All the films listed below are Halliwell 4* and have thriller listed as one of their categories.
Some of the “Thriller Films” I possess and enjoy include
Brighton Rock (See Classic Films Blog)
Chinatown
Don't Look Now
Foreign Correspondent (Hitchcock)
Invasion of the Body Snatchers
The Lady Vanishes (Hitchcock)
The Maltese Falcon (See Classic Films Blog)
North by Northwest (Hitchcock)
Psycho (Hitchcock) (See Classic Films Blog)
Rear Window (Hitchcock)
Rebecca (Hitchcock) (See Classic Films Blog)
The Third Man (See Classic Films Blog)
The Thirty Nine Steps (Hitchcock) (See Drama Films Blog)
Throne of Blood
Vertigo (Hitchcock)
You will no doubt have noticed that eight of those listed are Hitchcock produced and directed films. This was the area where Hitchcock stood out above all others in the film industry. He can be truthfully claimed to be an auteur – a film director whose films are so distinctive that he is perceived as the films creator in just about every sense of the word. The thriller was his specialism. He delighted in leading the audience on to the edge of their seats and then producing what he called a MacGuffin usually some factor of no real importance, but at the time it seems important.
Let’s take a more detailed look at
Chinatown is a 1974 American neo-noir film, directed by Roman Polanski. The film features many elements of the film noir genre, particularly a multi-layered story that is part mystery and part psychological drama. It stars Jack Nicholson, Faye Dunaway, and John Huston, and was released by Paramount Pictures.
The story, set in Los Angeles in the 1930s, was inspired by the historical disputes over land and water rights that had raged in southern California during the 1910s and 20s, in which William Mulholland acted on behalf of Los Angeles interests to secure water rights in the Owens Valley.
The film was nominated for eleven Academy Awards, winning in the category of Best Original Screenplay for Robert Towne. In 1991, Chinatown was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant."
Academy Awards - 1974
The film won one Academy Award and was nominated in a further ten categories:[6]
Wins
Best Original Screenplay - Robert Towne
Nominations
Best Picture - Robert Evans
Best Director - Roman Polanski
Best Actor - Jack Nicholson
Best Actress - Faye Dunaway
Best Film Editing - Sam O'Steen
Best Art Direction - Richard Sylbert, W. Stewart Campbell, Ruby Levitt
Best Costume Design - Anthea Sylbert
Best Cinematography - John A. Alonzo
Best Sound Mixing - Bud Grenzbach, Larry Jost
Best Music Score - Jerry Goldsmith
Golden Globes - 1974
Wins:
Best Motion Picture - Drama - Robert Evans
Best Actor in a Motion Picture - Drama - Jack Nicholson
Best Director - Roman Polanski
Best Screenplay - Robert Towne
Nominations
Best Actor In A Supporting Role - John Huston
Best Actress - Motion Picture Drama - Faye Dunaway
Best Original Score - Jerry Goldsmith
Other awards
1975 BAFTA, Best Actor (Nicholson), Best Direction, Best Screenplay (male)
1975 Edgar Award, Best Motion Picture Screenplay - Robert Towne
1991 National Film Registry
American Film Institute recognition
1998 - AFI's 100 Years... 100 Movies - #19
2001 - AFI's 100 Years... 100 Thrills - #16
2003 - AFI's 100 Years... 100 Heroes and Villains:
Noah Cross - Villain #16
2005 - AFI's 100 Years... 100 Movie Quotes:
"Forget it, Jake, it's Chinatown." - #74
2005 - AFI's 100 Years of Film Scores - #9
2007 - AFI's 100 Years... 100 Movies (10th Anniversary Edition) - #21
2008 - AFI's 10 Top 10 - #2 mystery film
Don't Look Now is an Anglo-Italian horror, directed by Nicolas Roeg and released in 1973. It is based on a short story by Daphne du Maurier.
Don't Look Now tells the story of a couple, Laura (Julie Christie) and John Baxter (Donald Sutherland) whose young daughter has recently drowned in a tragic accident at home. Their grief puts a sudden pressure on their marriage.
Seeking a change of scenery and an opportunity to work through their loss, they take a "working vacation" to Venice, Italy, where John has been contracted to restore an ancient church. While John attends to this project, Laura is befriended by two strange elderly sisters. One of the sisters, Heather (Hilary Mason), is blind and claims to be in psychic contact with the Baxters' dead daughter.
Laura is drawn to the sisters, but John finds their influence on her unsettling and suspects them of deceit. The ensuing drama is set against a subplot involving a serial killer who has eluded the police. John catches glimpses of a child-like figure in red raingear who resembles his dead daughter, although the figure vanishes whenever John pursues it. He begins to question his own sanity and that of his wife as Laura appears to be completely under the influence of the sisters, who in turn suggest that John shares their gift of "second sight."
John's fears and Laura's apparent obsession with the sisters lead them into a spiraling vortex of coincidences, recurring themes and motifs (light on water, breaking glass, the colour red), which reaches a dramatic conclusion in an old bell tower. John confronts the mysterious figure in red, realizing too late that his visions were premonitions of a grisly end.
A moody and sombre film set mainly in and around the canals of Venice. It is infamous for the love scene between Donald Sutherland and Julie Christie. Many reviews of this film give the impression it was all for real, but the question of did they/didn’t they still seems to persist. There is quite a surprising and shocking ending to the film. You have been warned!
Invasion of the Body Snatchers is a 1956 science fiction film based on the novel The Body Snatchers by Jack Finney (originally serialized in Colliers Magazine in 1954). It stars Kevin McCarthy, Dana Wynter, King Donovan, and Carolyn Jones. The screenplay was adapted from Finney's novel by Daniel Mainwaring, along with an uncredited Richard Collins, and was directed by Don Siegel.
In 1993, Invasion of the Body Snatchers was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant". In June 2008, the American Film Institute revealed its "Ten top Ten"—the best ten films in ten "classic" American film genres—after polling over 1,500 people from the creative community. Invasion of the Body Snatchers was acknowledged as the ninth best film in the science fiction genre.
Throne of Blood (literally "Spider Web Castle") is a 1957 film directed by Akira Kurosawa, which transposes the plot of William Shakespeare's play Macbeth to feudal Japan. It is regarded as one of Kurosawa's best films, and by many critics as one of the best film adaptations of Macbeth, despite having almost none of the play's script.
Kurosawa follows the events of Macbeth, although Kurosawa’s Washizu Taketoki (played by Toshirō Mifune) is arguably less evil than Macbeth. As with the play, the main character's comrade (General Miki, played by Minoru Chiaki) is killed when he is perceived as a threat to the throne, only to return as a ghost. There is no Macduff character in this picture; hence Washizu does not meet his end in a duel. Instead, in a spectacular scene he is shot by his own archers and stumbles forward like a porcupine before being shot in the neck. He slowly descends the stairs and dies, collapsing dramatically on the fog-soaked ground.
The Lady Vanishes (1938) is a thriller film directed by Alfred Hitchcock and adapted by Sidney Gilliat and Frank Launder from the 1936 novel The Wheel Spins by Ethel Lina White. It stars Margaret Lockwood, Michael Redgrave, Paul Lukas and Dame May Whitty, and features Cecil Parker, Linden Travers, Naunton Wayne, Basil Radford, Mary Clare, Googie Withers, Catherine Lacey and Sally Stewart
The Lady Vanishes was one of Hitchock's last films to be made in the U.K. – only 1939's Jamaica Inn came before he moved to Hollywood and began making films there for David O. Selznick, starting with Rebecca, released in 1940. It was the great success of The Lady Vanishes, after a slump of three films that were not hits, that made it possible for Hitchcock to negotiate a very good deal to work in the States.
Watch out for the lovely cameo of two cricket mad travellers (Basil Radford [Charters] and Naunton Wayne [Caldicott] whose only real fear is that they might miss the test match if they don’t get back home in time) - The characters Charters and Caldicott were created especially for the film and do not appear in the novel.
They do have some very funny lines-
Charters: If only we hadn't missed that train at Budapest. Caldicott: Well, I don't want to rub it in, but if you hadn't insisted on standing up until they'd finished their national anthem… Charters: Yes, but you must show respect, Caldicott. If I'd known it was going to last twenty minutes… Caldicott: It has always been my contention that the "Hungarian Rhapsody" is not their national anthem.
Awards and honors
The film was named "Best Picture of 1938" by the New York Times, and Alfred Hitchcock received the 1939 New York Film Critics Circle Award for "Best Director"
North by Northwest (This is the film with the famous chase of Cary Grant by a crop dusting plane and the chase in Mount Rushmore on the figure of Abraham Lincoln) It is a 1959 American suspense film directed by Alfred Hitchcock, starring Cary Grant, Eva Marie Saint and James Mason, and featuring Leo G. Carroll and Martin Landau. The screenplay was written by Ernest Lehman, who wanted to write "the Hitchcock picture to end all Hitchcock pictures". Author Nick Clooney praised Lehman's original story and sophisticated dialogue, calling the film "certainly Alfred Hitchcock's most stylish thriller, if not his best". The film is one of several Hitchcock movies with a film score by Bernard Herrmann and features a memorable opening title sequence by graphic designer Saul Bass. This film is generally cited as the first to feature extended use of kinetic typography in its opening credits.
The movie's world premiere took place in the San Sebastian International Film Festival. North by Northwest is a tale of mistaken identity, with an innocent man pursued across America by agents of a mysterious organization who want to stop his interference in their plans to smuggle out microfilm containing government secrets (a classic MacGuffin).
Awards
North by Northwest was nominated for three Academy Awards for Film Editing (George Tomasini), Art Direction (William A. Horning, Robert F. Boyle, Merrill Pye, Henry Grace, Frank McKelvy), and Original Screenplay (Ernest Lehman). The film also won, for Lehman, a 1960 Edgar Award for Best Motion Picture Screenplay.
In 1995 North by Northwest was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant".
In June 2008, the AFI revealed its "Ten top Ten"—the best ten films in ten "classic" American film genres—after polling over 1,500 people from the creative community. North by Northwest was acknowledged as the seventh best film in the mystery genre.
American Film Institute recognition
AFI's 100 Years... 100 Movies #40
AFI's 100 Years... 100 Thrills #4
AFI's 10 Top 10 #7 Mystery
AFI's 100 Years... 100 Movies (10th Anniversary Edition) #55
Rear Window is a 1954 suspense film directed by Alfred Hitchcock, and written by John Michael Hayes, based on Cornell Woolrich's 1942 short story "It Had to Be Murder", and starring James Stewart, Grace Kelly, Thelma Ritter, Wendell Corey and Raymond Burr. The film is considered by many film-goers, critics, and scholars to be one of Hitchcock's best and most thrilling pictures.
Rear Window, which received four Academy Award nominations, was added to the United States National Film Registry in 1997. It was ranked #48 on AFI's 100 Years... 100 Movies (10th Anniversary Edition).
North by Northwest was nominated for three Academy Awards for Film Editing (George Tomasini), Art Direction (William A. Horning, Robert F. Boyle, Merrill Pye, Henry Grace, Frank McKelvy), and Original Screenplay (Ernest Lehman). The film also won, for Lehman, a 1960 Edgar Award for Best Motion Picture Screenplay.
In 1995 North by Northwest was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant".
In June 2008, the AFI revealed its "Ten top Ten"—the best ten films in ten "classic" American film genres—after polling over 1,500 people from the creative community. North by Northwest was acknowledged as the seventh best film in the mystery genre.
American Film Institute recognition
AFI's 100 Years... 100 Movies #40
AFI's 100 Years... 100 Thrills #4
AFI's 10 Top 10 #7 Mystery
AFI's 100 Years... 100 Movies (10th Anniversary Edition) #55
Rear Window is a 1954 suspense film directed by Alfred Hitchcock, and written by John Michael Hayes, based on Cornell Woolrich's 1942 short story "It Had to Be Murder", and starring James Stewart, Grace Kelly, Thelma Ritter, Wendell Corey and Raymond Burr. The film is considered by many film-goers, critics, and scholars to be one of Hitchcock's best and most thrilling pictures.
Rear Window, which received four Academy Award nominations, was added to the United States National Film Registry in 1997. It was ranked #48 on AFI's 100 Years... 100 Movies (10th Anniversary Edition).
Photographer L. B. "Jeff" Jeffries (James Stewart) is recuperating from a broken leg and confined to a wheelchair in his small Greenwich Village apartment. He passes the time by spying on his neighbors through his apartment's rear window, including a dancer who exercises in her underwear, a lonely woman who lives by herself, a songwriter working at his piano, and several married couples, including a salesman, Lars Thorwald, (Raymond Burr) with a bedridden wife.
Every day Jeff is visited by Stella (Thelma Ritter), a cranky but friendly home care nurse and Lisa Fremont (Grace Kelly), his much-younger socialite girlfriend. Lisa is madly in love with Jeff, who returns her feelings but also believes that their lifestyles are incompatible. He talks to both Lisa and Stella about his neighbors. After the salesman makes repeated late-night trips carrying a large case, Jeff notices that the bedridden wife is now gone, and sees the salesman cleaning a large knife and handsaw. Later, the salesman ties a large packing crate with heavy rope, and has moving men haul it away. By now, Jeff, Stella, and Lisa have concluded the missing wife has been murdered by the salesman.
An old Army Air Corps buddy of Jeff named Tom Doyle (Wendell Corey) is now a police detective. He looks into the situation and finds that Mrs. Thorwald is in the country, has sent a postcard to her husband, and the packing crate they had seen was full of her clothes. Chastised, they all admit to feeling a bit ghoulish at being disappointed to find out there was not a murder. Jeff and Lisa settle down for an evening alone, but a scream soon pierces the courtyard when a dog belonging to a neighbor couple is found dead with its neck broken. The neighbors all rush to their windows to see what has happened, except for Thorwald, who sits unmoving in his dark apartment, the tip of his cigarette glowing.
Convinced that Thorwald is guilty after all, Lisa slips a note—written by Jeff—under his door asking "What have you done with her?" while Jeff watches his reaction. As a pretext to get him away from his apartment, Jeff calls Thorwald and arranges a meeting at a bar. He thinks Thorwald killed the dog to keep it from digging up something Thorwald may have buried in the courtyard flower patch. When Thorwald leaves, Lisa and Stella grab a shovel and start digging, but find nothing.
Lisa climbs the fire escape to Thorwald's apartment and squeezes in an open window. Inside she finds Mrs. Thorwald's purse, which she would never have left behind on a trip. She holds the purse up for Jeff to see, turning it upside-down to show that she has not yet found the wedding ring. Jeff watches helplessly as Thorwald comes back up the stairs, trapping Lisa inside the apartment. Calling the police as Thorwald goes in, he and Stella watch as Lisa is discovered by Thorwald. They see her try to talk her way out, but Thorwald grabs her and begins to assault her. They watch as he turns out the lights, and listen as Lisa screams for help. Just then, the police arrive, saving Lisa. With the police present, Jeff sees Lisa's hands behind her back, pointing to Mrs. Thorwald's ring, which Lisa now has on her finger. Thorwald sees this as well, and, realizing that she is signaling to someone across the courtyard, turns to look directly at Jeff.
Jeff calls Doyle, now convinced that Thorwald is guilty of something, and Stella takes all the cash they have for bail and heads for the police station, leaving Jeff alone. He sees that Thorwald's apartment lights are off, and hears the door to his building slam shut, then slow footsteps begin climbing the stairs. Looking for a method of defense, Jeff can find only the flash for his camera and a box of flashbulbs. The footsteps stop outside his door, which slowly opens. Thorwald stands in the dark, asking "Who are you? What do you want from me?" Jeff does not answer, but as Thorwald comes for him he sets off the flash, blinding Thorwald for a moment. Thorwald fumbles his way to Jeff's wheelchair, grabs him, and pushes him towards the open window. Hanging onto the ledge, yelling for help, Jeff sees Lisa, the detective, and the police all rush over. Thorwald is pulled back, but it is too late, Jeff slips and falls just as the police run up beneath him. Luckily they break his fall, and Lisa sweeps him up in her arms. Thorwald confesses to the murder of his wife, and the police arrest him.
A few days later the heat has lifted, and Jeff rests peacefully in his wheelchair; now with two broken legs from the fall. Lisa reclines happily beside him, appearing to read a book on Himalayan travel but turning, after Jeff is asleep, to a new issue of Harpers Bazaar, a fashion magazine.
Vertigo is a 1958 American psychological thriller directed by Alfred Hitchcock and starring James Stewart, Kim Novak and Barbara Bel Geddes. The film was written by Alec Coppel and Samuel A. Taylor and based on a novel by Boileau-Narcejac.
After his fear of heights indirectly causes the death of a colleague, San Francisco cop Scottie (James Stewart) retires. He is subsequently hired by magnate Gavin Elster to follow his wife, Madeleine (Kim Novak), as Elster says he fears for her life. Scottie becomes bewitched by Madeleine, falling in love with her after saving her from a suicide attempt. Then, when Scottie's vertigo prevents him saving Madeleine from a second attempt to kill herself, he becomes obsessed with recreating the dead woman's image.
This is Hitchcock's most richly complex, profound, and critically admired masterpiece: a wonderfully mysterious and dream-like study of obsession, phobia, sexual desire and identity. Blessed with memorable photography, San Francisco locations and Bernard Herrmann's music, Vertigo rewards countless viewings. Ranked 2nd best film in a 'Sight and Sound' international poll.
The film received mixed reviews upon initial release, but has garnered much acclaim since then and is now frequently ranked among the greatest films ever made
Vertigo was nominated for Academy Awards in two technical categories: Best Art Direction-Set Decoration, Black-and-White or Color (Hal Pereira, Henry Bumstead, Samuel M. Comer, Frank McKelvy) and Best Sound.
Hitchcock and Stewart received the San Sebastián International Film Festival Awards for Best Director and Best Actor respectively.
You will probably have observed that I have included no less than four Hitchcock thrillers in my detailed look. This is simply because, without doubt, he was the master of this genre. If your taste is for a good, entertaining thriller you can do no better than select one produced and directed by Alfred Hitchcock. You won’t find any blood and gore, hands leaping through walls, ghosts or ghoulies, or mad axe men on the loose, but you will find a well made, entertaining film. Most of the thrills come from your own imagination. What you DON’T see is what frightens you most in a Hitchcock Thriller.
No comments:
Post a Comment