The post I PLANNED to write first thing this morning:

[captainsblog]

We watched Rear Window last night. I believe it was the first time I'd seen it since it came back into theatrical release just over 25 years ago, which in turn was after it had been out of circulation for copyright reasons for most of the 30 years since it was made. Universal had restored it to its original fabulosity, and I saw it- in fact, all five of the "lost" Hitchcock films (this, Vertigo, Rope, Trouble with Harry and The Man Who Knew Too Much)- that year. They all played at the then-and-still-gorgeous North Park, the last of Buffalo's cinema treasures still in regular use as a movie theater.

What I'd never seen before was the set of commentaries on the DVD. Hitch's daughter; Peter Bogdonavich (who took time out from preparing to be Melfi's shrink back in the 70s and recorded an audio interview with the director about the film); and a surprisingly still-spry bunch of cast and crew from the film, all adding perspectives to what was a uniquely one-perspective film, virtually every shot of it appearing from Jimmy Stewart's wheelchair-bound point of view.

I'd honestly forgotten the denouement of the base story- whodunit? did he dunit? how did he dunit if he did dunit?- but it didn't matter. The opposite result would have been just as compelling. Instead, we just soaked in all of the side stories- all completely absent from the original short story- that Hitch and his screenwriter worked into the set. They interviewed Miss Torso, 50 years later (sadly, she's passed on since), and the commentary mentioned that Songwriter Guy (the apartment where the director makes his cameo, which we caught) was actual songwriter Ross Bogdasarian. Ten and even almost sixty years later, you'd know that actor better as "David Seville," creator and voicer of Alvin and the Chipmunks. (Don't laugh- the creative genius behind Mannheim Steamroller also wrote and performed "Convoy.")

I commented elsewhere that Dexter fans who haven't seen this film, should. Instantly. Whether or not there is actual murder in the film, you never see anything to give you a firm clue, and yet Hitchcock uses the script to convey just as much of a sense of impending doom as Dex does with the fake blood seeming all so real. There is so much of the same kind of black humor throughout the unseen dicing and slicing- not that Hitchcock was afraid of depicting it (see Psycho, passim), but this film proves that he didn't need it.

Grace Kelly. Gorgeous. Cute, Eleanor said at least once. Glamorous and yet never in that red-carpet-designer-gown sort of way that People has made so annoying over the last couple of decades. So much to remember her by, and yet not nearly enough.

Now, of course, the rest of her Hitchcock canon is back on our radar screen. If I start beginning posts here with, "Good eeeeefning," that's why.

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One odd PS on the last post: I know Obama promised to improve intelligence gathering and implementation after the Christmas incident, but. I got a pagehit this morning from someone at the FAA, when I'd begun my joking (speak directly into the flowerpot, Ray) reference to crotch bombing with a threat to ignite and explode my brain. Then I checked the time: the ping came two minutes BEFORE I hit "post." Wow, Obama, that's good:)

Comments

[ellettra.livejournal.com]

i love hitchcock. always watch the classics with my aunt when i go home to visit. :) i missed it this year, but hopefully we'll do it when i go home in february!

[liddle-oldman.livejournal.com]

This is purely tangential, but it might be a comment on the Induced ADD of modern life that when I tried to watch Rope, I nearly went mad.