Word: hitchcock
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...vision of the master, the boydless hand ripping away the shower curtain in the nightmare-provoker of all time, Psycho. This truism does not apply to The Lady Vanishes for some reason I can't quite fathom. Perhaps the simple georgraphic limitations of the plot account for this anomaly; Hitchcock always works best with a script that offers a wide variety of settings and locations that allow his prodigious imagination its rein. And there is, after all, only so so you can do with the interior of a railway car. All of which does not detract from the film...
...FESTIVAL'S highlight is the complete version of Ladislas Starevitch's The Mascot, a fairy tale of innocence astray in a wicked world. The film, made in 1934, is a classic of puppet and object animation. A dew-eyed puppy puppet--who bears a vague resemblance to Alfred Hitchcock--is brought to life by the tears of a dollmaker who is too poor to buy her sick daughter the oranges she dreams of. The dollmaker sends the puppy to be sold in a toy store. He manages to escape his new owner there as well as his fate...
...between the acts of this royal variety show are several excursions off to the home of the wicked Stepmother (Margaret Lockwood-the heroine, during rather better times, of Hitchcock's The Lady Vanishes). There, Cinderella (Gemma Craven) gets snooted by her Stepsisters and gazes sorrowfully into the flames of the scullery fire, waiting for her Fairy Godmother to come along...
...Rear Window. Probably the most difficult thing for me is to choose only one Hitchcock film. So many are fabulous, especially from the 50s (North by Northwest, Vertigo, and Strangers on a Train). But this little shown film with Jimmy Steward and Grace Kelley is my favorite. It combines all of Hitchcock's strengths: suspense, great plotting, complex direction, and an ability to force the audience to discover its dark and immoral sides by involving it with characters engaged in unsavory activities (here, voyeurism). Yet none of his other films go so far in lending a sinister touch to mundane...
...small independent company making up stories in order to take advantage of the locations, or fighting off gunmen sent out by the competition, his picture has a pleasant authenticity. There is also a nicely handled romantic triangle involving O'Neal, Burt Reynolds as a star and Newcomer Jane Hitchcock as a comically nearsighted actress. What goes wrong with the picture is an overreliance on slapstick, the nearly lost silent film technique, as a device to evoke the spirit of the time. Bogdanovich apparently does not quite trust his film's softer side to grab interest, especially...