I grew up with classic movies. Sure, Die Hard is a Christmas movie, but that’s right next to The Bishop’s Wife and The Man Who Came to Dinner and Christmas in Connecticut. So when a friend of mine asked me for the best of Alfred Hitchcock, I was confused. He had only seen
You're right about "Sabotage!" being rather a dud: somehow blowing up a twelve-year-old kid brother doesn't play well with cinema audiences. (It's based on the much better book "The Secret Agent" by Joseph Conrad, in which the kid brother isn't so much a boy as, iirc, retarded or what we'd call autistic.)
On the other hand, John Buchan's "The 39 Steps" was much better than the loosely-adapted film by Mr. H, and written before the Great War, whereas its two best sequels ("Greenmantle" and "Mr. Standfast") were written about and *during* the war--about a very different version of WW1 than we see in history books, but as envisioned from the British home front while the action was still very much undecided.
Thank you! I've been thinking of picking a Hitchcock film for movie night at our house and this reminds me that there a lot of great ones no one has seen. I did really like Notorious but I agree with your summary!
Rear Window is probably my favorite
There is a lot to like in it.
You're right about "Sabotage!" being rather a dud: somehow blowing up a twelve-year-old kid brother doesn't play well with cinema audiences. (It's based on the much better book "The Secret Agent" by Joseph Conrad, in which the kid brother isn't so much a boy as, iirc, retarded or what we'd call autistic.)
On the other hand, John Buchan's "The 39 Steps" was much better than the loosely-adapted film by Mr. H, and written before the Great War, whereas its two best sequels ("Greenmantle" and "Mr. Standfast") were written about and *during* the war--about a very different version of WW1 than we see in history books, but as envisioned from the British home front while the action was still very much undecided.
Thank you! I've been thinking of picking a Hitchcock film for movie night at our house and this reminds me that there a lot of great ones no one has seen. I did really like Notorious but I agree with your summary!