It's under 50 minutes and I'am ready to hang it up and go to bed. The music was nice but the photography was claustrophobic. I expected more shots of NYC but I'll have to watch Naked City. I just popped the DVD and I can still hear them talking and talking. Good night Bob & Shirley.
shareThere was a time when movies were about dialog. The cinematography in TFTSS is intentionally claustrophobic. Much of NYC feels this way. Not much has changed in 50 yrs. I have friends in Manhattan that pay a fortune for single apartments. The two main characters in this film are thrust together by their crippled emotional state and their cramped environment.
shareWhile there have been movies with great dialog, movies are about cinematography and editing. Hitchcock famously put down movies that are just "pictures of people talking." The essence of cinema is visual.
"The value of an idea has nothing to do with the honesty of the man expressing it."--Oscar Wilde
Motion pictures based on theatrical plays tend to be overly talky.
However, if the dialogue and acting are good enough, you can overlook the shortcomings in the cinematography, "mise-en-scene," and editing.
2 for the Seesaw almost makes up for the visual stagnation with its rapid-fire repartee, but some of its efforts at snappy wit now seem dated. The gender roles are definitely from another era. Also, the sex angle is not as daring as it used to be.
It is not quite on the level of theatrical dramas that make excellent viewing as films, such as Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf, although it has its charm.
I agree it seems dated now. It's characters are drawn a bit too broadly for us to care about them. Even Gittel's illness seemed like a writer's ploy to stir up sympathy for the character. It was like a red herring that meant nothing when the final curtain fell.
Robert Mitchum's character rarely raises his emotional level above basic conversation with the exception of his inappropriate backhand to Gittel!
There must have been something in this story that clicked with audiences at the time. Seeing as the piece went from Broadway play, to motion picture, and then Broadway musical.
I'm a big fan of B&W films, human dramas, and "drawing-room" plays. But something about TFTSS just doesn't click.
Yeah! Why let a good story or acting get in the way of stuff that looks nice.
shareIt's not about looking "nice"; it's about using the visual elements rather than simple dialog to tell the story, to move it forward. Hitchcock's movies aren't always beautiful to look at, but the editing and the long tracking shots and all the other visual arsenal make the story more of a visceral experience for the audience. There are great dialog-propelled movies, like "My Dinner With Andre" and "Mindwalk," and sometimes talking is a more effective way of imparting certain information; but cinema is first and foremost a visual art.
"The value of an idea has nothing to do with the honesty of the man expressing it."--Oscar Wilde