Hitchcock

Who better to portray Alfred Hitchcock than the wonderful Anthony Hopkins?

The title of the movie may not reflect it, but this is not a biography. The story is only that of getting the film Psycho, arguably the best Hitchcock film, made.

I don't know how much of it is actually true but I can believe that Hitchcock in fact was obsessive enough to have his people by every copy of the book Psycho that they could get their hands on, so that nobody would know the ending. Also, I am sure that his struggle to sell the story to the studio bosses and get certain scenes through the censors are well documented. But I am also pretty sure, that the director did not actually imagine hanging out with Ed Gein.

Aside from some doubts about the accuracy, the film is as entertaining as a film about the making of a film can be. The cast is superb, including besides Hopkins the wonderful Helen Mirren, Toni Collette, Danny Huston, Scarlett Johansson, Jessica Biel, Kurtwood Smith, James D'Arcy as Anthony Perkins (he is great) and The Karate Kid himself, Ralph Macchio.

Well worth watching.

7/10

The 39 stats: Alfred Hitchcock's obsessions in numbers

Go here for the article at Guardian.co.uk.

The Lady Vanishes

A group of travelers get stranded in a small guest house in the (ficitional) European country of Mandrika because of an avalanche. While the train tracks are being cleared over night some new acquaintences are formed, one of them between a young woman, Iris Henderson, on her way to meet with her future husband and an elderly governess, Miss Froy.

The next morning, before boarding, the young woman gets hit on the head with a falling flower pot - obviously pushed to land on Miss Froy, who helps Iris onto the train and shares a compartment with her and an Italian family. The two women spend most of their time together, talking and having tea in the restaurant cart.

Iris falls asleep and after she wakes Miss Froy is nowhere to be found. What's more, everyone else on the train denies she was ever even their. One doctor aboard concludes that the hit on the head may have caused a concussion and seeing Miss Froy is merely a consequence of it. But Iris insists that she is not imagining this and a young musician, Gilbert, comes to her aid (yes, yes he fancies her). Together they try to piece together what has happened and round up witnesses that have seen the missing governess.

An array of people becomes involved in what soon starts to appear like a conspiracy. Gilbert and Iris eventually do find Miss Froy, who has been disguised as an injured woman with a badly burned face. They free her and replace her with one of the conspirators, a lady that entered the train as a decoy on the very stretcher Miss Froy is supposed to leave on and, quite possibly, carried to her death.

Eventually, part of the train gets disconnected and the group of characters together on the remaining cart are stopped in a wooded area where Mandrikan army men (one assumes) try to retrieve Miss Froy, who turns out to be a British spy with some important information for the government.

A gunfight errupts, with the Englishmen shooting in the most gentlemanly manner, of course. They manage to get the cart going again and move it across the border out of Mandrikan territory and, hence, to safety.

Miss Froy delivers the message. Gilbert and Iris live happily ever after, one supposes.

Hooray!

6/10