IMDb #147: Rebecca (1940)

Source: Wikipedia

The classic mystery novel gets the Hitchcock treatment, and miraculously avoids ticking off everything I despise about mysteries.

Not that it makes the heroine any more tolerable.

A typical boring self-insert female protagonist, she unwittingly snares the attention and affection of a handsome, brooding widower on a cliffside contemplating suicide. Thus she transitions from "professional companion" (of a chatty old hag) to a professional spouse (of George Fortiscue Maximilian de Winter, brusque and imperious iceberg whose hidden depths sink relationships and kill people).

The whirlwind romance deposits the boring girl in Oz. Only it's called Manderly, the Munchkins are the dour serving staff, the unhelpful Wizard is her temperamental husband. Also, the Wicked Witch is the deceased previous wife, whose bitter legacy permeates the house and its inhabitants and even the movie title. This Dorothy has no friends. But there is a fluffy little dog, who drags her to a lakeside cottage containing a crazy old lady and rooms full of secrets.

As the boring girl strives for unattainable standards of beauty and sophistication, she hones her remarkable talent for pissing off her husband. Not that it takes much effort. She's awkward, deferential, and he's temperamental, demeaning. REBECCA stands between them, preventing intimacy as effectively as a full-body condom.

So when the authorities find Rebecca's body, and the hole-riddled boat it sank in, thus begin the token mystery shenanigans. Overnight, the situation waxes toward ridiculousness. Was it suicide? Accident? Murder?

The case re-opens in court. The soap opera begins, reducing the boring heroine to blessed irrelevancy with more complex games afoot. Mind games! Pregnancy! Cancer! The plot threads twist until they fray and unravel. The douchebag car-salesman cousin tries to ruin everything with damning evidence. The reticent landlady discovers her inner pyromaniac.

It's a lovely package. Well-paced, well-delivered, well-unwrapped.

The loose plot threads, just enough string to hang yourself, tie up in to a neat knot. And the shaky marriage between abrasive Lawrence Olivier and his girl-of-the-week achieves questionable vindication.

130 minutes.

IMDb #162 Review: Dial M for Murder (1954)

The Alfred Hitchcock suspense formula vacations in London, where it turns out people are still bastards and just as fond of needlessly complicated murder schemes.

This story follows the traditional speech structure -- say what you're going to say, say it, then say what you just said. Or, in Hitchcock terms: have a long dry chat about the crime you're going to commit, flub it irreparably, then spout a series of escalating lies before the coppers figure out what the hell happened.

So a guy wants to murder his cheating wife. Almost understandable. He plays professional tennis, so he's obviously insane. He conscripts another guy to kill her, in this case an old college buddy. He concocts an absurdly convoluted plan that gives them both alibis. (Wait, this is Strangers on a Train, transplanted to London for no reason!)

What could go wrong? The answer is -- I can't say, it's too stupid.

Fine. You made me do it.

She kills the killer in self-defense. With a pair of scissors. Completely by accident, it looked like.

When the dogged detective hunts down the baffling set of clues, he miraculously deduces that there was an accomplice. As the husband frantically conceals incriminating evidence, he only makes things worse for himself. What could be a fantastic black comedy is instead played quite seriously. Kudos to the cast for keeping straight faces.

Boil away the mystery claptrap and what have you got? Three long conversations in the same room, with about ten minutes of things going on. Is it interesting? Sure, if you're into that kind of thing. Hitchcock thrillers, while thoughtfully constructed, don't feel too mentally or emotionally taxing to begin with; once again, cardboard cutouts overreact to patently unfeasible scenarios. You can smell the grease sizzling in the director's brain-gears.

So if you enjoy stuffy Brits playing absurdly complex mind games to achieve contrived conclusions from hypothetical scenarios -- congratulations, both of you!

Whoever you are, stay the hell away from my house.

105 minutes.

IMDb #204 Review: Strangers on a Train (1954)

Source: Wikipedia

These two guys meet on a train — you might have guessed that part. One guy, cleverly named Guy, is a pro tennis player. The other’s a professional creep. It’s obvious, judging by the tacky lobster tie and monogrammed tie clip.

The creep displays a disturbingly comprehensive knowledge of Guy's marital indiscretions. The pending divorce, the affair with a senator’s daughter, everything.

He proposes a deal: the maniac offers to off the tennis-guy’s money-grubbing wife, if tennis-guy kills the maniac’s father. Swapping murders, to muddle the motive. Brilliant, if you’re outta your mind.

So without asking permission, the maniac follows through. The harpy in horn-rimmed spectacles gets strangled at the carnival, which was a suckhole of fun to begin with. (Question: who wears a suit and fedora to a carnival? Answer: the 1950s.)

Our hero owes a murder. If Guy outs the killer, the killer frames Guy. He’s also got a big game to train for, and a police tail to avoid. Not to mention the maniac stalking him, sabotaging his social functions.

It’s like Rope — a charming psychopath and a reluctant innocent work together to conceal a crime, except the innocent frets and the psychopath shoehorns “murder” into every conversation.

Here, Hitchcock’s overly complex premise spirals into madness. The mystery/suspense formula already runs on a heaping helping of disbelief suspension, but this one just staggers me.

The ending — spoilers be damned — is freaking hilarious. Unintentionally. I'd say it encapsulates the movie. What is it? A bathetic fistfight on a runaway carousel (sped-up footage courtesy of A. Hitch himself), surrounded by moms freaking out and kiddos loving the ride.

If you typically lap up Hitchcock schlock, go ahead and slog through it. If not...have I got a killer of a proposition for you...

101 minutes.

IMDb ??? Review: Rope (1948)

Source: Wikipedia

Nothing kills the mood of a murder scene like a party. Especially inviting the unsuspecting friends and family of the very recently deceased.

Unless you’re the protagonists of Alfred Hitchcock’s Rope.

Two Ivy League college students kill a peer on a whim and tackle the consequences with aplomb. One, a worrywart with a conscience; the other, a smarmy devil in a nice suit. Harvard’s Hitler waxes eloquent about murder as an art form, a right the intellectually superior supposedly wield over inferiors. His actions, such as sabotaging his cushy life out of sheer hubris, call into question the intelligence he assigns himself.

Through what seems like one gruelingly long take, Hitchcock, the master of suspense, casts his spell. And nothing spells “old movie” like grainy Technicolor, credits at the beginning, and a parade of cigs and hats and booze.

Most of the movie is dull and/or uncomfortable conversation. Old ladies natter about food, astrology, movie stars. The Ivy League stranglers alternate between insisting there’s nothing wrong and insinuating, “HE’S DEAD AND WE KILLED HIM AND I’M SMARTER THAN ALL OF YOU DUMBASSES AHAHAHAHAHA.”

So much potential. Add brisk editing and a slide-whistle soundtrack, and it’s a forties-era cringe comedy; kill the music and substitute a droning voiceover, and you have a systematic documentary guide to failing at crime and throwing shitty parties.

Overall, I'd say it examines the difference between preaching a philosophy and living it out. Like the difference between tenured poli-sci profs who shill Marxism in the classroom and their comrades who gnaw off their own frostbitten fingers in Siberian gulags.

Recommended for sadistic party animals, anti-social Darwinists, and fulfillers of both categories, such as Alfred Hitchcock.

80 minutes.

IMDb #221 Review: Notorious (1947)

Source: Wikipedia

At last, film noir starring the femme fatale. The stone-hearted private dick (this time a G-man snoop) takes a backseat, mostly to create romantic tension for our lovely drunken floozy.

The Americanized daughter of a Nazi officer, she receives a special job:

• Take a Brazilian vacation on Uncle Sam’s dime.
• Hook up with some Nazi expatriates (ahem: German businessmen), maybe seduce one or two, stoke up an old flame.
• Finally, report every seemingly inconsequential detail to the fedora-toting CIA spooks who just happened to follow her down.

On what motivation? To demonstrate her patriotism (veiled threat intentional). Also, to show her spontaneous love/infatuation for aforementioned G-man snoop, who fortunately happens to be devilishly handsome. Her new German fiance is notably less so.

When the twitterpated dummkopf wakes from his honeymoon daze, he makes a shocking revelation ripped straight out of Third Reich men’s magazines: "Oh sheiße, I married an American spy!"

As if the gal’s recurrent interactions with the suspicious-as-hell American Adonis weren't evidence enough. Her unlucky hubby should thank Hitler’s ghost he lives with his canny old mother, despite his own obscene wealth and scary Nazi refugee buddies who drop in for schnapps.

Alfred Hitchcock captures the war aftermath the best way he knows how: a genre movie with all the trappings. Snippy speeches about love; suspense from repeated near-discoveries; posh dinner parties; and so, so much infidelity. There are hints at the potential of Nazi nukes, foreshadowing the Cold War’s baby steps and the subsequent arms race. But, like the Cold War, after ages and ages of mounting tension, the movie just…ends.

Like so.

101 minutes.