Word: hitchcock
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...French railway station a woman bids goodbye to a friend. Then she boards the train-and sneaks out on the other side of the platform. A classic Hitchcock opening for a film that is missing only one vital ingredient: Alfred Hitchcock. In the maestro's place, however, is his greatest disciple, Director Francois Truffaut, who considers Hitchcock "an artist of anxiety" to be placed alongside Kafka...
...Unlike Hitchcock's films, Bride has no overriding buildup of tension leading to a climactic finish. Instead, Truffaut provides a whole series of suspenseful crescendos-and finds voluptuous revelations and eerie beauty in each one of them. Under his low-keyed, meticulous direction, all the murdered men give subtle performances that would do credit to Giraudoux. Out standing is Michel Bouquet, pathetic yet loathsome as a pawky, balding bachelor who cannot believe his good fortune when a mysterious beauty comes to his shabby room with a bottle of strange-tasting liqueur. Scarcely less memorable is Charles Denner, a painter...
Every time Roman Polanski puts his name on a film, six dozen critics say he's out-Hitchcocked Hitchcock. Rosemary's Baby, a pointless and supremely mediocre melodrama, provoked the same now-customary response: one New York paper assumed confidently that Hitchcock would have been proud to have made it and, on nearer horizons, Boston After Dark's very own Deac Rossell (a nice tall boy who smiles a lot) decided to write a paramount press release calling Rosemary's Baby "worthy of the dean of film thrillers, Hitchcock." I get mad when I read this kind of nonsense...
...count me out. Hitchcock wouldn't put his name anywhere near junk like Rosemary's Baby. Generalizing shamelessly, Hitchcock films make important, often positive, statements about a wide range of human problems. Polanski's films exist at best in tortured ambiguity and increasingly are sloppy stylistic exercises in low-level suspense mechanics...
...shown on TV sets, dropped on tables, and exhibited shamelessly throughout. The exteriors are bleached-out process shots taken on different days with no attempt made to reconcile light changes. When a little action is necessary, Polanski drags out the hand-held camera for some shaky realism (catch Hitchcock filming violence with a hand-held camera!); and repeatedly, Polanski substitutes tight close-ups for style. If nothing else, Rosemary's Baby is ugly--aesthetically derelict, the groping of a bombed-out mind...