Imaptience/Rebecca #4

Maxim displays impatience (illustration friday prompt) with the narrator when she wears a costume identical to that of the previous Mrs. DeWinter. This is the quotidian woman's fear of wearing the same outfit as another woman blown up to operatic proportions. In the novel, the heroine completes her passage into Real Woman hood by becoming complicit in concealing the fact that her husband is a murderer - in the movie, it softened, so that the Rebecca just kind of bumped her head when she fell over. I have another rumination for Saturday, Sunday...hmmm. The Third Man starts on Monday.

Rebecca #3

Mrs. Danvers forces the narrator to listen to her obsessive rant about the first Mrs. DeWinter. The performance of Judith Anderson as Mrs. Danvers seems to me exactly the performance that an Egyptian sphinx,  inserted into domestic service, would give - stony, unknowable, implacable.

Rebecca #2

My story begins in the South of France...

I wish, ha, it's actually Lake Merritt in Oakland. Return with me to the romantic days of yesteryear, when if a man told a woman she was "A little fool" it meant he thought she was, you know, kind of hot. In this scene, the unnamed narrator stops Maxim DeWinter, played in dry-stick like fashion by Laurence Olivier, from taking a header off a cliff. He does not appear to be thankful.

North by Northwest #2

Photograph taken on a mailbox on Mira Vista in Oakland. 

North by Northwest

It's the economy! 

We be sorry consumers now, you bet.

This is a second version of one I posted earlier, I have two North by Northwests to come. 

The Birds

Some days are duck soup, and some days you get nibbled to death by ducks. Thanks to D. for suggesting this film.

What a strange film this is - it could almost be called "Tippi Hedren's hair gets mussed", as the state of her coiffure is a recurring plot point, and her ultimate loss of poise the most dramatic incident in the film. The shrieking seagulls sound as if bags full of cats are being shaken around. The mother of the well-chinned hero looks just like Tippi, except in grey instead of green (get it?). There is no particular relief of tension at the end - the outline's of Stephen King's story the Mist is visible in this film, the idea of monsters visited on ordinary daylight life.

Of course, Stephen King is concerned with monsters, where Hitchcock seems to be about anxiety - people being trapped by their fears or lack of understanding. Any thoughts about this film?

Link to youtube mashup

Photo taken at Oakland's Lake Merritt

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

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.