Hitchcock
The Hitchcock Players: Lillian Hall Davis, The RingSaturday, 11 August 2012
Alfred Hitchcock’s atmospheric boxing silent The Ring pivots on the allure of WAG-dom, 1927-style, for Lillian Hall Davis’s Mabel. At the start, she is the ticket-seller for the fairgound booth in which her pugilist boyfriend, “One Round” Jack... Read more... |
The Hitchcock Players: Ivor Novello, The LodgerThursday, 09 August 2012
Whenever the name of Ivor Novello is mentioned, which is not often these days, the term “matinee idol” is inevitably appended. Novello, now best known as a songwriter, had already starred in nine silent films before Hitchcock chose him to play the... Read more... |
The Hitchcock Players: Alfred Hitchcock's cameosWednesday, 08 August 2012
Alfred Hitchcock isn't the only director who appeared in his own movies - François Truffaut, Orson Welles, Martin Scorsese and M Night Shyamalan are among many others who have done the same - but he is by far the one who has done it most frequently... Read more... |
The Hitchcock Players: Ingrid Bergman, NotoriousTuesday, 07 August 2012
Before the blonde, there was Bergman. In the second half of the 1940s, Hitchcock cast Ingrid Bergman three times, and on each occasion asked her to incarnate a different kind of leading lady. In the film noir Spellbound (1945) she was a... Read more... |
The Hitchcock Players: Herbert Marshall, Murder!Sunday, 05 August 2012
The epithet "mellifluous" might have been invented to describe Herbert Marshall’s voice. It was lucky that sound came along at the time Marshall, after a prestigious stage career, entered films when he was almost 40. We don’t hear those beautiful... Read more... |
The Hitchcock Players: Kim Novak, VertigoSaturday, 04 August 2012
In Vertigo Kim Novak plays two women who are really just one. First Madeleine, a supernatural siren, a woman apparently possessed by her tragedienne great-grandmother Carlotta Valdes. However, it’s a performance within a performance and she’s merely... Read more... |
Opinion: Is Vertigo really the greatest ever film?Saturday, 04 August 2012
The recent speculation as to whether Michael Phelps can be regarded as "the greatest Olympian" leads one to ponder the very notion of judging "greatness" hierarchically. If the only criterion for claiming Phelps as the "greatest" is based on his... Read more... |
The Hitchcock Players: Cary Grant, North by NorthwestFriday, 03 August 2012
The final collaboration between Grant and Hitch also happens to be some of the helmer’s most deft, joyously irreverent work, light of touch and bereft of sentiment. Grant stars as a slick Mad Ave exec who’s mistaken for a spy and pursued across the... Read more... |
The Hitchcock Players: Barry Foster, FrenzyThursday, 02 August 2012
Hitchcock’s penultimate film was the grubby, squirm-inducing Frenzy, and Barry Foster's depiction of the grim killer Robert Rusk is central to the disquieting aura it casts. The film’s production was problematic enough, having been cut by the BBFC... Read more... |
The Hitchcock Players: Robert Donat, The 39 StepsWednesday, 01 August 2012
It’s always a thrill watching The 39 Steps’ Richard Hannay (Robert Donat) doing daredevil feats on the Flying Scotsman as it speeds across the Forth Bridge, kissing a Scottish crofter’s jealously guarded wife, and bringing down the house with an... Read more... |
Cameraman: The Life and Work of Jack CardiffThursday, 06 May 2010
The last time Jack Cardiff went to Cannes, nobody recognised him; wearing his trademark trilby, he'd tell curious autograph hunters he used to be a stand-in for Frank Sinatra. In fact Cardiff's claim to fame was somewhat greater: his was the eye... Read more... |
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