Classics at The Alameda: North by Northwest

Cary Grant is my all-time favorite movie star. It's always great fun to see him in North by Northwest as the ultimate falsely-accused man-on-the-run - although Hitchcock made something of a specialty of this type of film, of course, including another one of my favorites, The 39 Steps. I'm pleased to say that the projection was pretty good today at the Alameda; rarely soft and pretty well-framed. Prior to the show, I asked the fellow at the snack bar whether the staff had pre-screened the print with an eye to ensuring good focus; turns out they did, until 5 AM this morning.

In addition to the feature presentation, the Alameda also screened a few charming shorts prior to the main show: Tex Avery's 1951 Symphony in Slang, a very short promo about a boy who sees Santa Claus in everyone and the classic John Waters "No Smoking" announcement. The latter was especially nice to see as it reminded me of my frequent trips to the old UC Theater in Berkeley when I first moved to California ten years ago. That sadly defunct repertory grindhouse played nightly double-features of classics, foreign films and cult favorites - and always opened the show with the sardonic Waters' bit:


Today, watching North by Northwest, I was struck by a couple of things. First - something I also noticed again last week during the Vertigo screening - Bernard Herrmann, the great film composer, frequently recycled bits and pieces of his scores, or at least that's how it seems to me. I first noticed this when writing a major essay on the use of sound in Citizen Kane in film school. Being a great fan of that film and also Vertigo, I noticed that some of the music in the first film seems to have been used for the second. This is not precisely the case; it's more a matter of very similar-sounding chord progressions sneaking into different compositions - and the very same progression I noticed in those films is present in North by Northwest, too!

If you're curious, listen to the music Herrmann uses in the Thatcher Library scene in Kane, just as the reporter, Mr. Thompson, begins to read Thatcher's journal, before the film dissolves into the depiction of the snowy day when Thatcher arrived to take young Kane away from his parents - and a certain favorite sled. Compare this music to the theme in Vertigo, repeated throughout the film, that can be heard as "Madeleine" stares at Carlotta's portrait in the Palace of the Legion of Honor. I could swear that I also heard the first few notes of this same theme at one point in North by Northwest, I believe when Cary Grant returnes to Eva Marie Saint's hotel room after his encounter with the malevolent crop duster.

The second thing that struck me today was how vividly the film illustrates Hitchcock's notions of the establishment and utility of suspense versus surprise in visual storytelling. Hitchcock was the "Master of Suspense," but I suspect that this has come to mean, for some, simply that he made "scary movies," like Psycho. The trouble there is that it's too easy to see Psycho as the precedent for the slasher movies that came afterward which, to this day, tend to rely much more on surprise than on suspense, to their detriment. (If you take a look at the trailer for the pointless remake, or "reboot," of Friday the 13th, you'll see what I mean.) Here, Hitchcock explains the difference in conversation with Francois Truffaut:

We are now having a very innocent little chat. Let us suppose that there is a bomb underneath this table between us. Nothing happens, and then all of a sudden, “Boom!” There is an explosion. The public is surprised, but prior to this surprise, it has seen an absolutely ordinary scene, of no special consequence. Now, let us take a suspense situation. The bomb is underneath the table and the audience knows it, probably because they have seen the anarchist place it there. The public is aware that the bomb is going to explode at one o’clock and there is a clock in the decor. The public can see that it is a quarter to one. In these conditions this same innocuous conversation becomes fascinating because the public is participating in the scene. The audience is longing to warn the characters on the screen: “You shouldn’t be talking about such trivial matters. There’s a bomb beneath you and it’s about to explode!”

In the first case we have given the public fifteen seconds of surprise at the moment of the explosion. In the second we have provided them with fifteen minutes of suspense. The conclusion is that whenever possible the public must be informed.

This is perhaps the key to Hitchcock's art; throughout North by Northwest, in big and small ways, we see examples of this in which we are shown something that is not immediately revealed to our hero. For instance, we learn long before Cary Grant that there is no George Kaplan; we are shown Eve's gun in her purse, though Grant doesn't know about it; Hitchcock pulls out to show us the henchman waiting on the other side of the rock as Grant and Saint flee across Mt. Rushmore. This approach is a big part of what keeps the film working, in all of its splendid preposterousness.

Classics at The Alameda, week two

Last week, Young and I attended a matinee of Vertigo, the first film in the Alameda's classic film series. This week is North by Northwest. It was great to see Vertigo on the big screen again. It's always an absorbing, mysterious and deeply rewarding film. The print was from the restoration done about a decade ago and was not in the greatest shape, but that's to be expected.

What cannot be tolerated are the persistent projection problems in the Alameda's historic theater. Unfortunately, I don't think I have attended a film in this theater that has not been out-of-focus at least once or twice during the show, or poorly-framed (as it was when I saw Milk). I have been a defender of this theater to some who have been up-in-arms about the projection problems; after all, it's been operating less than a year and still must work out the kinks. At this point, though, these problems are unacceptable.

What's worse is that the theater was controversial from the beginning for refusing to hire union projectionists - there was a small group of picketers during the grand opening last year - an issue that I have reluctantly overlooked out of self-interest (that is, I want to go to my local theater even if I don't really want to cross a picket line, actual or symbolic). Now, with the projection problems continuing, it looks like the theater owner has made a a pretty boneheaded mistake.

I have sent a comment to the theater management via their website, and I encourage other disgruntled customers to do the same. This is a beautifully renovated theater, and the kind of repertory programming they are reviving with this classics series (which theater sources say is only the beginning) deserves to be praised to the skies, but quality projection has got to be a top priority.

Classics at The Alameda!

Kudos to the Alameda Theatre and Cineplex which, beginning next week, will be running a classic film series on Wednesdays and Thursdays. I am very excited about this, even though I have seen this particular slate of films many, many times:

January 14-15: Vertigo
January 21-22: North by Northwest
January 28-29: The Maltese Falcon
February 4-5: Rear Window

It's interesting that's it's basically a Hitchcock series, with a Huston thrown in - but they'll get no complaints from me. I hope this continues on throughout the year. I have longed for such a series since the fabulously renovated theater re-opened in May, but had not dared to hope there was room yet for repertory film programming in this world of ours. I will be attending every one of these films - and hopefully will be able to twist some nearby arms to attend with me.

I believe I have only seen Vertigo on the big screen in the past - though possibly Rear Window, too. The opportunity is simply not there often enough. I hope folks come out for these screenings so they will continue. The theater has changed the website announcement a couple of times since I first saw it; at one point the films were labeled as being on AFI's list of the 100 Best American Films, which suggests they might explore more of that list in the future. Yay! I hope they show Citizen Kane (which actually happens to be one of my favorite films, absolutely thrilling every time I see it, and I've seen it A LOT). I get the feeling that few people have actually watched the "greatest film of all time."

Which, about that - I brought up this series last night at the Lucky 13, where I successfully warded off the urge to smoke as my friends were doing, and there was some general argument about the relative weakness of AFI's list. I'd have to agree that lists that rank films (or whatever) in order of greatness are usually pretty stupid. Or perhaps the word is boring, or pointless. Whether the "greatest film" is Kane or The Rules of the Game or Ants in Your Pants of 1939 is really not a very interesting question. How the estimation of a film changes over time is rather interesting, though, which is why I think the Sight & Sound poll is valuable - this is a critics poll, taken every ten years since 1952 (with a separate director's poll, since 1992) by the British Film Institute, that asks for a list of the ten greatest films. Kane has topped the list since 1962, but what has come next has changed dramatically over time. The first film in The Alameda's series is now regarded as the #2 film of all time, for instance, though it didn't appear in the list until '82.

The best response to AFI's list, now a decade old (though it has been updated since), is that of my favorite film critic, Jonathan Rosenbaum. He rips AFI's list to shreds, for all the right reasons, and proposes an alternative list, unranked, that is vastly more idiosyncratic and worthwhile. Check it out here!