Word: hitchcockian
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...independently, they invent the notion of stealing the turtles and setting them free in the ocean. It requires only the intercession of a third party, the creatures' keeper, to bring them together. Thereafter, Turtle Diary casts its spell mainly through its refusals. The heist proceeds without hitch or Hitchcockian suspense. There is not a single sentimental or anthropomorphic word, nor does anyone utter a sound about endangered species or ecological morality. William and Neaera do not fall in love as a result of their shared adventure. Each remobilizes sexually in surprising ways...
...themes of flight and pursuit, of innocence shading into culpability, are Hitchcockian. But John Landis' film is not a genre genuflection; it is a thoroughly modern, satanically entertaining night flight into the Zeitgeist city of the 1980s. This Los Angeles is a kingdom of chic sleaze, where every black soul gleams like Bakelite. In the Rodeo Drive boutiques, Iranian thugs and their bimbos are served champagne and caviar. Diana's brother (Bruce McGill) dresses himself and his apartment in Elvis memorabilia and drives a white Caddy bearing the legend THE KING LIVES. A shabby-genteel Brit (David Bowie) eases...
Vertigo takes this Hitchcockian transference of guilt-from criminal to innocent onlooker to movie watcher-one disturbing step further. Scottie Ferguson (Stewart) is another immobilized hero; the former detective's fear of heights had resulted in the death of a policeman. Now an old college chum has put Scottie on the trail of his disturbed wife Madeleine (Kim Novak), who believes herself possessed by the spirit of her suicidal great-great-grandmother. Scottie follows Madeleine up and down the hills of San Francisco, a vertiginous setting where even the streets have lost their balance. At first...
...Southern California, they have practically begged the swallows to return to Capistrano, where the birds are a big tourist attraction. But the central California city of Fairfield (pop. 58,000) has for three months suffered an almost Hitchcockian invasion of birds. Starlings, perhaps 200,000 at one time, have chosen to winter in a local eucalyptus grove. Major Hal Biestek, a pilot stationed at nearby Travis Air Force Base, lives close to the grove, directly under the starlings' flight path. "It was so loud," said Biestek of the birds' chirps and screeches, "it kept us awake at night...