Tag Archives: Alfred Hitchcock

4 Shots From 4 Films: Special James Stewart Edition

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

4 Shots From 4 Films is just what it says it is, 4 shots from 4 of our favorite films. As opposed to the reviews and recaps that we usually post, 4 Shots From 4 Films lets the visuals do the talking!

Today, we celebrate the birthday of one of the greatest American actors of all time, the wonderful James Stewart!  It’s time for….

4 Shots From 4 James Stewart Films

Mr. Smith Goes To Washington (1939, dir by Frank Capra, DP: Joseph Walker)

It’s A Wonderful Life (1946, dir by Frank Capra, DP: Joseph Walker and Joseph Biroc)

Rear Window (1954, dir by Alfred Hitchcock, DP: Robert Burks)

The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (1962, dir by John Ford. DP: William H. Clothier)

Scenes That I Love: Joseph Cotten and Teresa Wright in Shadow of a Doubt

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

On this date in 1905, the great actor Joseph Cotten was born in Petersburg, Virginia.  A longtime friend and collaborator of Orson Welles, Cotten was one of the most dependable leading men of the 40s and 50s, an actor with the charisma of star and the talent of an artist.

Today’s scene that I love comes from Alfred Hitchcock’s 1943 masterpiece, Shadow of a Doubt, and it features Teresa Wright and Joseph Cotten.  Wright plays Charlie.  Cotten plays her beloved uncle, who is also named Charlie and who might very well be a serial killer.  In this scene, Uncle Charlie drags his niece to a seedy bar, where he confesses that, as she earlier deduced, he is a suspect in a murder investigation.  With a mixture of charm and intimidating, Charlie tries to convince his niece to keep his secret to herself.

4 Shots From 4 Best Picture Winners: The 1940s

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

4 Shots From 4 Films is just what it says it is, 4 shots from 4 of our favorite films. As opposed to the reviews and recaps that we usually post, 4 Shots From 4 Films lets the visuals do the talking!

Today, I’m using this feature to take a look at the history of the Academy Award for Best Picture.  Decade by decade, I’m going to highlight my picks for best of the winning films.  To start with, here are 4 shots from 4 Films that won Best Picture during the 1940s!  Here are….

4 Shots From 4 Best Picture Winners: The 1940s

Rebecca (1940, dir by Alfred Hitchcock, DP: George Barnes)

Casablanca (1942, dir by Michael Curtiz, DP: Arthur Edeson)

The Best Years Of Our Lives (1946, dir by William Wyler, DP: Gregg Toland)

Hamlet (1948, dir by Laurence Olivier, DP: Desmond Dickinson)

Scene that I Love: Cary Grant and Ingrid Bergman in Notorious

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

The great Cary Grant was born 120 years ago today.

In honor of Cary Grant’s legendary career and screen charm, today’s scene that I love comes from one of my favorite Cary Grant movies.  This is also one of my favorite Ingrid Bergman films and one of my favorite Alfred Hitchock films and even one of my favorite Claude Rains films.  1946’s Notorious is a favorite all-around!

Horror Scenes I Love: Anthony Perkins In Psycho

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Poor Anthony Perkins!

Anthony Perkins did not start his career as a horror icon.  A talented young actor, Perkins started his career on Broadway and eventually, he started to appear in films.  From the start, he was usually cast as nervous young men, the type who awkwardly smiled and struggled to talk to people.  Perkins was promoted as a romantic lead, with the Studios and his agents making sure that Perkins was regularly photographed dating Hollywood starlets like Natalie Wood.  As witty off-screen as he was nervous on-screen, Perkins was a popular figure in Hollywood.  He received his only Oscar nomination for his performance as a young Quaker in 1956’s Friendly Persuasion.

Perkins’s entire career changed when Alfred Hitchcock cast him as the seemingly timid motel owner in 1960’s Psycho.  Perkins was reportedly Hitchcock’s first choice for the role, with Hitchcock saying that he felt only Perkins or Dean Stockwell was capable of bringing Norman to life.  Perkins was not nominated for Best Actor but the role pretty much defined him in the eyes of many.  Perkins spent the rest of his career trying to first escape the shadow of Psycho and then eventually embracing his status as an icon of horror.

Perkins’s performance has been imitated so many times that there’s a tendency to forget just how good he is in the role.  In this episode, Perkins-as-Norman discusses his mother with Janet Leigh.

Lisa Reviews An Oscar Nominee: Spellbound (dir by Alfred Hitchcock)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

The 1945 Best Picture nominee, Spellbound, tells the story of Dr. Constance Petersen (Ingrid Bergman), a psychoanalyst at a mental hospital in my least favorite state, Vermont.

Constance has fallen in love with a man (Gregory Peck) who she believes to be Dr. Anthony Edwardes, the newly appointed director of the hospital.  Dr. Edwardes is youngish and handsome and idealistic and authoritative …. well, he’s Gregory Peck.  However, he also has an intense phobia about seeing any set of parallel lines.  Curious to discover the reason for Edwardes’s phobia, Constance does a little digging on her own and discovers that Dr. Anthony Edwardes is not a doctor at all!  Instead, he’s a guilt-stricken amnesiac who is convinced that he murdered Dr. Edwardes and took his place!

Constance, however, doesn’t believe that the Amnesiac is a murderer.  She thinks that he is suffering from some sort of deep-rooted guilt that had led him to believe that killed the doctor.  She wants a chance to psychoanalyze him and discover the truth about his background.  Unfortunately, the police do think that the Amnesiac is a murderer and their determined to arrest him.

Constance and the Amnesiac go on the run, heading to the home of Constance’s mentor, Dr. Alexander Brulov (Michael Chekhov, the nephew of Anton Chekhov).  With Brulov’s help, Constance analyzes a dream that the Amensiac had, one involving curtains decorated with eyes, the faceless proprietor of a casino, and a man falling off a mountain.  Can Constance and Brulov solve the mystery of the Amnesiac’s identity before the police take him away to prison?

Spellbound was the last of the four Hitchcock best picture nominees and it was also the last film that Hitchcock made for producer David O. Selznick.  Selznick was quite a fan of psychoanalysis and he insisted that Hitchcock not only make a movie about it but that he also use Selznick’s own therapist as a technical advisor on the project.  Hitchcock, for his part, was able to bring in the surrealist Salvador Dali to help design the Amnesiac’s dream sequence but Selznick felt that the 20-minute sequence was too long and too weird and, as a result, it was cut down to two minutes for the final film.  All this considered, it’s not a surprise that, despite the fact that Spellbound was a hit with critics and audiences, Hitchcock himself didn’t care much for it and considered it to be more of a Selznick film than a Hitchcock film.  And it is true that the film’s total faith is psychoanalysis feels more like something one would expect to hear from a trendy producer than from a director like Hitchcock, who was known for both his dark wit and his rather cynical attitude towards anyone in authority.

For a film like Spellbound to truly work, there has to be some doubt about who the Amnesiac is.  For the suspense to work, the audience has to feel that there’s at least a chance, even if it’s only a slight one, that the Amnesiac actually could be a murderer, despite the attempts of Constance and Brulov to prove that he’s not.  And Spellbound is full of scenes that are meant to leave the audience wondering about whether or not the Amnesiac should be trusted.  However, because the Amnesiac is played by Gregory Peck, there’s really no doubt that he’s innocent.  Hitchcock was not particularly happy with Gregory Peck as his leading man.  Peck projected a solid, middle-American integrity.  It made him ideal for heroic and crusading roles but made him totally wrong for any role that required ambiguity.  It’s difficult to believe that the Amnesiac is suffering from a guilt complex because it’s difficult to believe that Gregory Peck has ever done anything for which he should feel guilty.  Cary Grant could have played the Amnesiac.  Post-war Jimmy Stewart could have done an excellent job with the role.  But Peck is just too upstanding and stolid for the role.  In a role that calls from neurosis, Peck is kind of boring.

That said, the rest of the cast is fine, with Ingrid Bergman giving one of her best performance as Constance and Michael Chekhov bringing some needed nuance to a role that could have turned into a cliché.  Leo G. Carroll has a small but pivotal role and he does a good job keeping the audience guessing as to his motivation.  Even at a truncated two minutes, the Dali dream sequence is memorably bizarre and the famous shot of a gun pointed straight at the camera still carries a kick.  This is a lesser Hitchcock film but, that said, it’s still a Hitchcock film and therefore worth viewing.

As I mentioned previously, this was the last of Hitchcock’s films to be nominated for Best Picture.  Ironically, his best films — Rear Window, Vertigo, and Psycho among them — were yet to come. Spellbound was nominated for six Oscars but only won for Miklos Rozsa’s score.  (Ingrid Bergman was nominated for Best Actress that year, not for her role in Spellbound but instead for The Bells of St. Mary’s.)  The big Oscar winner that year was Billy Wilder’s The Lost Weekend.

6 Shots From 6 Films: Special Alfred Hitchcock Edition

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

4 Or More Shots From 4 Or More Films is just what it says it is, 4 shots from 4 of our favorite films. As opposed to the reviews and recaps that we usually post, 4 Shots From 4 Films lets the visuals do the talking!

124 years ago, the master of suspense was born in England.  Today, we honor the career and legacy of the great Alfred Hitchock with….

6 Shots From 6 Alfred Hitchcock Films

Rebecca (1940, dir by Alfred Hitchcock, DP: George Barnes)

Shadow of a Doubt (1943, directed by Alfred Hitchcock, DP: Joseph A. Valentine)

Notorious (1946, dir by Alfred Hitchcock, DP: Ted Tetzlaff)

Vertigo (1958, dir by Alfred Hitchcock, DP: Robert Burks)

North by Northwest (1959, dir by Alfred Hitchcock, DP: Robert Burks)

Psycho (1960, dir by Alfred Hitchcock, DP: John L. Russell)

12 Oscar Snubs From the 1950s

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Audrey Hepburn and her Oscar.  At least the Academy didn’t snub her!

Continuing our look at the Oscar snubs of the past, it’s now time to enter the 50s!

World War II was over. Eisenhower was President. Everyone was worried about communist spies. And the Hollywood studios still reigned supreme, even while actors like Marlon Brando and James Dean challenged the establishment.  There were a lot great film released in the 50s.  There were also some glaring snubs on the part of the Academy.  Here’s twelve of them.

1950: The Third Man Is Not Nominated For Best Picture

….and Orson Welles was not nominated for Best Supporting Actor!  The Third Man received three Oscar nominations, for Director, Cinematography, and Editing.  The fact that Welles, Joseph Cotten, Alida Valli, and the film’s score were not nominated (and that King Solomon’s Mines was nominated for Best Picture instead of The Third Man) remains one of the more surprising snubs in Oscar history.

1952: Singin’ In The Rain Is Not Nominated For Best Picture

What the Heck, Academy!?  This was the year that The Greatest Show On Earth won the Best Picture Oscar.  Personally, I don’t think The Greatest Show On Earth is as bad as its reputation but still, Singin’ In The Rain is a hundred times better.

1953: Alan Ladd Is Not Nominated For Best Actor For Shane

How could Shane score a nomination for Best Picture without Shane himself receiving a nomination?

1954: Rear Window Is Not Nominated For Best Picture

Rear Window was not totally ignored by the Academy.  Alfred Hitchcock received a nomination for directing.  It also received nominations for Best Adapted Screenplay, Cinematography, and Sound.  However, Rear Window was not nominated for Best Picture and James Stewart, Grace Kelly, Raymond Burr, and Thelma Ritter all went unnominated as well.  Today, Rear Window is definitely better-remembered than the majority of 1954’s Best Picture nominees.  Certainly, it deserved a nomination more than Seven Brides For Seven Brothers and Three Coins in The Fountain.

1955: Ralph Meeker Is Not Nominated For Best Actor For Kiss Me Deadly

I guess I shouldn’t be surprised.  If the Academy wasn’t going to nominate Rear Window for Best Picture, there was no way that they would have nominated Ralph Meeker for playing a sociopathic private detective who, even if inadvetedly, helps to bring about the end of the world.

1955: Rebel Without A Cause Is Not Nominated For Best Picture or Best Actor

The 1955 Best Picture lineup was a remarkably weak one.  The eventual winner was Marty, a likeable film that never quite escapes its TV roots.  Picnic has that great dance scene but is otherwise flawed.  Mister Roberts was overlong.  Love Is A Many-Splendored Thing and The Rose Tattoo are really only remembered by those of us who have occasionally come across them on TCM.  Perhaps the best-remembered film of 1955, Rebel Without A Cause, received quite a few nominations but it was not nominated for Best Picture.  And while the Rebel himself, James Dean, was nominated for Best Actor, it was for his performance in East of Eden.  1955 was a strange year.

1955: Robert Mitchum Is Not Nominated For Best Actor For The Night of the Hunter

Robert Mitchum only received one Oscar nomination over the course of his entire career, for 1945’s The Story of G.I. Joe.  He deserved several more.  His performance as the villainous preacher in The Night of Hunter made Reverend Harry Powell into one of the most iconic film characters of all time.

1956: Cecil B. DeMille Is Not Nominated For Best Director For The Ten Commandments

Cecil B. DeMille was only nominated once for Best Director, for 1952’s The Greatest Show On Earth.  DeMille, however, deserved to be nominated for The Ten Commandments.  As campy as DeMille’s films can seem today, he was an expert storyteller and that’s certainly evident when one watches The Ten Commandments, a film that holds the viewer’s attention for nearly four hours.  DeMille deserved a nomination for the Angel of Death scene alone.  The screams in the night are haunting.

1957: Henry Fonda Is Not Nominated For Best Actor For 12 Angry Men

With 12 Angry Men, Fonda did something that very few actors can.  He made human decency compelling.  One gets the feeling that, much like Tom Hanks in Captain Phillips, Fonda made it look so easy that the Academy took him for granted.

1958: Touch Of Evil Is Totally Ignored

Anyone who had researched the history of the Academy knows that there was no way that the 1950s membership would have ever honored Orson Welles’s pulp masterpiece, Touch of Evil.  That said, it still would have been nice if they had.  Touch of Evil has certainly go on to have a greater legacy than Gigi, the film that won Best Picture that year.

1958: Vertigo Is Almost Totally Ignored

Vertigo did receive nominations for Art Direction and Sound but Alfred Hitchcock, James Stewart, and the film itself were snubbed.

1959: Some Like It Hot Is Not Nominated For Best Picture or Best Actress

Some Like It Hot received 6 Oscar nominations, including nominations for Best Director, Best Actor, and Best Adapted Screenplay.  It did not receive a nomination for Best Picture and, sadly, Marilyn Monroe did not receive a nomination for Best Actress.  Much as with Henry Fonda in 12 Angry Men, one gets the feeling that the Academy took Monroe for granted.  It’s sad to realize that, while two actresses have been nominated for playing Marilyn Monroe, Monroe herself would never be nominated.

Agree?  Disagree?  Do you have an Oscar snub that you think is even worse than the 12 listed here?  Let us know in the comments!

Up next: Things get wild with the 6os!

Night of the Hunter (United Artists 1955; D: Charles Laughton)

10 Oscar Snubs From the 1940s

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Ah, the 40s! For most of the decade, the world was at war and the Academy’s nominations reflected that fact. The best picture lineups alternated between patriotic films that encouraged the battle against evil and darker films that contemplated both the mistakes of the past and what threats might be waiting in the future.  With the Academy being even more aware than usual that films and awards could be used to send a message, the snubs continued.

1940: John Carradine Is Not Nominated For The Grapes of Wrath

John Carradine’s first credited film appearance was in 1930 but Carradine himself claimed that he had appeared as an uncredited extra in over 70 films before getting that first credit.  Carradine would continue to work until his death 58 years later.  John Carradine did so many films that he was still appearing in new releases in the 90s, years after his death.  He appeared in over 234 films and in countless television shows.  He was a favorite of not only Fred Olen Ray’s but also John Ford’s.

Unfortunately, Carradine was never nominated for an Oscar, despite the fact that he did appear in some classic films.  (He also appeared in a lot of B-movies, which is perhaps one reason why the Academy was hesitant to honor him.)  Personally, I think Carradine most deserved a nomination for playing “Pastor” Jim Casy in John Ford’s The Grapes of Wrath.  Carradine is ideally cast as the former preacher turned labor activist.  When he’s alive, he gives the Joads hope.  When he dies, both the Joads and the audience start to realize how difficult things are truly going to be.

1942: Ronald Reagan Is Not Nominated For Best Supporting Actor For Kings Row

Kings Row is an enjoyably over-the-top small town melodrama and future President Ronald Reagan is fantastic in the film, with his natural optimism providing a nice contrast to the truly terrible things that happen to him and his loved ones over the course of the film.  Reagan was not nominated for this performance, the one that both he and the most of the critics agreed was his best, but he should have been.

1943: Hangmen Also Die Is Not Nominated For Best Picture

Fritz Lang’s anti-Nazi classic was not nominated for Best Picture and only received two nominations (for Sound and Score).  That year, the Best Picture winner was another anti-Nazi classic, Casablanca.

1943: Shadow Of A Doubt Is Ignored

Today, it is recognized as one of Hitchcock’s best but, in 1943, Shadow of a Doubt couldn’t even score a nomination for Joseph Cotten’s wonderfully diabolical turn as Uncle Charlie.  One gets the feeling that the film’s satirical jibes at small town America and its theme of evil hiding behind a normal façade were not what the Academy was looking for at the height of World War II.  It’s a shame because, in many ways, Cotten’s Uncle Charlie was the perfect symbol of the enemy that the Allies were fighting.

1944: Tallulah Bankhead In Not Nominated For Best Actress For Lifeboat

Unlike Shadow of a Doubt, Hitchcock’s Lifeboat received several Oscar nominations.  However, Tallulah Bankhead was not nominated for Best Actress.  Perhaps the Academy was scared of what she might say if she won.

1944: Fred MacMurray and Edward G. Robinson Are Not Nominated For Double Indemnity

For all the nominations that this classic noir received, somehow neither Fred MacMurray nor Edward G. Robinson were nominated for their roles.  Both actors are brilliantly cast against type in this film.  MacMurray uses his trademark casual glibness to portray Walter Neff as being an arrogant man who is hardly as clever as he thinks that he is.  Meanwhile, Robinson’s more introspective performance leaves you with little doubt that, if anyone can solve this case, it’s him.  While Barbara Stanwyck was (rightfully) nominated, it’s had to believe that both MacMurray and Robinson were snubbed.

1946: Thomas Mitchell and Lionel Barrymore Are Not Nominated For Best Supporting Actor For It’s A Wonderful Life

As wonderful as James Stewart and Donna Reed are, it just wouldn’t be Bedford Falls without Uncle Billy and Mr. Potter!  Thomas Mitchell breaks your heart in the scene where he tries to remember what he did with the lost money.  And, for audiences who had just lived through the Great Depression, Lionel Barrymore represented every businessman who cared more about money than people.  It’s impossible to imagine the film without them …. or without Henry Travers, for that matter!  Seriously, very few films have received three best supporting actor nominations but It’s A Wonderful Life deserved to be one of them.

1948: Humphrey Bogart Is Not Nominated For Best Actor For The Treasure of the Sierra Madre

The Treasure of the Sierra Madre received four Oscar nominations.  Somehow, not one of those nominations was not for Humphrey Bogart.

1948 and 1949: Red River, Fort Apache, and She Wore A Yellow Ribbon Are Not Nominated For Best Picture

The public may have loved Westerns but the Academy largely shied away from them, with a few notable exceptions.  Howard Hawks’s Red River and John Ford’s Fort Apache and She Wore A Yellow Ribbon are today all recognized as being classic Hollywood films.  However, the Academy, then at the height of its bias towards “genre” films, didn’t honor any of them.

1949: James Cagney Is Not Nominated For Best Actor For White Heat

“Top of the world, ma!”  Maybe so, but not top of the Oscars.  The Academy was always more interested in honoring Cagney for being a song-and-dance man than for honoring him for his iconic gangster roles.

Agree?  Disagree?  Do you have an Oscar snub that you think is even worse than the 10 listed here?  Let us know in the comments!

Up next: Get ready to hate the commies and to love Ike because the 50s are coming!