Throughout most of his life, Alfred Hitchcock was both appreciated and dismissed as a maker of entertaining mystery thrillers. After his first American film Rebecca won the Academy Award, Hitchcock’s critics got wise and considered him first and foremost a genre filmmaker; the best of his movies might get nominated for Sound Design or Art Direction and … Continue reading A KISS BEFORE DYING: Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo

You know you’re in “favorite film” territory when you try and write a blog post, arrive at the million-word point, and realize you’ve only scratched the surface of what you want to say. You start over, go in completely different directions . . . and the same thing happens. This is the challenge for me … Continue reading NUCLEAR REACTOR: Alfred Hitchcock’s Rear Window

My opinion of actor Farley Granger changed forever last year when our film noir class watched 1948’s They Live by Night(aka Thieves Like Us).  It was only Granger’s third film, his first with top billing, and he is revelatory here. I wrote previously about that film, about his heartbreaking performance and the disappointing trajectory his career would take … Continue reading “SLAUGHTER AND BE GAY”: Hitchcock and Farley Granger

“Of all your pictures, this is the one in which one feels the most perfect correlation between what you are aiming at and what appears on the screen . . . “(Francois Truffaut to Alfred Hitchcock) Notorious is the shining light of Alfred Hitchcock’s output in the 1940’s and his first true masterpiece. Oh, Rebecca won the Oscar, Foreign Correspondent is … Continue reading A DIVINE SYNERGY: Hitchcock’s Notorious