One of the keys to the longevity of Hitchcock's career is how many different generations were exposed to those films:
There were the original audiences of the 30's, 40's, 50's.
Then came the Sixties Boomer Kids(in America, at least) who got a massive rush of Hitchcock pictures on the weekly network movies(NBC, CBS, ABC) that were watched by millions in an era without cable and multiple channels and movie viewing options.
The Seventies brought a mix of generations, and a mix of venues in which to SEE Hitchcock pictures: TV, colleges, revival houses, and with a coupla of new releases(Frenzy and Family Plot), the multiplexes.
In the early seventies, Hitchcock pulled those famous five, including all four Jimmy Stewart Hitchcocks, and within those, two candidates for the Greatest Hitchcock Movie ever made(Rear Window and Vertigo.) Hitchcock was sly and merciless in doing that: he ensured that he would be a Big Name, with Big Hit movies....after he DIED!
In the eighties, the "Hitchcock Five" came back, VHS and cable made sure that practically ALL Hitchcocks were in heavy rotation, and the 80's also saw "Psycho II and III" and a brief revival of "Alfred Hitchcock Presents"(hosted BY HITCHCOCK, in his old intros -- colorized!)
The 90's brought "Psycho IV," "The Birds II," and remakes of "Psycho," "Rear Window" and "Dial M for Murder." Most of those, you could see in a theater.
"Vertigo" was restored for 70mm re-release in 1996, and "Rear Window" got the same treatment to open the 21st Century with a 2000 release.
Bottom line: Hitchcock has stayed important, entertaining and RELEVANT for decades now. He's arguably got more fans since he died than when he was alive(world population growth; the proliferation of cable and video). And so many of those fans have still been able to see at least some of his works on the big screen.
Which reminds me:
One problem about waiting for "Topaz" til your deathbed: it is rumored that since "Topaz" has such a lousy reputation in the Hitchcock canon, Universal will take no steps to preserve it, let alone restore it. Given the long life I hope you have, "Topaz" just might not EXIST then.
Sorry.
Or as Hitchcock said to somebody fretting about something to do with one of his movies:
"Why worry,old boy? Within a hundred years, the film this was shot on with crumple into cornflakes, anyway."
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gManalishi
15 years ago
I certainly hope that Universal's rumoured intention to let Topaz fade away is not true. I too have something of a soft spot for Topaz. It took me a few years to find a copy (the 1999 VHS release of the Universal Hitchcock collection included Topaz but that film seemed to disappear almost immediately and at that point (my very early teens) I was only just becoming absolutely obsessed with cinema, had only recently experienced my first Hitchcock picture and was gradually beginning to work my way through them and, of course, had to rely on pocket money to buy up my collection which meant it took rather a long time!
When the DVD version of the Hitchcock collection came out I immediately bought Mr and Mrs Smith and Topaz - two Hictchcock pictures I had spent years waiting to see and which I had read almost exclusively negative reviews for. I enjoyed Topaz immensely. While it had some obvious flaws, I thought that the characterisations were well developed (certainly more so than Torn Curtain), the cast was fresh and original (Truffaut's influence in the largely European casting was obvious), it was the first of Hitchcock's films since The Birds (or arguably since Vertigo or North by Northwest) to be truly interesting visually (there are several sequences from Topaz that stick in my mind and which encourage me to return to the film over and over in a way that just doesn't happen with either Marnie or Torn Curtain, although that said I do like both of those films to differing degrees). I also found it interesting to compare Topaz to the films Hitch had made in England in the late thirties - the other spy thrillers like Secret Agent and The Lady Vanishes. In some respects I considered that it was a return to his roots. In many ways it was the beginning to Hitchcock's last great peak and a sequence of films that all did something new but also looked back to his roots. The next film was Frenzy which was a physical return to England and to real thrillers (it even has the transfer of guilt theme) and with Family Plot he returned to the comedy-thrillers he'd developed in the thirties and, notably, the fifties. So while it is not perect, Topaz is infinitely better that its reputation would suggest and, I think, one of the more important films of Hitchcock's time at Universal.
As to the OP you certainly have more nerve than I do. I couldn't resist watching any of his films no matter how poor the reputation. And it must be said that a number of the least popular Hitchcock pictures are actually rather good and deserving of critical re-evaluation.
"There are three sides to every story: yours, mine, and the truth." ~ Robert Evans
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rexshard93
15 years ago
Topaz (1969) also has some of the best scenes in the history of cinema. The death of Juanita de Cordoba, the scene where Mendozas says Juanita de Cordoba to Rico Parra (John Vernon), and Theresa Hotel Sequence.
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