Movie Review: “Hitch” at His Finest! :-)

October 17, 2015 by Geraldine Helen Hartman 4 Comments

I’ve always been a fan of Alfred Hitchcock’s movies. 🙂

I recently purchased this Hitchcock DVD collection from TCM and it is soooo good!

I ♥ three of these movies, 🙂 the fourth one, not so much. 😦

My mini reviews of each of the movies in this set:

Suspicion: This is the one that was “not so much”.

I’m not a Cary Grant fan, the only movie I’ve ever seen that I DID like him in was: Notorious. Other than that, he always seems to be just a “pretty boy” walking through movies, with not much depth or emotion. I know a lot of people enjoy his work but I’m not one of them. And as usual, his performance in Suspicion fell short of the mark IMO.

***

Strangers on a Train: Just wonderful! Farley Granger and Robert Walker, just shine in this tale of two men who meet on a train and from there, their personal lives are both nothing short of a “train wreck”. Robert Walker is one crazy guy in this movie, suggesting to Farley that they swap murders. A stellar supporting cast too, including Hitchcock’s daughter Patricia, who is just riveting in her role and the lovely Ruth Roman as Farley Granger’s love interest. 

Sadly, I read that Robert Walker actually died before this film was completed, due to complications from a drug he was given. He was only in his early 30s at the time. But what a final performance he gave. Haunting and memorable.

***

The Wrong Man: This movie is actually based on a true story, one of the few (or perhaps only) times that Hitchcock made a movie about an actual true person/event. Hitchcock even skipped his usual cameo appearance in this movie, due to it’s factual and tragic content.

Henry Fonda and Vera Miles star in this film and both give good performances. Henry Fonda plays the part of real-life: Manny Balestrero  a musician who worked as a bass player at the famous Stork Club in NYC. The film is set in the 1950s.

Manny (Henry Fonda) is wrongly identified and accused of a series of hold-ups, around New York city and the story unfolds how this case of mistaken identity not only goes on to impact his own life significantly, but also contributes to his wife ending up in an institution, with serious mental problems. 

A sad story but riveting and thought-provoking too. How something like this can happen to an innocent person is hard to imagine but I’m guessing, it’s more common (at least in that era) than one might think.

***

I Confess: This is my favorite in this collection. Again (and a bit ironically) another case of mistaken identity, when Montgomery Clift, playing a young priest, is accused of murder. Clift’s performance in this film is just riveting. I really can’t imagine anyone who could have played the part better.

Filmed in and around beautiful, Quebec City, this is a memorable and at times, rather dreamlike film. In addition to the investigation of the murder there is a bittersweet love story interwoven in the plot.

The musical score is perfection too and I think the right music is such a big part of setting the tone in any film. Sadly, the music is often NOT in keeping with the theme of too many older movies I’ve watched. It was definitely well done here.

I had not seen many movies with Montgomery Clift before this and never realized before just how good an actor that he was. Apparently, he showed up at a film festival in NY, where this film was being shown a couple of years before his death. When director: Peter Bogdanovich asked Montgomery what it was like to be watching himself in the theatre that day, his reply was: “It’s hard. It’s very hard.” Tragically, Clift died shortly after that of a heart-attack, at the young age of 45 .

***

This is a must-have movie collection for any Hitchcock fans.

And right now, it’s less than $10 at Amazon.com.

A real bargain for this classic collection from the Master of Suspense.

 I know I’ll be enjoying these movies, again and again. 🙂