Kane

Tonight was the second time I watched Citizen Kane. I recall I found it good but not great as a young adult. What can one say about "the best film of all time" (which it certainly isn't, because no single film is)?

Well, I can say I found it pretty compelling. Effective non-linear narrative, ace cinematography, Bernard Herrmann score, and young Orson Welles kicking ass on both sides of the camera. Good, intelligent reasons to like it. But it's the story itself that sticks to me. A poor boy gets everything and finds out he has nothing. That is simply a great, powerful myth.

The transfer on the DVD I have was nothing to write home about, though.

Cary Grant on fire

It wasn't really news to me that Grant is an excellent comedian. But Arsenic and Old Lace, which I hadn't seen, was still amazing. Every other actor did their job well (I particularly liked "Karloff" and "Roosevelt"), but it is Grant's show and he carries it brilliantly. Insanity's rarely been so exhilarating.

The richest director ever

I have no source to back up that title, but I'd be rather surprised if anyone beats Howard Hughes. Tonight I watched both films he directed, Hell's Angels and The Outlaw.

The best parts of Angels happen in the air, no doubt about that. It's thrilling to see two dozen or so biplane fighters swirling in the sky and know that it's real footage, not CGI. Hughes assembled a small fleet of WWI warplanes and pilots and shot a lot of film, which made the movie the most expensive ever made at the time. There's also some fine model work, used in the nighttime Zeppelin mission over London and the bombing of a German munitions depot. The rest of the film is uneven, to put it kindly, but Jean Harlow is good - good at being a bad girl, that is. Only a few years later the Hays Code prevented this kind of racy material being shown.

The Outlaw is famous for showcasing Jane Russell's breasts and being censored because of that, and her chest is indeed the most memorable element of the movie (her acting, sadly, less so). It's a retelling of the Billy the Kid legend that inserts Doc Holliday in the events, and not a terribly good one at that. There are some good scenes, but more ridiculous ones. At least Walter Huston, father of John, appears as Pat Garrett.

Rapid fire dialog

Besides Hitchcock, there's another director whose name begins with an "H" whom I hold in very high regard, and he is Howard Hawks. "Three great scenes, no bad ones" was his own pragmatic definition of a good movie, but it's safe to say he surpassed that frequently.

Today I watched His Girl Friday, one of the first movies where people talk over each other instead of waiting politely until the other actor has said his piece. More importantly, it's an extremely funny film. Cary Grant and Rosalind Russell play wonderfully off each other.

Casablanca is movies

Said Umberto Eco after going on and on about semiotics and other fancy concepts, and I agree. It sums up Old Hollywood as well as can be imagined. It's amazing how a script that was written as the filming took place and was a compromise between writer Koch's and director Curtiz's intentions can work so perfectly. One of the films that kicked off my interest in older movies.

Not the Hitch you're used to

Today we watched Under Capricorn. It's basically a period costume drama with few typical Hitchcock touches. Quite worth seeing nevertheless.

Ten long takes

Rope is pretty contrived, but I have always liked it. And did so again.

Test drive

After getting a new toy, I just had to watch something. What better way to try out a shiny Blu-ray gadget than watching a black & white film from 1947 on DVD, I ask? We continued the Project with The Paradine Case, which is not one of Hitchcock's greatest but actually worked well as a trial run, being about a trial (ha ha).

In all seriousness, it was a good candidate because my American disc benefits from some pretty impressive restoration work. When the upscaling performed by the BD player was added to this (I don't claim to know which was the more important factor), the picture quality was very good for such an old film.

Bright stars

Project Hitchcock goes on; tonight's film was Notorious. Bergman and Grant are very, very good, and so is the director. The story was surprisingly topical for 1946, and rather ruthless within the constraints of the Hays Code. Recommended.

Theme-free day

You can surely draw a connection between High Plains Drifter and Spellbound, but it would be too loose to count for anything.

Drifter is a film where Eastwood finally plays a man with no name. In the Dollars Trilogy he actually had a name or nickname in every movie. I'm not sure if it is a great western, but it's an interesting one (you don't often see a town remade into a personal hell). The writer Ernest Tidyman also had a hand in Shaft and The French Connection - not a bad way to start your 1970s.

Spellbound is frankly implausible. But it has Ingrid Bergman, Gregory Peck, Hitch regular Leo G. Carroll (six films), a Dalí-designed dream sequence, and some clever touches by the director, so it is far from a waste of time. Both Bergman and Peck would return.

A water tank and a boat

No, not Titanic. Lifeboat is set in a lifeboat - reportedly the smallest set ever used for an entire movie. It's a fine technical achievement, but also works well as a film. The Hitchcock cameo is very subtle (originally he considered floating past the boat as a corpse). Tallulah Bankhead steals most scenes and John Steinbeck provided the original story.

In the name of the Project, we also watched his two World War II propaganda short films, Bon Voyage and Aventure malgache. Made in French with French actors, the idea was to show them in those areas of France where the Germans were already retreating. However, they were shelved and only shown to the public in the 90s. Both are very dull. I don't think I'll watch them again.

Only three decades to go

A bit of backstory: last year I started Project Hitchcock with a friend of mine. Simply put, we are going to watch all of his films which I have collected in chronological order (currently that means 43 titles; I plan to get a few more). With life getting in the way, it has been slow going but now it's moving again.

Last Saturday we watched Shadow of a Doubt, which neither one had seen. Great acting by Joseph Cotten, Teresa Wright, and the supporting cast, and a nice small town setting which somehow reminded me of Twin Peaks with its immense normality and curious people.

It was released in 1943 and the finishing line Family Plot came out in 1976, so it's going to take a while yet.

Bonus trivia: we have previously watched The Lodger, The Ring, The Farmer's Wife, Champagne, The Manxman, Blackmail, Murder!, The Skin Game, Rich and Strange, The Man Who Knew Too Much, The 39 Steps, Secret Agent, Sabotage, Young and Innocent, The Lady Vanishes, Jamaica Inn, Rebecca, Foreign Correspondent, Mr and Mrs Smith, Suspicion, and Saboteur. No, I cannot be arsed to hyperlink all of them. You know where to go. If you want details about the numerous DVD releases (their quality varies), you can go to Alfred Hitchcock Wiki.