|
Movie
tickets: $5
for adults,
|
|
A
string of classic suspense films produced in England had earned Alfred
Hitchcock a reputation in the United States, and his first American
production, REBECCA, cemented his fame. Based on the novel by Daphne
du Maurier, REBECCA was conceived to rival producer David O. Selznick's
previous epic, GONE WITH THE WIND. This psychological thriller, however,
derives its grandeur from Hitchcock's careful cultivation of the title
character's haunting legacy. Joan Fontaine takes the starring role and
narrates the story of her life as the second Madam de Winter. Fontaine,
young and innocent, meets the worldly and sophisticated Maxim de Winter
(Laurence Olivier) while vacationing on the Riviera. After a whirlwind
romance and marriage, the two return to his opulent English estate,
Maderley, where Fontaine begins to realize she is not entirely welcome
in her new role. Chief among her detractors is housekeeper Mrs. Danvers
(Judith Anderson), who points out her every failing in relation to the
previous mistress of the house, Rebecca. Fontaine is nearly driven to
suicide by her inability to understand the mysterious legacy of the
first wife. However, when a ship washes ashore, the mystery begins to
unravel, setting the stage for the memorable and fiery climax. |
REBECCA|
A favorite of Alfred Hitchcock himself, with an exceptional script by the playwright Thornton Wilder, SHADOW OF A DOUBT anticipates such family menace dramas as CAPE FEAR. Young Charlie Newton (Teresa Wright) lies on her bed in Santa Rosa, California, bored with her small-town life and family. Meanwhile, her namesake, Uncle Charlie, lies on another bed thousands of miles away in Philadelphia surrounded by discarded bills, deep in secret thoughts. The two are linked, psychic twins, and when Charlie goes to send for her uncle, she finds a telegram announcing his visit already waiting for her. Uncle Charlie brings happiness into the Newton home and a special pleasure to Mother. Yet Charlie feels a tension- as if her double, played with razor-thin menace by the mild-mannered Joseph Cotten, has brought violence into her home as well. Subtle clues add weight to Charlie's vague doubts. This growing knowledge shocks her out of the warm sense of safety that she held in her small world. However, her intuitive understanding is a long way from allowing the young niece to challenge her uncle, and the tense cat-and-mouse play between the two is powerfully dramatized, showing Hitchcock in his best form. |
SHADOW
OF A DOUBT |
Alfred
Hitchcock weaves his spell binding magic into this Francis Beeding novel.
In some opinions, this is Hitchcock's best project from the 40's. Powerful
stars and a great story line keeps your interest until the final shot.
An amnesia patient(Gregory Peck)is believed to be a psychotic killer.
Bits and pieces of his memory about a childhood accident makes him believe
that he is a murderer. Ingrid Bergman plays a young psychiatrist, who
helps Peck unravel his past and regain his memory and mental health.
During this process, the lovely doctor tries not to fall in love with
her needy patient. She takes him to her old professor(Michael Chekhov)
for help. He is reluctant to get involved with solving the mystery to
clear the patient's name. Brilliant camera work and being filmed in
black & white really helped the story line. There is an eye opening
dream sequence designed by Salvador Dali that is down right mystic.
The strong and talented cast also includes: Regis Toomey, Leo G. Carroll
and Rhonda Fleming. |
SPELLBOUND|
Alicia Huberman (Ingrid Bergman) is a frivolous girl who loves drinks and men; her father was a German spy in USA and he has committed suicide in prison. Government agent T.R. Devlin (Cary Grant) asks the girl to spy on a group of her father's Nazi friends in Rio de Janeiro; this could be her chance to clear her guilty name. The girl falls in love with the agent, but he seems not to be attracted by the life she is living. Alicia accepts the duty and she goes to Brazil with Devlin. The agent suggests Alicia should marry her father's friend, Alex Sebastian (Claude Rains), and gain free access into his house, so she does. During a party, Alicia and Devlin find some uranium dust hidden in Sebastian's canteen, but now he has discovered Alicia is a spy and he starts poisoning her day after day. |
NOTORIOUS|
Manhattan
socialites Brandon Shaw and Phillip Morgan choke the life out of an
associate, David, as an intellectual challenge to commit the perfect
murder. Not content to escape the penalty of law by simply disposing
of the body quietly, they furthermore devise an elaborate and dangerous
display of arrogance: The two stuff David's lifeless body into a chest
and throw a dinner party serving their guests, literally, from the convenient
tabletop of the young man's grave. In attendance are Mr. Henry Kentley
and Mrs. Anita Atwater, the victim's father and aunt; Kenneth Turner,
the victim's rival for the hand of Janet Walker, David's fiancée,
who also attends; Mrs. Wilson, the servant; and Rupert Cadell, the murderers'
former teacher whose flippant repartee regarding social caste festered
into the pathological short circuit that led to Brandon's and Phillip's
crime. Brandon's sense of intellectual superiority swells to reckless
levels throughout the evening as he makes a nail-biting game out of
cleverly dropping his guests hints at nasty goings on. Meanwhile, Phillip
grows increasingly frightful and guilt-ridden as Rupert inches ever
closer to discovering why David hasn't yet arrived at the party. |
ROPE|
"Lets swap Murders- your wife, my father"- seemingly innocent conversation between two strangers- Bruno Anthony and Guy Haines when they meet over lunch on a train journey. Guy, a solid, respectable tennis player, whose problem is that his wife, the flirtatious Miriam, won't divorce him so he can marry senators daughter Anne, laughs the whole conversation off as a joke. The following week he isn't laughing any more. In a scene of classic Hitchcock suspense, Bruno stalks Miriam through a carnival and strangles her. As he does, her glasses fall off and we see the murder eerily reflected twice through her lenses. Cold hearted and amoral Bruno, his part of the deal completed, approaches an appalled Guy expecting, even pressuring him into 'doing his bit.' Matters are not helped when Anne's precocious and outspoken younger sister turns up suspecting Guy of Miriam's murder. So accused of a murder he didn't commit and expected to commit another, what is Guy going to do? The power of this film is in the presentation of human beings as having a murderous side to their nature- and this Hitchcock does to perfection. |
STRANGERS
ON A TRAIN|
Alfred
Hitchcock had already begun work on REAR WINDOW when he took on the
project to direct DIAL M FOR MURDER, based on the successful play by
Frederick Knott. For the film, Hitchcock chose to cast his favorite
leading lady of the time, Grace Kelly, as the embattled Margot Wendice.
Kelly would also star in REAR WINDOW and Hitchcock's subsequent TO CATCH
A THIEF. In the film Margot Wendice is a wealthy heiress whose playboy
husband, Tony (Ray Milland), recognizes his dependence on his wife's
fortune. When Tony begins to suspect he is losing Margot's affection
to writer Mark Halliday (Robert Cummings), he also begins to fear he
will lose her wealth. This leads the callous husband to craft a plan
for his wife's death. However, when the plan goes awry, Tony is quick
to turn circumstance into a second opportunity to destroy his wife.
|
DIAL
M FOR MURDER|
The weather is getting hotter, and photographer L.B. Jefferies (Jimmy Stewart) is stuck in his apartment with a broken leg and nothing to do- that is, nothing to do but spy on his neighbors through their open windows across the way in the apartment complex. There's an attractive and scantily clad dancer, a songwriter, a lonely woman, and the Thorwalds (Raymond Burr and Irene Winston), a bickering couple, among others. But when Mrs. Thorwald disappears, Jefferies is sure that something's wrong. Soon, despite the warnings of his girlfriend, Lisa (Grace Kelly), and his motherly nurse, Stella (Thelma Ritter), Jefferies has out his binoculars and telephoto lens and is studying his neighbor "like a bug under glass." However, looking in from the outside might not be as safe as Jefferies assumes. REAR WINDOW is not only a gripping story of murder and suspense, it is a celebrated allegory on the nature of film itself, a story in which the audience watches Jefferies watch the story unfold. The different windows represent the various different stories that are often told on film and also can be seen as representing the coming of television, as Jefferies can watch a multitude of "shows" from the comfort of his own apartment. |
REAR
WINDOW|
This
black comedy from Alfred Hitchcock was based on Jack Turner's novel.
When a retired sea captain, out doing a little rabbit hunting, discovers
Harry's lifeless body in the hilltops of small-town Vermont, he erroneously
believes that he is responsible for Harry's untimely demise. So he decides
to bury the corpse to cover his tracks. But Harry just won't stay in
the ground. Soon the dead man- through no fault of his own-has set off
a series of comic misunderstandings, as the town spinster and Harry's
wife also blame themselves for his death. This was Shirley MacLaines
first film; she gives an enjoyable performance as Harrys ex-wife. |
THE
TROUBLE WITH HARRY|
Ben McKenna (Stewart), an American doctor, and his family stumble into the middle of an assassination plot while vacationing in Marrakech. When his son is kidnapped by the conspirators, McKenna must race against the clock to stop the murder and save his son's life. Stewart, as one might expect, gives a seamless performance as the average man thrown into exceptional circumstances. Day brings a bit of levity and performs the only musical number to appear in a Hitchcock film. (The song, "Que Sera, Sera," would win an Oscar and become a popular hit.) This later version of Hitchcock's suspenseful film also features the masterful Albert Hall sequence, arguably almost the equal of the renowned plane sequence in NORTH BY NORTHWEST. |
THE
MAN WHO KNEW TOO MUCH|
San Francisco police detective Scottie Fergusson develops a fear of heights and is forced to retire when a colleague falls to his death during a chase. An old college friend (Gavin Elster) hires Scottie to watch his wife Madeleine who has reportedly become possessed by her ancestor's spirit named Carlotta. Scottie follows her around San Francisco and is drawn to Madeleine and her obsession with death. He unwittingly becomes a figure in a complex plot, and is determined to discover the truth behind it all. |
VERTIGO|
North by Northwest is a suspense thriller that finds Cary Grant in the role of Roger Thornhill, a Manhattan advertising executive mistaken for a spy. Considered by many to be the prototypical pure action movie (creating the template for later James Bond and Indiana Jones films), the film is a cross-country roller-coaster ride with Alfred Hitchcock at the helm. The film is duly famous for several classic and indelible scenes, including the desert biplane encounter and the Mt. Rushmore climax. The original title was THE MAN IN LINCOLN'S NOSE, which was replaced by a reference to a line from William Shakespeares HAMLET (in which Hamlet says, "I am but mad north-north-west."). The magical combination of Hitchcock and the debonair Grant- who made four wonderful films together- makes NORTH BY NORTHWEST a suspense-filled standout. |
NORTH
BY NORTHWEST|
Credited with inventing the genre of the modern horror film, PSYCHO has had its share of sequels and imitators, none of which diminishes the achievement of this shocking and complex horror thriller. Hitchcock's black-and-white original, featuring Anthony Perkins's haunting characterization of lonely motel keeper Norman Bates, has never been equaled. Bates presides over an out-of-the-way motel under the domineering specter of his mother. The young, well-intentioned Bates is introduced to the audience when Marion Crane (Janet Leigh), a blonde on the run with stolen money, checks in for the night. But Momma doesn't like loose women, so the stage is set for this classic tale of horror- and one of the most famous scenes in film history. PSYCHO was initially received by audiences with shock and amazement- and it still terrifies today. |
PSYCHO|
Spoilt socialite and notorious practical joker Melanie Daniels is shopping in a San Francisco pet store when she meets Mitch Brenner. Mitch is looking to buy a pair of love birds for his young sister's birthday; he recognises Melanie but pretends to mistake her for an assistant. She decides to get her own back by buying the birds and driving up to the quiet coastal town of Bodega Bay, where Mitch spends his weekends with his sister and mother. Shortly after she arrives, Melanie is attacked by a gull, but this is just the start of a series of attacks by an increasing number of birds. |
THE
BIRDS|
|
MARNIE|
Hitchcock's
first British film in almost two decades marked a smashing return to
his earlier form after the dull TORN CURTAIN and TOPAZ. Although not
a mystery (we know the killer's identity early on), the film is intensely
suspenseful, at times forcing the audience to identify with the murderer.
Richard Blaney (Finch) is accused of murdering his ex-wife Brenda (Leigh-Hunt)
and his girlfriend (Massey), both of whom have been strangled with neckties.
The real "Necktie Murderer," however, remains at large. |
FRENZY