By Film Noir Blonde and Mike Wilmington
The Film Noir File is FNB’s guide to classic film noir, neo-noir and pre-noir on Turner Classic Movies (TCM). All movies below are from the schedule of TCM, which broadcasts them uncut and uninterrupted. The times are Eastern Standard and (Pacific Standard).
Pick of the Week
A Day With Alfred Hitchcock (Friday, Nov. 28)
Robert Cummings, Ray Milland and Grace Kelly form the love triangle in “Dial M for Murder.”
When it came to making movie thrillers, manufacturing chills, and squeezing the last drop of tension out of every thrill-packed scene and breath-catching set piece, Alfred Hitchcock was, by common consent, the Master of Suspense — king of the genre in the cinema’s Golden Age. Born in London, an émigré who moved to Hollywood in the ’40s, “Hitch,” as he was called by most movie folk, could plan and plot a suspense scene like no one else — riveting his audiences almost from his opening minutes, and building his unforgettable sequences and his little gems of nerve-racking tension with a meticulous expertise and vivid imagination that all thriller-makes envied and all tried (usually unsuccessfully) to emulate.
Hitchcock liked his heroines to be blonde and in distress, his villains to be charming and deadly, and his heroes to be fallible or accused of something they didn’t do. And he liked his movies (like those villains) to be devilishly seductive and watchable. Of all his contemporaries, he is still the film director most known, most watched and most imitated. And when his 1958 masterpiece “Vertigo” — that eerie romantic chiller starring James Stewart as a detective afraid of heights and Kim Novak as the beautiful mystery woman for whom he falls — was recently voted the best movie of all time, finally beating out runner-up “Citizen Kane” in the Sight and Sound film poll, it was a recognition that was probably as much for Hitchcock’s entire oeuvre.
Tippi Hedren gets direction from Hitch.
Today’s Hitchcock mini-festival gives us five of his acknowledged classics, from the ’30s (“The Lady vanishes”), the ’40s (“Shadow of a Doubt,” which Hitchcock often named as his personal favorite), the ’50s (”Dial M for Murder”), to the ’60s (“Psycho” and “The Birds“), as well as the underrated 1942 “Saboteur” and 1964 “Marnie.” His constant, though often uncredited, collaborator on all these pictures, and on most of his others, was his one-time script woman, wife and life-long partner Alma Reville Hitchcock. If you’re a movie aficionado, you’ve probably seen them all, but they always repay a return visit. After all, life and love may fail you, but a thriller by Hitch will almost always get you on the hook.
5:30 a.m. (2:30 a.m.): “The Lady Vanishes” (1938, Alfred Hitchcock). With Michael Redgrave, Margaret Lockwood, Paul Lukas and Dame May Whitty. Reviewed in FNB on March 12, 2012.
7:30 a.m. (4:30 a.m.): “Saboteur” (1942, Alfred Hitchcock). With Robert Cummings, Priscilla Lane, Otto Kruger and Norman Lloyd. Reviewed in FNB on Oct. 18, 2014.
9:30 a.m. (6:30 a.m.): “Shadow of a Doubt” (1943, Alfred Hitchcock). With Joseph Cotten, Teresa Wright, Macdonald Carey and Hume Cronyn. Reviewed in FNB on Oct. 9, 2014.
11:30 a.m. (8:30 a.m.): “Dial M for Murder” (1954, Alfred Hitchcock). With Grace Kelly, Ray Milland and Cummings. Reviewed in FNB on Sept. 11, 2012.
1:30 p.m. (10:30 a.m.): “Marnie” (1964, Alfred Hitchcock). With Sean Connery, Tippi Hedren and Diane Baker. Reviewed in FNB on Jan. 30, 2012.
3:45 p.m. (12:45 p.m.): “The Birds” (1963, Alfred Hitchcock). With Rod Taylor, Hedren and Jessica Tandy. Reviewed in FNB on Oct. 23, 2014.
6 p.m. (3 p.m.): “Psycho’ (1960, Alfred Hitchcock, 1960). With Anthony Perkins, Janet Leigh, Vera Miles and Martin Balsam. Reviewed in FNB on July 7, 2011.
Friday, Nov. 28
1:30 a.m. (10:30 p.m.) “Il Sorpasso” (“The Easy Life”) (1962, Dino Risi). In this tragicomic road movie, a neglected classic from the heyday of Italian ‘60s cinema, Vittorio Gassman plays a charming playboy ne’er do-well in a white sports car with a catchy traffic horn, and Jean-Louis Trintignant plays the shy student to whom he gives a ride — and who unwisely becomes his tag-along in a fast, easy world of glamour, sex, high speed and reckless adventuring. The most popular film, and probably the best, of Italian comedy master Dino Risi, who made the original version of “Scent of a Woman.” (In Italian, with subtitles.)
Saturday, Nov. 29
3:45 a.m. (12:45 a.m.): “The Fearmakers” (1958, Jacques Tourneur). It’s been said, almost certainly by someone French, that the ideal film-directorial sensibility would blend the grace of Jacques Tourneur with the force of Robert Aldrich. Depends on the movie, though. As superb as “Out of the Past,” “The Cat People,” and “I Walked with a Zombie” all are, and as much as I admire Tourneur’s graceful, tasteful direction of all of them, they won’t prepare you for the badness to come in the tepid Cold War anti-Commie thriller, “The Fearmakers” — which seems to have been written by idiots, produced by brainwash victims, acted by zombies, and directed during a cat-nap.
In the movie, Dana Andrews plays, without any apparent interest, a returning Korean War vet and brainwash victim. (Was that why he agreed to do “The Fearmakers?”) After a near pickup by a suspiciously friendly left-wing professor on his returning plane, Dana tries to go back to his old public relations firm, only to discover that it’s been taken over by a nest of Commies who plan to conquer America. A helpful U. S. Senator has a tête-à-tête to warn him of the PR gap, and also of the red storm rising. Also lurking around are Veda Ann Borg as a Red Landlady Slut, Mel Torme as a Likable Doofus Fellow Traveler and Marilee Earle as a Pretty Anti-Commie Secretary. I think if I’d known Dana Andrews when he was given this script, I would have handed him a bottle instead. Gracefully.
Monday, Dec. 1
3:15 p.m. (12:15 p.m.): “Mildred Pierce” (1945, Michael Curtiz). With Joan Crawford, Jack Carson, Ann Blyth and Zachary Scott. Reviewed in FNB on Dec. 1, 2012, March 25, 2011 and Jan. 22, 2014.
Tuesday, Dec. 2
8 p.m. (5 p.m.): “Out of the Past” (1947, Jacques Tourneur). With Robert Mitchum, Jane Greer and Kirk Douglas. Reviewed in FNB on Dec. 12, 2010.
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