Old films

[jaf53]

One of my favorites is Jimmy Stewart, especially Rear Window.  Fell in love during that movie..... with Grace Kelly, what a hottie!  And there's Strategic Air Command, Virtigo, Cheyenne Social Club, Harvey, Flight of the Phoenix, It's a Wonderful World ... just to name a few.

[BBsq69]

I am enormous fan of Hitchcock. I don't think anybody maintained the consistency he did as a film director over 35 years from before 1930 to the mid the 60s. The best film of his is "Rear Window", although my favourite is the slightly less impressive "Spellbound". The whole set up of the film is amazing. Jimmy Stewart has a way of engaging with the audience that always makes him likeable rather as Tom Hanks has managed in the last 30 years. It is a really special quality which Hitchcock uses to effect in "Vertigo" (which many argue is Hitchcock's masterpiece but I don't) when Stewart's playing a very obsessive creepy character but still maintains the audience sympathy.

In "Rear Window" you are often wondering why he is just not settling down to be nursed by the hottest girl on the planet - one major men's magazine called Grace Kelly "the babe of the century" such was her beauty and I would not argue with that - but it is just not in his nature and in fact he often seems to ignore her. It is almost as though his character wills something to happen and plenty does. It is an absolutely brilliant film about curiosity, frustration, helplessness, love and of course voyeurism. It is a set piece like "Rope", and has been bettered by very few films before or since and there really is nothing to compare with it. I seem to remember a Shia Le Beouf(?) film which hit on a similar theme but that's like comparing Andy Warhol with Raphael.

One of my favorites is Jimmy Stewart, especially Rear Window.  Fell in love during that movie..... with Grace Kelly, what a hottie!  And there's Strategic Air Command, Virtigo, Cheyenne Social Club, Harvey, Flight of the Phoenix, It's a Wonderful World ... just to name a few.