May 2024: Amazon Prime Offers Some Key Hitchcock Movies "for free"

I sure hope I don't spoil a good thing here.

But it looks like for May, Amazon Prime has removed the "rent or buy" restrictions on these famous Hitchocck movies:

Rope
Rear Window
The Man Who Knew Too Much '56
Vertigo
Psycho

That's some good ones. You still have to pay(even with a subscription) to watch Family Plot..perhaps they want to keep that one away in comparison to those "golden oldies."

I have all of those on DVD but I don't watch them a lot. So it was fun to jump back and forth and look at them in bits and pieces.

I elected to "zero in" on The Man Who Knew Too Much '56 because its the one I haven't seen in a long, long time.

Its opening shot -- James Stewart, Doris Day(in a rather butch haircut) and their little boy Hank on a bus in Morocco surrounded by "Muslims." Total process screen scene. Boy that opening shot looked OLD -- even all dolled up in HD or 4D or whatever it was. I felt a bit deflated at how LONG ago Hitchocck pllied his trade.

Man 2 (shorthand for The Man Who Knew Too Much '56) came out in 1956. To Catch A Thief came out in 1955, but so did The Trouble With Harry -- a personal "little movie" between the two BIG box office hits that were To Catch a Thief and Man 2.

In the 70's, when Man 2 was removed from circulation, To Catch a Thief got a LOT of US airplay. It was the only 50's Hitchocck picture from Paramount allowed to screen regularly -- HItchocck didn't own it. (Psycho was in full 70's circulation in the 70s as a Paramount movie now owned by Universal.)

Well, its the same deal(kind of) with Amazon prime. To Catch A Thief is ALWAYS avaiable for free but -- we had to wait to get Man 2 that way.

And thus, again -- been a long time since I saw Man 2. The difference between Cary Grant as the lead in To Catch a Thief -- cool, calm, unruffled even when fighting for his life and James Stewart as the lead in Man 2 -- ALWAYS overemoting or angry, looming over wife Doris Day and actually yelling at her like a pet dog a couple of times -- boy , Stewart was a great actor but a lot less fun to hang with than Grant.

But then things are so much more dark and suspenseful in Man 2. A llittle boy kidnappend. Doris Day(Oscar worthy, at least a nom, says I) totally and belieably crying her eyes out at the news(Day ALWAYS cried in her movies, Hitchcock here gave her something to cry ABOUT.)

I stumbled across a "best movies" article by Guillermo De Toro the other day where he singled out Man 2 as one of the greatest Hitchcocks, well maybe it is. The tension is pretty unbearable what with the boy kidnapped by folks out to assassinate a world leader. Stewart powers out at top angry tension level and Day is...again...stunning as the mother trying to survive hysteria(I saw something of Ellen Burstyn in The Exorcist here.)

And the great murder of Louis Bernard with the brownface paint coming onto Stewart's hands and the almost erotic close-up of Bernard's mouth to Stewart's ear -- and then the close up on Stewart's anquished face and blue eyes as he knows too much.

And Albert Hall of course. And that nicely suspenseful showdown between Stewart and the main baddie -- on a staircase natch -- where you can see why Clint Eastwood said he preferred James Stewart to John Wayne as a star.

Two relevances to Psycho:

ONE: One realizes yet again why New York Times critic Bosley Crowther wrote of Psycho: "It is obviously a low budget job." Because Man 2 is obviously a BIG budget job. Location work in Morocco (an exotic land to battle black and white TV shows) AND London. That huge set piece at Albert Hall -- more cinematic prowess in that one scene than all of ...Frenzy, not Psycho (Psycho had those two intricate murder scenes.)

TWO: I forgot: a big scene in Man 2 takes place in a TAXIDERMY shop! So scholars can make a DIRECT connection between Man 2 and Psycho. The scene truly is great as it bulids on suspense(are THESE men among the kidnappers) to comedy (oops, they aren't!) Great final notes from Bernard Herrmann on a great final shot of a stuffed lion's head. Soon Hitchocck would stuff an old woman and make screen history.

With Amazon prime "opening the gates" to those Paramount Hitchcocks of the fifties(plus Rope from the 40s, a Warners/Transatlanci film) I am reminded of two quotes:

ONE: From Richard Corliss about Psycho:

"Its as if the pudgy old possum(Hitchcock) spent the entire fifties making dry mystery thrillers in Tecnicolor simply so as to shock us to our bones after the decade ended with a scream-filled black and white horror movie." (That's all paraphrased, except "pudgy old possum" and the general theme of the sentence.

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