The conventional wisdom among cineastes is that Elvis Presley’s best movie was the Don Siegel Western Flaming Star (1960), mainly thanks to the fact that it was one of the few times the singer worked with an important auteur. While I bow to no one in my admiration of Siegel in general and Flaming Star in particular, it’s less a great Elvis movie than a great movie that has Elvis in it; for a terrific film by a terrific director that’s also a supercharged vehicle for what Presley did best, one need look no further than 1958’s King Creole, which […]
by Jim Hemphill on May 15, 2020With Todd Haynes’s classic Safe now streaming on Criterion Channel (and seeming utterly prescient in its concerns), we’re reposting our Summer, 1995 cover story: Larry Gross’s interview with Haynes. — Editor Todd Haynes, director of Sundance Grand Prize Winner Poison and the underground classic Superstar, was inspired to make his latest feature, Safe, by his visceral response to New Age recovery therapists who tell the physically ill that they have made themselves sick, that they are responsible for their own suffering. Carol White, played superbly by Julianne Moore, is an archetypally banal homemaker in the San Fernando Valley who one […]
by Larry Gross on Apr 2, 2020One of the most flat-out entertaining action-comedies of the 1980s — and one of the most inexplicably obscure — is now available on Blu-ray thanks to the good people at indie label Code Red. Highpoint (1982) stars Richard Harris as an unemployed accountant who finds himself at the center of a wild adventure involving the CIA, organized crime and a wealthy family whose members include a brother who has faked his own death (Christopher Plummer) and a sister with whom Harris falls in love (Beverly D’Angelo). The increasingly elaborate plot is gleefully silly and spectacularly amusing, anchored by Harris’ witty […]
by Jim Hemphill on Jun 16, 2017Brian De Palma has been accused by detractors of being nothing more than a shameless Hitchcock imitator. Peet Gelderblom’s video essay puts that to the test, using De Palma’s beloved split screen to compare and contrast shots from both director’s films. Hitchcock is on the left, De Palma on the right.
by Filmmaker Staff on Dec 8, 2016Kent Jones’ 2015 documentary Hitchcock/Truffaut airs tonight, August 8, on HBO at 9 p.m. EST. Inspired by François Truffaut’s book of the same title from 1966, the film delves into the work of Alfred Hitchcock. Here is a clip from the AFI Harold Lloyd Master Seminar where Truffaut discusses how Hitchcock and Roberto Rossellini influenced his own work.
by Marc Nemcik on Aug 8, 2016In this video, The Nerdwriter meticulously breaks down how the blocking and staging of a key expository scene from Vertigo, showing how choreography and camera placement serve as visual language for the themes that’ll dominate the movie. If you haven’t seen Vertigo, a) what’s up with that? b) spoilers galore.
by Filmmaker Staff on Mar 28, 2016The formal title of Hitchcock/Truffaut (alternately Hitchcock and The Cinema According to Alfred Hitchcock) is a vexed question mooted by its famous title design: Hitchcock’s name on one side, François Truffaut’s on the other. First published in 1966 and revised before Truffaut’s death, it’s one of the most commonly name-checked starter texts for anyone looking to learn more about film. In a series of extensive, probing and relatively unguarded conversations, Truffaut guides Hitchcock through his work film-by-film. Illustrated by numerous stills (including one- and two-page layouts showing every shot choice from particularly famous/intense sequences, breaking them down in a lucid, teachable way), the book allows a director in total command […]
by Vadim Rizov on Dec 4, 2015When I meet Tippi Hedren in Vienna, we’re with a handful of other journalists for nearly an hour-long roundtable interview. There are less than ten of us, but after a series of interruptions, digressions, poking, and prodding, the pack feels more like an encroaching swarm. But Hedren is no stranger to this kind of journalistic interrogation. The recent Viennale programmed a tribute to her and invited Hedren from her home on the Shambala Preserve in California for her first visit to the capital of Austria. The animal rights activist also worked with both Alfred Hitchcock and Charlie Chaplin, so Hedren’s presence at […]
by Taylor Hess on Nov 18, 2015Jorge Luengo Ruiz’s straightforwardly titled supercut breaks down Hitchcock’s close-ups (from Rebecca to Family Plot; the British films await their own supercut) by category: hands, money, letters, paintings. Brisk work.
by Filmmaker Staff on Oct 27, 2015In this fairly typical Hitchcock interview from 1960, the director adjusts his tie and sits down for a brisk promotional session for Psycho, describing the plot with typical drollery and running through some of his greatest soundbite hits: the oft-told story about how he was imprisoned briefly as a child at his father’s request, qualifying his statement that actors should be treated like cattle (“You mean you want to make them larger cattle than they are?”), and whether he’s ever wanted to be an actor himself (“Nothing so low as that”).
by Filmmaker Staff on Feb 9, 2015