The small bit when the cocktail party has adjourned to the next room and the maid is cleaning up the dinner table, putting everything right on top of the cabinet (in which a dead body has been stuffed), and juuuuuust about to open it…
The scene in Marine in which Tippi Hedren is robbing a safe box, unaware that a cleaning lady is going about her daily chores in the very next room.
I recall watching a documentary of Hitchcock’s career showing a small scene from one of his earliest British films, just after the advent of “talkies.” The narrator pointed out that Hitchcock was perhaps the first director to use sound in an artistic way rather than just a novelty gimmick.
The movie (can’t recall the name) had a basic plot in which a young girl has an altercation with a neighbor in which she stabs him to death. She gets away from the scene of the crime unseen, but her guilt at her deed begins eating away at her. The scene in question had having tea with her family the next day. A neighbor comes in to discuss the local gossip and of course all they talk about is the local murder.
As the scene plays out, we get a tight close up shot of the girl’s very troubled face, while the conversation drones on. The neighbors’ voice becomes a distant mumble, all except one word - the word “knife” repeated over and over again.
In fact I found a clip of it on youtube. The movie - Blackmail.
Hmm. Yes, trying to remember, the two scenes/takes that define the movie now for me are the camera peeking into Norman’s “old” room, with the record player and the little kid stuff, and the attention paid to the taxidermy objects.
The former is IIRC all camera work, but the latter is probably mostly due to the editor.
I think a lot of iconic scenes are very well known to people who like Hitchcock movies (the ones mentioned from Marnie are pretty famous – as is the celebrated vagina purse shot of Marnie stealing in the single take near the beginning or one of my favorites, the murder in Topaz – the dress sort of melting away into a puddle in an overhead crane shot).
That was a good call re Torn Curtain – I’d forgotten most of the flick, but I recall that being a very effective scene, and somewhat unusual.
What was the picture with the windmills and the airplanes? There was a very good one I can’t remember, again with a staircase, in one of the windmills. I want to say Foreign Correspondent but it’s probably one of the other ones from that era. Can’t keep all the names straight. Whichever one I’m thinking of, it’s also a criminally underrated movie in general – I remember being blown away by the acting in particular, something surprising in the casting IIRC I was expecting to be let down, but wasn’t.
No, you got it, it’s Foreign Correspondent, with Joel McCrea. One of my favorite Hitchcock films, with McCrea playing (off George Sanders, among others) a kind of pre-Pynchon Tyrone Slothrop-type. I always suspected TP used that movie to create the character of Slothrop skipping all through Europe one or two steps ahead of (or behind) the evil Nazis.
They varied in length a bit, so as to find the best place for the semi-hidden cuts. The shortest was just under 5 minutes, and the longest 10 minutes, but the average is 8 minutes.
There’s a breakdown of the shots here on Wikipedia if you’re interested.
I’m pretty sure I’ve seen or read interviews with Hitchcock where he claimed all the takes were 10 minutes long, and that all the cuts were carefully hidden, but like a great deal of the things he said, that’s at best artful misdirection.
The scene in Vertigo when Midge realizes it’s never going to happen. One of the most understated, poignant scenes in all of Hitchcock. Also the best use of the beautiful score.
In fact, pretty much *every *scene with Midge. She’s one of my favorite unappreciated characters, a perfect counterpoint to Novak.
The front porch “lemonade” scene in The Trouble with Harry is also brilliant.
I came in here to say the scene where she unveils her painting to Scottie – it veers from laugh-out-loud to gut-punch in, like, five seconds.
I still don’t understand what Midge is doing in that movie. As far as I’m concerned, her role is just to make me really, really root for Scottie to jump after Judy in the finale.
I think the humorous touches are often unappreciated. The honeymoon couple in Rear Window, the fight scene in the taxidermist’s in The Man Who Knew Too Much, the ghastly meals served by the detective’s wife in Frenzy.