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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
Haven’t recorded a significant album since the seventies. Should have broken up thirty years ago.
I have watched all of Hitchcock’s Hollywood films, and some of his British ones. I can understand what you are saying, and part of it is that Rear Window is not, in my opinion, one of his best films. Having Jimmy Stewart and Grace Kelly in it certainly helped. It is well done, but the story falls short of what I think are his three masterpieces, Vertigo, North by Northwest, and Notorious. Notorious, which stars Cary Grant and Ingrid Bergman, starts a bit slow but comes on strong. It also has more of a romantic element than most Hitchcock movies.
Now to the real question. I will look at this both ways. In the past year, I watched Gone with the Wind. Even if I had low expectations, I still may not have enjoyed this movie. Overly long, the characters were not likable. I am really not sure what is supposed to make it great.
One the other hand, after watching Johnny Mnemonic, I did not have high hopes when I went to see the Matrix in the theater. I think I would have enjoyed it even if I was looking forward to it, but going in thinking it might be a clunker made it extra enjoyable.
#86 What about ELO, Kansas, or Styx?
My notes on classics, heavily redacted for CoC compliance.
Moby Dick: “Call me Fish Tale.”
Robinson Crusoe: [Redacted for CoC] it, Daniel, there is a difference between foreshadowing and sledgehammering your audience into the ground.
20,000 Leagues Under the Sea: Jules, baby, enough with the [Redacted for CoC] lists, already. Is this an adventure or a [Redacted for CoC] marine biology catalog?
Hmmmn, I’m seeing a pattern here. In a few more books, it will all be redacted.
Hold on.
Rick, GWTW is a chickflick and you’re not one. It also helped that when production began on the movie in 1938 there were approximately 8,000 living veterans of the Civil War. Their average age was 94, but that meant there were a lot of sons and daughters who viewed that as “Daddy’s War,” much in the way that we look at WWII today.
Well…let’s not forget Psycho, Shadow of a Doubt, Suspicion, Strangers On A Train, The Birds, Saboteur, Sabotage, The Man Who Knew Too Much – both versions, Frenzy, and the The Wrong Man. All very captivating films and some very ominous and disturbing but definitely well worth watching more than a few times each.
I loved Indiana Jones when I was six, but I didn’t actually watch any of the movies until sixteen. By then I had a decade of absorbing heavy doses of second hand Indy; countless ripoffs and parodies and pop cultured nods and Muppet Babies Kermit as Indiana Frog.
When I did finally see Raiders of the Lost Ark, it was still great…but, somehow it just wasn’t Indiana Jonesy enough.
Rick – GWTW isn’t in my top 50 (though my son loves it…I think for Max Steiner’s score). But I think Gable’s character was quite likable – he has the best lines in the film. And considering Vivien Leigh’s young career prior to landing the role, her performance is quite amazing. And you weren’t supposed to like Scarlett, so in that she succeeded.
I don’t know that it is solely a chick flick, either… I enjoyed it. Also enjoyed “Scarlet,” when I read that and the Timothy Dalton movie ain’t bad. They had to leave out quite a bit, but still not bad.
The other thing about GWTW, though, that I found frustrating, is that so much of what happened was totally unnecessary. It becomes a good movie when you get all the way to the end of “Scarlet” and everything turns out well. I’m a sucker for a happy ending.
A Christmas Story. Hyped up to be a laff riot; seemed broad and obvious.
“Rear Window” is my favorite Hitchcock movie; that incredible set, all those stories. The way it recreated a time in New York, right down to the sliver of the restaurant visible down the alley. I even prefer “The Birds” to “Vertigo,” which is just fear without reason, and also Suzanne Pleshette. I don’t find Kim Novak interesting at all. Her problem isn’t compelling. Is she reincarnated? I’m guessing . . . not.
You know what makes the film great? The score. Take away that, and it loses half its power. Hermann saved the movie.
Scene D’Amour is one of the best pieces of film music ever written. But I think the movie has more going for it than that- Jimmy Stewart giving a dark, heartbreaking performance, the cinematography, just how twisted the plot is.
In Vertigo, I do like the scene at the inquest where the Henry Jones “judge” makes “Scotty” out to be a craven coward. He definitely isn’t playing with a full deck.
Pssst. People. Moby Dick is funny. And so is Ulysses. Stop taking them so seriously. Treat them more like Alice in Wonderland.
Clearly, The Cloaked Gaijin gets it. Grace Kelly is absolutely yummy in this movie. I liked the nurse who checks up on Stewart periodically. She was the mother in Miracle on 34th Street who compliments a Macy’s worker on the Santa Claus who sent her to a different store. How can’t you feel for Miss Lonely Heart sitting alone at the corner watering hole, then inviting back a cad, and ultimately making the acquaintance of a music man?
Late in life flick? Try The Search with Montgomery Clift, set in post-World War II Europe. If you don’t get verklempt sometime during the movie, you have no heart.
The most likable was Hattie McDaniel as Mammy. How could you not love her?
It does have more going for it, and you’re right. It’s unsettling to see Stewart fall apart, especially since he knows what he’s doing is cruel to the Madelaine substitute. The cinematography is dreamy and the dolly zoom must have been stunning at the time. Believe me, I wanted the movie to put me in its spell, but something in me resisted.
I think one of the reasons I prefer “Window” to “Vertigo” is the way it treats its urban environment – SF is often a remote presence in rear projection as Scotty prowls; New York is alive and loud and hellishly hot in “Window.”
And you’re dead right about Scene D’Amour; that’s just a crossbow to the sternum, that one.
Regarding The Graduate, the scene of Ben at the hotel desk with the desk manager (Buck Henry) has to be one of the funniest scenes in movies. I liked the actor who plays his father. He was great 15 or so years later as insufferably arrogant Dr. Mark Craig in St. Elsewhere. Beyond that, I just want to say one thing…plastics.
Ever seen The Killing (1956)? Early Kubrick about a planned robbery of a race track. A contender for greatest heist movie ever.
Another rabbit trail to follow. Supposed classics that have never turned my crank, so to speak – may I present the Jaguar E-type:
I have rarely come across anything that is “a classic” which is not ultimately somewhere between tedious and terrible.
As I said after getting dragged to a Stones show, “We Won’t Get Fooled Again.”
Absolutely. Mammy and Melanie are the bedrocks of morality in the film that all the other characters swirl around.
One of the hardest things to do when evaluating a “classic” is to try to see it in its time period.
“Citizen Kane,” “Gone With the Wind,” and their ilk would not be viewed as great films if made today, but at the time they were at the height of what was feasible, and what was enjoyable to the audience of that day.
I’m willing to concede that what I’ve always felt to be the best movie of all time, “The Best Years of Their Lives,” would strike today’s audience (and especially critics) as melodramatic and unrealistic, as well as jingoistic. But I can’t not watch it every time it comes on TV.
Well said. Citizen Kane was a ground breaking film at the time in so many ways – breaking up the conventional linear narrative with flashbacks and flashbacks within flashbacks; as well as some of the severe low-angle camera techniques and lighting; intense close up shots on one side of the screen while other characters responded in the background (one has to remember that when a character is in such an intense close up that their face is literally over 50 ft. high in a standard movie theater of the time – an effect lost on most television screens); and Welles’ signature overlapping dialogue which he used in most of his films and which does seem more natural with how humans actually communicate often talking over one another.
Bottom line in this discussion: Sometimes it’s good to be old. Movies are best enjoyed linearly.
Ditto on Pleshette. Yowsers! What a woman! And The Birds is a great and under appreciated film. Jessica Tandy’s performance is phenomenal. The story of Vertigo is a contrivance with a lot of gimmies. Herrmann’s score does make it compelling and ethereal. Having grown up around San Francisco and spending a good deal of time there haunting the Palace of the Legion of Honor and exploring the Embarcadero, Fisherman’s Wharf, Chinatown and the great old hotels – I enjoy the film for the memories it brings. The gallery in the Palace of the Legion of Honor was virtually identical in the mid-70s to what was depicted in the film – sans the portrait of Carlotta Valdez of course.
I think the only real problem with The Bird is Tippi Hedren, who is underwhelming in the lead.
As for Vertigo, I think the second half is much better than the first half.
Hedren was the cool, remote blonde – the type of woman that Hitch was often obsessed with. Pleshette is everything she wasn’t – dark, curvaceous, sultry voice, warm, seductive and I think probably a lot of the men in the audience wanted to see more of her in the film. I know I did.
There is a lot to this–aside from changes in taste, there is something that makes it so much more difficult to understand what’s staring you in the face on the screen.
There is something to this business of having seen it all before & looking for innovations, the sense that we have to sit in judgment of these movies, as if something being called a classic is a personal insult–I think we’re paying a price for lack of naivety, for this knowing attitude, & I don’t mean that we do not get to enjoy classics–it’s something related, though, if the classics really are as good as their reputation suggests or claims, they speak to something important to us, which is more obvious to them than to us. Think of this refrain–you have to understand the thing it its context–there is always a suggestion there, & more than a suggestion, that this does not matter to us, but it may have mattered to grandpa for reasons not obvious to him, but obvious to us.