Strangers on a Train Tagged Articles at Cinematical

Whether it's the critic leaving the screening room, flabbergasted at another mess ... the producer baffled at how much time and treasure and good intentions got squandered into an immense dog's egg ... or the actor who had some sort of a hunch that a film could be work, only to find out that there wasn't enough of him to fight the dozens working against him ... all can console themselves with screenwriter William Goldman's rule: 'Nobody knows anything." This is the consolation when sure fire things go wrong. If nobody knows anything, there's still 7 things you ought to know if you're making movies ...

Had Alfred Hitchcock been remarkably long-lived, he would have turned 107 today (in reality, he died at 81 in 1980). A brilliant self-promoter whose wonderfully droll way of talking about his career and works created a character -- we'll call him Hitch -- whose fame extended above and beyond even that of his films, Hitchcock had a remarkably light touch as a director. Able to move with no apparent effort from clever humor (The Lady Vanishes) to intense psychological horror (Vertigo, Psycho) and forbidden homoeroticism (Strangers on a Train, Rope), he left behind a complex legacy, arguably still unmatched among mainstream directors.

While I love a wide-range of his films (my favorites are probably Strangers on a Train, Shadow of a Doubt and Lady Vanishes; I'm terrible person for not really liking Vertigo), the best thing about Hitchcock for me is listening to him talk. I remember seeing a documentary (no idea what it was called, sorry) in which he discussed raising tension on his movies. He explained his approach by planting a theoretical bomb under a cinematic desk, and then letting the man working there go about his daily business: Talking on the phone, signing checks, going over his schedule. Within the film, everyday life is occurring, but the audience, Hitchcock said -- in his distinctive slow, emphatic way -- is frantic, muttering "But there's a bomb ... under ... the desk!" at the screen. The obvious glee with which he told that story is, for me, what's so endearing about Hitch -- he got as big a kick out of the nastiness in his films as we do.