Fox Announcements including Hitchcock's Lifeboat (1 Viewer)

[ChrisPearson]

Yes. Although the bug-eyed intensity with which he makes his obvious observations carries him over from the boring to the irritating. I much prefer a commentary with hard facts than academic masturbation.

He has his admirers though.

 

[MarkHarrison]

I'm in the exact same situation as you and would also love any pointers on tracking this one down. That would be something to have a complete collection of his American films.

 

[Haggai]

Heh, I can see where you're coming from there, but Casper's (I think) most recent commentary, on Advise and Consent, has a lot of interesting stuff in it. He talks at length about the changes that the movie made from the original novel, including several things that he thought made the movie weaker than it should have been.

 

[Charles H]

I am thrilled that LIFEBOAT is finally coming out on dvd. I will be teaching a course on "The Politics of Alfred Hitchcock" this fall and FOREIGN CORRESPONDENT (as a pre-WWII cautionary tale inspired by an actual non-fiction book PERSONAL HISTORY) and LIFEBOAT (as Hitchcock's most provocative film as a reflection of the times) will be the cornerstones of the course. For those who have not seen LIFEBOAT, you are in for a very rude shock: it is Hitchcock's most violent movie and the resolution--we're talking war here--is not very PC. FOREIGN CORRESPONDENT and LIFEBOAT are revelations in the context of 9/11.
Does anyone know of an acceptable print of SABOTAGE (1936)? It was announced by MGM last year via a Carlton remaster, but it apparently got caught up in the buyout by Sony. Is there an acceptable pd out there?

 

[Albert_M]

In fact, I find Saboteur to be very interesting for its political themes and the theme of trust throughout it. Yes the dialogue is hopelessly cheesy, but the movie is much than an early NxNW.

 

[Joe Caps]

If this helps - PARADINE CASE will be on TCM in September.

 

[Jason Seaver]

It's actually playing at the Harvard Film Archive this Saturday. Be interesting to see how it looks.

 

[george kaplan]

Could you elaborate on that? I disagree, but I'm having a hard time responding cause you must be refering to a very specific meaning of "violence", which I'm not following.

 

[Robert Crawford]

I think I know which scene he's talking about, but let's make sure we use spoilers when discussing this film for the benefit of those that have never seen this great film.





Crawdaddy

 

[Charles H]

One thinks of PSYCHO as Hitchcock's most violent film, but it is a specific, psychological violence. Without revealing the "spoiler," let me say that what is at stake in LIFEBOAT is Civilization and what happens at the end of LIFEBOAT might be very disturbing to modern sensibilities.
I enjoy SABOTEUR and will be using that film. It is the only out-&-out propaganda film that Hitchcock made and it's quite effective with some terrific setpieces (Dorothy Parker contributed to the script).

 

[Steve...O]

There is some interesting reading in the book "Hitchcock - a Life in Darkness and Light" about the controvery and legal entanglements surrounding the authorship of the script. As a previous poster indicated, a lot of hands were involved in the writing of the final script.

Cover art is classy and in my opinion miles better than the one Fox used for the VHS. I still like the original poster art the best though

 

[DavePattern]

Apart from the Criterion discs, there are very few decent releases of Hitchcock's early films (1925-39) available in the US.

The majority are budget, so called "public domain" versions. Because the films actually aren't in the film domain, the companies releasing them make do with low quality transfers (mostly from video sources).

If you can play region 2 PAL DVDs, then the German Early Years box set has the best transfers of SABOTAGE I've seen.

You can get an idea of how some of the various releases compare on these pages:

http://www.daveyp.com/cgi-bin/compar...03&compare=24f
http://www.daveyp.com/cgi-bin/compar...03&compare=24c
http://www.daveyp.com/cgi-bin/compar...03&compare=24e

As mentioned previously, MGM were due to release SABOTAGE in 2004 but this was shelved after the company was bought by Sony.

Hope that helps!

 

[Marc^H]

I would have voted the FRENZY rape as the Hitchcock scene that makes audiences squirm the most, but now I think I agree with you. I recently watched LIFEBOAT with a small audience and the scene I think you are alluding to really did make people uncomfortable.

Perhaps the most disturbing thing about LIFEBOAT is--considering when it was released--that it had the audacity to portray the "bad guy" as so much sharper and more mature than the "good guys." THAT made me squirm!

I have never seen a print of this film that did not look like it had B&W algae growing on it. I really hope they've cleaned the image up.