Alfred Hitchcock Collection: Part 3

I’m slowly making progress through this huge boxset so here’s another few films ready for review.  This time it’s The Man Who Knew Too Much, Vertigo, and Psycho.

Vertigo and Psycho are often seen as Hitchcock’s creative peak, while The Man Who Knew Too Much is actually a remake of his own 1934 film.  Commercially this was also a very successful time for Hitchcock.  The Alfred Hitchcock Presents television program had begun in 1955 and had helped make Hitchcock a famous brand of his own.  Rear Window and To Catch a Thief had also helped cement his commercial appeal.

The Man Who Knew Too Much was released in 1956 and once again Hitchcock tells his wrong man in the wrong place story again.  This time a family on holiday in Marrakesh are mistaken for spies.  The first half sees them slowly becoming suspicious of this strange country and various goings on, while the second sees them travelling to London to stop an assassination but mostly something else that I will refrain from giving away.

It’s much weaker than other films from the period suffering, many of the Marrakesh scenes come off surprisingly well considering the obvious rear projection studio work.  The tension here is a bit too forced though which is of course a major weakness in a Hitchcock.  The climactic Albert Hall scene and the way in which the fear of the unknown and foreign is played are standout but ultimately can’t save it.  Plus Doris Day is much too nice to be a Hitchcock leading lady.
6/10

I’ll get this out the way right at the start, Vertigo is pretty much the perfect Hitchcock.  This is where his blend of thriller and mental instability comes together at its best.

Jimmy Stewart plays Scottie, a San Francisco detective who has decided to leave the police after an accident and the discovery of his acute fear of heights.  He decides to take a break from work in general to reassess his life choices.  He is soon contacted by an old friend from his army days and asked to use his detective skills to discreetly investigate his wife, Madeline and her daytime activities.

Rather than any infidelity Scottie suspects she has been driven mentally unstable by immersion in her family’s history and the fate of her great grandmother.  And when an accident occurs he finds himself more and more drawn to her.

This time in his fourth and final Hitchcock film Stewart plays the character perfectly.  This isn’t just his standard everyman persona as his mental weaknesses become illness.  Driven by his relationship with his friend’s wife, the instability hinted at by his new found fear of heights starts to creep into other aspects of his personality.  Kim Novak as Madeline gets her own chance to play it up when in a vicious circle Scottie’s obsession becomes impossible to avoid.

Hitchcock takes braver risks in direction on this, strange dream sequences and an overbearing ominous atmosphere make this a far darker tale than many of his previous films.

Everything from Basic Instinct to the Matrix make obvious lifts from this film and Brian Depalma has made a career out of remaking it, there’s a reason to keep coming back to it.  Definitely one of Hitchcock’s best.
10/10

A review of Psycho would be redundant, I should imagine any film fan should’ve seen this several times over.  More so than anything else he did Psycho came to define Hitchcock for many people, Vertigo is my favourite Hitchcock and the better film in my opinion but it would be foolish to think that anyone is interested in my thoughts on Psycho.

If for some reason you haven’t seen it (neither had Anne Heche and cinematographer Christopher Doyle when they made Gus Van Sant’s 1998 remake), yes it’s very good, and no it’s not been made to look ridiculous by numerous serial killer films made since.  Perhaps with the exception of the clunky explanatory scene at the end this could easily be released today, of course making the remake all the more pointless.

So in lieu of a proper review here’s some extra trivia squirreled from imdb:

Hitchcock actually chose to make this in black and white when much of his work at the time was in glorious colour.  Among the reasons cited for it was that he decided it would be too gory otherwise, he was also curious if a black and white movie could be a success, and to save time and money.

Anthony Perkins took no part in the filming of the shower scene.

The shower scene was originally planned to be silent but Hitchcock wisely changed his mind when he heard Bernard Hermann’s score.

My previously mentioned hatred for the psychiatrist scene is apparently shared by Pauline Kael who called it the worst scene in a Hitchcock movie.

First American film to ever show a toilet flush.

More trivia is listed here.

And here’s the spectacular trailer.