Hitchcock's Final Films

In this episode, George and Ryan dive into the last four films of Alfred Hitchcock’s career: Torn Curtain, Topaz, Frenzy, and Family Plot. From Cold War tension to grim London alleyways to offbeat psychics and kidnappers, we explore how the Master of Suspense closed out his career with a mix of political paranoia, brutal violence, and dark humor.

Was Hitchcock still pushing boundaries—or just chasing ghosts of past glories? We unpack the highs, lows, and overlooked gems in this strange final act.

Transcript

Introduction to Hitchcock's Late Career

Speaker 1 0:09

In the making of motion pictures, a director is often portrayed as a violent man who screams and yells at actors and says ready on stage and waves his arms around a lot. By your own admission, you are a placid man. Are you this placid when you're at work?

Speaker 2 0:34

Well, first of all I'll tell you an interesting thing. I've only been on another set once in my whole career. Now I've heard about directors and how they behave in the manner in which you describe, you see, and the only thing I could say about it was it seems to me, all the drama is on the set and none on the screen.

Speaker 3 1:06

Hey, everybody, welcome back to our show, the Film Journal podcast. With me today is Ryan, also known as Cinecrisis, on his fantastic channel, and today we will be discussing the late career and final four films of one of our favorite filmmakers and yours, alfred Hitchcock. Alfred Hitchcock is obviously a storied, famous director, a man who really carved out his own destiny and charted a path for himself, maybe the first filmmaker to become wildly famous amongst the general audience and populace of moviegoers, as towards the end of his career he was able to promote movies based on himself. He might be often the most prominent person on the poster. Today we're discussing his last four movies Torn Curtain, frenzy, topaz and Family Plot. Did I get those correct in chronological order there, ryan?

Speaker 4 2:10

I think you flipped Topaz and Frenzy.

Speaker 3 2:14

Okay, fair enough. That's right, Topaz was pre-Frenzy, because you need to come back from that one, but how have you been? What's new?

Speaker 4 2:22

Doing well, doing well, not too much new, just taking care of some stuff. But I'm very excited for this topic because you know you can't go wrong with Alfred Hitchcock and I think what's really interesting about this topic particularly is that these are the films that are often overlooked in many discussions about his filmography, in many discussions about his filmography, because the filmography is so vast and there's so many legit you could call them masterpieces in his body of work that people aren't going to spend time talking about the films that are merely good, perhaps great, but they're not at that level of a rear window, a vertigo, a psycho, strangers on a train, movies like those that they often get overlooked.

Speaker 3 3:13

And that's a real shame. I agree, and I have to say, as I was reading back through or listening to the audiobook versions of two Hitchcock books that I had previously read some time ago, there's a book called the 13 Lives of Alfred Hitchcock which I enjoy a lot, and then there's one called the Dark Side of Genius which is a little more sensationalistic. But both of those autobiographies really really turn on the guy towards the end of the book and they start talking about how he's washed up Come 1966, he's washed up, doesn't have the spark anymore, even though he had just completely revitalized the horror genre with one of the most compelling and transgressive horror movies ever made up to that time, with Psycho. Somehow he lost his touch and I guess we could talk a bit more about that as we get into the topics today, the four movies. So, ryan, do you have any sort of special insight into where Hitchcock was as a filmmaker and as a person, about the time he started to make Because we just prefaced this with saying Psycho was such a massive hit and very influential After that the Birds equally iconic, I would say, perhaps in his oeuvre and then he made a film called Marnie which I think people were rather cold on at the time, the time.

Speaker 3 4:25

But I think, with the benefit of hindsight, there's been a lot of study into you know how, um, how interesting the sort of Freudian overtones of that film are and how sort of psychosexual it is and how that can be rather controversial today. I find it to be rather compelling, though somewhat, um, I feel like it lacks a little bit of a spark. And then after Marnie he went right into Torn Curtain, correct?

Speaker 4 4:40

correct, correct. So I think, if you go back, even to Psycho, people in the industry or the tabloids were already telling him at that time hey, you're going to be 60 years old. I think you've already peaked and you're on your way down. Breaks all expectations kind of genre defining movie and probably the peak movie of his career, whether or not, you know. Maybe, maybe other films are better, but there's something about psycho that is just, you know, transcends all boundaries, across across everything about what makes it so special, and after that I think that is, though, fair to say that is the apex of his commercial and critical career, and the Birds begins the kind of downward trajectory.

Speaker 4 5:31

It doesn't plummet, there's nothing, there's nothing bad about any of these movies, but it's the nature of the business, right To continuously try to. Once you've built somebody up, you have to tear them down, and so that that, I think, plays into some of it. Marnie was a big hit I mean not hit in a, I mean hit in a bad way Like it was a big blow to Hitchcock in terms of its failure. It did not connect with audiences, it did not make money and it was considered a flop, and this really took a toll on him from what I've read, and that for the first time in his life, in his career, he was no longer sure of himself in terms of knowing, having a sense of what, what he knew was the right thing to do next.

Speaker 4 6:16

And so torn curtain starts, uh, the trend where he allows the studio kind of to have a little bit of a more meddling influence in some of his decision making process and it ultimately leaves him unsatisfied, I think, with a lot of the end product, and we see that, I think, in both torn curtain and topaz, and then, when he gets to frenzy, you see a little bit more of a rejuvenation to his spirit. This is the kind of the movie he wants to make. There's no frills, there's no bells and whistles, it's just like solid storytelling. There's no big names, and then I think I would be unsatisfied if Frenzy, though, was his final film, I think, to come back to America and do something with kind of new and upcoming actors, with family plot, which is a very solid, good movie. I think that's the. I think that's a good way to end his career. In my opinion it could be worse.

Speaker 3 7:16

I'm with you. I think that the ending of of of a family plot and we'll get to that perfect for perfect little cap on his career it feels like a Coda Does it feel like a grand finale. But how many filmmakers get the big grand finale? Yeah, that's interesting. With Marnie, that was a film where the bank vault robbery sequence has always stood out for me, and the horse chase with the fox hunting horse chase has always stood out for me, but that was a very good summation of what we're going to talk about here. Box hunting, horse chases always stood out for me, but that was a very good summation of what we're going to talk about here.

Speaker 3 7:48

And yet you mentioned that Hitchcock was making these movies on autopilot somewhat, especially Torn Curtain, because I felt like beaten and battered. He came back into the arms of the studio and they said okay, hitch, we love you very much, you're making a lot of money with us, but you're going to go back to making international sort of thrillers with big stars. And though I think that Paul Newman is quits himself Well as well, julie Andrews, he made various, you know, claims in the press about how dissatisfied he was with their performances and how much he did not enjoy with them. They weren't his first choice, which is kind of surprising. But hitch could always be very candid. That was kind of his thing. He'd earned it in a way. But, ryan, what did you think of Torn Curtain? What are your thoughts?

Speaker 4 8:24

Oh, I love it. I love it. It's actually my favorite of the lot we're going to be talking about today.

Torn Curtain: Cold War Espionage

Speaker 5 8:29

What series of startling events could come to a climax in a scene like this? I'm not a scientist, I'm a teacher. You're a scientist and you're supposed to respect a natural order in all things. Breakfast comes before lunch, ow and marriage should come before a honeymoon cruise. Paul Newman and Julie Andrews find love in danger and danger in love when they venture behind Alfred Hitchcock's torn curtain. Now you stay away from me, don't talk to me. When this plane lands, you take the next one out, any. Stay away from me, don't talk to me. When this plane lands, you take the next one out anywhere. Go home. But she had to know what was happening to the man she loved. All right, what would you like me to do? I'll be back in time for the wedding in two months, yeah, or three. Yeah, michael, you certainly know how to make a girl feel wanted it does not get the credit that it deserves, in my opinion.

Speaker 4 9:47

I think this is a one, especially in if you want to lump it in with kind of the, if you want to use general broad terms, if you want to call it the silver age of Hitchcock, that kind of 50s bronze age player.

Speaker 3 9:58

Do you think? Oh, go ahead.

Speaker 4 10:00

Sorry if you're using, if you're using comic book kind of uh, synonymous language. The 50s and 60s would be kind of that Silver Age and I would say, like Frenzy and Family Plot would be like Bronze Age. But you know, it reaches its own cycle of when Hitchcock was just firing on all cylinders, kind of like God tier filmmaking, where every movie was just one masterpiece after another and we had kind of that struggle with the birds and Marnie and now we're at this one. I think this is a nice end to that part of his career. So why do I like it so much? Well, it's a wonderful political Cold War thriller with a lot of great callbacks to other themes, thematic elements that were very prominent in previous films that he's had. You can use parallels too, and this will be interesting when we also talk about Topaz, because there's a lot of parallels there.

Speaker 4 11:02

But North by Northwest, saboteur movies like that. But it turns the tables a little bit too, because usually when you think about Hitchcock spy thrillers, you can think of North by Northwest being a prime example. You're usually about either mistaken identity or someone is wrongly suspected of a crime, like a sabotage or something you know. Like we saw in saboteur, this one is a not an average ordinary citizen who is caught up in the, the hype and the, the drama of some international espionage. This is someone who is from a distinguished kind of more um upper echelon kind of tier of a profession, who seeks to go into the fire himself and kind of prove himself that he he's seen himself more as like, kind of like a failure he he has.

Speaker 4 11:57

Paul newman basically plays a american scientist who was working on, you know, anti-missile missiles for the US government. For whatever reason, their project has become a failure, and so he defects to the Soviet side, to the East Germans, and in order to, you know, pursue his scientific endeavors because he's so caught up in the science of it. All right, that's the excuse that he gives, and so he's going to work on that, but secretly he's going to find the missing ingredient, the missing formula for this special missile and come back. And so instead of the mistaken identity, we have someone who's deliberately going into the fire, which is a big change, and I think that adds something different that we haven't seen before.

Speaker 3 12:49

Oh, you're muted. You're muted, george. I think on one hand it's easy to look at something like Torn Curtain and compare it to things like North by Northwest or other sort of adventure films he had done in the 50s. But for me, while it shares the elegance, the sort of technicolor photography of those movies, it harkens back a lot more to films like the 39th Step or the Lady Vanishes Foreign Correspondent or the man who Knew Too Much the original, in that it is sort of topical. Those movies always felt very immediate and even if you watch them today they feel very contemporary and they have a lot of momentum and power.

Speaker 3 13:20

Because you know there were films that were capturing the zeitgeist that felt during World War I, and for a film series like James Bond to be able to capture that so well at the concurrent time in the 60s, it surprised me that I thought that this movie felt a little bit flat.

Speaker 3 13:38

I could of course repeat a lot of the praise and things that you said, and I will have more to come, but first I think the decision to shoot this movie primarily on sound stages takes away a lot of the sort of the grit and realism of things that we said, and I will have more to come, but first I think the decision to shoot this movie primarily on soundstages takes away a lot of the sort of the grit and realism of things that we would have seen in movies like the man who Came in from the Cold, as far as portrayals like Behind the Iron Curtain. But there's a moment with Julie Andrews in a hotel room that I thought really captured what it might feel to live like in the Soviet Union, sort of stark, depressed. But there are moments where I just felt like it just the artifice, was there a little bit?

Speaker 4 14:07

um, that's a mild. So you think the visual aspect of it makes it more artificial, but do you think the thematic elements or the actual dramatic tension in it it makes it more realistic than, obviously, than a james bond thriller of the day?

Speaker 3 14:20

you know, the one thing that I think drags it down, um, is that hitch didn't follow his own rule when he was writing it. Hitch, when he was talking to Truffaut in his book, he had a bomb under both of our tables. And we have a three minute conversation. It might otherwise be boring, but because you know that there's going to be there's a bomb, it makes everything interesting. And for me I feel it's sort of insulting to the audience that we're supposed to pretend like, actually believe that Paul Newman is really a traitor to America and he's not on some spy mission. We know this, so maybe just tell us. We know this, so maybe just tell us.

Speaker 3 15:06

I felt the film could have rung a little more suspense out of maybe suspense where, in her attempt to try to win him back to the side of the Americans that you know, the lady from the Sound of Music might have Julie Andrews at points jeopardized. What we, the audience, knows is a brave, daring mission, but when they're asking you to go along with this thing, where you're watching these scenes, where she's saying, oh, please, come back to the American side and he's he's doing this pantomime of pretending that he's a real Soviet guy, now it just sort of fell flat for me and I felt like it sort of left me cold in a little bit. It didn't have the same Plus, you have no way for there to be any kind of romantic spark because Paul Newman is playing this part.

Speaker 4 15:43

Go ahead. I disagree, I disagree. I think that that entire, that entire dramatic element that you're describing is meant to show how their relationship is and how it grows stronger as a result of this entire episode. Right, so he is treating her very, very poorly for the majority of the beginning of the movie because we are in her position, we don't understand why he's acting so strangely. And then, why is he traveling to East Berlin? What is he up to? And of course, we're led to believe that he's a traitor and all that.

Speaker 4 16:15

But what's interesting from their relationship standpoint is that she follows him, first out of curiosity and kind of she's upset, and then, second, she decides to stay. And so it shows their relationship. What is it built on? And how much? You know, I guess? Or what are the foundations? Are they strong or not? And in terms of their, she's willing to kind of put aside her loyalty to country, at first because of her love for him, but then, when she is put to the ultimate test as to reveal top secret scientific information, that's when she breaks down and she's like no, you're the one you sold out, you're the traitor, not me. And then that reveal makes their romantic relation, their, their romantic relationship so much stronger after that. So I I think that part of it, the entire thread that runs through that, is worth it uh, and what I would say is I would, I would praise everything technical about the film.

Speaker 3 17:21

Um, hitchcock has these sort of set pieces and and when I was reading the book 13 Lives of Alfred Hitchcock, which is very good, there's a great quote they have in the book where there's a. There's a art critic named Gavin Lambert who said that you could often describe the set pieces in Hitchcock movies the same way someone might title a surrealistic painting Hitchcock movies, the same way someone might title a surrealistic painting. So he had titles like in the birds, human caged by bird, young man. Like if you were to show a still or just the scene of the movie with no context, you might call it something like young man dressed as dead mother knifing a naked girl in a shower. You know things that like there's.

Speaker 3 18:01

So the concepts are so particular and so precise. And I think of this one you have a great one, where Paul Newman is pursued by the, the deadly Soviet enforcer, through a museum, one in pursuit of the other one endeavoring to escape. Yet it's just fantastic, it's just like it's mesmerizing, you know, I mean it's wonderful. It's one of Hitchcock's great set pieces. I'd put it up there with with the plane scene from North by Northwest or the shower scene from. Well, you know what I'm saying it's. I would put it in the same pantheon as little short vignettes to watch.

Speaker 4 18:45

And I as little short vignettes to watch and I know you agree, agree, there's there's there's a lot of really good set pieces like that. So that is the top one for the movie. I I agree with you there. I do think the the theater is a close second the theater scene. The theater scene at the climax of the movie is quite good too.

Speaker 4 18:56

Set in the phantom of the opera theater yeah where, where they're, they're rushing to escape, and then, of course, the the fight scene and the murder of Gromak the East German, the East German agent that is pursuing them. So, also before we get into that though, gromak is, I think, one of the unsung and underrated Hitchcock villains of all time. This is a character that never gets discussed or mentioned or brought up, and this is a great character just in all regards. Okay.

Speaker 3 19:26

Agreed yes.

Speaker 4 19:27

And what's really also interesting about Torn Curtain is that, yes, the Soviets and the East Germans, they're clearly the villains and the enemy in the movie, but they're all shown to be rather non-malevolent, would you say, like they all seem very reasonable. They're doing things for their own self-interest, they're not doing anything because it is simply a mustache-twirling evil villain. And I think Topaz does the opposite, where the people are clearly just evil for the sake of being evil. And so Gromak is not a evil or bad character by any means, he is just simply doing his job. He is a fixture of that society. That is his occupation, that is his job. And he's merely just following Paul Newman around just to see what he's up to. He's his security detail.

Speaker 4 20:18

And if the tables were turned and we had, let's say, we had a movie about an East German or a Russian defector, like in Topaz for instance, and they came to America and they were going around with subterfuge, looking around and clearly up to something that is not in our interest, well, the Gromek, the American Gromek, would not be the villain, he would be the hero. And so that's kind of the great part about Gromek there. Also the constant gum chewing, lip smacking, the double talk about. His references to New York are also what make him so charming characterization of him is definitely interesting.

Speaker 3 21:08

I suppose I'm just a passive viewer because to me I see on the screen someone who's rather menacing, someone who appears to be rather sadistic. And you're right, I thought that he was a very captivating presence on screen and he was played by Wolfgang Keeling, who I'm not sure if I've seen in anything else, but I thought he was quite good. And yeah, I think he does get undersold as a hitchcock villain. Actually, he might be one of the more menacing villains we've ever seen in a hitchcock film ever besides norman bates, perhaps, right absolutely, absolutely.

Speaker 4 21:34

But like talk about you. You mentioned menacing and I do agree he is, and I don't mean to like sympathize with the villain here, but he has such a charm and charisma to him by all of his little tics and mannerisms, you know, and his, his time in the united states, this time in new york, leads him to to kind of present all these very obnoxious callbacks and and questions to paul newman and it's so clearly irritating to him. Well, that's why he's and it's so clearly irritating to him.

Speaker 3 22:05

Well, that's why he's bad because it's so delicious though?

Speaker 4 22:08

Is he taunting him or is he just, you know, trying to make conversation?

Speaker 3 22:14

He's he's bad because he's sort of a brute. He wears flat footed shoes, he's a. He's a peeping Tom follower guy, much like baby Hitchcock. Perhaps was himself on some kind of spiritual level, but you know, he's a guy without class and in a in a movie populated by um beautiful stars, he's the villain. And I think we should you know, we I said that the um, the museum scene was the was the standout in the movie, but I would say definitely a close second and one which is interesting because it melds. It's a movie in which you have this almost incongruous, which makes it more shocking, intrusion of psycho and frenzy level, late Hitchcock violence into this elegant classic Hitchcock Silver Age, hitchcock kind of story right In which Gromek is manhandled by Paul Newman and a sort of country wife of another informer and he's stabbed in the neck and then shoved into a gas oven and suffocated to death while we watch his fingers twitch until he dies. It's a really deftly handled sequence. It's really well done.

Speaker 4 23:27

It's sort of shocking, and it's especially in its duration. Yes, it goes on and on and on, but it's not it. It doesn't wear out its welcome because it's entirely satisfying. And the entire idea behind this was that I think hitchcock was, after seeing some of the 007 movies where killing a man is very easy, very easily disp disposed of. There's no rhyme or reason to anything, it just happens so to show how difficult it is to actually kill someone, especially an average person. Doing this was part of the idea there.

Speaker 3 24:02

Absolutely so. I was going to say do you find paul newman? I thought that he, just by the nature of the role, didn't have a whole lot of opportunity to be charming no uh, he did, and and I would look at another uh film.

Speaker 3 24:13

I know hitchcock switched writers on this twice, um, but I would have. I would have preferred someone like ernest lehman could have taken a crack at it, who who obviously wrote north by Northwest and who also wrote Family Plot. But, more importantly, he wrote a great movie called the Prize with Paul Newman, in which he's used incredibly well and it feels almost like I would put it in the same category as something like Charade, which is a Hitchcock movie that Hitchcock never made, and it was written by Ernest Lehman and I believe it was directed by Mark Robson. I don't know for what reason. I thought it was Fritz Langdon and it's not. But yeah, edward G Robinson is in it and Paul Newman.

Speaker 3 24:53

It's a terrific little action caper movie, and that was just three years prior. And then I think we get kind of a Paul Newman in this who's just kind of boring, and I would have been okay with that had our ingenue been the more interesting character and we could have this mysterious male lead. But she's not, she's not. She gets kind of boring because you know, paul newman's a spy and every time she does something goofy to try to like be with them, and she's endangering the entire mission. You're just going. Oh geez, you're screwing it up so I disagree.

Speaker 4 25:20

I don't think. I don't think they're flat performances at all. I I think that even though he's not turning the charm up to 11, it's a very quiet, it's a very nuanced performance. You can see the anguish in the facial expressions and the demeanor and that, I think, speaks more to the quality of the performance than just saying the way he's written, for instance. He's written, for instance, and Julie Andrews, I mean, does not jeopardize the mission all too much compared to, let's say, the girl and family plot, like just meddling beyond comprehension, things like that. So I do think that she's an act. She actually what becomes, I guess, where she starts out as a hindrance, a kind of complication to the entire plot that Paul Newman is concocting to to do this espionage, she actually does become an asset by the end of the movie and I think without her he would not have succeeded in escaping, OK or not?

Speaker 3 26:21

That's a fair point.

Speaker 4 26:23

I could, I could, especially when they get when they get a blackmail by the, the german countess or whatever she is. I love that. I love that character, my american sponsor I don't know.

Speaker 3 26:37

I found that all to be kind of tough.

Speaker 4 26:39

Oh no, come on, man, that is so good. That is so good that that's in a movie that's otherwise kind of devoid of the kind of Hitchcock wink and nod to the camera. Uh, that is much more abundant, I'd say, in frenzy and family plot this movie, that that was. That was kind of the comedic aspect.

Speaker 3 26:59

I completely disagree with you on that. I've never, I don't think, I can't think of another example in which Hitchcock has inserted a sort of jar jar binks character as comedy relief. What feels like comedy relief for me is in frenzy, when we have the montage of the police captain having to eat the disgusting food made by his wife, which that's much more seems like hitchcockian humor to me. Right, um, I don't know what this was.

Speaker 4 27:19

This was, this was uh well, you know, what's also weird about torn curtain is that for many I mean I can't, I'm hesitating to think of many other hitchcock movies that are not based on novels. I mean, he loved to adapt novels and or stage plays or other things like that torn curtains an entirely original screenplay for the, for the movie. So I think, do you think that that may be having not having a strong source material to begin with was maybe a little bit of a hindrance to this?

Speaker 3 27:47

I think that's possible. But I also look at something like Telepaths, which is obviously based on a book by Leon Uris, who also had fame with his movie Exodus about Israel, which had Paul Newman in it, and that movie I think, is sort of a kindred by the book.

Speaker 3 28:07

Yeah, because I could. You could feel with that book and I don't know this for a fact, but that it must've had a lot of very appealing, interesting insights into spy craft back in the 1960s, before all of those sorts of things became common knowledge, and it sort of becomes less of a revelation to the audience, right?

Speaker 4 28:29

Um, would you agree with that? Yeah, that, yeah. Well, let's not get it, let's not get ahead of ourselves, though, but, um, okay, I think another scene that that should be mentioned is the scene in the professor's classroom I guess you want to say I call it the the room would be all the chalkboards when he is finally getting the secret code information. That's a very effective scene and that's a very great moment, the aha moment where the german scientist finally realizes you told me nothing, I told you everything, and it's like right that that's a great.

Speaker 4 28:59

That's a great moment and and you can hear them over the loudspeaker they're like well, they're looking for you. What's going on? And he turns on a dime. There you see, this guy, who's not really the German scientist, is not really interested a lot in the politics. That has previously been brought up in various conversations. And now all of a sudden he becomes very militaristic and it's quite effective and shocking.

Speaker 3 29:23

Well, I thought it was an interesting scene because all signs point to Paul Newman being suspicious. But this guy is a man of science. But he's also manically devoted to his work and also sort of hubristic in the way that he wants to waste time and take this opportunity to one-up Paul Newman and prove how much smarter he is than him and how useless and feeble his knowledge is compared to his, even though people are screaming over the microphone hey, this guy, we want him, we're looking for him. But he has to use the opportunity to demonstrate his mathematical ability and in doing so gives up the ghost. Paul Newman escapes with the MacGuffin which in this film, the MacGuffin is in Paul Newman's mind. It's a mathematical equation which I know at the time. I've heard contemporary reports at the time that people thought that was dumb. I think that's a really cool idea.

Speaker 4 30:13

You know and we're going to get into that with Topaz about what contemporary audiences think is dumb, and I just completely disagree. I mean, we'll talk about the, the deleted ending for that when we get there which was oh, I didn't know about this, oh, you don't know that.

Speaker 3 30:28

Okay, well, we'll say oh, I think I did. It was yeah, yeah, okay, never mind the duel.

Speaker 4 30:30

Yeah, yes, yes, yes but you can't, you can't rely on, uh, completely all that stuff. Um, I don't know anything else about this. I I think it's a very, I think it's a very good movie, a very solid movie, enjoyable. I've watched this many times and it never gets old. I completely enjoy it.

Speaker 3 30:49

Yeah, I thought it was very enjoyable. I really liked it. I'm sort of sad that it doesn't get mentioned in the same breath as some of Hitchcock's other films and that it is sort of in the cutoff zone. I think a lot of people they watch the Birds and after that it's a cutoff zone. You know, not us, we're the real deal. I liked it a lot.

Speaker 4 31:08

Yeah, I mean the contemporary Cold War aspects to it especially, I think, make it very interesting as a historical piece and all that. My favorite moment in the film, though, is still always remains when Julie Andrews goes to the ticket booth where she's like and what time is professor armstrong's flight to stockholm? And they're like oh no, he's going to east berlin.

Speaker 4 31:32

and she's like east berlin, that's behind the iron curtain, it's like oh my god yeah, I like it's like it's like as if audiences in 1964, like or 66, wouldn't know that you know, but nowadays you know, maybe people don't know you know, I don't know it, just it just feels to me.

Speaker 3 31:51

I I like I said before about hitchcock's world war ii work, I just didn't feel like that sense of immediacy, like we're in a lot of danger with the soviet union. It felt different. It felt different from the sort of um the nazi threat of his early movies that's the entire nature, though, of cold versus hot war.

Speaker 4 32:07

Right, you know, this is a cold war movie. Those were made during the height of of actual ongoing, you know, world war ii I guess. But like the cold war was cool because I mean there was a mini cold war going on from 33 until you know 38, basically right I think this is legit, though, in terms of espionage and spy um motifs and and uh storyline here, I I don't think there's, I think you're, I think you're overthinking it, or or no, don't get me wrong, I did enjoy it.

Speaker 3 32:36

I was just trying to play devil's advocate to you so we could have a spirited conversation, because that's kind of what we do here.

Speaker 4 32:41

That's the name of the game did you also dislike the czechoslovakian ballerina lady who kind of steals the show, since you didn't like the German countess who wants her American sponsor? Did you also?

Speaker 3 32:53

not like her. No, I thought she was just fine. I thought she was just fine, she's the one that trips Paul Newman down the stairs right.

Speaker 4 32:58

Yeah, and then she tries to get them killed at the end of the movie by pointing at their escape in the cargo.

Speaker 3 33:06

Oh yeah, that's right that. Oh, what an incredible ending. So if you, don't watch.

Speaker 4 33:10

If you watch the movie once like you really don't notice how much she's actually in it. She pops up at various times and she's always up to something bad, like yeah, she gets. I think like she gets, just because she was so upset that he stole the spotlight from her when they came off the airplane and then ruined their ballet by shouting fire oh, oh, that's right. Then she tries to have them killed.

Speaker 3 33:32

Which, by the way, was a great fake out. He had me going. I was like, literally that can happen to me so many times. As jaded as I am, I can watch something, and when there's a fake out where you think that Paul Newman and Judy Garland or whatever might have been, shot Judy Garland, julie. Andrews, julie Andrews might have been shot. I was like oh, and then I saw they were alive and I was like oh great, nice ending. Really enjoyed it yeah.

Speaker 4 33:58

And it's a good love story, though it's a good romance. It's a. It's a. It's a, you know, a story where adversity helps build and strengthen their romantic relationship, which is nice, you know. It shows the devotion between man and woman there, you know, their relationship was, was stronger because of this when he tried to push her away at the beginning.

The Controversial Ending of Topaz

Speaker 3 34:17

Yeah, no, I agree. So obviously Hitchcock, the through line I sort of detected in both of the books I listened to towards the end of his life is that people were kind of anticipating that it was sort of the end of his career. From Torn Curtain on, every time he made a movie he got basically the red carpet rolled out for him. Some university always gave him an honorary degree. The critics sort of went easy on him because they thought every movie was going to be his last, basically, um, and would it change your opinion of this movie at all? Or how do you look at it? Uh, if you knew that all the actors said that hitchcock was basically like non-responsive on the set of this movie. He was just kind of like doing it sleepwalking.

Speaker 3 35:13

Yeah, I know that on later films, I think on frenzy, the cast claimed that sometimes like he was sleeping like while they were making the move, and um hitch seemed to go into sort of a bout of depression around this time, throughout this entire time, which is kind of sad to hear.

Speaker 4 35:27

Um well, I mean it's completely understandable, given that I mean it sounds like for marnie. He really, you know, poured his heart and soul into that and he was just devastated that people did not respond to it at all and his, his, a build-up of tippy hedron with the birds, and marnie was just met with meh by everyone.

Speaker 3 35:48

It's just like Vertigo, where he's sort of baring his soul psychologically and it's rejected by the audience. Yes, you know, I didn't want to do a shout-out, oh go ahead.

Speaker 4 35:59

I just don't think he ever got over Grace Kelly leaving. That hurt him very badly Devastated for the rest of his life. And wasn't she supposed to come back for for torn curtain. No for marnie, for marnie, marnie, she was, that's right yes, she was all set to come back for marnie, but there was political turmoil in monaco. I mean, I didn't think there ever was such a such a thing in.

Speaker 3 36:22

Yeah, what would the political? I need to look into that. What would be the political? So?

Speaker 4 36:25

actually it's in the truffaut book I was when I was reading it. This weekend so there was some pressure from de gaulle on monaco for having kind of lenient taxation or business um haven for for french businessmen and money, you know, money transference, and so they needed to show that monaco was a serious country and a serious principality. So having the crown princess star in a American movie would be considered too frivolous.

Speaker 3 36:53

Okay, I can get. You can understand that. Um, actually, you know, I uh, I went to Monaco once on a school trip. I went to Monaco and guess what, uh, the princess Grace's son, the current guy, drove by in his little motorcade thing. All of us and stuff. It was interesting. I want to like to thank one, oh one, uh, 1,001, or whatever. One, zero, zero one. Johnny, thanks for the $5, man he says cheers fellows, I always try and catch you guys live and I'm always sorry when I miss it. Well, thank you, we're glad you could be here. Appreciate the super chat very much. Courtney young has a great point. Who could get over Grace Kelly, leaving them nobody? I don't think you could. That's a tough one.

Speaker 4 37:36

That's a tough one for real, not to get too sidetracked or whatever.

Speaker 3 37:39

But maybe Jimmy Stewart in rear window because he did not appreciate Grace Kelly at all, and that's a big sticking point in the movie for me. She shows up with these elegant, beautiful dresses and he's like, oh, that's interesting okay the the um.

Speaker 4 37:50

The truffaut book also talks about vertigo being an entire movie devoted to hitchcock's obsession with grace kelly and the loss of her. Have you ever thought about this or read about this? Oh, I can, I could completely see it yeah, that, that, that completely you know, blew my mind reading that it's like it makes makes complete sense 100.

Speaker 3 38:12

Oh hey, thank you, hollywood picnics awesome channel. I enjoy your channel so much thanks for all the work you put in. Absolutely, we have fun doing it. Uh, all right, you ready for topaz?

Speaker 5 38:23

does the word topaz mean anything to you? What is?

Speaker 2 38:25

topaz Story of espionage in high places. Yeah, it's good it's really good.

Speaker 4 38:34

It could be fixed in a few ways, I think.

Speaker 3 38:36

And I think that it was yeah, it seemed rushed perhaps, and that there was a lot of hemming and hawing about how it ended at the studio. I appreciate what Hitchcock was trying to do.

Speaker 5 38:45

From between the covers of this book, Hitchcock has taken intrigue, suspense. From between the covers of this book, Hitchcock has taken intrigue, suspense, excitement. Warm-blooded men and women take risks, make love, face death for stakes that involve the world. And I'm supposed to keep my mouth shut and uncover topaz at the risk of my own skin.

Speaker 3 39:03

He, unlike us, was apparently so put off by his experience with the new stars right, that he thought I'm going to go back to basics and I'm going to hire all of these Holly uh, you know theater people to be in my movie and foreign, uh stars, and for me that's fine. They all equip themselves well. I think it's an interesting movie, um, not a memorable movie, in my opinion.

Speaker 4 39:25

I disagree.

Speaker 3 39:26

But, but, but, uh, Hitchcock, uh breaks is one of his other great rules, or you know things where he talked about the importance of stars in a movie and he had a great analogy where he goes. Would you rather pick up some random guy as a hitchhiker on the side of the road, or Cary Grant, and you can exactly see what he's talking about. You're going to have to give a plot run down of Topaz. If I have to be completely honest, I sort of like welched in my critical duty here and I watched topaz as kind of like a passive observer and, like you know, my wife was talking to me a lot during it and I was like, uh well, so you want to know about topaz, do you?

Speaker 3 40:04

that's the yes, I will tell you I will tell you about Topaz. Please enlighten our audience about Topaz, the secret spy ringer.

Speaker 4 40:14

So instead of in Torn Curtain, where an American fake defects to the Soviet side. In Topaz, a Soviet KGB agent defects to the Americans, agent defects to the Americans and as a result he is. He leads them down a rabbit hole about this secret spy organization that is called Topaz. Now, it does take the movie quite a bit to actually get to the Topaz part, which is, which is when you watch it on the first time. It makes it very confusing.

Speaker 4 40:48

But Topaz, as we find out, is a secret ring of French officials who are double agents for the Soviet Union and they are passing along all the information that is given to them about NATO, about America, about anything European, to the Russians. So they know about it. And the whole impetus for the movie and for knowing about topaz is that we're in the midst of the cuban missile crisis and a? Uh, the french agent who is at the heart of all this goes to cuba to document and get information about the soviet plans that are being made there and he's afraid their amer Americans are afraid to tell the French about it because they're afraid that that information will then go back to the Soviet. So I know that was a rather convoluted explanation, but that's basically what it's all about.

Speaker 3 41:39

Yeah, and I um everything at the beginning with the sort of retrieval of the defector from uh Russia, or where were they? They were in East Germany or somewhere.

Speaker 4 41:49

They're in Denmark.

Speaker 3 41:51

Just fantastic, going through the sort of pottery store, the way that we get to see in action maybe, what are real spy tactics of the CIA, where, for instance, it's fun that they all have to play this little sort of game where we can't really shoot you. We don't want to get into a shooting war, so instead we send three big burly american guys to just like bunch up against all the soviets, pretend to bump into them on the side of the street, which is a great little like um, great touch, and I and I really enjoyed that um, who's our key american figure?

Speaker 3 42:24

john forsyth from dynasty, the tv show dynasty I was gonna say he felt like a TV guy. I don't know, he just yeah.

Speaker 4 42:34

Also the voice of Charlie on Charlie's Angels.

Speaker 3 42:35

Also, the voice of Charlie on Charlie's Angels, that's interesting. Okay, hey, we do have a good question from Hollywood Picnics here. I don't want to derail our summary too much, but I haven't gotten a chance to watch his later films meaning Hitchcock.

Speaker 4 42:51

Do they get less voyeuristic?

Speaker 3 42:51

over the years. No, certainly not frenzy.

Speaker 4 42:52

No, I would say this one is one that I think that, just besides the expertly mounted sort of set pieces, um, it's one that I don't think there's a whole lot of Hitch personality in right yeah, I would say the most personal Hitchcock touch was probably the murder of the Juanita character in Cuba, where she is shot by Rico Parra who is, like I guess, a former lover perhaps, who is betrayed by by her. And as she shot dead, her skirt, her purple skirt, emanates onto the floor as a symbolic pool of blood which is quite which is cool.

Speaker 3 43:31

It's cool.

Speaker 4 43:32

Yeah, it's quite cool I think, though, if there is several problems to this movie, is that it is entirely too episodic in nature yeah that it feels like almost three distinct movies. Each act is its own movie and the through line of it, through the through line for it all, is our frederick stafford character devereaux. Who's fine? I I don't think he's particularly charming, but he is effective. He's not stiff. I wouldn't call him stiff, but he's no. Sean connery he's not, even though physically he's. He's a he's an imposing kind of guy.

Speaker 3 44:12

He's got nothing going on psychologically either. You know what I mean. He's just kind of like going and like setting these things in motion. I mean, am I wrong?

Speaker 4 44:18

It's the French, you know.

Speaker 3 44:21

Well, they're the most like you know, I was always told the French were like hypersexual and interesting guys.

Speaker 2 44:26

I mean maybe I bet 101.

Speaker 3 44:28

Johnny could tell us, because he sounds like he's British. He said cheers, so he could give us some insight.

Speaker 4 44:33

He's good. He's good in the movie. He's not great, but I think the whole international cast here is an interesting touch. I think for my money the cast here is much more interesting to analyze than the all-British unknown cast in Frenzy. You probably disagree, but I think this cast is more dynamic and more interesting all around than those guys. But anyway, he's the through line for it all. But when I say it's episodic in nature it's like for my money the first act is the most interesting, the most captivating for the entire movie and it should be the Cuba scenes being the most captivating. But they're not. In my opinion. They're fine but like you described, the opening scene in the movie is by far the best. It's all. I mean, even the opening credits are just downright, just delightful. I love seeing that Soviet parade with the marching music. That's all great stuff. As the credits roll and then as we lead into you don't like that, oh man.

Speaker 3 45:35

I thought it was very boring.

Speaker 4 45:37

I thought it was super pumping up to the action. And then we go into the scene where Great shot, where you start at the Soviet flag and it moves down to the oh, that was a curve yeah. The bad agent looking at us, and then the defector family leaves the embassy and we follow them. That entire sequence is just gold. That's Hitchcock gold, right there, I mean. There's nothing you can't deny that.

Speaker 3 46:04

I thought that was incredible. You're correct, that was incredible. I just want to throw a quick um uh nod toward torn curtains way I did, like torn curtains opening credit sequence a lot I thought it was kind of expressive and cool gave you that didn't do anything.

Speaker 3 46:18

Didn't do anything for me I understand the symbolism of it, of it, but I, I don't know kind of boring it kind of felt like a dvd menu a little bit, which I found was interesting because it shows like clips of the movie, like in sort of like a very vague way, which I think got me excited because I was like, oh, I'm going to get all this in this movie and I do like the new score in Torn Curtain, though we forgot to mention the fact that we didn't talk it was fired from that, from that movie, which is a shame.

Speaker 3 46:43

I did listen to Bernard Herrmann's original score and it's great. Yeah, it's great. And Hitch basically caved to the studio, though he wasn't very good at confrontation. He failed to mention that to Barry and just sort of or to Bernard Herrmann and just kind of sloughed them off.

Speaker 4 47:00

Well, that was like I was saying that he felt unsure of himself after Martyie and so he listened to the studios, uh, butting in, and they said you gotta drop Bernard Herrmann the Truffaut book actually makes a point to say that because the studio didn't want him, because they were looking to have soundtracks that were commercially viable to be played in discotheques and stuff like that I don't know, I don't I don't.

Speaker 4 47:27

I can't think of many film scores in the 60s that were radio hits. That's like we think of the 70s and you think of like john williams scores and I can understand them putting john williams on family plot for that.

Speaker 3 47:40

But I heard I heard the same thing and that like they were looking for a pop score. Now I mean, would you agree that, like goldfinger is a sort of pop score? I have that vinyl. It's terrific.

Speaker 4 47:49

Yeah, but that's that's a but, but the vinyl, for I mean, unless you have a different one, I have the. I have a goldfinger album too, and it's just goldfinger song, like many different times. Versions of it, right, is it?

Speaker 3 48:03

but yeah, but it's, it's the hit song. That's just the theme song oh no, I have the theme song and then it's obviously it's the rest of the uh, the score, which I think is john barry correct, and then um, and then I think that the score for, like the score for um on her majesty's secret service is like a total jam but those are not like radio hits, though, like but think about if you're an one thing, but not the score think about if you're're Austin Powers and you're in the sort of like, you know, swing and 60s, like club, with multiple like levels, and you're dancing or whatever, and you're playing the score for Honor, majesty, secret Service.

Speaker 3 48:37

That's it, that's a hit. Anyway, besides the point we should get back to Topaz, I feel derelict if we didn't mention that.

Speaker 4 48:44

Well, just just because you brought that up.

Speaker 3 48:46

Yeah.

Speaker 4 48:52

There was also the contention about whether or not there should be music or not in the murder of gromak, and bernard herman wrote, wrote a musical piece to accompany it and that was dropped in favor of a silent, silent version. So it's. It's actually, if you watch the dvd special feature, they do play it with the music and I think it's equally effective both ways. It's just kind of eerie and haunting to watch it without any music, and that was that was the debate between him and herman about psycho in the shower scene, whether or not there should be music.

Speaker 4 49:19

Oh, yeah, there should hitch wanted it to be silent originally and and bernard herman created that iconic piece of music to go with it. So the debate ranged, you know, again with the torn curtain.

Speaker 3 49:31

You know, honestly, if it were silent, it would probably be a lot more disturbing.

Speaker 4 49:36

It might be yeah, but no, but the psycho music though the shower scene music is so disturbing in and of itself.

Speaker 3 49:43

Right.

Speaker 4 49:44

It's like the kind of music that if you you were sleeping and someone played it, like blasted it and you're, you would be like disturbed and and horrified. That's a good point but back to to topaz. Yeah, um, yeah.

Speaker 3 49:58

So the beginning of the movie is great and the middle is good, and I think the ending is the weakest well, we get sequences which I think are interesting, where, in the middle, where we are, we recruit our friend who's a who's a secret spy and he works as a florist. Oh yes, scenes where he goes to a hotel and he's talking to people and you can't really. You know, there's sort of this. You know is he, you can't hear what he's saying, which I noticed a lot in some of these hitchcock films. I'm trying to think if it happens in other ones too. But we're frenzy, frenzy it happens again frenzy.

Speaker 3 50:27

It happens in the courtroom, where you you don't hear anything, but you're seeing things play out and you know exactly what's going on, which is kind of an interesting trick I think it's more effective in in topaz because it's it's yeah, I agree designed to eliminate the needless exposition yes, and I mean, look, it happens in North by Northwest too, where we're walking down the runway of the and the plane turns on and we can't hear the, the um, you know, convoluted explanation for, for Cary Grant's predicament, um, so yeah, hitchcock was fond of that and I actually think that's a pretty good exercise, as, like a filmmaker, to see if that's something you could pull off, um, which is to convey what's happening just by visuals alone, um, off, which is to convey what's happening just by visuals alone. So that's interesting and it's kind of like an extended version of that. But yeah, I agree Towards the end, you know it's.

Speaker 4 51:13

Part of the problem also is that, in terms of being effective villains, the John Vernon character that he plays, rico Parra, is a much more interesting, charismatic villain. That's our Cuban general guy. He's a much more interesting villain for the movie and he is disposed of or not even really I mean there's no final confrontation with him whatsoever and his storyline is done after that act and instead we move on to the real villains, which are the Topaz ring of French spies, and they are very uninteresting and bland and we meet them only at the end of the movie. So there is no buildup or no, you know there's no. When you have that payoff, it's not really satisfying because you really just met these characters for the first time and you're like, okay, they're bad bureaucrats, basically.

Speaker 3 52:12

Okay, they're like. Okay, they're bad, they're bad bureaucrats, basically okay, they're like a deep state kind of uh, french version. Right, they're not bombastic, and I love john vernon obviously. I thought he was good here fantastic.

Speaker 4 52:18

He's a great villain. Any actor that also has a career in voice acting is just for my money is gold. So john vernon played rupert thorne on batman, the animated series, in the 90s. If you've ever, if you ever know we did.

Speaker 3 52:29

I didn't know that, I did not know that, um also several other actors in this movie are.

Speaker 4 52:35

You would not recognize them by face or even by name, necessarily, but in animation they were prominent. So the guy that you just mentioned, the, the French Martinique spy that runs the Flora shop, roscoe Lee Brown, played the Kingpin on Spider-Man, the animated series in the 90s. Yes, yes.

Speaker 5 52:54

Very distinct.

Speaker 4 52:55

You would never guess that, but I saw the name and I recognized it and he, you know, obviously increased his bravado to play the Kingpin and then. So I mentioned John Vernon and Also blink, and you'll miss him. But there's a guy named John Stevenson who plays one of the CIA agents at the interrogation scene. He's a very prominent Hanna-Barbera voice actor from the 60s through the 80s, most famously played Doggy Daddy, also OG voice of Dr Benton Quest.

Speaker 3 53:26

Most famously Doggy Daddy. Doggy Daddy, also OG voice of Dr Benton Quest. So most famously Doggy Daddy, that doggy daddy, the beloved Doggy Daddy. So I had a long career.

Speaker 4 53:33

You know he went up into the 80s. He was in Laugh Olympics and other cartoons. Yeah, doggy.

Speaker 3 53:39

Doggy.

Speaker 4 53:40

Doggy Daddy yeah.

Speaker 3 53:41

OK, because I know, I know Dr Quest, I mean that's well, this was the original Dr Quest.

Speaker 4 53:49

that was for like maybe three or four episodes until he was replaced by Don Mestic oh okay, yeah, because they said that he sounded too similar to race Bannon.

Speaker 3 53:56

Oh, another great voice. Whoever does the voice of race Bannon Terrific.

Speaker 4 53:59

Mike road.

Speaker 3 54:01

Thank you. Are we ready to move on to Hitchcock's?

Speaker 4 54:05

No, no, no, no no. We didn't talk about, we didn't talk about the ending.

Speaker 3 54:09

The ending is that's right.

Speaker 4 54:10

Okay, so you can look at the ending in two different ways.

Speaker 4 54:12

You can say the ending is unsatisfying or yeah if you want to say that, it kind of shows the game goes on, the game is never ending, right? There's a continuous game of chess that's going on, where spies just rotate and circle around. I think, though, the deleted ending, which is a duel to the death between Devereaux and the French, whatever leader of Topaz is is a much more dramatic and effective resolution to the movie, where, then, he is actually the French guy. The Topaz agent is taken out by a russian sniper before the duel is engaged and from, apparently, from test audience reactions. At the time, they were laughing at it and saying it was so unrealistic, unbelievable and stupid, and so they deleted it. Really, yeah, and I'm like, I watched it, I watched it on, it was filmed, it was oh, I didn't, I didn't know that.

Speaker 4 55:07

Yeah, it's on. If you have the, you have a physical copy of the movie I don't know. No, ok, that's why you got to get the Alfred Hitchcock 4K set, you know.

Speaker 4 55:16

OK, and it's on there. There's actually three endings to Topaz. So that was the first ending that they scrapped, yeah, and then ending that they scrapped, yeah. And then they came up with the one that's actually in the movie that we saw, which is where the guy goes to moscow to flee. The third ending which they wanted to do was where he goes after he's told oh, the americans don't want you in the room while we discuss this, he goes back to his house and commits suicide and shoots himself. But they didn't have footage of him walking into his house an exterior shot and so they were going to use the the other guy, howdy genre, whatever the the guy with the um the cane yeah and they used him just like at the end, where he's locked, shutting the door, and then they freeze frame and they hear a gun, and so they're

Speaker 3 56:05

like, yeah, we can't do this no, that would be terrible and I think, do you think perhaps they they eschewed the duel because, you know, the movie is so reliant on this idea that it's a rip from the headlines kind of look behind the scenes and all the spycraft that went into a very real historical event, which was the, you know, the uh cuban missile crisis, and that it felt like it cheapened it in a way or that it was too?

Speaker 4 56:27

unrealistic. No people, audiences literally laughed at it. So if you watch, there's actually a great documentary on the DVD. It's, oh God, leonard Maltin Appreciation for Topaz. Okay, so it's a great, great featurette. And they show actually the the cards, the review cards that audiences filled out at the time like rating the movie. How would you rate the movie? Good, excellent? And people were writing like their own boxes and saying poor, bad, terrible, and they're like what scene did you hate the most? And they're like the duel, and and they're like what scene did?

Speaker 3 57:12

you hate the most and they're like the duel and everything was like the duel, the duel, the duel everyone hated. That. It's bizarre. I don't understand it at all. That must have killed hitch man, because this is a guy this is a guy who very rarely ever did reshoots on anything. And for there to be this big kerfuffle with the ending where we have to reshoot things or we have to have a new ending and redo it, I mean, that's just, I had to just kill them, man.

Speaker 4 57:30

That, oh, what a what a nightmare yeah, so I think that does make the movie a little bit unsatisfying. At the end it's kind of tongue-in-cheek the way it ends, which is fine, but I think it goes better also just in terms of suspense, I think the the scene in the hotel where all the Cubans are holed up and they're trying to get the briefcase with the plans. It's a very effective suspenseful scene, I mean would you? Not agree.

Speaker 3 57:58

Yeah, no, I thought you're. Yeah, it is cool.

Speaker 4 58:01

Um anything else? Oh, just in terms of like apples to apples, spy, spy, spy movie stuff.

Speaker 3 58:09

Yes.

Speaker 4 58:10

This, like I've mentioned and you kind of looked at me strange when I said like torn curtain shows the Germans and the Soviets is like not very evil or horrible. This movie is very like cartoonish, uh, americans and European, western Europeans, good, a communist bat and it. It's like that's fine too, but it's just a very strong, I think, divergence between the two of them. Um, these are much more like sinister bad guys in this one, as opposed to gromak who I think is just kind of like doing his job. He's not, yeah, but by an ideology. Here rico para is is clearly a bad guy and he's driven by this communist ideology that is bad In the movie. So that's there and also just the, the presentation of the defector. He is first percentage.

Speaker 3 59:00

He's a total asshole.

Speaker 4 59:03

I love him. He's great in the movie, but also did you notice how quickly he turns, though, and he becomes very materialistic and, uh, americanized it's just like roger shows that they have no spine or they they have no values. Basically, it's kind of the way of saying, oh, once the communists come over to america, they see the, the beauty of capitalism, and which is good.

Speaker 3 59:25

I, I, I'm not, I'm not, I'm not against that true, no true, or that america has a poisoning effect of like making you a new consumer. I don't know. But like you know, you can look at it either way, I suppose. But um, that was the other thing that bothered me. What's that?

Speaker 4 59:38

his tone is just great, though, throughout the movie, the way he enunciates. That's why I was doing the topaz thing well and they break him out.

Speaker 3 59:46

They break him out of this life or death situation, save him and his whole family, and he's like that was done horribly, you know that is not how we would have done it we've got good owner. Uh, he's a pretty loyal watcher and he says roscoe. Lee brown was also the voice of box in logan's run, a favorite character of ours. Right, your favorite, that's your favorite character in Logan's Run. A wonderful prop, a great robot that's very integral to the plot. Hello, it's me. Yes, welcome to my ice cave. Yes, all right, frenzy.

Speaker 4 1:00:25

Anything else on Topaz?

Speaker 3 1:00:26

Hey, I had to ask have you seen all these? Had you seen all these beforehand? All of these, yes.

Speaker 4 1:00:31

Yes.

Hitchcock Returns to London with Frenzy

Speaker 3 1:00:31

Okay, no, I'll be totally honest. The only one that I had seen before this was Family Plot.

Speaker 4 1:00:36

Really.

Speaker 3 1:00:37

Yes, yes. So the one I was not looking forward to, or at least looking forward to, was Frenzy. Why is that? For the same reason I felt when I watched it, which is just I was off put by all these ugly British people who are stabbing each other. That's why.

Speaker 4 1:00:56

I said I thought the international European cast of Topaz was much more appealing than the British cast of Frenzy. The British cast of. Frenzy is very off-putting.

Speaker 3 1:01:06

They're completely off-putting.

Speaker 2 1:01:08

Of course, one can never be sure where danger lurks. They tell me a dreadful crime was committed right in this building. My investigation next led me to this innocent alley, of which there are hundreds in London, but I don't think we should stay long. Something unpleasant is about to happen.

Speaker 3 1:01:33

And I guess that's realistic to Hitch's roots, because he really wanted to present what his sort of early life was like. He wanted to showcase his hometown, which is Carden Garden, I believe, is where we're at. It's sort of a neighborhood that is Covent Garden, which is known for its outdoor markets, which Hitch wanted to showcase as something that was very influential to him as a child and he wanted to set a film there and it was torn down shortly after the filming of this movie and I think we get a nice little crane shot of our lead character walking through these and obviously our main villain Now in this movie. I thought it was off-putting and weird but at the same time there were some incredibly memorable moments that I have to stand up and applaud and I, for the most part, very much enjoyed it. Your thoughts.

Speaker 4 1:02:28

I like this one. It's. It's probably my least favorite of the four, though, that we're talking about today. It doesn't mean that I didn't like it. I certainly liked it, and actually this is the one I think I saw the earliest out of any of them, like many years ago, and I was shocked the first time I saw it, because I had I was. This didn't feel like a Hitchcock film to me in terms of from everything else that I had seen at the time.

Speaker 3 1:02:51

Right.

Speaker 4 1:02:52

Because of how, I guess because it is so late in his career and because standards and practices had changed so much and the degree of what is acceptable for screen violence was, you know, changed. So there's that I do agree. The characters are extremely off-putting and it it makes it very difficult when you do not have a protagonist that you can really root for or support, and it's like, yes, we feel bad that the guy the our main character.

Speaker 4 1:03:19

I forgot his name and I I honestly couldn't tell you the name of the actor either, because we don't know who any of them are well, I do know john finch.

Speaker 3 1:03:25

He played mcbeth for roman polanski okay, yes, true, true.

Speaker 4 1:03:29

So the fact that he is kind of this unsavory character makes him very unsympathetic in that regard.

Speaker 3 1:03:37

Um, the villain is a little bit of a different story, because I think he well, in my opinion, it's not even that that he's unsavory, it's just that he's kind of an annoying whiner well, yeah, he's you know. I mean he's a kind of a bad guy, but he's just kind of an annoying whiner. Had he had a little pizzazz and kind of his scheming, maybe he would have liked him a little bit more.

Speaker 4 1:03:56

But what about your thoughts on the villain though? Do you think he is a villain? I think because he's so despicable that it's hard to even like. I was kind of praising Gromak in the earlier segment. I do not feel comfortable praising the Bob Ruck Is that his name, bob?

Speaker 3 1:04:13

Ruck character. I thought he was really good. I thought he was great in the movie. I thought he was sort of compelling.

Speaker 4 1:04:19

Yeah, but do you understand?

Speaker 3 1:04:20

what I'm saying though.

Speaker 4 1:04:21

Because he's so just gross and the natures of his crimes are just so unsavory that I'm like this is not like a character, you're like a villain you like want to like root for or whatever. You know like I can root for Gromak there, okay.

Speaker 3 1:04:35

Well, and then, boy, like I'm really sorry to say this, but like Anna Massey and like Barbara Lee Hunt, who are two female victims in this movie, they're just kind of very sort of average, looking like you know I I mean they were good actresses in the film, but they just look like they're like real people from off the street and it's kind of that's what this movie feels like, though it feels very real it feels very dirty and feels very yes it feels grimy.

Speaker 3 1:05:03

The murders are not in any way glamorous. I mean, you can think about this in a way. I know that people talk up psycho as being a film about how unglamorous both life and death are and how you'll get swallowed up by a mud pit and you'll be killed randomly in a shower. But janet lee is beautiful and the sequence in which you know, uh, norman kills her is very stylish and it's it's cut very quickly and it's cut very quickly and it's like this thing that you can watch over and over again and be enlightened by the brilliance of the cutting and how it was staged. And when we have our main villain choking to death, this like homely lady in her office with a tie, it's just like it's uncomfortable to watch.

Speaker 4 1:05:45

It's uncomfortable to watch, especially after we've we've had to sit through the defilement uh of her before that right, it's very uncomfortable, it's extremely uncomfortable and off-putting, and that's, I think, your comparison to psycho is very apt, because and that's the point I was trying to make also is that when we have norman bates in psycho, norman is a character that we, as the audience, we still like him, even though he's so evil and so bad.

Speaker 4 1:06:15

You know what I mean like yeah, yeah, yeah because, because he kind of has an out, because he's sort of not in control of what he's doing and so we sort of sympathize and that's the. That's what makes a great kind of horror movie, where we're we, as the audience, kind of take the point of view or perspective of the villain and we we subvert ourselves by doing that yeah, this is like no, I don't want anything to do with this guy. This guy is bad, this guy's creepy gross.

Speaker 3 1:06:46

No, I'll tell you this. I thought he was good in the movie. I especially liked the sequence.

Speaker 4 1:06:50

Oh, yes, yes, absolutely.

Speaker 3 1:06:53

I'll tell you.

Speaker 3 1:06:53

When Hitchcock puts him in a very difficult spot where he has this sort of lapel pin with his initial arm that he uses to, I guess, finish off the women at the very end he stabs them with his pin and then he puts it back in his lapel, which is his little totem, and he finds he's murdered another woman and thrown her in a bag of potatoes and thrown her into a vegetable truck, which I don't know how he thought he would get away with that.

Speaker 3 1:07:17

I mean, he could have just put her in the river, like he did the girl in the opening of the film. But this villain is forced to jump back in the potato truck and try his best to retrieve his pin from the bag, as the driver is driving away and he's going down the highway and her foot is coming out of the. You know he's having the hell of a time navigating her lifeless, numb body to try to get back his pin. And it is grotesque, it's shot incredibly well and it is sort of like I mean it's very humorous, right. It's also sort of darkly comic and in that way you do sort of identify with him in this kind of like scramble to. I mean, come on a little bit right.

Speaker 4 1:08:04

Okay. So yes, it is very darkly comedic in this movie, Just like Topaz. I didn't mention it, but Topaz is like all just cat and mouse the entire movie. This is a very dark comedy kind of movie, especially that scene where he's fighting off the rigor mortis. That's basically set in. So her hand is clenched in a fist because she's at the stage of rigor mortis, so he has to break open each individual finger in order to retrieve the lapelton. And that's why, any which way he moves the body, the foot and the leg is just kicking him in the face or slapping them here. And it's funny. It's funny. Now I don't. I wouldn't say that I felt at any point in time that I wanted him to succeed. And that's where I think the movie does have a little bit of a fault. Is like when you see Norman, for instance, sinking the car into the mud pit, you're like, OK, yeah, good job, Norman, Can I get away with it?

Speaker 3 1:09:00

And this one, you're like, oh, just help the police catch this guy help the police catch this guy right, right, right and he just is kind of this like slimy huckster guy. He's sort of a benefactor to the neighborhood so no one suspects him. But um, he's got this hair helmet, 70s kind of thing going on and uh, the hairdos are outrageous in this movie.

Speaker 4 1:09:19

It's like what happened between 1969, where everyone is very well polished in topaz, and then 1972, where everything's just a mess, you know.

Speaker 3 1:09:29

It's very true. It's like incredibly, like quick. Now I can't remember the name, but I think it was Michael Bates who played Sergeant Spearman, who is our police character, and we get a moment that critics have often compared to, perhaps in a semi-autobiographical scene, where the police chief is sort of narrating his progress with the case to his wife, who we're told has taken up a French culinary textbook and so she's preparing for him all these like disgusting meals and as he sort of tries to avoid eating them, he's explaining the plot, which people compared to perhaps Hitchcock and his long-suffering wife listening to his plots and offering opinions, and those scenes I thought were very interesting. That's the kind of Hitchcock humor I like, which is this sort of class.

Speaker 4 1:10:20

Not my.

Speaker 3 1:10:20

American sponsor. No, no, I like this kind of awkward manners comedy that he often employs. No, I think they like this kind of this, this awkward manners comedy that he often employs.

Speaker 4 1:10:28

Yeah, no, I think they're very effective in this movie and it's it's needed because the movie is so dark and so disturbing for the majority of it elsewhere that you need that to break up the monotony.

Speaker 3 1:10:40

And also it's just kind of an ugly looking movie. Everything's very over lit, like, I think, about the bar. It's like there's no nuance and really in any of the shots everything's just very and it was a cheaper movie, right, this was hitchcock doing what he wanted to do and uh, he wanted to make this, uh, masturbatory, weird, murder movie and, um, he did it and it's somewhat effective and I could see how this was also him trying to prove that, hey, I can be subversive too. Um, I don't, I didn't, I didn't lose it with after psycho, I could, I still got it. And I think that at the time there were a lot of younger filmmakers and people who were fans of hitchcock who were lauding his sort of return to um or ability to break free um. But still, there are things in the movie that I thought were you know, the, the murder sequence, the additional tie, strangling I didn't think was very effective. It's just it's not. It's not a very. I think it's sort of elongated and just kind of unpleasant.

Speaker 4 1:11:32

It's it's it's more just like shock and awe. I think more than than anything else, it's meant to just shock you, it's just it's just flat.

Speaker 3 1:11:50

Same time it's going on and I didn't feel like there was ever a ratcheting of intention. I didn't feel like the tie was actually could have killed this woman, and what I wanted to hear was where's this, where's the note on the soundtrack of the tie tightening like you know what I mean? Where's? Where's that sound like the tension of like this cloth as it wraps around this woman's neck? It's not there.

Speaker 4 1:11:59

It's just you're supposed to just believe, you know just like she'll just die eventually of like asphyxiation, which is, you know in real time, apparently what I kept thinking about before and after I mean, excuse me, during and after this movie is how much this could have been a Jalo movie and how much better it probably would have been if Hitch either was aware or wanted to make a Jalo. This would have been the way to like he, this would have been the way to like he, this would have been the material to do it, and if there had been more stylistic changes or something like that, this would have been a much more effective movie. And I think lacking the mystery element is a huge detriment to the film, in that we are revealed to who the killer is very early on in the movie and that kind of takes away a lot of the dramatic tension.

Speaker 3 1:12:54

I would say that perhaps, though, I disagree, and also, if it was a job, I would have a lot prettier women in it. But the moment when the killer offers aid and comfort to our fleeing John Finch, that I was very intrigued. I was like, oh, uh-oh, what's going to happen? This guy's obviously plotting and we know he's the killer. You know what's going to happen to our hero? That I thought was interesting, that I enjoyed.

Speaker 4 1:13:24

I think, or having more emphasis on the police inspector, who maybe has a little bit of reluctance with the way of how easy this case has been. He's not. He doesn't come onto that thread of suspecting that maybe he got the wrong guy until after he's already been convicted in a kangaroo court basically, and is already in jail. And it's kind of ridiculous, maybe something along the lines of, you know, like the bird with the crystal plumage, that kind of storyline there, where, where we go along with the, the protagonist and the inspector and we kind of try to figure out who the killer is, maybe what, maybe that's too conventional or too pedestrian and you wanted to subvert our, our expectations here, but I don't know. This was just kind of like we're just waiting for the next shoe to drop and that's less interesting to me.

Speaker 3 1:14:17

No, that's completely fair, or maybe?

Speaker 4 1:14:19

maybe we think that um the main guy actually was the killer and we're not sure the main guy actually was the killer and we're not sure, but then it turns out to be Rusk, you know, then you couldn't have seen the.

Speaker 3 1:14:28

The murderer kill.

Speaker 4 1:14:30

Well, we could have seen it through, um you know, not showing their identity, or maybe they, maybe they're masked, or maybe they're like the. Jallo man in black with the um, you know, the black gloves, you know.

Speaker 3 1:14:42

Yeah, very true, that would have been effective.

Speaker 4 1:14:45

So I don't mean to like rag on this movie. I think it's, I think it's good, but this is like not one that I'm going to like rewatch.

Speaker 3 1:14:52

No, I wouldn't, I would probably, I probably will not.

Speaker 4 1:14:56

It's been probably like 15 years or so since I've seen this, or longer, longer, probably like 20 years, I want to say, and I was fine, but I don't really have any desire to rewatch it anytime soon.

Speaker 3 1:15:11

I would say the one element that I thought was very effective from a script stage is we all know Hitchcock has this paralyzing fear of police officers and of getting falsely arrested. That was a big hang up for him in his life, as we saw in the very boring film the Wrong man, which is one of my least favorite Hitchcock movies. But I thought that the scenario by which our character is sort of framed by fate and all of the different things that he has, you know, that sort of demonstrate that he is possibly the murderer because he got the $50 he had in his pocket but didn't know it was there, all these extenuating circumstances that set him up to be the perfect culprit I thought were very well drawn in the screenplay.

Speaker 3 1:15:51

Yeah, it's just if this movie was made nowadays dna evidence would have cleared him, but it wasn't so that's why we have to make period piece murder movies. King, relax, it was good. It was good, yeah other than that though, yeah, this was, this was one that I was I was not so keen on not so keen on.

Speaker 4 1:16:08

I I agree it's fine, it's good, um, but I that's what I'm saying is, like people said this was a return to form for him. No, I, I, I don't really see it. It's it's certainly like a solid movie, but I'm very much glad that he made family plot after this to end his career.

Speaker 2 1:16:25

There's a medium in the family plot. She's a faker. There's a thief in the family plot, absolutely perfect. There's a kidnapper in the family plot. I bet that thing isn't even loaded. There's even a con man and a wild ride down a mountain.

Speaker 5 1:16:50

Come on, woman don't grab me, for God's sake.

Speaker 2 1:17:02

But who is buried in the family plot?

Speaker 5 1:17:05

For the answer to this and other startling questions, see Alfred Hitchcock's family plot.

Speaker 3 1:17:14

I think you're right. Family plot. In my opinion, now, what I have loved to have seen his the followup that Ernest Lehman was supposed to do, which was the short night where we might've had Sean Connery in a spy thriller movie. That would have been tremendous. But I really enjoy a family plot. I find it to be lighthearted, fun. There's some great moments, clever script, a great cast and really well done. I think family plot is a lot of fun. I would put it up there with some of my top 20 for sure.

Family Plot: Hitchcock's Fitting Finale

Speaker 4 1:17:43

Yeah, absolutely. It's a very, very underrated film. It does not get the love that it deserves. And william devane for the win here. This is a fantastic character, excellent performance, love every minute that he's on screen. He is so slimy, so slick, and this is a villain that you, you just love, you just love to hate this guy and it's just. Every moment is great.

Speaker 4 1:18:05

So that that's what I'm talking about when you have a really, really strong villain that makes the movie just oh so much better and it it makes up for the fact that the protagonists themselves, which are are fine, they're likable, they're likable enough, but they are not. I think so. For instance, I think I think Paul Newman and Julie Andrews are much stronger protagonists in a torn curtain than Bruce Dern and Barbara Harris here. I'm not saying they're bad, I'm just saying I think the fact that William Devane and Karen Black are so good makes this movie just turn up a notch.

Speaker 3 1:18:43

I really like this element that we don't see very often, which is like the good couple and the bad couple, and these are the diametric forces of the film. And I first of all, just for the record, I thought Barbara Harris was absolutely adorable and I thought Bruce Dern was terrific. I thought Bruce Dern, who I always love, had a lot of great little things about his character. He has these little funny comedic bits where he'll trip over a thing or he'll like almost hit his head on a log. He looks kind of wacky and I love his business with his pipe, how he's always clapping his pipe on something, which is actually a nice little note that I was thinking about as a filmmaker myself. Like to give a character a recognizable sound that they can like do over and over again, like sort of signifies who they are. Um, it's quirky and funny and uh, I like their little weird goofy kind of relationship where, um, it's very sexually inclined, uh it's, there's a lot of back and forth about who's going to have sex with who and how or when, or who's going to do what for who, and um, how she sort of ropes him into this goofy adventure, which is a great plot. And I think when everybody eventually sees my new film, mudball, I think you'll find that I did pull a lot from this movie.

Speaker 3 1:19:55

There were certain things in my rewatch of this that I thought, oh wow, I kind of ripped off family plot a little bit. But I think it's such a clever premise this idea that you're faking being a psychic and someone thinks you have psychic powers, so you have to keep up that ruse by actually solving the crime. And I love the business of William Devane and of Karen Black. I've always liked Karen Black and she has a great way about her as this evil woman, especially our first introduction as our heroes drive by her and she walks into the police station to complete this kidnapping ransom with the police. And John Williams' score is just tremendous in this. It's so fun and cute. It's got this sort of like Baroque, like Gothic feeling but also a lot of playfulness to it. I think this movie is just fantastic. Oh yeah, it's delightful playfulness to it. I think this movie is just fantastic.

Speaker 4 1:20:47

Oh yeah, it's delightful from start to finish, and that scene that you're describing at the beginning of the movie, where they have the payoff for the ransom, is excellent, okay. Where she's decked out in full disguise okay, and completely silent because she will not, you know, doesn't want to give away what her voice is, and showing everyone little notes that they have to read and take them back and they get this gigantic diamond as a ransom for this guy. It's phenomenal.

Speaker 4 1:21:16

I was almost kind of sad that they didn't do a second one when they kidnapped the Bishop at the end. And they just like, right, it happened off screen and I'm like, oh, I'm going want to do a second, like maybe a little different.

Speaker 3 1:21:27

But well, I have to say it's obviously a ludicrous idea, even though we know that william devane's character is a jeweler, but that you would request a giant diamond as like your payoff and not just like a bag of cash, right, but it's so cute and clever how they hide the diamond in the chandelier and, by the way, I just love that too where they have this operation, where they're kidnapping people of holding them for ransom and they have this little secret compartment in a wall in the basement and they walk upstairs. Oh, that's very fluid, very well staged, very well blocked, very well shot until they walk. They walk all the way from the basement into the kitchen and then up the stairs and turn off the lights and it's a. It's a great, really well orchestrated scene.

Speaker 3 1:22:09

I know people don't think of that so often, but they think more about the action, sequences and the moments like we get a moment where one of the bad henchmen guys tries to sabotage their car, which is perfectly fine, but I don't think it's any kind of standout moment. But moments like those I envy because they're more difficult to pull off than you would think To explain to the audience the geography of three different rooms and of an entire house and how people move through it. And then there's also lots of great insert shots in this movie. I think about when William Devane pulls the tape out of the drawer and it's in his hand, and then when there's a handoff of money, I believe, between Ed Lautner and Karen Black. I mean, there's all just great little insert shots, which is small but cool and I don't know.

Speaker 4 1:22:50

Well, you mentioned the scene where the henchman has disabled the brakes on Bruce Dern and Barbara Harris's car. That's a great scene and you can argue, I think, because they just completely go with it, the comedic aspect of it, where she is going hysterical and actually probably causing them to have more chance of crashing and dying by her just acting completely ridiculous and grabbing onto him, choking him, covering his eyes while he's driving, and it's like, you know, he wants to just kind of slap her or push her aside and he's just just just he wants to, you know. You know he wants to just like kind of slap her or push her aside and he's just like he's just driving the car.

Speaker 3 1:23:31

It's different because they're kind of like lower class bumblers. I mean, he is a ripoff psychic kind of like, as we talked about just just on our last episode with with Manitou.

Speaker 4 1:23:41

I was getting Manitou flashbacks. Were you getting? That, yes, I was, I was, I was like. Oh, we should have a crossover with the Manitow and family plot, you know.

Speaker 3 1:23:49

Okay, you know this is a side note, but like I met somebody who was like a family, you know a Clayton's person, and they were wearing a t-shirt that said Lake Manitow, colorado, which apparently was a place, do I make small talk by bringing up the film the Manitow or do I just let that?

Speaker 3 1:24:06

I'll just say no, you will, you will get you know what don't ever bring up the Manitow I brought up the Manitow to people and they think I'm absolutely insane for watching a job interview or you know, no, not a date or casual convert.

Speaker 4 1:24:19

Yeah, yeah, I have on dates.

Speaker 3 1:24:29

Yeah, this is the kind of movies you're in store for with me. Yeah, um, but no, I um back to yeah, they're sort of low class bumblers because they're schemers too, but they're good schemers, you know. And william devane and karen black are evil, they're sort of high class and they have. They have fine, rich tastes and food and clothing and you know they're very uptight and sort of like um, but it's just the turns of comedy I think are just terrific. At the end, where they're there, william Devane and Karen Black are endeavoring to kill our two leads throughout the entire film because they think they're onto them and his murderous past. And then when they reveal, no, I'm after you, cause I'm trying to, you're good, you're the heir to a vast fortune, you know that's just.

Speaker 4 1:25:11

That's such a funny. And let me ask you this is the only reason that you and your friend have been following me and bothering me this whole time and they're like, yeah, it's like, oh, okay, and then, but it's like it's un. I know you have to have it for the movie to have further dramatic tension and have it unravel, but like my god, she wasn't going to notice the, the vestment coming out from under the lady's so bumbling and bubble-headed.

Speaker 4 1:25:27

She's not going to notice that the, the clothing is seeping out through the, the car door and instead, when karen black tries to fix it, she makes it worse. And of course we have to have it because it's a movie but it's just like oh, come on see like you kind of want these villains to succeed.

Speaker 3 1:25:42

In my mind, you're like you're like oh, I can, I can get on board with these guys oh, karen black is so gorgeous and she's going around in a little sweater with no bra on and big sunglasses and stuff in the but like uh, I just love that scene when barbara harris is sort of she's trying to talk to bruce dernwell at the same time keeping up the ruse that she's a medium for, like all these voices and shows she's runs into the kitchen and says what are you doing here?

Speaker 3 1:26:03

oh you know that every interspersed this, this urgent conversation with her, with her boyfriend, with, like this fake, um sort of pantomime of of um being a median.

Speaker 3 1:26:13

I just it's such a funny, clever little movie and I love that it ends on her winking yes to the camera, which is a little bit of an in joke and also parallels hitchcock's own little cameo on the poster, where he's a winking head inside the crystal ball who's sort of shown to be like the, the fun master of ceremonies who's orchestrating this big cavalcade of of chaos and fun, and I think that's a perfect way for him to end his career. I think it's a perfect way to end it, which is I'm winking at the audience. Thanks for all the fun.

Speaker 4 1:26:42

It's been great absolutely, I agree is like you said, this is a fun movie.

Speaker 4 1:26:48

It's got suspense, it's got action, drama, comedy. It's got the best of everything that Hitchcock does well blended up and served very, very satisfyingly, with a nice ending that can all get behind and the tables are turned on the crooks, the heroes come through in the end. You know, maybe it's too saturday morning cliche to assert to some people, but to me I loved all those elements, like you described, the, the secret layer in the basement with the secret room that is, you know where they hold their hostages and they have the bricks come out of the wall and they have the intercom and all that stuff. That to me speaks volumes about the kind of stuff that I'm looking for in a movie. It's it's interesting, it makes them more colorful and kind of provocative that they're so sophisticated with their, you know, elaborate layer and I think they never really described, though I think they're just. Is he just collecting the jewels to put in the chandelier or is he ever actually selling any of those? I don't think he is.

Speaker 4 1:27:51

I don't think he's selling them. I think he's just having a collection in his chandelier.

Speaker 3 1:27:54

Perhaps, perhaps which is even better.

Speaker 4 1:27:57

That's even better, yeah you're right.

Speaker 3 1:27:59

But yeah, I love William Devane, very underrated actor director, oh yeah, I mean, everyone knows who he is and everybody loves him, but, like you know, you look back at his career and he's not been in. You know, christopher nolan gives him a little payoff and I think he gets to be in. Uh, dark knight rises, correct? He's one of the board members of wayne enterprises, I think is that is he?

Speaker 3 1:28:14

oh my god, yes, I have to look that up, okay I think that's part of it, and he has a kid, you know raves about william devane by the way you've seen rolling thunder, right, yeah, yeah, yeah, one of my that's actually one of my favorites. I need to re-watch that.

Speaker 4 1:28:25

It's been a long time, but he's very, very powerful movie, I mean oh man, very powerful movie.

Speaker 3 1:28:30

And think about that sequence with him in the garage where he's uh trying to replicate how he was tortured by the vietnamese and he's like, no, go ahead, it's fun, just gonna try, you know, to like sort of act out this sadomasochistic urge within him to like relive his pain. Um, he's, he's terrific in it, man.

Speaker 4 1:28:47

I mean, he's a great actor and so he's great at selling great at selling self-lubricating catheters too.

Speaker 3 1:28:53

You know, I thought he didn't want you to refinance your house I think he did catheters too, if I'm not mistaken did he? I'll have to verify that yeah, william devane and then karen black obviously made many memorable appearances in films of the 70s like Airport 77 and what else.

Speaker 4 1:29:11

Trilogy of Terror.

Speaker 3 1:29:12

Trilogy of Terror. Yeah, Did we watch something?

Speaker 4 1:29:16

else with her she's great in Nashville. I feel like we talked about a movie that she was in, but I can't recall off the top of my head.

Speaker 3 1:29:23

I guess she was in Easy Rider, I don't remember that. Was she one of the girls in the cemetery? Maybe?

Speaker 4 1:29:29

I don't recall.

Speaker 3 1:29:30

Yeah, but anyway, yeah, really a fun little movie and my most enjoyable watch of all of these. I think Family Plot's terrific. I've seen it. Probably I think it's my third or fourth time watching it.

Speaker 4 1:29:41

Okay, it's my second favorite of the bunch. I still put Torn Curtain as my favorite Of the lot today, and then this one, then Topaz, then Frenzy, last.

Speaker 3 1:29:53

Okay.

Speaker 4 1:29:56

You put this one first, and then what?

Speaker 3 1:30:00

I would go this movie Torn Curtain. Honestly a little bit of a toss up between Topaz and frenzy for me.

Speaker 4 1:30:10

So you didn't, did you not like Topaz or what I'm getting? No, I did enjoy Topaz.

Speaker 3 1:30:14

I just liked frenzy a little more than maybe I let on in my initial review. I felt there were things to admire about frenzy and I was really, really impressed with the the truck potato scene that I thought it was uh impressed with the the truck potato scene that I thought it was uh, that's really uh, that's a standout, standout moment. Yeah, and I thought it was very audacious.

Speaker 4 1:30:31

I just think of frenzy, though. We go through the motions a little too much, in that we have to go, the guy gets convicted, and then he has to break out, and then he has to find the real it's like it's. It feels very, you know, kind of ordinary in that regard, which it's still fine. But like see, I think you rag on topaz maybe a little too much, maybe I enjoyed it too much.

Speaker 3 1:30:51

Um, but I I think there's a lot to enjoy there, even though it's imperfect and kind of disjointed, and I think that each individual episode in the movie is like kind of intriguing in its own regard that was my biggest problem is I just felt like it would have been it's. It feels like it's trying to show you behind the curtain of what's going on in the spy world. You know, and it's all from this, this bestselling book. But I would have much rather have seen like a compelling protagonist leading that, or somebody with, like somebody with some kind of internal issue, Like he's got a wife at home who's just like you know and she's having an affair with the topaz guy right right out of nowhere yeah, yeah, yeah, but that could have been more.

Speaker 3 1:31:30

There could have been more going on there with that and I felt like maybe, like have a guy like you want to get a great french actor put alan delon in there and have him be some kind of like you know, based literally me style spy character traversing through this world.

Speaker 3 1:31:41

It would have been a lot more interesting, but uh, devereaux does not have a drive to him, there's no, there's no drive that is pushing him onward, other than he feels duty bound to do this, which is which is kind of boring it's kind of boring and yeah, and it felt the movie felt very sort of procedural and in a way I think hitchcock was kind of interested in procedure sometimes and so but that element of like his, his work, is the least interesting for me. But yeah, frenzy, um, I get it. It's a very sort of unappealing movie. I could totally wrap my head around that, but uh, yeah, we got good good.

Speaker 3 1:32:17

Owner that says that kirk karen black was also in burnt offerings, which is also really okay.

Speaker 4 1:32:21

Um and the book. Yeah, the problem with frenzy, I think, is for as for as um much as topaz does. Topaz doesn't have any big stars. At least there's john forsyth and at least there's people maybe you sort of recognize, like john vernon in frenzy. I was unfamiliar with everyone and there's kind of nothing for you. Not that that's a hang-up for for you know a movie necessarily, but it it kind of for as dour as the rest of it is, it compounds it more. You know, yeah, there's talks.

Speaker 4 1:32:53

I've read stuff that michael kane was possibly considered for the role of the, the rusk character, the killer, and that would have been fantastic. That would have been oh so satisfying. And change this movie made this like a top level movie. That would have been fantastic. That would have been oh so satisfying and changed this movie made this like a top level movie.

Speaker 3 1:33:09

That would have been fantastic it sounds like that was rectified by brian de palma when he had michael cain in dressed to kill who's just? He's just tremendous in that movie. Yeah, and I think we can also bring up brian de palma too. And we talk about bernard herman who, you know, if he wasn't wanted by hitch any longer and sort of also at the end of his rope career-wise, we're happy that Brian De Palma picked him up and used him for movies like Sisters, which is an incredible score that he did for Brian De Palma, a Hitchcock devotee and a favorite director of mine.

Speaker 3 1:33:39

But yeah, you know, the one sad thing in both the audio biographies that I was revisiting before this episode Hitchcock man towards the end of his life. He just kinda it seems to me like he was just kind of at the end of his rope. I mean, he has a little cameo here in in family plot where we see him in silhouette when Bruce Dern, the and also the other thing I'd like to have Bruce Dern is. I always like the, the detective who's sort of a reluctant detective. I always think that's a great bit of. I always like that genre. But Hitchcock is in silhouette only he was reluctant to do a cameo, he was tired of doing it. He was drinking and eating a lot, supposedly by this time in his career, and he felt like people had abandoned him a little bit and he was growing more and more estranged from his wife and from his old friend she was.

Speaker 4 1:34:26

They were both very sickly at this time yeah alma had had a stroke and was more debilitated. Hitch himself had to have had a pacemaker inserted and was going through a lot of other issues, and so this is not not a good time. It's bad yeah, it's sad, I mean we think about 76 now being. You know it's older but it's not that old considering yeah, but in 1976, being 76 was a big deal and very old, very elderly at that time.

Speaker 3 1:35:04

Yeah, I just feel bad that I think that Hitchcock left his career by thinking I know he wanted to do one more movie, which we alluded to earlier, and I think that he had felt, and maybe most of the public, that these last four films were sort of maybe his last five films in the public consciousness were sort of flops. But I think that's unfortunate and I think that you know, now that we can revisit them today, we can say that there's a lot of good and a lot to enjoy with these movies and some of them are downright great, like Family Plot, in my opinion.

Speaker 4 1:35:31

You know, it's just the nature of changing times too, where the modern audiences aren't connecting with the work of the older, more established pros. I mean, you see this today, right? I mean Martin Scorsese comes out with a movie like Killers of the Flower Moon, which is, I think, a really good movie. Did it really connect with quote modern audiences? It surely connected with the, you know, the Oscar crowd and all that, but it was not, you know, a big success or something along the lines of his earlier films, even though it's very good. You know what I'm saying, like something along that. Or Spielberg comes out with a movie People love to rag on that, oh, another Spielberg movie. You know past his prime and stuff like that. Will we be saying that in you know 30, 40, 50 years, when people were reappraised the later works of directors like these that had their heyday, you know, 30 years before possibly?

Speaker 3 1:36:23

I mean, do you think possibly someone's going to be like? You know?

Speaker 4 1:36:25

it was really amazing bridge of spies, that was dope but we're going to talk about bridges, spies, like we talk about topaz, where you're like baby, it's a good movie, it's not as greatest, it's a perfectly serviceable, watchable film and it's just, it just exists. You know, it's like well, but that, will they talk about lincoln and say that? I I think lincoln is tremendous so that's what I'm saying, is that?

Speaker 4 1:36:49

yeah you have to just keep, you, just keep making movies, and some of them will be good, some of them will be great and maybe some of them will just be not very good. I mean, you know, I know you, you're a big fan of ready player one, so you know yeah, that's great.

Speaker 3 1:37:05

So there you go.

Speaker 4 1:37:05

I'm just saying that that's the same kind of mentality. Is that we, you can't, you can't leave it up to the current day? Appraisal only that is. I think that is insufficient, as we've seen with these movies and, yeah, maybe if we had been around in 1972 and 76 and said, saw frenzy and and topaz and we like, oh, this is not up to the standards of what we expect from a Hitchcock film and you know, hindsight is 20-20, right.

Speaker 3 1:37:33

Yeah, and I think the sad part is that you know all of his people were gone.

Speaker 2 1:37:38

Yeah.

Speaker 3 1:37:38

Cary Grant and Jimmy Stewart and you know, and Grace Kelly and a lot of these actresses and people that he worked with were just kind of they were gone and he kind of outlived him a little bit. But I think this is a worthy. His bronze age is worthwhile, in my opinion.

Speaker 4 1:37:52

Absolutely. I think these all definitely deserve watching. Even Frenzy deserve watching at least once. And I mean I, I I watched the other three routinely. I've seen them multiple times and thoroughly enjoy them every time I watch them.

Speaker 3 1:38:08

When does the Hitchcock Golden Age end, in your opinion?

Speaker 4 1:38:11

The Gold. Well, ok, first, what do you mean by the Golden Age? Do you mean like the mega hits, masterpieces Like you're talking like Rear Window is Golden Age? Because I consider like Golden Age, not by time, so I would consider like.

Speaker 3 1:38:22

By time, by time.

Speaker 4 1:38:27

And it's a clear delineation of change. Golden age for me is like rebecca through, maybe like stage fright I'm looking at the filmography so like 1940 to 1950, and I would say silver age is like strangers on a train which is 51 through. I you know. I would say torn curtain ends that. And I would say his bronze Age is like Topaz through Family Plot which is like just because of the time period in which we exist.

Speaker 3 1:38:50

I would, I would Okay. So I'm looking at it in the way that it's comic book style so where it doesn't. It doesn't really need quality, it just means time, I would. I would say the Golden Age goes from his silent works all the way till foreign correspondent, which was like what was rebecca was his first american movie yeah, I would say I would put the sign, I would put the silence in the 30s movies in like a pre pre-golden age, though that's like maybe that's splitting hairs, but like when you think about golden age in comics, you're talking about 40s and 50s really yeah, all right, let's.

Speaker 3 1:39:24

I'm gonna take the golden age all the way to rebecca the pre-golden age. Okay, golden age one. And then we have a second golden age which I think ends with rope.

Speaker 4 1:39:36

Okay, I've included under capricorn and stage fright, as you know that part of that, because they're kind of unmemorable you know what I'm gonna go with?

Speaker 3 1:39:45

dial it. Well, no, I'm gonna. No, I'm going to start the Civil Rage with Rope, because it's a Technicolor movie.

Speaker 4 1:39:50

That's a fair assessment.

Speaker 3 1:39:51

To start with Rope, okay, I would say yeah, because if you're talking normies, I think that everybody can agree Dial In for Murder, rear Window To Catch a Thief, the man who Knew Too Much, vertigo North by Northwest Psych of the Birds. I mean that's just a generational run. I mean you have a few clunkers in there, like the man who like.

Speaker 4 1:40:08

Trouble with Harry.

Speaker 3 1:40:09

Trouble with Harry, or you know, you know.

Speaker 4 1:40:12

I recently rewatched the Trouble with Harry and I've never seen it. I wouldn't say that I'm coming around to saying I liked it just yet, but I definitely saw something there that I didn didn't see on the last time and it's gonna take a few more tries, but I think they're. I think it's not as bad as I kind of made it out to be. The first time I watched it I was like this is this is ridiculous, this is horrible I actually I've never seen it.

Speaker 3 1:40:36

I will watch it. The movie I did re-watch, kind of in preparation for just just to give myself context, was the man who knew too much the original from 34, and it is just astounding like how much ingenuity and fun he's having with that movie and how how much energy. It's such a brisk, just like terrific, like energetic movie. It's so much fun, um, and he had so much like ferocity and energy in his filmmaking and like it's so clever. You know, and I feel the same way about um Steps and the Lady Vanishes and some of those movies are just, they're just so terrific, some of his best in my opinion.

Speaker 4 1:41:11

I think the other ones besides the lot that we talked about which don't get the love and affection they deserve, is a lot of these what we're describing as kind of golden age Hitchcock, which is things like Suspicion, like Saboteur, like Lifeboat or lifeboat or notorious even notorious is one of his best movies I think honestly I would be, I would probably say it's my favorite it might be my favorite yeah, I, I just adore that movie just so much.

Speaker 4 1:41:39

I think it's just so magical and special and just how romantic it is, yet how suspenseful and it has just. Every one of the principal actors is just perfect um and I'm a sucker for the, for the carrie grant hitchcock films, more so than the jimmy stewart ones. That's just my opinion. Um, I think he's just a much more engaging leading man for me. Um, and then of course, claains, I mean, is just impeccable, as this villain in the movie Don't forget Ingrid Bergman.

Speaker 4 1:42:12

She's so good too, and also just about how far will you go undercover. To what extent will you just wreck your life and debilitate yourself and and ruin everything for this cause?

Speaker 3 1:42:28

it's very compelling something I really wish I had done, but we did not. I did not do because I'm, but I got lazy. I think I told you this once I was gonna do a shot for shot remake of notorious in college, because it's a very small cast and I wouldn't. We would just kind of wear suits and like wouldn't really matter what the background is, but we'll just, like you know, try to see it and do it.

Speaker 4 1:42:48

And, um, I got tripped up by not having a giant staircase yeah, I was gonna ask how are you gonna do the giant staircase scene?

Speaker 3 1:42:55

yeah, I kind of. But then you have a movie like spellbound, which I think people can recognize. It's more of a curiosity for the, for the um uh, you know the, the uh Dali illustrations.

Speaker 4 1:43:06

Yes, it's still good. Haven't seen that one in quite a while, so I should.

Speaker 3 1:43:10

Lifeboat.

Speaker 4 1:43:12

Lifeboat, I think is excellent. I really enjoy that one a lot.

Speaker 3 1:43:16

Yeah, Strangers on a Train Rope, I think, is one of his most frightening movies ever. We've talked about this before.

Speaker 4 1:43:23

Yes, but what was I going to? Oh, I confess, great, great movie that it never gets talked about yes ever gets talked about, and this is this is excellent montgomery, clift and baxter. Um again, it just on the basis of just one kind of narrative hook, which is, I confess, a murder to a priest. The priest is now implicated in the murder as a suspect for some for for reasons otherwise, and he cannot do anything to defend himself because he is devoted to keeping the secret.

Speaker 4 1:43:55

And it's just, it works. It works so well, it's so effective. And it's again how far are you willing to go?

Reevaluating Hitchcock's Legacy

Speaker 3 1:44:02

And it's got Montgomery Clift where, yeah, you're correct. And it's got Montgomery Clift where, yeah, you're correct and it's a great movie it's. Montgomery Clift was a perpetual pain in Hitchcock's ass because he was playing it method and had some like method acting like liaison guy there that would say you can talk to me and I'll talk to you, and Hitch was just like shut the fuck up. You know, it's like be a cow. That's what I would prefer, Right? So all right, man, this was great this was great.

Speaker 4 1:44:29

This was a good topic, I think. Yeah, no, I figured this was this one. This one was good. Uh, there's a lot, there's always a lot to talk about with these. Uh, there's just gold, even when they're like okay, they're, they're just golden absolutely, absolutely hitchcock was we should do one, though, on on some of the other ones we just mentioned, like a golden age hitchcock I think that would be terrific.

Speaker 3 1:44:47

I think we should.

Speaker 4 1:44:48

It's like everyone knows about Vertigo and Rear Window and the Birds, and it's like you know what, though?

Speaker 3 1:44:55

One of my favorites top three To Catch a Thief.

Speaker 4 1:44:58

I don't hear anyone talk about that that's right, that one doesn't get enough love either.

Speaker 3 1:45:02

Sure does not Again either. Sure does not again. Cary Grant, you know it's like good John will be the cat. Yeah, so good. That's one of my favorite movies ever of all time. Absolutely so transportive, great talking to you, as always, man. Do you want to let people know what our next episode is going to be?

Speaker 4 1:45:18

I don't know what did we decide?

Speaker 3 1:45:20

aren't we going to do another high and low oh, is that, is that next?

Speaker 4 1:45:24

okay, yeah, okay, great, great you've been begging for this one. You've been begging, I have I have been and we we delayed it.

Speaker 3 1:45:30

So, bella lugosi doing a white zombie and bella lugosi meets a brooklyn gorilla so, if you're not familiar with our high and low series, we started it out two weeks, two episodes ago, with tony curtis, where we talked about some like it hot in the manatee. We'll pick one filmmaker, one director, whoever it might be, and we'll pick one really great example of their filmography and one that's not so good, which gives us an example to talk about the breadth of their career and sort of like you know how they, what their, what their work is like, and this will be fun. Yeah, uh, white zombie. And then bella lagosi meets a brooklyn gorilla. Yeah, okay, I cannot wait, can't wait. I tried to push this off till Halloween, but Ryan refused and he said no, no, we're doing.

Speaker 4 1:46:08

We've got plenty of other topics to go through for Halloween. We could do any anything there we got. We got many options.

Speaker 3 1:46:15

We need to go all out for Halloween. That's going to be a lot of fun.

Speaker 4 1:46:18

Yeah, we kind of dropped the ball last year, didn't we? We?

Speaker 3 1:46:20

really did. We? We did too. We did the alien review and we talked about Jello films, which is also great. Hey guys, thanks so much for coming to tune in. Don't forget to go to your favorite pod catcher, or whatever they call it, you know platform like subscribe on Apple podcasts and Spotify. Give us a five star review. It's really annoying me that there's like some podcasts that's been defunct since like 2011, with like four episodes calling called film journal. That has nothing to do with me. That needs to be destroyed in the algorithm and this film journal podcast needs to be ascendant for everybody. So get out there. Please write us a five-star review, like and subscribe uh, subscribe to ryan's channel, senate crisis and we'll see you next time. Thank you for coming thanks everyone.