I recently gave an hour-long Zoom presentation on the “Art of Alfred Hitchcock” for the 19th Century Charitable Foundation in Chicago. I talked about the relationship between voyeurism and film editing and showed clips from THE LODGER, REAR WINDOW, VERTIGO and PSYCHO. You can now watch it on YouTube:
Tag Archives: The Lodger
Alfred Hitchcock’s THE LODGER at the Northbrook Public Library
I wrote a new capsule review of Alfred Hitchcock’s The Lodger (the master’s first great film!) for Cine-File Chicago. A restored version screens at the Northbrook Public Library next Wednesday.
Alfred Hitchcock’s THE LODGER: A STORY OF THE LONDON FOG (Silent British Revival)
Northbrook Public Library (1201 Cedar Lane, Northbrook) – Wednesday, 1 and 7pm (Free Admission)
One of the most important and revelatory film restoration projects of recent years has been the British Film Institute’s ambitious digital refurbishing of the “Hitchcock 9” (the nine extant films that Alfred Hitchcock made in England during the silent era), re-releases of which first toured the U.S. in 2014. The crown jewel of this series is 1927’s THE LODGER, which, in spite of being the master of suspense’s first thriller and thus arguably the first true “Hitchcock film,” still hasn’t gotten its due in many quarters for being the great movie that it is. It probably hasn’t helped matters much that Hitch himself practically dismissed it in the seminal interview book Hitchcock/Truffaut by discussing it primarily in terms of pulling off the neat technical trick of shooting through a glass floor. But THE LODGER is much more interesting than that. The narrative intertwines two of what would soon become the director’s trademark plots: the story of a murderer and a “wrong man” plot (in which an ordinary man is accused of a crime he didn’t commit). THE LODGER is also, unforgettably, a love story. Daisy (June Tripp), the daughter of a married couple who run a boarding house, falls in love with the eponymous but unnamed title character (matinee idol Ivor Novello), who is also the chief suspect in a series of grisly stranglings of young blonde women. The way Hitchcock laces these elements with a potent eroticism as well as a sense of humor is impressive, notably in a scene where the lodger and Daisy play chess (the context of which gives his line “I’ll get you yet” a delicious triple meaning). When the lodger picks up a blow-poke just as Daisy bends over to pick up a chess piece that’s fallen to the floor, the viewer is left to wonder if he intends to bash her brains in. That he ends up merely stoking the fireplace nearby is both the film’s darkest and funniest joke—one that calls to mind Truffaut’s remark that Hitchcock filmed love scenes like murder scenes and vice-versa. THE LODGER was also a clear influence on Fritz Lang’s M, both in its depiction of how murder can drive a community into a lynch mob-like hysteria and in terms of its visual style: Hitch used triangle shapes as a recurring visual motif in much the same way that his German counterpart would employ spirals. Even more significantly, I never realized the extent of how expressionistically lit THE LODGER was until I viewed the BFI’s restoration, which gloriously reveals many previously unseen details in the sublime, high-contrast cinematography. Live accompaniment by Dave Drazin at both shows. (1927, 92 min, Digital Projection) MGS
Cool Apocalypse at the Siskel Center / The Lodger at Transistor
I’m very pleased to announce that my feature film, Cool Apocalypse, while still in the midst of its festival run, will receive its Chicago debut at the Gene Siskel Film Center in November. The Siskel has long been my favorite local film venue and I am honored beyond my ability to express myself that they were interested in programming it. It will screen for two shows only: on Saturday, November 21, at 8pm and Monday, November 23, at 8:15pm. I will be present to introduce both screenings and participate in post-screening Q&As with producer Clare Kosinski and members of the cast. Tickets will not go on sale for another month but, because I am offering extra-credit points to the students in all five of my classes who attend, I suspect that both shows will be sell outs. I therefore strongly advise anyone interested in seeing Cool Apocalypse to purchase their tickets in advance. Tickets will be available for sale through the Siskel Center’s website and in person at the box office in October. Hope to see you at our hometown premiere!
In more recent Chicago film-screening news, I will be introducing a screening of Alfred Hitchcock’s The Lodger at Transistor Chicago this Saturday, September 19 at 8pm. I will be showing the BFI’s recent restoration of the Master of Suspsense’s first thriller, which is not yet available on home video in North America. The screening is FREE and BYOB. Here is the description I wrote for Transistor’s website:
The British Film Institute’s recent restoration of Hitchcock’s first thriller gloriously renders many heretofore unseen details in the film’s luminous Expressionist-influenced photography. Hitchcock fans who haven’t yet seen it might be shocked at how fully formed the Master of Suspense’s style was this early in his career: There are a series of murders, a ‘wrong man’ plot, a beautiful ‘Hitchcockian blonde,’ and a highly memorable kissing scene. (1927, NR, 92 minutes)
Hope to see you there as well!
A Silent British Cinema Primer
This list of essential British silent films is, above all, a testament to the power that “home video” has had to rewrite movie history. A couple of early Hitchcocks notwithstanding, the silent British cinema has never figured prominently into any official versions of the story of early motion-picture development. Fortunately, the efforts of numerous film institutions and preservation foundations have in more recent years seen to the restoration and re-release of many important silent British movies. (the story broke only a couple of months ago that an important British silent, George Pearson’s Love, Life and Laughter, was discovered in Amsterdam — proving yet again how notions of film history evolve with the vicissitudes of fate.) Below are nine eye-opening personal silent British favorites that I consider well worth any movie buff’s time.
Electric Edwardians: The Films of Mitchell and Kenyon (Kenyon/Mitchell, 1900-1913)
This is not a feature film but rather a series of brief documentary shorts of Edwardian England that were put out as a DVD anthology approximately 100 years after their initial release. Originally produced between 1900 and 1913, the movies of Sagar Mitchell and James Kenyon were advertised as “Local Films for Local People” and screened at town halls and local fairs across the U.K. by itinerant showmen. A kind of Anglo-equivalent of the earliest films of the Lumiere brothers, the Mitchell and Kenyon shorts are mostly one-shot actualities that delightfully show how English men, women and children lived, worked and played in the early 20th century. These are invaluable documents of a now-vanished era, particularly interesting for what they reveal about fashion sense, social interactions and how the subjects vibrantly but unselfconsciously “perform” for the camera. Culled from 28 hours of footage, the superbly curated 85-minute “Electric Edwardians” DVD features an enlightening audio commentary by one Vanessa Toulmin and was released by the BFI in the U.K. and by Milestone Films in the U.S. Unmissable for lovers of what historian Tom Gunning has dubbed the “cinema of attractions.”
The Epic of Everest (Noel, 1924)
“Since the beginning of the world men have battled with Nature for the mastery of their physical surroundings. Such is their birthright, and such is their destiny.” So reads a quintessentially British — and vaguely imperialist — opening title card in this mesmerizing documentary from explorer/filmmaker Captain J.B.L. Noel. Newly restored and released on Blu-ray by the British Film Institute, this masterpiece is the official record of George Mallory and Sandy Irvine’s ill-fated 1924 attempt to scale the world’s highest mountain. The film’s focus, refreshingly, is not on the personalities of the men involved but on the arduous task of mountain-climbing itself; most of its power stems from shots of wee man, often not more than a black speck on the horizon, crawling all over the overwhelmingly indifferent, ice-capped peaks of Mount Everest. Some of Noel’s astonishing montage sequences feature shots where the most dramatic thing happening is the way drifting clouds cast shadows over mountaintops, images that resemble moving paintings in their abstract beauty. The best such scene is arguably the last, after the two men spearheading the trek have perished; the final images of Everest, tinted blood-red, conjure up the futility of their mission with an almost unbearable poignance.
The White Shadow (Cutts, 1924)
One of the great recent stories of the discovery of a film previously thought to be lost is the 2011 unearthing of Graham Cutts’s silent British melodrama The White Shadow from a New Zealand archive. The discovery sparked worldwide interest mainly because the movie was a formative work in the career of Alfred Hitchcock (who wrote the script and also functioned as set designer, assistant director and editor). Although Hitch wouldn’t make his own feature directing debut until the following year, it’s surprising how much his artistic DNA seems to be all over this (e.g., Expressionist lighting effects, a “doppelangger” motif, and a plot revolving around mistaken identity). Betty Compson excels in a dual role as twin sisters — one naughty, one nice — both of whom become romantically involved with an American tourist (Clive Brook) who is unaware that they are, in fact, the same person. Unfortunately, the last three reels of the film are still missing and so it ends in the middle, right when all of the characters have congregated at a seedy Parisian nightclub named “The Bohemian Cat” — the kind of joint in which Louis Feuillade and Fritz Lang would have been at home. But a synopsis fills us in on the conclusion, which apparently involved a mystical transfiguration between the sisters. Cinephiles should be grateful for what exists, however, for an important, previously missing piece of the Hitchcock puzzle is now firmly in place.
Hindle Wakes (Elvey, 1927)
My favorite silent British film of all is Maurice Elvey’s 1927 adaptation of Stanley Houghton’s play about mill employee Fanny Hawthorn (Estelle Brody) and her leisure-time adventures during “Wakes Week,” a traditional week-long holiday for factory workers and students in Lancashire. This is the most shockingly progressive silent movie I’ve ever seen in terms of how it portrays gender relations: Fanny has a tryst with the mill owner’s son who is engaged to be married to another, more respectable woman. The film’s sympathetic — and casual — treatment of a woman engaged in a pre-marital sexual relationship, and the way it attacks the hypocrisy of how society views the behavior of single men and women, makes the tone feel strikingly modern. (Also modern is an utterly sublime ending that suggests the resilient heroine will survive and endure.) But the progressiveness of the film’s content is also impressively matched by its innovative form: a scene taking place at an amusement park that uses extended point-of-view shots of characters on carnival rides is as cinematically breathtaking as any similar scenes in more well-known silent masterpieces like Sunrise, Lonesome and Coeur Fidele.
The Lodger: A Story of the London Fog (Hitchcock, 1927)
One of the most delightful home video surprises of this decade was the UK label Network’s sensational Blu-ray disc of Alfred Hitchcock’s The Lodger. The master of suspense’s first thriller was originally released in 1927 and the Blu-ray was based on an impeccable restoration by the British Film Institute that gloriously renders many heretofore unseen details in the luminous, Expressionist-influenced photography. I would go so far as to say I never realized what a truly great movie it was until viewing the BFI’s restoration. Hitchcock fans who haven’t yet seen it might be shocked at how fully formed the master’s style was so early on in his career: there are a series of murders, a “wrong man” plot, a beautiful “Hitchcockian blonde” and a highly memorable kissing scene. Network’s generous Blu-ray package includes a booklet with extensive liner notes about the film as well as an impressive 2-CD soundtrack of composer Nitin Sawhney’s newly composed, Bernard Herrmann-esque score.
Underground (Asquith, 1928)
In recent years, the British Film Institute in particular seems to have spearheaded an effort to raise awareness of silent British cinema in general, which I’ve been delighted to find is of interest beyond the earliest masterpieces of Alfred Hitchcock. One of my most pleasant film-related surprises of the past year was discovering the great silent movies of Anthony Asquith, an English director better known for his less-exciting sound-era work. BFI’s home video division released a revelatory Blu-ray of Asquith’s second film, 1928′s Underground, last June. The plot, a love triangle between a shop girl, a nice-guy subway worker and a douchebag power-plant employee, allows Asquith to indulge in some wondrous cinematic conceits — including astonishingly fluid crane shots during a protracted climactic chase scene — and offers a fascinating, documentary-like glimpse of “ordinary” Londoners from a bygone era besides. The image has been painstakingly restored (as evidenced by a short doc included among the extras) and the new orchestral score by Neil Brand sounds brilliant in a 5.1 surround-sound mix. Hopefully, a Blu-ray release of the same director’s even better A Cottage on Dartmoor, a late silent from 1929, will not be far behind.
Blackmail (Hitchcock, 1929)
Alice (Anny Ondra), the girlfriend of Scotland Yard Inspector Frank (Johnny Longden), agrees to meet another man, a young artist, behind her inattentive boyfriend’s back. After the artist attempts to rape her, Alice kills him in self defense but refuses to confess to the crime. Frank is assigned to investigate the case and figures out the truth but the pair soon find themselves being blackmailed in exchange for their silence. This was originally released in silent and sound versions, making it both Hitchcock’s last silent and his first talkie. The latter version features a much-acclaimed experimental employment of sound and dialogue (in particular during the famous “knife” sequence) but I think the silent version trumps it as an elegant work of purely visual storytelling. Hitch’s effective use of real London locations, especially the climactic chase through the British Museum, prefigures the director’s celebrated use of iconic American locations later in his career. The silent version was restored, along with the eight other surviving Hitchcock silents, by the British Film Institute in 2012.
A Cottage on Dartmoor (Asquith, 1929)
This unique and incredibly dynamic film pulls out every cinematic trick in the book to tell the tragic story of Joe (Uno Henning), a barber’s assistant, who is sent to prison after using a razor to menace another suitor to the object of his affection, manicurist Sally (Norah Baring). The story plays out in flashback as the love triangle is remembered by Joe, who has escaped from prison and is making his way to the cottage in Dartmoor where Sally now lives with her husband and child. Director Anthony Asquith’s command of visual storytelling in this late silent, arguably more advanced than what Hitchcock achieved in the same era, is incredibly sophisticated — light and shadow, striking close-ups, and rapid-fire editing are all used to establish a poetic mood and sustain a suspenseful tone. The film’s undisputed highlight, however, is also its most lighthearted scene: the main characters go on a date to the movies to see a double-feature of a silent comedy followed by a “talkie.” A montage of faces in the audience watching the latter in stunned silence (undoubtedly meant to express Asquith’s displeasure with the new technology) is a poignant commentary on one of the most important transitional periods in cinema’s history.
Piccadilly (Bennett, 1929)
Anna May Wong was the first Asian-American actress to achieve movie stardom, although she’s better known today for her iconic visage (and pageboy haircut) in still photographs than for any of her actual performances, which tended to be supporting roles and “dragon lady” villains. The best showcase for her acting talent is not a Hollywood film at all but the 1929 British production of Piccadilly. The story concerns a love triangle between a nightclub owner (Jameson Thomas) and two of his employees — a dancer (Gilda Gray) and a dishwasher (Wong). Wong’s character, “Shosho,” makes a dazzling early impression in a sequence where she dances on top of a table in a restaurant kitchen and, much like Sessue Hayakawa in Cecil B. DeMille’s The Cheat, undeniably goes on to steal the show even though she’s ostensibly not the lead. The melodramatic courtroom finale is a little too twist-filled for its own good but the direction — by German filmmaker E.A. Dupont (who had earlier made Variety, one of the masterpieces of the Weimar-era German cinema) — is consistently lively, expressive and fluid.
Top 10 Home Video Releases of 2012
In spite of the ever-increasing popularity of downloading and streaming (with their attendant inferior image and sound quality, suckas!), 2012 proved to be yet another year of movie-watching paradise for crazy people like me who want to feel a physical connection to the movies we love (not to mention the bitchin’ artwork, liner notes and “special features” on the discs themselves that tend to go along with the increasingly outdated notion of “physical media”). All of the great home video labels (Criterion, Masters of Cinema, et al) continued doing great work, and a few smaller domestic and foreign labels (Flicker Alley, Kam and Ronson, etc.) even stepped up their rate of Blu-ray production. Olive Films deserves a special thanks for combing through the Republic Pictures catalogue, judiciously selecting all of the titles that cinephiles most want to see and presenting them in high definition (e.g., Letter from an Unknown Woman, Rio Grande, Johnny Guitar, and, most exciting of all, a newly restored version of The Quiet Man set to drop in 2013).
Below are my top ten favorite Blu-ray discs of 2012 as well as 30 additional runners-up. (I purchased no DVDs in the past year at all.) Being fortunate enough to watch all of the below discs, some of which I was even able to screen in classes, single-handedly made 2012 a very good year for me.
10. Letter from an Unknown Woman (Ophuls, Olive Films Blu-ray)
Olive Films has quickly established a reputation as a home video distributor known for putting out straightforward transfers (unrestored but also never overly manipulated) of classic Hollywood and foreign films on DVD and Blu-ray. They are also known for offering little-to-no extras (think of them as Criterion’s poorer little brother). While the new Blu-ray of Letter from an Unknown Woman fits this description exactly, I’m including it here because the movie is so friggin’ awesome and because it was only previously available in North America on VHS tape. Max Ophuls’ elegant, Viennese waltz of a movie is a devastating melodrama about a schoolgirl crush that turns into an unrequited lifelong obsession. A reviewer on a popular Blu-ray review site, who is apparently unaware of the conventions of the melodrama genre and should’ve known better, foolishly complained about the film’s plot contrivances and gave it 3.5 stars out of 5. I say this is one of the great American movies and if it doesn’t rip your heart out then I don’t want to know you.
9. Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (Hawks, Fox Blu-ray)
20th Century Fox, who have a good track record when it comes to their catalogue titles, released a superb Blu-ray of Howard Hawks’ immortal Gentlemen Prefer Blondes to curiously little fanfare last July. Over time this musical/comedy has become my favorite Hawks movie, in part because I’ve come to realize that comedy is what Hawks, the proverbial “master of all genres,” did best but also because of how he used the Marilyn Monroe persona: together, Hawks and Monroe slyly suggest that her dumb blonde act is just that – an act – which makes her Lorelei Lee character seem awfully smart, after all. What impresses most about this specific release is how much the colors pop (has red ever looked so red?) and how remarkably blemish-free it is; Fox’s restoration of the film involved creating a new negative from the original three-strip Technicolor elements. I cannot recall seeing another movie from Hollywood’s studio system era that looked this pleasingly pristine on my television.
8. Lonesome (Fejos, Criterion Blu-ray)
My vote for the best Criterion release of the year is their incredible Blu-ray disc of the George Eastman House restoration of Paul Fejos’ essential Lonesome. I had previously only seen this lyrical masterpiece, a portrait of urban loneliness and love comparable to Sunrise and The Crowd, on a fuzzy VHS tape as an all-silent film in black-and-white. This new version restores it to its original theatrical glory as a part-talkie (there are three brief dialogue scenes) with a color-stenciled-by-hand Coney Island climax. Even more impressive is how Criterion bundles the main attraction together with two other Fejos features: a reconstructed version of the 1929 musical Broadway (whose generic story of a chorus girl mixed up with gangsters is merely an excuse for Fejos to show off some astonishingly fluid and dramatic crane shots) and the recently rediscovered The Last Performance, a Conrad Veidt vehicle that belongs to one of my favorite subgenres – films about the sinister goings-on within a circus. Oh yeah! Taken together, these three films offer a compelling argument that Fejos may have been the most unjustly neglected major filmmaker to ever work in Hollywood.
7. The Gospel According to Matthew (Pasolini, Eureka/Masters of Cinema Blu-ray)
Pier Paolo Pasolini’s greatest achievement received the home video treatment it has long deserved with this definitive edition from the UK label Masters of Cinema. The tone of this much-beloved biopic of Jesus, based upon the book of Matthew, alternates between the reverent (the Neorealist but respectful treatment of the Christ story in general) and the irreverent (a deliberately anachronistic score, one of the best ever compiled, that mixes Bach’s “St. Matthew Passion” with cuts by Mahalia Jackson, Blind Willie Johnson, a Congolese mass and even snatches of Prokofiev’s Alexander Nevsky score). That score comes through loud and clear via the uncompressed 2.0 mono soundtrack, and the film’s beautiful black-and-white cinematography has the thickness and pleasing graininess of an authentic, well-kept 35mm print. Also, the English subtitles are thankfully optional, not “burned in” as on the old Image DVD release. Finally, there are many welcome extras, the most important of which is Sopralluoghi in Palestina, a feature-length documentary about scouting the film’s locations directed by Pasolini himself. Essential.
6. The Mizoguchi Collection (Mizoguchi, Artificial Eye Blu-ray)
This terrific box-set from UK distributor Artificial Eye collects the four best-known Kenji Mizoguchi films that pre-date the great director’s most famous period (the late masterworks he created in the 1950s). Unfortunately, it has been damned with faint praise by some critics who complained about the overall “softness” of the images, and the fact that two of the titles (Osaka Elegy and Sisters of the Gion) have already been released by Criterion’s Eclipse DVD label in transfers that were clearly made from the same source material. But this is Blu-ray, folks, and there is an improvement, and no improvement is too small when it comes to the legacy of a giant like Mizoguchi. Granted, these films, like all Japanese films of their era, are not in the best physical shape but they are among the cinema’s finest achievements (The Story of the Last Chrysanthemums in particular) and cinephiles therefore owe Artificial Eye a huge debt of gratitude for putting them out. Unsurprisingly, the best-looking film in the set is also the most recent: 1946’s Utamaro and His Five Women, the only postwar title in the bunch, is a delightful, autobiographical and uncharacteristically light movie (at least for Mizo) about an artist’s relationships to his female models.
5. The River (Renoir, Carlotta Blu-ray)
2012 was a great year for admirers of Jean Renoir. Out of all of the Blu-ray releases of classic films that came out this year that were based on new restorations, two of the very best-looking were for his masterpieces Grand Illusion (released by Studio Canal stateside and in Europe) and The River (released by the French label Carlotta). My favorite between them is The River, not only because I think it’s the better movie but also because it boasts the more impressive restoration work. Funded in part by Martin Scorsese’s invaluable Film Foundation, the film’s original vibrant Technicolor palette (marking the first time Renoir ever worked in color), which irresistibly shows off the The River‘s colorful Indian locations, has marvelously been brought back to life. The movie itself, a coming-of-age story about three adolescent girls who fall in love with the same American soldier, is one of Renoir’s best and most humane. There are no English subtitles on this French disc, which shouldn’t really matter to English-speakers because the film was shot entirely in English.
4. Les Vampires (Feuillade, Kino Blu-ray)
Louis Feuillade’s groundbreaking and deathless mystery serial was originally released in 10 parts over a span of several months in 1915 and 1916. Blu-ray, however, is arguably the ideal way to experience this 7-hour silent film extravaganza (spread across two discs in Kino’s set): one can dip into it at any given point at any time to experience its proto-Surrealist delights. And for those who have heard of Feuillade, a kind of French D.W. Griffith, but are not yet familiar with his work, this is also the best place to start: Les Vampires, a supreme entertainment about an intrepid journalist matching wits against a gang of master criminals, exerted a big influence on Fritz Lang’s Mabuse films, the entire espionage genre, and even the nouvelle vague in its pioneering use of self-reflexivity (most obvious in the fourth-wall-busting comic performance of Marcel Levesque). Full review here.
3. A Trip to the Moon (Melies, Flicker Alley Blu-ray)
Flicker Alley’s second ever Blu-ray release was this gem of a set combining both the restored black-and-white and color versions of Georges Melies’ classic A Trip to the Moon with The Extraordinary Voyage, an informative feature length doc about the making of the original film as well as the extensive restoration of the color version (the most expensive ever undertaken). The candy-colored hand-painted visuals from 1902 turned out to be a major revelation and a total delight: they radically change the experience of watching the film by providing greater separation between subjects within Melies’ compositions, providing a much greater illusion of depth, and subtly directing the viewer’s eye to important elements within single frames. Because the color version only comes with one soundtrack option, a space-age pop score by the French art-rock duo Air, some alleged cinephiles groused on internet message boards that they refused to buy this. If you are one of those people, you are an idiot. Full review here.
2. The Lodger (Hitchcock, Network Blu-ray)
The UK label Network released this sensational disc in September, which turned out to be in many ways the year’s most delightful home video surprise. The Lodger, Hitchcock’s first thriller, was originally released in 1927 and this version is based on an impeccable restoration by the British Film Institute that gloriously renders many heretofore unseen details in the luminous, Expressionist-influenced photography. I would go so far as to say I never realized what a truly great movie it is until viewing this Blu-ray. Hitchcock fans who haven’t yet seen it might be shocked at how fully formed the master’s style was so early on in his career: there are a series of murders, a “wrong man” plot, a beautiful “Hitchcockian blonde” and a highly memorable kissing scene. Network’s generous package includes a booklet with extensive liner notes about the film as well as an impressive 2-CD soundtrack of composer Nitin Sawhney’s newly composed, Herrmann-esque score. I normally include only one title per director in my “Best of” lists but it was impossible to leave off either The Lodger or the “Masterpiece Collection” for 2012. More here.
1. Alfred Hitchcock: The Masterpiece Collection (Hitchcock, Universal Blu-ray)
Universal Studios did the world a huge favor by releasing this “mother” of all movie box sets in late October. The 15-disc set, lovingly packaged with a 58-page booklet and beautiful artwork, contains 15 of Alfred Hitchcock’s best known and best loved Hollywood films, all of which are loaded with copious extras. The audio-visual quality varies from disc to disc but, fortunately, the very best films included here (e.g., Shadow of a Doubt, Rear Window, Vertigo, North By Northwest and Psycho) also tend to be the ones that have the most impressive image and sound quality. The colors of Rear Window and Vertigo in particular are more saturated and feature warmer skin tones that feel truer to their original Technicolor roots. The most pleasant surprise though is The Trouble with Harry, whose blazing autumnal color palette truly dazzles in 1080p. Below are my grades for all 15 films in the set. The first grade is for the movie, the second is for a/v quality:
Saboteur: B+/A
Shadow of a Doubt: A+/A-
Rope: B+/B+
Rear Window: A+/A+
The Trouble With Harry: A-/A+
The Man Who Knew Too Much: B-/B-
Vertigo: A+/A+
North By Northwest: A+/A+
Psycho: A+/A
The Birds: A/A-
Marnie: A-/B
Torn Curtain: B-/B+
Topaz: B/B+
Frenzy: B+/A-
Family Plot: A/B-
Runners-Up:
11. The 39 Steps (Hitchcock, Criterion Blu-ray)
12. Bande à part (Godard, Gaumont Blu-ray)
13. The Blue Angel (Von Sternberg, Kino Blu-ray)
14. Center Stage (AKA Actress) (Kwan, Kam and Ronson Blu-ray)
15. Certified Copy (Kiarostami, Criterion Blu-ray)
16. Chinatown (Polanski, Paramount Blu-ray)
17. David Lynch Box Set (Lynch, Universal UK Blu-ray) This ambitious set was unfortunately marred by technical problems on its original release (a couple of discs contained audio and/or video glitches, while others were released in 1080i instead of 1080p and with 2.0 stereo soundtracks instead of the promised 5.1 mixes) and was subsequently withdrawn by Universal UK. When replacement discs were eventually reissued, Twin Peaks and Lost Highway were still unfortunately in 1080i though Wild at Heart, Eraserhead, Dune and Blue Velvet all look and sound terrific. Had it not been for the technical errors, this extras-laden set would have easily made my top ten list.
18. The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie (Bunuel, Studio Canal Blu-ray)
19. Film Socialisme (Godard, Kino Blu-ray)
20. Floating Weeds (Ozu, Eureka/Masters of Cinema Blu-ray)
21. Fort Apache (Ford, Warner Bros. Blu-ray)
22. The Gold Rush (Chaplin, Criterion Blu-ray)
23. Grand Illusion (Renoir, Studio Canal Blu-ray)
24. The Grapes of Wrath (Ford, Fox Blu-ray) Full review here.
25. In the Mood for Love (Wong, Criterion Blu-ray)
26. Johnny Guitar (Ray, Olive Films Blu-ray)
27. La Jetee / Sans Soleil (Marker, Criterion Blu-ray) More here.
28. Life Without Principle (To, Mega Star Blu-ray) Full review here.
29. Die Nibelungen (Lang, Kino Blu-ray)
30. Notorious (Hitchcock, MGM Blu-ray) Full review here.
31. The Passion of Joan of Arc (Dreyer, Eureka/Masters of Cinema Blu-ray) Full review here.
32. Rio Grande (Ford, Olive Films Blu-ray)
33. Rosemary’s Baby (Polanski, Criterion Blu-ray)
34. Sansho the Bailiff / Gion Bayashi (Mizoguchi, Masters of Cinema Blu-ray)
35. Singin’ in the Rain (Donen/Kelly, Warner Bros. Blu-ray) More here.
36. Strangers on a Train (Hitchcock, Warner Bros. Blu-ray)
37. The Testament of Dr. Mabuse (Lang, Eureka/Masters of Cinema Blu-ray)
38. That Obscure Object of Desire (Bunuel, Studio Canal Blu-ray)
39. Ugetsu / Oyu-sama (Mizoguchi, Masters of Cinema Blu-ray)
40. Weekend (Godard, Criterion Blu-ray)
2012: The Year of the Hitch
When it came time to decide my annual White City Cinema Filmmaker of the Year honor, there was no real contest: 2012, for many reasons, belonged to Alfred Hitchcock. For the past calendar year, it seems like Hitch was everywhere. Vertigo, to much fanfare, supplanted Citizen Kane atop the BFI/Sight & Sound Critics’ Poll of the greatest movies of all time (a usurping that I’m totally fine with). The BFI also restored Hitchcock’s nine surviving silent films, all of which have been exhibited theatrically and should eventually make their way to home video. Beginning last month, the website of the National Film Preservation Foundation began streaming free of charge the recently re-discovered 1924 film The White Shadow, which Hitchcock wrote, assistant directed, edited and designed the sets for. This British melodrama, directed by Graham Cutts, turned out to be a major revelation for being an important stepping stone for Hitch on his path to becoming a director himself. Hitchcock also turned up in dubious-looking biopics on the big screen (the Anthony Hopkins-in-a-fat-suit-starring Hitchcock) as well as the small (HBO’s The Girl, which told the disturbing and long suppressed story of Hitchcock’s sexual harassment of Tippi Hedren on the set of Marnie). Most importantly, though, a ridiculous number of the master’s films dropped on Blu-ray for the first time, 24 to be exact, most of them in terrific editions that illustrate how it is ultimately the great movies that make him matter now more than ever.
The complete list of Hitchcock titles newly released on Blu in the last 12 months:
The Lodger (1927) – Network
The 39 Steps (1935) – Criterion
Rebecca (1940) – MGM
Saboteur (1942) – Universal
Shadow of a Doubt (1943) – Universal
Aventure Malgache (1944) – Eureka/Masters of Cinema
Bon Voyage (1944) – Eureka/Mastres of Cinema
Lifeboat (1944) – Eureka/Masters of Cinema
Spellbound (1945) – MGM
Notorious (1946) – MGM
Rope (1948) – Universal
Strangers on a Train (1953) – Warner Bros.
Dial M for Murder (1954) – Warner Bros.
Rear Window (1954) – Universal
To Catch a Thief (1955) – Paramount
The Trouble with Harry (1955) – Universal
The Man Who Knew Too Much (1956) – Universal
Vertigo (1958) – Universal
The Birds (1963) – Universal
Marnie (1965) – Universal
Torn Curtain (1966) – Universal
Topaz (1969) – Universal
Frenzy (1972) – Universal
Family Plot (1976) – Universal
The 13 Universal titles cited above are part of the “Masterpiece Collection,” a mammoth limited edition 15 disc box set that also includes North By Northwest and Psycho (both of which had previously been issued as stand-alone discs prior to 2012). This mother-of-all movie box sets is arguably the most important ever created. Originally scheduled for release in September, it was delayed for a month by technical problems, most of which were satisfactorily resolved by last minute fixes. Needless to say, I eagerly snapped this one up along with The Lodger, The 39 Steps, Notorious (the latter of which I reviewed earlier this year) and Strangers on a Train. Questions arise though. Is this Hitch motherlode too much of a good thing? Can anyone other than Martin Scorsese afford to buy all 24 of these titles? Even if you think the answers to these questions are yes and no, respectively, the difficulty in acquiring such an embarrassment of riches should probably be considered a nice problem for any cinephile to have. Out of the titles that I did purchase, from The Lodger through Family Plot, I was reminded yet again why Hitchcock is so beloved and so important. Not only was he a master director who made entertaining thrillers that showed a profound understanding of the dark side of human nature, his body of work was also remarkably consistent for half a century, a longer span of time than almost anyone else (only John Ford and Luis Bunuel can really compare).
Although the “Masterpiece Collection” will be topping my soon-to-be published list of the Best Home Video Releases of 2012, I would like to dedicate the rest of this post to the sublime but much less heralded release of The Lodger, the first – and so far the only – BFI restoration of the Hitchcock silents to receive a home video release. The Lodger was released in September from the UK label Network as a superb but, unfortunately for those not in possession of a multi-region Blu-ray player, region-B (i.e., European) “locked” disc. The Lodger is not only the oldest of the 24 Hitchcock films to make a Blu-ray debut in 2012 but, perhaps surprisingly, arguably the best in terms of the audio/visual quality. Originally released in 1925, The Lodger was Hitchcock’s third feature film as a director and the first to be shot in his native England (the first two were made in Germany). Loosely based on the story of Jack the Ripper and subtitled “A Story of the London Fog,” it was also Hitchcock’s first foray into the thriller genre, which has caused many critics – not to mention the director himself – to refer to it as the first “true” Hitchcock movie. I had seen the film once before, on VHS tape in the 1990s, and thought of it as an interesting formative work because of how it showed Hitchcock’s famous obsessions in embryonic form. But watching the Blu-ray caused an epiphany: The Lodger is a truly great film in its own right, regardless of what its creator went on to do afterwards.
The Lodger intertwines two of what would soon become Hitchcock’s trademark plots: the story of a murderer, and a “wrong man” plot (in which an ordinary man is accused of a crime he didn’t commit). The Lodger is also, unforgettably, a love story. Daisy, the daughter of a married couple who run a boarding house, falls in love with the eponymous but unnamed title character (played by the great Ivor Novello), who is also the chief suspect in a series of grisly stranglings. The Lodger clearly influenced Fritz Lang’s M, not only in its depiction of how murder can drive a community into a collective, lynch mob-like mentality but also in terms of its visual style; most obviously, Hitchcock employs the triangle as a visual motif throughout the film in much the same way Lang would employ the spiral in M. More significantly, I never realized the extent of how gorgeously and expressionistically lit The Lodger was until I viewed Network’s Blu-ray, which contains a high-definition transfer of film elements restored by the BFI National Archive. It is almost hard to believe that the film was shot in 1925 on the evidence of this uncommonly strong transfer; detail in some of the close-ups, as in the first memorable kiss between Daisy and the lodger, is stunning. The images, which have been restored to their original blue and sepia color-tinting, not only contain great clarity but are also remarkably stable and free of scratches and blemishes. This restoration makes the prospect of seeing the other restored Hitchcock silents, especially the much-celebrated Blackmail, a positively mouth-watering one.
Like most silent films, The Lodger had no official score. The soundtrack for the Blu-ray was newly written by British composer Nitin Sawhney. It is a full-blown orchestral score performed by the London Symphony Orchestra that sounds very robust in 2-channel stereo. In fact, it is one of the best scores I’ve ever heard for a silent movie – right up there alongside Richard Einhorn’s score for The Passion of Joan of Arc. At times, Sawhney’s score seems to fittingly tip its hat to the classic Bernard Herrmann scores for North By Northwest and Psycho. Unfortunately, the score has also generated some controversy among so-called “purists” who have complained in online forums about the inclusion of a couple of pop songs with vocals. The first song, which begins at around the film’s 23 minute mark, is a beautiful, Indian-inflected pop number, a reflection of the composer’s cultural heritage, with lyrics that cleverly interact with the images onscreen (e.g., “Blue eyes cold as ice / cut through me like a knife”). I would argue, however, that this song is completely appropriate because it accompanies a major tonal shift in the movie – away from suspense and towards romance as Daisy and the mysterious lodger first develop feelings for each other. The second song accompanies the ballroom dance scene, which practically cries out for such a song. The first song, titled “Daisy’s Song,” is actually my favorite part of the entire score and I’m very happy that Network included the double CD soundtrack in their Blu-ray package.
While I personally think Network’s Blu-ray of The Lodger single-handedly justifies the purchase of a multi-region Blu-ray player, I’m also aware that only a very small fraction of American cinephiles are likely to take that plunge. Therefore, one can only hope that an enterprising U.S. distributor, perhaps Criterion, will pick up the stateside rights to The Lodger, perhaps alongside of the other BFI restorations, and release them as a Blu-ray box set. Maybe that is what 2013 will bring since the the flood of high-def Hitch shows no signs of abating (Criterion has already announced a January Blu-ray release of the 1934 version of The Man Who Knew Too Much). Or you could just come over to my apartment if you really want to see it now. Just make sure to bring a six-pack.
Check out the trailer for the BFI restoration of The Lodger here:
Listen to Nitin Sawhney’s “Daisy’s Song” here:
White City Cinema 