Dial M for Murder

directed by Alfred Hitchcock (1954)

I got kinda bored with this one.  It's too easy to figure out, and you gottta wade through a whole lotta yadayada before you get to the denouement satisfactions.

Ray Milland is defintinely evil, and nasty, greeedy, coldhearted, so I wanted to see him suffer.  He's always got the stiff upper lip though, so his suffering isn't that entertaining.   It's definitely the devious selfish machinations where he delivers; his duplicitous actions are what'll get you all incensed and rooting for him to get nailed.

Grace Kelly is very gorgeous in this, but she's so bland and helpless too.  I felt like her character was being punished too much by the script, though. She's so tortured!  So often the damsel in distress is a boring character of function, just there as a beautiful thang to get threatened and rescued.  Even though she's put through the wringer, at least she had some complexity beyond just being a victim.

I guess I was expecting this to be more crazy than it was.  It's so highly rated, that set me up for something more than what it is - a tightly wound mystery thriller - sorta like a CSI episode.  It feels like a play and that makes sense since it was originally a Broadway production by Fredrick Knott, and he adapted the screenplay as well.  Maybe I'd have liked it better if I saw it in 3D, like it was originally shot.

One scene made me laugh, one cop is walking off with some evidence: a women's purse.  He's got it dangling dainitly on his arm, and as he sets off on his way back to the station, a detective stops him short. "You can't walk around like that, you'll get arrested." And the cop puts the purse inside a satchel to cover up the gender crime.  Holy eh? You'll get arrested!  This is really true though.  At one point in English history, you could be arrested for wearing clothes that didn't define your gender "properly".  It's the actual legal reason behind Joan of Arc getting burned at the stake.  In hindsight, it makes more sense that Albert Nobbs was so terrified to be outed.

In case you're wondering, the Hitchcock cameo is in BITD school photo of the blackguard Milland.

Blow Out

directed by Brian De Palma (1981)

I caught most of this last night and even not seeing the whole thing, I can understand why it was a failure at the box office.  It's got a gigantic plot hole that makes you totally lose all belief in the story, then it piles on a terrible ending that makes you hate the hero too.

John Travolta is a movie sound FX guy who's doing foley work.  He's capturing sounds with his super sensitive mic near a bridge and that puts him right position to record an accident.   He sees a car go off the rails - an apparent blow out - and rescues a woman in the car, saving her from drowning.  The driver dies, and he's a Governor, the apparent candidate to beat for the next US Presidential election.  I missed all this and started watching at the accident aftermath in the hospital, but I really didn't miss much at all, because somebody was filming the accident too, and you get to see that footage later, ad infitum, mostly in flashback form when Travolta listens to his recording.

So what's wrong this movie?  It comes down to 2 things, plausibility and accountability.  It's a conspiracy flick and I'm fine with that, I think there are all kinds of conspiracies naturally going on all the time, that's not unbelievable.  It's the way Travolta's character treats Nancy Allen, the supporting woman in peril character.  On the one hand he rescues her, then he's always manipulating her, because he likes her, but also because he wants her to stick around so she can help him figure out who caused the accident.  His interactions with her are so self serving, then for no plausible reason at all,  he deliberately puts her in danger. Really it felt very misogynistic, and it made no sense except to set up the finale. Besides, the bit where he uses her scream in a horror film?   Man, that took the cake.  Callous much?

I did like all the behind the scenes film and sound editing stuff.  Film geekery good times.

It's a cool period piece with lots of street scene detail too.  And the acting is good.  I bought Travolta's frustration and bitterness, though Nancy Allen's naive prostitute was a little too cliche.  Dennis Franz as a sleazy photographer and John Lithgow as a psycho henchman were especially good in their small roles.

It's such a good looking flick that I wanted to like it so I was disappointed how brainless it goes in the final reel. Could be it was better before 2 reels were lost.  Parade footage was reshot at a cost of $750,000 and  maybe there were more crucial details in those reels that went missing.  Was there stuff that couldn't be restaged due to circumstances, and that compromised the integrity of the story?  Maybe that's giving too much credit to action sequences saving the day though.

It's a very meta movie about reality as a construct, and how media is not necessarily an accurate reflection of reality, that it too is an abstraction that can be distorted to shape and influence the world as well.  I liked that - there's lots of clever in this film.  Just the ending I hated.  It's so dumb and melodramatic.

I have to say in spite of my misgivings, I enjoyed it.  I was captivated by the flick from the moment I started watching it, even minus the beginning.  De Palma's stuff is entertaining even and perhaps particularly when you don't like the characters.  He does pulpy and bizarre really well and I always look forward to seeing whatever he does.  I think Tarantino really learnt a lot from him visually.

Gaslight

 directed by George Cukor (1944)

 Jesus does Isabella Rossellini ever look like her mom Ingrid Bergman.

 Aside from that observation, I forgot to write anything about this movie right after I watched it, so this review will be brief.

It was good.  The story is great, except for a rather anticlimactic ending, and the acting is stellar by everyone involved.  Joseph Cotton is a snoopy American with a snazzy manner, suspicious of that foreigner Charles Boyer. While Boyer is sleazy and supercilious, he's awsome spooky too.  Ingrid Bergman is the fragile object of affection, eyed possessively by both men and she's more than just a pretty face.  It takes skill to appear vulnerable and tormented.  Angela Lansbury is great in her role as a maid on the make, and she's pretty gorgeous and nasty too.  It's a good portrayal of the upper classes in the fussy and mannerly Victorian era.  I liked the sets and costumes, it looks beautiful, and it's altogether, a pretty great thriller, that's entirely entertaining.  I can see why the term gaslight came in to use, because it's such a memorable production particularly in terms of illustrating the diabolical type of evil it would take to "gaslight" someone.  It makes sense that the title was coined as a term and referenced over time so often because it well depicts the matrix of deceit and manipulation the abusive/Svengali male entangles around their thrall in order to control them and this is an insidious dynamic which gets play in most all abusive relationships. 

I got caught up in the story too.  The villain is a terrible man, and what he does is  soooo wrong.  I was getting mad watching him be such a snakey jerk.  Still, it's soooo sexist!   It's redonkulous how often female characters are written as lambs to the slaughter victims. Whatever though, because it's worth a look.  It's a fun psycho-killer showdown, satisfaction guaranteed!

Dream Lover

directed by Nicholas Kazan (1993)

I caught this playing about 1/2 way through.  It's an early 90s thriller starring Mädchen Amick and James Spader, but it feels like it was written in the 50's.  It's an old school story, with some ridiculous bits, but overall it's a lot of fun. It's got a Hitchcock feel with the suspense. Spader doesn't get to be weird much in it, as this was back in the days when he was a straight up pretty boy, but he does a good job.  So does Amick with the femme fatale role.

Mädchen Amick is lying to her husband about her past and James Spader gradually twigs to the fact that his wife is not who she says she is.  He finally confronts her with proof of her lies when he tracks down her parents and brings them home.  The scene when he bugged eyed watches her reaction is priceless.  I missed the beginning where they get together, but I didn't really mind because I think the best part of the movie is probably the cat and mouse gamesmanship.  It's a gas....light.

Bonus: there's some crazy carnival dream segments that would make David Lynch proud.

 

It's all on youtube, so I'm gonna watch what I missed.  James Spader and Mädchen Amick are both looking gorgeous in this, so I expect there will be some steamy seduction scenes.

Amick - "Getting to know someone is like peeling an onion.

Spader - "It makes you cry?