Hitchcock, 40 years ago goodbye to the master of the thrill

April 29 is an important date for film enthusiasts: exactly 40 years ago in Los Angeles the flame of the thrilling cinema of all time went out after the umpteenth heart attack: Sir Alfred Hitchock died. It is therefore imperative to dedicate this week's column to him and his films while waiting for the partial "reopening" of social life to encourage large retailers to put on the home video market news that has already been announced for some time.
    The free television hosts on April 29 a detailed tribute to the Maestro del Brivido with La7 which proposes three masterpieces framed by Andrea Purgatori in his "Atlantide" program.
    It begins with "International Intrigue" (1959, with Cary Grant and Eva-Marie Saint), continues with "Notorius" (1946, again with Cary Grant paired with Ingrid Bergman for the longest kiss in the history of cinema) and finally , late at night "I will save you" (1945, with Gregory Peck and again Ingrid Bergman). The documentary Hitchcock Confidential remembers him on May 2 on Sky Arte - The other half of the genius is aired on Saturday at 9.15 pm on Sky Arte (channels 120 and 400) and streamed on NOW TV.
    But the real proposal is found on the Chili platform which showcases all of its "crown jewels": even 15 films between the English pre-war period and the Hollywood period, enriched by two fundamental documentaries and a quality biopic like "Hitchcock "by Sacha Gervasi (2012) with a camouflage Anthony Hopkins as the director during the troubled production of" Psycho ". To the delight of film buffs, there are many of the key titles in the career of this extraordinary creator of fear gadgets that have changed the language of cinema forever. There are the best known films from "Thief hunt" to "Psycho", from "The birds" to "The other man", from "I confess" to "Marnie" and the access fee (without subscription) is acceptable (less than three euros with the possibility to download the film with a surcharge or to order your copy on DVD or blueray).
    But in terms of reporting, it is advisable to note a couple of films of the English period that are rarely found available and the two documentaries placed in support of the overall proposal.
    - BLACKMAIL with Anny Ondra and John Longden (1929). It is the first sound film by the director who, now famous at home, opposed the producers' desire to sound only the last reel and made his actors use all the dialogues by combining them with sound effects never heard before. The protagonist, Alice, is disputed between the love of the policeman Frank and the advances of a painter who wants to make her a portrait. To defend herself Alice ends up killing the painter by mistake but suffers the blackmail of this Tracy who was already persecuting the victim. Called to investigate Frank understands the truth, cornering Tracy who falls from a dome in the British Museum and saves Alice at that point determined to confess her crime. However, the shadow of guilt will continue to haunt her. The construction of tension, complicity with the viewer who knows the truth before the protagonists and the sound effects are already decisive elements in the vision of the story signed by Hitch '.
    - THE TAVERN OF JAMAICA with Charles Laughton, Maureen O'Hara, Robert Newton (1939). Based on a short story by his beloved Daphne Du Maurier (the writer of "Rebecca"), the film is one of Hitchcock's rare historical tales. Set in Cornwall in the eighteenth century, it has at its center the vicissitudes of the naive Mary Yellen who, orphaned, goes to live with her aunt in the shady tavern of Jamaica where a group of pirates makes a living by attacking ships to prey on them. Their mind and informant is Judge Pengallan who pretends to be the protector of the girl, especially after she saved a handsome young man, Jem, from the gallows. He will prove to be a naval officer who wants to thwart pirate plans. Adrenaline ending with Pengallan who, uncovered, throws himself from the top of the main mast of the ship with which he wanted to escape by holding Mary hostage. Often considered among the minor films of the English period, it has recently been rediscovered because it contains many of the fundamental elements of a new way of making cinema. The following year Hitchcock would sail to America towards his new life.
    - 78/52 by Alexandre O. Philippe with Guillermo del Toro, Bret Easton Ellis, Karyn Kusama, Eli Roth, and Peter Bogdanovich (2017). The title refers to the exorbitant number of shots (precisely 78) and the scene cuts (52) with which one of the most famous sequences in the history of cinema is built: the shower scene in "Psycho". It was a memorable invention both because, just a third of the film, the director brutally kills the protagonist (Janet Leigh), and because he solves the problem of censorship (explicit scenes of murderous violence could not be shown) creating in the imagination of the spectator everything that physically does not see. Despite this, fear and horror dominate all the time of the sequence and creates an autonomous world in the context of the film without revealing neither the culprit nor the possible fate of the unfortunate protagonist. Talking about a series of excellent spectators.
    - Kent Jones' HITCHCOCK / TRUFFAUT with James Gray, Martin Scorsese, Paul Schrader, Wes Anderson, David Fincher, Arnaud Desplechin, Olivier Assayas, Peter Bogdanovich, Kiyoshi Kurosawa and Richard Linklater. (2015). Grappling with the endless archive of the famous interview made by the young French filmmaker to his ideal master over the course of a week during 1962, the film director and historian Kent Jones (together with his screenwriter Serge Toubiana) retraces that historic interview in the company of great directors who have been marked by the Hitchcockian lesson all over the world. It emerges for the first time the extraordinary modernity of that dialogue and a truth of its protagonists that the pages of the book (the interview was published for the first time in 1966) could not make. (handle). (HANDLE).