Movie thoughts and fiction updates.
Dripping with atmosphere, brimming with wonderful performances, and feeling like there's a ghost around every corner of the almost mythic Manderley, Alfred Hitchcock's Rebecca may be one of his lesser great works, but it's still great. That we can talk about the gradations of his great films is a testament to how many he had… Continue reading Rebecca: A Second Look
I've gone through all of Alfred Hitchcock's filmography, and I can easily say that the man made a lot of movies over a long period of time. From the mid 20s to the late 70s, he has directing credits on fifty-three feature films that still exist. That's a lot of ground to cover, and it's far… Continue reading Hitchcock, The Early Years – A Retrospective
#12 in my ranking of Mel Brooks' filmography. I think it's pretty obvious that Mel Brooks loved the work of Alfred Hitchcock. I do not think he really understood it, though. I disagree with some contemporary reviewers who said that it was simply impossible to satirize or make a parody of Hitchcock films because of… Continue reading High Anxiety
A top 53. Not even close to a Top 10. Hitchcock's career as director spanned 51 years and saw the advent of sound, the profusion of color cinematography, the adoption of widescreen aspect ratios to combat television, and the beginnings of the fall of the studio system. He started as a contract director with British… Continue reading Alfred Hitchcock: The Definitive Ranking
#29 in my Ranking of Alfred Hitchcock's films. We come to it at last, Alfred Hitchcock's fifty-third completed and unlost film that is also his last ever made. From 1925's The Pleasure Garden to 1976, he made movies that cinema will never forget, and like many great filmmakers, he went out without hitting the same… Continue reading Family Plot
David Vining, Author 