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.

Arsenic & Old Lace

T

his was an enjoyable movie. It made me laugh out loud only once, but I found it amusing. I guess it's what you'd call a "farce".

Mortimer Brewster (Cary Grant) has just married the daughter of a minister. Brewster is a lifelong bachelor. He has even written books talking about how marriage is unnecessary and antiquated (or whatever, it doesn't matter).

So he stops by to see his 2 aunts & let them know that he's married their next door neighbor's daughter. His aunts seem very ditzy. Brewster is looking for something that he's left at their house and while he's looking for it, he finds a dead body in the window seat.

He's shocked, but at the same time, he doesn't want to scare them with the news that they have a dead body in their house. When he finds out that they know about the body, and that they've killed 11 other men & buried them in the basement, he starts wondering how to cover it up.

The comedy comes in with Brewster's reactions. He has 2 brothers. One who lives with the aunts and thinks he's President Teddy Roosevelt and another one who's a homocidal maniac and keeps getting plastic surgery and currently looks like Boris Karloff? Or Lon Chaney? I don't know. One of those old horror movie actors.

The crazy brother...I mean, the homicidal brother comes back with his plastic surgeon and a body in the trunk. He wants to hide it in the basement of his aunt's house until he finds out that there are already 12 other bodies down there.

Mortimer wants Murderous Bro out, Teddy Bro committed, and tells his new bride that he can't go through with the marriage because insanity runs in his family. There's a whole lot happening in this movie, LOL.

I'd tell you more, but I have a really bad headache right now so I'm going back to bed.

Look for it on TCM (Turner Classic Movies). It's decent if there's nothing else on, but I wouldn't go out of my way to see it. I think it had 3½ stars (out of 4) on the guide, but I'd give it 2. Maybe 2½ for Cary Grant. ;-)

Chow! (Sorry, read Cardiogirl most recently, LOL.)

Charlie Chaplin day on TCM!

T

oday is Charlie Chaplin Day on TCM (Turner Classic Movies).

I was halfway through "The Gold Rush" when Evan decided he needed to watch his shows, so I'm recording it.

The 45 minutes I've watched have me understanding why Chaplin was such a big deal back in the Silent Movie days.

I never thought I'd enjoy silent movies because the clips I've seen of other ones (not starring Chaplin) had that ridiculous music and every other frame was the card telling what someone had said.

I don't know about the other movies that will be coming on today, but this one had a narrator, so I was able to just enjoy the comedy.

Definitely check it out if you have nothing else to do today! :-)