Alfred Hitchcock

Young and Innocent

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Nova Pilbeam and Derrick De Marney in a car

Minor Hitchcock but a major surprise (to me at least), 1937’s Young and Innocent is terribly, terribly British and also terribly, terribly entertaining, a near-comedy that’s bright, sunny, fast, brilliantly made and very grin-inducing. Made two years after The 39 Steps it is basically the same film all over again, but with more comedy and less jeopardy and English rural locations standing in for the wilds of Scotland. Its stars don’t look too unlike Robert Donat and Madeleine Carroll either. Derrick De Marney plays Robert, the square-headed decent chap accused of a murder he didn’t commit and Nova Pilbeam is Erica, the pretty blonde who helps him out. She’s not shackled to him, … Read more

The Wrong Man

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Henry Fonda in hat

Atypical and yet very typical, 1956’s The Wrong Man is Alfred Hitchcock’s tilt at those noirish ripped-from-the-headlines crime dramas that were all the rage when people still said “all the rage”, films sold on authenticity and with a dedication to telling it how it was. That’s what’s behind Hitchcock dropping his usual comedy cameo early in this movie and settling instead on a moody, backlit intro in which the man himself informs us that what we are about to see is stranger than all the films he’s made before, and yet… “this is a true story. Every bit of it.” He is pretty much as good as his word. This is the story … Read more

Marnie

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Tippi Hedren as Marnie

1964’s Marnie is Alfred Hitchcock on the comeback trail. True, the previous year’s The Birds had been a big hit, with barely any critics openly saying what a lot of them must have inwardly thought – that it’s not top-flight (ouch) Hitchcock. It had made a stack of cash for the director and Paramount studios. But Hitchcock knew it wasn’t quite up there with the best. And so he set out to make a better film by deliberately borrowing from the best – himself. From Psycho another blonde called Marion (as Marnie is first introduced), the mother issues and a lot of fraught sexuality. From the 1950s high era of North by Northwest/Vertigo/Rear … Read more

Family Plot

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Bruce Dern at a graveside

If you were idly flicking through the TV channels on a wet afternoon and hit upon Family Plot, chances are you wouldn’t immediately think it was a Hitchcock movie – it looks more like an episode of Columbo. That bright TV lighting, those mid-range actors who look like they’re trying not to be fingered as this week’s criminal, one who’s once again not as smart as the man in the mac. I’ve looked up Bruce Dern, Karen Black, Barbara Harris and William Devane and not one of them ever did make an appearance on Columbo but they don’t quite fit the standard Hitchcock bill either, or not the bill containing Cary Grant, Grace Kelly, … Read more

Stage Fright

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Jane Wyman and Marlene Dietrich

When the conversation turns to Alfred Hitchcock films, Stage Fright doesn’t often come up. Notorious, Psycho, Strangers on a Train, The 39 Steps, North by Northwest, Vertigo and even The Birds all regularly make an appearance. Stage Fright not so much. And yet it’s a fascinating film, not least because in it Hitchcock tries to do something different with his formula. All the usual elements are here – the innocent man, mistaken identity, flat-footed cops, the mystery blonde – but everything has been given a distorting twist, inside a movie which itself is set in a world with a distorted relationship to reality, as if all the characters in it have somehow become … Read more

The Man Who Knew Too Much

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Bob consoles wife Jill

Here’s the original 1934 version of The Man Who Knew Too Much, the thriller Alfred Hitchcock would remake in 1956 with James Stewart and Doris Day in the lead roles. He later said this first version was “the work of a talented amateur, and the second was made by a professional.” However, ever a master of misdirection, it’s actually the first one that Hitchcock preferred. He found the second too polished. Unlike the second, this is a very British affair, with Leslie Banks and Edna Best as the married couple whose holiday in St Moritz is interrupted when a friend is shot and killed in front of them (in one of the most … Read more

Rear Window

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James Stewart and Grace Kelly in Rear Window

A movie for every day of the year – a good one 8 January François Grimaldi takes Monaco, 1297 On this day in 1297, dressed as a monk, François Grimaldi (more properly Francesco, since he was Italian) was admitted to the castle at Monaco. Known as Il Malizia, “the cunning”, Grimaldi’s plan was simple – get inside, open the gates and then let his men rush the guards. This he did, and once his men, including his cousin, Rainier, were in he took control. For four years he ruled over Monaco, until he was chased out by the Genoese. He was the first of the Grimaldi clan to try and establish a claim … Read more

North by Northwest

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Cary Grant pursued by a plane in North by Northwest

A movie for every day of the year – a good one 31 October Mount Rushmore completed, 1941 On this day in 1941, the sculpture of four US presidents – George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Theodore Roosevelt and Abraham Lincoln – was finished on a granite face near Keystone, South Dakota. Sculpted from a mountain known to the Lakota Sioux as the Six Grandfathers, the depiction of the four presidents was masterminded by Gutzon Borglum and carved (after dynamiting to remove the big stuff) by up to 400 workers, each head measuring around 60 feet (18 metres). The gigantic frieze was conceived and created for reasons of promoting tourism, rather than overarching patriotism, and … Read more

The Lodger

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Ivor Novello in The Lodger

A movie for every day of the year – a good one 30 September Jack the Ripper Kills Twice, 1888 On this day in 1888, the London serial killer known as Jack the Ripper killed two women, Elizabeth Stride and Catherine Eddowes. Stride had had her throat cut; Eddowes had also had her throat cut, part of her nose was missing, her right earlobe was hanging off and she had had her abdomen cut open and one kidney had been removed. They were victims number three and four of a five-kill run that had started on 31 August and run its course by 9 November of the same year. The Ripper’s identity was … Read more

The 39 Steps

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Madeleine Carroll handcuffed to Robert Donat in The 39 Steps

There are several filmed versions of John Buchan’s novel. The other two notables have Kenneth More and Robert Powell in the lead. But this one, in spite of its antiquity, is the best. It stars debonair, pencil-moustached Robert Donat as the innocent man forced into going on the run after accidentally getting caught up at the wrong end of someone else’s spying caper. The “innocent” theme was something Alfred Hitchcock was already comfortable with in 1935 and one which he’d return to repeatedly, most notably in North by Northwest. If you’ve read John Buchan’s original book, you’ll know The 39 Steps is a taut thriller full of derring-do, a rattling good read even … Read more