The following video impressed me. It begins with an assured overview and periodization of the rest of Hitch's career before plunging into thoughful discussions of each of Hitch's late films):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s2slAVLjxgY
Highly Recommended.
I, for one, appreciate the recommendation.
Overall, a nice piece in how it manages to incorporate clips (sometimes just slivers) from pretty much every movie Hitchcock ever made, thus finding a real "context'(DECADES worth) for the "Dark Age."
Its the Tarantino theory again, isn't it? "Late sixties/seventies edition" in which, not only did health and age start to slow Hitchcock down, but a "New Hollywood" rather viciously sought to toss out a whole group of classic directors. Recall Dennis Hopper saying to George Cukor during this period, "We're gonna bury you, man!"
But for me, the whole thing reminds me again that the usual rules just never much applied to Hitchcock. He was an unstoppable entity unto himself -- protected by Lew Wasserman and Universal/MCA at the end(even as Lew is somewhat responsible for some of the Dark Age films)...and as far as I'm concerned, ALL FOUR of those final films look great and have "the Hitchcock touch."
Plus, the young documentarian occasionally misses the point because he doesn't have the information.
He compares the "dark, fuzzy" look of Torn Curtain to the clarity of To Catch a Thief(an Oscar winner for cinematography.) But I guess he doesn't know that Hitchcock undertook a "cinematography experiment" with Torn Curtain ON PURPOSE to use gauze lenses and natural light...and to make sure that East Germany was a kind of "cold, gray hell." To Catch A Thief -- with its gorgeous colors (and green night sky) was MEANT to sell color.
CONT
There is also this point the documentary maker makes about the films after Torn Curtain: no major stars in them. Point taken. BUT: Hitchcock could not attract stars after Torn Curtain. Nobody at that level in New Hollywood wanted to work with him. The Big Mistake was Frederick Stafford in Topaz(the male Tippi Hedren), but the rest of them were interesting if not starry. Family Plot had "names" (Bruce Dern, Karen Black, Barbara Harris) but not BIG names(and the best player was the least known of them, William Devane, great of face and voice.)
I suppose one could say that Hitchcock's decline was rather simply described: he got old, he got physically sick, he couldn't get big stars, he couldn't get big budgets, he was crowded out by a new generation of flimmakers.
All true. But...none of it really mattered. Because he was damn Alfred Hitchcock!
We fans were willing to wait, and to hope, and to remember. Every one of those films was an EVENT...even if bigger movies were happening all around them, not always that great themselves. (Honestly...Topaz opened the same time as Hello Dolly and Paint Your Wagon, but are THOSE considered great?)
I chuckled a bit when Easy Rider was offered as something that buried Hitchcock. It came out in the year of Topaz, it was a hand-held documentary style "youth film," it made a lot of money. I had the soundtrack album, as did my friends.
But it was a TERRIBLE film. Dennis Hopper was some kind of Hollywood hanger on who got traction for, oh, about one more film after Easy Rider(The Last Movie) and....OUT. George Cukor lasted longer.
Yes, Jack Nicholson made his big splash there, and he's good, but he's not in it much and the cheapness of the whole project rather defeats him.
CONT
I also chuckled when they showed clips of Virginia Woolf -- adapted for the screen and produced by Ernest "NXNW" Lehman. Hardly new Hollywood. And Bonnie and Clyde, to me, is not as good as it was made out to be(they showed the Arbogast-inspired clip where the bank clerk gets shot in the face.) Clearly, these WERE more important films in the public and critical eye around the time that Torn Curtain and Topaz were Hitchcock's entries....but they weren't all THAT major. As with North by Northwest and Psycho, "you had to be there" when they were exciting and new and audience favorites. The Graduate looks a bit less monumental, now.
Hey, wait..."is this guy saying that Topaz was better than The Graduate?" No. Nor as important. Nor, certainly as much as a hit. But I AM saying that some of the New Hollywood films eventually lost their luster and Topaz has hung on as...a Hitchcock film, with Hitchcock touches, and Hitchcock set-pieces, and a good-enough story (and if they chopped off any false endings, better than that. End it at the NATO meeting says I.)
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CONT
Watching this film, I realized that the "Dark Ages"(the final four? why not the final five?) are rather like the psychiatrist scene in Psycho...for me. The world dismisses them, but I like them.
I'll go with this statement(particularly after looking at all the clips.)
I personally prefer to watch Hitchcock's films from 1966 through 1976 than I do to watch his films from 1940 through 1950.
Which might be seen as insane, but I have these reasons:
ONE: Unlike with the forties films, I was young and alive and able to see those final four films "in my time." First run.
They were ALL events in the waiting for. My family routed two vacations(one at Xmas for Topaz, and one in summer for Frenzy) to drive hundreds of miles to see those two films because they were not available in our small town(oh, we did other things, too, but seeing Topaz and Frenzy was MY part of the show.) And I saw Family Plot at its World Premiere(attended by Hitchcock himself) as the opening film of the 1976 FILMEX film festival in LA.
TWO: Unlike the forties films, Hitchocck made his final films AFTER he made Vertigo, NXNW and Psycho. So these late Hitchocck films are rather INFORMED by Vertigo, NXNW, and Psycho. Hitchcock had "peaked" earlier, but retained now a sophistication and sense of what works that he didn't have before then. And he could repeat devices: there is an Arbogast character in every movie from The Birds through Family Plot, though most of them live (Rod Taylor as Mitch, Sean Connery as Mark, Gromek the spy, DuBois the spy AND the young journalist who grills noiret in Topaz, Babs in Frenzy, Madame Blanche in Family Plot.)
CONT
There was some bad news to following "the greats." The Birds and Frenzy couldn't really beat Psycho. The spy films Torn Curtain and Topaz couldn't really beat North by Northwest. The twisted love story of Marnie couldn't really beat Vertigo. And Family Plot couldn't beat...North by Northwest either. It wasn't a spy story but it was a comedy-thriller, with a shared screenwriter(Ernest Lehman),with a shared runaway car scene. BUT, even if failing against their forbears, they REMINDED us of those forbears, and felt all the more like Real Hitchcock.
Note in passing: the young documentarion shows the ballet house climax of Torn Curtain and remarks on how rather dull and uninvolving it is. Yes, that's true -- though the set-up is good(Paul and Julie are surrounded by baddies -- how will they escape) and the idea is "fun" ("Fire in a crowded theater.") But what the documentarian DOESN'T say is that THIS climax seemed "meh" because it couldn't match the climax of North by Northwest -- on Mount Rushmore(no greater setting in movies for a climax), thundering Bernard Herrmann music, with people we cared for in grave danger: Hitchcock couldn't beat it(and neither in that era, could anyone else.)
CONT
THREE: Hitchcock's forties films, for me, personally -- and even some of those acknowledged as classics, -- are 'too far back" and of a more stately and romantic period in American film: Rebecca, Suspcion...just not of particular interest to me(yep, Frenzy is FAR more gripping and colorful and weird.) And something about Spellbound never worked for me -- Peck too callow a male lead, the overemphasis on pop Freud, I dunno. Notorious right after was GREAT(Grant and Bergman much better matched, in such a sophisticated story) but it, too, lacks the VistaVision excitement of North by Northwest and the shock thrills of Psycho. None of the Dark Age films are better than Notorious, but they have a bit more action and (in Frenzy's case), shock.
Shadow of a Doubt is my favorite of that era.
I suppose the odd thing about the forties versus Htichcock's Dark Ages is that he pumped out a movie a year with ease --the forties(like the fifties) are CROWDED with Hitchcock movies. Those final four came out at very measured intervals: two years, three years, FOUR years...and ended up feeling that much more like events (with the hidden suspense: "Is THIS one Hitchcock's LAST one?")
The documentarian lists Hitchcock's Golden Age as "1954 through 1964," so as to include Strangers on a Train as the climax to an experimental period. Maybe. I think the better stretch is "1951 through 1963,: Start with Strangers, end with The Birds, you've got Hitchcock's most famous and successful works. (You gotta move poor Marnie to the Dark Ages, but that movie is the last one with Herrmann and Burks and Tomasini so...its all alone by the telephone.)
And most of us know -- ON topic to this page -- that for all its fame and effects, The Birds didn't climax Hitchcock's Golden Age as well, and as perfectly, and as (to use the documentarian's term) monumentally as Psycho.
CONT
The documentarian knows his "Dark Ages" stuff. He knows that Frenzy was a comeback hit. I'm not sure if he knows (given his age) just HOW surprising that comeback was, how much Hitchocck was talked about and written about that summer...as if he had finally again delivered a movie not only worth talking about -- but worth bringing up all his past history with.
The first time I saw Frenzy was at the Cinerama Dome in Hollywood. The second time was about a month later when it had reached my smaller town and I saw it at the drive-in with "the teenage gang." I remember walking to the edge of the drive-in and looking up at the marquee facing the street(there was only one double-bill playing): ALFRED HITCHCOCK'S FRENZY."
I felt: "I'm finally really a PART of this guy's successful period. He finally means something again." Then I went and watched the movie with my friends. They didn't like it , found it dull. They liked the second feature, Eastwood's Psycho-like "Play Misty for Me" better. A life lesson.
The documentarian makes a great point that Hitchcock himself refuted("He didn't get the memo," says the young man) Frenzy should have been Hitchcock's final film. He would have gone out with a well-reviewed critical and audience hit.
That Hitchcock practically dragged himself across another four years to get Family Plot made and released -- however less "perfect" it looked than Frenzy -- has always told me: Hitchcock didn't want a movie as bleak and savage and ugly as Frenzy(in content) to be the last one. He wanted to go out with something nicer. And so he did.
CONT
The clips on Family Plot include two great hidden ones: Bruce Dern in a bright blue jacket meeting a woman at a department store whose violet blue suit gives the whole scene a "blue" feeling that is easy on the eyes and (2) that great moment when Madame Blanche enters Adamsons' garage and finally, the two most important characters in the story meet(it gave me a frisson charge of excitement when I first saw this moment).
The documentarion "goes after" the runaway car chase scene in Family Plot(which I love) by pitting it against clips from The French Connection, Vanishing Point, and Bullitt. I think the young fellow misses the point. Yes, those were popular movies(well, two of them) with big action car chases. But the clips themselves show us that a lot of the car chase action was filmed at a distance(long shots, medium shots) with stunt drivers.
Hitchcock had no interest in filming such a scene. He wanted an effect that he tried for in North by Northwest, but PERFECTED in Family Plot: to recreate -- from the POV of the car driver/rider -- a "roller coster effect." Simply put, the camera never leaves the car(except once, a tiny bit). And there is no shot of the hood and hood ornament(as there was in NXNW) to remove the gut-clutching dizziness of the ride. And yes, its funny. And no, i don't mind the process -- it allows Dern and Harris to ACT. (Same with Marty Balsam on the stairs in Psycho, and isn't it interesting that THAT movie has a high perch in film history "irregardless" of the process fall in that film. Why? Because its a GREAT process fall.)
CONT
I guess that's enough. I do think it is amusing/interesting that Hitchcock's final films have such a hold on young film buffs. QT's theory works here...but it doesn't. (I note that the narrator only allowed for John Huston to have beaten the theory -- and shows a superfast clip from Wilder's Sherlock Holmes -- with the Loch Ness Monster -- to demonstrate how Billy went down.)
Me? I'm glad I was alive to see Torn Curtain, Topaz, Frenzy and Family Plot first run. They were exciting in the anticipation and in the presentation(at theaters festooned with Hitchcock photos and memorablila for Topaz and Frenzy) even if a bit disappointing in the payoff.
Oh, my Torn Curtain story.
We saw it at that beach theater where we saw other movies in summer. Yep..walk in from the bright SoCal beach and into a dark theater with a grim gray East German setting for the movie.
The deal was this: because of a baby in the house, we split up into two groups to see Torn Curtain at two different showings in the same day. I was in the second group. My mother returned from the first showing(first group) and said: "I'm not sure the kids should see this one. It has a very gory murder of a man in it."
I threw a rather erudite temper tantrum. If my sibling HAD gotten to see this gory murder, I should be able to see it too. How else could I prove myself with the kids on the playground movie talks? How else could I prove I was "tough enough?(movie-wise.)
So I was taken in the second group, and I saw Gromek get gorily killed. (Irony: never allowed to see Marion and Arbogast get killed, allowed to see Gromek get killed.)
We were the cool ones at school when summer ended and we could talk about Gromek!
(I note that the narrator only allowed for John Huston to have beaten the theory -- and shows a superfast clip from Wilder's Sherlock Holmes -- with the Loch Ness Monster -- to demonstrate how Billy went down.)Yeah, that shot was a bit of a cheap shot against Wilder! Wilder's Sherlock Holmes film is worth seeing, as is Fedora (1978). But I guess the doc-maker is on the right track in that Huston's best films post-1970 aren't just nice-to-sees, they're bona fide *must-sees* for everyone eventually, just as Frenzy is of course, but Huston managed 4 or 5 after 1970 with that quality. Outside Hollywood though, Bunuel was born in 1900 and his 1970s output is all classics: Tristana, Discrete Charm of the Bourgeoisie, Phantom of Liberty, That Obscure Object of Desire. So I think we are right, period, to reject QT's general theory. share
(I note that the narrator only allowed for John Huston to have beaten the theory -- and shows a superfast clip from Wilder's Sherlock Holmes -- with the Loch Ness Monster -- to demonstrate how Billy went down.)
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Yeah, that shot was a bit of a cheap shot against Wilder! Wilder's Sherlock Holmes film is worth seeing, as is Fedora (1978).
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I saw Sherlock Holmes -- on release in 1970 -- and it is worth seeing, a very melancholy film(with a very sad instrumental theme) that FEELS rather like Topaz -- "old masters caught in the changing times but still with something to say" (stylistically on Hitchocck's part.)
Wilder ran into Hitchcock's problem here: he couldn't get stars. He sought Peters O'Toole and Sellers for Holmes and Watson, but ended up with unknowns (Robert Stephens and Colin Blakely.) Moreover, while Wilder was hardly known as an "action man"(and Hitchcock kinda WAS)..Sherlock Holmes (like Topaz) rather glides along on talk and rarely turns into something exciting.
After Sherlock Holmes, Wilder got "stars" -- but they were the same stars: Jack Lemmon and Walter Matthau. Good, loyal guys, a bit past their prime(Lemmon especially), sort of needing work themselves. And Bill "Sunset Boulevard" Holden came back for Fedora(which I have not seen, and should.)
Look, though it is less so with Wilder than with Hitchcock, I'm glad that all of their final films were made. Auteurism and good memories kept those late works welcome enough. Except maybe for Buddy, Buddy, which has terrible cinematograph,y a finally-ugly Walter Matthau(it was sad for me to see him that way, he was a favorite), really out of date lines.
CONT
But I guess the doc-maker is on the right track in that Huston's best films post-1970 aren't just nice-to-sees, they're bona fide *must-sees* for everyone eventually, just as Frenzy is of course, but Huston managed 4 or 5 after 1970 with that quality.
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Huston interests me because, vis-Ã -vis "the health thing," he directed several of his final films on oxygen!
I will agree that Huston made more must sees in his final films than Hitchcock did -- but Huston in the 80's was occasionally "for hire" -- that soccer movie with Sly Stallone and Michael Caine; "Annie" of all things -- and I don't think he really "stood out" like the Great Hitchcock did because WHY the Great Hitchcock WAS the Great Hitchcock is that ...he didn't do ANYTHING for hire...and his movies were works of style perhaps before they were filmed stories.
I'm reminded that in the summer of 1972 when Hitchcock had his Frenzy comeback...John Huston had his "Fat City" comeback. But the latter film(about down and out boxers in California) wasn't much of a hit; "critics only."
CONT
Outside Hollywood though, Bunuel was born in 1900 and his 1970s output is all classics: Tristana, Discrete Charm of the Bourgeoisie, Phantom of Liberty, That Obscure Object of Desire. So I think we are right, period, to reject QT's general theory.
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I think QT's theory REALLY collapses with a number of "foreign filmmakers." (Hey, I have to call them that; they didn't work in Hollywood and I'm in the US, so they are foreign to me.)
Point being: people like Bunuel and Kurosawa and Truffaut (who died young at 54) weren't caught up in the high budget, high production, high responsibility fillmaking world of Hollywood -- Hitchcock hung on there(where people like Capra and Ford did not) because he had protection at the end from Uncle Lew.
One reason that the "Dark Age" films are an issue with Hitchcock is that he clearly peaked as a filmmaker in that 1958-1963 period. MGM gave him his biggest budget and longest shooting schedule ever to do "North by Northwest," and Hitch could hire THREE major stars, with the two of the greatest for hero and villain(Grant and Mason); an Oscar winner for the heroine(Saint), and locations all over the United States, including Mount Rushmore for real(location) and Mount Rushmore wonderfully faked (in the studio.) It never really got better than that for Hitchcock.
He did Psycho cheap on purpose(his power manifested not in the budget, but in what he was allowed to show). Once he moved to Universal -- even with The Birds and its great effects -- he was under the thumb of people who started to CUT his budgets and CANCEL his projects.
That is a "hidden issue" about those "Dark Age" films. He worked a long time on a "new" psycho movie(the First Frenzy) only to have Universal stop it. He was forbidden to make his dream project, Mary Rose(which could have been another Vertigo, a critical success at least.) He evidently turned down Wait Until Dark(which would have required a loan-out to Warners.)
CONT
Some clarifications:
You know when you say something(or write something) and later you want to take it back.
I kind of want to take back my preference for the four Hitchcock films of 1966 to 1976 over the multitude of Hitchcock films from 1940 to 1950.
I'd say that two of Hitchcock's final four -- Topaz and Family Plot -- are actually not "full movies." They are not competently made. For instance, a shot through the Hotel Theresa lobby window of DuBois convincing Ubribe to spy on the Cubans STARTS great as we see the men talking in silence. But it goes on...and on...and on...and on...as Hitchcock HAS to show the whole transaction and we want to yell "CUT!". Its the same with some of the overlong scenes in Family Plot and some of the process work there.
In comparison, ALL of Hitchcocks forties films have the competent look of being made by a man in good health and fine mental fettle. These films perhaps lack the "heart and soul" of Hitchcock's fifties work(especially with Bernard Herrmann matching I'm 50/50) but they are "real movies."
And I particularly like Foreign Correspondent(the Early Arbogast bloody face murder; the windmills, the plane crash into the sea); Saboteur(Lady Liberty and a GREAT villain in Otto Kruger); Shadow of a Doubt(like Notorious, it feels modern and somewhat kinky); Lifeboat(a great stunt with interesting people and surprising violence for its time); Notorious(the "glamour" match to Shadow of a Doubt) and Rope(not ONLY for the stunt, but also for the evil of the killers and the brashness of their plan.)
Why do I like the "final four" more? I dunno. I guess because I went to the theater -- and great lengths, and more times than once -- to see them? Also because I DID like Sean Connery and Paul Newman as movie stars, they make a difference. Julie Andrews, too and hey-- her work in Torn Curtain is more heartfelt and emotional than anything Eva Marie Saint gets to do in NXNW.
CONT
CONT
About Torn Curtain. I'm reminded that it is the only original screenplay for a Hitchcock picture after North by Northwest, and I think together they are the ONLY originals of the fifties and sixties in Hitchcock's work. Everything else was from novels, plays, short stories.
And this: Hitchcock HIMSELF came up for the idea for Torn Curtain: a man defects to the Communists. How does his wife feel about that? This came through pretty well in Part One...hence Julie's legit emotionalism (love of man versus love of country.) But Newman is NOT a defector(he's like an "undercover cop," always suspenseful. Hitchcock pretty much told the story he wanted to tell in Torn Curtain -- just not as excitingly as in NXNW.
I return with this contemplation:
If I am pitting "the final five Hitchcocks" of the sixties and seventies against the Hitchcock films of the forties(which are less enjoyable to me personally), I have a little bit of film critic support on my side with regard to four Hitchcock movies in a row, from the late forties to the early fifties:
The Paradine Case
Rope
Under Capricorn
Stage Fright
These are called, in some places, "the Hitchcock male menopause period." Unfairly, perhaps, but there is this:
The four movies are "bracketed" by the great Notorious before them, and the great "Strangers on a Train" after them (and Strangers on a Train rather shifts from the action-free but suspenseful stasis of Notorious and into a more action-packed form of 50's entertainment -- as if Hitchcock somehow anticipated the Coming of Television.)
There are reasons for the "male menopause." The Paradine Case was (contracturally?) Hitchcock's final film for Selznick, and Hitchcock was rather bored by then, and Selznick heavily interfered in the writing and making of the film.
Rope and Under Capricorn were made under Hitchcock's short-lived "Transatlantic Pictures" and evidently he didn't have the strong support system of a studio beneath him(though Warners distributed both.) The "continuous long takes" -- total in Rope and partial in Under Capricorn, turned a lot of people off evidently.
And of course Under Capricorn wasn't much of a thriller and WAS a costume drama.
As for Stage Fright - I don't know. It has partisans here, it certainly had stars( a newly Oscared Jane Wyman and Marlene Dietrich), I suppose it is just a bit too staid and mystery novelish coming right before the excitements of Strangers on a Train.
CONT
In any event, for ME personally, I certainly prefer Hitchcock's final five to the male menopause four.
With one exception: I do like Rope, both for the stunt and for the plot -- the cruel and arbitrary evil of the killers and their plot; James Stewart's uncomfortable complicity in it.
I don't believe that any of the "male menopause four" were hits EXCEPT Stage Fright.
Anyhow, the rabbithole of youtube film nerd doc-making runs pretty deep. God help me, I recently watched a 5+ hour video series nominally on Paul Verhoeven's Starship Troopers (1997) from Kyle Kallgren's 'Brows Held High' channel.
Kallgren grew up in the US in a broadly military family that worshipped Robert Heinlein's sci-fi but then went to High School in the Netherlands ultimately spending over a decade there. So he's almost uniquely well-placed to understand both Heinlein *and* Verhoeven *and* the latter's take on the former. In the first vid. in the series Kallgren revisits and tries to process almost all of Heinlein's novels; in the second vid he watches almost all of Verhoeven's films; and in the third (two hour) video Kallgren basically has a nervous breakdown on-screen as he grapples with his dual national identity and how to recognize fascism in himself and his own family. It's all quite amazingly researched but a little disturbing and painful to watch. I had plenty of motivation to go through it all though since I too grew up with all the Heinlein stuff (but hadn't thought about since then) and also have a somewhat dual national personal identity. If any of this sounds interesting or relevant to you too, start here (but, no kidding, you've been warned: here be a rabbithole!):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y5bHLrGBUKo
Anyhow, the rabbithole of youtube film nerd doc-making runs pretty deep. God help me, I recently watched a 5+ hour video series nominally on Paul Verhoeven's Starship Troopers (1997) from Kyle Kallgren's 'Brows Held High' channel.
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The internet in general has allowed the world to express itself. But when you add YouTube and video and film into the mix...not only is Everybody a Star...some of those stars can be very esoteric indeed.
Watching the Hitchcock Dark Age documentary, I was impressed at how tight the quick cuts to clips were -- just like a "professional" Hollywood production. How professional are these matters? Does somebody help? Or are these all homegrown?
BTW, its funny how the doc opens not with Hitchcock, but with The Godfather("I believe in America") Coppola...who evidently devolved down to the Spaz rapper kid in the later clip. THAT's a decline.
BTW, its a little Unfair how the doc guy turns the rather intellectual "chalkboard duel" in Torn Curtain into "a snoozefest." His take. Not mine. Same with comparing the Family Plot runaway car(which is NOT a car chase) to Bullitt. But...its his show, he can say what he wants.
CONT
If any of this sounds interesting or relevant to you too, start here (but, no kidding, you've been warned: here be a rabbithole!):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y5bHLrGBUKo
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Heh, er...maybe. Or some of it.
Heinlein, I"'m not familiar with, though I was surrounded by students in high school and college who were reading his paperbacks. (Again..perhaps a retirement project for me.)
Verhoeven....well, he STARTED out as a rather sexually outrageous foreign filmmaker in the 70's..then went mainstream, but still pretty outrageous. Robocop is a Violence thing; Starship Troopers, Basic Instinct, Total Recall and Showgirls seem to "mix it up." Sex with some violence; violence with some sex. I'm still not sure if ALL of those are good movies(Showgirls, I'm looking at you) but you can't say they aren't attention-getting.
Heinlein, I"'m not familiar with, though I was surrounded by students in high school and college who were reading his paperbacks. (Again..perhaps a retirement project for me.)Heinlein is constantly preaching/proselytizing. He's from the same era, after all, as people like Ayn Rand and L. Ron Hubbard and Dale Carnegie... It's perfect for early High School kids who just want to absorb as much supposed wisdom as quickly as possible often with a side-helping of snark and mockery for any competing ideas. In Heinlein's case his smirking libertarianism and hyper-militarism (two ideas that are *very hard* to put together in the real world without an overarching Social Darwinism so Heinlein becomes a delivery mechanism for the latter too!) is an intoxicating brew if you're 14, especially if you're male. For adults, however, Heinlein's hard sell of 'big ideas' (and non-stop caricaturing of any alternative perspectives) is simultaneously way too much (get on with the story dude!) and also way too *little* to swallow. As an adult, if you want to take a proper, fair-minded course in political sci. or philosophy you just do that, and you don't accept some novelist's crazy Cliff Notes on Political Thought as a serious alternative to that. share
As an adult, if you want to take a proper, fair-minded course in political sci. or philosophy you just do that, and you don't accept some novelist's crazy Cliff Notes on Political Thought as a serious alternative to that.
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Ha. Well maybe I WON'T make a reading of Heinlein part of my retirement project.
I've been thinking more of doing "the great novels" thing -- Moby Dick Great Expectations, THe Grapes of Wrath....stuff I missed in school.
...while I was getting soft and spoiled on Hitchcock, Peckinpah, Scorsese, and QT.
I've been thinking more of doing "the great novels" thing -- Moby Dick Great Expectations, THe Grapes of Wrath....stuff I missed in school.In my experience, reading a famously great & important novel is a good exercise *even if* or perhaps *especially* if you *didn't* miss it in school. When I reread as an adult I find I have such a much greater historical awareness and general life experience so that the book often reads completely differently. So, for example, I read lots of Joseph Conrad in High School and basically interpreted his stuff psychologically and symbolically, whereas re-reading now he's brutally realistic about the realities of the world around 1900: globalizing fast, wracked with terrorism and extremism and prejudice of various sorts, imperial powers are fading fast but still make vast profits off exploitation and genocide, huge bureaucracies frustrate both individuals and communities but serve and grease the wheels of large multi-nationals, and so on. For another example, reading Grapes of Wrath is one thing, but reading it once you've seen Ken Burns' Dust Bowl documentary is quite another. Indeed, when I read Grapes in high school I'm pretty sure I had no real grasp of FDR and The New Deal and how all of that fitted with the 'roaring '20s before it and the rise of Fascism in Europe later. I was really into Busby Berkeley musicals in high school too but I somehow never fitted that stuff together with Grapes either. Grapes is *so* different when you have something close to the background that was second nature to its first readers at the time. share
I've been thinking more of doing "the great novels" thing -- Moby Dick Great Expectations, THe Grapes of Wrath....stuff I missed in school.
In my experience, reading a famously great & important novel is a good exercise *even if* or perhaps *especially* if you *didn't* miss it in school. When I reread as an adult I find I have such a much greater historical awareness and general life experience so that the book often reads completely differently.
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Yes. I suppose that this is another case of "youth is wasted on the young." Reading those books that I DID read, in my youth as assigned classroom reading, was pretty much a chore and I didn't have any life experience to put it in context.
I'm primed to read the great books NOW with the patience and even eagerness to experience them as something I WANT to read, rather than HAVING to read.
Its funny. I recall reading a fair amount as a youth for pleasure -- usually mysteries and spy stuff, sometimes as first seen in my parents' hands. Agatha Christie. Travis McGee. Len Deighton.
And Ian Fleming, of course. My father kept buying the "James Bond paperbacks' of the 60's and each one had a great cover -- different background color each time, the famous titles(Goldfinger, Thunderball), small painting of gorgeous women and evil villains. As he finished them, I read them -- they were certainly different from the movies!
And then came "the blockbuster books": The Godfather and Jaws, I read. The Exorcist, I did not(even before I didn't much like the movie, I was not much enticed by the book.)
I dutifully read the novels from which I knew Hitchcock movies were to be made: Topaz, Goodbye Picadilly, Farewell Leiceister Square(Frenzy), The Rainbird Pattern(Family Plot) -- and there was no way I could see THOSE books as Hitchcock movies. He proved me wrong.
And of course, I found and read a copy of Robert Bloch's Psycho during this time. I read it BEFORE I finally saw the movie. Which meant I already had Bloch's beheading of Mary(ian) Crane in my brain before I saw the tamer movie.
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Plus I went on an "Alastair MacLean" binge. His books were action thrillers on the page; kinda/sorta Hitchcockian in their suspense. Unlike the James Bond books, these were generally sexless affairs, "all guy missions" (The Guns of Navarone and Where Eagles Dare made famous movies.)
All of this is to say that -- rather as with my taste in movies -- I read for thriller entertainment while reading "for serious reasons" the classics at school.
And I'd like to see if I can re-enter that "serious reading world" with a newfound sense of responsibility and response to the material.
Keep in mind that a lot of the "writers on Hitchcock" (like Robin Wood) elected to compare his films to NOVELS and writers -- Joseph Conrad, A Passage to India -- as much as to other movies and filmmakers. I learned a LITTLE bit about classic authors through my Hitchocck studies.
For another example, reading Grapes of Wrath is one thing, but reading it once you've seen Ken Burns' Dust Bowl documentary is quite another. Indeed, when I read Grapes in high school I'm pretty sure I had no real grasp of FDR and The New Deal and how all of that fitted with the 'roaring '20s before it and the rise of Fascism in Europe later. I was really into Busby Berkeley musicals in high school too but I somehow never fitted that stuff together with Grapes either. Grapes is *so* different when you have something close to the background that was second nature to its first readers at the time.
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Yes, The Grapes of Wrath takes in all of those things. The NEED for Busby Berkeley musicals in a time of such great nationwide poverty becomes more clear now -- those folks weren't going to want to watch I Was a Prisoner on a Chain Gang. Though I suppose some did.
There is a movie from the 50's called "O Henry's Full House" in which five O Henry stories are done as small "mini-films." The movie is entertaining enough on its own terms, but of some fascination is the "on screen host" for the stories: John Steinbeck himself. It is interesting to see such a famous author "in the flesh" on the big screen.
Recall that Hitchcock worked with Steinbeck on the script and used his name to sell "Lifeboat" -- which certainly has some gritty class issues to discuss along with the WWII thrills.