Showing posts with label thrillers. Show all posts
Showing posts with label thrillers. Show all posts

June 25, 2010

Rear Window - 1954

La Finestra sul Cortila- Rear Window


La Finestra sul Cortila- Rear Window Framed Art Print
12.9375 in. x 16.9375 in.
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After breaking his leg during a dangerous assignment, professional photographer L. B. "Jeff" Jeffries (Stewart) is confined to a wheelchair in his Greenwich Village apartment, whose rear window looks out onto a small courtyard and several other apartments. During a summer heat wave, he passes the time by watching his neighbors, who keep their windows open to stay cool. The tenants he can see include a dancer, a lonely woman, a songwriter, several married couples, and Lars Thorwald (Burr), a salesman with a bedridden wife.

After Thorwald makes repeated late-night trips carrying a large case, Jeff notices that Thorwald's wife is gone and sees Thorwald cleaning a large knife and handsaw. Later, Thorwald ties a large packing crate with heavy rope and has moving men haul it away. Jeff discusses these observations with his wealthy girlfriend Lisa (Kelly) and his home-care nurse Stella (Ritter), then explains to his friend Tom Doyle (Corey), a local police detective, that they believe Thorwald murdered his wife. Doyle looks into the situation but finds nothing suspicious.

Soon after, a neighbor's dog is found dead with its neck broken. When a woman sees the dog and screams, the neighbors all rush to their windows to see what has happened, except for Thorwald, whose cigar can be seen glowing as he sits in his dark apartment. Convinced that Thorwald is guilty after all, Jeff has Lisa slip an accusatory note under Thorwald's door so Jeff can watch his reaction when he reads it. Then, as a pretext to get Thorwald away from his apartment, Jeff telephones him and arranges a meeting at a bar. He thinks Thorwald may have buried something in the courtyard flower patch and then killed the dog to keep it from digging it up. When Thorwald leaves, Lisa and Stella dig up the flowers but find nothing.

Pyscho - 1960

Alfred Hitchcock Collage


Alfred Hitchcock Collage Art Print
27.5 in. x 39.5 in.
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Framed   Mounted


Alfred Hitchcock's powerful, complex psychological thriller, Psycho (1960) is the "mother" of all modern horror suspense films - it single-handedly ushered in an era of inferior screen 'slashers' with blood-letting and graphic, shocking killings (e.g., Homicidal (1961), The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974), Halloween (1978), Motel Hell (1980), and DePalma's Dressed to Kill (1980) - with another transvestite killer and shower scene). While this was Hitchcock's first real horror film, he was mistakenly labeled as a horror film director ever since.

The nightmarish, disturbing film's themes of corruptibility, confused identities, voyeurism, human vulnerabilities and victimization, the deadly effects of money, Oedipal murder, and dark past histories are realistically revealed. Its themes were revealed through repeated uses of motifs, such as birds, eyes, hands, and mirrors.

The low-budget ($800,000), brilliantly-edited, stark black and white film came after Hitchcock's earlier glossy Technicolor hits Vertigo (1958) and North by Northwest (1959), and would have been more suited for as an extended episode for his own b/w TV series Alfred Hitchcock Presents. In fact, the film crew was from the TV show, including cinematographer John L. Russell.

The master of suspense skillfully manipulates and guides the audience into identifying with the main character, luckless victim Marion (a Phoenix real-estate secretary), and then with that character's murderer - a crazy and timid taxidermist named Norman (a brilliant typecasting performance by Anthony Perkins). Hitchcock's techniques voyeuristically implicate the audience with the universal, dark evil forces and secrets present in the film.

Psycho also broke all film conventions by displaying its leading female protagonist having a lunchtime affair in her sexy white undergarments in the first scene; also by photographing a toilet bowl - and flush - in a bathroom (a first in an American film), and killing off its major 'star' Janet Leigh a third of the way into the film (in a shocking, brilliantly-edited shower murder scene accompanied by screeching violins). The 90-odd shot shower scene was meticulously storyboarded by Saul Bass, but directed by Hitchcock himself.

June 21, 2010

Notorious - 1946

Notorious


Notorious Wall Mural
48 in. x 72 in.
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Notorious (1946) is a classic Hitchcockian post-war psychological suspense/thriller. The basis of the film came from the 1921 Saturday Evening Post two-part short story "The Song of the Dragon" by John Taintor Foote. The master of suspense created a compelling spy mission interwoven with a romantic love story. The dark, intricate film is thematically concerned with both political (and sexual) betrayal and issues of trust, friendship, and duty embodied in the characters' relationships. It was remade in 1992 as a TV-movie, with John Shea as Devlin, Jenny Robertson as Alicia, Jean-Pierre Cassel as Sebastian, and Marisa Berenson as Katarina.

Hitchcock tells the subtle tale of a beautiful but confused and agonized American spy (Ingrid Bergman) with a reputation for loose living as a playgirl (she is the American-born daughter of a convicted Nazi sympathizer) who unwillingly infiltrates an evil German cartel by marrying the Rio-based enemy leader living there incognito. A love triangle develops between three of the characters - the Nazi villain, a federal agent, and the woman. After seducing (and betraying) her loving husband, she begins to feel perilous menace from both the man she really loves - an icy, seemingly insensitive and cruel American intelligence agent (Cary Grant) on the assignment - and her husband (Claude Rains), a man who is fixated with and controlled by his overcritical, partly-jealous mother figure (Leopoldine Konstantin). In the film's twisted finale, Bergman is rescued before her untimely death from poisoning.

Notorious, Cary Grant, Ingrid Bergman, Claude Rains, 1946


Notorious, Cary Grant, Ingrid Bergman, Claude Rains, 1946 Giclee Print
9 in. x 12 in.
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Mounted


One of Hitchcock's best and most popular films, his ninth American film, it is most notable for its use of a realistic MacGuffin - something around which the film's plot revolves. In this film, the 'red herring' narrative device is a sample of uranium concealed in sand within wine bottles, a top-secret substance needed to manufacture an atomic weapon. The specific mention of uranium in Ben Hecht's screenplay was timely and prescient - the atom bomb had just been dropped on Japan a few months before shooting began on the film. Originally, the MacGuffin for this film was to have been diamonds.

Another subtle symbol in the film is a key, and a third major motif is the drinking of lethal substances (either alcohol or poison) - to either seek refuge from reality or to bring harm. The most celebrated segments in the film are a marathon, prolonged erotic kissing scene (that circumvented the 'three-second' censor's restrictions), a swooping camera crane shot down to an extreme closeup of the wine-cellar key held in Bergman's hand (posters for the film always included a key motif), the wine-cellar sequence, and the suspenseful final scene with masterful inter-cutting.

As with many Hitchcock films, it was not lauded by its contemporary critics, and received only two Academy Award nominations: Best Supporting Actor (Claude Rains) and Best Original Screenplay (Ben Hecht). Stars Cary Grant (with his second of four appearances for Hitchcock) and Ingrid Bergman (with her second of three appearances), both at the height of their careers as a glamorous leading man and sultry beauty respectively, were denied nominations. The film's producer, David O. Selznick, had originally wanted Vivien Leigh for Ingrid Bergman's role.

North By Northwest - 1959

North by Northwest, Cary Grant, Eva Marie Saint, 1959


North by Northwest, Cary Grant, Eva Marie Saint, 1959 Giclee Print

Bass, Saul
9 in. x 12 in.
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Mounted


North by Northwest (1959) is a suspenseful, classic Alfred Hitchcock caper thriller. The box-office hit film is one of the most entertaining movies ever made and one of Hitchcock's most famous suspense/mystery stories in his entire career. One of the film's posters advertised: "Only Cary Grant and Alfred Hitchcock ever gave you so much suspense in so many directions." The film paired debonair Cary Grant with director Hitchcock for the fourth and last time: their earlier collaborations were in Suspicion (1941), Notorious (1946), and To Catch a Thief (1955). And Hitchcock also chose Oscar-winning Eva Marie Saint as the blonde heroine (to the studio's and Grant's surprise) - one of many such female characters in his film repertoire.

The film's themes include many plot devices and elements typical of Hitchcock films (especially The 39 Steps (1935) and Saboteur (1942)) - predominantly the themes of mistaken identity for the innocent, ordinary, 'Wrong Man' hero. Another of its themes is false pretenses and survival in 20th Century America during the Cold War. [The Leo G. Carroll character in the film - the head of the American Intelligence Agency, was possibly modeled after two 1950s real-life figures: Secretary of State John Foster Dulles and his brother Allen W. Dulles, head of the CIA.] Arthur Hiller's Hitchcockian Silver Streak (1976) paid homage to this film, with a similar train ride, dangerous circumstances, pursuit by police, and a mysterious woman.

The Night of the Hunter - 1955

The Night of the Hunter


The Night of the Hunter Framed Art Print
16 in. x 22 in.
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The Night of the Hunter (1955) is a truly compelling, haunting, and frightening classic masterpiece thriller-fantasy, and the only film ever directed by the great British actor Charles Laughton. The American gothic, Biblical tale of greed, innocence, seduction, sin and corruption was adapted for the screen by famed writer-author James Agee (and Laughton, but without screen credit). Although one of the greatest American films of all time, the imaginatively-chilling, experimental, sophisticated work was idiosyncratic, film noirish, avante garde, dream-like expressionistic and strange, and it was both ignored and misunderstood at the time of its release. Originally, it was a critical and commercial failure.

Robert Mitchum gave what some consider his finest performance in a precedent-setting, unpopular, and truly terrifying role as the sleepy-eyed, diabolical, dark-souled, self-appointed serial killer/Preacher with psychotic, murderous tendencies while in pursuit of $10,000 in cash. Lillian Gish played his opposite - a saintly good woman who provided refuge for the victimized children.

The disturbing, complex story was based on the popular, best-selling 1953 Depression-era novel of the same name by first-time writer Davis Grubb, who set the location of his novel in the town of Moundsville, WV, where the West Virginia Penitentiary (also mentioned in the film) was located. Grubb lived in nearby Clarksburg as a young teenager.