Movie Night

For the last four years, I have hosted an annual Alfred Hitchcock Memorial Film Festival. It started out as something serious, but it developed into something more irreverent. Friends come over, and we watch two Hitchock films back to back. There ends up being A LOT of running commentary ala "Mystery Science Theater 3000" so we end up watching the movies with the subtitles on. At one point, we started writing down the funniest of the astute observations because, well, they were pretty funny. (For example, have you ever noticed how high-waisted Cary Grant's trousers are in Hitchcock films? You will now. And after a couple of G&Ts, you will find that hilarious.)

This year's theme revolved around Hitchcock's work with legendary Swedish actress Ingrid Bergman. We started off watching Spellbound and were then going to segue over to Notorious (also known as "No-No-Notorious" for you Duran Duran fans), but that didn't end up happening because we ended up talking about other stuff.

ANYHOW, Spellbound is the story of a woman psychiatrist (Bergman) who protects an amnesia patient (Gregory Peck) accused of murder while attempting to recover his memory. There is some really cool imagery in the film, in particular a dream sequence that was designed by surrealist Salvadore Dali. This film has some seriously hilarious moments, mostly unintentional, like the romantic way Bergman accepts a liverwurst sandwich and when the psychiatrist who is her mentor declares that "Freud is hooey". I particularly liked when Gregory Peck says that he has "never been to Rome." I countered that with "How about that one time on a Vespa with Audrey Hepburn?". (I thought it was funny. Maybe you had to be there.)

While this film isn't one of Hitch's best, it was entertaining. (I wasn't surprised to learn that Michael Chekov, who played the mentor, was nominated for a Supporting Actor Oscar - he was the best part of the film.) I still need to watch No-No-Notorious. If you want to see the Dali dream sequence, you can watch it over on Turner Classic Movies website.