Word: mother
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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North By Northwest. Clever. One could say as much for any Hitchcock film. But this one has to be his most ingenious, the plot is devilish--and although Hitchcock never really wrings the full terror out of it, terrifying. Cary Grant plays a Madison Avenue smoothie with a doting mother and life of business luncheons who gets taken (figuratively, and literally) for a spy. "Nice play-acting, but it won't wash," his abductor, a chillingly villainous James Mason tells Grant when he tries to clear up this misunderstanding. Grant breaks free, then does some romantic interluding with a seductive...
...spring and that means the start of a new season. Every year about this time, Mother Nature makes her big trade. She gives up two or three feet of snow (first round drift choices) for green grass and an undisclosed amount of rain...
...child, and even a hint of affluence. Flexner's research, he says, "turns the accepted story completely upside down. I found not affluence but relative squalor; not warmth but betrayal. Hamilton's home was a shambles." Being illegitimate, Alexander was officially designated an "obscene child." His mother Rachel was evidently something of a slut; before taking up with Hamilton's father, she served time in jail on St. Croix for committing adultery-"whoring with everyone," said her husband's complaint in court. Hamilton's father, a feckless romantic and bankrupt merchant, eventually deserted Rachel...
...sought from the world an ever-denied release from inner wounds ... The accomplished, smooth and brilliant man of the world could at any moment change hysterically, invisibly, for the time being decisively, into an imperiled, anguished child." In Flexner's formulation, Hamilton bore a lifelong grudge against his mother and cherished a romantic dream of aristocracy and vanished honor; it was the only thing his father had to leave...
...EITHER the plot or the acting provide the continuity that the cinematography lacks. The peek-a-boo piece in Playboy led us to believe that Violet's mother, Hattie (Susan Sarandon) would be a reluctant and ambitious hooker who dreamed of getting out. But Sarandon the ruthlessness to flesh out that theme. She simply ups and weds one of her johns in the middle of the movie--leaving Violet being and leaving us wondering why she did it, and where we missed something. Less self-explanatory still is David Carradine's portrayal of the photographer-suitor, Bellocq. When he first...