Suspicion

I decided to watch Alfred Hitchcock's Suspicion for a few reasons.  First and foremost, I enjoy Hitchcock's work.  Not far behind that, I have come to the conclusion that it's never a poor choice to watch a Cary Grant film.  Thanks to the seemingly infinite supply of movies available to me (my own massive collection, Netflix by mail, on-demand streaming, etc.) I have been primarily watching films I have never seen before, often with very little in the way of foreknowledge.  That is fine most of the time, but I've had some bad luck with picking random Hitchcock movies to watch (read: they weren't classics) for this blog.  Will Suspicion break that trend?

Lina (Joan Fontaine) is well on her way to spinsterhood.  Yes, her case is hopeless, since she has no suitors, appears to not want any suitors, and she has reached the ripe old age of mmmaybe twenty-five (and that's pushing it).  Oh, and did I mention that she reads a lot and wears glasses?  Who would want to marry someone so repellant?

Disgusting!  I think I just puked in my mouth a little!

One day, Lina is singled out by the irrepressible cad Johnnie (Cary Grant), an infamous playboy.  For reasons that Lina is unclear on, Johnnie finds her abrasiveness appealing.  Very soon, Johnnie is courting Lina --- despite her family's misgivings --- and he finds all sorts of ways to woo her; he compliments her lower neck, he grooms her, and he nicknames her Monkey Face.

Johnnie, checking Monkey Face for delicious lice

That proves too much for Lina to deny and the two elope.  After a luxurious honeymoon, the pair move into a fancy new home together.  All of this would be wonderful, if not for the fact that Johnnie doesn't have a pot to piss in.  Somehow, the subject of money never came up in their courtship, and now both of them are unemployed without being independently wealthy.  That's not strictly true, I suppose; Monkey Face is the daughter of a wealthy old man (Cedric Hardwicke), so she should inherit some money someday.  In the meantime, though, Johnnie spends money he doesn't have quickly and frivolously, dodging creditors and lying with a smile whenever the subject of money comes up.  But when Lina's father dies under suspicious circumstances and doesn't leave Lina any money (not as long as she's married to that cad!), a darker side of Johnnie starts creeping in.  There is nothing concrete to indicate that Johnnie is up to no good, but Lina soon begins to piece together circumstantial evidence to arrive at a disturbing conclusion --- Johnnie is trying to kill her!

Literally spelling it out?  Subtle.

Hitchcock films are not famous for the acting performances, but Suspicion features the only Oscar-winning acting role from any Hitchcock film.  Joan Fontaine won Best Actress as Lina.  Personally, I don't get it.  Fontaine spent a good portion of the film making tragic faces away from Cary Grant.

Now, repeat thirty more times

I also didn't like the overall message of the character, but I'll touch on that in a bit.  From a performance standpoint, Fontaine was pretty good, but a touch melodramatic.  I've read a few opinions that her Oscar win was a belated award for her work in Rebecca, though, which does help explain this a bit.  Cary Grant being excellent definitely balanced out the unevenness of Fontaine's character.  Grant was his normal charming self for the most part, but it was interesting seeing him shift into the more serious moments.  The screenplay doesn't go as far with that darkness as I might have liked, but it's a good example of Grant's depth.

Shifty eyes, sinister milk

The rest of the cast was made up of character actors.  Cedric Hardwicke and May Whitty were okay as Lina's parents.  Heather Angel was fine as the pretty maid and Isabel Jeans was okay as one of the local gossips.  The only supporting character that really stuck out to me was the pleasantly dim chum to Johnnie, Beaky, played by Nigel Bruce.  It's difficult to play a clueless character without resorting to base physical humor or Dude, Where's My Car? idiocy, but Bruce was convincing as a man who could be counted on to always say the exact wrong thing.

"A toast: to whores --- a husband's best investment!"

As for the direction, Suspicion shows Alfred Hitchcock refining his craft.  There are a lot of clever bits in this movie, and most of them are extremely subtle.  The most memorable shot is of the possibly poisoned milk Johnnie brings Lina; the way it stays so brilliantly white while Johnnie is in shadows played perfectly into the tension of that scene.  There are other, less striking, examples of Hitchcock's craftiness, though.  I really liked how the plausibility of Lina's suspicions were handled; the point-of-view in this film was so definitely Lina's that the audience never sees Johnnie in a scene without her.  Who knows what he was up to when he was off-camera?  There was also the technical feat of superimposing Lina's face over an imagined tragedy, which looked very good for the time period.  Perhaps the greatest feat by Hitchcock in this film was how much he let the film rest on the shoulders of the main actors.  This is easily the most character-driven film of his I have seen and it was interesting to see him allow two flawed characters the room to grow.

The flaws in Suspicion are not just with the characters, though.  The ending is pretty terrible.  There are dozens of articles online about the supposed original or proposed alternate endings to the film, but I just want to focus on what made the final cut.  If you take the explanations given at face value, you are left with a huge anticlimax.  To say it is out of left field would be generous; I immediately drew comparisons to the end of Poochie from The Simpsons. 

If you choose to disbelieve the explanations given --- and that would be going against the obvious intent of the filmmakers --- then the ending's tone was off to an unsettling degree.  Whichever way you interpret the ending, I think it can be agreed that it is underwhelming, at best.  My larger problem with the film is the condescension that underlies the story.  If I was a woman, this movie would seriously piss me off.  Even if you choose to ignore Lina's willingness to turn a blind eye to just about everything with a passiveness that defies logic, there is still the whole concept of SPOILER: everything suspicious about Johnnie being her own fanciful imagination.  Really?  That's the explanation that ties up this plot with a little bow?  She's a woman and women are batshit crazy?  If that's the argument that the filmmakers want to propose, I'm fine with that --- it could be hilarious --- but it shouldn't be the key component to a twist ending.  The film seems to be building to such a promising end that the actual finale is incredibly disappointing.  The movie's not bad, but that ending nearly ruined it for me.

Check out this Belgian movie poster I found online for Suspicion!  Is it just me, or does it look like a dead Hitch next to Mr. Rogers?  Stick to beer, Belgians.  Movie posters are not your forte.

The Man Who Knew Too Much (1934)

I have always found it strange when a writer or director returns to something they have published previously.  I understand the argument for going back to older material that might seem underdeveloped or raw, but the rough edges are often what makes art charming.  George Lucas and Stephen King may be the most notorious (and richest) examples of revising their own history, but it's always been around, from Walt Whitman to the current Hollywood reboot craze.  I was surprised when I learned that legendary director Alfred Hitchcock remade one of his movies, The Man Who Knew Too Much; I was even more surprised when I realized that the original film wasn't silent.  Why would a director with such good instincts want to revise his own film?  Well, there's one way to find out, right?

Bob Lawrence (Leslie Banks) and his wife, Jill (Edna Best) are vacationing with their daughter, Betty, in what appears to be the Swiss Alps.  Why only "appears"?  Well, watch this opening scene and tell me how much of it you believe:

That sure is a...um...convincing ski accident, Hitch.  And by "convincing," I of course mean "insultingly idiotic."  How old is that girl supposed to be?  I think you learn at a pretty young age to not put your life and the lives of others in danger and then laugh about it.  I am not one to advocate child abuse, but if there is an argument for it, Betty could be it.

Anyway, that scene shows the Lawrences laughing it up with Mr. Can't Ski, AKA Louis (Pierre Fresnay) and sharing a few laughs with the sinister (not in this scene, though) Abbott (Peter Lorre).  Not long after the skiing accident, Jill and Louis are sharing a dance when he is assassinated by a sniper's bullet.  With his dying words, he urges Jill to find an important secret in his room, and pass it on to the British consulate.  Naturally, since Jill is a delicate woman (who is a champion skeet shooter...?), Bob takes over.  In Louis' bedroom, he finds a shaving brush, and inside that brush --- apparently he had the Rambo survival knife of brushes --- there is a note.

Of course!  This explains...um...nothing?

Bob returns to Jill, where she is being comforted/questioned by the police.  As he prepares to share the message with everyone, the Lawrences receive a phone call; if they want to see stupid little Betty again, they had better not talk to the cops! 

"We'll consider it.  Don't call us, we'll call you.  Maybe."

Since they opt to try and keep their daughter alive, the Lawrences are left without many attractive options.  They know something bad is going to happen, and it is implied that this bad thing could be as significant to world politics as the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand.  What can this married couple do?  Well, Bill can go out and try to single-handedly try to save his daughter.  Jill...well, she can sit out most of this one.

Hitchcock movies are not particularly famous for having great acting parts; he's a master director, and the plot usually supersedes the actors involved.  Such is the case with The Man Who Knew Too Much.  I found Edna Best to be fairly vapid in the lead female role.  Hitchcock generally had pretty strong female parts in his films, but Best appeared genuinely helpless, even when she was taking action.

Her lines are written on her palm

Leslie Banks seemed ill-suited for his role, too.  I have never seen either actor in anything else, but I was not impressed by their dramatic chops here.  Banks, in particular, seemed better suited for a romantic comedy than a thriller.  Peter Lorre, though, is quite memorable here as the evil mastermind, Abbott.  Lorre is usually good, but he is what lifts this picture up; sure, he's an evil mastermind, but he also has a sense of humor --- and that makes his character far more rounded than most of the cast.

"Well...I'm only mostly evil."

In all fairness, the cast wasn't working with much.  The script is not very clever and many parts of it are just stupid (like the ski jump scene or the chair-throwing battle).  Alfred Hitchcock's direction --- which I assumed would be great --- is shockingly poor.  It's not awful, just mediocre, which is "shockingly poor" for a master.  I thought the story was edited together (and written) poorly; this is a bit of a mess from a plot standpoint.  I'm still not entirely sure what was going on here --- I think the Lawrence child was kidnapped to prevent the Lawrence parents from showing the police a note that would lead them to...a dentist?  That can't be right.  Hitchcock does show flashes of his future brilliance, with many of Lorre's scenes being filmed impeccably and some of the transitions between scenes were inspired, but there is just too much mediocrity in this film --- acting, script, plot, and occasional stupidity --- to give him a pass.  I was very surprised when I realized that I didn't like this movie.  Normally, I can enjoy a Hitchcock film because the story is entertaining.  In this instance, I'm still not sure when Bob becomes a Man Who Knows Too Much; for most of the film, he appears to be half-cocked and mostly clueless.  I also thought some of the story elements were handled clumsily; was there really a doubt how the film would end when Jill's skeet-shooting nemesis turns out to be a bad guy?  My biggest complaint is that this is a suspense/thriller movie with neither suspense nor thrills.  The story is too incoherent to effectively build tension, despite nearly non-stop action.  Is this Alfred Hitchcock's dumb action movie?  I think it is.  No wonder he wanted a second crack at this one.

Writing this review made me want to look up photos of Archduke Franz Ferdinand, but I instead stumbled across music videos for the band Franz Ferdinand instead.  I had no idea that a Scottish band inadvertently started World War I.

The Lady Vanishes

In case you haven't noticed yet, I like watching movies from all time periods (although I am still leery of most silent films).  As much as I enjoy Alfred Hitchcock's most famous movies, I have only seen a few of what I would consider his "album tracks," if he was a musician.  I recently reviewed The 39 Steps and that turned out to be pretty good, so I thought I would give The Lady Vanishes a try.

The movie opens with a group of stranded travelers in a fictional Central European country.  Since their train cannot leave that day, all the passengers have to take rooms in the town's only inn, and that place is inn-adequate.

Puns.  Aren't.  Funny.

Anyway, while in the cramped inn, a few things happen.  The first is that a local street musician is strangled in the night, after the spinsterly Miss Froy (May Whitty) listened to his song from her room.  The other incident of major importance is that Iris (Margaret Lockwood) and Gilbert (Michael Redgrave) establish an antagonistic relationship.  She comes off as being uptight, he comes across as a bit of a cad, but there is no harm done, aside from preventing the audience from watching a traditional folk dance from the historical region of Madeupia in Central Europe.  The next day, everybody's boarding the train, but it becomes apparent that somebody is trying to kill little old Miss Froy; they try to drop a flower pot on her head, but miss and his Iris instead.  Dizzy, but not too hurt, Iris boards the train and ends up sitting with Miss Froy and taking tea with her in the dining car.  When they return to their passenger car, which is filled with seemingly oblivious foreigners, Iris takes a nap.  When she wakes, Miss Froy is missing, and nobody has seen her.  To be more specific, nobody claims to remember her at all.  Is Iris crazy, or has something sinister happened to Miss Froy?  Well, it's a Hitchcock movie, so I'll give you a wild guess.  But that would mean that everybody is lying about remember Miss Froy, wouldn't it?  Why would they do that?  Just as odd, the only person who is willing to believe Iris is the one man that exasperates her most: Gilbert.

If this plot sounds a little familiar to you, that's because it probably is.  The movie was remade in the late 70s as a critically reviled movie with the same title and was later updated as the Jodi Foster vehicle, Flightplan.  So, if you have seen a movie with a character vanishing from a moving vehicle, or somebody that is looking for a missing person is considered crazy, or if a clue is written on steamed glass, that movie owes a debt to The Lady Vanishes.

What struck me most about this movie is how scattered its focus is early in the film.  While they are in Fictionalvania, the first characters we notice are a couple of confirmed British bachelors that are obsessed with cricket.  In fact, they later lie about seeing Miss Froy just to keep the train from being stopped, because that might keep them from missing the game they want to watch.

"I say, old chap, why not tell a pointless lie for trivial reasons?"

I thought that folk dancing may have been important, too, because it is an odd thing to see in an old movie.  There is a lot of misdirection before the film gets going proper on the train.  I like that in a mystery, but it seems a little unnecessary here, especially since much of it offers trivial insights to the characters and darn little plot significance.

The acting is pretty solid in this film.  I don't think there are a lot of strong female roles in movies, but Margaret Lockwood did a good job balancing the characteristics of a lady in distress with a determined woman.  She could have been a little less helpless at times, but this is over seventy years old.  This was Michael Redgrave's first major film role, and he was pretty good.  He was better at playing up the comedy in scenes than in the dramatic ones, but he wasn't bad.  This movie launched the careers of Naunton Wayne and Basil Radford, who played the cricket-loving characters Charters and Caldicott; they went on to reprise these supposedly comedic characters (or ones similar to them) in a number of British movies and radio programs.  I don't see the appeal, but British humor is often baffling.  May Whitty was pretty good in the character role of Miss Froy --- she is certainly one of the better spinster actresses of her generation.  Paul Lukas also turned in a respectable performance as a doctor.

The real draw of Alfred Hitchcock movies is the man's direction, and he doesn't disappoint here.  British films at the time were (and, let's face it, are still today) lower-budgeted affairs than the typical Hollywood movie.  As such, it was interesting to see how Hitchcock handled the first scenes of the film; they look like a crane or helicopter shot of a small European town, but if you're paying attention during the slow zoom in, it is not a vast European landscape, but a miniature set.  That was kind of neat.  While I didn't particularly care for the seemingly pointless scenes at the inn, I did enjoy this movie once it got rolling.  I was impressed by how well the puzzle of the disappearing lady was laid out; you can definitely feel a sense of claustrophobia as Iris begins to panic, with so many witnesses in such a small space, and all of them insist she is imagining things.  The basic idea behind this movie, that of a crazy narrator vs.a conspiracy is an intriguing one.  The most memorable scenes are the ones where Hitchcock shows off a little bit, like the scene with the writing on the window condensation, and the little things that Hitchcock does add up to make this a more enjoyable movie.

My primary critique of this film has to deal with its tone.  I realize that many movies at the time, British ones in particular, thrillers are often filled with comedic parts.  I understand it, but I'm not a huge fan of it.  Maybe I just haven't seen it completely pulled off yet, I don't know.  I really enjoyed the middle third of the film, when there was still a question of whether or not Iris was crazy, but that semi-goofy tone bookends the movie.  I can't be the only one who thinks it feels awkward for characters like Gilbert to crack a joke while grappling with a villain.  And I don't think Hitchcock was much of a comedic director, either.  Sure, it was tolerable in the inn scenes, but none of it was really funny, so much as it was clever.  Speaking of clever, I wish the story had come up with a slightly more reasonable explanation for the missing lady.  It works, sure, but did it have to involve a magician?  That's a little weak.  The basic plot behind this film is a great one, but the mixed tone detracts from the film's tension.

The 39 Steps (1935)

When 12 Steps are not enough...!

Hokey smoke, Bullwinkle!  I've been blogging for what feels like forever, and I haven't covered a single Alfred Hitchcock movie; that means I haven't seen a Hitchcock movie in about a year.  How disturbing!  I've always been a fan of the fat man, although I will readily admit that I do not have an overwhelming familiarity with his body of work.  Noting my lack of Hitchcock reviews and my ignorance on his pre-Hollywood career, I decided to try this one out.  Why this particular title?  I checked out the British Film Institute's website and found that this was Hitchcock's highest-ranking film in the BFI's top 100 (it was #4).

The film opens at a theater, where it seems a variety show is going on.  Richard Hannay (Robert Donat) was enjoying the memory recall demonstrations of Mr. Memory (Wylie Watson) when shots ring out in the theater.  Everybody rushes for the doors and, when he finally makes it outside, Richard finds that he is holding a frightened-looking woman, Anabella (Lucie Mannheim).  She asks if she can go home with him and, as most single men will do when an attractive strange woman asks to go home with them, he obliged her.  Once inside his apartment, Anabella gets a little mysterious, insisting on staying in the dark and away from windows.  Anabella tells Richard that she is a spy that has information about a plan to steal British military intelligence, masterminded by a man that is missing part of a finger.  She mentions something about "the 39 steps" in passing, but goes into no detail.  More importantly, she is being followed by men who intend to kill her.  Being a chivalrous chap, Richard lets her stay at his place until the heat is off, which doesn't take long; a few hours later, Anabella bursts into Richard's bedroom with a knife in her back.  Way to protect a lady, Richard.  With her dying words, Anabella tells Richie to escape, so he grabs the only real clue he has --- the map of Scotland with a city circled on it that Anabella had in her hand --- and hops on the first train he can.  On the train, Richie notices that he is front page news; he is wanted for questioning in Anabella's murder!  Can Richard clear his name, or will he have to move South and call himself "Ricardo?"  Can he foil the espionage plot?  What are the 39 steps?

Oddly enough, that last question is the least important in the film.  This is one of the quintessential MacGuffins in film history.  In case you are unfamiliar with the term, a MacGuffin is a plot device that gets the story rolling, but fades in importance as the film progresses (sometimes vanishing from the movie entirely).  It's used in thrillers and crime stories more than anything else.  Quentin Tarentino has used MacGuffins in both Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction; neither movie was really about the heist money or Marsellus' suitcase, but they were used as tools to tell more interesting stories.

The 39 Steps begins as a thriller, but hits its stride when it changes gears.  This is actually an odd design for a movie.  The beginning and end are clearly taken from the classic thriller mold, but the middle third is almost a classic romantic comedy.  Through a series of coincidences and unfortunate honesty, Richard and Pamela (Madeleine Carroll) find themselves on the lam together, despite hating each others guts; in classic romantic comedy style, though, the two quickly fall in love.  While I find the change in tone rather abrupt, I have to admit that the two actors had chemistry on-screen.  Robert Donat's performance even foreshadowed Cary Grant's work.

"Don't you two look deeply in love!  And not at all on edge!"

The main reason to watch an Alfred Hitchcock movie is to see how he tells a story; the man famously quipped that actors should be treated like cattle, so you usually don't find standout performances in his work.  The 39 Steps is certainly a bit rougher than many of his later classic films of the 50s and 60s, but it is still pretty good.  Hitchcock's camera work is still good, even at this early stage.  The use of lighting and the cropping of shots (especially of Richard in the first few scenes) shows a master at work; you might not actively realize it when you're watching, but Hitchcock does a fabulous job of using the camera to imply meaning.  As for the story itself, it made sense, even if it was a little silly at times.  Still, the pace was good, the dialogue clicked, and the cinematography was good, if a little basic.

In its defense, The 39 Steps was made in 1935.  Many of the film tricks used in this movie may have been revolutionary or novel at the time, but have since lost their luster.  For instance, when Anabella's body is discovered, the woman who found the body screams, and that scream blends with a train whistle as the scene shifts to Richard at the train station.  Another overused trick can be seen when Richard remembers Anabella's words and her face pops on screen and does the whole repeating lines fading trick...repeating lines fading trick...repeating lines fading trick.  While these and some of the other techniques used in the film are a little hokey now, they weren't overused at the time, so I try to cut them some slack.

The acting in the film is okay.  I think Robert Donat showed off some real star talent here, but he never quite made the big time, for many personal reasons.  That's too bad because he was pretty charming.  Madeleine Carroll wasn't as good as Donat, but served as an adequate foil for him.  It was nice to see a female character not willingly help the hero in a movie; if I was her, I wouldn't have trusted someone on the run from the police, either.  Lucie Mannheim was less good as a spy, but she did have an accent and she did play up the whole "take me home tonight" card pretty well.

This isn't one of Hitchcock's strongest films, and I don't understand the feverish acclaim it gets from the British press.  It's not bad, though --- Hitchcock doing a decent job is better than most directors on their best day.  I just wish he had been able to maintain a more even tone throughout the film.  Definitely worth a viewing, if only to see someone other than Cary Grant doing his shtick.