Archive for Alfred Hitchcock
Vertigo
Posted in Books, pictures, Travel with tags 1950's, acrophobia, Alfred Hitchcock, Boileau-Narcejac, D’Entre les Morts, Golden Gate Bridge, James Stewart, Kim Novak, poster, San Francisco, thriller, Vertigo on February 28, 2021 by xi'anHitch’s tricks
Posted in Books, Travel with tags Alfred Hitchcock, Atlantic ocean, Battle of the Atlantic, classics, film noir, John Steinbeck, Lifeboat, shipwreck, steamer, The New Yorker, U-boats, war convoys, WW II on November 27, 2020 by xi'anAs I was watching the first minutes of the 1944 under-rated Lifeboat by Alfred Hitchcock (and John Steinbeck as the script writer!), a series of objects floating by the lifeboat to convey the preliminary mutual sinking of an Allied boat and a Nazi U-boat contained a cover of the New Yorker. Which while being iconic sounds like a weird inclusion, given that this is the very first issue of the magazine, in February 1925, hardly the first thing I would carry across the Atlantic at war time! Maybe being iconic was the reason to keep this issue rather than a more recent one, another mystery about the great Hitch allusions and clues interseeded throughout his films.
the 39 steps
Posted in Books, Kids, Mountains, Running, Travel with tags Alfred Hitchcock, Blake and Mortimer, England, first World War, Glencoe, Rogue Male, Scotland, The 39 steps on May 3, 2015 by xi'anI had never read this classic that inspired Hitchcock’s
39 steps (which I neither watched before). The setting of the book is slightly different from the film: it takes place in England and Scotland a few weeks before the First World War. German spies are trying to kill a prominent Greek politician [no connection with the current Euro-crisis intended!] and learn about cooperative plans between France and Britain. The book involves no woman character (contrary to the film, where it adds a comical if artificial level). As in Rogue Male, most of the story is about an unlikely if athletic hero getting into the way of those spies and being pursued through the countryside by those spies. Even though the hunt has some intense moments, it lacks the psychological depth of Rogue Male, while the central notion that those spies are so good that they can play other persons’ roles without being recognised is implausible to the extreme, a feature reminding me of the Blake & Mortimer cartoons which may have been inspired by this type of books. Especially The Francis Blake Affair. (Trivia: John Buchan ended up Governor General of Canada.)