You may remember I spent much of the fall watching Hitchcock movies for the R.I.P. Challenge.  Today I have another one that I never got to a review of during the challenge: Lifeboat, from 1944, about the survivors of a German u-boat attack, trapped in a lifeboat together with one German soldier.

I realized over the course of my Hitchcock kick that my favorites where the ones “in which nothing happens,” and this seemed like another good rewatch for that goal.  I figured–how much can happen in a lifeboat?

Although the external crises are certainly an impetus to the story, mostly this is about nine people stuck together and how they react off each other and the circumstances.  Connie Porter (Tallulah Bankhead) is the most striking; a wealthy journalist, she arrived on the lifeboat with her fur coat, jewelry, camera and luggage, but gradually loses everything–and gains some heart–as the movie goes on.  Alice (Mary Anderson) also has an interesting story, as she was en route to London to be a nurse–and to meet a man she had previously carried on an affair with.  A married man, and for 1944, I’m surprised the censors let that plot element in!

I think I was most fascinated, though, by the German soldier, Willy (Walter Slezak).  The whole movie I wondered where it was going to go with him, because there were moments when it seemed to me he could be played from a sympathetic angle.  A complicated sympathetic angle, considering we know all along that he shelled the original boat, and is now deceiving the survivors about certain things like their heading.  But for most of the movie, I could still see where he was coming from too.  He was acting as part of a war, and he’s now in a very precarious position among a group of British and Americans.  And I can’t really blame him for hoping to find the German supply ship in the area, rather than striking off for the very distant Bahamas.

However…the movie was made in 1944, so I don’t think it’s much of a spoiler to say that Willy does not ultimately turn out to be a good guy.  It’s too bad, because I feel like he could have been a complex character and morphed instead into an almost caricature villain.  He was a villain not because there was a good in-movie reason for it, but because of the climate of when the movie was made.  It’s hard to present a sympathetic Nazi soldier now; I’m sure it was impossible in 1944.

Of all of the Hitchcock movies I watched recently, Lifeboat is the only one I’d particularly like to see a remake of.  I’d be very curious to see how Willy’s character could be done now, almost 70 years after the war ended.  Although on the other hand, the blood and the horror of it all, so discreet under Hitchcock, would probably be so awful in a modern movie that it wouldn’t be worth it!

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Derek Winnert
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Buy it here: Lifeboat

I’ve been on a definite shadowy-movies kick these last two months, and have fallen thoroughly behind in reviewing them–they go by faster than books, you know!  I thought I’d do a round-up of several movies I’ve watched recently that fall into the Peril on Screen category for R.I.P.

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Dark Passage (1947) is an excellent film noir murder mystery–you can’t go far wrong in film noir when you have Humphrey Bogart as your lead.  Vincent Perry (Bogart) is wrongfully convicted of murdering his wife; he breaks out of San Quentin and goes on the run into San Francisco.  Luckily for him, Irene Jansen (Lauren Bacall) is on hand to help him hide.  Unluckily, the police have set a manhunt in motion, and the only way to escape recapture is to change his face.

This movie strains credulity in places with coincidences and how neatly things unroll.  On the plus side, it employs a fascinating device–rather than casting two actors as Vincent, the movie avoids showing his face for the first 45 minutes or so.  Almost everything is from Vincent’s eye view…until he’s bandaged up post-plastic-surgery.  And of course, when the bandages come off, he’s Humphrey Bogart.  The biggest strain to credulity (maybe) is when someone Vincent used to know well completely fails to recognize his voice.  The face may be different, but Bogie’s voice is unmistakable.

My favorite part is actually a random interlude–a small time conman tries to blackmail Vincent, and in the middle of the whole thing he starts giving advice on how Vincent can go on the run…go through Arizona, you’ll need fake papers, I know just the guy you should go to–didn’t you learn anything in Quentin?  They’ve got real smart guys in Quentin!  It’s a great bit of humor in a mostly grim movie.

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To Catch a Thief (1955) is a Hitchcock film, later than most of the ones I’ve been reviewing.  Cary Grant plays a former jewel thief, out to catch a copycat robber when he’s accused of the crimes.  It’s essentially a whodunnit, with Grace Kelly thrown in as a love interest.  It’s pretty good on the whole, although the twist on the culprit feels a bit dated…and I’ll leave it at that to avoid spoilers!

Thinking about this movie, it occurred to me that my favorite Hitchcock films are the ones where nothing happens.  The ones where people are going about what, on the surface, appears to be ordinary life…with a lurking terror underneath.  On the surface, Suspicion appears to be about happy newly-weds; Rebecca, ditto; it’s only the woman’s suspicions that indicate something is wrong.  Rope is about a dinner party and Strangers on a Train is mostly about one character being stalked through his ordinary life.  It’s the illusion of normalcy that gives power to the tension.  Not many people actually stay at creepy castles on stormy nights, and even fewer hunt jewel thieves on rooftops, but everyone goes to parties.

To Catch a Thief is a good movie, but it’s less a psychological suspense film and more a straight mystery where things happen–and all against the backdrop of the Riviera, by the way.  The scenery is practically another character.

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Double Indemnity (1944) centers around a murder–although it’s not exactly a murder mystery, as it opens with Walter Neff (Fred MacMurray) confessing to the crime.  He proceeds to narrate how it all happened, in a very Sunset Boulevard style.  Neff is an insurance man who fell for a client’s wife (Barbara Stanwyck)–and decided to help her commit the perfect murder on her husband.  A “double indemnity” is a special clause to double the insurance payment if someone dies in a highly unlikely way.

This one is more psychological, a murder story without a drop of blood that centers around the puzzle of how to pull off the murder–and then how it unravels.  Edward G. Robinson is particularly good as Barton Keyes, a claims investigator with an instinct for sniffing out false claims.  I’m fascinated by the way he views it as a puzzle too, apparently less concerned with the fact of murder than with the insurance fraud involved.

Even though there’s no actual hard-boiled detective in this one, Neff and Keyes both have their hard-boiled moments, and there’s a definite film noir feel.

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I fit in one last Hitchcock film with Rear Window (1954), another later film.  After my observation with To Catch a Thief, I decided to rewatch another Hitchcock where not a whole lot happens…and sure enough, I liked the film very much!  Jimmy Stewart plays a photojournalist who broke his leg (pursuing a photo), and is stuck in his apartment for weeks.  He passes the time watching his neighbors out his window.  Things turn sinister when he suspects one neighbor killed his wife.  Love interest Grace Kelly gets a bit more to do here than she did in To Catch a Thief.

This one is mostly an elaborate puzzle, with Stewart and Kelly trying to work out how the murder might have been done, and how they can prove it.  There’s some action at the end, and I do like that the male lead’s broken leg gives the female lead a chance at a bit more daring-do.

My favorite part of this movie, though, was less the murder mystery, and more the other stories playing out through the window.  We also get to see into five other apartments, each with their own inhabitants and their own narratives.  Hitchcock does a lovely job of carrying each of them along (and with virtually no dialogue, since it’s all observation) and giving a nice wrap-up at the end of the movie.  Those stories were less dramatic, but they were more focused on the individual and what they were experiencing, and perhaps that’s why I liked them!

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It’s funny…I didn’t make any movie-viewing plans at the beginning of R.I.P. but that turned out to be my favorite part this year!

Continuing my Alfred Hitchcock spree for Readers Imbibing Peril, I next watched Spellbound with Ingrid Bergman and Gregory Peck.  With the tagline, “Will he kiss me or kill me?” it’s proof that stories about women falling for possibly murderous men date back well before certain vampire novels I could name!

Bergman plays Dr. Constance Petersen, a coldly self-contained psychiatrist who falls for her facility’s new director (Peck), who falls just as hard for her.  When he suffers a breakdown, it comes out that he’s an imposter; in reality he’s an amnesiac, convinced that he killed the man whose identity he assumed.  Constance adamantly believes that he’s innocent and suffering from a guilt complex; the two go on the run, trying to learn what happened in his past.

This isn’t one where I’m going to rave about the plot, because, um, it’s kind of mad.  At one point a character tells Constance, “you’re a brilliant analyst but a very stupid woman,” and unfortunately it seems to be true (for what it’s worth, in an interview Hitchcock described Constance as “very brave”).  She takes wild risks and engages in extraordinarily unprofessional behavior–guided, of course, by her heart.  Hmm, I seem to be a bit of a cynic about the whole thing!

While the plot and the main character are questionable, I love the atmosphere of the movie.  The first time I saw it, I remember being utterly fascinated by the shadows and the shades of gray.  It might sound strange, but Hitchcock cast shadows across faces in wonderful ways, and all those shades of gray in the black-and-white film contribute to a marvelous dreamy quality.

The music is also a big part.  I honestly can’t remember if there was much of a soundtrack to Rope or Strangers on a Train, even though I just saw them, but in this one the music was perfect for increasing the tension in key moments.

We also see again Hitchcock’s ability to raise tension without any blood or dramatic conflict.  Peck gets a wild look in his eye, and that’s enough.  There’s a very good scene where he becomes fixated on a knife Constance is using at dinner.  There’s no dialogue about it, but we see him seeing, and we see her seeing him seeing, and then a noise jolts him out and things are all right again.

Hitchcock also seems to have a thing about characters on staircases.  Cary Grant in Suspicion comes to mind, or there’s a terrifying sequence in Psycho.  Spellbound has two scenes with characters on staircases that are wonderfully tense even though nothing is really happening–although in one of them, Peck is carrying an open razor.  Still, you don’t need the blood of Sweeney Todd–just carrying it is tense enough.

Though that does bring me back to Constance being very stupid.  I know he’s handsome Gregory Peck and therefore has to remain handsome and clean-shaven, but why did she leave a razor where a possible psychotic could get it???

Anyway…one of the more famous sequences in this is the dream sequence.  It’s very surreal (in the Surrealist sense), and you can definitely tell that Salvador Dali was an adviser for that part.  It didn’t look like any dreams I’ve ever had, but it’s a great bit anyway.

This one doesn’t come in at the top of my list of Hitchcock films…but I do love Bergman and Peck and that wonderful Hitchcockian atmosphere!

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Journeys in Classic Film
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Buy it here: Spellbound

I’ve been continuing my Hitchcock viewing for Readers Imbibing Peril, and I’m still enjoying the Master of Suspense.  I had a bit of a Hitchcock phase in college (the library had lots of his movies available) and most of the movies I haven’t seen since then.  I’ve been having a good time now rewatching favorites I haven’t seen in years–like Strangers on a Train.

This is a very direct and accurate title: two strangers meet on a train, tennis star Guy Haines (Farley Granger) and the wealthy and idle Bruno Antony (Robert Walker).  Bruno has all sorts of wild theories, and he proposes one to Guy: a criss-cross murder.  Guy wants to get rid of his philandering, divorce-refusing wife, Miriam; Bruno wants to get rid of his father.  Neither can commit the murder because the motive makes them the obvious suspect–so why not commit each other’s murder?  Guy laughs the idea off…until Bruno shows up at his door to tell him that Miriam is dead, and now he expects Guy to fulfill  his half of the agreement.

I didn’t plan it, but this turned out to be a fascinating one to watch right after Rope (review here).  It was made a few years later, and I can see some of the same themes.  Also, if you remember weak-willed and murderous Philip from Rope, the same actor played the very different Guy Haines.  I was impressed, actually, because Philip and Guy look exactly the same, and yet they felt like very different people.  I think it was a difference that was on the level of mannerisms, bearing, speech patterns and so on.  Guy has his foolish and weak-willed moments, but on the whole he’s confident and morally-upright…although, like Philip, he winds up manipulated by a seriously deranged man.

Hitchcock does wonderful things with Bruno.  He’s not a moustache-twirling villain or a big hulking monster.  He’s smiling, affable, pleasant-spoken and even charming…but with a little edge of weirdness.  To quote Mr. Shakespeare, “you can smile and smile and be a villain,” and Hitchcock takes this smiling psychopath and presents him as a terrifying specter, haunting first Miriam and then Guy.

We follow Bruno as he follows Miriam to an amusement park, and it becomes a long tense scene set against a backdrop of revelry, because we know what has to be coming.  One of my favorite moments is when Miriam and two “friends” take a boat into the Tunnel of Love.  Bruno follows in another boat, and for a space we only see their silhouettes as shadows against the wall–and from their separate boats, Bruno’s shadow stalks and overtakes Miriam’s.  Bruno’s amusement park boat, by the way, is named Pluto, the God of the Underworld.  Those little touches are why I love Hitchcock so much.

As Bruno gets more intent on his demands of Guy, there are other lovely moments that are so simple but so creepy.  At one point, Guy is sitting on the sidelines of a tennis match, and we see the crowd–every head turning in unison with the progress of the match, except right in the center there’s Bruno, eyes locked on Guy.

I mentioned some of the themes seemed to be carrying over from Rope, and I was especially thinking of the contrast between murder in theory and murder in actuality.  Guy’s new girlfriend has a younger sister who is lovely and sweet and fascinated by grisly murders.  We again have a character who thinks murder is quite thrilling in theory–but is horrified when confronted with the reality.  The insane characters, the Brunos and the Brandons, are the ones who make no distinction–who don’t draw a line between saying you could strangle someone, and actually doing it.

My one criticism of the movie is that it ends too quickly (a Hitchcock trademark) and more importantly, too easily.  I like happy endings, but I don’t quite believe that it all would have worked out so neatly and so simply…

Still, it was another excellent walk through the shadows with the Master of Suspense.

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Derek Winnert
Folding Seats
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Buy it here: Strangers on a Train