DYL was an enjoyably diverting film as long as you don’t think about it too much. I wouldn’t call it “deep” by any metric, but will grant it “whimsical”.
Well, it’s not like Brooks is some kind of Albert Einstein
Suspicion (1941). More vintage Hitchcock! Stars Cary Grant and Joan Fontaine, also with Cedric Hardwicke and Leo G. Carroll. The Fontaine character is from a wealthy family and has a whirlwind romance with the Grant character and they impulsively get married despite her father’s disapproval. Whereupon Fontaine discovers that her new husband is not only broke, but is an incorrigible liar, a crook, and maybe a murderer.
I found the story quite absorbing and was thinking as I was watching that it deserved better than the 7.3 rating it has on IMDb (but it’s rated 97% on RT). I downgraded my opinion a bit when it was over because I found the surprise ending rather disappointing, but maybe I’m just coming to expect too much because it’s Hitchcock. But Joan Fontaine did get an Oscar nomination for Best Actress for her role, and the film itself was nominated for Best Picture. It was a bit odd seeing Cary Grant playing a scoundrel, albeit a charming one. I thought all those A-list actors in the Golden Age insisted on only playing good guys.
Not that “charges of racism” were a particular problem in 1935. The whole concept of Tarzan – some random white guy shows up in Africa and naturally becomes King of the Jungle, over the people who have lived there for millennia – barely raised an eyebrow.
I mean modern charges of racism. Nobody back then cared, or else we wouldn’t have gotten all those “white goddess” stories.
Tarzan is a special case. I disagree with your characterization, and the general charge that Tarzan is racist. He’s certainly seen that way. Some schools that were planning to put on the Disney musical version cancelled it because the character was perceived as racist - not because of racism in the show itself. But Tarzan clearly drags a lot of baggage with him. It doesn’t help that Edgar Rice Burroughs started out in a Sundown Town and ended up founding another one (Tarzana).
Agreed. I really enjoyed the movie, and appreciated how it showed good ol’ American ingenuity, spunk, know-how, determination, teamwork and courage overcoming the odds and winning out (I can only dream of someday being a “steely-eyed missile man”). A notable scientific flaw, though: the winds on Mars are nowhere near as hard or as dangerous as those shown in the storm that gets Watney marooned in the first place.
It’s been awhile since I’ve seen it. Remind me of the Casio incident, please?
Agree on both points. Rope was just boring. The gimmick was the only thing it had going for it, and that also contributed to its awkwardness.
Weekend - Jean Luc Godard
Wow. I’ve seen several of his films, but nothing quite as out-there as this one. Completely nuts. It was billed as a comedy, which I doubted before I saw it, but it did have one LOL line for me (the protagonists’s car is on fire, and the wife is sobbing. Husband asks why, and she wails about her Hermes handbag). I got a bit of a chuckle at the conclusion, but it’s quite an extreme film.
Helen Gahagan? She’s the one who was slurred by Nixon when he ran for Congress (?). He called her the Pink Lady, i.e. a duh duh duuuuuh communist.
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If that’s what you’re looking for, I highly recommend Promising Young Woman
One that I just saw today about approximately the same subject is To Kill a Tiger:
It’s about the problems of getting rapists punished in India.
I can confirm that She (1935) is available for free on Amazon prime. Although it’s difficult to do a search… You get all the results that contain those three letters.
Easiest way to find a film’s viewing availability is the Google app. Enter the title, and an entry will come up with a “Watch movie” button which will show its presence on all the apps.
Watched Rope tonight, and that was the gayest movie I ever saw. On purpose, right? I counted four cuts. No doubt there were more, because I did get engrossed in the story. And no Hitchcock cameo.
My understanding is that Rope was based on the Leopold and Loeb case, and I remember reading that one of them was in love with the other.
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0040746/trivia/?ref_=tt_trv_trv - Director Cameo:
“Alfred Hitchcock: appears, though barely if at all recognizable, walking down the street during the opening credits. The neon sign advertises “Reduco”, the same fictional weight-loss product that Hitchcock advertised in his famous newspaper ad cameo in Lifeboat (1944).”
Yeah, I’m reading about it now. Fascinating.
I was squinting at those little people, and thought, “Nah.”
Another version of Leopold-Loeb is Compulsion (1959), with Bradford Dillman and Dean Stockwell as the murderers, and Orson Welles as their lawyer (in real life, Clarence Darrow).
I’ll check it out if I can, for Dean Stockwell alone.
Never mind the Paul Masson disaster, Welles’ monologue from Compulsion shows how great he really was.
I watched Violent Night. Entertaining and gory light fun, if that’s what you’re after.
Strangers On a Train (1951). I’d definitely put this somewhere in Hitchcock’s top 10 films, maybe even top 5. A psychopath tries to get a tennis star drawn into a murder plot, where each kills the other’s hated enemy. Still an exciting thriller after all these years.
Based on a Patricia Highsmith novel. She’s the Queen of Alienation.