THE HITCHCOCK VILLAINS
This is my contribution to Maddy's 4th Annual Alfred Hitchcock blogathon, click here to learn more...
In 1962, French film director/critic Francois Truffaut spent a
week sequestered at Universal Studios with Alfred Hitchcock, a filmmaker he
admired extravagantly. There, the two explored each of Hitchcock’s films to
date in detail. Discussing Stage Fright (1950), one of his lesser films,
Hitchcock remarked, “The greatest weakness of the picture is that it breaks an
unwritten law: The more successful the villain, the more successful the
picture. That’s a cardinal rule, and in this picture the villain was a flop!”
Truffaut was delighted, “The better the villain, the better the picture,” he
exclaimed, “that’s an excellent formula!”
Is it? Let’s take a closer look at the villains in some of Hitchcock’s
best films.
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The much-anticipated Turner Classic Movies/NCM Fathom Events presentation of Alfred Hitchcock's The Birds screens in theaters nationwide next Wednesday night, September 19, and I'm happy to announce a random drawing for a pair of tickets to the event will be held here at Eve's Reel Life this Sunday, September 16.
Turner Classic Movies and Fathom Events are about to begin a film series in celebration of Universal's 100th anniversary with special movie theater presentations of four newly restored Universal classics.
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| Bodega School House |
Eye on
the Bay, a feature of KPIX, CBS’s San Francisco TV outlet, was recently on the
trail of director Alfred Hitchcock, traveling around the Bay Area to take an up-close look at locations used
in his films. The 20-minute piece, Hitchcock Step-By-Step, focuses on sites featured in Shadow of a Doubt (1943), The Birds (1963) and Vertigo (1958). Aaron Leventhal,
co-author of the definitive Hitchcock-in-the-Bay-Area guidebook, Footsteps in the Fog, discusses the director’s
work in the region,
providing fascinating production background as well as information on many locations. Hitchcock’s
granddaughter, Tere Carruba, talks about her grandfather from a personal point of view and Edna May Wonacott, the last surviving featured cast member of Shadow of a Doubt, speaks on television
for the first time about how she was chosen for the film and what it was like to work with Alfred Hitchcock.
