Tag Archives: hitchcock

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The 39 Steps (1935)

If you have been reading My Filmviews for a bit longer, you have probably noticed that I’m a big fan of Alfred Hitchcock movies. A while ago there was a sale with a lot of his movies in one box and of course I just had to pick it up. I now take my time to slowly work through all these films. One of them was The 39 Steps. A title that doesn’t say a lot about the film itself, but luckily a title isn’t the only reason to decide whether or not a movie is worth seeing.

The 39 Steps is about a man (played by Robert Donat) who meets this woman during a show who tells him that she’s in great danger. She asks if she can go home with him to hide for a while until she feels safe again. It doesn’t take long before he finds out that he’s in danger as well and because of the information he received from the woman he is forced to flee and go on a search to save both his own life and England. Continue reading →

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Vertigo (1958)


According to MedicineNet.com:

Vertigo is a feeling that you are dizzily turning around or that things are dizzily turning about you. Vertigo is usually due to a problem with the inner ear. Vertigo can also be caused by vision problems.

The word “vertigo” comes from the Latin “vertere”, to turn + the suffix “-igo”, a condition = a condition of turning about). Vertigo is medically distinct from dizziness, lightheadedness, and unsteadiness.

After a chase on the rooftops of San Francisco, John ‘Scottie’ Ferguson (James Stuart) starts suffering from it. He’s even afraid to get on small ladders. He has to quite his job and leaves the police force to become a private detective. He’s asked by an old friend to shadow his wife as she has been acting very strange lately. He takes the job and follows the woman everywhere she goes around San Francisco, which results in not only some beautiful shots of the city, but also a suspenseful thriller as only Hitchcock could make them. Continue reading →

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My IMDB tens: Psycho (1960)

I was planning to continue with my existing IMDB tens list with the next movie that was already present on it, until i watched Psycho. So a new addition to my list (after E.T. and The Great Dictator).
I guess that’s what you get when you are slowly working your way through the IMDB top 250. What a movie this is.
Just like Rope, this is also a movie Hitchcock directed. I only knew one scene about this movie, which is the famous shower scene including the haunting music that accompanied it. I had no idea where in the movie this scene would show up, but thought it was probably near the ending. It turned out i was wrong about it and it just shows what kind of ideas you can have about a movie which you have not seen yet. Continue reading →

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Rope (1948)

I haven’t been watching Hitchcock movies for a very long time yet (about a year or 2). The movies that i did see (Rear Window, The Wrong Man, The Man Who Knew Too Much, The Birds, I confess and some more) by the master of suspense really show that he deserves that title. With Rope he decided to make a movie out of a play. The whole story is set within an apartment and is the first movie he shot in color.
What really stands out when you watch this movie are the extremely long takes (like we also know from Orson Welles’ Touch of evil (the opening shot is very impressive) or a movie like Children of Men). The complete movie only has 10 segments for which the transitions, for the most part, are concealed by making clever use of the back of an actor or something else. Continue reading →