![]() ![]() Caruso’s teen comedy thriller made no secret of its indebtedness to Rear Window. Most Hitchocky moment: Not many, but it’s a Hitch-style romantic caper underneath the pyrotechnics and slow-mo.īased on Hitchcock's. Are we talking about Notorious or Mission: Impossible II here? Oh, it’s both. The heroine ends up drugged and our hero must rush to save her. There is a smuggling setpiece at a racetrack. The villain’s amorous intentions distract him into jeopardising his plans. Our hero isn’t too comfortable with this, but goes along with it. The woman agrees to revisit a past relationship as part of their mission to get close to the villain. Is Foster’s aircraft engineer really the victim or is she just, um, plane crazy?Īn agent is teamed with a woman he’s never met before, whose father has just been convicted for spying. Most Hitchcocky Moment: The initial disappearance sparks a satisfyingly Hitchcockian spiral into desperation. But which one is behind this foul scheme? And how can there be so many secret compartments on one plane? Liam Neeson would have sorted all this out in 15 minutes. The original’s gossamer touch and comic moments are jettisoned in favour of an airline meal of a thriller that boasts an array of winningly shady types played by Peter Sarsgaard, Greta Scacchi and Sean Bean. If you’re *not *looking for that here’s a high-concept, airplane-based reworking that separates Jodie Foster from her young daughter and then spends two hours unseparating them again. If you’re looking for a faithful remake of The Lady Vanishes, complete with Nazis and Angela Lansbury as the missing Mrs Froy, you’ll need the 1979 version. Most Hitchcocky Moment: Well, all of it (natch) but the reworked Albert Hall denouement, in which an assassin awaits a cymbal clash before pulling the trigger, is purest Hitchcock distilled into 12 tense, wordless minutes.īased on Hitchcock's. The original’s monochrome tension, largely generated by a supremely creepy Peter Lorre, is sacrificed for thrills of a slightly less edgy, more Technicolored nature, and a bit where Doris Day sings that song about going to Wembley. In place of Leslie Banks and Edna Best comes Jimmy Stewart and Doris Day, a pair you’d need to be hard-hearted indeed not to find irresistible as two American fish who find themselves out of the water in the murky ponds of Marrakesh and London. ![]() ***The Man Who Knew Too Much (1934)īit of a cheat this entry, because Alfred Hitchcock of course stepped into the shoes of… well, himself, to apply a Hollywood sheen to his 1934 black and white British thriller. Most Hitchcocky moment: Hitchcocky moments are the point of the whole thing, but he’d have enjoyed the bits where Van Sant went even further, like having Norman obviously jerking off behind that bathroom spyhole. ![]() Sadly for Vince Vaughn though, Anthony Perkins proved unmatchable. But in Gus Van Sant’s hands this is less a mercenary enterprise and more a cinematic experiment: can a shot-for-shot facsimile achieve the same results as before? If you’d never seen the original, would this have the same effect on you? And if not, why not? Maybe those are bogus questions, but Van Sant’s Psycho does intermittently work, particularly where Julianne Moore and Anne Heche are involved. ***Psycho (1960)īy reputation one of the most absolutely pointless of pointless remakes. Most Hitchcocky moment: Any time the camera goes on a long prowl or circles the actors. There are bits of Dial M For Murder and Notorious in there too, but the ending, though ambiguous, is markedly happier than Vertigo’s. You won’t find Vertigo referenced in the credits, but Obsession’s story of a man haunted by the death of his wife and years later running into her double, is really quite familiar. Much of Brian De Palma’s career has been about displaying his love for Hitchcock – see also: Body Double, Dressed To Kill, Sisters, Raising Cain – but probably his most intricate homage is Obsession, from Paul Schrader’s screenplay. In the meantime, we’ve run the rule over those who’ve come before Fincher in revisiting the Master’s work and sorted the remakes into the good, bad and the almost-exactly-the-same. Murder and sexual subversion will no doubt ensue once again, but only time will tell if the film lives up to the Hitchcock legacy. Together with Ben Affleck (star) and Gillian Flynn (writer), he’ll be putting a modern spin on the Patricia Highsmith tale of a wealthy tennis-playing gadabout and the mysterious man who, during one carriage-borne conversation, promises to solve all his problems for him. For his next trick, David Fincher will be reteaming with his Gone Girl posse to make Alfred Hitchcock’s loco-thriller Strangers On A Train sing again on the big screen. ![]()
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