Hue and Cry II

I was about to write a blog post saying that in spite of the fact that I'd had the DVD of the movie, Hue and Cry, on my shelves for some time, I'd never watched it. To my surprise, when I checked back, I did watch it in 2007, and wrote about it then. Both my wife and I said last night, I don't remember ever seeing this before. Which is puzzling, because I usually have a reasonable visual memory for movies, and so does she, and at least some aspects of the first viewing will be remembered in the second.

So I don't need to say any more about the film, except to say that it was just as enjoyable on a second viewing as I'd obviously found it on the first. However, what I don't seem to have noted at the time is the detail. Right from the opening credits, which are white-washed onto a real wall, with boys playing, running, fighting in front of them, and with a bit of humour thrown in (Wot? no producer? says one, and Stick no Bills in another, with a tatty Ealing Studios poster fluttering alongside) there's an attitude of 'Let's see if you pick this up, audience.' Added to this is Auric's opening music which fits beautifully to all the zipping around and punching that's going on.

Every time the main group of boys appear - and there are around a dozen of them, and one girl (Joan Dowling, who later married Harry Fowler, the main 'boy' in the film, and who sadly committed suicide at the age of 26) - not only do we get a sense of their individuality, but all manner of other 'business' is going on. In one scene one boy is holding a bag of chips; the arm of another reaches over several times to pinch a chip while the others are talking. One boy is being buried in bricks from the bombed-out building site in another scene, and is left to fight his own way out when the others all rush off. One boy has a pet mouse (which has a couple of important scenes later) and it's casually walking up around his collar when we first see him. There's a scene where the first 'The Trump' - a boy's adventure weekly that plays a vital role in the film - is snatched back and forth between three or four of the boys, including its owner. Nobody ever stands around in this movie: the boys' characters and movements are distinct and well-worked out. Charles Crichton, the director, obviously had a good eye for how boys of that generation behaved, and the movie is full of things to keep the eye attentive.

And there's plenty of comedy: in one notable scene that takes place in a department store at night the boys are waiting for the crims to arrive: the owner of the mouse is hiding under a mannequin's skirt. The mouse escapes, and heads over to a speak-your-weight machine. The boy dives for the mouse and the machine speaks his weight. The shop's caretaker arrives and tries to get the boy and the machine speaks their combined weight, and then other boys come and then the police and the machine, with its pompous voice, can hardly keep up.

Alistair Sim has only a few scenes, and plays a character who can hardly sit still. Crichton has him up and down around his cluttered flat, talking nineteen to the dozen, and performing as only Sim could do, and doing so many bits of business that his brain must have been whirling. He gets star billing in spite of appearing for about ten minutes all up, but as Sim always did, he makes those ten minutes unforgettable.

I mentioned in the previous post that a great deal of the film was shot on location, outside in the bombed-out streets of London. In the background of several shots you can see workers rebuilding, and further away still, the barges and boats on the Thames. The film manages to be a documentary of a particular time in the city's history as well as an entertaining story.

Over to degrees

My wife and I are just switching to the 2Degrees network, but both had about $4 on our Vodafone cards.  So we thought we'd use them up.  I rang my daughter in Auckland and we chatted and chatted and still no sign of the card coming to an end.   Finally she had to ring off and put the kids to bed.   And even then there was still $2 left.   So my wife rang a good friend of hers in Christchurch, and within a minute had run out of money!    How does that work?

Now I have to register with 2Degrees - we've already got a couple of their sim cards - and no doubt that'll be fiddly.  Maybe not!

Meantime I'm coping with the new Google version of Blogger, where they've made some changes - some good, like a button for links which, most oddly, never existed before; and some not so good like not being able to pick up photos off your own PC.   When you click on the add picture button it offers you a choice of getting something straight off an Url (or 'a URL' as they put it) or via Picasa - but online, not off your computer as I discovered after I'd installed Picasa - or from the pictures that you've already got on your blogs.   Weird.   Seemingly this is a bug that they're supposed to be fixing. Let's hope they hurry. 

Now why I'd want to write about an Epson receipt printer I'm not entirely sure.   One of the joys of blogging is that you find yourself writing about all sorts of things you know next to nothing about.   Which requires research, which I sometimes do...sometimes well, and sometimes not.   The latter is one of those occasions.   A receipt printer is one used for Eftpos machines - as I'm sure you all know without my having to present you with any of my research - and they make that whining little noise as though it was some kind of pain to present you with a receipt.  

They're ubiquitous.   There now.  That's enough.  Plus I managed to sneak in a decently long and suitably incomprehensible word. 

North by Northwest

I watched Hitchcock’s North by Northwest again the other night. I don’t think I’d actually seen most of it since it was first shown; some of it I caught up with on television a few years ago, but obviously not all of it as there were many scenes that I’d forgotten.
It’s the sort of Hitchcock movie where the plot is irrelevant; the set-pieces are what make it: the climax on the Mt Rushmore faces (very little of which was actually shot there); the wonderful sequence where the crop-dusting plane attacks Cary Grant in the middle of nowhere; the nonsense Grant makes of a very dignified auction. The film was virtually written around these sequences – it’s one of the few Hitchcock movies that isn’t based on a book. (Not that he ever stuck to the books: in most cases he took a few key ideas and made his own film.)
North by Northwest epitomises Hitchcock’s style. The suspense, you say. Well, yes, up to a point, but once you know what’s going to happen, the suspense goes out the window. No, I meant Hitchcock’s humour. Very few of his movies lack some aspect of humour (except perhaps I Confess, The Wrong Man and Psycho – and even Psycho has a few humorous moments early in the piece).
For instance, it was a nice surprise to find that in one of his earlier movies (Young and Strange, I think it was) there isn’t just the suspense, but some wonderful moments of humour – much of involving children, who often play a humorous role in his movies. Both the American and English movies have some glorious humorous sequences – North by Northwest is full of them (with Grant at his ironic best), but Stage Fright, which I caught up with again recently too, has some great moments, particularly those featuring Alistair Sim, whom apparently Hitchcock didn’t take to and objected to his ‘mugging’ – in spite of that, there’s a great deal of Sim in the movie, along with a marvellous scene he shares with the inimitable Joyce Grenfell. I still remember how delighted I was to find her in a Hitchcock movie when I first saw Stage Fright years ago.
Back to NBN. The cast is great. Eva Marie Saint – who never appeared in another Hitchcock movie – is wonderful: elusive, persuasive, romantic; a quiet surface hinting at considerable passion beneath. Why he chose to use Tippi Hendren, for instance, in later blonde roles remains a mystery, when Saint was available. James Mason does a subtle villain, and Jessie Royce Landis (only a couple of years Cary Grant’s senior) plays his mother with considerable aplomb. Cary Grant (who mugs almost as well as Alistair Sim at times) thoroughly enjoys his role, even though he was far too old for the part – but Hitchcock delighted in using him, in spite of that.
And the crop-dusting scene remains a triumph of crafty filmmaking: Grant is actually more in the studio than out of it during the sequence, even when he’s being chased by the plane; and an analysis of the scene, shot by shot, would reveal just how well planned the whole thing is – and how economically.