Four Midnight Movies

A text only post, and about history, afield from fauna and flora, sort of...and grim, so dear readers, a caution to read on...

I'll put the search strings in bold, these are the beginning of a quote, and the link(s), the ulr(s), which are highlighted too, will be the quote(s) end(s)...


Suspicion ending

Ken Mogg was the first Hitchcock scholar to suggest this possibility, and it is hard to disprove, even when the scripts at UCLA show no trace of any such ending ever being put on paper. Moreover, in 'The Alfred Hitchcock Story' Mogg cites three strong pieces of evidence that Hitchcock was preparing audiences for just such a conclusion. 1) When Johnnie and Lina meet in a railway coach in the first scene, he is traveling first-class with a third-class ticket and doesn’t have enough cash to pay the stern conductor the difference, so he brashly asks Lina for help and settles for a postage stamp she has in her purse. As the conductor leaves, outraged at having to accept a stamp as 'legal tender', Johnnie fires a parting shot - 'Write to your mother' – which certainly seems to allude to the last scene of the Ur-Suspicion:  Johnnie mailing the incriminating letter to Lina’s mother. 

http://www.labyrinth.net.au/~muffin/suspicion_c..html

An 'advanced' Hitchcock discussion group, for articulate film academics, professional scholars, filmmakers, etc., exists. Here's the URL: http://movies.groups.yahoo.com/group/hitchen2/

How often in literature class we would go over forshadowings!...apparently, Hitchcock movies are full of them...myself, I'm not real keen on being a detective watching detective movies...I like to be surprised, not having figured out who dunnit, or how the movie will end...but the ending of Suspicion movie, on youtube, was like wth!...all of a sudden Cary Grant owns up to being suicidal to escape his indebtedness, which explains away some of his suspicious actions, and he's going to reform from his gambling ways, and going into debt, make amends and such...'not likely!' I'd say...Joan Fontaine is shy, a social recluse, and Grant the opposite...yet they meet and marry, Fontaine totally smitten...these kinds of romances never work!...as they ride off into the sunset, after Fontaine is nearly thrown over what looks to be the cliffs of Big Sur, but no, actually pulled back into the open sports car after the passenger door opens on a swinging wild turn by Grant, I expect down the road it will be more of the same...shy folk, we've all been there!...good movie, I haven't spoiled it by telling the ending, no one knows what the ending is!...much scholarly discussion!...Fontaine won the academy award...1941...and watching her is why one stays watching!

Spellbound movie 1945 youtube

Ingrid Bergman isn't shy, but she isn't dating either...wrapped up as it were in her studies and work as a psychiatrist...but it's love at first sight with Gregory Peck, who she quickly discovers isn't who he says he is, he has amnesia...and he may be a killer on the run, and Bergman runs off with him, using her psych skills to try to jog his memory, and innocence...Hitchcock has taken the suspicious relationship from Suspicion movie, and re dressed it...don't know but that's the trick in North by Northwest movie too...(Grant and Eve Marie Saint)...Bergman sticks with her guy, and it works out...though a weak ending...Dali's bent wheel a revolver?...really?...in the throws of his amnesia, Peck bristles when Bergman's questions are too pointed...a habit I have in response to prying manipulative questions!...a normal response in psychoanalysis, the story explains...whole story is like an illustration of an intro to psychology...Bergman carries the film...(she was psychology student, German, and would pester the heck out of me!..:)

Purgatory movie western youtube

I just watched a lecture on youtube about Jason and the Argonauts that concluded that the story is archetypal...heroes gather for a quest and adventure...Penn university...and I can see that in this film, which I've seen before...famous gunslingers have all gathered in a magic twilight zone town to refrain from gun slinging, and swearing, and such, for ten years, at the end of which a stagecoach comes along and takes them to Heaven...if they fail, an old Indian, who spends his time sitting in front of an iron gate of a graveyard, comes for them, and escorts them to a fiery canyon...Hell...the movie has the power of the sermon in Moby Dick!...(which come to think of it is another Argonaut crew)...if one is evil to being beyond redemption, the Indian slings the corpse (all the bad guys meet their just ends...the gunslingers are good 'bad' guys!') over a wobegone horse and tips them over into the canyon, where they all scream a lot...some wonderful horse riding in the beginning...over the top western ware...way too much on Black Jack...oh...it's a curio that the Kid discovers the Nature of the town from having seen the residents in his dime novels...the bad guys learn it when the residents blow holes in them...and the residents, well, they're a bit like Jack Sparrow's crew (another Argonaut crew!)...grumpy, but tolerant and obediant to the  circumstance they can't do much about, and which leaves little doubt!...

Jason and the Argonauts movie youtube 1997

I've seen the 1963 movie many times...I saw it in the theater when it came out!...a favorite...but I watched one I hadn't seen on youtube made in 1997...the costumes and sets look to be authentic reproductions, though I think the ancient Greeks were more into painting everything bright colors...there's a lot of attention to detail, like in the hairdos, jewelry and such...Dennis Hopper is awful, but all the other actors do very well I think...Fleece were really used to pan gold, trapping gold flecks in streams, hence the notion of golden...and Colchis was where a lot of gold mining took place...the most complete version of the Argonaut story comes from a Librarian at Alexandria, like 300 BC...and there are fragments elsewhere, and many different versions in the retelling...it is just the best story ever...

:)

DavidDavid