The Lady Vanishes - Alfred Hitchcock - 1938

★★★★★ - I loved this movie. Hitchcock's second to last film before coming to the states.

Gist is a beautiful English tourist, Margaret Lockwood (a total babe [this was during Hitch's brunette phase]), travels by train across Europe with a motley cast of characters. Just before boarding the train, she takes a bump on the head and an elderly woman agrees to watch after her. In and out of consciousness, she awakens to find her companion has disappeared. The other passengers deny having ever seen her and gaslight her, saying she can't trust her own memory because of the blow to her head. She eventually employs the help of a musician, Michael Redgrave (who looks exactly like Paul Dano), whom she has had beef with going back to the hotel where the movie opens.

All the train stuff was filmed in a studio that used only one car for the entire shoot. Totally remarkable filmmaking.

The vanishing lady is something of a McGuffin that only sort of matters. The film gets a little bogged down with why she is being kidnapped and what have you.

Has a decent amount of humor to it. There is a great fight scene between Redgrave and Lockwood and this Italian magician who is in on the kidnapping. It takes place in the luggage area with all his magic props and a cardboard cutout of him looking on. The fight is realistic and terrible with a lot of slow choking and wild punching. The best comes after the magician has escaped being locked up through a trap door. Frustrated by the whole thing, Lockwood punches the cutout in the face.

Might be my all-time favorite train movie. Hitchcock is mostly associated with Strangers on a Train in this regard, but that really isn't a train movie. This takes place almost entirely on board.

Marnie - Alfred Hitchcock - 1964

★★★ - I’ve always been led to believe this was a great movie. It was not a great movie. Hardly any of it makes sense. Doesn’t really feel like a Hitchcock movie. Lotta melodrama.

I felt like Tippi Hedren mostly phoned it in. Sean Connery was pretty good. The actress that plays Tippi’s mother is maybe the worst performance in all of Hitchcock. Her accent is literally incredible.

The gist is Tippi’s character be scammin’. Connery, his character seems to be into that sexually or something. Never really figured out what his motivation was, honestly.

Like when Connery catches her, he has her tell him her story. She tells a tale about her mom being dead and desperate for cash. Let’s her go on forever and then tells her how he knows that was all bullshit. Then he decides to take care of her. Alright.

Ought to be sending her to jail. She ripped off a bunch of friends of his and stuff. When he marries her, those friends are at the wedding. She’s like, “welp, I’m going to jail.” But instead, Connery says that they want after he tells them what he has to say. No idea what the hell he’s gonna say to smooth that shit over.

Something I’ve noticed after 25 or so flicks. Men in Hitchcock movies are always forcing brandy on women in the morning.

Also, Hitchcock did love the violence-leading-into-sex move. When Connery inevitably gets rapey, the Bernard Herman score is at its most frantic and horrible. The whole time you ask, why is he doing this.

What an insane living situation this is. Sean Connery and his fake wife, his dad, and his widowed sister-in-law that is in love with him all under the same roof. Tippy has a nightmare, her normal, reoccurring one where she’s screaming. “Don’t hurt my mama.” The sister-in-law comes and shakes the shit out of her while Sean Connery is just looking at her. The sister-in-law leaves their room and sees the book Sean Connery is reading, “Sexual Aberrations of the Criminal Female.” If any of this is happening to me, I am reassessing as life has become way too complicated.

Everybody is sort of familiar with it with many claiming it as one of Hitchcock’s greats. But when you get into this run of films, things get pretty weird in his universe. Definitely question his genius at this level.

Overall, to me, it felt like someone imitating Hitchcock. Same with the Bernard Herrmann score. The whole movie just felt kind of off.

Foreign Correspondent - Alfred Hitchcock - 1940

★★★★ - Love a journalist thrust in into a spy-thriller or noir flick. Main guy, Joel McCrea, has a Tom Brady look. Plays a great dumb guy who finds himself unwittingly in an international assassination plot. Shares some DNA with North by Northwest in that way.

The paper he works for in New York sends him to Europe in 1939 just before the war broke out. The publisher tells him he doesn’t want him to cover the impending conflict, but really wants him to, I guess. This is the backdrop of the story. Everybody waiting for war, but thinking it’s not going to happen but knowing it will.

The publisher is sending the protagonist because he punched a cop. This is his “punishment” instead of being fired. He’s out of control and loves his job. If this were what being a newsman was like in 2023, I’d for damn sure still be on the job.

Bunch of people I recognize but no one really by name. This guy George Sanders looks just like Jason Segal. Recognize him as the raging asshole convinced Laurence Olivier was up to something in Rebecca. He was also Mister Freeze in the Batman show from the 60s.

Female lead, Laraine Day, was not much else. This was her biggest role. Didn’t really make it. Was a Mormon, too, similar to Scientology. I can’t enjoy someone’s work if I know they are a Mormon. Other groups that ruin it are Jehovah’s Witnesses, fundamentalist, Christians, conservative, rapist, wife, beaters, and racist. If you turn out to be a Trump supporter, I cannot even look at you. There is active rage there.

Pretty great film but has some flaws. Overshadowed by Rebecca, which also came out in 1940 and won the Academy Award for Best Picture. These are his first movies after arriving in Hollywood. This film is mostly forgotten, but shouldn’t be. Plus a heck of a plane smash at the end.

Blackmail (1929) is the greatest film of all time

Detectives in glass houses shouldn't wave clues. Final silent Alfred Hitchcock movie from 1929. When it was being developed, The Jazz Singer, the first talkie, came out. That shit became all the rage and Hitchcock made a talkie version of the same flick which is cited as the first sound feature film. The silent one is better though. 

Gist of the movie is that this young lady who is maybe cheating on her (I guess) husband--who is a detective for Scotland Yard--goes home with a painter. His game is to get chicks naked and to "paint" them. The oldest trick in the book, apparently, because it is worn out even then. They flirt and he makes a move. She turns him down and he gets all rape/murdery. In what is obviously self-defense, she kills him. But she freaks and takes off, leaving a mountain of evidence behind. Luckily though her dude gets assigned the case and takes some of the shit she leaves behind when she sees that the victim is the guy his wife or whatever left with. She ain't out of the clear though as this homeless dude saw her and tries to blackmail them. 

Rapey vibes

But, surprise, they pin it on the homeless dude. Spoiler. She doesn't want him to get hanged for her "crime" though so she goes to Scotland Yard to tell the cops "who did it." When she's about to do as such, they find out the homeless dude died while being pursued by the cops. It's a pretty sweet scene that takes place in the British Museum, a truly remarkable building. Her conscience clears up real quick when they learn about that. So off they go, to live happily ever after, I'm sure. Ends with a real knee-slapper how "pretty soon, you'll see women detectives on Scotland Yard!" They all have real good laugh at that one. 

Stars Anny Ondra the chick who kills the dude in self defense. She famously spoke little English and ended up miming the words while another access spoke offscreen in the talkie version. Don't feel bad for her though. She continued to act in German and French films and married the German boxer Max Schmeling. He was famous losing the "Battle of the Century" to Joe Louis in 1938 and getting shunned by the Nazis. The Nazi Party didn't exactly jive with him either as he saved Jews by hiding them in his basement during the war. Later in life he became an executive for Coca-Cola and more or supported Joe Louis. He was solid. I imagine she was as well. They stayed married until her death in 1987. Their marriage was apparently super happy.  

John Longden plays her detective maybe husband who helps cover the crime up and pin it on the blackmailer. Cyril Ritchard is the guy who gets murdered who had it coming. 

Hitchcock is the MVP, obviously. This was something like his 10th film. All the shit he would become known for is there. The use of shadow and light. The Kuleshov Effect. The cameo. The beautiful blonde. The famous landmark. Really glad I watched it. Probably never watching it again though.