Rebecca (1940)

#80 on Thrills

Rebecca is the film version of the book of the same name by Daphne Du Maurier.   Directed by Alfred Hitchcock, this movie was full of suspense.  Joan Fontaine stars as a young bride to Laurence Olivier's Maxim de Winter.   No matter what she does, Joan can not live up to his first wife's legacy, the beautiful Rebecca de Winter. 

Fontaine and Olivier

As in the book (which I've never read, but I hope to one day), Joan Fontaine's character is never given a name. This helps add to the feeling that she is almost an after thought, even in her own story.   From the start everything seems to overwhelm her:  Her overly large wedding bouquet; Manderley,  Maxim's mansion;  Rebecca's legacy, which is everywhere she turns.

Mrs. Danvers (played by Judith Anderson), the housekeeper, did not help matters.  She worshiped Rebecca.  Maybe a little bit too much.  At every turn, she seems to be pulling the rug out from Fontaine.  I can't say anything more without spoilers.   

Every time Olivier opened his mouth, all I could hear was Cary Elwes. (Yes, technically it is Elwes who sounds like Olivier. shush.)  Olivier was brilliant, obviously. 

To me, this was different than most Hitchcock films I've seen.  I'm not sure I can pinpoint why.  Maybe because I've watched more of his 1950s work.  It just didn't seem to have as much of the Hitchcock trademark as I would expect.


  
Favorite Quote:
2nd Mrs. de Winter: You know, I, I wish there could be an invention that bottled up a memory like perfume and it never faded, never got stale. Then, whenever I wanted to, I could uncork the bottle and, and live the memory all over again.

Gaslight (1944)

#78 on Thrills

Hey hey now!  A blog post! What is this mysterious thing, long forgotten? I failed miserably at reaching my year goal in 2012 for the list, so I'm going to try to make up for it in 2013 by being more consistent with both my watching and my blogging. Wish me luck, faithful readers!

Lets start off the year with the psychological thriller, Gaslight.  I always find suspense, and psychological thrillers to be so much more frightening than gore and horror.  Because the things in a psychological thriller like Gaslight? could foreseeably happen. And we all know that reality is scarier than any fiction.

Gaslight tells the story of Paula, who's aunt was a famous opera singer.  The film starts after Paula's aunt is murdered, with Paula is trying to start over.  She meets and falls in love with Gregory.  They get married, and move back into the home where her aunt was murdered.  Suddenly things start to go missing.  Gregory is insisting that Paula herself is taking and losing the items, but she has no recollection of doing such things. Is it all in her mind? Or is something more sinister going on? (The answer is yes.  Something more sinister is ALWAYS going on….)

Beautiful, but crazy. Or crazy, but beautiful?

Ingrid Bergman is looking gorgeous, as usual.  I find that she always plays characters that terrible things happen to (or at least in the films I’ve seen).   She plays these tragic characters so well, though.   Bergman must have been doing something right, because she won the Oscar for Best Actress in a Leading Role (her first).

This film marks Angela Lansbury's film debut, as a maid. That would come full circle for her, when she became a tea pot….

Fun Facts: Gaslight was originally a play, and has a few film adaptations.  When this version came out, MGM apparently tried to destroy all the prints of the 1940 version.  Luckily, they were unsuccessful.  Gaslighting is now used as a term in clinical and research literature for psychology, the phenomenon coming from this story.

Favorite Quote:

Gregory Anton: I knew from the first moment I saw you that you were dangerous to me.

Brian Cameron: I knew from the first moment I saw you that you were dangerous to her.

The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938)

#100 on Thrills

We all know the basic story of Robin Hood.  This movie is one of the best versions of it ever made.  Action, adventure, romance. What more could a person ask for?

I love that Marian wasn't just a fainting, helpless, damsel in distress; she actually participated in the cunning moves and the saving, and the defending of England, but still in a way considered "proper" for her time. I suppose in most portrays she is pretty awesome.  It would be pretty badass to see her pick up a sword though.  Speaking of swords, Errol Flynn? is amazing.   Athletic and charming, I can see why he is so great.

I forgot Claude Rains was in this, but I shouldn’t have because Claude Rains is in EVERYTHING.  Seriously, pay attention to his tag on this blog. It will only go up as I write about more films. He is cast in everything because he is good.  Better than good. He is one of the greatest character actors ever.

Random: The horse Marian rides is Trigger, of Roy Rogers fame (before he met Roy, obviously.)  When Trigger died, they had his hide stretched over a plaster model of his likeness, to be placed in the Roy Rogers and Dale Evans Museum.  If that weren’t strange enough, after that museum was closed in 2009, the items from it (including Trigger) were put up for auction at Christie’s in New York in 2010.  I worked next to Christie’s at the time.   I saw Trigger. It was weird.  I’m still trying to figure out why they did this to this horse.   Stranger still, some TV station purchased Trigger.   On one level, I get it. Kind of like the Natural History Museum.  This does not make this seem any less bizarre to me.

Favorite Quote:

Lady Marian Fitzswalter: Why, you speak treason!
Robin Hood: Fluently.

Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981)

#60 on Original, #66 on Anniversary, and #10 on Thrills

I’m having a Harrison Ford movie week.  It started when I made the discovery about myself that if I find “Air Force One” on the TV, I can not turn it off.  Apparently for me, it is just one of those movies.   I continued with the original Star Wars trilogy, and then ventured off to a newer Ford film, “Morning Glory”.  From there, I’ve gotten to the film that this entry is about, “Raiders of the Lost Ark”. 

I forgot how creepy parts of this film can be, when snakes are coming out of corpses in particular.   Also, a revelation from writing this blog, I guess I have kind of always thought of this as a semi-creepy film.  I think this is a hazard of first seeing the film when I was VERY little, and then not seeing it again until I was much older.  What can I say, first impressions die hard. 

And this was a great film to give a viewer a first impression of Indiana Jones: daring, intelligent, and adventurous.  I find it funny how almost timid he comes across when he is teaching a class, and how much of a badass he is when he is looking for an archeological treasure.   Sometimes environment really does affect your personality.   One of the things I like about Jones, and a lot of the characters Harrison Ford seems to play, they are flawed heroes.  Indiana does gets shot and screws up sometimes.  Han Solo does have issues with his ship and ends up trapped by Jabba the Hut.  These characters are not perfect, and that is what makes them the every-person kind of hero.

The score for this film is awesome, as it usually is with pretty much anything John Williams works on.  Just hearing the classic music piece, “Raiders March” or as we all probably call it, Indiana Jones’ Theme, invokes thoughts of daring and adventure.  

The character of Marion Ravenwood is something of a conundrum for me.  Sometimes she is totally self sufficient and fighting and protecting herself, and other times, she is screaming her head off as a damsel in distress.  I guess if you put it in the context of when the story is set, 1936, then it kind of makes sense.  But I want her to be so much cooler than she actually comes across.  Also, she had to run around for a good chunk of this film with no shoes on. What is up with that?

I’ve always said that the easiest way to get a villain into your film without having to give any explanation for why they are evil is to have the bad guys be Nazis. The writers actually noticed this very late into filming, and there ends up being only one reference to the Jewish people and the Nazi’s hatred for them in the whole film, and it doesn’t come until the film is near the end.

Favorite Quote

Marion: You're not the man I knew ten years ago.
Indiana: It's not the years, honey, it's the mileage.