There’s a technique surely everyone’s now familiar with in suspense or horror films: humor. Often the first part of the film is lighthearted, which serves to…well, you know, make it so that everyone in the audience is really primed to be emotionally demolished. Hitchcock’s actors in the Man Who Knew Too Much included Peter Lorre,Continue reading “Hitchcock: The Man Who Knew Too Much (1934)”
Tag Archives: Hitchcock
Hitchcock: The Man Who Knew Too Much (1956)
I haven’t any idea why both Doris Day and Jimmy Stewart hold such happy places in my heart–but they do. This is the sort of Hitchcock I enjoy most, when I’m not left feeling sick and paranoid. Well, right now I’m feeling sick because I’ve been drinking coffee all night and that’s a miserable thingContinue reading “Hitchcock: The Man Who Knew Too Much (1956)”
film: Hitchcock: The 39 Steps (1935)
I was thankful that The 39 Steps was not actually a thriller, not in the later Hitchcock sense of the word. Of course it had many of his later elements, and much of his humor, and most notably: an otherwise anonymous woman opens her mouth to scream, and a train whistle blares forth, from theContinue reading “film: Hitchcock: The 39 Steps (1935)”
film: Carol Reed: The Third Man (1949)
Walking out the door each day and ten steps later reaching the doorway through which Graham Greene passed daily for years filled me with some sort of awe. I also had to walk out of the theatre during End of the Affair because it made me so miserable, I left and cried. As much asContinue reading “film: Carol Reed: The Third Man (1949)”
film: Lang: M (1931)
Though I probably haven’t seen enough thrillers to know, their general pattern seems to be lightheartedness through the beginning, and then a quick increase into whatever makes us anxious, a curveball at the end, finis. Except that this seems to be Hitchcock’s strategy, I’d say that Lang was working early in a genre–and so? IContinue reading “film: Lang: M (1931)”
arts & fetters 