there's an under-current of politics. The party is for daughter Vera who's going off to London for school, partly because she has friends with leftist leanings who are being tracked by the government. Dad Ruben has returned from his own self-imposed exile after some months as a liberal councilman put him on the military's radar. But the ambassadorial kidnappings have intensified the military's presence in the streets and the father is keeping close contact with his friends in the Brazilian Labor Party. It's only a matter of time before that presence arrives at their door-step.

When it does, it comes quietly but assertively. Men in plain clothes and suspicious looks show up one day, armed, while the family is going on about their normal lives. But, the normalcy ends immediately. Ruben drives off in his car with a couple of the guys to be taken in for questioning. The family, particularly Eunice, take a "wait and see" attitude. But, then Eunice and her next eldest daughter Eliana are driven to one of the military prisons for their own questioning. Eunice will stay there for twelve days; Eliana just one. No mention is made of the whereabouts of her husband, and eventually all information about him dries up, and the military denies they have them. Then why is his car still in their lot?

I'm Still Here tracks the family's progress and the stoic Eunice's change from victim to activist and her quest for answers about what happened to her husband. It will take decades of effort as she also raises her children, but always keeping an eye on that empty chair at the dinner table. With her stores of pictures and films she has the evidence that her husband existed, while the government continues to deny his existence or their part in his disappearance. She will fight until she gets the one piece of paper that will expose the whole thing—his death certificate.

It's an amazing movie, much more so for the fact that it seems so ordinary, so focused as it is with the mere act of surviving a trauma, and building a family out of tragedy. Despite the hopelessness of the circumstances, the movie comes out filled with hope.

Walking Kurosawa's Road: Ikiru

The inability to write about the films of Akira Kurosawa to my satisfaction led me to to take a different path: start at the beginning, take each film in sequence, one after the other, and watch the progression of the man from film-maker to Master. I'm hoping I can write more intelligently and more knowledgeably about his work by, step by step, Walking Kurosawa's Road.


Ikiru (aka "To Live" aka 生きる)(Akira Kurosawa, 1952) For those who've seen more than just Akira Kurosawa's samurai films, this is the one that is most often cited as his crowning achievement.

Hard to argue.

Short on visual majesty, except in the sort of composition and eye for detail that Kurosawa brought to every film, with very little of what one would call "action," and inspired by the director's love for Russian Literature, Ikiru tells the story of a simple bureaucrat, a paper-shuffler, "a walking corpse," as the narrator describes "the protagonist." 

Set in contemporary Japan, it follows Kanji Watanabe (Takashi Shimura), a Kainan civil servant (with the uninspiring title of "Section Chief of Public Affairs") who has worked for the same department for 30 years and who (we are told) has been "dead for twenty years"—that's around the time his last white paper on steps to improve efficiency in his department was summarily dismissed by his "higher-ups".

We see a typical day at his office. Kanji rubber-stamping papers with barely a glance, the same way that he handles a request from Sakai (Haruo Tanaka) about the concerns of the Kuroe Women's Association—they want to drain a local cess-pool and create a children's park on the site, eliminating a health hazard and providing a benefit for Japan's version of "baby-boomers." Kanji basically runner-stamps them, sending them off to Public Works without any sort of entree or recommendation, where the mothers go through an all-day session of bureaucracy runarounds only to end up exactly where they started. 

Only when they return to his desk, Kanji is not there—he has uncharacteristically taken time off from his duties to go to the physician's office. He has certain symptoms—pains—which a fellow patient in the waiting room tells him could be stomach cancer, which is a death sentence. But (he's informed), the doctors, who wouldn't be able to treat the cancer, will tell him that it's merely a mild ulcer, there's no need to operate, and to eat whatever he wants (as long as it's easy to digest). The patient tells him that is his experience, and when Kanji is called to the doctor's office, his worst fears are answered. He's told he has a mild ulcer, there's no need to operate, and he can eat anything he wants (as long as it's easy to digest). That patient was telling the truth; the doctors will lie. His diagnosis is good news; it is a death sentence. The doctors can only watch as their cheery "spin" fills Kanji with despair. They know he is suffering, but they go on with their charade. That is how things are done, you see. To deviate from it might be disastrous.

At the doctor's office, Kanji has been given a taste of his own medicine and it is a bitter pill. He knows he has less than a year to live, but he has no idea how. Living has become a habit, something he has squandered, and, in his grief, he takes things to excess. "What would you do," his doctor asks his team after he's left "if you had only six moths to live?" Kanji staggers home, oblivious to the world, only to hear his son and his new wife arrive home, speculating on buying a new home with his money, and he recalls himself as a widower, raising the boy himself, the sacrifices, and can only cry himself to sleep.

The next day, he is not at work, nor is he for the next five days—¥50,000 has been taken out of his account—but no one can find him. It turns out he's been drowning his sorrows, pretty stupid for a man with stomach cancer, but the sake gives him oblivion and oblivion takes away the thoughts in his head—of his wasted life, his contemplation of suicide and his cowardice for not doing it. He blurts all this to a writer "of second-rate fiction" who finds Kanji's existential struggle romantic and vows to help him start living by taking him to pachinko parlors, cabarets, dance-halls and strip-joints, but it is all just drunken activity that only makes him feel worse. He is running in place and getting nowhere.

Still recovering from his night's activities with the writer, he has a chance encounter with a co-worker (Miki Odagiri) who is overjoyed to see him. Feeling stifled by the job at Public Affairs, she was been wanting to quit but has needed his permission signed to begin work at a new job making children's toys. Watanabe takes her to his house to provide the needed seal for her petition, but the girl's presence makes the old man's son think that his father is foolishly stepping out with a younger woman, risking his inheritance. But, Watanabe, feeling isolated and alone, is merely clinging to her for her vitality and energy. She makes him laugh and ultimately inspires him to start a new path...in the same place where he began, where he feels he's been wasting his life for the last 30 years. But, that will all change.

At this point, Kurosawa changes the strict timeline he's been following and moves forward five months in the story. Watanabe is dead and at his memorial, his family and past employees gather in remembrance. Even the Deputy Mayor is there. The children's park has been built, which the Deputy Mayor is only too proud to take credit for, dismissing Watanabe's efforts. But, a grateful appearance at the wake by the Kuroe Women's Association seems to belie that, and Watanabe's co-workers, perhaps inspired by the generous rounds of warm sake, begin to swap stories of Watanabe's zeal in his last few months, uncharacteristically bending rules, hounding department heads and getting the park built.

Watanabe at his lowest...and his highest.

"But I was so much older then, I'm younger than that now.

To the point of even having his life threatened by local pimps who'd rather use the designated park-area for their own purposes. When they threaten retribution, he only looks at them with an ironic smile, at the joke only he can appreciate. By the end of the movie, the characters begin to appreciate the value of one, solitary life, however humble, however stifled. Appreciate it, but in a bureaucracy, maybe not inspired by it. Maybe.

 

But, the park is there. And it will be well-used, as Watanabe himself used it. No further marker is needed.

Ikiru is a quieter, less celebratory—and less dependent on angels, certainly—cousin to It's a Wonderful Life or A Christmas Carol (any of them). All tread a journey through darkness and the sorrow of the soul to emerge, at their respective ends, to the light and a celebration of life. It's why I offer this one for Christmas. As a sort of gift.

I can't recommend this one highly enough. I borrowed this from the Library and kept it for two months, revisiting it, picking details out of it, admiring how it blended tragedy and comedy, satire and spiritualism. If there was one Kurosawa film that I could choose in his entire work that I could view over and over again, it would be this lovely little miracle of a film.

It was remade (as, it seems, all of Kuosawa's films must) in 2022 as the quite decent British film, Living.

Kainan City Hall

 

I Know Where I'm Going!

I Know Where I'm Going! (Michael Powell/Emeric Pressburger, 1945) Wendy Hiller stars as Joan Webster, a determined woman whose whole life has been planned out and played out according to her own well thought-out scenario. Now, she's traveling to the Scottish Highlands to marry her industrialist fianceé (head of Consolidated Chemical Industries) on the Island of Kiloran. But to get there—and become "Mrs. Consolidated Chemical Industries"—she must book boat passage from the Island of Mull. But Nature and Fate conspire to keep her Mulling and scuttle her schedule, while the cutely eccentric citizens cast a spell all their own.

 

By all accounts, it should never have been made. Powell and Pressburger were going to make A Matter of Live and Death for the Rank Organization after a request that they make a film that might help cement relationships between the British and Americans. But, the plan was to make A Matter of Life and Death partially in Technicolor (why "partially" is best explained by seeing the movie). But with all the Technicolor cameras being used by the American military for training films, The Archers (the company name of Powell and Pressburger) had to delay filming until they became available.

 

What to do in the meantime?

Pressburger knew that Powell loved spending his initial down-time after a movie by going to the Scottish islands and proposed a story about a woman who wanted to make a transit to an island but couldn't and by the time one's available she's made the decision that she no longer wants to go.

Pressburger wrote the story in a whirlwind four days, and Powell and he fine-tuned over a matter of a couple weeks. Initially to star Deborah Kerr and James Mason, The Archers had to navigate their own troubled waters as Kerr had a contract at M-G-M and couldn't get out of her commitment (either that or Powell and Pressburger didn't have the money—they certainly didn't!—to pay M-G-M to loan her out) and Mason didn't want to spend his days "camping out" with the crew in an out-of-the-way location. Wendy Hiller, whom Powell and Pressburger had wanted for The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp—her parts had been played instead by Kerr!—was signed and Roger Livesey was ultimately cast as one of the island's residents (ironically Livesey was doing a play in London and never went to the Hebrides locations, but did his part in the studio filming—Mason needn't have worried about the rough conditions).

For Powell and Pressburger, it was something of a lark, and allowed them to continue an anti-materialist theme that they'd started with their previous film, A Canterbury Tale, of the aesthetics of rural life, while also breaking their four-film streak of making war films. A whimsical love story was just what was needed. A whimsical love-story with a third-act action sequence where our heroes nearly drown in the Corryvreckan whirlpool, but a delightful one, nonetheless.

 

Powell and Pressburger create a film concoction with fantasy elements, surreal dream sequences and musical interludes, taking a straightforward story and applying an extremely creative approach to it. The story may seem overly familiar, but not the approach to it which keeps one watching intently to see not so much what will happen, but how. No less an expert as writer Raymond Chandler wrote of it: "I've never seen a picture which smelled of the wind and rain in quite this way nor one which so beautifully exploited the kind of scenery people actually live with, rather than the kind which is commercialised as a show place."

 

It's a lost little gem that shows what a creative force "The Archers", the team that made The Red Shoes, could be. Also, look for a short appearance by a child-actress named Petula Clark. Yup, that one.

Inside Out 2

Pardon Our Dust. Puberty is Messy.

or

Taking Inside Out 2 Twice a Day Will Take the Place of Xanax

It's nice to see that Disney* is permitting Pixar out of its streaming jail-cell and letting its movies open in theaters again. It seems to have paid off as Inside Out 2 has out-performed expectations—certainly Disney's—and has generated Barbie-land box office. One took the hopeful sign that allowing the only-streaming releases to have a theatrical run made them re-think what they were doing with its best—and longest-held—assets. Pixar product is just too good to be restricted to home theaters, and Inside Out 2 is a good example of why.

Sure, a couple of the sequels have been less than spectacular—Monsters University, Cars 2, and Lightyear (although not technically a sequel) had a creative lethargy backing the stunning visuals, but this sequel to 2015's Inside Out takes advantage of the inevitable march of time to expand and deepen its particular cartooniverse. That it is all contained in the mind of our gal-pal Riley (now voiced by Kensington Tallman), who survived her move to San Francisco and flourished, retaining her passion for ice-hockey (a big story-point in this one) and keeping it together with some help from her humors in Head-quarters.

They are Joy (Amy Poehler), Sadness (Phyllis Smith), Anger (Lewis Black), Fear (Tony Hale taking over for Bill Hader), and Disgust (Liza Lapira taking over for Mindy Kaling), who have negotiated Riley's emotional life in the intervening years and managed to make a go of it, despite outgrowing clothes, getting braces, and the near-occasion of pimples. Of course, she's had help from her supportive gal-pals on the hockey team, Grace (Grace Lu) and Bree (Sumayyah Nuriddin-Green). Her school has just won State and grabbed the attention of Coach Roberts (Yvette Nicole Brown) of a local high school who has invited the three to a weekend hockey camp.

Pretty easy for five emotions to handle, one would think. Especially as Joy has worked out a new doohickey that allows her to take bad memories and vacuum-tube them to the back of Riley's mind, where they won't do any harm to her burgeoning "Sense of Self." All very neat and orderly...just like kids are (he said with a wink).

But, remember how I dropped the mention of a "pimple"—well-rendered subtly by Pixar pixelators)? The night before she goes off with her friends to the camp, Riley's "Puberty Alarm" goes off, sending everyone into a panic, and requiring a crew to come in and do a "mitigation" on Riley's head-space, leaving the old crew with a new console that—shall we say?—is a bit..."sensitive". Plus, there are all sorts of new gizmo's and buttons no one's ever seen before.

Those "upgrades" are for a quartet of new emotions generated for Riley by her hormones and they are Anxiety (Maya Hawke), Envy (Ayo Edebiri), Embarrassment (Paul Walter Hauser) and Ennui (Adèle Exarchopoulos), who show up and decide they're going to run the place...that is, Riley...during her hockey weekend. This, of course, complicates matters, and one notices that having these guys around makes describing what happens in the story sounds a little too "on-the-nose." It's far more subtle—and entertaining!—in the Pixar presentation than the summation, which reads like symptoms in a psychological post-mortem.

To wit: Anxiety manages to rip away Riley's Sense of Self and locks away Joy (and her comrades) in an effort to push Riley to achieve her ambitions on the ice. Sounds a bit clinical, doesn't it? It's not, but shows how cleverly director Kelsey Mann and his co-scenarists Meg LeFauve and Dave Holstein manage to integrate human turmoil into an adventure story that's enjoyable for kids and relatable for adults (who'll be answering questions with a smirking "just you wait..."). The kids watching this movie will grow up into the answers that had previously sailed over their heads.

It all feels like a natural progression to the original. Changes are made, but they're well-integrated (even if, in the story, the new emotions have to be shown some tough love) and one is propelled along with the assurance that the film has been nuanced to within an inch of perfection. And, of course, one is always amazed at the artistic leaps that Pixar makes between films; Inside Out 2 feels richer in its animation than the original with nice ethereal edges to inhabitants of Riley's head-space and one can appreciate the little details like the way Riley's teeth are crooked to the way ice erupts from the edge of a skate.

Those details are not what's flocking audiences to theaters to see this, but it's a value-added that can only be appreciated on a large screen. Inside Out 2 may not have the holistic concept brilliance of the first one, but it's a worthy sequel that builds on it, maintaining the train of thought while not derailing it (see how lame the concept could get?).

 

Inside Out 2 will get you right in "the feels."

* Although one notices that the House of Mouse has put on an ultra-long company logo (that might actually qualify as a short subject) onto the beginning and the end of this one as if to emphasize who's in charge. The Pixar logo is same as it ever was. Don't let that discourage you from missing the tag-line at the very end of the movie, though.

 

Caption quiz: "Anxiety...."