Century of Film Making

The last scent in Psycho where he looks up , under his lashes and says

* see, i couldnt hurt a fly*. Scared the hot chocolate out of me!

For me, Hitchcock was the ultimate master . He never used overt “scary bits”. There was not a lot of blood and gore as in todays so called frighteners . He used the imagination of his audience and that is far scarier.

I’m a huge fan of Hitchcock.
Indeed rightly called “The Master Of Suspense”, and whilst I still believe that Kubrick is the greatest filmmaker of all time in that not only did he perfect the art form but literally transformed it, one cannot deny the impact and sheer entertainment value of many Hitchcock films.
In many ways it’s unfair to compare the two, so I’ll stop that.. Sorry 8-[

Earlier on, three works stand out for me..THE 39 STEPS, REBECCA and SABOTEUR.

Eve is absolutely right about Hitchcock letting us use our own minds to scare the hot chocolate out of each other.

I remember being terrified when a kid watching a tv Hitchcock where some guy arranges an insurance scam whereby he pretends to die and is buried, arranging a narrow air vent to allow him to breathe in his coffin six foot under. Unfortunately, as we and he discover at the end, the letter informing his co-conspirator that he is alive and in Burial Plot #1147 is accidentally thrown away, and we are left with him in his dark windowless coffin gradually realising that he’s not going to get out.

Yikes!! *screaming abdabs!!!! I ended up like Julie Andrews running round the moors like an escaped loon waving me arms around singing!!!

last scene of a film called The Umbrellas of Cherbourg.

Saw this as a teenager, wearing me Val Doonican cardigan with brown buttons, and me co-op glasses..a 17 year-old looking like a 45 y/o bore

usual romatntic tosh (all music) of young couple dreaming their way to marriage when the guy is then called up to fight in Algeria. They decide to enjoy his last night, wiht the result that she gets preggers (how did that happen, says a shocked and prim mum? the usual way comes the reply from the gorgeous Catherine Deneuve). He’s away, thinking of her and baby-to-be, and a rich jeweller woos and wns her, taking her to Paris.

He returns and turns morose and surly, bullying his way out of his job and very very bitter and upset. He finally marries the less gorgeous gal as a second-bestand settles down to running a garage.

In the last scene, set against the snow, his wife and little lad go christmas shopping and who should suddenly turn up for petrol but his ex- and the little girl he’s never seen. Boy, did this shock the young Val Doonican, who had never imagined in his life that you cd have a kid and the woman run off. But a very very moving scene where he accepts that he’ll never see his daughter and ends embracing his wife and laughing and paying snowball fights with his young lad, all to the pop music so beloved of people then (remember bacharac and all that crowd).It’s actually a very moving scene.

The young Val Doonican took note of the fact that real life might get rather complicated. How disturbing. Still, couldn’t happen to him. Settles back to Val, gently strumming on his guitar while singing that ‘a guy chases a girl until she catches him’ (with a smiling wholesome woman echoing ‘until she catches him’), never dreaming that some men stay awake all night just to be able to see their child asleep before s/he leaves in the morning.