Movies 'Til Dawn Blog

HITCHCOCK TALKS ‘ROPE’

Continuing this week’s Leopold and Loeb theme, here’s a clip of Alfred Hitchcock on The Dick Cavett Show’ discussing, among other things, the long-take method of the movie that I described in yesterday’s post. Far from the forbidding figure we sometimes think of him as, Hitch is amusing, droll and

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‘ROPE’–THE CLIMAX!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8ggnZ-2Ns54 Welcome bac;k to Leopold and Loeb week. On Monday I posted Henry Fonda’s tour de force performance as Clarence Darrow, the lawyer who successfully kept Leopold and Loeb from being executed. Yesterday we watched the trailer of the L&L inspired movie ‘Compulsion’. Today lets watch a very impressive long-take

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STRANGERS ON A TRAIN: THE CAROUSEL BIT

Above, witness the still horrific climactic carousel-out-of-control scene from Alfred Hitchcock’s ‘Strangers On A Train’. The previous two days I’ve posted on Raymond Chandler, including a fine mini-doc on the corruption filled Los Angeles of the 1930s that inspired his early writing as well as a cameo appearance by the

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RAYMOND CHANDLER…ACTOR?

I’ve seen ‘Double Indemnity’ (screenplay by Billy Wilder and Raymond Chandler based on James M. Cain’s novel) about a thousand times over the past fifty years and never knew–or frankly cared about– the identity of a man sitting outside Barton Keyes’s (Edward G. Robinson) office. Sixteen or so minutes into

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GOOD NIGHT FROM KHJ-TV

Why did television stations used to sign off in the wee morning hours? Couldn’t they get anyone to work the overnight shift? Aren’t TV stations supposed to be like hotels–they never close? At least the sign offs were dramatic and interesting. Dig the above 1970 sign-off from KHJ-TV, Channel 9,

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MEL BROOKS’ HITCHCOCK STORY

Here’s Mel Brooks, age 91, on an English chat show telling the story of showing Alfred Hitchcock the finished version of ‘High Anxiety’. I love Mel’s reaction to dopey Russell Brand–his face clearly reads: ‘who is this prick and what am I doing sharing a show with him?’

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