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Underwhelmed By Greatness?
Have you ever had this experience? Have you ever sat down with a book, a film, an album, what have you, that you’ve heard from time immemorial was a classic and thought…eh? Maybe you would have liked it if you had come to it cold, but it just couldn’t bear the weight of its own legacy.
I’ve always been a big Alfred Hitchcock fan. Vertigo is one of my favorite films of all time. The episode of Alfred Hitchcock Presents entitled “Breakdown” is one of the most gripping 30 minutes of television I’ve ever seen (you can find it on Netflix or Amazon). While I’ve worked my way through most of the Hitchcock corpus, I had, until recently, somehow failed to make the time for Rear Window, considered one of the director’s all-time classics. Finding myself with some unexpected free time on a recent Sunday, I popped it up on Netflix. And, well…eh.
Don’t get me wrong, it’s a solid film. The acting is stellar, confining the action primarily to Jimmy Stewart’s apartment was clever (it’s essentially the movie equivalent of a bottle episode), and there are some moments of genuine suspense. Overall, however, I came away underwhelmed. Without giving too much away (although, to be fair, the film is 60 years old, so a spoiler alert is an act of charity), the tension in the plot runs as follows: one of the main characters either did A or did B. In the end, it turns out he did B. Not exactly white-knuckle stuff.
Now, to be fair to the film, I probably would have had a much different reaction had I seen it in a cinema in 1954. In 2015, however, when thrillers go to baroque lengths to hide the ball on plot twists, Rear Window seemed almost pedestrian by comparison. Had it been some obscure little film, I probably would have delighted in it. As a movie that’s so deeply engrained in pop culture, however, that my first consciousness of it came through a childhood viewing of a Simpsons episode, it had a higher bar to clear.
And, honestly, that feels, at some level, like a disservice to the film. But there’s simply no way to decouple my reaction from the expectations created by decades worth of hype.
What “masterpieces” have you come to late, only to discover that your expectations were disappointed?
Published in Entertainment, Literature
Well, I always thought his performances in The Quiet Man and The Searchers were pretty well done and very moving.
Certainly. I do not really know who would care about love poetry except disappointed lovers who will not give up regardless. Well, maybe a few others, but not many.
There is another thing, too–the sonnets are annoyingly witty, so to speak. I’m not sure anything else he wrote was wrote with such a small audience in mind.
One of my favorite comedies of recent years, but I don’t think anyone could get their arms around it from clips. One of the reasons the show struggled to find an audience is that it is, to some extent, a serialized comedy, and a lot of the jokes only make sense if you’ve followed the show linearly. It’s worth watching the first few episodes (the show’s pacing is so frenetic that they fly by) to get a real sense of it. If you like it, limit yourself to the original run. The Netflix resurrection was more concerned with being high-concept than with actually being funny.
Seconded. It works here and there (“Harvest Moon” is a beautiful song), but how he’s managed to have a decades-long career with those pipes is beyond me. I would have whiffed on that one as an A&R man.
This passage inspired me to ask Max if we could program it so that editors can have unlimited likes on a comment.
I don’t consider him a great actor (I think most people agree that his range was limited), but I agree that he does great work in those two films.
In fairness I haven’t seen those movies at least all the way through. I saw both versions of True Grit and thought Jeff Bridges was much better. I also recently caught many of his performances on a cable channel which ran a John Wayne marathon and thought he had some laughably wooden moments. Maybe I just caught his worst moments. I’m sure Marlon Brando and Meryll Streep had a few stinkers.
It’s a great theme: “just because you’re paranoid, it doesn’t mean no one’s out to get you.” There’s also the specific question of urban paranoia: in the big, bad city, you don’t really know your neighbors, do you? “Rear Window” is even explicit about this, with the poor woman screaming exactly this about her murdered dog. This was very new in 1954. So…
No “Rear Window,” no “Rosemary’s Baby” or “Sliver.”
No “Rear Window,” no “Invasion of the Body Snatchers” (1956), still the ultimate urban/Cold War paranoia film.
No “Rear Window,” no “The Stepfather,” although the latter was also inspired by the John List murders, i.e. suburban paranoia that happens to be true.
You get the idea.
Get to the 1970s and Stephen King turns the idea on its head: what if a vampire invaded a rural town? Would anyone even notice? Boom, “Salem’s Lot.” The aforementioned Ira Levin went suburban second-wave feminism paranoid with “The Stepford Wives.” David “Trust Me; Small Towns Are Plenty Creepy” Lynch made his 80s-90s career on “Blue Velvet” and “Twin Peaks.”
We don’t know people as well as we think we do. That can go any way you like: comedy, tragedy, suspense, horror. Hitchcock saw it as suspense. I seem to be able to find it still—maybe thanks to growing up in a very tight-knit neighborhood and feeling that urban alienation after leaving.
Thought he was a great addition to Crosby, Stills and Nash. He gave their sound a certain kind of twang. His voice works as a condiment like a spicy brown mustard but you don’t want it as a main course.
I’ve seen the whole series. I taped the whole series when it aired, and I watched the DVD. I saw the movie in theaters, and twice on DVD, and again on cable.
Firefly.
American Graffiti. I just couldn’t figure out what the big deal was…shut it off halfway through.
Actual answers:
I can never get into Jane Austen. Many of my friends, men and women, tell me I would enjoy it, but I can’t get into it. Based on the plots, she’s practically my soulmate, but I don’t care for the prose. And Clueless is an undervalued treasure of an adaptation.
2001: A Space Odyssey doesn’t light my fires.
M could be done so much better today.
And while Alexander Nevsky is awesome, Battleship Potemkin strikes me as hackneyed -but which movie does everyone homage?
Schmaltzy?! Them’s fightin’ words. Best Christmas movie ever. Ever!
Agatha Christie. Such a bad writer.
I thought he was superb in Red River.
Are you talking about the novel or the movie? If the latter, a life-threatening amount of drug use tends to be the key to enjoying it. Though, to be fair, you could probably say something similar about Interstellar (which I enjoyed more, but found, um, very ambitious).
For what it’s worth, I find Kubrick overrated across the board. Apart from The Shining and the first half of Full Metal Jacket, most of his canon can be safely ignored. I don’t mind Strangelove, but it strikes me as a movie that is so dependent on its historical context that it doesn’t age all that well for newer audiences.
Maybe I need to rethink my position on John Wayne. Can I do that on the internet? Agatha Christie was always a mystery to me.
Mike, I had the DVD set, watched the first episode/pilot, and thought … meh, just a Western disguised as science fiction (like the original Star Wars was an adventure story disguised as science fiction). I sold the set.
Years later after repeated endorsements from people I respect I purchased again (on Blu-ray) and re-watched in a more open frame of mind. Within a couple of episodes I concluded that this was amongst the best TV ever made, decent science fiction, amazing story lines, somewhat conservative and extremely libertarian in a Heinleinian kind of way. It maintains this quality to the premature end, and in the rarest of all treats, scores a fine movie — Serenity — to finish things off in the best way possible.
When I saw the title Vertigo appear before reading your post, I thought I was going to have to beat you up for not liking it. Instead I have to beat you up for Rear Window, a film I’ve seen and thoroughly enjoyed about 4 times. Actually, I do see where you’re coming from, and it certainly is more straightforward than the revelations in Vertigo. The premise of the movie does set up a bit of a problem for the writers in that if Raymond Burr hasn’t done ‘B’ than there isn’t much reason for the movie. (Though this is years after Hitch already gave us Suspicion). Anyway, that climactic scene with the camera is still pretty cool, and beyond the story one can really enjoy the set piece, the observations of all the other neighbors, the dialogue and humor, and the always great Thelma Ritter. Plus Grace Kelly.
In my first semester at community college years ago I saw the film in a film history class of about a hundred people. I had already seen it, but it was fun to hear a bit of a gasp from many in the room when Kelly was in Burr’s apartment, and we see she needs to leave.
I saw that Simpson’s episode first too, as well as the One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest spoof, and I’m sure others.
For another cool Jimmy Stewart film with one set piece check out Flight of the Phoenix.
I finally saw that three years ago. I thought it was better in the second half.
Actually, I liked it, up until the final minute of the movie. The nastiest sucker punch of any well regarded movie. Foreshadows the Star Wars prequels with its vicious contempt for the audience.
I still need to see it. I’ve read the story that John Ford saw the film and said “I didn’t know that son of a **** could act.”
Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?
It’s five hours of drunk people yelling at each other. And Richard Burton’s pores.
Whoever sanded the teeth marks out of the props at the end of each day’s shooting deserved an Oscar.
Um … A Clockwork Orange?
Also, it’s worth going back to near the start of his career and checking out The Killing. Pretty impressive noir, and quite gripping.
2001 has a special place in my heart for being the first movie that I, I science fiction nerd, saw which took seriously such things as microgravity, no sound in space, rotating spaceships to generate pseudo-gravity. For an extremely slow movie, the HAL stuff at the end managed to be incredibly tense. And then, well, that stuff happened. Oh well.
No, you’re right, Troy. There are lots of folks younger than I who appreciate older classics, and, obviously, you’re in there. I guess, I get depressed when I read comments by (random) people about how “boring” some movie is, where I’m thinking that the buildup and character development is totally appropriate and make for a fuller experience.
Maybe, RW isn’t really a “masterpiece” (and obviously the build-up can inflate expectations), but I really got a renewed appreciation for the movie when I saw it on the big screen again a couple of weeks ago. The whole apartment set they built for Hitchcock, and then the ambient sound of Stewart’s environment were really key parts of the movie. I also really appreciate how Hitchcock built the story up gradually.
Funny, but I had a similar experience as you, but in my case, it was for “Vertigo.” I mean it looks great, but the last time I saw it (on TV), I couldn’t help but think “wait a second this is totally nuts and doesn’t make any sense.” (Still there is a lot to love about that movie; got a great kick last year visiting the old Mission at San Juan Bautista and seeing where they filmed those key scenes).
Knotwise the Poet:
I’ve only seen a few clips of the much lauded sitcom Arrested Development, so I can’t fairly judge it, but the bits I saw underwhelmed me.
A Farewell to Arms- I’ll let Bradley Cooper explain my feelings (warning- does contain a few F-words)
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I actually was surprised that I enjoyed Arrested Development when I started watching it on Netflix. I can’t think of any other home-movie-style of filming and storytelling show I enjoy. As a genre I don’t like them. It gets better the longer you watch it.
And I really enjoyed that video! I hated A Farewell to Arms. I didn’t find the main character likable at all, and was disgusted by the ending.
He’s really good in “In Harm’s Way” which is a Big Mess of a movie, but with a lot of enjoyable stuff in it (a true guilty pleasure!).
I’ll second the recommendation for The Killing.
Totally agree on Citizen Kane. I cannot take seriously the idea that there are actual human beings who think it’s the best movie ever made. Borderline unwatchable.
I think I can explain it.
Most people read Catcher in the Rye between the ages of 12 and 16. This is an age at which many people have the deadly combination of an exaggerated sense of their importance, uniqueness, and brilliance. If you’re looking for a book to endorse all of those self-deceptions, this is the one.
I read it as a high school freshman. Thought it was awesome. Then I became an adult and was embarassed that I once thought it was uniquely great. Very much like Atlas Shrugged, now that I think of it <ducking>.
I always thought the case for Dylan as a performer was made, ironically enough, by Simon and Garfunkel’s first album, Wednesday Morning, 3 AM. They do a cover of “The Times They are A-Changin'” and “Peggy-O” (which Dylan had covered on his first album). Simon and Garfunkel have lovely voices, but that’s not always enough to sell a song. They hit all of the notes and miss all of the feeling. Dylan is definitely more direct.
As I have said about the difference between Hank Williams, Sr. performing “I Saw the Light” and the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band performing the song, one sounds like a group of people singing a song and one sounds like someone who saw the light.
I hated the film, “Tom Jones,” which I found to be terrible, unwatchable, unfunny, poorly made, badly acted. But somehow it won Best Picture.