Hitchcock double bill: BBC2/10 & 11 Nov

[Stanley Stewart]

In a week dominated by Americana, a pleasure to set the recorder for two Alfred Hitchcock features on BBC 2, 12 o'clock (mid-day), TODAY, 10 Nov and tomorrow, same time;

10 Nov - Saboteur (1942) Remarkable for its climax sequence on the Statue of Liberty!

11 Nov - Shadow of a Doubt (1942) - Hitch's favourite film. A psychopath arrives in a small town community, setting off a confrontation between good and evil. Compulsive viewing. Each time I see it, I instantly reach for a playback of Knoxville; Summer of 1915 - Dawn Upshaw's classic recording on Elektra Nonesuch.(1989). A treat.

[Alain Maréchal]

10 Nov - Saboteur (1942) Remarkable for its climax sequence on the Statue of Liberty!
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Norman Lloyd, who plays Fry, and became Hitchcock's TV producer, was 102 on Tuesday. He is still working.

[vinteuil]

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... also more Hitchcock today 10 November -

Film4 at 4:35pm -The Man Who Knew Too Much [1955] - James Stewart and Doris Day in Hitchcock's remake of his own 1934 thriller - with the virtuoso crescendo in the Albert Hall....

[pastoralguy]

I owned a lovely 16mm print of Hitchcock's '39 Steps' which, having shown once, I sold on. I really regret it now.

[Stanley Stewart]

A real pleasure viewing the remastered print of Saboteur, today, and memories like silence came rushing in! First saw the film as an adolescent in 1942 and even had a schoolroom joke of suspending my arm in the air at moments of despair with a cry of "sleeve, sleeve" which always got a laugh.

Of course, the time was ripe for propaganda as America had only entered WW2, a few months earlier. Fascinated to note the opening credits with three writers credited in the adaptation of the original screenplay; Peter Viertel, Joan Harrison AND Dorothy Parker. Hitch set a cracking pace and masterly in sustaining the built-up pressure in the action. Clever clogs, too, in developing his party pieces; the protagonists trapped at large social gatherings, viz, Saboteur-Notorious, 1946), The Man
Who Knew Too Much, (1956) - North by North West (1959). or dangerously suspended; Saboteur-or Mt Rushmore- North by North West. Even in Foreign Correspondent, 1940, he wittily used an outdoor sequence in Amsterdam, leaving Joel McRae confused seeking a gunman in a crowd with
raised umbrellas.




As usual, I return to my copy of the Hitchcock/Truffaut interviews for the master's wit and wisdom as a director. Droll po-faced humour.

[vinteuil]

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... not Hitchcock, but if you like noirish 1940s films, next week we have -

Monday 14 Nov, more4, 10:55am Gilda

Thursday 17 Nov, more4, 11:20am The Lady from Shanghai