Thursday 27 September 2012

Hitchcock's antiheroes (Strangers on a Train, Dial M for Murder)

As promised yesterday, here's another golden oldie. I published this originally on Mid-Summer Day 2010 - back when the world was young and all things seemed possible. As before sorry if any of the links have gone kaput in the intervening time.

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Over the past few weeks we've seen Strangers on a Train (1951) and Dial M for Murder (1954) at the BFI. They were part of two separate seasons, but seeing them together raised an interesting issue: antiheroes – central characters who we should want to fail in their (usually criminal) objectives, but who at least a little bit of us wants to succeed.

Wednesday 26 September 2012

Rear Window (1954, wr John Michael Hayes, dir Alfred Hitchcock)

As the BFI is in the middle of its Hitchcock celebration, I thought I might as well re-post a couple of things I did a while ago on his films. Here's Rear Window, from July 2010; I'll do my thing about anti-heroes in Dial M for Murder and Strangers on a Train tomorrow.

(I haven't checked the links at the bottom, so apologies if any of them have died.)

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Last week we went to see Rear Window at the BFI, as part of the Grace Kelly season. It was – shamefully - the first time I'd seen the film, and although it didn't grip me on first viewing as much as some of Hitchcock's other films, a repeat viewing the following morning revealed what an impressive bit of work it is.