Spellbound

I

watched this movie on Ingrid Bergman Day on TCM. IMDb.com gives the plot as:

"A female psychiatrist protects the identity of an amnesia patient accused of murder while attempting to recover his memory."

It starts with Dr. Constance Petersen (Bergman) playing a relatively new psychiatrist at a mental hospital. With all the things her co-workers say about you, you understand that she's an "Ice Queen" and she never shows any emotions to her patients or her fellow doctors.

One day a new psychiatrist comes to work there, Dr. Anthony Edwardes (Peck).
Constance immediately develops a crush on Dr. Edwardes. He has strange reactions whenever he sees dark lines against a white background. Once he practically yells at Constance for making lines on the white tablecloth with her fork. He does this in front of all of his co-workers.

One day, when all of the doctors are operating on one of Edwardes' patients, he passes out. It is then that everyone begins to suspect that Edwardes isn't who he says he is.

While she's taking care of Edwardes after his 'spell', Constance compares the signature in his book to the signature on a note that he left her. She sees that they are not the same. After he leaves the hospital, she tracks him down. She realizes that he is not Dr. Edwardes, but she believes that he has amnesia and a guilt complex about something that happened to him in his childhood.

While the police are looking for this "Fake Dr. Edwardes" (they believe that he murdered the real Edwardes and took over his identity), Constance takes him to the home of one of her mentors. She is determined to help him remember who he really is, where the guilt complex comes from, and what really happened to Dr. Edwardes.

This movie had 3½ stars in the guide, and I would agree with that. It was odd seeing Gregory Peck so young. I'm used to "Atticus Finch". This young Peck reminds me of Anthony Perkins.

Whatever.

There was a twist in the movie. When it got close to the end, and Constance had finally helped him figure out his name and what had happened to the real Dr. Edwardes, I thought that the movie was over. It wasn't.

I liked the twist and the ending. I enjoyed the entire movie even though I kept thinking "Is Ingrid Bergman Isabella Rossellini's mother? She sure does look like her!" (Yes, Bergman had an affair with director Roberto Rossellini.)

I have at least one more Bergman film to watch & review. It's with Cary Grant. I can't wait! :-)

Notorious

Y

esterday was Ingrid Bergman day on TCM. I have 3 more movies to watch, but I started with Notorious starring Bergman and Cary Grant & directed by Alfred Hitchcock.

Grant played TR Devlin an Agent (they never specified what agency it was) for the US. His job was to hire Alicia Huberman (Bergman) to do something to help catch Nazis working against America. They chose her because, in the beginning of the movie, her father was put in prison for being a Nazi Agent/Treason and they knew that she was totally against his illegal activities and that she loved America because they had bugged her apartment.

So anyway, Devlin shows up at Alicia's going away party after her father is put into prison. She is leaving Miami because paparazzi (they didn't call it that in the movie) was constantly asking her questions about her father and did she know and why didn't she testify at his trial, etc.

After the party, Alicia is wasted and asks Devlin if he wants to go for a ride. She insists on driving. They get pulled over, but Devlin shows the officer his ID and says that he will take care of Alicia. They didn't get a ticket, but Alicia is suspicious of why and freaks out on Devlin because she knows that he's some kind of Agent.

Blah blah.

He tells her that America needs her to help catch the rest of her father's cohorts. Neither of them know exactly what she needs to do yet, but she agrees.

They go to Cuba (I think) and fall in love *rolling eyes* while waiting for Devlin to get a call from his superior.

Finally, Devlin finds out that Alicia is supposed to seduce or ingratiate herself with a man named Alexander Sebastian. In the past, Sebastian had been in love with Alicia and they'd even been engaged. Of course, her previous relationship with him will make it easier for her to find out information about him and his illegal dealings.

Sebastian is suspicious of Alicia's relationship with Devlin. He is sure that Devlin is in love with her and that she might possibly be in love with him too. The only way he will continue to see her is if she marries Sebastian ASAP.

Alicia goes to speak to Devlin and his superior and tells them about Sebastian's conditions. She's looking for Devlin to say that she absolutely cannot marry Sebastian, but he doesn't. He's angry with her because he believed that she was "innocent" and never having told him about her previous relationship with Sebastian.

So she marries Sebastian and starts snooping. The only place she cannot get into in the house is the wine cellar. So she has Sebastian throw a party & invite Devlin under the premise that if Devlin sees her happy with her husband, he'll stop harassing her.

She steals the key for the wine cellar from her husband's key ring & she and Devlin go in to the wine cellar and find a bottle that is full of some kind of sand. Devlin accidentally knocked the bottle over so they try to clean it up as best they can. Before they can get back to the party, Sebastian is coming down the stairs so Devlin grabs Alicia and starts kissing her & whispers "Push me away!".

At the party, Sebastian is suspicious. He notices that his key for the wine cellar is gone. The next day, when his key is miraculously back on his key ring, he goes to the cellar and finds the remains of the broken bottle and knows that Alicia is an agent.

He and his mother hatch a plan to slowly poison Alicia to death so that 1) none of his criminal cohorts will find out that he's married to an American Agent and kill him and 2) so that there will be no suspicion of murder if she's sick for a long time before she dies.

That's all I'm saying.

The movie was all right. It had 3½ stars in the guide. The pace wasn't as slow as some of the other Hitchcock movies I've seen. There were no long sequences where nothing was happening other than the score. But, once again, Hitchcock just tied it all up in a bow too fast. They're building up to this dramatic conclusion and then the "The End" frame pops up. There was no pay off, IMO.

All the freaking "passionate kisses" got on my nerves too. It was like watching a Harlequin Romance book on screen.

*Sigh*

Whatever, man. I'm really tired today. I want to be in bed right now. But I still have 3 more freaking movies to watch. :-(

Vertigo

A

nother Hitchcock movie starring James (Jimmy) Stewart. This one is about a police detective who decides to quit the police force when his Acrophobia (fear of heights) is the cause of a fellow officer's death.

He's taking time off, doing nothing, when a former college friend looks him up and hires him to watch his wife because he's afraid she's going to kill herself. Turns out that her great grandmother & grandmother had also killed themselves. His wife currently disappears for hours at a time and has no memory of where she's been or what she's done.

John Ferguson (Stewart) starts following Mrs. Elster (Novak) and one day she jumps into the San Francisco Bay. He saves her & takes her back to his apartment. She, of course, remembers nothing. When he leaves the room to answer the phone, she takes off.

The next day, she's leaving him a note thanking him for saving her and apologizing for leaving so abruptly. He sees her & they start "hanging out". He keeps asking her what happens & where she goes in her mind and why she's so terrified. He finally decides to take her to the place that she "dreams" about so that she can face her fears.

When they get to the old Spanish Mission, they admit that they love each other and then she runs into the bell tower and jumps off.

He goes on trial? for leaving the scene of a crime? I have no idea. It's retarded. But then he goes crazy and is in a mental institution for 6-12 months. I don't know if they made that clear in the movie.

That's all I'm going to tell you.

:-)

I've decided that Alfred Hitchcock movies are too long, LOL. They take for freaking ever trying to build up suspense and then something convoluted happens and it ends...finally.

If those looooooooooooong sequences with nothing going on except the score were cut by 75% I'd be a lot happier.

I think the "TCM Guy" said that this was said to be one of Hitchcock's best.

I guess. I mean, I certainly didn't expect the ending. Didn't really expect the "twist". Maybe I'm just too jaded by this century's movies with the quick editing and whatnot?

I don't know. I was really looking forward to this for Jimmy Stewart & because it was a Hitchcock movie. I think the movie sounds more interesting than it is. But at least now I know who Kim Novak was. She looks kind of like Harmony from "Buffy" and "Angel" to me, minus the porcine nose. :-)

Whatever. If you like Hitchcock, you might like this. But I wouldn't say that this is a "must see" movie.

That is all.

Marnie

Y

esterday I recorded "Marnie" starring Tippi Hedren and Sean Connery and directed by Alfred Hitchcock.

It only had 2½ stars, but I think it deserved a much higher rating. It was so much better than Suspicion, North by Northwest and Rope, IMO. It held my attention the entire time! I wanted to know why Marnie was so afraid of thunderstorms and why she freaked out every time she saw the color red.

The movie starts out with a black haired Tippi Hedren working for a man named Sidney Strutt. While she's there, Sean Connery's character (Mark Rutland) meets her. Soon after, she steals money (maybe $10,000?) from Strutt's safe and goes to her hotel where she changes her hair color to blonde.

She leaves town to ride her horse and then visit her mother who comes across as a fundamentalist Christian who has no love for her daughter. Marnie has spent her life trying to gain her mother's approval, which is one of the reasons she steals. She always sends money home to mommy and buys her expensive gifts, but to no avail.

Marnie gets another job, another new hair color, and another fake name.

The new job is at Mark Rutland's office. He knows immediately who she is and starts paying particular attention to her habits (to ward off another robbery) while falling in love with her at the same time.

After Marnie is introduced to Mark's father and SIL she freaks out. Steals more money and tries to run away.

Mark finds her and basically blackmails her with "Marry me or go to jail." Of course, she marries him.

Mark's SIL, Lil Mainwaring, is jealous/suspicious of Marnie. She learns that not only has mark spent $42,000 on a new diamond ring for Marnie, but he's also sold some stocks (or a bond) and withdrawn a substantial amount of money to pay off some man named Strutt and to pay for his South Seas honeymoon after his whirlwind marriage to Marnie.

While they are on their honeymoon, Mark finds out that Marnie has some serious sexual hangups. She claims that she doesn't like to be touched. After a couple of weeks, he eventually gets tired of his sexless marriage and...I don't know if he raped her or not, but the next morning, Marnie tries to kill herself by jumping into the pool on the cruise ship.

Mark - Why didn't you just jump into the ocean?
Marnie - The idea was to die, not to feed the damned fish.

I'm paraphrasing, obviously.

Anyway, I think there is some witty dialogue in the movie. Tippi Hedren is a much better actress than I had previously given her credit for being after seeing "The Birds". Her voice (reminiscent of her daughter, Melanie Griffith's, voice) is a little irritating, but maybe that's just me.

It was nice to see a young Sean Connery, even though I prefer the older "Hunt for Red October" version. ;-)

I really liked this movie. It's up there with Rear Window for me as an Alfred Hitchcock great.

Definitely check it out if you see it on your schedule at TCM.

You can watch the original trailer (which pretty much gives away the ending, if you ask me) to see if it's something you'd like to watch. :-)

Rope

I

was doing a search on my DVR schedule for movies by Alfred Hitchcock and I found "Rope" with James (Jimmy) Stewart, so I recorded it.

The plot, according to IMDb.com is:

Two young men strangle their "inferior" classmate, hide his body in their apartment, and invite his friends and family to a dinner party as a means to challenge the "perfection" of their crime.

Before the movie, the 'TCM Guy' said that Hitchcock had wanted to do a one take movie, but at that time (1948) movie cameras only held about 10 minutes of film so he had to do 10 minute takes and cut them together. After the movie, the 'TCM Guy' said that 4 or 5 takes had to be re-shot because the color of NYC's skyline didn't match that time of day. (The story takes place from late afternoon to early evening.)

I would be interested to know how long it took to shoot that movie since all the actors had to do steady 10 minute takes. You'd think they could do it in a short amount of time. Like a week as long as the weather cooperated? It looks like a play because there is just one setting.

Anyway, the movie was okay. I wasn't familiar with any of the actors except Jimmy Stewart. Maybe that's why I'm kind of lackluster about it? Not enough Jimmy Stewart, LOL.

It starts with a view of the street, then it moves to a window with the curtains closed. We hear a man scream.

Then we are inside the apartment and 2 men, Brandon & Phillip, are strangling a third man. They kill him because they believe that David, the 3rd guy, is inferior to them and because they believe that they can commit "the perfect murder".

They put the body inside a trunk and hold a dinner party. They serve dinner buffet style on the trunk containing David's body.

Among the invited guests are David's father, aunt & fiance. Also, David's former best friend and old teacher of all of theirs, Rupert Cadell (Jimmy Stewart). Rupert is the teacher who taught them the idea that there's nothing wrong with murder if the person being killed is inferior in some way. There is a long & spirited conversation about this theory at the dinner party.

No one knows where David is. His father had said that David was coming to the party early and he should have already been there. His fiance says that she had spoken to him earlier and he told her that he would meet her at the party. Brandon & Phillip claim they hadn't heard from him since inviting him to the party.

After the dinner party, Cadell is handed a hat that looks like his, but has David's initials on the inside of it. It is then that he begins to suspect that Brandon (the arrogant one) and Phillip (the jumpy one) have done something with David and that is why dinner was served on the trunk instead of the dining room table.

It's an interesting premise. I suppose that it was executed well considering the limitations (technology & actors) that they had in '48. I'd be interested to see a remake of this to see if I would be more excited about it than this.

Watch it if it happens to be on, but I wouldn't go out of my way to see it if I were you. I don't need to see it again.

You can see the original trailer for Rope at TCM's website. :-)

Cary Grant

L

ast week I watched Suspicion, an Alfred Hitchcock movie with Cary Grant. I didn't like that movie, so I wondered if I'd like Grant in something else. I had seen "Operation Petticoat" listed on TCM's schedule, but it's a comedy and comedies aren't usually my cup of tea. So I had to wait for a drama or suspense to see if I'd like him. I know I like looking at him, but I mean if I liked his acting, LOL.

BTW, I found The Ultimate Cary Grant Pages. Go there for hundreds of photos, a bio, etc. if you're really a fan. After watching Suspicion & North by Northwest, I couldn't help but wonder if Grant was a closet homosexual. I mean, the way he moves his hands & whatnot is very effeminate, IMO. Not that it matters. He's dead. And even if he were still alive, he'd be too old & too famous & too far away for me. I still wanted to know. Diane Cannon says he's not. She's slept with him & borne a child with/for him... I still have my doubts.

Anyway.

North by Northwest is another Hitchcock movie.

Grant plays Roger Thornhill, an advertising executive in Manhattan. He's mistaken for an FBI (or CIA) agent by some bad guys and is kidnapped. They repeatedly try to kill him, in various ways. Thornhill alternately runs from the police and to the police because he's accused of a murder that he didn't commit. When the bad guys are near, he willingly gets arrested just to get away from them.

So...there are some unbelievable things in this movie. Like Thornhill is forced to drink an entire bottle of bourbon (or something) and is still able to drive. Not well, mind you, but well enough not to drive off a cliff and kill himself.

Thornhill meets a woman named Eve Kendall (Eva Marie Saint) when he boards a train with no ticket and 1) she helps him hide from the police 2) she lets him spend the night in her room & makes out with him.

This movie was released in 1959. I didn't think they had such open sexuality back then. There was one line that Miss Saint had to dub. I tried to mute it and read her lips to see what she had really said, but no success. Something about having sex with a full stomach.

Anyway, there were some funny bits. There were some lines that made me say "Damn!" and "Oooh, burn!".

Overall, I liked the movie. I'd watch it again. But the ending, once again, was a letdown. I guess after 160 minutes, Hitchcock decided just to wrap it up even if the ending was a little too neat & cutesy.

My major question has been answered, though. I like Cary Grant. Even though he has an odd accent. It's not British, and it's not the kind of "Almost British" accent that a lot of actors had in the black & white movie days.

Whatever.

I'm writing this yesterday & my back is hurting so I'm out!

Watch it if you want to. Or don't.

:-)

Suspicion

L

ast night I decided to record "Suspicion" by Alfred Hitchcock. It had 3 stars (or maybe 3½?). It starred Cary Grant & Joan Fontaine. I don't think I've ever seen Cary Grant in a movie before and I'd never heard of Fontaine. But it was Alfred Hitchcock. I've enjoyed several of his movies including Rear Window, The Birds, Psycho.

I have to say that this was the longest 90 minutes (approximately) of my life. It felt like 3 hours.

It starts with Lina McLaidlaw (Fontaine) on a train. She looks like a librarian. Enter the dashing Johnnie Aysgarth. When the conductor comes around, we find that he has a Third Class ticket but he's sitting in First Class with Lina. He doesn't have the money to pay for the upgrade, but he "borrows" it from Lina.

Then he sees her in town while walking to church with 2 other women and they stop by her house to invite her. When they all get to the church, Johnnie takes Lina off for a walk.

Lina is a very bookish woman. Her parents think that she'll die an old maid. So the attention from this gorgeous man sweeps her off of her feet.

Within one week they are professing their love to each other and he asks her to marry him. They elope and she is taken on a whirlwind honeymoon around the world. Paris, Italy, Monte Carlo, etc.

When they get home from the honeymoon, Johnnie brings her to the house that he's rented and had furnished for her. It's a very grand house.

As soon as they get home, however, Lina finds out that Johnnie is broke. He says something like "Why shouldn't we live in style? When your parents die we will." Not that crass, obviously, but it sows the first seeds of doubt in Lina.

Throughout the movie, people tell Lina about Johnnie's gambling habit. They tell her that he's a "playa". Her father tells her that he's been kicked out of a country club for cheating at cards or something scandalous. Johnnie sells the 2 antique chairs that her father had given to her as a wedding present. They had been in her family for several generations. She also learns that he borrows money that he can't pay back and that he'd been fired from his job for stealing £2000. The only reason he wasn't prosecuted is because he was working for his cousin.

At some point, Johnnie's good friend Beaky (Nigel Bruce) stops by for a visit. I believe he was the first person to tell Lina about Johnnie's gambling. On another visit from Beaky, he drinks some brandy even though it's dangerous for him. Johnnie tells Lina not to call a doctor when Beaky starts coughing and looking like he might have a heart attack. He says "He'll either be all right or it will kill him. One of these days it will."

Johnnie comes up with a scheme to buy some land, sell half of it, and develop the other half (with Beaky's money). Finally, Johnnie decides that the deal is no good, so he makes Beaky go with him on a trip to see the land. Lina worries the entire time that Johnnie will kill Beaky. But when they both come back alive, she learns that Johnnie had actually saved Beaky's life by stopping him from backing over a cliff.

One of Johnnie's friends is a Mystery writer. Her brother is a coroner (it was interesting that they were talking about forensics in 1941. I don't know if they had DNA, but one of the characters said that even a single hair could be traced back to its owner...)

So anyway, Beaky has to go to France to cancel the land deal. He asks Johnnie to go with him, but Johnnie only goes as far as London so that he can look for work.

While Johnnie is still away, the police (Inspectors in Britain) stop by and show her a news article about Beaky dying. Apparently, he'd bet the man he was with that he could drink a large snifter of brandy. The waiter, who didn't speak good English, said that Beaky's companion was someone named Allbeam or Ollbeam. Beaky always referred to Johnnie as "Old Bean".

Now Lina thinks Johnnie killed Beaky.

When they have dinner with his writer friend & her coroner brother, they get into a discussion about poisons. Johnnie is very interested in the only untraceable poison that the Dr. mentions in passing.

Lina starts to fear that Johnnie will kill her because she'd found a letter from the insurance company stating that the £5000 loan that he had requested couldn't be given unless his wife died. So when he brings her a glass of milk one night, she refuses to drink it and decides that she needs to go stay with her mother "for a while".

I'm done.

My xanax is kicking in.

The only good thing about this movie, IMO, was looking at Cary Grant. He was a good looking man. I might check TCM for some more of his movies and see if I like those better? I don't know.

For a Hitchcock movie that won an Oscar and had 3 stars, I was disappointed. It felt longer than The Aviator with Lionardo DiCaprio. But that movie was at least interesting.

Suspicion was a whole lot of buildup for a crappy, sappy, ridiculous ending. No payoff at all.

If you've seen it, I'd be interested to hear what you thought. I don't ever need to see it again. I would not recommend you rent it or even waste space on your DVR recording it. :-(

All photos are from IMDb.com