RealityChuck

Huh? The central sequence to the movie is a ballet set to the Gershwin song. Here's an excerpt:

I assume you don't mean songs like "Key Largo," which was written about the movie. There's an upcoming Nicholas Cage movie, "Season of the Witch," that might not include the Donovan song. John Carpenter's Dark Star doesn't include the Grateful Dead song it's named for. I'm guessing Carpenter could afford the rights.

This, of course, applies to the revised version (which is the only one most people have seen). The original had far less Bogart/Bacall interplay (no scene where they discuss "horse racing," for instance), though the plot made much more sense.

Great film. The only downside is it marked the beginning of the end for films for adults and intelligent science fiction. But that's not entirely the fault of the film and it still holds up very well.

Well, if it's an accusation that is pointless to deny, I won't deny it. I'll just leave it as self-evidently absurd.It's not absurd -- it's an issue that historians have to wrestle with all the time: making sure they don't bring their own preconceptions into their analysis. Here's an example: In the book, The Telephone Gambit, author Seth Shulman was struck by the similarity between Bell's drawing of the telephone microphone and that of a drawing in Elisha Gray's patent application. He took that as evidence that the Bell patent was stolen. But when he first mentioned it, a colleague asked, "How do you know that this just isn't a standard way of portraying things that hundreds of inventors used?" And he was right: if no one else did a drawing like this, it's one thing; if everyone else did, it's something else. You can't draw any conclusions until you establish this point. I've seen the same thinking right here on the board: the question was asked "Why did Casey Stengel talk about Ed Kranepool as a leadoff hitter?" Now, part of the answer is that Casey would often say things just to entertain the press. But the other part is that back in 1963, managers evaluated the batting order differently. Kranepool didn't have the OBA or the speed to be a leadoff hitter -- today. But Casey didn't look at OBA, and speed was not thought particularly important back in 1963.* Asking the question requires the assumption that Casey was looking at things the way we do now. But the person asking the question never considered this and was huffy when I pointed it out. As usual, he denied he was making the assumption that was obvious in the question. I've seen that behavior many a time. It's one of the hardest things in the world to question your own ingrained assumptions, yet it's something that has to be done when trying to analyze the past. So, when you're discussing Hitchcock's relation with his leading ladies, you need to view it within the context of his times and background. Things that are not acceptable today were perfectly acceptable back then (and things unacceptable back then are perfectly acceptable now). The comments in the article are similar to him condemning Hitchcock because he allowed cigarette smoking on the set. He's putting everything in a 21st century context, but that doesn't apply to things that happened 50 years ago. *Maury Wills excepted -- his 102 the year before was considered a fluke, though teams were seeing they were useful. Casey, however, was certainly going to be old school on the subject since only had one player who topped 20 with the Yankees -- Mickey Mantle, who didn't bat leadoff (and that was in 1959, one of the few years they didn't win the pennant). Phil Ruzutto topped 15 three times during that stretch, but the team never had more than one player over ten, and some years none reached ten. So it was not surprising that Casey wouldn't think SBs meant all that much.

Yes. Or, rather, he assumes that all the people involved in making Hitchcock's movies were living in 2010 and thus their behavior has to conform to current norms. It's a very common fallacy. No one is immune to it, and, of course, people are so blind to it that they deny they're doing it.

Off-set, Hitchcock had a penchant for practical jokes, and often played them on his female actresses (though he did them with the men, too, when is suited him). There is, of course, a lot of blatant presentism in the assumptions of the article; the writer assumes (without realizing it) that Hitchcock was living in 2010 when he was making his films (and, of course, will deny that -- presentism is always blind to itself). You can also pick and choose. Hitchcock's women were more often than not smart, self-assured, and very competent. There's Edna in the original The Man Who Knew Too Much (a crack shot with a gun and the only one with the nerve to take out the villain), Miss Froy in the Lady Vanishes, Sylvia in Sabotage, Charlie in Shadow of a Doubt, Connie Porter in Lifeboat, Lisa in Rear Window (as well as Stella, in a different way), Eve in North by Northwest, Blanche in Family Plot, and others. So by choosing those examples, you could argue that Hitch was a feminist.

Oh, and Hitchcock's penchant for putting women in danger is due to story needs, not any dark psychological demons. His films were always about suspense, and you can't have suspense without danger. And a damsel in distress is far more dramatic than a man in trouble (and Hitchcock had plenty of them, too -- Cary Grant in North by Northwest, Robert Cummings in Saboteur, Montgomery Clift in I Confess, Henry Fonda in The Wrong Man, etc.).

I've long enjoyed Joe Queenan's take on Alfred, which was pretty much that he was as good a flimmaker as one can be without being great. Or (re-reading), he is great, but not great-great. Pretty good work by Queenan from back when his snark content was about 40% instead of the 80-85% it runs at now that he's a brand name. He had me until this: Carole Lombard was given a dry run in Mr. and Mrs. Smith, but she must not have been docile enough, because Hitchcock never used her again, and so she was forced to move on to more fertile fields. Because she was dead, maybe? Mr and Mrs. Smith was her next to last film before she died in a plane crash.

Vic Sage wrote: Benjamin Grimm wrote: Not sure exactly why, but I have a special fondness for Shadow of a Doubt. maybe cuz its really good? It was Hitch's own fave of his films, apparently.I think Hitch liked it for reasons other than than what was on the screen (most notably, having Thornton Wilder involved). It's second-tier Hitchcock -- good film, but not one of his greats. I'd say his great films are North by Northwest, Psycho, Notorious, Rear Window, The 39 Steps and Strangers on a Train. Second tier are Shadow of a Doubt, The Lady Vanishes, Saboteur, Family Plot (very underrated), The Man Who Knew Too Much (both versions) and Young and Innocent There are also plenty of good films that don't make either of these lists.

Hard to choose, but I went with North by Northwest. Rear Window, Strangers on a Train, The 39 Steps and Psycho are also in the running. I do find Vertigo overrated. Re the psychiatrist in Psycho: his explanation was never supposed to explain anything. It was put there so those who needed an explanation would have one.

You're right about Chaplin -- he didn't even play piano. He'd just hum the tune he had in mind and have someone take care of the scoring (IIRC, he liked 6-4-3 since it got him out of trouble). Woody Allen wrote, acted, directed, and, in at least one case, wrote the music (he's an accomplished clarinetist). Mel Brooks has done five: actor, writer, producer, director, and composer. Though he hasn't produced as much work as Eastwood.