Binge-ful Watching: Favorites from TCM's September "Sundays with Hitch"

**Including Spoilers**

Movie(s) I Couldn't Get Out of My Head Afterward:

Marnie (1964)

With power-house actors like Tippi Hedren and the swoon-worthy swagger of a young Sean Connery, who wouldn't have this movie in their head afterwards (as well as Sean Connery's accent)? But it is that last scene that really gets you: Tippi Hedren's fine acting as she reverts back into a child and relives the trauma she had from being molested by her mother's client. And Marnie's mother (actress and stage-vet Louise Latham) really adds a double punch in the stomach when she still won't offer affection to the institution-bound Marnie. Even for a movie made in 1964 I was shocked to see a hand under skirt shot implying rape. Leave it to the genius that Hitchcock was; having tackled attempted rape as far back as Blackmail in 1929!

I Confess (1953)

"I Confess" certainly falls under my list of "Amazing Stage to Movie Adaptations that Still Reads As a Play" despite the poor reviews and box office attendance. Even still, "I Confess" still remains today something that has never been entirely studied in a movie until "Doubt" came along: How much should the Catholic Church interfere with law and order? Although one can guess that Montgomery Clift's (don't even get me started on him just yet!) Father Michael Logan had a number of soliloquoys in the play, you can still see the fight of morality going on in his head and his taut facial gestures. It's enough until the last gun shot at the end that kind of stuns you. Despite Hitchcock's relationship with method actors such as Clift he should have been lenient to the practice. Imagine the Oscars he and his cast would have won!

Shadow of a Doubt

(1943)

The template to "Stoker" (which floored me in itself) was enough for me to feel strangely rushed and yet fascinated with the almost-incest tones that Hitchcock never took with "Shadow of a Doubt." Regardless, the movie is still genius proving why this is Hitchcock's favorite movie he ever made because of "the thought of bringing menace into a small town." (Patricia Hitchcock, Beyond Doubt) Plus what floored me as well was the conversations between Henry Travers (Poppa Newton) and Wallace Ford (Fred Saunders) about how a person could get away with murder. That fact alone stayed with me after the movie with American ignorance never knowing that evil is best not to be tampered with but it still fascinates. That creeps me out. As does (after watching Stoker as well) the phrase "Uncle Charlie." I know it's weird, but it does.

Vertigo
(1958)

"Vertigo" is truly a mind-fuck, to put it mildly. Although it's plot seems fairly simple: an out-of-work cop takes a job to watch over a college class mate's wife out of the suspicion that she is not acting like herself; that's barely the half of it. Complete with allusions to being possessed by a dead great-grandmother, fear of heights, an obsession with a beautiful blonde woman and death itself, the movie seems to study fear in a way that it becomes a nightmare of itself. And I'm not even counting the beautifully animated dream sequence; the best scene in this movie (for me) is the first time at the Mission San Juan Batista, especially looking at the tree trunk. The colors are so perfect and that's only a testament to the genius that is Alfred Hitchcock and Edith Head. Aren't the best scary movies based on allusion and what you feel anyways?

Favorite Leading Actress(es)

Anny Ondra as Alice White

in "Blackmail"

Tippi Hedren as Marnie Edgar

in "Marnie"

Movie I Couldn't Understand the Hype Over:

Maybe the Birds is iconic the way Psycho is iconic; it set the bar for the scary movie and the attack movie formula. I'll give the movie that as well as the great pleasure to stare at Tippi Hedren shaking my head going "Her daughter Melanie [Griffith] really does look like her! Damn!" Otherwise, it's a good movie for its time, reasons for being made for the movie formula to be set; but I didn't see much to personally enjoy. And I'm one of those people who will watch a classic movie with its out-dated effects and find my inner '20s-'30s audience movie-goer and try to see it as they would have. It fell dead on my ears much like most zombie movies. The Birds maybe beautiful in its atmosphere and the haunting yet beautiful setting of Bodega Bay. Oh and Jessica Tandy. Oh, oh, and Suzanne Pleshette. But despite all the things that are lovely about the film; it is a template for future reference and I've never been a huge attack movie fan. But for what it did for the time, it's a movie that had to have been made.

Favorite Leading Actor(s):

Cary Grant as Roger Thornhill

in "North by Northwest"

Montgomery Clift as

Father Michael William Logan

in "I Confess"

Sean Connery as Mark Rutland

in Marnie

Robert Walker as Bruno Antony
in "Strangers on a Train"

The Movie(s) that Made Me Go "Oh my God, I love it, I love it!!!!"

The Lodger:

A Story of London Fog (1927)

"The Lodger" reads like a backwards almost-fairy tale. You have the bumbling but cute and unaware parents (with Hitchcock's signature humor in the execution) the beautiful curly blond haired daughter who could possibly be the next victim to a Jack the Ripper-like killer with an affinity for killing curly blond haired women, the idiot boyfriend to the daughter that is a cop and is a huge jealous idiot for June's Daisy Bunting's crush on Ivor Novello's The Lodger. Novello moves into the extra room in the Bunting household almost conveniently when this killer is making attacks closer to the neighborhood so obviously Malcolm Keene's idiot boyfriend intends to make him out of as the killer. When they go through his room with a warrant for his arrest; it turns out Novello may know more about these killings. But it turns out he's rich and he's in love with Daisy! Most silent movies are meant to be very simple but once the neighborhood townsfolk starts chasing after Novello's Lodger at the end complete with his hands cuffed in a very James Whale-Frankenstein kind of way, you're starting to see there's an extreme depth to this actor! Unfortunately the beautiful Welsh Ivor Novello was more of a composer and musician (but what Welsh person isn't?) but he really could've acted his way into Hollywood if he wanted to.