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

 

The Man with Bogart's Face

Saturday is traditionally "Take Out the Trash" Day...

The Man with Bogart's Face (Robert Day, 1980) With some television series ("The Rebel" and "Branded"), a couple movies (like Chisum) and a long association with director Irvin Kershner on his resume, writer-actor-producer Andrew J. Fenady began work on his first book, "The Man with Bogart's Face" which was first published in 1977. 

I read it not long after that--the title caught my attention-- but it didn't leave much of an impression on me, other than the guy had done his research and that he had an obvious love for the detective films of the 1940's and '50's. It tells the story of a man so obsessed with Humphrey Bogart, he has plastic surgery done on his face and changes his name to Sam Marlow, all the better to become what he's always dreamed of being—a private detective. 

Fenady had an eye to making a movie of the book, wrote a screenplay, got financing from Melvin Simon—Fenady wrote it to be low-budget—and started the process of getting the movie on the screen.

But, who would play Sam Marlow, the man with Bogart's face? Supposedly, an actor had been cast* when in walked a little known thesp' named Robert Sacchi. Saachi had his own one-man Bogart-tribute touring show which he took around the country and from most angles, he was a dead ringer for Bogart (who'd passed away in 1958), and did an impeccable mimicry of him, if slightly limited in range. Put him in a trench-coat and a fedora and he fit the bill like a slightly rumpled suit. 

George Raft (in his last role) confronts Sam Marlow

But for an entire feature film? Maybe that's going a bridge too far. The plot follows the outline of The Maltese Falcon: after unveiling his new plastically-surgeoned face (in a sequence that resembles a similar sequence in Dark Passage), a valuable "whatsit" is coveted by a variety of outlandish characters and newly-chiseled Sam Marlow (Sacchi), with a newly installed ditsy secretary he calls "Duchess" (Misty Rowe), is employed by almost all of them for the prized "McGuffin." That they all vaguely resemble characters from Dashiell Hammett's original only proves that the falcon doesn't fall far from the tree.

 

But, it's The Maltese Falcon-light.

Light, but not so nimble. His first case is with his sizable landlady whose husband is missing. Then he gets a call from Elsa Borscht (Olivia Hussey), who tells him that her father, Horst, a former prop-man for the pictures, has been getting threatening phone-calls. She tells him this right before they get attacked by two masked gun-men at the Hollywood Bowl. It's enough action to almost make you forget that a character's name is Horst Borscht. It's going to be that kind of picture.

It seems everybody is looking for "The Eyes of Alexander" two perfect blue sapphires once a part of a statue of Alexander the Great. Among the many coveters is Commodore Anastas (Victor Buono)—whose daughter Gena (Michelle Phillips) Marlow thinks looks just like Gene Tierney in Laura (he even has "the portrait" hanging in his office)—the fey-caricatured Mr. Zebra (Herbert Lom), the slimy club-owner Hakim (Franco Nero), and the former Nazi general (with a wooden arm) Wolf Zinderneuf (Jay Robinson, considerably toned down from his performance as Caligula in The Robe). All have eyes on the Eyes and are ready to resort to any sort of skullduggery to get them. And Marlow is forced to dodge bullets and search for the sapphires in some of the seedier, less photogenic sides of Los Angeles.

It starts to get formulaic very quickly: everybody who meets Marlow has to ask: "Has anyone ever told you you look like..." before he cuts them off with a pivot, Marlow's dialogue is always a little too clever by half and sometimes downright irritating at any quarter. Then, there's an omnipresent narration where he waxes philosophic and usually has to include an old movie reference ("Hollywood Boulevard isn't what it used to be, but then it never was" huh?).

 

After awhile, it gets to be a drag, the kind of movie Bogie would say "only phonies like it."

It gets so bad that Sacchi's performance starts to wear a little thin and you start to notice the differences instead of getting comfortable with them. For examples, the forehead is too high, the nose a little pudgy and the chin weak. Plus, every chance he gets, Sacchi runs a finger across his lip "just like Bogie did" but, he never did it this much and although imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, too much of it is the sincerest form of boredom.

Things get really ugly when things get deadly serious and the most sympathetic (although sadly also the most dull) character gets killed. And the movie begins to drag and Sacchi's impression starts going stale. The real Bogie would risk looking ugly or tortured or something at this stage of the mystery, but Sacchi doesn't dare lest the Bogie-illusion suffers for it. And one realizes then that the performance is relentlessly one-note and the whole enterprise starts to slide downhill.

The movie is of its time and you can't change that—the direction and cinematography looks like that of every run-of-the-mill detective television series of the 1970's—But one would think this thing might have played better during the "Bogie renaissance" when he started being a cult-figure on college campuses during the 1960's.

The Man with Bogart's Face just goes to show that unique can't be imitated and that Bogart was and remains inimitable.

* I'm guessing Jerry Lacy, the most obvious choice. Lacy did commercials as a Bogart look-alike and starred as the phantom-Bogart in Woody Allen's "Play it Again, Sam" both on-stage and film. If he was considered, the loss shouldn't have been too upsetting, as The Man with Bogart's Face died a quick death at the box-office. Sacchi died in 2021, outliving Bogart by over 30 years. Lacy is still quite alive at the age of 89.

Millions

Written, initially, when it was released on video. And recently expanded because it's so darned good and everybody needs a good movie every once in awhile...

Millions (Danny Boyle, 2004) "The French have said au revoir to the franc, the Germans have said auf wiedersehen to the mark, and the Portuguese have said...whatever to their thing."

 

"Now, it's our turn to say good-bye to sterling. This Christmas, we are going to get the euro. Good-bye, old pounds. Everyone says we're going to miss you."

 

It's 2002, and with the establishment of the European Union, the country-specific currency in the days of conflicting exchange rates was being replaced by the euro in 12 of the member states (although it's now in 20 of the 27 EU countries) as of the first of that year, all in the name of solidarity and globalization. Such a radical shift is the sort of thing to make great stories of, and this little parable (of a sorts) is a remarkable example of making a great story out of cultural change (and not just the monetary kind).

Director Danny Boyle begins Millions with a sun-dappled intro to a child's world, and a visit to the site of a new housing development, where our hero Damian (Alex Etel) and his brother Anthony (Lewis McGibbon) imagine the building of their soon-to-be new home in fantastical stop-motion animation set to John Murphy's cooing Elfmanesque score.* One is instantly charmed, not only by the fairy-tale way in which the story is introduced, but also by the promise of what is to come. Anything is possible.

But, the sequence is interspersed with shots of impossibly propulsive trains, indicating—along with the house-building sequence that, in this child's world, things can move pretty fast.

Once, they've moved into their new home named appropriately "Serendipity" ("Surprisingly spacious with attractive views!" enthuses Anthony), it's off to school with them, where Anthony is better able to adapt than Damian who when he's asked if he has any heroes rattles off the names of saints (with whom he's obsessed) enthusiastically detailing their grisly fates to the horror of his fellow students (whose heroes are footballers).

But, their lives change when Damian imagines an audience with Clare of Assisi (1194 to 1253 and the patron saint of television...no, really) in his hermitage made of moving boxes taped together to form an ornate structure and its interrupted by the construction being crushed by a flying Nike bag filled with pound notes—£229,520 to be precise—which Damian assumes (naturally) that it came from God. His brother, Anthony, is far less deistic and thinks—maybe—it came from a passing train, but doesn't question it enough to see the opportunities implied. The kids stash the loot, vow to not tell their Dad, and Anthony begins to use it to gain friends at their new school to form a "posse."

But, Damian has other ideas (of course). Since the funds came from God, he starts to distribute it the way his idols, the saints, would. His first act is to buy a bunch of pigeons and release them, as per St. Francis (who dutifully shows up to give his approval and suggest that Damian use the money to help the poor). With aid from St. Nicholas, he leaves stuffs a lot of pound notes into the mail-slot of some neighboring Mormon missionaries (they needed a dish-washer and a microwave), the Ugandan Martyrs persuade Damian to give to a Christian charity that will provide wells to African villages (that one is so obvious and un-anonymous it gets him in trouble with his whole family and exposes the fact that he has the loot), then St. Peter comes by for a visit and tells him maybe he should slow down a little as miracles aren't always what they seem.

Damian with St. Francis (note the halo)

 

Meanwhile, there's all this money with a certifiable expiration date and two boys have to figure out how to use it while it's still valuable. Anthony starts to tour real estate "for investment opportunity." Damian comes to realize that even though giving to the poor is a really good idea "it's really hard" to do. Plus things get...complicated once Da knows there's all this money and then, there's the business of some guy nosing around the neighborhood looking like he's lost something really valuable. And Doyle maintains his penchant for keeping things visually fascinating and telling a story in unconventional ways, but still conveying what he absolutely means.

Millions is one of those ones I missed in the theater, and one I deeply regret for having missed it. It's a little gem of a movie Boyle made between his zombie-film 28 Days Later (which will be getting a sequel this year) and his sci-fi film Sunshine but sweeter than his usual fare, although—Doyle being Doyle—it does flirt with some dark material involving child jeopardy, but it ultimately has its sacred heart in the right place.

At one point St. Peter tells Damian: "Something that looks like a miracle turns out to be dead simple." Millions isn't dead simple, but it is something of a miracle.

 

It's a highly charming movie, while avoiding the usual cute kid cliches, and maintaining a quite sophisticated tone of drama and off-the-wall comedy. That was a trick even Disney found hard to pull off.** It gets a very high recommendation from me. 

* I was delighted to see that the score was performed by the Seattle Symphony Orchestra and The Northwest Boychoir and recorded at Studio X of my old stomping ground Bad Animals and recorded by old comrade Reed Ruddy. Nifty!

 

** This being what they are, and the film being originally produced by Fox Searchlight, it is now the property of The House of Mouse. 

Everybody watches "Who Wants to be a Millionaire" which is some sort of career-foreshadowing.

Mickey 17

Essential Worker

or

"Go Ye Forth and Multiply"

Mickey Barnes (Robert Pattinson) has a sketchy past-he has an issue with a loan-shark-and so he wants to get off-planet as soon as possible. Fortunately, there's a private mission to the planet Niflheim that has been spear-headed by a former Senator Kenneth Marshall (Mark Ruffalo) to form a colony where he's the Supreme Leader (Marshall has lost his last two elections and no doubt wants to leave democracy behind). Mickey, seeing the long lines of potential volunteers for the exploration flight, volunteers to be an "expendable"--a low-level worker position that no one wants, mostly because the fine-print is egregious, saying that he can be assigned guinea-pig positions that will probably kill him, at which point he will be "re-printed" body and mind, his memories downloaded into the new Mickey. In the 4.5 years it takes to get to Niflheim, he's died and been re-manufactured 11 times. Once land-fall occurs, Micky dies a few more times testing the environment and the various vaccines for the planet's endemic diseases, before anyone else is allowed out in the glacial environment. And, at the time of the movie's start, he is Mickey 17.

But, at the movie's start, that won't last long. 17's fallen into a crevasse in the freezing cold, nothing's broken, but there's no way he can get out. His co-hort from Earth, Timo (Steven Yeun), has a job as a pilot and he could rescue him from his predicament...but, hey, why bother? They're just going to make another one, anyway. He leaves with a genuine "Hey, nice knowing you. Have a nice death." And a question everyone asks, "Hey...what's it like to die?" After all, Mickey's had experience.

I won't give too much away, but 17 survives the fall and the cold and is only too happy to get back to the base-camp where he gets a bit of a shock. Despite the lack of protocol and general laxity of safety conditions—especially in the science department—it seems they're very johnny-on-the-spot (or one should say Mickey-on-the-spot) for replacing their expendable: another Mickey has already been re-printed, who, of course, is Mickey 18. Because cloning is not an exact science, 18 is a bit more aggressive and less forgiving than his predecessor (hey, he's young, having only a few hours of life to his credit). But, the two have an immediate problem: duplicates are illegal in the colony and so, they it's a literal case of there not being room enough for the two of them, which makes both Mickeys beside themselves.

One of them, then, has to go. Although they basically have the same brain, they are of two minds on the matter. 18, of course, says that because 17 is considered dead, he's overstayed his welcome and he needs to die; 17 considers 18 to be unnecessary and superfluous and so he should be the one to die. Neither one of them wants to have a twin—do they split their rations?—and, besides, Mickey 17 has a girlfriend, Nasha (Naomi Ackie), who's one of the base's security forces, and although she's intrigued with the possibilities, neither one of the Mickeys are into open relationships.

The problem is, the question of who lives and who dies is out of all of their hands—duplicates are illegal and if it's one thing former Senator Marshall is consistent at it's in following the rules that he's put in place (and that's just about the only thing he's consistent about other than maintaining absolute power over the colony). This puts Nasha and the two Mickeys in conflict with the social order and their functions, but, hey, movies need conflict and there's quite a lot of it in Mickey 17.

It's clever, entertaining, and adaptor-director Bong Joon Ho (he of Parasite, Mother, and The Host) has created another of his intricate little "trap" movies where you wonder where he might be going with it, but it's less devious then his previous films, and suffers from a "Chekhov's gun" situation which makes the resolution of the film feel slightly telegraphed and less of a surprise than in previous work. There are a couple superfluous characters (besides the extra Mickey) and one sees a trope (let's be kind and call it "inspiration") from an early "Star Trek" episode that makes it seem overly-familiar. That's a slight disappointment. 

And he gets entertaining work from his cast—Pattinson plays dual roles, of course (actual multiple versions of the same character), and, dang, if you can't tell the two of them apart merely by his playing of them, and Ackie has never been more kinetic as she is here. Ruffalo and Toni Collette (playing Marshall's Lady MacBeth of a wife) play it broad, but then, the characters are broad, as most autocratic figures are before they fall into the self-destruction of self-parody.

That broadness will, no doubt, raise hackles in some quarters, but those hackles are always on the alert, anyway. Best to look at the more subtle statement Mickey 17 is making about the irony of "essential workers" being regarded as the most disposable in business and governmental circles. Twas ever thus, whether it's in war, shirtwaist factories, or food-processing plants during a pandemic, this "dammit-I-can-have-it-both-ways" canard of the powerful sees far less exposure than it should. I'd like to see more of it, if only in the public interest.

 

The novel on which Mickey 17 is based has a sequel called "Antimatter Blues", but if it gets made into a movie, I'm sure they'll call it Mickey 19.

Wilhelm Alert @ 01:17:00

 

Marty

Marty (Delbert Mann, 1955) It was a strange dichotomy—the motion picture studios were fighting off the insurgency of television sets into American house-holds, competing against it by offering exotic locations, widescreen aspect ratios and other innovations like 3-D and stereophonic sound (we won't even get into what William Castle was doing!), even air-conditioning, in an attempt to get people off their convenient couches and away from the primitive flickering black and white images on their square TV sets and back into theaters for their distractions. At the same time, writers and other craftsmen were finding work in the nascent television field where home-grown stories with a less spectacular dimension requirement could be produced quickly and with less studio interference (for them, sponsors were the problem).

 

Marty began as a television play broadcast in 1953 on The Philco-Goodyear Television Playhouse, starring Rod Steiger in the titular role. Movie rights were bought up by the Hecht-Lancaster Production company (formed by Burt Lancaster and his agent Harold Hecht) and it was their first project without Lancaster starring. Steiger bowed out, not wanting to be tied to a multi-picture contract to Hecht-Lancaster and the part went to an unlikely candidate, Ernest Borgnine, with whom Lancaster had worked on From Here to Eternity and Vera Cruz, and who had just finished filming Bad Day at Black Rock. The casting couldn't have been more against "type"—Borgnine was usually being cast as heavies, bullies, villains, or even (in From Here to Eternity) a downright sadist.

But, Marty was different. Marty Piletti (Ernest Borgnine) is an approaching-middle-age butcher (he's 35) in the Bronx. He makes an okay living—he gets by, has some money saved and could see himself buying his own place—but still lives with his mother (Esther Minciotti) for the usual reasons: Dad's gone, Mom's living alone (except for him), she's a bit of a noodge, and he has a severe failure to launch.

Not that he doesn't want to. He's just not the sort of man who attracts attention. "I gotta admit, whatever it is women like, I ain't got it!" He's a butcher, fercryinoutloud, he doesn't even get any respect from his customers who don't even expect a thumb on the scale when they tell him he "oughta be ashamed of himself" for not being married when his younger siblings got married long ago. He's a nice guy. But "an ugly, fat" nice guy. And "time goes on, boy" and the years pile up and before you know it, you haven't done nothing.

But, what do you expect when the weekend comes and you end up with the same crowd on the same street-corner and you say the same thing over and over again like a mantra (but a mantra that doesn't DO anything): "Whadaya wanna do tonight, Marty?" "I dunno, Anj' (Joe Mantell), whadda YOU wanna do?" His contemporary pals are basically running in place, not going forward with their lives for fear of rejection or just plain lethargy. You develop a hard skin, like an antipathy towards women, or, worse, an antipathy towards yourself. Why have your worst faults thrown in your face again and again? Why have it proven again that you don't measure up? Why get your hopes up only to have them dashed? Why risk the pain? Better to just drift with what you're used to. It may be boring, and it may even be irritating, but it's comfortable.

Marty is a movie about being alone in a city of millions, where the opposite of love isn't hate—it's indifference. People collide into each other and don't even notice the collision. But, the next day they'll notice the bruise and wonder where that came from. It's intimate. It knows people. And it recognizes how you can want the best AND the worst for someone, if it comes out a little bit in your favor. There's something a little sweet and a lot of sour about it.

There's a lot of irony there. But, the big irony is that it wasn't something in widescreen Vistavision and Hi-Fidelity sound. It wasn't even in color, but the same black-and-white you'd find on your humming television set back home (and it was in Academy ratio too, which is what the TV tube was).

And the biggest irony is that this product of television—that looked a lot like television—won The Best Picture Oscar for its year (and the Palme D'Or at Cannes!) over the movies that were being put out to compete with television. And Best Actor. And Best Screenplay. And Best Director.

 

Writer Paddy Chayevsky must have had a good laugh at that. The heads of the studios probably didn't get the joke.