BEFORE: Just about a week left to go in the Hitchcock chain, and I'm sure ready for a change of scenery. And it's just about 40 days until Comic-Con, but I've got a weekend trip to Portland, OR coming up before that. I was able to continue watching films while in Massachusetts but I'll have to suspend operations while I'm on the West Coast. Hitchcock carries over for another cameo - tonight he misses a bus.
THE PLOT: A New York advertising executive is mistaken for a government agent by a group of foreign spies, and is pursued across the country while he looks for a way to survive.
AFTER: Well, Hitchcock had to change with the times, and at some point Nazis got replaced by Soviets, and probably nobody was happier than him when the Cold War heated up - he got to tell all those spy stories again, just changing the villain. The Russkies were always sneaking around stealing our secrets, or so he would have us believe. And any American could have easily been mistaken for an agent, captured by the Commies and tortured to reveal state secrets.
Roger Thornhill gets mistaken for the mysterious "George Kaplan", though we never really learn what it is about him that makes him fit Kaplan's profile, especially since no one's ever seen Kaplan (Umm, so how can he look like him?). Old Hitch loved his mistaken identities - sometimes you get mistaken for a store robber, and sometimes a secret agent - it cuts both ways, apparently.
And once you get marked as an agent, how hard is it to prove that you're NOT that guy? Go ahead, try and prove a negative. Trust me, you're better off going on the run to find Kaplan, especially if you've been framed for murder. Because even though the police are mostly incompetent, how do you prove that you DIDN'T kill that guy?
He meets a lovely woman after jumping on the train to Chicago, and before he can realize that she's in this thing up to her eyeballs, they've already shared a meal on the dining car, a berth on the sleeping car, and who knows what else. Because we all know by now that sharing time together on the run is the fastest way to a lasting relationship, at least in a Hitchcock film.
But Eve Kendall is sort of cut from the same cloth as the lead from "Vertigo", namely our hero learns about halfway through the film that everything he knows about her could be wrong, and that she has her secrets. Still, I think this shows a lot of growth over the course of Hitchcock's career - his first few leading ladies were either innocent and helpless or conniving and slutty. There was a turnaround at some point, perhaps it was Ingrid Bergman in "Notorious", where it became OK for his women to be smart and to take a larger role in the proceedings, and not just be wives or girlfriends.
Like "Vertigo", this film was just a bit too long. Both stories could have easily been cut down to under two hours just by losing some of the middle bits, which is where they dragged.
Also starring Cary Grant (last seen in "To Catch a Thief"), Eva Marie Saint (last seen in "On the Waterfront"), James Mason (last seen in "A Star is Born"), Martin Landau (last heard in "Frankenweenie"), Leo G. Carroll (last seen in "Strangers on a Train"), Jessie Royce Landis (also last seen in "To Catch a Thief"), with a cameo from Edward Platt (the chief from "Get Smart").
RATING: 7 out of 10 Redcaps
No comments:
Post a Comment