Weekend Movie Report: Without a Hitch?

Was Hitchcock the only classic director who could craft an effective thriller? Well, no, not based on the evidence presented this weekend at Jersey City's Landmark Loew's Jersey Theatre, which presented three films from three other directors who could clearly create pleasurable jitters. I think only one of them worried Hitchcock much, however.

Peeping Tom (1960), directed by Michael Powell (who actually worked for Hitchcock at one time), is often compared to Psycho and Rear Window. That may be true thematically -- it's about a voyeur who gets off on murdering women -- but I wouldn't say it's in the same league with those two films. The actor who plays the main character has an incongruous and unexplained European accent (the film is set in London) and seems miscast to me. And all of the acting has a very British "theatrical" quality that seems artificial, especially for a film made in 1960. Still, the movie never drags, includes some innovative visual techniques that I think were ahead of their time for a mainstream film, and induces real tension. Hitchcock just shrugged his shoulders, though, I imagine.

The Stranger (1946) is minor Orson Welles film noir (Welles himself reportedly said something like that), but it works as entertainment by combining suspense with touches of humor (which was Hitchcock's formula), as long as you don't think too hard about it. Two problems: Welles himself plays the villain, and it's very hard (for me at least) to see him as a secret post-war Nazi hiding out in small-town Connecticut, where he indulges an obsession for fixing clocks. (And didn't all the Blue Meanies end up in Argentina? Why would they head for the U.S. and marry the daughters of Supreme Court justices? You'd think that would draw some unwanted attention.) The film also has a very silly ending that I won't give away, but talk about being stuck for time. The usual Welles mastery of camera angles, composition, editing etc., are on display, but Hitchcock just snickered, I think.

Charade (1963) is the only one of these three films that gave Hitchcock any professional jitters, I imagine. It's exactly the kind of glossy thriller that he made himself in the late 1950s, reminding me especially of North by Northwest -- and not just because it stars Cary Grant. Audrey Hepburn is an American in Paris whose recently murdered husband should have left $250,000 behind (real money in 1963), but where is it? Several shady characters are willing to kill to find out, and Hepburn is in big trouble. But the man she thinks she can trust (Grant) turns out to be a serial liar. A lot of paranoia, running around through glamorous Parisian locations, and comic touches ensue. The dialogue and acting are sharp and witty, and director Stanley Donan handles all of this like "the Master" at his peak. Hitchcock would never have cast a brunette -- in 1963, he would have used Tippi Hedren -- but Hepburn is perfect, both sympathetic and funny. Grant plays it serious but not humorless -- just right. Hitchcock once said that he didn't make slices of life, he made pieces of cake. Charade is a piece of cake.