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8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Hitchcock, A Cinematic Master, April 4, 2001
Any fan of Alfred Hitchcock will understand the voyeuristic desire to watch over & over his classics. Rear Window, The Man Who Knew Too Much and the collection of Alfred Hitchcock Presents continue in the fine line of special edition releases (such as the first collection)in an affordable and worthy boxed set. James Stewart's performances in these the first two movies exemplify the actor's diversity as well as Hitchcock's admiration of such a talent and each performance is different. For example, in Vertigo, Stewart is a darkly personal (yet slightly neurotic) character, where his obsession and confusion get the best of him in the voyeuristic Rear Window. Equally great is his innocent tourist in the Man Who Knew Too Much. What else can be said about Hitchcock's TV program, except that I wish it were still in syndication or even being produced in 2001.All I can say is FANTASTIC and EXCELLENT works from one of the masters whose artistic vision influenced and influences many!
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5.0 out of 5 stars
Only for The Man Who Knew Too Much 1956, February 9, 2009
This film has aged very little because this time Alfred Hitchcock does not try to identify the enemy. It might be anyone from any country where the prime minister can be a fat white man who has good relations with Great Britain. Our Alfred meddles a little with Morocco and the French police in 1956. No surprise since Morocco was under the control of the French then. The main part concerns England three Americans lost in Britain, a surgeon, his singing wife and their charming Henry Hark of a son. The poor doctor who was taking a few days of vacation in the Maghreb with his family after a conference in Paris was amazed by the atmosphere and the strange people he met in Marrakech. But the plot thickens faster than it takes time for it to sickens and there we are with a child that was kidnapped under his own eyes, a man who was assassinated in the market place, some murmured secret whispered in his ear by the dying man who will reveal himself as being a French secret agent who does know how to fight back and only knows how to run when he is menaced by one knife. Ah! Those Frenchmen! Then London is not better. They run around from imbroglio to more imbroglio, from a taxidermist's to a chapel to an embassy to the Albert Hall to Scotland Yard to many other places. And all is well that ends well. And all ends well since all is well. But the humor of Alfred Hitchcock is so harsh at times, though here full of dainty nuances and nice tact. The cops are depicted as considerate and caring and yet distant when necessary. No brutality, no blackmailing, just the necessary coolness to make you understand that if you don't want to speak, then you are alone. And alone they are. The criminals who are mixing crime and politics since they are organizing a political assassination are priests in a local chapel in London, in Ambrose Street exactly. The wife is tender and supports the escape of the kidnapped son, which could mean their own death or arrest. This time he does not snigger at the cooking habits of the English, and their evolution, but at the eating habits of the Moroccans, with two fingers of their right hand - right mind you - and no use at all of their left hand. It is details like that, always reported and revealed with some empathy if not compassion, that make Hitchcock's style. And then you have his obsession of climbing and descending stairs. The stairs at the Albert Hall, and the stairs at the Embassy, and many other stairs here and there, plus of course the brand new way to exit a church, or a chapel as for that: use the bell rope to go to the top of the church tower and then use the rope you have shifted outside to go down to the ground. That's a fair use of a rope that is at least less sinister than its use in "Rope" or the use of the bell tower, bells and belle rope in "Vertigo". A little bit of a change. But climbing you have to when you are working for that Alfred. Climbing down too. And all that climbing connected with political terrorism before the term became popular. It was called a revolution in those days and it was trendy, in and fashionable to believe the world could not change in any other way. And Cuba was still to come, and after that one quite a lot in South America, in Africa and in Asia, and the war was just stopped for a couple of years in Vietnam and the war had already started in Algeria. When we think that Latin America has changed more in ten years with plain old elections than it had in fifty years before with violence, military like Pinochet or civilian like Nicaragua. Only one touch of hardly acceptable humor at the beginning. It was humor in 1956. But it is not any more. Yes it is something serious to pull the lace veil off the face of a woman in Morocco, even by accident. But that's really the only sign of aging, and a good sign about the world. The film is funny at times, dramatic at other times, always fast enough to be challenging and thrilling in a way though we don't know the embassy that is concerned by all that hullabaloo. And be careful not to be bitten by a lion's head on a wooden platter or sawed raw by a saw fish in the awkward hands of a seventy-one year old man.
Dr Jacques COULARDEAU, University Paris 1 Pantheon Sorbonne, University Versailles Saint Quentin en Yvelines, CEGID
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5.0 out of 5 stars
Two Important Cinematic Works from Alfred Hitchcock, April 4, 2007
1954's REAR WINDOW is a brilliant study on voyeurism and insatiable curiosity. Wheelchair bound James Stewart spies on his neighbors in the courtyard from the window of his Greenwich Village apartment. Convinced that he has uncovered a murder, Stewart maintains his vigil with his society girlfriend (Grace Kelly) by his side. Hitchcock asks the viewer about the ethics of interpreting what goes on behind the closed doors of our neighbors, as his courtyard is an allegorical cross section of American society and mores during the 50s. 1956'S THE MAN WHO KNEW TOO MUCH is Hitchcock's effective remake of his own 1934 version. An American couple (James Stewart and Doris Day) visiting Morocco have their young son kidnapped as part of an international murder plot which they can not help but be drawn into. Doris Day's performance is brilliant as the mother whose son has been taken from her. Her initial reaction to the news is almost unbearable to watch. This film is very suspenseful and disturbing, as the odds against the family regaining their boy seem insurmountable as the film progresses. This is reinforced by Bernard Herrmann's almost minimal score, which adds an undercurrent of discomfort to the psyche of the viewer. There are some very memorable scenes such as when James Stewart is followed by echoing footsteps in the empty London streets on his way to finding Ambrose Chappell. The suspenseful Albert Hall assassination scenes are brilliantly filmed and edited. The face of Reggie Nalder as Rien the Assassin is unforgettable. Brenda de Banzie turns in a complex performance as Mrs. Drayton. Bernard Miles as Mr. Drayton also gives an effective performance through the various identities he goes through. And that is one of the strengths of this film: people and places are not exactly as they seem. Characters constantly evolve. Some grow in strength while others are mere shadows of virtue. James Stewart's performances in each represent a man who finds himself in a world where he no longer has control over the destiny of his loved ones. His reactions to that dilemma are handled slightly different in each film. His female counterparts in each put themselves in jeopardy to return order and stability to their normal environments.
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