Tag Archives: Hitchcock

OBSESSION (Brian de Palma, 1976)

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OBSESSION (Brian de Palma, 1976)

 

Cliff Robertson plays Michael Courtland the businessman who loses his much-loved wife and daughter to kidnappers and is riven by guilt. When he goes to Florence with his business partner (John Lithgow) he meets a young woman who is the spitting image of his late wife and becomes obsessed, à la VERTIGO (Alfred Hitchcock,1958) a clear inspiration, following her through the dark nights of the old town until he meets her, dates her and brings her to America.

Good thing she’s a good Catholic and doesn’t put out, as the object of his affection turns out to be the daughter he’s long thought dead. Geneviève Bujold plays mother, daughter, and child-as-grown up, one of the many inventive twirls De Palma de ploys here.

She’s terrific and her work here makes me want to revisit her other work, particularly the films she made in Quebec with Paul Almond, Michel Brault and Claude Jutra. Robertson, as we can see in the clip below,  comes across as handsome but a bit stiff in contrast.

The story is filmed predominantly in very wide shots, that take in the surroundings, contrasted with close-ups, sometimes extreme ones, when the story calls for interiority or turns to dreams.

It’s a dazzling film full of rhyming shots (the mausoleum where the wife rests evokes the Church where they met, father and daughter are both filmed in the exact same place in the exact same type of shot at different moments in the film, the change in figure a change in meaning) with the last shot, a father/daughter embrace where  the camera goes 360 degrees on the impossible couple, themselves twirling with emotional release around the camera. It’s a tour de force ending to a fascinating film that as Gary Couzens says, ‘has both a 360° nd 540° pan’..

It was De Palma’s first mainstream success and Bernard Herrman’s last score (TAXI DRIVER was written later but released earlier),, a great one. Co-written by De Palman and Paul Schrader; the latter accusing the former of truncating and destroying his work (ostensibly removing or condensing the last third of the screenplay) and not speaking to him for years. But De Palma clearly made the right decision. It’s a noir infused psychological thriller with Gothic elements  that holds up beautifully, with the scenes of Robertson following the dream of his dead wife at night in Florence particularly memorable. The ending remains extraordinary. Bluray from Arrow.

José Arroyo

José Arroyo in Conversation with David Greven

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A conversation with David Greven, distinguished Hitchcock scholar, author of Intimate Violence: Hitchcock, Sex and Queer Theory, Psycho-Sexual: Male Desire in Hitchcock, De Palma, Scorsese, and Friedkin and many other books (see images below) which took place at the Under Capricorn +70 Conference at King´s College, London. We talk of Hitchcock as a queer filmmaker, how his works undermine gender roles and expectations. We discuss David´s explorations of the intersection of Queer Theory and Hitchcock and what he´s learned by bringing them together. We bring into the discussion recent television work by Ryan Murphy as well as the work of Pedro Almodóvar. We touch on the significance of the re-release of five Hitchcock films in the 80s in the context of gay male representation, as well as on E.M Foster adaptations such as Maurice, Room with A View, Howard´s End and the recent theatrical deployment of some of those structures and tropes in The Inheritance. Finally the conversation refocuses on his work on Under Capricorn, the presentation of which is David´s reason for being in London, putting it in the context of Ingrid Bergman´s ‘trilogy’ with Hitchcock (Spellbound and Notorious are the others). Under Capricorn is enthralling but is it goodP? Finally David offers some recommendations on how to introduce yourself to Hitchcock´s work if you haven´t already done so. If you don´t love Under Capricorn, you don´t love Hitchcock, and if you don´t know how to appreciate Hitchcock, you don´t know how to appreciate cinema. An informal but stimulating and all too brief conversation.

 

José Arroyo

In Conversation with Adrian Garvey on James Mason

 

A long, wide-ranging and informative discussion with scholar Adrian Garvey on the career of James Mason , the subject of Garvey´s interest and research for over a decade now. We touch on various aspects of the particularities of Mason´s career and achievements but with a particular focus on his work in the UK in the forties, and then in the United States in the 50s. The conversation ranges from the differences in his level of stardom in the UK and the US, his choice of projects, the quality of the people he sought out to work with, how a star becomes a lasting star in spite of never quite becoming a box-office star in America, what his star persona was in the UK and how that was re-deployed but also re-inflected in America. We touch on the directors he worked with: Reed, Ophuls, Hitchcock, Kubrick, Minnelli, Nicholas Ray; we compare his career to that of other British stars of the period and after– Stewart Granger, Dirk Bogarde, John Mills, Richard Burton, Peter O´Toole, Richard Harris, Alec Guiness…. A must-listen for anyone interested in James Mason.

José Arroyo

Richard Layne and Nicky Smith on Under Capricorn, Destry Rides Again and the first few days of Cinema Ritrovato 2019

Richard Layne, Nicky Smith and myself in a post-screening discussion of a 1968 print of Under Capricorn screened at Bologna´s Cinema Ritrovato that ranges from the impact of the colour to  the length of the shots, Bergman’s performance, the appeal of Michael Wilding, wether Joseph Cotten´s hair was a wig, the film´s connection to Hitchcock´s earlier Rebecca, and whether the character played by Margaret Leighton is Mrs. Danvers in Australia. The discussion then moves on to some commentary on Destry Rides Again, Jean Gabin, and how there´s no hope for cinema if even a Ritrovato audience is piggy about using their phones during screenings. It was recorded during lunch so there´s quite a bit of background noise which in my view adds ambience without detracting from the conversation itself.

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José Arroyo