MovieChat Forums > Psycho (1960) Discussion > OT: "The Number Twos"

OT: "The Number Twos"

posted 3 years ago by ecarle (14979)
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Here are my "Number Ones" -- my personal favorites of the 60's and 70s, from my younger years where(sociologists tell us)...the movies mean the most to us:

1960: Psycho
1961: Judgment at Nuremburg
1962: The Manchurian Candidate
1963: Its a Mad, Mad, Mad Mad World
1964: Dr. Strangelove
1965: The Great Race
1966: The Professionals
1967: Wait Until Dark
1968: Bullitt
1969: The Wild Bunch

Now, some of those are childhood memories based on a child's likes (Mad Mad World; The Great Race) but even those still play well to the adult mind. And some of those I did NOT see on release -- I had to pick them up, on TV , in my later years (pre-teen to teen) and embrace them(Psycho, Judgment at Nuremburg.) I recall going to the drive-in with my parents to see The Manchurian Candidate, but being ordered to "hit the floor" during scenes of violence -- which only deepened my desire to see the film on my own, at which point: I loved it.

Others -- from later in the 60's -- I DID see on release and the memories of seeing them -- and being excited by them -- are crystal clear to me. The Professionals(on Christmas Day, 1966.) Wait Until Dark(with a screaming full house.) Bullitt(with another full house, yelling away at the car chase.) The Wild Bunch (simply, WOW.)

By the 70's I saw the movies all on release and directly, but (early on) with the still unformed mind of the pre-teen/teen...it took some LATER reviewings to really "get" what I saw, so this list is probably based on multiple views over time:

1970: MASH (the movie)
1971: Dirty Harry
1972: The Godfather
1973: American Graffiti
1974: Chinatown
1975: Jaws
1976: The Shootist
1977: Black Sunday
1978: National Lampoon's Animal House
1979: North Dallas Forty

Liked 'em all. And most of them were big popular hits. I "went against the grain" with the thriller Black Sunday in the year of Star Wars(Lucas) and Close Encounters(Spielberg), and I suppose The Shootist(John Wayne's final film, but from director Don "Dirty Harry" Siegel) and North Dallas Forty are minor-key, too.

But some discussions around this very board over the years have reminded me that in most years...there was certainly at least one other movie I liked a lot, too. Number Two. I'll pre-acknowledge the scatological joke that "Number Two" entails but push on because "Number Two" in any given year is usually a very, very good movie memory, too. So here goes, starting with 1960:

Number One: Psycho.

Number Two: The Apartment. Hitchcock and Billy Wilder had great movies out in 1959 and 1960; together, four of the greatest ever made: Some Like It Hot, North by Northwest, Psycho, The Apartment. Psycho is the biggest hit and the most historic...but The Apartment won Best Picture(for which Psycho was not nominated) and Wilder won Best Director(for which Hitchcock was nominated, for Psycho.)

The Apartment and Psycho share: black and white photography(The Apartment won that Oscar over Psycho, too); a sad and bleak "undertow" to the comedy(Apartment) and horror(Psycho); a sense of the yearnings and fears of "the little people" who get ground down by life and...a theme of lonliness as the heart of human life.

Billy Wilder is The Master of Suspense in The Apartment: Jack Lemmon doesn't know that the girl he wants so badly(Shirley MacLaine) is the mistress of his big boss(Fred MacMurray, the epitome of privileged corporate evil); MacLaine doesn't know that she is trysting with MacMurray in Lemmon's apartment; Lemmon's Jewish doctor neighbor(Jack Kruschen) doesn't know that it ISN'T Lemmon having sex all the time next door(its all the married men using Lemmon's apartment to cheat with their mistresses.) The suspense is tremendous in The Apartment, and it pays off with an emotional wallop of satisfaction at the end, when all is made clear.

Highlights: MacLaine's broken hand mirror and how it devastates Lemmon; MacMurray's final reveal of evil to Lemmon: "It takes years to get up here to the 27th floor(as an insurance executive), but only 30 seconds to be back down on the street again; you dig?"; and the glorious long close-up on MacLaine's face as she realizes she loves the nebbish Lemmon rather than the rich cad MacMurray. BUT: Like Psycho, The Apartment is a "piece of time" -- 1960, and the very year itself drives the historic emotion of the film today.

[–] ecarle (14979) 3 years ago

Honorable 1960 mentions:

The Magnificent Seven. An adventure film more than a Western, as seven gunslingers team up to help save a town of Mexican peasants from bandit leader Calvera(Eli Wallach) and his 40 bad men. Yul Brynner was an established, Oscar-winning star, but the 6 other guys included some big stars to be: Steve McQueen(the biggest), Charles Bronson(pretty big), James Coburn(cool, quiet and big enough.) There's also a big TV star in there (Robert Vaughn) and an overacting foreign ingénue(Horst Bucholz, German playing Mexican) and...my personal fave, Sinatra pal Big Brad Dexter bringing his Rat Pack roots to the role of the "Professor Henry Hill" of the 7...the rogue who is "only in it for the money." Dexter didn't go as far as the rest of them(well, Bucholz faded out, too.) So The Mag 7 is his best role.

The movie has a big action climax -- rather like "The Wild Bunch" without all the blood -- and some great themes: how the strong protect the weak; the loyalty of men to one another; the moral courage of fathers with children to feed versus loners, etc.

And a great villain in Eli Wallach's robust but ruthless bandit leader Calvera("Generosity...that was my first mistake.") . Here is a performance(along with Tuco in The Good Bad and the Ugly ) that begs the question: must the role ALWAYS be filled with the right ethnic nationality? Its too bad if that means we will never get a villain as great as Wallach again. (In the remake, the guy became a frail white guy land baron.)

[–] ecarle (14979) 3 years ago

Spartacus: On the Universal backlot, right over the hill from the Psycho house, was built the gladiator school where men were tortured and offered up to kill each other to entertain the rich aristocracy of Rome. Spartacus joined Psycho as "the most violent movie of 1960" while at the same time serving up its own brew of epic spectacle and heart-wrenching sadness. Kirk Douglas as Spartacus leads an army of slaves against the Roman empire -- but loses. And so does almost everyone around him. There are tears and a ray of hope at the end, and a very funny reformed villain turn by Peter Ustinov(who won the Best Supporting Actor Oscar for 1960; Arbogast wasn't even nominated.) Laurence Olivier and Charles Laughton are elegant and erudite Roman Senators(Oliver bad; Laughton good) John Gavin is Young Julius Caesar (1960 was HIS year) and has scenes with Olivier(gulp!) And hot star Tony Curtis sort of does a long cameo and gets a scene of homosexual seduction by Olivier that...was cut in 1960 and brought back in 1990. Spartacus had a lot of men in it, but one lovely woman: Jean Simmons.

Peeping Tom. Discussed downthread.
That's it for 1960.

[–] ecarle (14979) 3 years ago

1960:

Number One: Psycho
Number Two:The Apartment

Honorable Mentions:

The Magnificent Seven
Spartacus
Peeping Tom

1961:

Number One: Judgment at Nuremburg
Number Two: The Guns of Navarone

Honorable Mentions: 101 Dalmations
Breakfast at Tiffanys
Pocketful of Miracles

1962:

Number One: The Manchurian Candidate
Number Two: The Music Man

Honorable Mentions:

Lonely are the Brave
How the West Was Won(also listed as a 1963 release)
To Kill a Mockingbird
Cape Fear
Ride the High Country
The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance
Hatari
Dr. No

1963:

Number One: Its a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World
Number Two: Charade

Honorable mentions:

Jason and the Argonauts
The Birds
From Russia With Love

1964:

Number One: Dr. Strangelove
Number Two: Mary Poppins

Honorable mentions:

Goldfinger
Rio Conchos
Fail Safe
The Killers
Seven Days in May
The Pink Panther
A Shot in the Dark
Father Goose
Marnie
Strait Jacket

1965

Number One: The Great Race
Number Two: Thunderball

Honorable mentions

Mirage
Those Magnificent Men in Their Flying Machines
Cat Ballou
The Sound of Music

1966:

Number One: The Professionals
Number Two: Gambit

Honorable mentions

The Sand Pebbles
Arabesque
Torn Curtain
The Silencers
Our Man Flint
Fantastic Voyage

1967

Number One: Wait Until Dark
Number Two: Hotel

Honorable mentions

Hombre
The Graduate
Bonnie and Clyde
The Dirty Dozen
You Only Live Twice
In the Heat of the Night
Tony Rome

1968

Number One: Bullitt
Number Two: Finian's Rainbow

Honorable mentions:

2001
The Odd Couple
Rosemary's Baby
The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly
Pretty Poison

1969

Number One: The Wild Bunch
Number Two: True Grit

Honorable mentions:

On Her Majesty's Secret Service
Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid
Topaz
Hello Dolly
Paint Your Wagon
The Sterile Cuckoo

1970:

Number One: MASH the movie
Number Two: The Kremlin Letter

Honorable mentions:

Patton
The Cheyenne Social Club
Tora, Tora, Tora
Airport
Where's Poppa?
Little Big Man

[–] ecarle (14979) 3 years ago

1971:

Number One: Dirty Harry
Number Two: Get Carter

Honorable mentions:

Big Jake
Shaft
Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory
Fiddler on the Roof
The Omega Man
Straw Dogs
The French Connection
The Last Picture Show

1972

Number One: The Godfather
Number Two: Frenzy

Honorable mentions:

The Cowboys
Deliverance
Junior Bonner
The Getaway
The Hot Rock
The Poseidon Adventure
The Candidate
Cabaret
Hannie Caulder
The Heartbreak Kid
The Wrath of God
What's Up Doc?
Play It Again Sam
Everything You Wanted to Know About Sex

1973:

Number One: American Graffiti
Number Two: Charley Varrick

Honorable mentions:

The Sting
The Paper Chase
The Way We Were
The Long Goodbye
Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid
Westworld
The Laughing Policeman
Sleeper
Magnum Force
The Last Detail
The Exorcist

1974:

Number One: Chinatown
Number Two: The Towering Inferno

Honorable mentions:

The Longest Yard
Godfather II
Freebie and the Bean
Blazing Saddles
Thunderbolt and Lightfoot
Young Frankenstein
The Taking of Pelham One Two Three
The Conversation
Earthquake

1975:

Number One: Jaws
Number Two: Three Days of the Condor

Honorable mentions:

One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest
Love and Death
Tommy
Bite the Bullet
The Wind and the Lion
Funny Lady
The Man Who Would Be King

1976:

Number One: The Shootist
Number Two: Family Plot

Honorable mentions:

Network
Marathon Man
Taxi Driver
Rocky
Carrie
The Outlaw Josey Wales
The Big Bus
The Bad News Bears

1977:

Number One: Black Sunday
Number Two: Star Wars

Honorable mentions

Annie Hall
Close Encounters of the Third Kind
Saturday Night Fever

1978:

Number One: National Lampoon's Animal House
Number Two: Capricorn One

Honorable mentions:

Heaven Can Wait
The Fury
Superman
The Boys from Brazil
Grease
The Deer Hunter

1979

Number One: North Dallas Forty
Number Two: Alien

Honorable mentions:

All That Jazz
10
Time After Time
Apocalypse Now
1941

[–] ecarle (14979) 3 years ago

Some stray follow up thoughts on occasional years.

1966:

Number One: The Professionals
Number Two: Gambit

Honorable mentions

The Sand Pebbles
Arabesque
Torn Curtain
The Silencers
Our Man Flint

...not much of a year, 1966. Coming before the watershed year of 1967, its like this was a "breather" as Old Hollywood gave in to new Hollywood. My favorite of the year -- The Professionals -- paired an Old Hollywood star(Burt Lancaster) with a New Hollywood star(Lee Marvin) to great effect in a "four men on a mission" movie perched neatly between The Mag 7 and The Wild Bunch in time...and far "kinder" to its principals -- NONE of them die. And the four men are introduced "in action, one by one" as their names appear on screen in one of my favorite movie openings. Saw this on Christmas Day -- at the same theater where I would see Wait Until Dark, my favorite of 1967.

"Our Man Flint" and "The Silencers" are American spoofs of James Bond. They aren't really good movies...especially The Silencers...but I list them because I was really into that spy craze, and it pretty much peaked in 1966. On TV, The Man From UNCLE, The Wild Wild West, I Spy and The Avengers (from Britain) were going strong. Thunderball had been a huge 1965 hit, and I saw it again in the summer of 1966.

"Our Man Flint" elevated James Coburn to 60's stardom. Like Rod Taylor, Coburn never really got cast in a truly major, Oscar-type movie, both men burst on the scene and faded over time...but Coburn lasted longer. He had a great, deep sonorous voice, a lanky body...a great walk(as did Cary Grant and Paul Newman) and big choppers that cut into his handsomeness .

[–] ecarle (14979) 3 years ago

"The Silencers" gave Dean Martin HIS Bondian superspy, and though he was good looking and looked good in a tux(on TV, not in this movie)....he was a bored bust AS a superspy. The plot and villains were like a BAD episode of The Man From UNCLE. Closer to Get Smart. Or Austin Powers.

The big deal in The Silencers(which was a big hit) was...sexy Playboy-level curvaceous babes, wall-to-wall and often "serving" Dino. Stella Stevens(who relished her "sex star" label) was one of them, but there were plenty more. Sure it was sexist, but in 1966, it was also sexy -- what Hugh Hefner was selling, and a lot of men were buying(and boys were peeking at).

It remains one of the great childhood memories of my life to have seen "The Silencers" and to have seen "The Scene" that came early in the movie: Dino's Matt Helm awakens alone in his big, circular bed, and technology pushes the bed towards a wall that opens to reveal a giant indoor pool-cum-bathtub, complete with bubble bath.

And ...a BABE. Named "Lovey Kravezit" (get it) who is clearly naked under the suds(as is Dino) and who helps wash him before the two of them emerge for a "robot towel" dry. (Nudity always intimated without being shown.)

Well...a young pre-teen boy sees THAT scene at an early age and his hopes for the years after puberty have a BIG fantasy. Never happened, of course, but .. well, never mind.

Its odd to me that the American studios could only match Bond with silly, jokey, almost juvenile spoofs. Coburn was cool, but Dino was not. These films revealed the early Bond films to be rather serious -- or at least dangerous, what with the vicious mano-y-mano between Connery and Robert Shaw in From Russia With Love and Goldfiner's laser ever approaching the area between Bond's legs. Perhaps the "exotic" British foreigness of the Bond movies dashed the American hopes of matching them. Very odd though.

CONT

[–] ecarle (14979) 3 years ago

CONT

..and into this 1966 frenzy of superspies , Hitchcock brought his stolid and dour "Torn Curtain" into the world. Hitchcock was now not only fighting memories of his own spectacular North by Northwest(and the other great Hitchcock classics) but fighting with the "new fangled" Bond movies and Bond spoofs. Honestly, how could Torn Curtain(which opens with Newman and Andrews naked but unseen beneath a pile of blankets) compete with the bikini babes and overt sex of Bond, Flint, and Helm?

Hitch tried to suggest Torn Curtain was in the serious vein of "The Spy Who Came In From the Cold," but it was too "fancy and fanciful" for that.

Hitch nonetheless "won" in a way, because at least Torn Curtain was serious enough to be taken seriously BY critics -- no way Lovey Kravzit was getting THAT respect. The grim and gruesome Murder of Gromek is a Hitchcock Classic, but a hard one to watch -- its like the big fight in From Russia With Love slowed down and involving mismatched middle-aged opponents.

My second favorite movie of 1966 was "Gambit" starring newly minted star Michael Caine with "Sexy Kook" Shirley MacLaine(who never looked better in a movie.) I love the twists and turns of that movie. Its a caper movie in type(not a favorite genre of mine) but "done different." I wrote some long posts about it on its board. Never have the words "I love you" been more touching and even exciting.

[–] swanstep (2616) 3 years ago

...not much of a year, 1966

Can't agree with that! I think of 1966 as one of the most important years in movie history. Even sticking just to films that were sizeable hits in the US: Blow-Up, Seconds, The Good The Bad & The Ugly, Virginia Woolf, Alfie are all sensational and hugely influential on later cinema I feel.

And in full foreign, art-film mode, three of biggest mind-benders ever arrive: Persona (peak art film!), Au Hazard Balthazar, and Andrei Rublev. Each of these films kind of reinvents cinema. Also, Bondarchuk's War and Peace arrives, Czech-wave arrives with 'Closely Watched Trains' and "Daisies", Japanese cool-wave arrives with "Tokyo Drifter".

My kid self really liked "Fantastic Voyage" from this year too. It sadly doesn't hold up especially well as an adult I find. 'A Man for all Seasons' too seems to me to work better for (high-minded) kids than for adults.

[–] ecarle (14979) 3 years ago

...not much of a year, 1966

--
Can't agree with that! I think of 1966 as one of the most important years in movie history. Even sticking just to films that were sizeable hits in the US: Blow-Up, Seconds, The Good The Bad & The Ugly, Virginia Woolf, Alfie are all sensational and hugely influential on later cinema I feel.

---

Well, swanstep, given this little "memory project of mine," I have to say that when I reached 1966 I felt a letdown in memory.

1961 is the same way and -- does this mean something? -- 1965 as well(right next to 1966). I always rather felt that the early 60's found Hitchcock and Wilder and Preminger peaking...but as the decade went on, those men would fade and -- before Penn and Nichols and Peckinpah "arrived" -- we had this weird "in between time" of 1965 and 1966 where movies in general took on an "international feel" and American studios weren't quite sure what to do.

1966 has Torn Curtain for Hitchcock and The Fortune Cookie for Wilder and you can almost feel them simultaneously and instantaneously "turning old and out of touch." Wiilder moreso than Hitchcock, though.

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[–] ecarle (14979) 3 years ago

And in full foreign, art-film mode, three of biggest mind-benders ever arrive: Persona (peak art film!), Au Hazard Balthazar, and Andrei Rublev. Each of these films kind of reinvents cinema. Also, Bondarchuk's War and Peace arrives, Czech-wave arrives with 'Closely Watched Trains' and "Daisies", Japanese cool-wave arrives with "Tokyo Drifter".

---

Well, here I must clarify(as YOU know, swanstep) that I simply cannot list foreign films because I simply never saw them. I READ about every title you listed(in Time, in Newsweek, in the LA Times at home and the NY Times at the school library) but I never saw them. Again...possibly a project for my golden years.

And I think it is "fair" on my part to review a "personal history of movies" as being American studio films(and maybe some British films -- those got widespread US distribution). The theaters I grew up around only showed American studio films. A lot of those films were pretty bad and my parents STILL took us to them regularly -- I am thinking of Doris Day's movies with Rock and Cary and Rod -- which are nostalgic to me today (from my childhood) but rather silly looking today, too . (And yet, Pillow Talk got the Best Original Screenplay Oscar over North by Northwest!)

Among the AMERICAN movies..a year like 1959(NXNW, Rio Bravo, Some Like It Hot, Anatomy of a Murder) or 1960(Psycho, The Apartment, The Mag 7, Spartacus, maybe Exodus for Otto) has it all over 1966. To my mind.

And I'm looking to be fair with myself. My favorite movies may well be "four star" and in some cases classics(though clearly I listed some outright bad movies)...but they have to be entertaining and movies I like to watch again and again. Virginia Woolf is that only a little bit; same with Man for All Seasons. My folks took me to that one( they liked historical education for the kids) but mainly I dug on Scofield getting beheaded at the end. You know, like Strait-Jacket. Good for playground discussion.

[–] ecarle (14979) 3 years ago

My kid self really liked "Fantastic Voyage" from this year too. It sadly doesn't hold up especially well as an adult I find.

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Oh, I liked Fantastic Voyage too. I had the "novelization" paperback written by popular SciFi writer Issac Asimov, who also wrote the screenplay.

I simply forgot to put FV on my 1966 list. I'm trying to play fair with myself, working from memory rather than from a "list of all 1966 releases" (or of any other year). But I dug on the idea of a little submarine exploring the human body to save the man's life. Mad Magazine spoofed this two ways. The mission becomes -- unclogging the man's stuffed sinuses. And at the very end, the crew sees another crew going off with sad faces on their mission: "Operation EXLAX" -- a suicide mission.

I'll add Fantastic Voyage to my 1966 list.

BTW, I think The Good the Bad and the Ugly came to America in 1968. 1966 and 1967 saw the first two Clint spaghetti Westerns. I might be wrong.

[–] swanstep (2616) 3 years ago

BTW, I think The Good the Bad and the Ugly came to America in 1968. 1966 and 1967 saw the first two Clint spaghetti Westerns. I might be wrong.

That's probably right.... It can be so hard to pin down a film's year in many cases in the 1960's especially. Foreign films came out at such different times around the world and then, if they hit big, they would make bank only very gradually. All of Clint's Leone films probably pulled crowds at drive-ins etc. for at least 5 years after release so arguably it makes sense to assign those films to the whole mid to late '60s rater than to any one years. And, both the big Russian films of 1966 War and Peace and Andrei Rublev got releases in various cities festivals from 1967 all the way up to 1974. For example, here's the release info on IMDb for Andrei Rublev!
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0060107/releaseinfo?ref_=tt_ov_inf

So...the perspective of modern film buffs that now assigns films (at least for such purposes as comparing and ranking different years) to the specific years of their initial release (even if 99+% of their eventual audience 'at the time' came much later!) is very artificial.

[–] swanstep (2616) 3 years ago

But, heck despite the modern film buff perspective being a little artificial, it is clarifying too. E.g., it *is illumnating to see 1957 emerge as one of greatest of all movie years - you've got Bridge on the River Kawi, Face in The Crowd, 12 Angry Men, Sweet Smell of Success, Funny Face, Paths of Glory, Witness for the Prosecution, Affair to Remember, Gunfight at OK Coral, Incredible Shrinking Man, and on and on and on from Hollywood. But then add to that all the following foreign master-blasters to get a real sense of the cinematic ferment and new maturity at the time: Seventh Seal, Throne of Blood, Wild Strawberries, Nights of Cabiria, The Cranes are Flying. Wow.

Yet Wild Strawberries didn't get its first US release until 1959 while Seventh Seal first made it stateside in 1958. Cranes, however, didn't hit the US until a few weeks before Psycho, and Throne of Blood didn't get a *genera*l US. release until November 1961 (it had a single Film Festival screening in San Fran back in 1957). The smeared out pattern of US release dates is interesting and even revelatory for some purposes, but as a basis for answering questions like "what was the state of the play of film in 1957?" and "What was best in 1957?" pegging all these films back in 1957 seems to be the right move.

[–] swanstep (2616) 3 years ago

BTW, I'm almost through watching a new series called "1971 - The Year That Music Changed Everything". Across its 8 eps (at least so far, I'm up to ep. 6) the series is almost comically willing to absorb anything of interest from surrounding years into 1971's remit. So, it isn't enough for the show that The Stones and Bowie put out masterpieces Sticky Fingers and Hunky Dory respectively in 1971, they also respectively *recorded* some of Exile on Main Street and Ziggy Stardust then. So those projects get featured too. And Elton John's 'Your Song' from 1970 gets played a lot because of course EJ performed it plenty and had it played on the radio plenty in 1971. And the ep. on Carole King and Joni Mitchell, who had epic 1971's for sure, is cut together with the 1973 PBS doc/reality series 'An American Family' because it was *filmed* in 1971. During the clips from An American Family the mom visits her gay son in NYC and meets the Andy Warhol crowd he's hanging out with. 'Walk On The Wild Side', released in Nov 1972, is played and extensively discussed. On the other hand, across 8 hours about the music of 1971, the makers find no room to even mention let alone properly discuss Led Zeppelin, The Carpenters, or the biggest chart hit of the year, "American Pie". (Maybe rights issues nixed some of these, but still.)

"Single year" hooks and projects are fun but they often cheat and seldom convince except as conversation starters.

[–] ecarle (14979) 3 years ago

So...the perspective of modern film buffs that now assigns films (at least for such purposes as comparing and ranking different years) to the specific years of their initial release (even if 99+% of their eventual audience 'at the time' came much later!) is very artificial.

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Evidently with "foreign films" (but in today's international market, those don't really exist anymore) they reached US theaters years after being made ...they were foreign to America, which made sense at the time because that's where studio movies came from and where most movies made the most dough.

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But I find the "single year hook" to work quite well with American studio films. Psycho IS 1960...and its 1998 remake could not overcome that crucial element. Same with The Godfather in 1972(it arrived at Easter and played out the entire year). 1972 reflected the R rating, a more realistic approach to dramatic acting, a more cynical political stance, etc.

I will admit that back in the 70's, the blockbusters came at Xmas , so The Exorcist and The Sting(both from Christmas of 1973) got most of their audiences and money in 1974. Same with The Towering Inferno(1974) in 1975.

Speaking of The Towering Inferno, 1974 -- in addition to being the year of " downer dramas" -- had a run of "disaster movies" (put into production after The Poseidon Adventure hit big in 1972 and 1973) so...again..sometimes the "single year hook" works for me.

[–] ecarle (14979) 3 years ago

And the ep. on Carole King and Joni Mitchell, who had epic 1971's for sure, is cut together with the 1973 PBS doc/reality series 'An American Family' because it was *filmed* in 1971. During the clips from An American Family the mom visits her gay son in NYC and meets the Andy Warhol crowd he's hanging out with. 'Walk On The Wild Side', released in Nov 1972, is played and extensively discussed. On the other hand, across 8 hours about the music of 1971, the makers find no room to even mention let alone properly discuss Led Zeppelin, The Carpenters, or the biggest chart hit of the year, "American Pie". (Maybe rights issues nixed some of these, but still.)

---

Sounds like this "1971" show didn't much stick to the topic. (Uh oh.)

I remember 1971 vividly through a few things: Carole King and Tapestry(with James Taylor already established in 1970 but back in the game with King's "You've Got a Friend" and the album Mud Slide Slim) and in the fall, both American Pie and Imagine. (It was like high school that year was "scored" to those two songs, particularly in the crisp fall around football season.)

Still, music is different to capture than movies "per year."

[–] ecarle (14979) 3 years ago

1957 emerge as one of greatest of all movie years - you've got Bridge on the River Kawi, Face in The Crowd, 12 Angry Men, Sweet Smell of Success, Funny Face, Paths of Glory, Witness for the Prosecution, Affair to Remember, Gunfight at OK Coral, Incredible Shrinking Man, and on and on and on from Hollywood.

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That's some good ones, to be sure. (Hey, Hollywood was really cooking in the 50's and 60's as craftsmanship met daring themes.) But 1957 didn't have Psycho, or North by Northwest, or The Apartment, or Some Like It Hot, or Rio Bravo. Those just feel "bigger" to me. Wilder's 1957 movie(Witness for the Prosecution from Agatha Christie) seemed to "dilute" Wilder's true powers back then (Sex, acerbic comedy, etc.).

There may or may not have been a Hitchcock movie in 1957. Sometimes "The Wrong Man" gets listed as 1957, but it got an Xmas 1956 NYC/LA release(unrealized Oscar hopes.) I think The Wrong Man is just as great as the three Hitchcocks that follow it, but it wasn't much fun.

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But then add to that all the following foreign master-blasters to get a real sense of the cinematic ferment and new maturity at the time: Seventh Seal, Throne of Blood, Wild Strawberries, Nights of Cabiria, The Cranes are Flying. Wow.

---

Your "second track" of foreign films is impressive, swanstep, and we know that all THOSE movies pushed American filmmakers to DEMAND a loosening of censorship. Hitchcock and Wilder and Preminger led the way(Capra and Hawks did not)...but it took awhile for American films to go European (Bonnie and Clyde, yes; The Graduate somewhat; Five Easy Pieces, very much.)

--

Under my calculations, The Wrong Man is my favorite of 1956 and 12 Angry Men is my favorite of 1957. They are linked by: Henry Fonda, bleakness, black and white, NYC settings...and a look at the failings of the justice system from inside and out. Such a pair!

[–] ecarle (14979) 3 years ago

Note in passing: I really like The Bridge on the River Kwai and especially its climax(big, ironic, suspenseful...very sad) but Francois Truffaut HATED it. In championing the more fanciful Hitchcock, Truffaut needed to hate some more "serious establishment directors," evidently.

[–] ecarle (14979) 3 years ago

CONT

All of Clint's Leone films probably pulled crowds at drive-ins etc. for at least 5 years after release so arguably it makes sense to assign those films to the whole mid to late '60s rater than to any one years.

---

I think Clint Eastwood made the first one of those in 1964..pretty much for the European vacation.

I wonder what he thought when -- a full two years later -- suddenly these movies became hits, and he became a "new star." I'd say what did he do during those years until he hit?, but I know what he did...he made all three of those Westerns. (And then rejected Once Upon a Time in the West, which helped make Bronson a star.)

--

Whereas Psycho (a June release on the East Coast, an August release on the West Coast) played out before 1960 was over, it came back for a re-release in 1965 (March 16, 1965 to be exact --- that's exactly when Psycho entered my consciousness' I saw a newspaper ad "Psycho is BACK!".) And then it was gone again.

But in the 70's, I remember movies like Walking Tall, Billy Jack, and Jeremiah Johnson playing almost continually -- yes, drive-ins , but also year to year re -releases.

Even Frenzy did that for awhile. I count:

Summer 1972 initial release
Thanksgiving 1972 -- goes out with Aldrich's violent "Ulzana's Raid."
Fall, 1973 -- goes out with Eastwood's May-December love story "Breezy" (why? because Breezy/Frenzy I guess.)
1975: Goes out with Sleuth, also from 1972 (both written by Anthony Shaffer)
1976: Goes out with Family Plot in some markets.

Still, I tend to cling to the "year of release" capture. I just do.

[–] ecarle (14979) 3 years ago

Number One: MASH the movie
Number Two: Patton

Honorable mentions:

The Kremlin Letter
The Cheyenne Social Club
Tora, Tora, Tora
Airport
Where's Poppa?
Little Big Man

--

Hmm..a rather "slight" list. But then I looked at a list of 1970 releases and ...it was a kind of slight year(American films.)

I have updated the list to include John Huston's The Kremlin Letter, which I saw some years ago and fell in love with(even though it is a dark and depressing film.)Richard Boone has the real lead in the movie(rare for him) and goes full throttle entertaining...full throttle evil at the end. Equally charismatic actors like George Sanders and Nigel Green are there. Two beauties -- brunette Barbara Parkins and blonde Bibi Anderson -- sex up the place. The film demonstrates how directors like John Huston stumbled into using the R rating; 1970 was a year where that happened a lot.

Patton will stay my Number Two. I saw that reserved seat and I can still remember how stunning that opening shot was , with the huge flag filling the screen(truly: see this movie on the big screen if you can) and George C. Scott cussing away with such power and flair.

The R rating brought in cussing and to some, that devalued movie dialogue. I dunno. I always felt that it seemed WRONG in Mr. Roberts when all those enlisted tough guy sailors said things like "what a bunch of crud" or "you son of a gun" -- I'm sure sailors didn't talk that way.

Patton went to ABC TV a couple of years after its release. As I recall, they left in some cuss words from Patton's speech and took others out. The "need for HBO and VHS" became manifest.

[–] ecarle (14979) 3 years ago

Coppola's Oscar-winning script for Patton took up all the contradictions of war and valor. Other than the spectacular opening speech scene(which won Scott his Oscar right there, he was the most deserving guy ever to win Best Actor and decline it)...the scene I'll always remember is the one where Patton blesses a group of badly maimed and wounded men, comes across a "mental case" solder who is crying and has no physical wounds at all. Patton slaps the young man and demands he be removed from the brave(but maimed) men around him.

Disturbing. Particularly in the years when Vietnam and the draft were still in place...and seeing the movie with a military man father. But he was good about it, never demanding about our having to do what he did. Still --I think that scene hit fathers and sons all over America in 1970.

And yet -- in the film itself and I guess based on fact -- Patton has to apologize to that solider he slapped -- in front of hundreds of other soldiers -- in a "PR event," suggesting that even then muy mas macho was not to be tolerated.

But back to cussing. In addition to making sure that cussing in military movies (like The Last Detail -- hoo boy), and prison movies was "accurate," profanity gave us some great comedy -- face it , the "F" word is comedy gold used correctly and with fervor. In Used Cars:

Jack Warden: Where's my brother?
Kurt Russell: He's gone down to Miami Beach.
Garritt Graham: He's gone down to Miami Beach.
Jack Warden: What are you? A f-king PARROT?
Garritt Graham: Miami Beach is in Florida.
Jack Warden: I know where the F Miami Beach is!!

Conversely, cussing in the wrong context just felt wrong. Neither Frenzy nor (especially) Family Plot seemed to use profanity well, it "stuck out" in both films. Perhaps because Hitchcock was considered to be too "old fashioned" in the first place.

CONT

[–] ecarle (14979) 3 years ago

Checking 1970 further, I find that John Wayne had one of his formula oaters: Chisum -- but it was a big hit. Wayne would do three actually good Westerns in the 70's -- Big Jake(opposite Richard Boone), The Cowboys(a serious film) and his final, The Shootist. But in 1970, he was just treading water.

Clint Eastwood and Don Siegel worked in 1970, but it was not as good as Dirty Harry : Two Mules for Sister Sara(with Shirley MacLaine as a hooker disguised as a nun). It suffered from being a Leone wannabe and having way too small a budget for the war action required.

Airport makes my list, but with reservations. I was very excited to see it. I had read the novel and the two-chapter sequence in which the mad bomber is exposed and blows out a side of the plane(not ALL of it; it can fly) was Hitchcock suspense on the page to my young eyes. I recall Burt Lancaster going on the Carson show to promote his new movie "Castle Keep" but saying he was WORKING on "Airport." I didn't want to see "Castle Keep" -- I couldn't WAIT to see Airport. Also, I had liked the movie made from the author of "Airport" -- "Hotel" -- from years before.

When Airport came out , it was a big, surprising hit -- the "square" movie for oldsters who weren't ready for Five Easy Pieces or MASH. It was also, unfortunately, nowhere near the sophistication of Hotel...very clunky and mundane, with "1970 split screens" trying for modernity, but looking square. Lancaster looked old, disheveled and disinterested. Good lookin' Dino came through in a fairly serious role as the pilot who saves the day. George Kennedy established his "forever bona fides" as ace airline mechanic and troubleshoote Joe Patroni, the only character who appears in Airport(NOT a disaster movie) and its various sequels(which WERE disaster movies, and pretty bad ones.)

[–] ecarle (14979) 3 years ago

CONT

Of the five Best Picture nominees -- MASH, Patton(the winner), Airport, Five Easy Pieces and Love Story -- only three make my list. Five Easy Pieces looks too arty and mannered today(though future Family Plot star Karen Black is in it -- Hitch managed to work with at least ONE counterculture actor.) Love Story -- uh, no.

The Cheyenne Social Club was one of those "TV-ish" looking wide screen Westerns with some hooks that got me in 1970. James Stewart and Henry Fonda as buddies(they had been adversaries in Firecreek) and Stewart inheriting a hillside bordello that looked like a cleaned-up Bates Mansion with a houseful of "Disneyland hookers"(clean-scrubbed beauties all...not like Sylvia Miles in Midnight Cowboy!)

For a male teenager, these sanitized hookers were fantasyland, but the movie did suggest some of the realities: how often they have to do their services(seems wearisome), how one of them is beaten, and how Stewart and Fonda end up in trouble with both town fathers and outlaws when Stewart tries to close the place down(even as the more laid back Fonda samples the entire menu; but than Hank was more handsome than Jimmy by then.)

"The Cheyenne Social Club" screams "1970" to me. 2 old-time movie stars on their last lap together; the insertion of PG-rated sexuality that was impossible in 1950(Stewart is actually accosted by a busty woman in a see through blouse.) And it was entertaining, with a gun battle at the end that eschewed Wild Bunch gore.

And among the "ladies": Shirley Jones back in a hooker role 10 years after winning the Oscar for Elmer Gantry; a baby-faced actress named Sue Langdon who specialized in "pushing the envelope" on sex roles before the R came in; cute comedy gal Jackie Joseph(Ken Berry's wife -- remember him?) surprisingly sexy as a hooker, and some va-va-voom type who had tried to seduce Matthau in "Guide for the Married Man" and here tries the same thing with Jimmy. I remember all of them, well.

CONT

[–] ecarle (14979) 3 years ago

1970 also had Woodstock, the documentary that reminded us all of the "current world" not for view in "Cheyenne Social Club," and the beginning of Blaxploitation with "Cotton Comes to Harlem." I remember these well, too -- it was as if "two Hollywoods" were concurrently in play, one dying, one growing.

I think Hollywood would need 1971, 1972 and 1973 to fully "grow into New Hollywood." 1970 was an uncertain year without enough functioning old directors(Howard Hawks' Rio Lobo with Wayne was a tired re-tread of El Dorado, which had been a good retread of Rio Bravo; Wilder's Sherlock Holmes was inert) and not enough new directors (though it occurs to me that Penn returned with Little Big Man just as Nichols returned with Catch-22.)

I'll add Little Big Man to my list. Just remembered it.

And oh...Hitchcock's Topaz had come out at Xmas 1969, so it ended up playing into 1970, with Hitchcock seeming to join Hawks and Wilder in old age. But he had Frenzy up his sleeve...

[–] swanstep (2616) 3 years ago

Some more on The Good The Bad & The Ugly (1966).

1. Fans of TGTB&TU have been in a tough spot over the last few decades with a range of cuts (stemming from the film's production which was US-financed with US actors for the most part but Leone also produced a longer, main-actors-dubbed-in-Italian edition at the time) being available with various kinds of dubbing, and the most extraordinarily varied and downright oddly color-graded editions on blu-ray have emerged. For a lot of us, TGTB&TU has been almost unwatchable over the last decade. Well, *finally* there is a really good blu-ray edition of the US Theatrical edition available from Kino Lorber. This vid. has all the super-extensive details:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Ko0utoKX2w
The bottom line is that a good (color-accurate, checked against original technicolor prints) blu-ray of the US Theatrical version is all most of us wanted or needed, and it's here. Halleluljah.
2. Netfilx, at least where I live, has a fun documentary, Sad Hill Unearthed, about the fan-driven project to restore and preserve the epic, remote cemetery location from the climax of TGTB&TU. The doc. interweaves a lot of the key anecdotes about TGTB&TU's production and its influence with the details of the cemetery project which was timed for TGTB&TU's 50th anniversary back in 2016 (so Morricone was still around to celebrate). I recommend the film as a good relaxing watch. TGTB&TU, like Psycho, is a supreme collaboration of Director & Composer, and the doc. makes clear how the score to TGTB&TU both worked to make TGTB&TU a huge world-wide hit at the time (with years and years of re-releases) and has ensured that TGTB&TU has never really gone away. The doc really does end up implicitly arguing that if a director wants serious longevity in pop culture, he or she should find him- or herself a true musical partner.

[–] swanstep (2616) 3 years ago

Bump

[–] ElizabethJoestar (930) 3 years ago

Cool to see ARABESQUE on your honorable mentions. The plot might make no sense, but those visuals are amazing and I love the chase in the zoo at night.

As far as 1966 goes, have you ever seen HOW TO STEAL A MILLION?

[–] swanstep (2616) 3 years ago

@Eliz. Not who you wanted, but I'll answer your query! I haven't seen HTSAM in quite a while but my memory of it is dominated by my sense that Audrey Hepburn, who'd risen to fame playing ingenues and dutiful schoolgirl/daughter-types, was now profoundly miscast in those sorts of roles (Charade had in fact already showed the way ahead for her and her two triumphs of 1967, Two for the Road and Wait Til Dark, would mark her complete transition to fully adult roles and also, sadly, her partial retirement). HTSAM is her going to that well one last time, and boy is the result flat and unconvincing. For me, not even O'Toole's great charm and director Wyler's great skill can save the film from Audrey's mis-casting. I did, however, enjoy the scene where Audrey reads an Alfred Hitchcock mystery magazine in bed!
http://plaguehouse.blogspot.com/2012/10/hitchcock-in-how-to-steak-million.html

[–] ElizabethJoestar (930) 3 years ago

[–] ecarle (14979) 3 years ago

@Eliz. Not who you wanted,

--
You rang?

--
but I'll answer your query! I haven't seen HTSAM in quite a while but my memory of it is dominated by my sense that Audrey Hepburn, who'd risen to fame playing ingenues and dutiful schoolgirl/daughter-types, was now profoundly miscast in those sorts of roles

--

I suppose those were some of her better 50's films -- Sabrina, Funny Face -- but indeed as she headed into Love in the Afternoon, with a horribly aged Gary Cooper, for Billy Wilder -- it started to require a "change."

--

(Charade had in fact already showed the way ahead for her and her two triumphs of 1967, Two for the Road and Wait Til Dark, would mark her complete transition to fully adult roles and also, sadly, her partial retirement).

---

Well, we are talking two great thrillers -- with roughly the same premise -- and the movie that REALLY tried to "adult her up."

---

CONT

[–] ecarle (14979) 3 years ago

HTSAM is her going to that well one last time, and boy is the result flat and unconvincing. For me, not even O'Toole's great charm and director Wyler's great skill can save the film from Audrey's mis-casting. I did, however, enjoy the scene where Audrey reads an Alfred Hitchcock mystery magazine in bed!

---

It turns out that I did answer Elizabeth's question about HTSAM "downthread," so I guess I'll defer to myself.

BUT, I think on this go-round I'll go off on quite the side-trip.

If you can, try to look at the posters for:

Arabesque
How to Steal a Million

..they are in the mid-to-late sixties tradition of the "gorgeous painting of gorgeous stars" ; they create an element of sophistication and the belief that if you see THIS movie...you will GET sophistication.

Now, try to look at the posters for

Marnie
Torn Curtain
Topaz

...I don't know if it is because Universal didn't have a good movie poster art department or would spend the dollars to hire whoever did the artwork on the Arabesque/HTSAM posters but -- yechh. OK, the Torn Curtain poster is marginally better than the other two -- Newman and Andrews center it and we've got a "Psycho" knife in hand ripping the poster but...Marnie? Topaz?

Meanwhile, one "follows the art" into Arabesque and gets a Hitchcockian action thriller in which people are murdered and the stakes are life and death. One "follows the art" to How To Steal a Million, and gets a very well produced caper film that...I just can't remember at all.

Hepburn and O'Toole looked great on the poster. This was the time of male/female thrillers and capers, to wit:

Grant and Hepburn(Audrey)
Peck and Loren
Hudson and Cardinale (Blindfold; Universal, so-so.)
McLaine and Caine(Gambit)
Newman and Andrews(for Hitchcock in at once the grimmest and most artful of the lot)

..and I just get that the "murder thrillers" and Gambit with its funny twist on a caper film(the perfect caper dream; the bumbled caper reality) stuck with me better than HTSAM

[–] ecarle (14979) 3 years ago

@swanstep, it's weird-- I totally get your opinion, but Hepburn's casting does not bother me as much. I agree she was getting long in the tooth for ingenue roles, especially by 1966. However, she always projected a sense of youthfulness that belied her clearly being in her mid-thirties, so I didn't find her so flat in terms of performance. I actually think this is one of her better comedic performances. But as they say, different strokes!

---

In the end, I expect that Hepburn knew she began as a fifties star , and peaked as a sixties star. She "fit right in there" in the 60's, with iconic roles in Breakfast at Tiffany's, Charade, My Fair Lady, HTSAM(maybe; it had O'Toole and great support) and though it was a baby that sent her into retirement after Two for the Road and Wait Until Dark, in her heart I'll bet she knew her run SHOULD stop. Grace Kelly got roughly the same message when she married Prince Rainier.

I WILL try How to Steal a Million again; all I have to do is sit and watch.

I read interesting trivia on the film. Evidently Wyler or Hepburn or somebody sought Walter Matthau for what became the Eli Wallach role in the movie. Matthau asked for $200,000 for a supporting part. Too much -- Matthau did that a lot to get out of roles. But 1966 was the year that The Fortune Cookie won him an Oscar (supporting) and made him a leading man(not supporting.)

---

And yes, that Hitchcock magazine is a great bit!

---

I don't remember that at all. Some "Hitchcock buff." Truth be told, I was just about to DISCOVER Hitchcock as Rear Window and NXNW and The Birds and the verboten Psycho hit TV.

[–] ecarle (14979) 3 years ago

Note in passing:

While the posters for Marnie, Torn Curtain and Topaz are pretty bad...the poster for Gambit is rather charming and ALMOST as well painted as the posters for Arabesque and How to Steal a Million.

Gambit and Arabesque were Universal pictures, just like Marnie, Torn Curtain and Topaz. SOMEBODY there paid for better posters than for the Hitchcocks...

[–] ElizabethJoestar (930) 3 years ago

@ecarle, can you believe that, beyond its bad reputation, one of the prime reasons I avoided TOPAZ for a long time was because of its uninspiring poster art?

I mean-- it just focuses on the fact that Hitchcock is adapting a novel... wow. The film, flawed as it is, does have some iconic images the poster artist could have exploited. Surely, they could have come up with something better than what we got!

Good poster art should hype you up or at least intrigue you. It's like when it came to TOPAZ, they didn't know how to sell the movie, maybe because it was so different from typical Hitchcock fare. Same with MARNIE.

[–] ecarle (14979) 3 years ago

@ecarle, can you believe that, beyond its bad reputation, one of the prime reasons I avoided TOPAZ for a long time was because of its uninspiring poster art?

---
Ha. Well, I recall looking at the ads -- I was a very huge and new Hitchcock fan based on the classics that NBC and CBS were showing(Rear Window, NXNW, Vertigo, The Birds) plus Psycho out there haunting local TV -- and the Topaz ad just looked WRONG. Could this BE a Hitchcock movie?

Moreover, the ad here at moviechat has a photo of Hitchcock in it, I think -- but not the ads that I first saw.

----
I mean-- it just focuses on the fact that Hitchcock is adapting a novel... wow.

--

A novel that...BLOWS UP. The book itself BLOWS UP on the ad. Hah.

Of course , without big stars in it, Topaz had only two selling points -- (1)Hitchcock himself (now a star not only because of the off-the-air TV show and the movies, but because the Truffaut book had made him an auteur God in 1967). (2) The book itself -- a big enough bestsellter by Leon Uris of Exodus fame. Otto Preminger had made Exodus with an all-star cast; here was Hitchcock finally making "that kind of movie" -- with a low-star cast(though Michel Piccoli and Phillipe Noiret lent the film the requisite foreign film "bona fides."

---

The film, flawed as it is, does have some iconic images the poster artist could have exploited.

---
Whether they were stars or not, the people in Topaz were either beautiful or compelling..perhaps their FACES (nicely rendered) should have been grouped on the poster. With John Vernon's Rico Parra for timely Cuban menace(and OOPS..there were folks who thought Castro and Che were heroes, not villains, by 1969) and Roscoe Lee Browne for timely African-American suave.

---

CONT

[–] ecarle (14979) 3 years ago

Good poster art should hype you up or at least intrigue you. It's like when it came to TOPAZ, they didn't know how to sell the movie, maybe because it was so different from typical Hitchcock fare. Same with MARNIE.

---

Well, the Marnie poster is perhaps the worst of the lot. Though Hedren and Connery are beautiful people, the orange color scheme and clunky lettering suggests a movie far below Hitchcock's level of sophistication. I suppose -- with the grim and kinky love story that centered the film -- the kind of "pretty paintings" of the stars that made the How to Steal a Million and Arabesque posters so "mid-sixties" suave -- wasn't available. But SOMETHING better.

Its funny about movie posters. While we can still, today, see the "modern at the time" look of the movies of the 30' and 40's in films themselves -- the POSTERS are from a different era entirely, kind of a "sketchy art deco" look And then there is a sort of "clunkiness" to a lot of posters of the 50s -- Strangers on a Train , for instance.

CONT

[–] ecarle (14979) 3 years ago

Hitchcock hit a great run of posters for his three great movies -- Vertigo(poster BY Saul Bass, the only one he did for Hitch; very stylish); NXNW(ONLY the poster that put everything in it -- Rushmore, the crop duster, Grant and Saint -- NOT the one that only shows Saint shooting Grant.

Psycho is another deal. The greatest logo of all time (not by Saul Bass, by Tony Palladino from the novel cover) to suggest the slashing horror of the film; Janet Leigh in bra and half slip for sex, John Gavin shirtless for sex(a tee-shirt was brushed onto him in some newspapers). And the real star of the piece -- Tony Perkins -- relegated to looking nervous in a corner, smaller photo than Leigh.

"A completely new and different experience in screen excitement" was the Psycho ad tagline in poster. Truer words were never spoken(the slasher film arrives out of nowhere) -- but The Birds ended up with the taglines that Psycho SHOULD have had: "Sheer stabbing shock!" "...could be the most terrifying film I"ve ever made." Its as if the promoters were scared of advertising Psycho was such a horror film...but, upon its success, went whole hog with The Birds.

CONT

[–] ecarle (14979) 3 years ago

The posters from Marnie through Topaz were not so hot. Came the 70's, 1972 and the Frenzy poster...I'm of two minds. Its more dynamic than the fhree posters before it, but still smacks a bit of "Universal studios cheapness." Still the overall effect of the poster is GREAT: Neckties swirling to encircle screaming Anna Massey, with the words HITCHCOCK's and FRENZY swirling in the shape of the ties flow....I saw Frenzy one time(out of many) at a multi-plex in 1972 and the title was in that swirling shape from the movie, on the marquee.

Two good taglines on the Frenzy poster: "From the master of shock -- a shocking masterpiece!" Shock conjured up visions of Psycho -- and the gag was that Frenzy was MORE shocking -- in terms of being brutal and disturbing, somewhat sick. At least in its one big scene. "A deadly new twist from the original Hitchcock." Here -- as with the neckties in the motif of the ad, was a take on just what KIND of shock this movie would have: necktie strangulations, the tie twisting to kill the victim.

Note in passing: in the Psycho trailer, when Hitchcock is trying to describe the Arbogast murder at the foot of the stairs, he says..."its difficult to describe the twisting of the...of the...well, never mind, let's go upstairs."

"The twisting of the---" I guess Hitchcock meant how Arbogast twists physically to and fro as he falls down the stairs?

[–] ecarle (14979) 3 years ago

Hitchcock's final poster for his final film -- Family Plot -- is a busy one, not as bad as the late 60's posters but still a bit "clunky." My one regret is that while Bruce Dern and Barbara Harris figure in it(running) and Karen Black is the centerpiece(in her blonde villainous wig, with gun)...William Devane is NOT in the poster. Little known he may have been, but hey, he was the villain -- and the cast list is FOUR.

But what's this? Hitchcock himself -- a rather disembodied head, winking(relevant to the final shot of the movie) is in the poster. He's the "star" of the movie, to be sure. But he looks a bit aged and tired...this is not the "peak period" Hitchcock of the NXNW/Psycho period(when he was overweight but not wrinkedl and saggy.)

Still, Hitchcock in his own poster proved a nice way to go out...final film, put the maker right in there.

--

While there are no Hitchcock posters in the sixties with that great "painted art" that marks How to Steal a Million, I guess his posters for his best films were pretty good, after all. High marks for Vertigo, NXNW, Psycho (with reservations -- unlike as with the sequels, the famous HOUSE isn't in the poster); The Birds(a pretty famous merging of Tippi Hedren and Jessica Tandy into one terrified victim; I remember that poster from childhood.)

Then a bad run of posters through a bad run of movies.

A comeback poster for a comeback film -- Frenzy. As this was the best of the late films, this was the best of the late posters.

Family Plot? A bit of split decision for me. Too busy -- no Devane. But I recall that TV Guide ran a two-page glossy spread of this poster in that popular magazine -- it got a LOT of views.

That's it. (And I'm going to lift this "poster bit" for a separate post. Its buried here.

[–] ElizabethJoestar (930) 3 years ago

It's such a shame that Hitchcock posters took such a downgrade in quality come the 60s and 70s, because I find the 60s and 70s to be a kind of golden age for movie poster art. So many iconic posters hail from that period: LAWRENCE OF ARABIA, A CLOCKWORK ORANGE, STAR WARS, MY FAIR LADY, WEST SIDE STORY, 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY, etc.

I don't mind the FRENZY poster but yeah, it's underwhelming when Hitchcock had Saul Bass all those years ago. At the very least, it's striking.

The PSYCHO trailer is a masterpiece of movie advertising. I actually think it's much more inspired than the usual movie trailer-- especially since we see no footage from the movie itself. In an era where trailers often give too much away and scripts "leak" onto the internet months before movies hit theaters, this is such a refreshing approach to see.

When Hitchcock mention the "twisting," I'm guessing he meant to evoke the image of Arbogast's body twisting as he fell down the stairs. That's all that makes sense.

PS Interestingly, the PSYCHO trailer features footage of Vera Miles screaming in Janet Leigh's place in the shower. I don't recall, but was Miles originally considered for that part?

[–] ecarle (14979) 3 years ago

It's such a shame that Hitchcock posters took such a downgrade in quality come the 60s and 70s, because I find the 60s and 70s to be a kind of golden age for movie poster art.

---

I agree. I'll opine here: I think that the poster for "The Dirty Dozen" (1967) is the greatest of 60's posters, at least in its adherence to the "glossy painting" school of poster. Its the "macho" inverse of the more sexy How to Steal a Million artwork.

I remember seeing that "Dirty Dozen" poster and being just enthralled at what is suggested in "scale of action." As it turned out, the action wasn't as big in the movie as in the poster but...it came close.

---

So many iconic posters hail from that period: LAWRENCE OF ARABIA, A CLOCKWORK ORANGE, STAR WARS, MY FAIR LADY, WEST SIDE STORY, 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY, etc.

---
Those posters were actually more artful and "meaningful," I suppose than the "character painting" posters for Dirty Dozen and How to Steal a Million. Saul Bass did a lot of posters(only Vertigo for Hitch) and ensured that these posters (and logos) stood out as their own item.

The Clockwork Orange poster from the 70's was downright weird and perfect. Right down to the lettering. I like the poster better than the movie. Hah.

---

Hitchcock's posters after The Birds are generally subpar. I guess I'll blame Universal -- and yet, such Universal movies as The Sting and American Graffiti and of course Jaws -- had GREAT posters. I'll guess that that young and powerful makers of those films demanded that the poster work be "farmed out" to better artists that the Universal regulars?

[–] ecarle (14979) 3 years ago

I don't mind the FRENZY poster but yeah, it's underwhelming when Hitchcock had Saul Bass all those years ago. At the very least, it's striking.

--

Well, after Topaz, Frenzy was pretty easy to sell: its about a psycho who kills women with neckties. in fact, I forgot, the poster often(but not always) had a small drawing of killer Bob Rusk(Barry Foster) menacingly clutching a tie. Which was funny because the movie itself wants us to think that Richard Blaney is the killer, for the first half hour. Hah, a spoiler in the poster!

But this: I had followed Frenzy for about two years before the Friday it opened in June of 1972. It had gone from being announced in 1970, to being filmed in the summer of 1971(Time magazine posted photos of Hitchcock filming it SEVERAL times that summer) and then early RAVE reviews started appearing(so I was all psyched for the movie.)

And then I opened the paper one day to the movie page and BOOM -- there was the poster. And I realized in that instant -- hah -- "oh, Hitchcock's turned this into a story about a man who kills with neckties." You see...Rusk didn't USE neckties in the book. He used his hands and, one time, a stocking. In that instant, looking at that ad, I realized: now Frenzy had its "hook" for all time in the Hitchcock canon: necktie killings.

Hitchcock also did a great little commercial with Tom Helmore of all people (Gavin Elster in Vertigo)...where Helmore is a department store selling of ties and Hitchcock wants to buy some: "They're for my friend, he uses them to strangle women." Funny: Helmore isn't shocked by this, he actually looks at Hitchocck in a sinister, conspiratorial way: "Oh, let me help you help HIM kill women." Good ol' Gavin.

CONT

[–] ecarle (14979) 3 years ago

Hitchcock knew he had a "good one" in Frenzy, and he tried to bring back the good old days of Psycho like promotion. He had Time sending out all those photos, he made SEVERAL commercials, he appeared at length in the Frenzy trailer(he had not for Torn Curtain and Topaz.)

But alas, the whole thing felt rather like Scottie trying to bring Madeleine back to life through Judy, trying to bring back a past that was gone. Hitchcock was too old, his TV show was long off the air, Frenzy wasn't as fun as Psycho(nor nearly as big a hit)...it was a nice try at nostalgia, but rather a futile one.

[–] ElizabethJoestar (930) 3 years ago

But alas, the whole thing felt rather like Scottie trying to bring Madeleine back to life through Judy, trying to bring back a past that was gone. Hitchcock was too old, his TV show was long off the air, Frenzy wasn't as fun as Psycho(nor nearly as big a hit)...it was a nice try at nostalgia, but rather a futile one.
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Hard to argue with that. I do wonder though, what do you make of Truffaut's statement that FRENZY feels like "a young man's film"? For me, it doesn't feel tired or nostalgic really-- just mean-spirited as hell.

[–] ecarle (14979) 3 years ago

Hard to argue with that. I do wonder though, what do you make of Truffaut's statement that FRENZY feels like "a young man's film"? For me, it doesn't feel tired or nostalgic really-- just mean-spirited as hell.

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I've always felt that the "mean spirited as hell" part extended not only to the film's one graphic rape murder(only one, yes, but "the whole reason I made the movie" said Hitchcock) but to the EMOTIONAL shock of Hitchocck letting Rusk kill our "heroine," Babs, too. Imagine if Lila got killed in Psycho, or if Ruth Roman got killed in Strangers on a Train. Babs gets killed in the novel too, but on screen -- with such a warm presence as Anna Massey in the role -- its really CRUEL on Hitchcock' part. And then Babs' nude body becomes a prop in a long evidence retrieval sequence.

The film also opens with a VERY mean-spirited argument between Richard Blaney and his pub boss. Frenzy is "adult" in the fact that the characters are very mean and very cruel to each other a lot(the nicest of the group, at least in public is Rusk...and Hitchcock blows HIM up , too.)

There will always be this about me and Frenzy: I was much more excited, much more DELIGHTED by all the rave reviews for my young fan's idol Hitchcock...than by the rough go of the movie itself. As a matter of content.

CONT

[–] ecarle (14979) 3 years ago

As a matter of STYLE, yes, Frenzy is "the movie of a young.man."

1972 was a different time at the movies than today, in the post Star Wars/Lethal Weapon/Die Hard/Terminator/Marvel era of action(hah, there's a trip across the decades.)

In the summer when Frenzy came out, there really wasn't much competition out there, thriller-wise. Deliverance was a bigger deal, but just as sick.

Anyway, the "dazzle" of Frenzy, I think came with all of Hitchocck's "tricks" thoughout. "Got a place to stay?" was a great small technical moment; the "Farewell to Babs" staircase move was brilliant and heartbreaking. The sheer editing razzle-dazzle of both Brenda's murder and the potato truck scence showed the concentration of a "young man" (even as Hitchcock farmed out some work to his assistant director and put editors on the case.)

And after Topaz with too many endings(none of which work), Frenzy has a GREAT, if low key ending.

I take the mean-spiritedness of Frenzy as central to its meaning -- both in representing the 70's and in representing Hitchcock's worldview(see also Eastwood's Unforgiven.) Above all I love its sense of PLACE -- Covent Garden with the worker bees who figure so importantly in the story. Its at once mean spirted AND heartening. And it will keep its place in film history as Hitchcock's great comeback.

[–] ecarle (14979) 3 years ago

The PSYCHO trailer is a masterpiece of movie advertising.

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The greatest trailer ever made. And it climaxes with the greatest movie logo of all time(plus the most famous movie murder music of all time.)

Its interesting how great Psycho is even OUTSIDE of the movie itself.

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I actually think it's much more inspired than the usual movie trailer-- especially since we see no footage from the movie itself.

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Yes, I think there are a few other trailers in history with no footage, but this one goes SIX MINUTES. (I think this just might be the longest trailer ever, too.) But Hitchcock fans and horror fans just ate it up, as Hitchcock gave a "guided tour" of what he KNEW was the greatest locale for a thriller ever filmed. The house. Its staircase. Its rooms...the motel...its office...its parlor...its cabins...its SHOWER.

So overstuffed is the "topography of Psycho" that Hitchcock did this long trailer and still didn't have time to visit the swamp, Norman's bedroom or the fruit cellar!

---

In an era where trailers often give too much away and scripts "leak" onto the internet months before movies hit theaters, this is such a refreshing approach to see.

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Yes. Hitchcock gives two big things away -- that there will be a staircase murder and a shower murder - but he flat out MISDIRECTS the audience to believe that Mother is alive. As he says "the victim..or should I say victims..had no idea of the people they were being confronted with in this house." The PEOPLE. "You had to feel sorry for (Norman) being dominated by an almost maniacal woman."

Yes...the trailer's a bit of a cheat. But that's just to keep the audience entertained by the twist reveal, so its OK.

CONT

[–] ecarle (14979) 3 years ago

When Hitchcock mention the "twisting," I'm guessing he meant to evoke the image of Arbogast's body twisting as he fell down the stairs. That's all that makes sense.

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Yes...the more I think about it, yes. Hitchcock (without identifying the victim or even the sex of the victim) rather gives us a "shot by shot description: "She met the victim at the top....in a flash there was the knife...and the victim tumbled and fell with a horrible crash...the back broke immediately...its difficult to discuss the twisting of the --"

Hah. Proud daddy of a great murder sequence. And --"the back broke immediately." A grisly detail. We don't sense that in the movie. Arbogast might have died from t he fall if he wasn't being stabbed to death!

---
PS Interestingly, the PSYCHO trailer features footage of Vera Miles screaming in Janet Leigh's place in the shower. I don't recall, but was Miles originally considered for that part?

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Evidently, not. Stephen Rebello in his book on the making of Psycho reveals two lists of actresses considered for the roles of Marion and Lila.

The lists each had a different "set" of actresses. I think Hitchcock wanted a bigger star for Marion even if Lila (Hitch told Truffaut) was really the female lead. Hitchcock generally got his first choices for all the roles in Psycho save two: he wanted Stuart Whitman for Sam Loomis(agent Lew Wasserman pressed for client Gavin) and he wanted "method" heavyweight Kim Stanley for Lila(she wouldn't work with Tony Perkins for some reason; his bad acting rep around then?)

CONT

[–] ecarle (14979) 3 years ago

Two comments on the Psycho trailer(I make them often but when the opportunity presents):

ONE: The trailer puts the lie to decades of film writing that "Hitchcock wanted to take the audience by surprise with the shower murder, with them thinking that Marion's story is the main story and that Leigh is the star."

Well, the whole damn trailer leads up to SELLING the shower murder as the main event of the film.

And Hitchcock's narration is SOLELY about Norman and his mother. no mention is made of Marion Crane and her story.

"When the fact becomes the legend...print the legend."

TWO: As part of my single-digit youth, I learned of Psycho through a 1965 re-release that triggered tales all over the playground about how horrifying it was -- kids mixed up the book with the movie and talked about Marion getting beheaded, etc.

Well, that summer I was at a kiddie matinee with another boy to see some innocuous Universal double feature and in between features, they ran trailers for the next shows: Mirage and Psycho(double bill to help Mirage.)

As the Psycho trailer began -- with Hitchcock standing in front of the motel and the house -- I yelled "let's get out of here" and we head out to the lobby to wait out the trailer.

But not long enough...because of that long six minute stretch...we went back in just in time to see Vera screaming in the shower.

A sleepless night ensued...part of a few YEARS of Psycho haunting my mind.

It was delicious...a meaningful part of my young life. Something really scary..out there.

[–] ElizabethJoestar (930) 3 years ago

Just curious, ecarle, have you ever seen PEEPING TOM? That's my number two for 1960-- in some ways, I find it scarier than PSYCHO. Something about it got under my skin and creeped me out thoroughly.

[–] ecarle (14979) 3 years ago

Just curious, ecarle, have you ever seen PEEPING TOM? That's my number two for 1960-- in some ways, I find it scarier than PSYCHO. Something about it got under my skin and creeped me out thoroughly.

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Its a very creepy movie and there is a body of literature about how in the same crucial year -- 1960 --these two envelope-pushing movies about psychopathic killers of women dealt out differing outcomes: Director Michael Powell's career was shut down on the basis of HIS horrible movie -- but Hitchcock got his biggest hit and biggest payday.

I only saw Peeping Tom all the way through a few years ago, and though I respect it -- I didn't find it to be the equal of Psycho, for a few reasons.

One, is the "BOO!" factor -- and how Psycho is really built like a thrill ride, with those murder sequences and the screeching violins and all the cinematic dazzle -- whereas Peeping Tom plays things rather realistic and low key -- and can't really "finish the job" of showing ITS shock murders. Psycho also has a haunted house on a hill(Hitchcock cited "House on Haunted Hill" as an influence)...its (as Hitchcock said), a fun movie.

As a British film, Peeping Tom was allowed to be more graphic about nudity and sex than Psycho was. The idea is creepy: the photographer (Carl Boehm) psycho kills his pretty female victims(models and hookers) by using the spike end of his tripod leg to impale them in the throat(not seen), while simultaneously filming their last terrified moments. Later, Boehm watches films of his murders and ...we get the picture. Self-pleasure.

Powerful stuff, and definitely with a sexual edge, but I suppose that you could say Peeping Tom is more "adult" than Psycho, couldn't really lure mainstream audiences.

CONT

[–] ecarle (14979) 3 years ago

12 years after Psycho, in 1972, Hitchocck made HIS Peeping Tom with Frenzy. It shares a star from Peeping Tom (reheaded waif Anna Massey, virtually unchanged in look), a sex killer emphasis, a London setting...and Technicolor(which also separates Peeping Tom from Psycho.) Frenzy and Peeping Tom share a sexual creepiness...but Frenzy doesn't have the "BOO!" factor either.

Additional points: I always felt that Psycho benefits from having a MALE victim(Arbogast.) Peeping Tom and Frenzy are about male killers of women, so there is no "fear factor" for men, and there is a distasteful sense of exploitation...watching pretty women get killed. A woman gets killed in Psycho, too, but with Arbogast's murder...we sense "equal opportunity" and less sexual exploitation.

And: Norman Bates as written by Joe Stefano and played by Anthony Perkins is simply more sympathetic and pleasant(for awhile) to watch than Carl Boehm. Its interesting how "Peeping Tom" has to "sell" Anna Massey falling in love with Boehm(he's so "sensitive") but...Boehm just didn't have Perkins star power.

All of this may suggest that I "don't like" Peeping Tom...that's not true. It is a very well made movie with all sorts of envelope-pushing creepiness(like how Boehm's mad scientist father conducted fear experiments on his own child and "made a killer." ) But Psycho is just a bigger memory, more fun, and weirdly enough, all these years later, I feel quite warm towards it.

I will add Peeping Tom to my 1960 honorable mentions. This list will help ME keep track of life of movie watching.

[–] ElizabethJoestar (930) 3 years ago

Fair enough. I think PSYCHO is the better movie for sure, but there is a haunting power to PEEPING TOM. It might lack the boo factor, but something about it got under my skin. I felt a bit gross and sad after watching it in a way I didn't after PSYCHO-- Boehm is just so tragic, but without Perkins' humor or ironic boy next door vibe. Something about him is alien enough to be off-putting... but pitiable too.

Also I didn't realize Anna Massey was in both this and FRENZY-- but you're right!

[–] swanstep (2616) 3 years ago

@Eliz. Moviechat allows us to keep hold of 5 years of threads. Unfortunately that's not enough for a number of epic Peeping Tom-related threads to have survived. :(

Anyhow two points that I remember making in those threads.

1. I agree that Peeping Tom is full of incredibly interesting and disturbing ideas, maybe even more so than Psycho. But, for many different reasons, it's simultaneously more static than Psycho and also more scattered. A key reason why it feels *so* different, so lacking in Psycho's nervous propulsive energy and forward momentum is the obvious: Herrmann's amazing score. If you haven't see it before, check out Howard Goodall's great dissection of Herrmann's contribution to Psycho here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0aM8lCHinbo
Powell by way of contrast sticks with the same composer he'd used since the '40s, Brian Easdale. Easdale's severe, bonk-plonk piano works well in The Red Shoes (which is called back to in PT by the appearance of Moria Shearer), for example, but it just weighs down Peeping Tom in my view, constantly stopping it dead in its second half in particular.
Psycho is a true collab. between geniuses, Herrmann and Hitch, And Psycho had another acknowledged genius on staff: Saul Bass. Bass, like Herrmann, had worked with Hitch on several movies before Psycho, and now that working partnership was at its peak. Bass didn't just do titles, he also at least contributed designs and storyboards for the shower scene and gets a special, additional 'Pictorial Consultant' credit for that, right before Herrmann's credit and then Hitch's own.

More generally, Hitch was at the peak of his power and influence when he made Psycho so he got the actors he wanted, whereas Powell, who'd had a very patchy 1950s, didn't have that luxury. Dirk Bogarde and Laurence Harvey (Perkins-comparable both) were the first and second choices for Mark. Boehm is much more stitled, less engaging, and less 'box office' than them. The film suffered for that.

[–] swanstep (2616) 3 years ago

2. 1960 saw an explosion of interest in the horror genre's possibilities from both leading and soon-to-be leading directors. PT and Psycho are just the most famous entries in this wave, but consider also:
The Virgin Spring (Bergman)
Eyes Without A Face (Franju)
Les Bonnes Femmes (Chabrol)
The Housemaid (Kim Ki-young)
Jigoku (Nakagawa)
Black Sunday (Bava)

At least the first four of these are absolute must-sees in my view, and, like Psycho and PT, they exhibit real desires to define and discover new sorts of horror. Psycho benefits from being seen in this larger context of a spontaneous cultural wave. At age 60, Hitchcock, the most famous director in the world at the time, was right *on* the film zeitgeist. And Film itself was in 1960 in the vanguard of culture. The sixties wouldn't really explode in the wider culture until 1962 or 1963, but Film was a revolutionary force from 1960 on the dot. [And some of the *other* revolutionary forces in film in 1960, e.g., the French New Wave, could hardly have been more solicitous of Hitchcock. At 60, Hitchcock was suddenly seriously rich and also cooler than he'd ever been.]

[–] ecarle (14979) 3 years ago

Fair enough. I think PSYCHO is the better movie for sure,

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Oh, not necessarily better -- but a "bigger deal" in its time, a much bigger hit, and there were reasons for that.

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but there is a haunting power to PEEPING TOM.

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Absolutely. If Michael Powell's career was truly "ruined" by this film, it was evidently for two reasons (1) Unlike Hitchcock, he had no track record in dark material so it was doubly shocking and (2) it got more directly into adult, sexual material, than Psycho ever did. (In Psycho, if Norman is truly a "sex murderer," it is so far beneath the surface as not to even be noticed on first viewing, even if Marion's murder while in the nude is clearly a centerpiece of the film.)

Boehm's first on screen victim is a prostitute and we get a "travelling POV" of her from her streetside proposition, into her building, up into her apartment and onto her bed before the murder occurs. 1960 in British film could be pretty frank.

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It might lack the boo factor, but something about it got under my skin.

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Well, the boo factor is something that, I think, at once gets huge audience and perhaps loses some of the "adult" reality of the "creepy." "Boo factor greats" for me include Psycho, Wait Until Dark, Jaws, Carrie(at the end only) and Halloween. Once you get to Friday the 13th, the boo factor is run into the ground(too many killings of kids we don't care about) and there is no there, there.

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[–] ecarle (14979) 3 years ago

I felt a bit gross and sad after watching it in a way I didn't after PSYCHO-- Boehm is just so tragic, but without Perkins' humor or ironic boy next door vibe. Something about him is alien enough to be off-putting... but pitiable too.

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Absolutely. Look, we SEE how Boehm became Boehm -- a literal mad scientist of a father who conducted fear experiements on HIS OWN CHILD -- like throwing a rat on him in his bed or locking him in a claustrophobic close. This is truly a mad killer who was "made, not born." Psycho never really makes the case that the REAL Mrs. Bates tortured Norman into his homicidal urges -- after all, he killed HER.

Because we clearly see Boehm as a victim (from his father) as well as a victimizer (of his female prey), the movie IS sad and creepy -- and that's another reason it hurt Powell's career.

Funny...I'm starting to lose my grip on how Peeping Tom ended, but as I recall two elements factored in : (1) Boehm tells Anna Massey "do NOT show ANY fear" as he threatens her with his tripod spike(and she doesn't); and (2) then he kills himself with that spike(a monster who sacrifices himself for a woman he could have loved.)

Side-bar irony: Boehm's character is a photographer of sexy models and dancers...and nude models. One expects that had he been sane, he COULD have had many of these women as sex partners or lovers. They were interested in HIM. But he couldn't be normal...

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Also I didn't realize Anna Massey was in both this and FRENZY-- but you're right!

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Yep...it definitely links the two films...as does 1960 from Peeping Tom to Psycho. They are rather a "trilogy." Or at least a triangle.

But: I don't think Hitchocck went LOOKING for Anna Massey for Frenzy. He had already been turned down by Lynn Redgrave for Babs -- Massey came in to audition for the lesser secretary role...and got the lead of Babs instead.

[–] ecarle (14979) 3 years ago

Cool to see ARABESQUE on your honorable mentions. The plot might make no sense, but those visuals are amazing and I love the chase in the zoo at night.

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Arabesque was director Stanley Donen's attempt to duplicate the success of "Charade"(1963.) He didn't have Cary Grant and Audrey Hepburn this time, with their rather cerebral sexiness and wit. He had Gregory Peck and Sophia Loren...two "strapping specimens"...and traded in the all-star mystery of Charade for more of a Hitchockcian spy chase thriller -- but only around London and the countryside.

What a difference 3 years made. Arabesque is "Mod" and psychedelic (Peck is actually put on LSD for one scene and trips out), with wild camera angles that scream "1966". It is not as good as Charade, but it is good enough.

And these two things: (1) Henry Mancini returns from "Charade' with an even more exciting and muscular theme overture and (2) the poster is one of those great 1966 things that makes Peck look handsome (and Bond-ish with gun in hand) and Loren look gorgeous(and leggy.) One of the great movie posters of all time.

Also: Arabesque and Torn Curtain were both from Universal, and though it was more "serious" and cinematic, Torn Curtain came out the loser. Well, Donen was younger than Hitch. These two films are great contrasting 1966 thrillers -- and Cary Grant turned down the leads in both! (He also turned down the lead in 1966's Gambit, which Michael Caine took.)

[–] ecarle (14979) 3 years ago

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As far as 1966 goes, have you ever seen HOW TO STEAL A MILLION?

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I saw it on release in 1966 -- my parents were wonderful in exposing me to movie stars and sixties sophistication. Audrey Hepburn and Peter O'Toole! William Wyler! And another gorgeous 1966 movie poster. But alas, I don't remember much about it, and I can never get through it in a re-run. True confession: caper movies aren't really my "thing." A Hitchcock scholar noted that Hitchcock himself rather eschewed caper films(less To Catch a Thief, which really ISN'T one) -- Hitchcock liked to make sure that MURDER was a part of his movies...it raised the stakes and the suspense.

That said, I can always try again with How to Steal a Million.

[–] ecarle (14979) 3 years ago

At least the first four of these are absolute must-sees in my view, and, like Psycho and PT, they exhibit real desires to define and discover new sorts of horror. Psycho benefits from being seen in this larger context of a spontaneous cultural wave. At age 60, Hitchcock, the most famous director in the world at the time, was right *on* the film zeitgeist.

---

Trying to get into the heads of producer directors is an interesting game -- if one you can't quite win.

Around this time, for instance, Otto Preminger became the "go to guy" to make movies out of hit novels -- Anatomy of a Murder, Exodus, Advise and Consent . Whereas Hitchcock bought Psycho for $9000 (I'm not sure that author Robert Bloch EVER saw it as a movie), Preminger bought (with studio backing) Advise and Consent for $200,000.

So Preminger was rather "in the publishing world" to make movies out of books that were famous already.

Hitchcock seemed more tuned into the MOVIES. He'd been looking for HIS horror movie since Diabolique hit in 1955, and movies like Touch of Evil and House on Haunted Hill only fed his passion. Then Psycho came along and Hitchcock was willing to go to the mat for it, stake everything on it. (Irony: Hitchcock snapped up the next book written by the guys who wrote Diabolique -- but it turned out to make Vertigo, not a horror movie.)

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[–] ecarle (14979) 3 years ago

And Film itself was in 1960 in the vanguard of culture. The sixties wouldn't really explode in the wider culture until 1962 or 1963, but Film was a revolutionary force from 1960 on the dot.

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I recall Anthony Perkins saying his decision to play Norman Bates was fed by: "Do I want to enter the 60's?" Perhaps because of all the foreign films flooding the American art market, and the shift in American politics(with BOTH Young JFK and Young Nixon taking us away from Eisenhower, and Janet Leigh's pal JFK winning), the sixties were full of a need to make changes.

Hitchcock did it his way.

---[And some of the *other* revolutionary forces in film in 1960, e.g., the French New Wave, could hardly have been more solicitous of Hitchcock. At 60, Hitchcock was suddenly seriously rich and also cooler than he'd ever been.]

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Hitch is such a fun guy to study at this time in his life. The American studio chiefs really didn't know about the Cahiers crowd and young Americans who dug on Psycho and The Birds(but also North by Northwest for its sexed-up action.) I believe that Esquire magazine ran an article that included Hitchcock with Dylan and the Beatles and Kubrick as "new cool."

Also, Hitch sure lucked out having his biggest triumph -- Psycho -- in his third act of life. Orson Welles started on top and slid down.

CONT

[–] ecarle (14979) 3 years ago

I also like how -- whether they were as good as Psycho or not -- ALL of the movies Hitchcock made after Psycho were INFORMED by Psycho in some way -- it hung over all of them as an influence and a touchstone:

The Birds -- the attack in the upstairs bedroom matches the shower scene.
Marnie: Marnie's mother don't like men anymore than Norman's mother likes women.
Torn Curtain: Gromek -- a more ugly version of Arbogast -- prods and pushes until he must be brutally killed (but by the HERO.)
Topaz: "DuBois"(Roscoe Lee Browne) a black and dapper Arbogast, puts himself in mortal danger but survives; later a young man interviews a spy and its Norman/Arbogast all over again.
Frenzy: The only Hitchcock psycho after Norman Bates -- and he's a good one, a different one -- an extrovert with lots of friends. The murder in a clean bathroom in the dead of night here becomes a contrasting murder in an office at lunchtime in broad daylight.
Family Plot: Pretty much the same plot as Psycho -- but with almost no blood and a lighter air. And a happy ending.

[–] ecarle (14979) 3 years ago

Psycho is a true collab. between geniuses, Herrmann and Hitch,

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Hitchcock attributed 1/3 of the success of Psycho to Herrmann -- and paid him a bonus.

Its probably more like 1/2 --- Bass has the music side; Hitchcock, his writers and his actors are all on the visual side(well, the actors do TALK, I guess).

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And Psycho had another acknowledged genius on staff: Saul Bass. Bass, like Herrmann, had worked with Hitch on several movies before Psycho, and now that working partnership was at its peak. Bass didn't just do titles, he also at least contributed designs and storyboards for the shower scene and gets a special, additional 'Pictorial Consultant' credit for that, right before Herrmann's credit and then Hitch's own.

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Yes...Bass got to do more than the titles on Psycho(which are as great as his Vertigo and NXNW titles, these are the only Hitchocck movies Bass did) and evidently he helped a LOT. He storyboarded the two murders(only the shower scene followed his design , though.) He made the Bates Mansion more creepy by matting in the clouds at night.

And yet, right after helping to give Hitch his greatest triumph, Bass...left Hitchcock's employ. He kept going with Otto Preminger but...Hitch and he broke up. Whose fault? (Hitch, maybe? Hitch started to cut loose quite a few of his collaborators -- DP Robert Burks and Herrmann were yet to come.)

[–] ecarle (14979) 3 years ago

CONT

Also: Arabesque and Torn Curtain were both from Universal, and though it was more "serious" and cinematic, Torn Curtain came out the loser. Well, Donen was younger than Hitch. These two films are great contrasting 1966 thrillers -- and Cary Grant turned down the leads in both! (He also turned down the lead in 1966's Gambit, which Michael Caine took.)

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A follow-up comment on male movie stars, circa 1966.

Cary Grant was offered Torn Curtain, Arabesque, and Gambit. He turned them all down, clearing the way for three other leading men to work. And Grant retired IN 1966, with his final film, "Walk Don't Run"(in which he is not the romantic lead, but rather a matchmaker for two younger people. Grant was fine, but it didn't take.)

With Grant vacating the field:

Gregory Peck: Recommended BY Cary Grant for Arabesque, Peck kept telling Donen as filming progressed, "I keep trying to tell you, I'm not Cary Grant." But Peck was tall and handsome and had that "Voice of God." Still, his stardom would taper off in the 60's; Arabesque may be his last true 'bankable lead." He got a career save in 1976 with "The Omen"(a role vacated by Charlton Heston) but he seemed old and tired in that.

Paul Newman: Hitch couldn't get Cary Grant for Torn Curtain -- and the studio turned down his other interesting choice: Tony Perkins! (Think about it.) But Universal had Paul Newman on contract and he was THE established young male star of the 60's, with Steve McQueen in near-parity and Sean Connery coming in from the British side. (Hitch had gotten Connery for Marnie...but a little too early in a little too mediocre a film.) Hitch and Newman may have clashed on Torn Curtain(politely, said Newman) but Hitchcock clearly "brought the Hitchcock hero into the 60's" with arguably the top young male star OF the 60's. And Newman was so "solid" in his prestige stardom, he would last for over 3 more decades (even as rival Steve McQueen was dead by 50 in 1980.)

CONT

[–] ecarle (14979) 3 years ago

CONT

Michael Caine: If Greg Peck was aging and "on the fade," and Paul Newman was "in the sweet spot"(40 in 1966) of top stardom, Michael Caine was a "new arrivee" as a male star in a decade that needed them bad. Gambit was seen as a Cary Grant vehicle, but when he said "no", it became a Shirley MacLaine vehicle, and SHE picked Caine as her co-star. He'd made his name in Britain with The Iprcress File(a realistic James Bond) and Alfie(which established Caine, however briefly, as a heartthrob sex idol), and Caine was pleased to get Gambit as his American debut.

And here we are in 2021...Caine is in his 90's and probably not acting anymore. Mr. Grant, Mr. Peck and Mr. Newman have left us -- Newman went last and most "recently"(2009).

And we are trying to keep the current crop of male movie stars afloat.

[–] ElizabethJoestar (930) 3 years ago

[–] swanstep (2616) 3 years ago

@Eliz. I think ecarle is effectively alluding to the phenomenon you mention - that after the (long) generation of men that includes Cruise, Denzel, Will Smith, Leo, Brad, Matthew McConnaughhey, Ewan McGregor we seem to get people who are only stars in particular, pre-existing IP roles. Chris Evans is mostly just Cap America, Chris Hemsworth is mostly just Thor, etc.. The problem may be a little exaggerated in my view but Hollywood and especially more its auteurish directors like QT and Scorsese and Nolan *have* clung pretty tightly to that cohort of stars who seemingly *can* draw big audiences along to non-superhero movies. There's always a lot of *fear* around in Hollywood, but trepidation has increased markedly as boundaries blur between film and tv and video games and whatever the hell people are doing with their phones.

[–] ElizabethJoestar (930) 3 years ago

@swanstep : You're absolutely right about there being more competition regarding entertainment. Hollywood freaking out over that has been a running trend since radio emerged in the 1920s and then TV in the 1950s.

I do think there is a decline in the idea of the movie star as well, partly as a symptom of that phenomenon. Actually, there's an interesting clip of Anthony Mackie where he pretty much agrees with this idea:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oj8JK6c5x3M

It's weird because I find few people are "universal" celebrities these days. That is, a lot of the people who are celebrities for people younger than me (I'm in my late 20s) are "TikTok" stars, "influencers," or YouTube personalities. The net for celebrity has become much wider with the advent of social media and that in a sense has diminished the movie star idea.

At least, that's my theory.

[–] ecarle (14979) 3 years ago

And we are trying to keep the current crop of male movie stars afloat.
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I'm curious: what do you mean by that? Is that related to how the drawing power of movie stars has considerably waned since the early 2000s?

---

ecarle here. I agree for the most part(actually for ALL the part) of swanstep's analysis of the situation and I like the "new"(to me) idea that the traditional movie star is being swamped by all these other "small d democratic" stars of the internet, who don't need to pass auditions and secure agents to make their mark.

I suppose what triggered my comment about "keeping modern movie stars alfloat" stemed from my review of Cary Grant, Gregory Peck, Paul Newman , and Michael Caine as ranking stars of 1966. Do stars WORK like that anymore?

Take Paul Newman. I think he was the biggest "young star"(behind old man John Wayne in ranking) of much of the 60's, but he achieved this almost exclusively with downbeat dramas like The Hustler, Hud, Hombre(all those "H"s) and Cool Hand Luke. Newman DIES in some of those movies. But he achieved stardom beause the old male stars were dying and retiring and new stars were needed. Still, Newman did it with DRAMAS..that would be indies today or maybe not greenlighted at all.

Cary Grant was from a "golden era" where audiences went to see the STAR, in whatever "vehicle" he was in. Bogart, James Stewart, Clark Gable..Cary Grant...we wanted to see THEM, in whatever story they chose or was chosen for them.

CONT

[–] ecarle (14979) 3 years ago

Modernly, its a cliché but a true cliché: "stars" are making multi-millions to play superheroes, but take them out of the superhero movie and...they aren't stars.

Consider Robert Downey Jr. As the "first man through the gate" on the Marvel movies (with Iron Man), RDJ made huge dollars throughout the series -- and something like $100 million on the final Avengers.

But he released a movie of Doctor Doolittle and...it didn't make a dime. He wasn't a "star" at all.

That was also true with Johnny Depp away from the Pirates franchise..no real hits that I can recall.

And for the Chris Evans and the Chris Pines and the Mark Ruffalos...let alone the Jeremy Renners...nada.

Funny thing: Tom Cruise was almost Iron Man, but he decided to turn it down. RDJ took it and got megarich in a franchise. But Cruise pulled "Mission Impossible" out of his hat, and now HE is a franchise star. Though Top Gun II still awaits.

The billions that are made in the international marketplace means that superheroes make millions, "irregardless." But as one wag wrote: "Movie stars have never earned so much or mattered so little." That's about right.

Cary Grant advised new young male actors to achieve stardom by "making as many movies as you can, as fast as you can, until you become a familiar brand to the viewer, like catsup in the house." But modernly, actors can't MAKE enough stand alone movies to really matter. Oh, Daniel Day Lewis back in the day but...otherwise?

I have, at this point in my life, been reviewing my lifelong interest in movie stars as much as my lifelong interest in movies. I have a little more to say but...not right now.

[–] ecarle (14979) 3 years ago

I think ecarle is effectively alluding to the phenomenon you mention - that after the (long) generation of men that includes Cruise, Denzel, Will Smith, Leo, Brad, Matthew McConnaughhey, Ewan McGregor we seem to get people who are only stars in particular, pre-existing IP roles.

---

Yes. I certainly feel that these among the ones you mention ARE bona fide stars today: Cruise(faded from his heyday, but rich from Mission Impossible); Denzel(I think he was once noted as the most steadiy successful male movie star, and he plays well to all racial groups); Leo, Brad.

Leo and Brad were in QT's Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, and that was a helluva coup, getting them together. One could STUDY them, side by side and clearly Pitt had the movie star looks, Leo sort of did...but Leo has made his name (since his Titanic launch) in a series of well-regarded dramatic films, many by Scorsese. In any event, this has kept Leo's star career at the tippy-top and -- I'm STILL not sure if he aligns with the stars of other eras as being as good.

Will Smith's star actually faded quite some time ago -- he used Netflix for career support. I think Smith made the mistake of thinking his big 90s hits Indpendence Day and Men in Black were about HIM. He came a cropper with the effects-ridden but stupid Wild Wild West(1999) and never really recovered from the exposture of it. And he turned down Django Unchained because he felt that a star like him should shoot the bad guy(Leo!), not some supporting guy like Chris Waltz.

---

[–] ecarle (14979) 3 years ago

In an entirely different direction, I have been spending recent days pondering -- as an adjunct to the value of the movies in my life, the value of the movie STARS of my life.

I was never one to worship any given star, or to write fan mail or join a fan club, but I certainly used stars as a measure of a movie, and derived pleasure and inspiration from the best star performances.

It was also fun to follow the "star making machinery" and realize when a star became a star.

Example: Walter Matthau. Even as a youngster, I enjoyed Matthau's wry, dry presence as a supporting player and then --somewhere around The Odd Couple -- I realized: he was now a STAR. A leading man. Over the title. I felt proud for him, as if I'd made the journey with him.

Example: Barbra Streisand. Whereas Matthau had to toil for ten years in the supporting ranks and earn stardom on his voice and presence rather than his face, Streisand arrived as fully-formed, ready-to-go star in Funny Girl. No wonder Matthau couldn't stand Streisand on Hello Dolly -- it had been "no work" for her.

Example: Tom Cruise. He struggled as "young ingénue support" in movies like Taps and The Outsiders but...Risky Business rather made him an insta-star just like Dustin Hoffman(another short, boyish guy) before him. Top Gun cemented the deal (of which one critic noted "Tom Cruise plays a flyboy -- he could play a fly, he could play a boy -- but not a flyboy.)

Cruise was the first of the new generation of "boy stars" who often seemed cast in roles that were too old for them, and looking like boys where the Waynes and McQueens and Bronsons and Coburns before them looked like men. No matter. The girls loved him.

CONT

[–] ecarle (14979) 3 years ago

Jim Carrey: Boy did I hate HIM. I know his movies were made for people about three decades younger than me even then, but when he "hit" for a few years in the 90's, it was as if all of Hollywood simply decided to concentrate on bringing him down. I recall him taking the stage at an Oscar ceremony at the peak of his fame -- a so-so movie called "Liar, Liar" had just had a great opening weekend and Carrey did that big grin he does , that loud voice he does and taunted the audience "...and how was YOUR weekend?"

Carrey's fan base was too young and his ego was too big and it took awhile but...he burned out as everyone had hoped and believed he would.

Still, he was a star for awhile, and a very big one.

---

I'll stick with male stars because there are more of them, and I use them for identification as I can't use women and...so, who are some of my favorite stars?

Well, Cary Grant, but really only in two movies: North by Northwest and Charade. And he made scores more. Grant illustrates a rule of mine: "The movie, not the movie star' -- that star may have worked every year, all the time, but really only "clicked" in the biggest hits or biggest classics of his career. Or the "special ones" -- North by Northwest and Charade, two great sophisticated thrillers made four years apart.

I'll also give Grant To Catch A Thief and Notorious(To Catch a Thief is more fun), but I'm not big on Suspicion. He was hilarious "over the top" in Arsenic and Old Lace. He was very funny in his penultimate film, Father Goose, as a funny-drunk beach bum.

But really -- North by Northwest and Charade. HE's great...but so are the movies, and the co-stars.

CONT

[–] ecarle (14979) 3 years ago

Eh...enough of the detail.

I'd say that these are among the men of the movies who "delivered the goods" and proved that movie stars ARE valuable people in terms of inspiring us or entertaining us, and the best of them (unlike, er, Matt Damon -- I HAD to get him in) were uniquely different from us.

Here goes:

Cary Grant
Spencer Tracy
James Cagney
Humphrey Bogart
Marlon Brando
William Holden
Robert Mitchum
Kirk Douglas
John Wayne
Paul Newman
Steve McQueen
Sean Connery
Walter Matthau
Jack Nicholson
Al Pacino
Robert Redford
Clint Eastwood
Tom Hanks
Denzel Washington
Bill Murray
Johnny Depp
Brad Pitt

Those are actors who I have really liked in certain roles, or respected for what they did with their careers...they HAVE been meaningful throughout my life in anchoring some of the best movies of our lives. And hell, one ends up forgetting personal favorites: Sam Jackson, Kurt Russell, Morgan Freeman, Billy Bob Thornton, Michael Douglas...hell, there's a LOT of them, aren't there?

Eh, OK...they matter. And I'll close out with this one:

Jeff Bridges. From "young guy" roles in The Last Picture Show and Thunderbolt and Lightfoot to "old guy" roles in True Grit and Hell or High Water, he has always been amiable, compelling, funny but serious. And his "Big Lebowski" perf as the Dude is perfect, with an equal balance of vocals and facial expressions.

And we may be losing him. RIPs should be saved for RIPs, but I was sad to hear that Bridges got cancer (his press release quoted Lebowski: "New shit has come to light") and his last public report was in January. Here's hoping for remission. I really wanted the Dude leading the way in his 70s and 80s.

[–] ecarle (14979) 3 years ago

I return to note that..the post above with all those actors names...doesn't particularly hang together or necessarily express what I wanted it to.

Now, I think I know better.

One thing is that, for all those male movie star names I put up there, I certainly skipped a lot of them, too. No Burt Lancaster, Rock Hudson, Tony Curtis. No Robert DeNiro, Will Smith, Leo DiCaprio.

Well, it was a list of MY favorite stars, as I thought about them. And yet, I've liked those other guys in certain movies, for sure. Lancaster in The Professionals(my favorite movie of 1966.) DeNiro in Jackie Brown(hilariously silent and stupid for much of the movie.) Tony Curtis(who has been praised by David Mamet and Tom Hanks alike as a great star) in Some Like It Hot and The Great Race(where he has to over-do a SuperGood hero cartoon of a part.)

The point is...there turns out to be a HELL of a lot of movie stars over the history of movies. I do think that there are less of them now, I think almost all of the superheroes of the Marvel movies are at once paid at superstar level and not really stars at all. Except for Robert Downey Jr. but not even HIM -- Dr. Doolittle tanked and The Judge underperformed.

I ran this check on my DVD collection:

Jack Nicholson is probably my favorite star from 1970 on. And yet , I own very few of his movies. Chinatown. The Shining. Terms of Endearment. Batman. Mars Attacks(hey, its got Rod Steiger in it with Nicholson -- what a pair.) The Departed. The rest of the time, I've pretty much just enjoyed watching his movies on cable or streaming "when they come along."

Warren Beatty? I own Bonnie and Clyde. That's it.

Burt Reynolds? I don't think I own one of his films, and I WAS a fan of Deliverance and The Longest Yard and Semi-Tough.

I forgot to mention Nick Nolte above and -- he's in two of my favorite movies -- North Dallas Forty and 48 HRS. But that's all that I own.

CONT

[–] ecarle (14979) 3 years ago

I'm self-amused that I own a lot of Walter Matthau pictures. The Odd Couple. A New Leaf(Elaine May is hilarious.) Pete n Tillie(Matthau and Carol Burnett in a deadpan funny love story.) Hello, Dolly(Matthau and Streisand are hilarious together even though they hated each other.)

His "thriller trilogy" of the 70's: Charley Varrick, The Laughing Policeman, The Taking of Pelham 123(two great ones, one so-so in The Laughing Policeman but Time said Matthau was great in it. He couldn't get a bad review.)

And Matthau is great "thriller support" in Lonely are the Brave(to Kirk Douglas), Charade(to Cary Grant and Audrey Hepburn) and Mirage(to Greg Peck.) I own all of those, too.

Yep, I'm thinking I own more Walter Matthau movies than anybody else! Which is funny because several female sig others over my life have said to me: "How did THAT guy get to be a movie star?" (Well, you had to be there and -- his forebears were Wallace Beery, WC Fields and Spencer Tracy.)

Walter Matthau had tentatively accepted the villain role in Hitchcock's "The Short Night," but Hitch died before it could be made. Matthau can be seen sitting near Hitch in that great but sad AFI awards show.

CONT

[–] ecarle (14979) 3 years ago

CONT

With the exception of Matthau and a few others, I suppose my rule is illustrated here: "The movie, not the movie star."

Cary Grant made scores of movies and I'm sure he was great in all of them, but its North by Northwest that has held my grip for so long.

Nick Nolte was a perfectly passable movie star for awhile, but its only North Dallas Forty and 48 HRS of his work that I REALLY love.

And I like to point out that James Stewart and Wendell Corey made Rear Window together(an unassailable classic) but also Carbine Williams(a paycheck for them, nothing to remember for us.)

On point(if not topic) it remains the case that modernly, if you take all the Marvel superstars out of the picture, you aren't left with two many stars who draw audiences on their own. It HAS changed(because the movies have changed) and the list gets smaller all the time(Goodbye, Mr. Depp!)

[–] ecarle (14979) 3 years ago

A change to the Number Twos:

1970:

Number One: MASH the movie
Number Two: Patton

Honorable mentions:

The Kremlin Letter
The Cheyenne Social Club
Tora, Tora, Tora
Airport
Where's Poppa?
Little Big Man

NOW becomes:

Number One: MASH The Movie
Number Two: The Kremlin Letter

I think I picked Patton the first time because of the rousing first five minutes and MEMORIES of an intelligent script thereafter(and that "slap" scene.)

But who am I kidding? I've seen Patton maybe twice. I've seen The Kremlin Letter about 10 times.

It wasn't well reviewed at the time but it seems to be generating a cult.

And it is very, very, VERY mean and merciless about how the "hero" American spies use sex, drug addiction and murder to achieve their goals. I kinda like that.

But mainly, the CAST. Big Richard Boone(with no moustache and white hair) the Good Ol' Boy psychopath("Well, nephew..."); suave and feline George Sanders, suave and cheeky Nigel Green, two gorgeous ladies(Barbara Parkins, a brunette and Bibi Andersson, a blonde -- I go for Parkins) Orson Welles(THAT voice)...and it says "1970" for better AND worse as "Old Director" John Huston tries to get hip.

[–] swanstep (2616) 3 years ago

I saw The Kremlin Letter for the first time only recently and was quite impressed by it (and its general nastiness). It felt like Huston was transitioning nicely into the hard-R '70s!

BTW, The Conformist (1970) is currently viewable in 720p on youtube here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W62HmmyKInI
albeit this version is an English dub with (unobstrusive) Spanish subtitles. I much prefer it with its original Italian dialogue, but getting the film's celebrated visuals for free isn't to be sniffed at and the dub isn't *so* bad.

Another wild,1970 gem now available on youtube (in 720p) is Performance here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZUm8Il-pFCE
The version omits a fun but inessential 4 min Mick Jagger song/rock video sequence (which can be found elsewhere on youtube anyway)

[–] ecarle (14979) 3 years ago

I saw The Kremlin Letter for the first time only recently and was quite impressed by it (and its general nastiness). It felt like Huston was transitioning nicely into the hard-R '70s!

---

I suppose the novel (somewhat of a bestseller) had the "original" nastiness in it, but for Huston to elect to make a statement on the subject in a major motion picture was an act of daring on his part. The R rating brought out the perversities and bleakness of certain "old hands" -- Frenzy from Hitchcock was only two years later.

The DVD I bought has mini-booklet with Huston discussing The Kremlin Letter(in his autobio) and its funny what he seemed to miss about his own movie: "The cast could not be bettered, it looked great, and it had those elements that are in demand today -- sex and violence. I was disappointed that it did not succeed."

Well, John -- did you forget how mean and merciless the tale is, how unhappy for so many characters at the end?

I think a number of writer-directors missed the point that their savage and mean 70's movies weren't going to draw audiences. And of course, kids and teens weren't going to come to The Kremlin Letter.

The outlaws in The Wild Bunch were mean and savage too -- but they were loyal to each other in the end(to the death) and the "bang bang" was spectacular and exciting.
The Kremlin Letter had none of that.
CONT

[–] ecarle (14979) 3 years ago

CONT

I did not see The Kremlin Letter in 1970. A promotional photo of George Sanders in drag, and reviews that stressed the prostitution in the film, told me that I'd have a little trouble with the parents getting to see it. But ANOTHER photo -- of the "team" -- was compelling to me. I already had my "Richard Boone jones" from Hombre at the theater and Rio Conchos on TV -- the white hair/no moustache look intrigued me.

I can't remember when I finally caught up with it -- VHS rental I think -- but it then came with a "nostalgic charge" to a tougher era at the movies, and a sadness: Boone, Sanders, and Green were all dead by the early 80s -- Sanders and Green to suicide. I was enjoying performers whose style was a thing of the past.

By the way, the cast COULD have been bettered. The "young male lead" part was turned down by Warren Beatty, Steve McQueen, and even James Coburn. THEY saw how mean it was. So we got Patrick O'Neal, and he just couldn't hold his own with the Over the Hill Gang of evil survivor spies. Still, with no major young star in the lead...Richard Boone BECAME the lead. And a smiling, evil one.

Note in passing: NYT critic Vincent Canby compared The Kremlin Letter to Hitchcock's Topaz -- they came out a few months apart -- and gave the edge to Hitchcock. I don't. In one way, Canby is RIGHT -- Topaz has a ton of Hitchcockian style and visual invention; The Kremlin Letter is a series of "talk scenes" with a little violence in between. But Topaz didn't have interesting stars for the most part. The Kremlin Letter did. Made all the difference.

[–] ecarle (14979) 3 years ago

BTW, The Conformist (1970) is currently viewable in 720p on youtube here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W62HmmyKInI
albeit this version is an English dub with (unobstrusive) Spanish subtitles. I much prefer it with its original Italian dialogue, but getting the film's celebrated visuals for free isn't to be sniffed at and the dub isn't *so* bad.

--

I like that YouTube is becoming the place to go for movies of a certain age...albeit sometimes with certain sacrifices.

I say this because right now I have "HBO Max" on streaming and ...as a technical matter, its horrible. Movies freeze mid-way through and "three little dots" appear on screen(like the circle you get with computer buffereing) and..you can't watch the movie anymore. Sometimes it comes back the next day.

Worse, I've been trying to get through "Mare of Easttown" with Kate Winslet and the HBO Max feed does something strange -- the film backs up and REPEATS what I've just seen in the past 20 seconds, two three four times, before starting over. ("Why should I know?" "I don't know" "Why should I know? "I don't know" "Why should I know?" "I don't know.") We've just about given up. I'll be seeking support but...any ideas out there. I think the room my TV is in isn't close enough to the router.

---

HBO Max does have a lot of foreign classics, so if I can possibly get it to work again, I will keep trying to view them. Otherwise: YouTube, here I come..

---
Another wild,1970 gem now available on youtube (in 720p) is Performance here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZUm8Il-pFCE
The version omits a fun but inessential 4 min Mick Jagger song/rock video sequence (which can be found elsewhere on youtube anyway)

--

Ha. "Piece together your movie," YouTube style. I do remember when Performance came out, it seemed to merge the New Age of movies(British in this case) with the hot and happening Rock Era(I always think of the "old" Rolling Stone as covering it so well.)

[–] ecarle (14979) 3 years ago

1968

An OT glimpse at 1968(Hitchocck enters in):

Number One: Bullitt
Number Two: Finian's Rainbow

Honorable mentions:

2001
The Odd Couple
Rosemary's Baby
The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly
Pretty Poison

---

My Number Two is "Finian's Rainbow," with good reason, and at some risk. Its interesting thinking about the film, to me, but once over lightly those other ones:

Paramount ran ads and billboard side by side for The Odd Couple and Rosemary's Baby. They were "light and dark summer hits," very big ones that entered the common vernacular . This was 8 years after Psycho had been such a huge hit for Paramount(albeit made at Universal with Hitch getting most of the profit); here was Rosemary's Baby coming along 8 years later with similar impact(though I don't believe it was as big a hit as RB.)

As a Californian, I found BOTH The Odd Couple and Rosemary's Baby to be scary and claustrophobic. Both films are set on the East Coast in a spooky , grimy NYC and the characters are largely stuck in roomy, grim apartments.

I laughed hard at The Odd Couple with my family; I wasn't allowed to see Rosemary's Baby, though a teacher successfully assigned the book to her class(including me) a year later. Good enough!

2001 is a monumental achievement, a much cited classic, a true art film and...well, it wasn't exactly a fun night out. I'll always remember that I responded to the "thriller" part -- where HAL kills several astronauts and is in turn killed himself. The trivia tells us that Arbogast himself, Martin Balsam voiced HAL but his authoritative voice was tossed in favor of that more elegant one.

CONT

[–] ecarle (14979) 3 years ago

Meanwhile, Norman Bates came back -- sort of -- in Pretty Poison, a movie in which Tony Perkins looks barely unchanged from 1960 and is again acting in a low budget horror-tinged thriller but...something is wrong. 1968 "realistic cinematography" isn't 1960 TV on the big screen black and white; the thriller isn't quite so big on shocks, and Tony's not REALLY the psycho this time -- its cheerleader Tuesday Weld!

The Time magazine critic wrote "Anthony Perkins gives his best performance since Psycho," and as Psycho was much on my mind (but not yet seen) in 1968, this became a companion piece to seek out.

I did. You can't go home again. At least Perkins' acting is closer to 1960 Norman than in the 80's sequels.

CONT

[–] ecarle (14979) 3 years ago

Which brings me to Finian's Rainbow.

On paper, Finian's Rainbow("FR") was one of the glut of "dinosaur big budget musicals" that came out in the wake of the success of My Fair Lady and The Sound of Music.

Counterculture critics hit these late musicals pretty hard -- they had a New Hollywood to invent. And retroactively, there's a lot of shorthand snickering over them -- "oh they were so out of touch and out of date, they sank the musical."

What's weird is that if you really LOOK at them(or lived through them, as I did) they were a very diverse lot.

You had Camelot trying to be My Fair Lady again but something went wrong --the lack of a Hepburn/Harrison level star, perhaps? You had Julie Andrews and Mary Tyler Moore in Universal's just a bit too cheap "Thoroughly Modern Millie"(with not many good songs but HEY..there's John Gavin looking like he made Psycho the day before and quite funny here.) You had Julie again in "Star!" a musical that wasn't a musical that nobody saw(even when they renamed it "These Were the Happy Times!") Julie Andrews lived by the sword and died by the sword. Torn Curtain alone didn't kill her career.

You had freakin' Oliver winning the 1968 Best Picture Oscar and fully announcing that the musical wasn't gone -- retroactively it seems a much disliked BP; I'm not sure why.

You had freakin' Barbra Streisand winning the 1968 Best Actress Oscar for Funny Girl -- on her first movie, but tying with Kate Hepburn -- and ALSO fully announcing the musical wasn't gone.

CONT

[–] ecarle (14979) 3 years ago

And then you've got the three I like the most, critical damnation be damned:

Finian's Rainbow
Paint Your Wagon
Hello, Dolly

FR came out in '68, the other two in '69, but I didn't SEE FR til '69, so that year was awash in fun musicals for me. Yes, they were big and expensive and overblown(well, two of them were) and yes they were old hat and wasn't there SOMETHING wrong with putting non-singers like Lee Marvin, Clint Eastwood, and Walter Matthau in MUSCIALS. (Not by me -- I was a big fan of all three guys, and their singing skills didn't matter -- they were IN these movies, usually backed by a big chorus and orchestra anyway.)

I didn't learn it (or know it, or SEE it) until years later, but it turns out that Finian's Rainbow had the cheapest budget of these "big budget" musicals, and had to "fake it."

Much of FR is filmed on the Warners backlot, some in a San Fernando Valley meadow area, some in gorgeous green northern California wine country...all meant to be rural Kentucky.

And interiors were filmed on leftover "bright green astroturf" sets from Camelot which had just the right Luck o' the Irish effect in THIS movie.

I noticed none of the cheapness or slapdash of Finian's Rainbow when I saw it TWICE in '69 -- once in a roadshow big theater experience; later "at regular prices!" I liked the music. I thought Petulia Clark was pretty and sexy in a different way. And there WAS something "hip" -- if not countercultural -- about its youthful sense of fast cutting and constant movement.

Something that its newish director -- a fellow named Francis Ford Coppola -- brought to the film.

Hey -- Finian's Rainbow is only ONE movie away from The Godfather on the Coppola resume . I don't think that Coppola was a genius in 1972 and an idiot in 1968. He just had better material and more free reign the second time.

[–] ecarle (14979) 3 years ago

I liked FR "in general and just because" as an unsettled adolescent in 1969; seeing it in later years, I can now zero right in on my two favorite things

ONE: The opening credit sequence. On the DVD commentary track, Coppola says he knew that FR was going against Funny Girl and other "biggies" and begged Jack Warner to give him the cash to have a second unit film a "grab 'em" opening. It is...and the links to Hitchcock are strong.

Fred Astaire as Irish dad and Petulia Clark as Irish daughter traverse the whole of American on their journey -- by foot -- to the promised land of Kentucky. Its two body doubles most of the time, but sometimes its Fred and Petulia.

This footage was shot by Carroll Ballard, eventually the director of The Black Stalliion(and hey, a guy named George Lucas was an intern on this movie too -- it was 70's cinema aborning).

And Fred and Petulia go from: the Statue of Liberty(Saboteur) to Mount Rushmore(NXNW) to The Golden Gate bridge and one realizes just how WELL Hitchcock got America's big monuments into two and one half of his best movies.

And then Coppola has a little fun...Fred and Petulia (REALLY THEM) are shown walking in a green meadow away from a schoolhouse -- the Bodega Bay schoolhouse from The Birds.

So here was Coppola giving a gorgeous wide screen shout-out to a Master(then still alive) and stitching four of his greatest locales together .

Now if only Fred and Petulia could have walked by the Bates Motel...

CONT

[–] ecarle (14979) 3 years ago

TWO: There are lots of musical numbers in FR; most of them are pretty good, beautiful and tuneful (and standards, unlike the new stuff in Thoroughly Modern Millie)

It was only on a re-viewing on VHS in the 80s that I found myself drawn to the duet "That Old Devil Moon" by Petulia Clark and the great crooner...Don Francks?

I told you FR was cheap. Don Francks was a Canadian actor who made a living playing bad guys on The Wild Wild West and The Man From UNCLE(childhood faves, ) so I knew him. Given this major role (it happens; see Jon Finch), Francks ran with it. He looked a bit like Richard Harris and he sang a bit like Sammy Davis, Jr.

Francks leads off the vocals on "Old Devil Moon" -- and its the smart move,he can carry a tune, but Petulia is ready to come in and blow him away.

Its a great song in general, and someone -- Coppola? -- decided to have Petulia and Don sing it "hip" and rock-style, but soulful and slow, with a lot of sensuous "yeah-yeah-- YEAH-ah-EY" curlicues amidst the beautiful melody.

The result? One of the sexiest songs in movies, in my book -- you feel like this pair could "do it" right now -- and deeply loving, too.

The rest of the movie is like that: mod and old-fashioned, hip and square. But every entertaining.

Coppola said the movie had "too much book"(too many dialogue scenes) but...the magical invention of the DVD allows you to skip right through them. Just like ANOTHER cheapish, fast-on-its feet musical from 10 years earlier: Damn Yankees.

There are a lot of reviews mocking and/or hating Finian's Rainbow, but I got back up in one corner: Roger Ebert(of all people) with a "you are there" 68 four star review of FR in which he declares "this is the best of the current musicals." High praise from Young Rog.

I'll take it. Though I like Paint Your Wagon, too(it played for a year in one small city near me) and my dear grandmother so loved Hello Dolly(scripted by Ernest NXNW Lehman for this Matthau fan)..that I love it too.

PS. I'll do 68's Good Bad Ugly over where swanstep talks about it.