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"So Who Says Only Hitchcock Can Make a Mystery Suspense Film?"

posted 2 years ago by ecarle (14979)
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Charade has been called (too often, I think) "The Best Hitchcock film Hitchcock never made."

A number of people I've met over the years think that Hitchcock DID make it (that he did not is apparent in its lack of his visual set piece style.)

The reasons are pretty obvious though. Cary Grant. And with Audrey Hepburn as he had been with Ingrid Bergman and Grace Kelly. Hitchcock WANTED to work with Audrey Hepburn, and had her for a 1960 movie called "No Bail for the Judge" until she backed out. (Hitch was furious.)

BUT:

One interviewer asked Stanley Donen, the director of Charade, about its resemblance to a Hitchcock movie.

And Donen responded rather angrily: "So who says that only Hitchcock can make a mystery s uspense film?"

A good point. And in the 1960s and 1970s, suddenly a LOT of people were making Hitchcock films.

Christmas 1963 saw both Charade and The Prize at theaters. The Prize was an informal remake of North by Northwest and by the same screenwriter, with Paul Newman(mugging too much) in the Cary Grant role. Wrote one critic "Imitation Hitchcock seems to be in style this Christmas."

Though Psycho had put Hitchcock on the horror thriller map, it was his spy thriller North by Northwest that was probably more influential in the 60s. Spy movies EVERYWHERE, led by James Bond over seven movies, and

Arabesque
The Ipcress File
The Sillencers
Blindfold
Funeral in Berlin
The Spy Who Came in From the Cold(VERY serious.)

Plus non-spy thrillers like Charade and Wait Until Dark(both with Audrey Hepburn menaced by crooks over a hidden fortune.)

And the very scary Cape Fear, turned down by Hitchcock, but with a Psycho-like score by Bernard Herrmann who wrote that same score.

Poor Hitchcock found himself besotted on all sides by people trying to make thrillers (and money) like he did with NXNW and Psycho. He competed starting strong with The Birds(more horror and a SciFi/fantasy angle) but losing the battle to more sexy, action packed films as all he could offer was the auteurism of Marnie, Torn Curtain, and Topaz.

Back on topic: of ALL of those sixties films above, only Charade really feels like classic Hitchcock in its low key mix of murder, romance, and mayhem. Wait Until Dark is a scream machine(like Psycho) but without romance.

Came the 70s, the spy chase thriller got gruesome with Marathon Man and overtly political with Three Days of the Condor.

And as the decades went by - Hitchcock died in 1980 -- it was like the genteel thriller died with him. Horror, ultra-violence and Bond continued on.


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[–] BillySlater (4097) 2 years ago

For all intents and purposes it was a Hitchcock copycat film. That said it works regardless and probably was all the better for it. Hitch loved his grandiose, over the top sequences which I feel would have spoiled the intrigue of Charade.

I think its a big reason why I prefer Hitch's older British films like The 39 Steps and The Lady Vanishes because Hitch had to rely on pure mystery/intrigue than elaborate action sequences.

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[–] ecarle (14979) 2 years ago

For all intents and purposes it was a Hitchcock copycat film. That said it works regardless and probably was all the better for it.

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It had the feeling of the "fun" Hitchcock films of the 50's with Grant -- To Catch a Thief and North by Northwest. It had a fine romance.

And as with NXNW, it was very much a film about false identities. At the beginning of NXNW, Philip Vandamm thinks that Roger Thornhill is George Kaplan and Thornhill thinks that Vandamm is Lester Townsend!

In Charade, Grant changes names about four times -- and someone else (the killer) does too.

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Hitch loved his grandiose, over the top sequences which I feel would have spoiled the intrigue of Charade.

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Well, Hitchcock was big on "long silent visual sequences." And fancy shots. Not much of that in Charade...it is straightforward stuff with a nice lush polish to it(and Paris.)

The fight between Grant and hook-handed George Kennedy is Bondish and surprisingly violent -- "old" Cary Grant is in fine fighting shape when his stunt man isn't there -- and ends on a funny, not horrible, note.

All the running and shooting at the end is good climax stuff, but not Hitchcock level in complexity.

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I think its a big reason why I prefer Hitch's older British films like The 39 Steps and The Lady Vanishes because Hitch had to rely on pure mystery/intrigue than elaborate action sequences.

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That's an interesting point. For his last 20 years, it seems that Hitchcock felt required to give his movies those big action pieces -- made them blockbusters.


Not so much in the British ones. The 39 Steps simply isn't "mounted for action" like North by Northwest is.

I kinda like the set pieces.

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[–] ecarle (14979) 2 years ago

One thing I liked a little BETTER in Charade than in Hitchcock: a certain "tough American gangster" touch to the bad guys, a certain emphasis on the killer and the fortune hiding in plain sight. Charade was a bit more "hip" than Hitchcock, with quite the cast of "stars waiting to be stars" in support of Grant and Hepburn. Walter Matthau and James Coburn would become (odd) leading men; George Kennedy an Oscar winning, top tier character star(and Matthau and Coburn eventually got an Oscar, too.)

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[–] BillySlater (4097) 2 years ago

RE: the remake.

I havent seen it but Wahlberg and Thandie as the leads just sounds bizarre. I heard it got savaged by the box office and critics alike, no wonder Stone didnt want his name attached.

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[–] BillySlater (4097) 2 years ago

Yeah many similarities. Didnt mention the rooftop fight scene between GK and Grant which is a favourite of Hitchcock's too!

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[–] ElizabethJoestar (930) 2 years ago

It's weird: I've often heard this movie described as Hitchcockian, and it does have a lot of NBNW influence in there, but I would never mistake it for Hitchcock. It lacks a certain something-- maybe Freudian elements? I'm not sure. I feel much the same about a lot of other movies called Hitchcockian-- they're often just stylish suspense-thrillers, not necessarily cut from Hitchcock's interests.

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[–] ecarle (14979) 2 years ago

It's weird: I've often heard this movie described as Hitchcockian, and it does have a lot of NBNW influence in there, but I would never mistake it for Hitchcock.

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Now, that's interesting. Over my years as a professed Hitchcock fan, I always had people asking me, "and wasn't his Charade GREAT?" and I have to tell them he didn't make it and they say "Really...I could have sworn he did."

But truthfully, Charade isn't really that Hitchcockian. It is at once "worse" than his greatest work (Hitchocck scholar Robin Wood called it "a shallow pastiche") and better than a lot of his work -- in a very then-modern, hip 1960's way. The Henry Mancini score often sounds a lot like his score on the Peter Gunn TV series, and Charade kinda plays like Gunn on the big screen, with Cary Grant in for Craig Stevens(WAIT...Stevens was based in Gunn ON Grant.)

I'll go there: if the choice is between Hitchcock's To Catch a Thief (Grant and Kelly) and Donen's Charade(Grant and Hepburn)...I'll go with Charade. It has more action than To Catch a Thief(a great fight), more rather scary murders(a thriller that THRILLS) and a general atmosphere of hip one-liners delivered by some of the best in the business(Grant, Hepburn, Matthau, Coburn, Kennedy.)

I rather like James Coburn's good ol' boy Texan, "Tex" Penthollow.

To Hepburn about her murdered husband: "He had no right to do it thata way; no right at all."

When he berates Grant for getting fooled by Hepburn : "She batted her pretty little eyes for you and you fell for it like an egg off a tall CHEECKIN !"

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[–] ecarle (14979) 2 years ago

But:

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It lacks a certain something-- maybe Freudian elements? I'm not sure. I feel much the same about a lot of other movies called Hitchcockian-- they're often just stylish suspense-thrillers, not necessarily cut from Hitchcock's interests.

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Indeed, not. As we know by now, Hitchcock's feelings ran deep and his art soared high, and movies like Notorious and
the Wrong Man and Vertigo were as interested in human psychology and relationships as in thrills or mystery.

Like many artists after him (Scorsese for one), its like Hitchcock would only make a "standard audience pleaser" about every two or three films -- to keep the studio contract - and then reward himself with a deeper dive into psychology.

Interesting: in 1963, the same year that Charade was a big hit in the "NXNW" tradition, Hitchcock was going for Fantasy and Youth(again, after Psycho) with The Birds. And while Hitchcocks next two films featured "romantic star couples"(Connery and kinda/sorta Hedren in Marnie; superstars Newman and Andrews in Torn Curtain) the movies were far from crowd pleasures. Marnie was perverse and unsexy about sex. Torn Curtain converted what could have been a breezy NXNW chase into something soiled by its central, realistic murder -- committed by the hero!

Marnie and Torn Curtain were far worse reviewed and enjoyed than Charade...but you gotta admit, Hitchcock kept to his dark, grim muse. By the time he got a hit again with Frenzy, it was a movie that made Charade look like sheer fun. Frenzy was a grim, sadistic exercise in great Hitchcockian style and themes. One can't picture Grant and Hepburn within a mile of it.

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[–] ecarle (14979) 2 years ago

That said, I'm here to tell you that in my young 60s youth, between the Mad Magazine parody and some parental chat, Charade sounded like a scary film in the Psycho tradition. The murders seemed cruel and brutal. And the revelation (SPOILER SPOILER) of the killer being Walter Matthau actually made HIM scary to me for awhile. Such a funny, deadpan guy...revealed pretty much to be a psycho monster at the end(though a sympathetic one: "They left me there, with six bullets in my body and nothing to kill the pain. They deserved to die.")

Cary Grant made only two flims after Charade, both romantic comedies. Charade saw Grant dipping his toe into what Psycho and the sixties had wrought: gruesome murders, more overt references to sex. It was about as rough and tough a movie as he'd ever make.

Sidebar: another reason that Charade REALLY doesn't play like a Hitchcock movie is that, at his peak, he truly was a genius worthy of study and remembrance.

Take Rear Window. A fine mystery, a fine romance BUT also about the most strenuous of "pure cinema" exercises in film history. All those cuts, all those POV shots of the window, all those shots of Stewart peeping away(truly a great actor, he had to come up with a different expression -- and the RIGHT expression -- scores of times.)

Truffaut called Hitchcock "the ultimate athlete of cinema" and the sedentary plump man certainly made his DP, his crews, and his editors RUN.

Charade(my second favorite movie of 1963) doesn't play at that level.

PS. Charade used to be my Number One movie of 1963, but I dropped it to Two and moved childhood favorite "Its a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World" up. Truly epic. Truly a memory over the decades. Penultimate Spencer Tracy film. Jonathan Winters owns it. Dick Shawn and Phil Silvers battle for second place and Ethel Merman takes the "battleax honors." Great score. Very sad ending that somehow turns very, very happy.

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[–] ElizabethJoestar (930) 2 years ago

That said, I'm here to tell you that in my young 60s youth, between the Mad Magazine parody and some parental chat, Charade sounded like a scary film in the Psycho tradition. The murders seemed cruel and brutal.
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They are pretty gruesome, especially for a movie with Audrey Hepburn. The one that stays with me is Tex suffocated in that plastic bag. It goes beyond a clean gunshot or even a stabbing-- that is just nasty.

Another freaky moment-- Scobie attacking Regina with his claw hand-- what a horrible way to go if the hit had connected!

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[–] ElizabethJoestar (930) 2 years ago

Sidebar: another reason that Charade REALLY doesn't play like a Hitchcock movie is that, at his peak, he truly was a genius worthy of study and remembrance.

Take Rear Window. A fine mystery, a fine romance BUT also about the most strenuous of "pure cinema" exercises in film history. All those cuts, all those POV shots of the window, all those shots of Stewart peeping away(truly a great actor, he had to come up with a different expression -- and the RIGHT expression -- scores of times.)

Truffaut called Hitchcock "the ultimate athlete of cinema" and the sedentary plump man certainly made his DP, his crews, and his editors RUN.
--
That's the thing: the editing and camerawork, the VISUAL STORYTELLING in Hitchcock is often what elevates his work. About the only "Hitchcockian" filmmaker who can compete (for me anyway) is Brian De Palma. His movies feel more Hitchcockian in psychosexual themes and imaginative visuals than more famous fare like Charade... though Charade is no slouch. The use of color and the compositions are often very creative-- it's just not Hitchcock, but that's to be expected.

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[–] ElizabethJoestar (930) 2 years ago

PS. Charade used to be my Number One movie of 1963, but I dropped it to Two and moved childhood favorite "Its a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World" up. Truly epic. Truly a memory over the decades. Penultimate Spencer Tracy film. Jonathan Winters owns it. Dick Shawn and Phil Silvers battle for second place and Ethel Merman takes the "battleax honors." Great score. Very sad ending that somehow turns very, very happy.
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Great pick! That's a fun little movie-- I love all the cameos and the scope. The gas station destruction scene is my favorite, appealing to the vicious little kid in me.

My fave for 1963 is Kurosawa's High and Low. Another thriller that gets called Hitchcockian when it's not really, but it is a fantastic film that holds up well on repeat watches. The ending is among the most chilling I have ever seen and it never fails to move me.

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[–] ElizabethJoestar (930) 2 years ago

But truthfully, Charade isn't really that Hitchcockian. It is at once "worse" than his greatest work (Hitchocck scholar Robin Wood called it "a shallow pastiche") and better than a lot of his work -- in a very then-modern, hip 1960's way. The Henry Mancini score often sounds a lot like his score on the Peter Gunn TV series, and Charade kinda plays like Gunn on the big screen, with Cary Grant in for Craig Stevens(WAIT...Stevens was based in Gunn ON Grant.)
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Wow, Robin Wood is harsh! It's only really "worse" in that it does not feature the deeper psychological bent of Hitchcock's best work. It's certainly confectionery, but what confectionery!

Charade is certainly interesting in its 60s-ness. I love the clothes, the lingo, everything-- very reminiscent of the first Pink Panther movie in showing the earlier part of the decade. Critic Geoffrey O'Brien (or was it Bruce Eder?) wrote an essay about Charade for the Criterion Collection release and pointed out how it represents the social leanings of the early 1960s-- where there was more cultural holdover from the 1950s-- than the later, more "swinging" part of the decade. You need only compare this with Donen's second attempt at a Charade style thriller, Arabesque.

And yeah, it's certainly more "hip" than Hitchcock-- Donen was about 25 years younger. It reminds me of our discussion about Wait Until Dark's script, where the play's stodgier dialogue was made "younger" by the screenwriters. It's not often discussed when people compare the "Hitchcockian" films of the 1960s and 1970s with the real deal, but it's still there.

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[–] ecarle (14979) 2 years ago

That said, I'm here to tell you that in my young 60s youth, between the Mad Magazine parody and some parental chat, Charade sounded like a scary film in the Psycho tradition. The murders seemed cruel and brutal.
--
They are pretty gruesome, especially for a movie with Audrey Hepburn. The one that stays with me is Tex suffocated in that plastic bag. It goes beyond a clean gunshot or even a stabbing-- that is just nasty.

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The plastic bag murder was depicted in the Mad Magazine parody -- and freaked me out THERE. Keep in mind, as a child I was raised in a household where we were warned not to put such bags over our heads -- "it will suffocate you!"-- and here was a parental threat in action.

One has to " piece together" how the killer did it. Knock Coburn out, tie Coburn down, THEN put the bag over his head so he awakens to his own strangling death -- and to draw "Dyle" in the floor with his finger.

Its the most tortuous of the killings -- perhaps the killer hated Coburn most of all.

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Another freaky moment-- Scobie attacking Regina with his claw hand-- what a horrible way to go if the hit had connected!

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I think the gimmick there is -- if you killer has a hook for a hand, he better use it. Near miss with Hepburn, a quick slash with Grant.

And recall the "escalating" threats of each of the three baddies to Hepburn, in a row: Ned Glass(the one "non big star to be" in support): verbal threat. Coburn: throws burning matches ONTO Hepburn(a trace of torture there, too.) Kennedy...the HOOK.

The brutality in Charade towards and around Audrey Hepburn anticipates that in Wait Until Dark four years later -- another thriller with three baddies out for Hepburn's loot(and , both times, she doesn't know where it is) -- but no Cary to save her.

Hepburn retired for 9 years after Wait Until Dark. Perhaps she sensed that the movies were simply going to get MORE violent, more "nasty." If so, she was right.

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[–] ecarle (14979) 2 years ago

Truffaut called Hitchcock "the ultimate athlete of cinema" and the sedentary plump man certainly made his DP, his crews, and his editors RUN.
--
That's the thing: the editing and camerawork, the VISUAL STORYTELLING in Hitchcock is often what elevates his work. About the only "Hitchcockian" filmmaker who can compete (for me anyway) is Brian De Palma. His movies feel more Hitchcockian in psychosexual themes and imaginative visuals than more famous fare like Charade... though Charade is no slouch. The use of color and the compositions are often very creative-- it's just not Hitchcock, but that's to be expected.

--

I came around on DePalma. In the beginning -- Sisters, Carrie, Obsession, Dressed to Kill -- he lived up to the SNL joke about him "Once a year, Brian De Palma picks the bones of a dead director, and gives his wife a job."
Hitchcock "homages" that didn't play like Hitchcock. Bungled, overlong suspense sequences.

But as the years went on and the budgets went up,DePalma seems to have found his own style -- very cinematic, very "art" (like Hitchcock) in the service of thrillers. And like Hitchcock, he had some great, exciting scores placed over his movies(the final subway/train station chase in "Carlito's Way" is carried by its exciting music as much as the imagery and action.)

Even when big stars started to work with him, his films still seemed to be rather subversive.

I saw that Brian De Palma turned 80 recently. That's the age when Hitchcock died. Here's hoping that DePalma outlives his mentor.

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[–] ecarle (14979) 2 years ago

PS. Charade used to be my Number One movie of 1963, but I dropped it to Two and moved childhood favorite "Its a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World" up. Truly epic. Truly a memory over the decades. Penultimate Spencer Tracy film. Jonathan Winters owns it. Dick Shawn and Phil Silvers battle for second place and Ethel Merman takes the "battleax honors." Great score. Very sad ending that somehow turns very, very happy.
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Great pick! That's a fun little movie-- I love all the cameos and the scope. The gas station destruction scene is my favorite, appealing to the vicious little kid in me.

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Mad, Mad World was a childhood favorite. I can still remember the joyous exhilaration I felt at the cliffhanger/people flying through the air climax. To adult eyes , its a lot of so-so process work(and some GOOD stunt work.) To a kid...it was the greatest climax this side of Rushmore in North by Northwest -- ANOTHER chase film.

But here's the thing: Mad Mad World continued on as a movie I'd see at college(full house, laughing) and revival theaters and it was quite hip ENOUGH for the older audience member.

Like when Winters is handed a small bicycle to ride for help:

"But this...this is a GIRL's bike. (Disgusted) This is a bike for a little girl..." Funny on paper? Not so much. When WINTERS says it? Gut busting.

And during that great gas station destruction scene, Winters chides the guys whose station HE is destroying: "I'm tellin' ya, I've just about had it wit'cha. You guys are gettin' out of line."

I'm laughing thinking about it.

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[–] ecarle (14979) 2 years ago

Charade had my Number One 1963 spot for years for all the great memories: Grant and Hepburn together; Matthau, Coburn and Kennedy in support. The Mancini music, the occasional action, the twists, the great one-liners.

But I"ve been "rearranging my list" over the years and there just seems to be something about Mad Mad World that was astonishing and will never come again. Having screen great Spencer Tracy AND all those comedians, two of whom (Milton Berle and Sid Caesar) had been the biggest TV comics of the 50s this side of Lucy Ball(not in it.) Plus new-style comics like Buddy Hackett(beautifully paired with the canny and underrated Mickey Rooney) and Winters. There have been numerous articles over the years noting that even if one used ONLY sitcom stars (today) ...you couldn't afford to cast Mad Mad World with Jerry Seinfeld and Kelsey Grammar and Jennifer Anniston, etc.

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[–] ecarle (14979) 2 years ago

My fave for 1963 is Kurosawa's High and Low. Another thriller that gets called Hitchcockian when it's not really, but it is a fantastic film that holds up well on repeat watches. The ending is among the most chilling I have ever seen and it never fails to move me.

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I have posted various places around here "fessing up" to a total lack of "foreign films" on my filmgoing resume. I simply wasn't brought up on them, and it will take years to catch up. I've seen SOME, but hardly all.

I hope to catch up on at least some of them in the years I have left.

High and Low is high on that list(higher, now.) I READ a lot about movies -- even foreign ones -- and the premise to High and Low sounded fantastic: kidnappers snatch a millionaire' son for a million dollar ransom ...but it turns out that they kidnapped -- the son of the millionaire's (poor) chauffeur. What to do, what to do? Issues of class and wealth. I don't know the ending, so I'd better hop to it and order it up.

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[–] ecarle (14979) 2 years ago

(Hitchocck scholar Robin Wood called it "a shallow pastiche")
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Wow, Robin Wood is harsh!

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Well, it was in his seminal work "Hitchcock's Films" which was out to make a "great artist" case for Hitchcock at the expense of "lesser works." Wood DID say that the most Hitchcockian moment in Charade came near the end, when Hepburn had to choose which of two men to trust(the other is a killer) and she goes on loving instinct against logic.

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It's only really "worse" in that it does not feature the deeper psychological bent of Hitchcock's best work.

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Yes and to me , "worse" isn't really "bad." Charade is not only one of my favorite movies, it has proven -- rather like Mad Mad World -- to be quite hard to duplicate. Impossible even. Its unique -- like The Sting. The cast is part of it -- its hard to match Grant and Hepburn AND three other movie stars in support(I"ll count Kennedy.) But, indeed, also the "capture of a time that would soon be gone."

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It's certainly confectionery, but what confectionery!

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Yep. Among movies that could not match it are Arabesque; Who is Killing the Great Chefs of Europe; Foul Play(too comedic), Somebody Killed Her Husband(anybody even REMEMBER that?)

Gambit with Shirley MacLaine and Michael Caine is quite good, but is more of a caper film without the grisly life and death stakes(ala Hitchcock) of Charade.

Then there is this puzzle: as super-entertaining a "Hitchcock fake" Charade was, the REAL Hitchcock just couldn't compete around the same years. Paul Newman and Julie Andrews -- megastars at the time -- in Torn Curtain were not as fun and memorable as Grant and Hepburn. Connery and Hedren in Marnie? No way. Topaz -- with French leads and some scenes in Paris -- nope. These were "lesser" Hitchcock films but, in their own way, STILL more artful and serious than Charade. Quite an odd outcome.


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[–] ecarle (14979) 2 years ago

Charade is certainly interesting in its 60s-ness. I love the clothes, the lingo, everything-- very reminiscent of the first Pink Panther movie in showing the earlier part of the decade.

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Well, both Charade and The Pink Panther(1964 original) had Henry Mancini scores -- and he was his own "auteur" in the 60's. His scores rather made a Stanley Donen movie and a Blake Edwards movie AND a Howard Hawks movie(Hatari) seem like they were made by the same man.

Maybe that's why Hitchcock fired Mancini off of Frenzy -- Herrmann had already done enough to steal Hitchcock's thunder.

But Charade and The Pink Panther are also both set in Paris...a very romantic city in that 60's decade...moreso than London(which is the setting for Arabesque.)

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Critic Geoffrey O'Brien (or was it Bruce Eder?)

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You got me...I'll go looking

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wrote an essay about Charade for the Criterion Collection release and pointed out how it represents the social leanings of the early 1960s-- where there was more cultural holdover from the 1950s-- than the later, more "swinging" part of the decade. You need only compare this with Donen's second attempt at a Charade style thriller, Arabesque.

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This is true. Charade was released just weeks after JFK was killed -- and its like the 50's went with them both. JFK blown away. Here come the Beatles and (eventually) Mod times and psychedelics.

Made 3 year after Charade, Arabesque is rather embarrassing now for how "badly hip" it tried to be -- Mod. Greg Peck is given LSD and has a trip, but other scenes and shots in the movie are all tilted and distorted and shot from inside glasses and all that other "too hip" cinematic technique that was over before it started. Charade ends up looking solidly traditional.

I do give Arabesque an edge for Mancini's score this time -- its more muscular, exotic(given the exotic Middle East characters in London, and Miss Loren) and exciting than Charade's.

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[–] ecarle (14979) 2 years ago

But Peck and Loren are supported by little known "foreign" players this time, there's no Matthau or Coburn or Kennedy. And -- in the North by Northwest tradition -- there is no whodunit here, just a spymaster and his henchmen chasing Peck(an innocent) and Loren(an Eva Marie Saintish two-timing spy) all over the place. Its OK...but no Charade.

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And yeah,(Charade is) certainly more "hip" than Hitchcock-- Donen was about 25 years younger.

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Wow. I forgot. By the time I saw Donen being interviewed on TV decades later -- he was an old man too. But sure...Hitchocck was hobbled by health and drinking issues in the 60's. Donen was probably sharper and more in tune with where the movies were going. That said, Hitchcock would not have "fallen" for the psychedelics in Arabesque, he knew when to keep it cool.

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It reminds me of our discussion about Wait Until Dark's script, where the play's stodgier dialogue was made "younger" by the screenwriters.

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I agree with all of that again and I again say: I am glad that Hitchcock was NOT the director of Wait Until Dark. He likely would have followed the stodgy play and no way we would have gotten the hip psycho performance of Alan Arkin.

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It's not often discussed when people compare the "Hitchcockian" films of the 1960s and 1970s with the real deal, but it's still there.

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The age difference? Perhaps. Its tough. The "young" Hitchcock made movies like The 39 Steps and Notorious, and by the 60's , those were WAY too staid for a new age.

Hitchcock lucked out and then crapped out. Lucked out: North by Northwest and Psycho, back to back, made big bucks(and Hitchcock richer) and set the template for all thrillers to follow them -- action or horror, take your pick. Crapped out -- except for The Birds and Frenzy, Hitchcock never really did well again after Psycho, and there are problems with both The Birds and Frenzy. (Frenzy just strikes me as flat out weird and unique. It doesn't play "action fun" like NXNW or Charade; it doesn't play "screaming fun" like Psycho or Halloween. It exists in its own hermetically sealed Covent Garden universe of great style and realistic murder.)


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[–] ElizabethJoestar (930) 2 years ago

By the time I saw Donen being interviewed on TV decades later -- he was an old man too. But sure...Hitchocck was hobbled by health and drinking issues in the 60's. Donen was probably sharper and more in tune with where the movies were going. That said, Hitchcock would not have "fallen" for the psychedelics in Arabesque, he knew when to keep it cool.
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I think Donen was very influenced by the French New Wave at the time, so he was certainly more up to date. I can't see Hitchcock using LSD as a plot element either. To be honest, he seemed more at home with the grottier world of the early 70s with Frenzy than he did with the swinging late 60s.

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[–] ecarle (14979) 2 years ago

I think Donen was very influenced by the French New Wave at the time, so he was certainly more up to date. I can't see Hitchcock using LSD as a plot element either. To be honest, he seemed more at home with the grottier world of the early 70s with Frenzy than he did with the swinging late 60s.

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Great point. Hitchcock lucked into a trend in the early 70's. With the "hippie hipness" of the 60's fading away, a group of new "film school" directors arrived with a love of "Old Hollywood" filmmaking: Bogdanovich in the main, but also Coppola and Lucas and Friedkin and Spielberg. And certainly DePalma. Frenzy mixed "grotty" (hard R) with "return to Old Hollywood" and..voila. (Even in England.)

As critic Richard Schickel wrote of Frenzy, "If Hitchocck is perfectly capable of imitating himself, why should he leave the job to a man like Peter Bogdanovich?"

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[–] ElizabethJoestar (930) 2 years ago

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I agree with all of that again and I again say: I am glad that Hitchcock was NOT the director of Wait Until Dark. He likely would have followed the stodgy play and no way we would have gotten the hip psycho performance of Alan Arkin.
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Me too. I love Hitchcock, but Audrey Hepburn and Alan Arkin are the prime reasons I adore the movie. I doubt I would enjoy the movie as much without their contributions.

I'm also glad Knott did not adapt his own script-- a choice he apparently regretted since he vehemently hated the movie. Apparently didn't think it was cinematic enough (because the film Dial M is so much more cinematic with scene changes?), complained the budget was too low (why would it need to be higher?), and he hated little changes to his script. Reading his complaints, it honestly felt like sour grapes to me... especially when one of his complaints was that the bad guy had "too many knives." Ah yes, Roat goes from having one knife in the play to.... one knife in the movie. (Did he forget the details, I wonder?)

Wow, that was a rant. Sorry!

Anyway, I like the screenplay more. Like the new dialogue, like the changes. It's funny, a community theater from New Jeresy posted a video of their recently staged version of Wait Until Dark and it was basically half taken from the movie rather than the play-- they had a prologue with Lisa (only in the film, not the original play script), showed Lisa's corpse onstage, aped the "Are you looking at me?" line, and had Susy break all the lights by herself without Gloria after the phone cord is cut by Roat (in the play, the phone is never cut and Susy has Gloria help her break the light bulbs). They even sometimes used Mancini's music to accent certain scenes. It was an interesting production with its own vibe-- but it goes to show just how much of a legacy the movie version still has.

Oh wow... that was a monster paragraph not at all about Charade. I love WUD too much lol.

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[–] ElizabethJoestar (930) 2 years ago

Hitchcock lucked out and then crapped out. Lucked out: North by Northwest and Psycho, back to back, made big bucks(and Hitchcock richer) and set the template for all thrillers to follow them -- action or horror, take your pick. Crapped out -- except for The Birds and Frenzy, Hitchcock never really did well again after Psycho, and there are problems with both The Birds and Frenzy. (Frenzy just strikes me as flat out weird and unique. It doesn't play "action fun" like NXNW or Charade; it doesn't play "screaming fun" like Psycho or Halloween. It exists in its own hermetically sealed Covent Garden universe of great style and realistic murder.)
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Psycho wasn't just Hitchcock's peak-- it basically represents the birth of modern cinema as we know it. I know some people prefer to use Bonnie and Clyde as the diving line between classic cinema and modern cinema, but Psycho is far bolder and in its own way, more radical. Watching Bonnie and Clyde, I'm seeing a period piece-- not just the 1930s, but the late 1960s in its concerns and anti-authoritarian posturing. Psycho still feels vital and unsettling, at least to me.

So Hitchcock would have had to pull out something even more groundbreaking and radical to top Psycho. He couldn't, but no one really could. I can't think of another movie which had that same impact, except maybe Star Wars, but even that movie is harmless compared to the dangerous world of Psycho.

The Birds is a movie that leaves me cold, but I've been reading more analyses of it, specifically of the Freudian themes, and have been meaning to rewatch it with those in mind. Frenzy... well, I've seen it twice and I liked it more on the second watch. I do not think I will ever love it, but it is a good film, if a disturbing one. I agree with Truffaut that it feels like a movie made by a young filmmaker, not a man with less than a decade left to live. And it's certainly nasty too, in a way I have to respect.

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[–] ElizabethJoestar (930) 2 years ago

This is true. Charade was released just weeks after JFK was killed -- and its like the 50's went with them both. JFK blown away. Here come the Beatles and (eventually) Mod times and psychedelics.

Made 3 year after Charade, Arabesque is rather embarrassing now for how "badly hip" it tried to be -- Mod. Greg Peck is given LSD and has a trip, but other scenes and shots in the movie are all tilted and distorted and shot from inside glasses and all that other "too hip" cinematic technique that was over before it started. Charade ends up looking solidly traditional.

I do give Arabesque an edge for Mancini's score this time -- its more muscular, exotic(given the exotic Middle East characters in London, and Miss Loren) and exciting than Charade's.
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I feel like Donen was diving big into the 60s scene during this period. Two for the Road has the non-linear story, weird flourishes (a scene with the footage sped-up for comic effect, freeze frames to highlight dramatic twists, bizarre match cuts), open discussion of sex, and Hepburn's mod fashions (that party dress that makes her look like a walking disco ball comes to mind). Arabesque has all those funky camera angles and even weirder psychedelic fashions. The bad guy wears sunglasses all the time and Loren is in these pure mod confections every scene. I also recall one of the henchmen spoke entirely in slang-- calling people "cat" and the like.

Charade is more traditional in comparison but it's also more timeless, even if it's very obviously set in the early 60s. It's not trying to be trendy or "young." Also Grant was just a better fit for the Hitchcockian plot. I like Gregory Peck, but he tends to sink in most comedies. He was too stiff to work in Arabesque.

Mancini's work in Arabesque is wonderful. I listen to it a bit and enjoy it more than the actual movie.

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[–] ecarle (14979) 2 years ago

Made 3 year after Charade, Arabesque is rather embarrassing now for how "badly hip" it tried to be -- Mod. Greg Peck is given LSD and has a trip, but other scenes and shots in the movie are all tilted and distorted and shot from inside glasses and all that other "too hip" cinematic technique that was over before it started. Charade ends up looking solidly traditional.

I do give Arabesque an edge for Mancini's score this time -- its more muscular, exotic(given the exotic Middle East characters in London, and Miss Loren) and exciting than Charade's.
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I feel like Donen was diving big into the 60s scene during this period. Two for the Road has the non-linear story, weird flourishes (a scene with the footage sped-up for comic effect, freeze frames to highlight dramatic twists, bizarre match cuts), open discussion of sex, and Hepburn's mod fashions (that party dress that makes her look like a walking disco ball comes to mind).

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I guess we can figure that in addition to being much younger than Hitchocck at the time, Donen was much more interested than Hitchcock in "following the New Cinema" as a participant. He had many more years to go; he had to compete.

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Arabesque has all those funky camera angles and even weirder psychedelic fashions. The bad guy wears sunglasses all the time and Loren is in these pure mod confections every scene.

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The fashions were SO radical in that movie, they were part OF the movie. I'm reminded that Hitchcock, when filming the scene in Frenzy(sorry, its all I have reports on from the time) where the two women walk past the wall and hear the scream -- said "cut" and had the women sent back to wardrobe to put on "less mod" outfits, more traditional.

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I also recall one of the henchmen spoke entirely in slang-- calling people "cat" and the like.

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Yes he did. Quite the evil fellow. Attacked Peck and Loren with a wrecking ball (in a crop duster simile.) Got electrocuted for his trouble.

MORE SOON

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[–] ElizabethJoestar (930) 2 years ago

Yes and to me , "worse" isn't really "bad." Charade is not only one of my favorite movies, it has proven -- rather like Mad Mad World -- to be quite hard to duplicate. Impossible even. Its unique -- like The Sting. The cast is part of it -- its hard to match Grant and Hepburn AND three other movie stars in support(I"ll count Kennedy.) But, indeed, also the "capture of a time that would soon be gone."
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Agreed. Charade is still a masterwork in a class of its own-- it does not need to be Vertigo. I know they tried remaking it in 2002 or so, but I cannot bring myself to watch that. It's heresy to even try.
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Then there is this puzzle: as super-entertaining a "Hitchcock fake" Charade was, the REAL Hitchcock just couldn't compete around the same years. Paul Newman and Julie Andrews -- megastars at the time -- in Torn Curtain were not as fun and memorable as Grant and Hepburn. Connery and Hedren in Marnie? No way. Topaz -- with French leads and some scenes in Paris -- nope. These were "lesser" Hitchcock films but, in their own way, STILL more artful and serious than Charade. Quite an odd outcome.
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I find there's more "meat" to Hitchcock than Donen in general (I find even when Donen is trying for more realistic psychology, like in Two for the Road, he's way too cutesy and lightweight for any of it to ring true)-- that might be why something like Marnie technically has more of intellectual interest than Charade, but Charade is the better time. It just feels less tired. I get Marnie was a personal project, but after Psycho or even The Birds, it just disappoints. It lacks the stylistic boldness of Psycho and resembles his 50s work, even with the slightly more explicit presentation of sexual repression and rape.

I will still go to bat for Topaz. Unlike with Marnie or Torn Curtain, I feel like Hitchcock was really trying something new there, even if it gets a bit lumpy. But it has some great sequences and the unglamorous espionage element is refreshing even now.

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[–] ElizabethJoestar (930) 2 years ago

High and Low is high on that list(higher, now.) I READ a lot about movies -- even foreign ones -- and the premise to High and Low sounded fantastic: kidnappers snatch a millionaire' son for a million dollar ransom ...but it turns out that they kidnapped -- the son of the millionaire's (poor) chauffeur. What to do, what to do? Issues of class and wealth. I don't know the ending, so I'd better hop to it and order it up.
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High and Low is definitely worth the time. It's suspenseful and intellectually intriguing. There's class conflict but it's not on the nose. Everything is so carefully set up and subtle. And Toshiro Mifune's lead performance is marvelous-- I love it more than his most famous samurai parts. Here, he's seething and morally conflicted, such a fascinating character. His dilemma is even more involving because he was not born into money. He had to work his way into wealth in a society where upward class mobility is notoriously difficult to achieve. He will literally lose EVERYTHING, including his share in the shoe company he now runs, if he pays up.

Could not recommend the movie more. I get Seven Samurai is more important, but High and Low is the Kurosawa movie I rewatch the most.

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[–] ElizabethJoestar (930) 2 years ago

But I"ve been "rearranging my list" over the years and there just seems to be something about Mad Mad World that was astonishing and will never come again. Having screen great Spencer Tracy AND all those comedians, two of whom (Milton Berle and Sid Caesar) had been the biggest TV comics of the 50s this side of Lucy Ball(not in it.) Plus new-style comics like Buddy Hackett(beautifully paired with the canny and underrated Mickey Rooney) and Winters. There have been numerous articles over the years noting that even if one used ONLY sitcom stars (today) ...you couldn't afford to cast Mad Mad World with Jerry Seinfeld and Kelsey Grammar and Jennifer Anniston, etc.
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We also don't really have such stars anymore. Plenty of movies try packing in stars now, but that doesn't draw. Mad World had just about every movie comedian still breathing at a time where star power meant something.

I recall years ago certain internet celebrities would do big collaborations with one another-- they were terrible, but in 2007/2008, they were an event. And then there's the Avengers movies, which were cultural events for my generation. Not exactly old time stars since we were more invested in the characters than the actors, but still a big deal I cannot see happening again-- not anytime soon anyway.

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[–] ElizabethJoestar (930) 2 years ago

I came around on DePalma. In the beginning -- Sisters, Carrie, Obsession, Dressed to Kill -- he lived up to the SNL joke about him "Once a year, Brian De Palma picks the bones of a dead director, and gives his wife a job."
Hitchcock "homages" that didn't play like Hitchcock. Bungled, overlong suspense sequences.

But as the years went on and the budgets went up,DePalma seems to have found his own style -- very cinematic, very "art" (like Hitchcock) in the service of thrillers. And like Hitchcock, he had some great, exciting scores placed over his movies(the final subway/train station chase in "Carlito's Way" is carried by its exciting music as much as the imagery and action.)
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I have a similar love/hate relationship with De Palma. I first wrote him off as a Hitch wannabe, but I've come to admire his films, particularly Sisters, which is a genuine favorite. Obsession has a lot to recommend it and the Hermann score vies with Taxi Driver's for my favorite movie score of all time. Dressed to Kill is more of a miss for me (Nancy Allen annoys me so much in it-- I only ever like her in the Robocop movies, tbh), though I do love the museum sequence and the ending made me jump at one point.

De Palma is definitely very Hitchcockian but he has his own garish vibe that sets him apart, with the exception of Obsession, which goes for a more dreamy, gothic vibe that must have seemed antique even in the 70s.

But my favorite De Palma movie is Phantom of the Paradise-- definitely no Hitch influence there, but such a campy delight.

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[–] ElizabethJoestar (930) 2 years ago

One has to " piece together" how the killer did it. Knock Coburn out, tie Coburn down, THEN put the bag over his head so he awakens to his own strangling death -- and to draw "Dyle" in the floor with his finger.
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Did Coburn write that down or did Dyle write it down to get Hepburn to suspect Grant of the killing? I've seen people debate this and need to rewatch the movie again, but Dyle writing it down does seem to make more sense.
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The brutality in Charade towards and around Audrey Hepburn anticipates that in Wait Until Dark four years later -- another thriller with three baddies out for Hepburn's loot(and , both times, she doesn't know where it is) -- but no Cary to save her.

Hepburn retired for 9 years after Wait Until Dark. Perhaps she sensed that the movies were simply going to get MORE violent, more "nasty." If so, she was right.
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Oh probably-- Hepburn often said she didn't care for how graphic movies became in the 1970s. I also found out recently that Hepburn hated doing the scene where she had to stab Alan Arkin to death. She said she hoped to never have to kill someone onscreen again (I'm guessing she forgot about when she "killed" a man in 1960's The Unforgiven, though she shot that guy-- a bit less down and dirty than stabbing an attacker at close range). Violence really turned her off apparently-- though that does make me wonder why she was tempted to take up The Exorcist, which goes beyond mildly bloody stabbings.

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[–] ecarle (14979) 2 years ago

One has to " piece together" how the killer did it. Knock Coburn out, tie Coburn down, THEN put the bag over his head so he awakens to his own strangling death -- and to draw "Dyle" in the floor with his finger.
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Did Coburn write that down or did Dyle write it down to get Hepburn to suspect Grant of the killing? I've seen people debate this and need to rewatch the movie again, but Dyle writing it down does seem to make more sense.
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Whoa! Pretty much 60 years later...I read that and...I never even thought of it. And it makes a whole lotta sense...particularly when one surmises how hard it would have been for Coburn to REALLY scratch that name out.

I'll go with that analysis. I learn new things.

By the way, I can't recall if the weapon in this scene is the standard "dry cleaning bag" or if the killer used something more substantial in material.

Relevant because: As a kid, I was warned not to put dry cleaning bags over my head(why would I, anyway?) because they could kill me. But on the TV show Mad Men from the 2000's , they made a joke of mother Betty Draper NOT CARING when her daughter entered the room wearing one. The mother just shooed the girl into another room to play. As an actual kid from the 60's, I thought: "Oh, the writers think we were that dumb in the 60's. Obviously, they weren't really there."

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[–] ecarle (14979) 2 years ago



Hepburn retired for 9 years after Wait Until Dark. Perhaps she sensed that the movies were simply going to get MORE violent, more "nasty." If so, she was right.
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Oh probably-- Hepburn often said she didn't care for how graphic movies became in the 1970s.

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On "oh probably" I realize that I may have "typed too fast" and left out other factors. Much as she quit Hitchocck's No Bail for the Judge over her pregancy, I think she "retired" after 1967(with the one-two punch of Two for the Road and Wait Until Dark) to raise her son. Also , her marriage to actor Mel Ferrer was on the rocks and about to end (he produced Wait Until Dark and HE is on the DVD documentary talking about it -- I found that a bit unfair to Audrey, but ...she had passed away.) So various things led Hepburn to make her decision.

As I think we may have discussed, Audrey "came back big" 9 years later, with "Robin and Marion" with Sean Connery as love(Robin Hood) and Robert Shaw (fresh off of Jaws) as foe. Shaw had also famously duked it out to the death with Connery in From Russia With Love.

The trouble was that Robin and Marion was very 70's in the bad way -- rather downbeat, dull and drab -- and sad, and it had no impact at all.

And that was the GOOD comeback film that Audrey made. Again, Cary Grant had shown the correct decision: when its time to leave...leave. Don't try to come back.

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[–] ecarle (14979) 2 years ago

I also found out recently that Hepburn hated doing the scene where she had to stab Alan Arkin to death. She said she hoped to never have to kill someone onscreen again

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More new information to me. But I'm here to tell you, in a packed full house in 1968(a 1967 film but I saw it later), the crowd rose to their feet for a standing ovation and cheered when Hepburn put that knife in Arkin's belly. It was just after this exchange:

Arkin: Well, Susy...let's go to the bedroom.
Hepburn: You said you wouldn't hurt me.
Arkin: Did I? I must have had my fingers crossed behind my back.

Pure evil. And then she stabs him and he falls "dead" (a weird freeze frame on him clutching the knife in his belly) which only made his subsequent "leap from the dead" all the more screamworthy.

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(I'm guessing she forgot about when she "killed" a man in 1960's The Unforgiven, though she shot that guy-- a bit less down and dirty than stabbing an attacker at close range).

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I've found that actors in interviews often forget scenes they did -- we follow their movies more closely than THEY do.

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Violence really turned her off apparently-- though that does make me wonder why she was tempted to take up The Exorcist, which goes beyond mildly bloody stabbings.

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Hmm. I'll guess she was offered REALLY big bucks and knew the book had a chance for "Godfather" grosses and fame. Actually, a vague memory: didn't she demand the movie be filmed in Europe?

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[–] ecarle (14979) 2 years ago

There have been numerous articles over the years noting that even if one used ONLY sitcom stars (today) ...you couldn't afford to cast Mad Mad World with Jerry Seinfeld and Kelsey Grammar and Jennifer Anniston, etc.
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We also don't really have such stars anymore. Plenty of movies try packing in stars now, but that doesn't draw. Mad World had just about every movie comedian still breathing at a time where star power meant something.

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That's right. And again...Berle and Caesar had been TV GIANTS. And Phil Silvers was "hot" with his Sgt. Bilko show. (Note in passing: Don Rickles said he begged for a part in the movie but he wasn't big enough at the time -- I'll note that Phil Silvers is Don Rickles in that movie. The ORIGINAL Don Rickles -- insults, self-interest, etc.)

I've always found it rather ironic -- and I have no proof but I SENSE this -- that after decades as a star, two Oscars, and his collaborations with Kate Hepburn..Spencer Tracy probably ended up MOST famous as "that old white haired cop they chase in Mad, Mad, World." Its how I can tell people who Spencer Tracy was, even today.

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[–] ecarle (14979) 2 years ago

I recall years ago certain internet celebrities would do big collaborations with one another-- they were terrible, but in 2007/2008, they were an event. And then there's the Avengers movies, which were cultural events for my generation. Not exactly old time stars since we were more invested in the characters than the actors, but still a big deal I cannot see happening again-- not anytime soon anyway.

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More invested in the characters than the actors. That would be Marvel, and that would be right. So few of those actors have much star presence beyond Marvel. RDJ is one, but he seems to have backed off making other movies, in the main.

I have noted elsewhere that the current Netflix "pseudo movie," Don't Look Up, has a MAJOR all-star cast, but they are reduced pretty much to uncommitted performers in an SNL sketch. Some of the highest paid, most Oscared actors in the world are in that movie(Leo, J-Law, Meryl, Cate...) but ironically, for a movie about political commitiment, they don't seem very committed to making a real movie. Jonah Hill is funny, though. I think he is usually funny.

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[–] ElizabethJoestar (930) 2 years ago

Didn't see Don't Look Up, but SNL skit sounds about right. That's how I feel about most mainstream comedy now. Death on the Nile also had a pretty impressive line-up too, though I think it only made modest box office takings.

It's just weird how stardom doesn't sell anymore.

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[–] ElizabethJoestar (930) 2 years ago

And then she stabs him and he falls "dead" (a weird freeze frame on him clutching the knife in his belly) which only made his subsequent "leap from the dead" all the more screamworthy.
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Okay, glad I'm not the only one who noticed that freeze frame!! When I first saw the movie on TCM, I briefly thought something was up with the broadcast! Maybe the editor didn't have enough footage and wanted the scene to be longer?
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I'll guess she was offered REALLY big bucks and knew the book had a chance for "Godfather" grosses and fame. Actually, a vague memory: didn't she demand the movie be filmed in Europe?
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Could be, though maybe she connected emotionally with the role: a famous actress and mother who finds her child put in peril and that none of her connections or wealth can save her? I think Hepburn would have been sensational in the part-- Charade and Wait show she could evoke terror well, and Two for the Road-- as much as the actual movie leaves me cold-- showed she could play subtle frustration and cynical weariness well.

She did want the movie filmed in Europe so she could be near her children. At that point, she had a second child who was only a toddler, so she probably wanted to be close to him. She had made the same demand that Wait Until Dark's apartment scenes be filmed in Europe and for the same reason (her son Sean was in a Swiss school, I think), but Jack Warner shot her down.

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[–] ElizabethJoestar (930) 2 years ago

On "oh probably" I realize that I may have "typed too fast" and left out other factors. Much as she quit Hitchocck's No Bail for the Judge over her pregancy, I think she "retired" after 1967(with the one-two punch of Two for the Road and Wait Until Dark) to raise her son. Also , her marriage to actor Mel Ferrer was on the rocks and about to end (he produced Wait Until Dark and HE is on the DVD documentary talking about it -- I found that a bit unfair to Audrey, but ...she had passed away.) So various things led Hepburn to make her decision.
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Oh yes, certainly Her personal life was the biggest factor-- she felt guilty about not being a full-time mom for her small son and wanted a family life over a career. During the filming of WUD, she apparently ran up hundreds of dollars in long-distance calls to her son. He was in Europe for school while she was shooting her scenes in Burbank.

Both Two for the Road and Wait Until Dark were selected as Hepburn projects because Ferrer wanted Hepburn to move into the newer Hollywood scene. The cute but borderline 30s screwball style How to Steal a Million did acceptable but lukewarm box office and Ferrer thought less old-fashioned properties would keep Hepburn relevant. She did great work on both films, but there are interviews from the late 60s and 70s where she expressed dismay at how much darker new movies were or that the parts offered her were too young or "kinky." She claimed she never officially planned a hiatus, but the perfect storm of her divorce, her desire to be a stay at home mom, and the tumultuous changes of the film industry all kept her offscreen until 1976.

I've only seen R&M once, but I recall liking it enough. It has good elements, though I wish Marian were in it more, as she was the most interesting character. That the script writer gave Marian a sinister edge with her euthanizing tendencies was fascinating. And the ending is heartbreaking. It's uneven but heartfelt.

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[–] ecarle (14979) 2 years ago

Didn't see Don't Look Up, but SNL skit sounds about right. That's how I feel about most mainstream comedy now. Death on the Nile also had a pretty impressive line-up too, though I think it only made modest box office takings.

It's just weird how stardom doesn't sell anymore.

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Yes. Very weird. As someone wrote: "movie stars have never been paid more yet mattered less." The high pay reflects potential billion dollar worldwide grosses, even a SLIVER of such potential means a movie star gets a LOT more money than his or her predecessors.

(It was interesting in 2021, when a group of movies went straight to HBO and Netflix for their runs instead of theaters -- the movie stars demanded additional pay to "match" what MIGHT have happened had the movies been hits in theaters.)

Don't Look Up reminds us also that -- for whatever reason - we don't seem to have a LOT of major names anymore. The same folks turn up in movie after movie -- Cate Blanchett for instance.

I've noted this before, but I'll note it again:

The TYPE of movies made in the 40's through the 70's allowed certain actors -- Humphrey Bogart, Paul Newman -- to make a lot of movies where the star was the REASON for the movie. Casablanca, The Big Sleep. Hud, Cool Hand Luke. People went to see their favorite star in their newest good(or maybe great) story.

Now, with the comic book movies, the characters (Iron Man, The Hulk, Black Widow) are the real stars. The actors aren't very bankable leads in other movies.

And while Leo has built SOMEWHAT of a stand alone movie star career, he simply hasn't made as many classics as Bogart or Newman did. But he's still got time. Also -- look at how many Leo movies were made by Scorsese. Its like Leo has to depend on Marty to keep him in prestige pictures.

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[–] ecarle (14979) 2 years ago

Note in passing: The "all-star" cast of Death on the Nile 2022 isn't really at the level of Death on the Nile 1978. The original had Bette Davis AND Maggie Smith as feuding characters, and David Niven as a throwback to classic Hollywood leading man-ism(The Guns of Navarone, Around the World in 80 Days)). Peter Ustinov had two Oscars (supporting) and a following. Mia Farrow had Rosemary's Baby and The Great Gatsby on her resume. Angela Lansbury was already respected on stage and screen(The Manchurian Candidate.") And even George Kennedy(an Oscar winner) and Jack Warden were identifiable top drawer American character guys.

The new one has Gal Gadot(the star of the film, newly crowned as Wonder Woman and fighting that bankability problem for superheroes), Armie Hammer(now scandalized and unemployable before he had a chance to BECOME a star), Russell Brand(neutered and unrecognizable) and -- other than the lead Kenneth Branaugh as Poirot -- who?

I saw Death on the Nile at the theater about a month ago; it is now on my TV on SEVERAL channels -- HBO Max, Hulu...Sheesh!

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[–] ecarle (14979) 2 years ago

Psycho wasn't just Hitchcock's peak-- it basically represents the birth of modern cinema as we know it.

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Yep...you may know that I agree on THAT one. On one point alone -- the violence of BOTH murders -- it was unprecedented in how much was shown and how long the murders took to accomplish. I can't think of an American film in the decades prior to Psycho that had ANY violence at that level. Closest: Richard Widmark pushes an old lady in a wheelchair down a flight of stars in Kiss of Death. But that's little known.

Everything else in Psycho flows to and away from its murders -- the "fake out" story of Marion Crane's love story and embezzlement -- the ever-changing take on exactly how innocent sweet Norman Bates is; not only the big twist but the unprecedented horrific backstory(again, plot content of a perversity that had NEVER been allowed in American studio films to that date.). The sexuality on display in the hotel room in the beginning; and yes , the historic toilet.

The "new cinema" begins in 1960 with Psycho, not way out there in 1967 with Bonnie and Clyde.

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I know some people prefer to use Bonnie and Clyde as the diving line between classic cinema and modern cinema, but Psycho is far bolder and in its own way, more radical.

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Agreed. Though I suppose 1967 was seem as a watershed year in which a small group of "New Hollywood" young turks elected to fight the Hays Code in America and take Eurofilm as their muse. We had Bonnie and Clyde for violence; The Graduate for sex. Those two ALONE were landmark. But also In the Heat of the Night(race), The Dirty Dozen(war), Point Blank(crime.)

Still, Psycho was out ahead of all of them in allowing the movies to get...dangerous. 1967 paid off Psycho's debt.

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[–] ecarle (14979) 2 years ago

Watching Bonnie and Clyde, I'm seeing a period piece-- not just the 1930s, but the late 1960s in its concerns and anti-authoritarian posturing.

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Yes. B and C was "lifted" by its connection to "youth, the counterculture and revolution" and perhaps given too much credit for that connection. Today, it looks like a movie about a group of not-very-smart, rather animalistic thugs robbing banks and killing cops. Plus the "New York method acting" of Beatty and Dunaway is very mannered.

..and it owes a LOT to Psycho. When the male bank clerk jumps on the getaway car and gets shot bloodily in the face -- its an homage to Arbogast's bloodied face (and this victim is a CIVILIAN, not a cop.)

And the final gun-down of Bonnie and Clyde lifts from the Psycho shower scene both in the first "frisson" shots(Janet Leigh screaming in three ever-closer close-ups; Bonnie and Clyde frozen in time looking at each other) and the montage slaughter that follows.

By the time the 60's was over, Psycho, Bonnie and Clyde and The Wild Bunch stood as the the movies where "the blood was the message" -- they turned the thriller, the gangster movie and the Western into horror movies and they set the course of movies ever after.

But Psycho was there first.

And speaking of 1967...MY favorite movie that year wasn't very landmark, but boy did it play to screaming full houses: Wait Until Dark. And IT was rather landmark in its hipness and in the mental tortures imposed upon poor blind Audrey Hepburn by Evil Hepcat Alan Arkin.

But wait: in her rave review of Bonnie and Clyde in 1967, newbie critic Pauline Kael noted that the only really exciting movies of the EARLY sixties(to her) were: The Manchurian Candidate and Charade.

Charade!


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[–] ecarle (14979) 2 years ago

I find there's more "meat" to Hitchcock than Donen in general (I find even when Donen is trying for more realistic psychology, like in Two for the Road, he's way too cutesy and lightweight for any of it to ring true)-- that might be why something like Marnie technically has more of intellectual interest than Charade, but Charade is the better time. It just feels less tired.

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Hitchcock found himself in a weird place in the 60s after that incredible finish to the 50's (Vertigo, North bv Northwest...even Psycho a bit.) He couldn't compete against himself given those summits(though The Birds, I think, matched them as a part of popular culture.) But even as his movies got "dark and deep" (Marnie AND Torn Curtain are pretty grim tales)...he was up against competitors who were simply making more ENTERTAINING thrillers. Cape Fear. The Manchurian Candidate. Charade(for romance.)

But this: Marnie and Torn Curtain are simply not in league with the great Hitchcocks before them. The scripts are lacking(so key to a great Hitchcock movie.) They are tired(reflective of Hitchcock's own physical state.) I'm not as against their process and matte work as others are, but they sure have a LOT of process and matte work.

And yet..I personally VALUE Marnie and Torn Curtain. What's that old phrase? "Mediocre Hitchocck is better than most other directors' best work."

And look at this about Charade: it was absolutely GREAT, a box office and critical success, perfectly of its time and yet -- Stanley Donen HIMSELF could never match it. Hitchcock hit home runs a LOT of times. Donen seems to have joined that group of thriller directors who could "really only do it once." Arabesque was his only other try except maybe for the 1975 action misfire "Lucky Lady."

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[–] ecarle (14979) 2 years ago

Psycho still feels vital and unsettling, at least to me.

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Its odd. An acquaintance of mine pointed out that the whole first half hour with Janet Leigh and NO horror is still very disturibing and indeed, unsettling. It plays like a nightmare(a REAL one), it plays rather arty and strange. Psycho plays AGAINST traditional Hollywood early on and just gets stranger (and then terrifying) as it moves along.

And yet, at the same time, it has that great TRADITIONAL thing anchoring the whole movie: the "haunted mansion" that isn't really haunted but much more dangerous in a real way.

AND that mansion on the hill is "attached" (psychologically) to that modern but shabby motel down below. The greatest setting for a movie thriller in history. (Number Two is The Overlook in The Shining.)



So Hitchcock would have had to pull out something even more groundbreaking and radical to top Psycho. He couldn't, but no one really could. I can't think of another movie which had that same impact, except maybe Star Wars, but even that movie is harmless compared to the dangerous world of Psycho.

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I agree with that entire paragraph, including the Star Wars comparison. Psycho stands a movie that really, really, UPSET people and stuck with them for years. It was "fun' in the screaming and jumping and hollering --- but its take on human life (and the loss thereof) struck deep and stayed there.

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[–] ecarle (14979) 2 years ago

The Birds is a movie that leaves me cold, but I've been reading more analyses of it, specifically of the Freudian themes, and have been meaning to rewatch it with those in mind.


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I'll give this to Hitchcock: he really, really REALLY did try to top Psycho with The Birds. In some ways he did, but not enough to have the same impact. And The Birds had some real flaws.

But first...its strengths. North by Northwest and Psycho each have three big set-pieces. The Birds has more like SIX. Hitchcock pulled out all the stops this one time, he would never been willing to give us so MUCH action and horror and suspense again.

The effects. Somewhat derided today, they were absolutely spectacular THEN. The bird's eye view of the gulls flying down onto Bodega Bay. The final shot with thousands of birds as far as the eye can see. "The ultimate athlete of cinema."

And it wasn't ALL effects. Hitchcock had REAL trained birds. Puppets. Caroon animation. He SUCCESSFULLY "directed" all those birds to do EXACTLY what he wanted.

I recall reading some article by a special effects man who said The Birds -- after King Kong 1933 -- was THE acheivement in movie effects, and inspired folks like the guys who worked on Star Wars.

But on the downside: the script posited some terribly uninteresting and unlikeable characters and made us spend a LOT of time with them. The Freudian aspects are certainly there: Rod Taylor following Anthony Perkins as a "boy man" still under his mother's control, but with differences: Rod isn't a psycho killer; he is quite capable of dating attractive women(but mother drives them away); he has a pre-teen sister who is more like a daughter to him....and he is trying to substitute for a dead father who was a "leader." Its interesting enough, but its too much.

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[–] ecarle (14979) 2 years ago

Hitchcock seems to have been aiming for an Oscar with these "in depth" characters in The birds. To promote them , he said they were all more interesting that most of the characters in Psycho, who , said Hitchcock "were mere figures."

Hitch had it completely backwards. The characters in Psycho were MUCH more interesting than the characters in The Birds. Sam and Marion together were far sexier than Mitch and Melanie. There's no match in The Birds for the consummate character private eye Arbogast(and his tragic life and death in 20 minutes of screen time.) And Lila Crane is a great mix of rage and sadness. (And that's not counting the classic Norman Bates.)

Audiences delivered the verdict on The Birds: it made less than half what Psycho made. Not scary enough, evidently -- too much psychodrama in the first hour before the birds show up for real.

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[–] ecarle (14979) 2 years ago

I will still go to bat for Topaz. Unlike with Marnie or Torn Curtain, I feel like Hitchcock was really trying something new there,

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That's true. Marnie and Torn Curtain harkened back to earlier Hitchcock films. Topaz seemed to be an attempt to "get with" the new international cinema. "Hitchocck internationale."

Hitch followed trends. One reason he couldn't ever really make a Psycho again(not even Frenzy) was that it was FROM the fifties horror of William Castle(House on Haunted Hill), American International, and Diabolique.

The movie world had moved on , and Topaz reflected European influences on American film. Only Yves Montand was a bankable, age-appropriate actor for the lead role -- and he turned it down. So Hitchcock went with a newbie(Frederick Stafford) and surrounded him with respected players recommended to Hitchcock by Truffaut and Bergman, among others.

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even if it gets a bit lumpy. But it has some great sequences and the unglamorous espionage element is refreshing even now.

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About those great sequences. My theory is that when Hitchcock could not get stars for Topaz and Frenzy, he did not have to SERVICE stars, so he wsa set free to fill both of those movies with "Hitchcock touches" every step of the way, each time. They are very creative in visuals and sound.

Famously, Topaz doesn't have a good ending. Actually it has THREE endings(all shot, not all used) and none of them are good. An ironic comedown for a filmmaker who OFTEN gave us the greatest final scenes in movie history: Vertigo, NXNW, Psycho, The Birds..Frenzy.

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[–] ecarle (14979) 2 years ago

Note in passing: though I saw The Birds and Torn Curtain at a movie theater with my parents, I didn't really know they were Hitchcock movies. By Christmas 1969 when Topaz came out(after Rear Window, Vertigo, NXNW, Psycho and The Birds had all premiered on TV)...I was a full on Hitchocck fan and EXTREMELY excited to be seeing his next movie. It disappointed in some ways(no Mount Rushmore climax) but delivered the goods with others(the opening sequence in Copenhagen, the Hotel Thereas sequence, the death of Juanita.)

I'm one of those Hitchocck fans who., frankly, prefers the post Psycho movies to his movies in the thirties and forties. A lot of those old movies are...old movies...and films like The Paradine Case and Under Capricorn hold little interest for me.

Old, in poor health, and perhaps alcoholic Hitchcock may have been after Psycho, but he had MADE Psycho and Vertigo and their brilliance informed all the films after them, to the end.

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[–] ecarle (14979) 2 years ago

I forgot something that Stanley Donen said when he said that Hitchcock shouldn't be the only one allowed to make thrillers.

Discussing North by Northwest -- and its similarity to Charade - Donen said "I liked that movie only through the auction scene." He felt it slowed down and dragged to the Rushmore climax, and I guess he didn't much like the Rushmore climax.

Well what the HELL.

To me, North by Northwest exists FOR the Mount Rushmore climax. The whole movie movies towards it, plucking "regular guy" Cary Grant out of his comfortable life in an office and bars and putting him all the way up there on the gigantic Presidential heads, with the woman he loves by his side and sheer survival on the line.

Its like only one movie, only one time, could use that American monument for a climax, and Hitchcock did it so well(with Herrmann's great music and Grant's great acting) that it was as if the thriller had reached its climax. Torn Curtain and Topaz can't go to Rushmore. James Bond can't either. Its a once-in-a-lifetime thrill.

Like that shower murder one movie later.

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[–] ecarle (14979) 2 years ago

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Oh yes, certainly Her personal life was the biggest factor (in Audrey Hepburn's 1967 short-lived retirement)-- she felt guilty about not being a full-time mom for her small son and wanted a family life over a career. During the filming of WUD, she apparently ran up hundreds of dollars in long-distance calls to her son. He was in Europe for school while she was shooting her scenes in Burbank.

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That story is both touching and "real." I'm not sure I would have wanted MY mother to be thousands of miles away from me at that age. Of course, she put him in Europe when most studio production was still in Hollywood (for soundstages.) She didn't keep him near her in LA. But ..she made her decision to re-unite with him in THEIR country, I suppose.

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Both Two for the Road and Wait Until Dark were selected as Hepburn projects because Ferrer wanted Hepburn to move into the newer Hollywood scene.

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I'm reminded that Mike Nichols went to Doris Day for Mrs. Robinson in The Graduate. Day's manager HUSBAND said "no." Its a hard call. Anne Bancroft was an Oscar-winning, Broadway trained "serious actress" with the chops(and the sex appeal) for the role.

But Doris Day had a great body(said her male co-stars), a great voice -- WHAT IF she had taken on Mrs. Robinson? Might Doris have had her OWN Wait Until Dark or Two for the Road? Instead, she petered out in lousy family comedies and a TV series.

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[–] ecarle (14979) 2 years ago

The cute but borderline 30s screwball style How to Steal a Million did acceptable but lukewarm box office

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I saw it as a kid and maybe once on TV but -- with Peter O'Toole as her co-star and freakin' William Wyler as director, yes? -- it just wasn't as exciting as Charade or Wait Until Dark.

And we know why: no murders. No REAL physical danger.

Someone wrote that Hitchcock's thrillers almost ALL had murders in them (The Wrong Man is among those who did not) and that always raised the stakes. Even the "light" North by Northwest has at its terrifying core this concept: from the moment they meet him, all James Mason and Company want to do is to KILL Cary Grant...and he's on the run from them for the whole movie.

How to Steal a Million is one of quite a few "caper movies" and I'll admit they just aren't that exciting. Gambit did a nice twist on the genre, and Young Michael Caine and Shirley MacLaine were sexy stars but...eh. Ocean's Eleven? The Rat Pack were a gas and George and Brad and Matt and Julia were starry but...eh.

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and Ferrer thought less old-fashioned properties would keep Hepburn relevant.

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I think that guy cheated on Audrey a bit, but he seems to have steered her towards two movies that allowed her to retire in style. For awhile.

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[–] ecarle (14979) 2 years ago

She did great work on both films, but there are interviews from the late 60s and 70s where she expressed dismay at how much darker new movies were or that the parts offered her were too young or "kinky."

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The coming of the R rating put a number of old time actors and actresses on notice to "adapt or die." Or retire. Or in the case of a lot of MEN: take TV series. Rock Hudson did. Tony Curtis did. James Garner did. James Stewart did. Henry Fonda did. (Not ALL of them thrived.)

The 60's was also a decade in which a lot of the first wave of Old Hollywood greats died (Gable, Cooper, Tracy) or retired(Cagney, Grant.)

Hepburn was right up there as a Top Star, and she had come along later than , say, Gable. Still, the times they were a changing and she seems ot have made the right decision to let it pass her by. She had an Oscar and almost two decades of mainly great movies to her name.

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She claimed she never officially planned a hiatus, but the perfect storm of her divorce, her desire to be a stay at home mom, and the tumultuous changes of the film industry all kept her offscreen until 1976.

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Ha. In the 80's, I think neither Bill Murray nor Al Pacino "officially planned a hiatus" but those guys were gone for about four years apiece --and it was noticeable. Murray never came all the way back; but Pacino got BIGGER.

You never know.

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[–] ecarle (14979) 2 years ago

I've only seen R&M once, but I recall liking it enough. It has good elements, though I wish Marian were in it more, as she was the most interesting character.

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I've only seen it once, too -- but you sure seem to remember more than I do about how it played (that Marian isn't in it enough, and her "euthanizing tendencies," which I remember with only one character in particular.)

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That the script writer gave Marian a sinister edge with her euthanizing tendencies was fascinating. And the ending is heartbreaking. It's uneven but heartfelt.

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The director was Richard Lester, coming off his two Three Musketeers films and leaving their derring-do behind. I just remember it as a realistic, downbeat movie. I recall seeing Connery and Shaw in elderly, struggling combat was a letdown after their bang-up punch out in From Russia With Love.

But this: BOY was that movie promoted to the max as "Audrey Hepburn returns." And she never got her rhythm back. Bloodline was pretty trashy(I've heard); nobody saw Bogdanovich's They All Laughed and..at the end, when Spielberg lured her back for "Always" -- the movie wasn't up to HER.

Movie star careers are pretty fascinating if you see them to the end. Bogart, Gable and Cooper "died with their boots on" -- they were still in demand and had movies lined up when illness took them. But guys like Kirk Douglas, Burt Lancaster and Henry Fonda had to "fade out" in character parts..."names" but not stars.

Hepburn was somewhere in between. She retired "with a bang" in 1967 and then came back in a long, slow drift to irrelevance. But when she took the screen in Always for the last time...you REMEMBERED the great star she was.

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[–] ElizabethJoestar (930) 2 years ago

I've only seen it once, too -- but you sure seem to remember more than I do about how it played (that Marian isn't in it enough, and her "euthanizing tendencies," which I remember with only one character in particular.)
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From what I recall, the movie implies she feeds some poison to an incurably ill person, foreshadowing what she does to Connery at the end. But it's been a long time. I think her role was interesting, romantic, bitter, and slightly sinister. People always complain Hepburn had little range, but I think she had more range than they or even she believed.

Robin and Marian suffered from an inaccurate ad campaign. People expected light, romantic fun, and not a drama about aging and death. It's bittersweet and revisionist. To be honest, it has been such a long time since I saw it and my tastes have changed so much (let alone my patience for "revisionism") that I might not like it as much were I to rewatch it. But who knows?

But it will never cease to amuse me that Audrey Hepburn's heyday-- inaugurated by a sweet romantic comedy like Roman Holiday-- ended with a thriller about a blind woman terrorized by a sleazy murderer with a Beatles-style haircut. It seems unreal!

Her last starring film in general was an okay romcom caper film called They All Laughed, which is like a mash-up of Charade and How to Steal a Million. It name drops plenty of her old films and has many little references to them. It's a cute send-off-- nothing special, but harmless and a masterpiece compared to Bloodline (had her career ended there.... I shudder!).

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[–] ecarle (14979) 2 years ago

From what I recall, the movie implies she feeds some poison to an incurably ill person, foreshadowing what she does to Connery at the end. But it's been a long time. I think her role was interesting, romantic, bitter, and slightly sinister. People always complain Hepburn had little range, but I think she had more range than they or even she believed.

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This is one I probably need to go back and see. I'm working from seeing it on release(1976) and I think on cable a time or two.

The bottom line is that, as Robin Hood movies got, it was not shall we say , what Kevin Costner did with the piece. Very much about aging and lost love(or maybe impossible love --Hepburn was a nun, yes?)

Director Richard Lester had an interesting career. After doing British TV(I believe) he gave us the historic A Hard Day's Night and the somewhat lesser Help...but those were enough: he was the Beatles' director and he staged their comedy in a very offhand, mumbling. weird and witty way.

Flash forward about 10 years(less the interesting Petulia)..."The Three Musketeers" were really four musketeers...like the four Beatles, and AGAIN (in two movies) Lester went for offbeat mumbling and meandering plot lines. It was very unique, very auteurish. But very exciting too, what with all those brutish and realistic swordfights.

So we were hyped for Lester's Robin and Marian -- particular sold as it was as "Hepburn's back and Connery's got her" and we got..something else.

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[–] ecarle (14979) 2 years ago

But it will never cease to amuse me that Audrey Hepburn's heyday-- inaugurated by a sweet romantic comedy like Roman Holiday-- ended with a thriller about a blind woman terrorized by a sleazy murderer with a Beatles-style haircut. It seems unreal!

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Well, that's the journey from the early, censored (and often romantic) 50's and the "edgy and hip" late sixties. Thriller wise, Psycho had set a new course for terror(though I'm here to tell you that Wait Until Dark milked maximum audience screams with minimum blood.) Still, WUD was a prestige production, and Audrey's portrayal of a blind woman was, indeed, Oscar level stuff.

Meanwhile: Audrey Hepburn and ALAN ARKIN? What a team! Just two years before as a movie guy, Arkin wasn't really known. But ONE year before, he was Oscar nommed for his funny Russian(complete with funny accent) in the only so-so Russians Are Coming and -- he was now a newly minted hip new star.

I recall when I first saw Wait Until DArk, Arkin creeped me out with his funny (again) hipster voice but I couldn't put a handle on him yet. He was too new a star.

All these years later, alas, I can really HEAR Alan Arkin as I know him in the part.

As I recall, George C. Scott was the only competition for the role of Roat. Robert Duvall played it on Broadway but he wasn't big enough for the movie. Lucky us!

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[–] ecarle (14979) 2 years ago

Her last starring film in general was an okay romcom caper film called They All Laughed, which is like a mash-up of Charade and How to Steal a Million.


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Of Hepburn's movies after Robin and Marian, I've only seen the very last one -- Always for Spielberg (a cameo, really, and pretty much playing God. Casting.)

I've read of how quirky They All Laughe was(Peter Bogdanovich almost self-financed it) and how bad Bloodline was.

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(They All Laughed) name drops plenty of her old films and has many little references to them. It's a cute send-off-- nothing special, but harmless and a masterpiece compared to Bloodline (had her career ended there.... I shudder!).

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Sadly today "They All Laughed" is known for Bogdanovich(looking for a comeback) casting his gorgeous Playmate girlfriend Dorothy Stratton in this -- and she was horribly murdered by her ex-husband BEFORE it came out. The movie was tainted on arrival.

All these years later, maybe we can "watch around that." I mean its got Hepburn and suave-rough Ben Gazzara(her lover for awhile) and John Rittter and several young beautiful women...

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[–] ElizabethJoestar (930) 2 years ago

(They All Laughed) name drops plenty of her old films and has many little references to them. It's a cute send-off-- nothing special, but harmless and a masterpiece compared to Bloodline (had her career ended there.... I shudder!).

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Sadly today "They All Laughed" is known for Bogdanovich(looking for a comeback) casting his gorgeous Playmate girlfriend Dorothy Stratton in this -- and she was horribly murdered by her ex-husband BEFORE it came out. The movie was tainted on arrival.

All these years later, maybe we can "watch around that." I mean its got Hepburn and suave-rough Ben Gazzara(her lover for awhile) and John Rittter and several young beautiful women...
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The movie I'm talking about there actually isn't They All Laughed. It's called Love Among Thieves, a TV movie from 1987 with Hepburn and Richard Chamberlain. It was technically her last starring role, a movie she made for the fun of it.

They All Laughed is actually very good in my opinion. It's a throwback of old screwball comedies of the 1930s and 1940s, only with a more modern, melancholy twist. It's a shame real life tragedy has overshadowed its merits.

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[–] ecarle (14979) 2 years ago


Sadly today "They All Laughed" is known for Bogdanovich(looking for a comeback) casting his gorgeous Playmate girlfriend Dorothy Stratton in this -- and she was horribly murdered by her ex-husband BEFORE it came out. The movie was tainted on arrival.

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The movie I'm talking about there actually isn't They All Laughed. It's called Love Among Thieves, a TV movie from 1987 with Hepburn and Richard Chamberlain. It was technically her last starring role, a movie she made for the fun of it.

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OOPS! "Reading comprehension fail." Actually, I did not know that among Hepburn's last films was a TV movie. That's a bit sad to me.

It reminds me of James Cagney. He retired "for good" in 1961, but came back in 1981 for top billing(justiably) and a short role in the third act; Ragtime. He was visibly old and could not move out of his chair, but the movie was 'A" and his performance was good.

And THEN he made a TV movie. I don't remember much about it -- except it wasn't very good.

Better to go out with a "movie movie." The Shootist. On Golden Pond. Etc.

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They All Laughed is actually very good in my opinion. It's a throwback of old screwball comedies of the 1930s and 1940s, only with a more modern, melancholy twist. It's a shame real life tragedy has overshadowed its merits.

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I'm piling up movies from the past I need to see.

I got time. Years.

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[–] ElizabethJoestar (930) 2 years ago

Meanwhile: Audrey Hepburn and ALAN ARKIN? What a team! Just two years before as a movie guy, Arkin wasn't really known. But ONE year before, he was Oscar nommed for his funny Russian(complete with funny accent) in the only so-so Russians Are Coming and -- he was now a newly minted hip new star.
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That might be the weirdest thing of all. They pair well together on screen though and have great energy in their brief shared screentime (I would call it chemistry but that's much too linked with sex and romance-- is chemistry allowed to be non-romantic?).
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As I recall, George C. Scott was the only competition for the role of Roat. Robert Duvall played it on Broadway but he wasn't big enough for the movie. Lucky us!
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There was talk of Rod Steiger but he passed on the part too. He ended up playing a theatrical killer in No Way to Treat a Lady from 1968-- which is its own weird, weird thing.

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[–] ecarle (14979) 2 years ago

Meanwhile: Audrey Hepburn and ALAN ARKIN? What a team!
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That might be the weirdest thing of all. They pair well together on screen though and have great energy in their brief shared screentime (I would call it chemistry but that's much too linked with sex and romance-- is chemistry allowed to be non-romantic?).

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Yes! See: Anthony Perkins and Janet Leigh(who was not as lucky as Hepburn in HER part.)

One thing about Wait Until Dark is the slow, inexorable movement towards the third act, when all of Arkin's henchmen are dead(by his hand -- "the children have all gone to bed") and all of Hepburn's allies are gone somewhere and we REALIZE: the NICEST lady in the world(blind, yet) and the most EVIL man in the world...will be put together in a dark, sealed room for a literal fight to the death. One enters that third act in full dread -- and applauds for Hepburn every step of the way.

CONT
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[–] ecarle (14979) 2 years ago

As I recall, George C. Scott was the only competition for the role of Roat. Robert Duvall played it on Broadway but he wasn't big enough for the movie. Lucky us!
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There was talk of Rod Steiger but he passed on the part too.

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He would have been good. I've read that Steiger WANTED the Max Cady convict role given to Robert Mitchum in Cape Fear.

---He ended up playing a theatrical killer in No Way to Treat a Lady from 1968-- which is its own weird, weird thing

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That's a weird movie indeed. It has all the elements of a classic thriller -- psycho villain(Rod Steiger, as a master of disguise who strangles middle-aged women, but does not rape them) , George Segal as the cop cat-and-mousing him (phone calls) and Lee Remick as the beautiful damsel in distress.

Its good ENOUGH, and the strangler angle anticipates Hitchcock's Frenzy, but it just goes off on too many "New York City satire tangents' to satisfy -- the climax rather falls apart even with Steiger come to kill Remick unless Segal can get there in time.

I think Hitchcock was offered this and turned it down. The book (by William Goldman) had TWO dueling psychos.

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[–] ElizabethJoestar (930) 2 years ago

That's a weird movie indeed. It has all the elements of a classic thriller -- psycho villain(Rod Steiger, as a master of disguise who strangles middle-aged women, but does not rape them) , George Segal as the cop cat-and-mousing him (phone calls) and Lee Remick as the beautiful damsel in distress.

Its good ENOUGH, and the strangler angle anticipates Hitchcock's Frenzy, but it just goes off on too many "New York City satire tangents' to satisfy -- the climax rather falls apart even with Steiger come to kill Remick unless Segal can get there in time.
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It's like half detective thriller and half romcom, and the two elements don't always merge-- unless there's meant to be a parallel between Steiger's mommy issues and Segal's relationship with his mother? I still liked the movie for how weird it was-- but now that I know the novel might be even weirder, I have to go track down a copy!

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[–] ElizabethJoestar (930) 2 years ago

I think that guy cheated on Audrey a bit, but he seems to have steered her towards two movies that allowed her to retire in style. For awhile.
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Mutual cheating towards the end. Both were having affairs in the mid-60s. Hepburn actually had one with Albert Finney while they were shooting Two for the Road.

Ferrer was more invested in her career than she was from the looks of it. He acted too, but never had the same success as his wife. I only ever liked his acting in Lili with Leslie Caron-- otherwise he always seemed stiff.

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[–] ecarle (14979) 2 years ago

I think that guy cheated on Audrey a bit, but he seems to have steered her towards two movies that allowed her to retire in style. For awhile.
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Mutual cheating towards the end. Both were having affairs in the mid-60s. Hepburn actually had one with Albert Finney while they were shooting Two for the Road.

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Oh. Oh, well -- those open Hollywood marriages (and Hitchcock opined that leading men and leading ladies in the same film "always" had affairs. I'd say "often.")

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Ferrer was more invested in her career than she was from the looks of it.

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I suppose he joined the ranks of those actor husbands who sacrificed THEIR acting careers(meager as they may have been) for their starrier wives. Examples: Ann Margret's husband Roger Smith; Bo Derek's husband John Derek.

--- He acted too, but never had the same success as his wife. I only ever liked his acting in Lili with Leslie Caron-- otherwise he always seemed stiff.

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My funny memory of Mel Ferrer was his long stint in the prime time 80's soap opera "Falcon Crest" about a winery family in Napa Valley. Guest stars like Kim Novak and Rod Taylor would come on, but the main cast had Mel Ferrer as matriarch Jane Wyman's shifty lawyer. She'd say to him as an impossible business deal would go haywire: "Fix it. That's your job. That's what I pay you to do" -- and he'd sheepishly go off and do evil.

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[–] ElizabethJoestar (930) 2 years ago

My funny memory of Mel Ferrer was his long stint in the prime time 80's soap opera "Falcon Crest" about a winery family in Napa Valley. Guest stars like Kim Novak and Rod Taylor would come on, but the main cast had Mel Ferrer as matriarch Jane Wyman's shifty lawyer. She'd say to him as an impossible business deal would go haywire: "Fix it. That's your job. That's what I pay you to do" -- and he'd sheepishly go off and do evil.
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Lmao-- so weird to think of him in soap operas.

I know he had ambitions as a director but other than Green Mansions (probably Hepburn's most notorious flop, even though Bloodline is 100,000,000 times worse) I cannot recall any other directorial projects for him.

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[–] ecarle (14979) 2 years ago

Lmao-- so weird to think of (Mel Ferrer) in soap operas.

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The 80's "nighttime soaps", while not as polished as today's Sopranos/Mad Men/Breaking Bad deals, were popular ...and a real nesting place for olf 50's stars...either as leads(Jane Wyman on Falcon Crest) or "guest stars" (for a few episodes or a season.)

Mel Ferrer probably put himself out there for "nighttime soap opera work". As i recall, he was quite funny as the crooked and put upon family lawyer.

Jane Wyman's long stint as the star of Falcon Crest allowed her to "track" the 80's career of her ex -husband: Ronald Reagan. TV critics found that funny.

Meanwhile, Charlton Heston came on to lead a SPIN-OFF of Dynasty, which "only" starred minor TV star John Forsythe.

And so on. Rock Hudson also worked on Dynasty, and found himself a tragic headline at the same time (AIDS.)



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[–] ecarle (14979) 2 years ago

I know he had ambitions as a director but other than Green Mansions (probably Hepburn's most notorious flop,

--

That movie was "two ahead of Psycho" for Tony Perkins..not much time left before his screen persona changed forever.

Actually , Hepburn and Perkins made a fine pair -- thin, child-like, pretty -- and Perkins DOES kill a villainous muscular South American "native"(Henry Silva) by stabbing him to death repeatedly.

Perkins laughed at the memory of the much bigger, much more muscular Silva having to lose to Perkins in a wrestling match with knives. The two men collapsed in laughter mid scene.

--

even though Bloodline is 100,000,000 times worse)

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I'm getting to feel I want to SEE this one. Wasn't it called "Sidney Sheldon's Bloodline" because he was an ex-sit com writer who became a "junior Harold Robbins"?

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[–] ElizabethJoestar (930) 2 years ago

I saw it as a kid and maybe once on TV but -- with Peter O'Toole as her co-star and freakin' William Wyler as director, yes? -- it just wasn't as exciting as Charade or Wait Until Dark.

And we know why: no murders. No REAL physical danger.
--
To be fair, that movie is more about high fashion, romance, and comedy than danger. Charade and Wait Until Dark are proper thrillers about ordinary people thrust into lethal circumstances-- the danger drives the story in them. HTSAM is a confectionary, more about two attractive people falling in love while also pulling off a caper. I actually love it-- probably my third favorite Hepburn movie. It's just relaxing and fun-- and I say this as someone who prefers darker fare. But to each his own.

Gambit is a treasure too though. I like the opening sequence-- very Vertigo-esque in a weird way and I wonder if that was a deliberate influence?

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[–] ecarle (14979) 2 years ago

I saw it as a kid and maybe once on TV but -- with Peter O'Toole as her co-star and freakin' William Wyler as director, yes? -- it just wasn't as exciting as Charade or Wait Until Dark.

And we know why: no murders. No REAL physical danger.
--
To be fair, that movie is more about high fashion, romance, and comedy than danger. Charade and Wait Until Dark are proper thrillers about ordinary people thrust into lethal circumstances-- the danger drives the story in them.

---

Well, there you have it -- I don't know what the grosses of HTSAM were versus Charade and WUD -- but I"m going to guess: lower.

And yet: as you way:

---HTSAM is a confectionary, more about two attractive people falling in love while also pulling off a caper. I actually love it-- probably my third favorite Hepburn movie. It's just relaxing and fun-- and I say this as someone who prefers darker fare. But to each his own.

---

I"ve got a list of movies to see that I've never seen, only read about(High and Low) and now, maybe a list of movies that I HAVE seen, but it was so long ago and I remember so little of them, that THEY need a revisit too.

I have time.

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[–] ecarle (14979) 2 years ago

Gambit is a treasure too though.

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A rather "hidden treasure," though. I actually saw it as a kid on Xmas 1966 release and rather "fantasized forward" to adulthood ahead. Could I be as cool as these people?(Answer: no.)

I've seen it since a few times and its a marvelous concept ("borrowed" I hear from Preston Sturges' Unfaithfully Yours -- Michael Caine "envisions" a 20-minute "perfect crime" in which MacLaine says nothing start to finish. The REAL version goes wrong at every turn and MacLaine won't stop jabbering at Caine. Also their mark ( a very rich Herbert Lom conned to think a double for his dead wife is available to him) doen'st buy any of the scam "for real."

---

I like the opening sequence-- very Vertigo-esque in a weird way and I wonder if that was a deliberate influence?

--

I didn't think so THEN, but I sure see it NOW. The focus on a "woman who looks like another, dead woman." Long silent early sequences following the silent woman around.

Here's something: Some years ago, Gambit was remade. I think it kept the title. They had Colin Firth in eyeglasses as Michael Caine(good casting -- though Caine didn't wear glasses in the original) and Cameron Diaz as Shirley MacLine -- except she's not a showgirl, she's a rodeo rider. It had ALAN RICKMAN(Die Hard) in the Herbert Lom role and the script was partially written by the Coens.

And yet...it tanked. Bad reviews. Nobody saw it. Helped put one of the nails in the coffin of the Cameron Diaz career.

I must check this out -- if I can find it.

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[–] ecarle (14979) 2 years ago

Speaking of remakes:

Billy Slater wrote:


RE: the remake (of Charade)

I havent seen it but Wahlberg and Thandie as the leads just sounds bizarre.

-- It was. Wahlberg circa 2002 wasn't a big star yet and neither was Thandie and, of course, Cary Grant and Audrey Hepburn were two of the biggest stars around.

The three thugs menacing Thandie Newton were no longer so starry -- and one was a woman. I don't think any of them -- all of them? even got killed.

Marginally interesting: Tim Robbins took the Walter Matthau part. He was tall and lanky like Matthau and he elected to do a "light Walter Matthau impression." He did it with a Bronx accent and calling Thandie Newton "Missus Lampuht."(Lambert) just like Matthau did in the original movie.

But the climax was a mess for Robbins, nothing like the original at all.

In fact, it has been said that a BETTER Charade remake can be found with the 1986 comedy law mystery, "Legal Eagles." The Charade mystery solution is there(if not all the victims) and Robert Redford and Debra Winger are "more like it" as stars.

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I heard it got savaged by the box office and critics alike, no wonder Stone didnt want his name attached.

--It had so little -- really -- to do with the original that I can see why, just there.

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[–] ElizabethJoestar (930) 2 years ago

I've been morbidly curious about the Charade remake. It just does not feel like a movie that could be adequately made post-Old Hollywood. New movies are too interested in being "realistic" (I cannot put enough quotes around that term). And Wahlberg as a stand-in for Grant? Please.

I heard the movie also tries evoking the French New Wave in its style and even in some of its cameos (I think Agnes Varda shows up at one point?). I suppose it fits in a weird, indirect way-- Stanley Donen was quite influenced by the French New Wave by the later part of the 1960s-- but not so much in Charade.

It sounds bad... but I'm still curious.

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[–] ecarle (14979) 2 years ago

I've been morbidly curious about the Charade remake. It just does not feel like a movie that could be adequately made post-Old Hollywood.

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Indeed. Recall that Van Sant -- to his credit, I think -- attempted to remake Hitchcock's 1960 Psycho "shot for shot, line for line." It wasn't , but it was very, very close. And it had an odd "Old Hollywood" look and sound fro 1998. I recall when they had the "travelling shot" of used cars per Marion's POV at the car lot -- I really felt like Hitchcock had come down from heaven(ha) to direct that scene.

But Jonathan Demme and his writers just seemed hellbent to "mess with" the originals.

And I say "originalS," because a few years after Demme ruined Charade...he ruined The Manchurian Candidate, too.

We must pause for a moment: Jonathan Demme was an Oscar winner for a THRILLER(something Hitchcock never pulled off) called Silence of the Lambs in 1991. How COULD a director who did such a GREAT thriller so thoroughly botch remakes of two classics in 2002(Charade, now called "The Truth About Charlie" to echo The Trouble With Harry), and in 2004 (The Manchurian Candidate.)

Unlike as with his Charade remake, Demme DID have two big stars in his Manchurian Candidate remake: Denzel Washington(inj for Frank Sinatra) and Meryl Streep (in for Angela Lansbury.)

Surprise: Meryl Streep didn't come close to Angela "Murder She Wrote" Lansbury. And Denzel was good but he was rather "too Denzel" -- too calm and collected(even playing a mentally damaged brainwashing victim) to match Sinatra's basket case performance(arguably, Sinatra's Best performance.)

I wrote against Demme's Manchurian Candidate remake at its board. Got slammed some, but I stand by my opinion. A great "topical film" about Chinese/Russian Communism and American populist fascism was turned into a "generic" thriiler about an Evil Corporation.

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[–] ecarle (14979) 2 years ago

New movies are too interested in being "realistic" (I cannot put enough quotes around that term).

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Yep. That's how this movie was. One lost -- and it was probably irretrievable -- the "feeling" of 1963 -- Grant, Hepburn, Mancini --Walter Matthau almost ready to break as a star. It was a different time.

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And Wahlberg as a stand-in for Grant? Please.

--

That was fatal. I"ve done some "trivia" research at IMDb and I've read that Demme originally wanted Will Smith(then a BIG star himself) to co-star with Thandie.Will dropped out, Wahlberg went in. But here's the thing - Wahlberg MIGHT have pulled it off if he got the same scenes Grant got(the fight scene, for instance.) Or got the same villains Grant fought. Bu he did not.

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I heard the movie also tries evoking the French New Wave in its style and even in some of its cameos (I think Agnes Varda shows up at one point?).

--

I saw it once, long ago. I believe you are right on the money. It had a "foreign film" flavor.

--
I suppose it fits in a weird, indirect way-- Stanley Donen was quite influenced by the French New Wave by the later part of the 1960s-- but not so much in Charade.

--

Well, Donen applied his New Wave interests to a traditionally "Hollywood movie" -- albeit more violent and macabre than most.

--

It sounds bad... but I'm still curious.

--

If memory serves, a coupla years after The Truth About Charlie came out, Universal went ahead and put it on a DVID WITH Charade, so viewers could watch both films back to back and decide. I don't think The Truth About Charlie even got its own separate DVD release -- it went out WITH Charade.

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[–] ecarle (14979) 2 years ago

CONT

Speaking of Mark Wahlberg in for Will Smith -- and I think I've mentioned this elsewhere, the musical chairs on casting Charade gave four men roles...and lost one man his.

It goes like this.

Cary Grant was offered both Charade and Howard Hawks' Man's Favorite Sport at the same time. Grant expressed regrets to Stanley Donen and picked Man's Favorite Sport.

If Grant was out of Charade...Hepburn was out. She only wanted to make it with Cary Grant.

Donen set up a tentative deal for Warren Beatty and Natalie Wood to star.

But then...Grant backed out of Man's Favorite Sport and said he'd do Charade.

Yep, said Donen. And Hepburn came back in.

Rock Hudson took Grant's role in Man's Favorite Sport.

Meanwhile Rock Hudson had turned down the male lead in Hitchcock's Marnie -- and "newbie" Sean Connery got it.

So:

Cary Grant replaced Warren Beatty
Rock Hudson replaced Cary Grant
Sean Connery replaced Rock Hudson..

..and Warren Beatty lost the round of musical chairs.

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[–] ElizabethJoestar (930) 2 years ago

Oh my God, I never knew about this bit of musical chairs.

Marnie might not be a total winner for me, but I'm glad Connery got that part. It's hard to think of Hudson coming off as dangerous in the same way.

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[–] ecarle (14979) 2 years ago

Oh my God, I never knew about this bit of musical chairs.

--

Its a fun story that I sort of "tracked down by accident," reading about all of those movies (the Charade and Man's Favorite Sport data came from Stanley Donen's biography; Hudson in Marnie from one or two Hitchcock biographies.)

The linchpin to all this was Cary Grant...who was First Choice for everything in the late 50's/early 60s. He was up for Marnie when Grace Kelly was announced to return in it. I read a quote from him at the time, when he was asked if he would re-unite with Princess Grace in that film: "I don't know, Hitch hasn't asked me yet." Grace backed out. I think it is just as well that Grant and Kelly -- younger in the more light and upbeat romance of To Catch a Thief -- were NOT cast in the heavy, rapey psychodrama of Marnie.

The attempt that failed to re-unite Princess Grace and Cary Grant that I wish HAD succeeded was to put Grace into North by Northwest. THAT would have given them a huge classic -- and allowed Grace to portray the aggressive sexuality she reportedly had in real life(towards her male co-stars....and writers.)

On the other hand, Eva Marie Saint got a little bit of immortality taking "the Grace Kelly part" in NXNW, and is still alive today(at 90?)...she lived decades longer than Princess Grace and spoke about NXNW for decades.

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[–] ecarle (14979) 2 years ago

Marnie might not be a total winner for me, but I'm glad Connery got that part. It's hard to think of Hudson coming off as dangerous in the same way.

---

Hudson was announced for Marnie in the trades, he must have been interested and he was a Universal contract player at the time. But he surely saw how perverse that script was, and how dangerous the Mark character was.

Brando was on a Universal contract, too, at the time, and was considered. (Lest we think Brando would give Hitch trouble, he evidently behaved for director Charlie Chaplin on "Countess from Hong Kong" -- co-starring Sophia Loren and Tippi Hedren(!)

That said, Hitchcock had this quote: "Marlon Brando and Frank Sinatra are two actors I would never direct -- because they direct themselves." (And screenwriter Ernest Lehman wrote NXNW with Sinatra in mind.)

But Connery was a perfect choice for Marnie, yes? He brought the sexuality and light sadism of Bond to a "straight" role, and proved loving and caring enough at the end-- surprising for Bond.

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[–] ecarle (14979) 2 years ago

More musical chairs with Cary Grant.

In 1965, he was offered the male lead in three thrillers. He turned them down. Here's who got the roles:

Torn Curtain: Paul Newman
Arabesque: Greg Peck
Gambit: Michael Caine(a newly minted star.)

And Cary Grant retired in 1966 and this stopped...though he STILL got offered roles.

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[–] ElizabethJoestar (930) 2 years ago

I don't plan on touching the Manchurian Candidate remake with a ten foot pole. The original is so brilliant. 1990s-2010s remakes of older movies always seem to take what was weird and awesome about the originals and then make them as boring as possible. The Robocop remake is a great example, turning an R-rated satire into a generic, bloodless thriller.

Not surprised to hear Will Smith was originally offered the Grant role in The Truth About Charlie. Definitely better casting than Wahlberg at least...

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[–] ecarle (14979) 2 years ago

I don't plan on touching the Manchurian Candidate remake with a ten foot pole.

--

I advise that you don't. I recall actually becoming angrier and angrier the more the movie became nothing like the original. It was like Demme and his writers were out to eliminate everything that had been so unique about the original: the feeling, the surreal brainwashing sequences, the characters. And the great fight between Sinatra and Henry Silva was gone; Denzel got no such action (Demme cut the great fight in Charade, too. What gives?)

---The original is so brilliant. 1990s-2010s remakes of older movies always seem to take what was weird and awesome about the originals and then make them as boring as possible. The Robocop remake is a great example, turning an R-rated satire into a generic, bloodless thriller.

---

There was a weirdness to modern fiilmmakers "pulling their punches" on the politics (Manchurian Candidate) or sexual savagery(Straw Dogs) of their remakes. They offered us sanitized, and indeed "generic" versions of dark art.

---

Trivia: I have a book of Pauline Kael's reviews, and/or excerpts.

She made her name at The New Yorker with a characteristically long rave for Bonnie and Clyde(1967). Before that, she was fired by the mainstream Redbook for a pan of "The Sound of Music."

But in those early reviews, she praised as "the two best and most exciting films of recent years": The Manchurian Candidate(1962) and Charade(1963.)

Obviously, Kael had good taste.

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[–] ecarle (14979) 2 years ago

Not surprised to hear Will Smith was originally offered the Grant role in The Truth About Charlie. Definitely better casting than Wahlberg at least...

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Yes. A legitimate star in Smith(though to fit Charade, his femae co-star should have been bigger) and an attempt on Demme's part to do a "black remake."

Demme somewhat succeeded on that second part by casting black actors in the Sinatra and Janet Leigh roles in The Manchurian Candidate. But THOSE remake characters were just so poorly reconceived that it didn't matter who played them.

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[–] ElizabethJoestar (930) 2 years ago

Of course, she put him in Europe when most studio production was still in Hollywood (for soundstages.) She didn't keep him near her in LA. But ..she made her decision to re-unite with him in THEIR country, I suppose.
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She had hoped to make the movie in Europe to be fair and there was talk of it until the studio nipped that in the bud around fall 1966. The kid was going to school there and I think she did not want to interrupt his studies, but I could be misremembering.
--
I'm reminded that Mike Nichols went to Doris Day for Mrs. Robinson in The Graduate. Day's manager HUSBAND said "no." Its a hard call. Anne Bancroft was an Oscar-winning, Broadway trained "serious actress" with the chops(and the sex appeal) for the role.

But Doris Day had a great body(said her male co-stars), a great voice -- WHAT IF she had taken on Mrs. Robinson? Might Doris have had her OWN Wait Until Dark or Two for the Road? Instead, she petered out in lousy family comedies and a TV series.
--
Day was incredibly talented and had more range than people think. Have you seen her in Midnight Lace? It's not as good as what Audrey got with Wait Until Dark and Charade, but it is a fun thriller in the vein of Gaslight.

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[–] ecarle (14979) 2 years ago

Of course, she put him in Europe when most studio production was still in Hollywood (for soundstages.) She didn't keep him near her in LA. But ..she made her decision to re-unite with him in THEIR country, I suppose.
--
She had hoped to make the movie in Europe to be fair and there was talk of it until the studio nipped that in the bud around fall 1966. The kid was going to school there and I think she did not want to interrupt his studies, but I could be misremembering.
--

Who am I to criticize a mother's choices? She called every day from the WUD set and moved to Europe and gave up quite a career for him (after those two 1967 hits, she would have been in big demand -- for what, is the question.)

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[–] ecarle (14979) 2 years ago

I'm reminded that Mike Nichols went to Doris Day for Mrs. Robinson in The Graduate. Day's manager HUSBAND said "no." Its a hard call. Anne Bancroft was an Oscar-winning, Broadway trained "serious actress" with the chops(and the sex appeal) for the role.

But Doris Day had a great body(said her male co-stars), a great voice -- WHAT IF she had taken on Mrs. Robinson? Might Doris have had her OWN Wait Until Dark or Two for the Road? Instead, she petered out in lousy family comedies and a TV series.
--
Day was incredibly talented and had more range than people think. Have you seen her in Midnight Lace? It's not as good as what Audrey got with Wait Until Dark and Charade, but it is a fun thriller in the vein of Gaslight.

--

I have seen Midnight Lace. It has a great cast(Rex Harrison, Myrna Loy, Roddy McDowall -- John Gavin in the same year as Psycho) but its perhaps a bit too overwrought and maudlin in places. It's a "Ross Hunter" production, and Ross did 'em fluffy, with a lot of emphasis on fashion. Still, Doris proved -- as she had with Hitchcock on The Man Who Knew Too Much -- that no actress could dig so DEEP into crying and hysteria so that you felt the woman's pain.

--

The Graduate would have demanded something different from Day, though: a certain predatory lustfulness. One wonders (if she DID accept) it, if she would have agreed to some of the more sexual scenes Anne Bancroft played. There's a flash of body-doubled nudity(Day could have nixed that) but what of the general in-bed predatory state?

I'd LIKE to believe it would have worked, but somehow I think it wouldn't, and I think Mike Nichols knew that, but pushed the DD story to "make a myth."

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[–] ecarle (14979) 2 years ago

Still, I think that Doris Day DID have range, SHOULD have been Oscar nominated for The Man Who Knew Too Much and shoulda/coulda found some top tier comedy movies to make in the 70s rather than some Universal backlot junk like "The Ballad of Josie." How about the Ingrid Bergman romantic role opposite Walter Matthau(played by a mature Ingrid Bergman) in Cactus Flower? Not QUITE the usual Doris Day romcom.

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[–] ElizabethJoestar (930) 2 years ago

Discussing North by Northwest -- and its similarity to Charade - Donen said "I liked that movie only through the auction scene." He felt it slowed down and dragged to the Rushmore climax, and I guess he didn't much like the Rushmore climax.

Well what the HELL.
--
The hell indeed. NBNW is basically a perfect movie to me, so the idea that it stops being good at any point is just sacrilege to me.

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[–] ecarle (14979) 2 years ago

The hell indeed. NBNW is basically a perfect movie to me, so the idea that it stops being good at any point is just sacrilege to me.

--

Good for you! But I'll also drive home this point. Hitchcock said that the Mount Rushmore sequence was the "whole reason I made the movie" and it really feels like the pinnacle of his work as an ACTION director.

A lot of the critical praise goes to the crop duster scene -- because its somewhat arty, I guess -- but the more "standard" Mount Rushmore chase feels like the biggest and best and most MEANINGFUL action climax to that date in movies(and while its been beaten for explosins and effects, it will never be beaten for location and depth of characters up there on the monument.)
Who could EVER find a better,more famous place for a finale?

So many TV shows, and Bob Hope spy comedies, and Abbot and Costello crime comedies, climaxed with the Big Crime Boss pointing at the heroes to his henchman and yelling : "GET THEM!" And the chase begins. Though James Mason actually murmers something more cool: "Get that figure back." The "figure" is a statue full of microfilm, and its important not just for its value: the bad guys can't just SHOOT Grant off the mountain, they have to catch up with him and grab the statue back.

Add in how GREAT the special effects are in this sequence(matte paintings, glass shots, and the lot) and how GREAT Herrman's wild fandango is here and, yes: the greatest of all Hitchcock action scenes.


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