Rear Window #2

Thorvald arrives home while Lisa is inside his apartment looking for evidence. What is it about Grace Kelly? I'm not talking about the sensuality kept in check by good breeding yada yada, I'm talking about her sadness. She's not a great actress, that is, you don't completely buy Lisa as a fleshed-out character, but Kelly's melancholy works in conveying Lisa's unenviable situation as "the perfect woman" ignored by Jeff for his telephoto lens. In the end, by breaking and entering, nearly getting strangled, and hauled away by the police, as observed by Jeff, she wins him. A victory?

Tomorrow starts Lost Boys, followed by some new Alice posts. 

Rear Window #1

L.B. "Jeff" Jeffries is much more interested in the goings-on of the neighbors than he is in his would-be fiancée Lisa. He only seems to come alive when seeing things he shouldn't, and when his neighbor's wife disappears one night, he is most intrigued by the neighbor's careful wrapping of a saw and an enormous knife in newspaper. My greatest respect for Jimmy Stewart as an actor is for his expression when he realizes he will be able to watch Lisa through his telephoto lens digging up (they think) Mrs. Thorvald's head from the garden - wonderfully, creepily avid, as opposed to his merely tolerating her presence on his lap.

The film was based on a Cornell Woolrich (the best of the Noir fiction writers, to my mind) story, which gives Hitchcock a very strong framework to work within/against.

Please note: Carlos, my neighbor who plays Thorvald for the photo, wishes to state that he is not a murderer. He does not even own the saw, which has red acrylic paint on it. 

The Third Man #5/wrapped up

This wraps up the Third Man Series.  Circling back to the graveyard, as at the opening scene- Holly Martins waits, hoping Anna will stop. She seems to glide forward, almost resembling a nun in a wimple and habit. Although she no longer loves Harry, she has chosen loyalty to his memory as her compass point. Holly is free as a bird, although not enjoying it much. Strange, because here Anna moves forward although emotionally fixed in place, while Holly, shortly to leave the country, remains still. Well, I may provoke some controversy here, but I felt disappointed by The English Patient, which examined some of the same issues of loyalty and morality, because they were presented as serious fare, whereas this story is told so lightly (that zither music) that one is able to participate more in the story and I think come to one's own conclusions. 

Edit: The Dancer Upstairs also falls into this category of film. There are probably others?

The Third Man #4

Lime loses his divine status and passes directly into being a hunted thing.

Yup, short text today, I will be making up for it tomorrow in the concluding post for this series. Beware!

The Third Man #3

The central moment of the Third Man, Harry Lime's merry, luminous eye at the center of the darkness when he reveals himself. Despite having just been told just how terrible a human being he is, this is pure joy - the trickster choosing to step into the light , laughing at ordinary mortals as if he were Hermes or Reynard the Fox, before vanishing once again into the darkness.

The Third Man #2

Never trust a Baron with a chihuaha. This guy looks like a bad Marx brother who got kicked out for being more creepy than comical. Holly Martins meets the him at the Mozart cafe, where the Baron holds a copy of Holly Martins' immortal opus, "The Oklahoma Kid".

The Third Man #1

Callaway watches Holly Martins who watches Anna Schmidt. The Third Man is a film of overcoats - here there are Callaway's hard edged official leather coat, Martins' worn nubbly coat, and Anna's poor actress thin one. Later we will see Harry Lime's suave unfathomable black coat.

Dark Passage #6

Here you see Madge Rapp, the murderer of Victor's wife and also of his friend George. Madge is a woman like a demented terrier, as played with great vitality by Agnes Moorhead. I think I am exaggerating here, and she didn't actually kill George with his clarinet, but with a trombone. George is portrayed as an obliging fellow, so possibly he offered Madge, a woman half his size, a stool to stand on while she beat him to death. 

Madge, Madge - your 12 foot tall satin curtain has seen too much, and is shortly to hurl you from your own window when you attempt to hide behind it.

At least, if you believe Victor. He ends up in a white dinner jacket dancing with Irene in a club in Peru. Is he able to afford well-tailored white dinner jackets because he is making a living as a hit man? We'll never know. 

Can you finish this sentence for tomorrow's opening scene "Last night I dreamed..."

Dark Passage #5

Victor struggles with the blackmailer Baker. The original fight scene was shot under the Golden Gate Bridge at Fort Point, the same location as was used in Vertigo. In Vertigo, Kim Novak ends up in the water (not really there). Here, Baker ends up on the rocks below (which are there). Another interesting scene, in that Victor apparently flings Baker up into the air and over the cliff by sort of grunting or something...I couldn't figure out the technique. I have one more scene from this film which I have yet to shoot, so it may air next week.

Edit: Oh, forgot to say about the finale - the murderer revealed!

Dark Passage #4

Victor keeps trying to leave Irene so she won't be involved in his problems, first when he gets his plastic surgery - but his best friend gets murdered. After the bandages come off, he sets out again. I usually desaturate the figures, but I left the blue morning light in this one. Eventually he gets to a diner, but never gets to eat his bacon and eggs.
Films will be continuing into August, I remembered The Third Man and spent about an hour last night on Joseph Cotton's clothes - the Criterion restoration lets you see every tweedy nub.

Edit: I had to link to this . I found it hysterically funny, but I don't know if anyone who is not a visual person will see it that way.

Dark Passage #3

This photo was taken at the foot of the Filbert Street steps. The frame is meant to dsuggest the view of the Bay one would have from Irene's apartment. 

After Vincent (Bogart) collapses after ringing her door buzzer, she hoists him into the elevator and onto a couch in her apartment. He revives to find her facing him, impeccably groomed. "You were no featherweight" she tells him. Thing is, you pretty much believe in her superpowers - she is just so magnificently poised. She proceeds to bring him breakfast in bed for two weeks before removing his bandages. 

Question: Why do women even bother to have hair after Bacall?

A word on the process: it's much easier to get a resemblance with people I like - Bacall was relatively easy to draw, while Tippi Hedren, who seems sort of absent to me, I drew over and over and never quite nailed it. Tom Waits, the absolute easiest.

Dark Passage #2

Here you see Humphrey Bogart climbing the Filbert Street steps. He has just encountered the first two of a trio of fairytale characters, the first being a lonely cabbie who identifies him as a convicted killer and drives him to a plastic surgeon. Now THIS guy, the plastic surgeon, looks like a wierd little gnome who lives in a tree. He laughs way too much and only charges $200 for the 90-minute treatment he invented which caused him to get thrown out of the A.M.A.

This is the wooden path up to Irene Jansen's apartment in the art deco building, which runs beside the Marchant Gardens now. It was a trash-filled area  between the cottages on either side until Grace Marchant moved there in 1949 and built a beautiful hillside garden. After she died, others took up its maintenance. There are more photos and history of this beautiful enterprise here.

Dark Passage #1

Lauren Bacall still seems startlingly modern when she appears on the screen in this odd film. She is standing in front of the apartment building she lives in at Filbert and Montgomery in San Francisco. The film is the story of a man who breaks out of prison, having been unjustly accused of his wife's murder. We don't see his face, although he has Humphrey Bogart's voice. Irene Jansen, the Bacall character, picks him up near San Quentin and hides him in her ritzy digs because she thinks he "got a raw deal". This is only the first of many preposterous goings-on.

"Forget it, Jake...

...it's Chinatown". Would somebody please explain this to me? Cause, it's not Chinatown at all,  it's the John Huston character causing all the trouble. "Chinatown" is possibly meant to symbolize a complex place in which Jake Gittes is an innocent/foreigner, but the phrase does not work as irony.  Are you simply meant to cross out "Chinatown" and substitute "Los Angeles"? What am I complaining about? It just seems that the defining phrase of the film doesn't actually contain any meaning, it just sounds wicked cool. But feel free to disagree with me.

Vertigo: Hollow Dreams

The last scene I am doing for Vertigo...Scotty goes on, of course, to try to duplicate the doll-like, barely present Madeleine. Why is it that we human beings (and I include myself) will, if we do something that doesn't work, simply repeat the first mistake only trying harder? 

Edit for further consideration:

The fool who persists in his folly will become wise

               - William Blake

Vertigo: taking a dip

This is from the day I started out to get to the famous spot under the Bridge, but my feet got tired...so I substituted another San Francisco Landmark which appears in Vertigo, the Palace of Fine Arts. One more scene from Vertigo to go -

Vertigo: Infinite regression

Johnny watches Madeleine (who is not Madeleine) watching the gravestone of Carlotta. The casting of Kim Novak, whose shoulders seem about twice as wide as Stewart's, in the part of someone who is presented as ethereal is certainly piquant. I have the experience while drawing things of understanding them differently, and it did seem that it was almost as if the suit were walking around by itself, silvery and exquisitely tasteful.

Vertigo

His rooftop experience made him shaky on heights (the illustration friday prompt is shaky). Vertigo, for me, is barely a suspense film at all, it is so much about disillusion and the folly of taking appearance over substance. It could almost be seen as the director's informing the audience of what is really behind Hollywood glamour (the original meaning of glamor was for a sort of enchantment the fairies threw over things to fool mortals).

Photographed at the bike rack at Grand Avenue and Lakeshore.