strange and random happenstance

Rebecca
Based on the book by Daphne Du Maurier
Starring: Laurence Olivier, Joan Fontaine, Judith Anderson, Leo G. Carroll, and Alfred Hitchcock
Release Date: 1940
Rating: ★★★
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Maxim de Winter has taken a new bride. After a hasty proposal followed by a hasty marriage in a registrar office in the south of France, the newlyweds are off to England and his great estate of Manderley. The second Mrs. de Winter feels lost and out of place there. She feels as if everything she does is being compared to Maxim's first wife, Rebecca. Rebecca whose initials are strewn all over the stationary, Rebecca whose room is keep as a shrine by the housekeeper Mrs. Danvers, Rebecca who could pull off class and wear a black dress and pearls without anyone batting an eyelash. And finally, Rebecca, whose memory sends her new husband into sulks and fits of rage. Will Rebecca be the end of them? 

My entire life I have had a little bit of a Hitchcock obsession. It could be that I'm drawn to great filmmaking with a darker edge, or it could be that I have embraced him because we share the same birthday, either way his films are the pinnacle of what cinema is about for me. For years I went back and forth between Rebecca and Rear Window as to which was my favorite of his films, that was until I saw Vertigo and it can now never be shifted in my heart as his true masterpiece. In recent years I've taken to watching Hitchcock movies on the big screen and only resorting to watching my DVDs if I can't help it.

For some reason Rebecca is never shown in these retrospectives at the various art house cinemas. This means I haven't seen Rebecca in many years now. It was an odd and jarring experience rewatching the movie. I've revisited my other two favorite Hitchcock films so many times that they have changed and grown with me, but Rebecca feels as if it belongs to a different me. I can still see the reasons I loved it back in high school, I can picture myself begging my parents for a copy of the movie poster for my room, and yet... and yet I see the flaws more clearly.

Of course, ideally you shouldn't finish the book, set it down and reach for the remote, that can never end well. And yet I did just that. Yes, despite knowing that this couldn't end well, I did it anyway. All that was wrong jumped out at me with more force then ever before, I wasn't charmed by the old film, I was baffled that I ever saw anything but a bad miniature as Joan Fontaine narrates the opening lines of the book. This isn't to say that the movie is a train wreck, far from it, this is the best adaptation of Rebecca out there. It just doesn't compare to the depth you get in the book.

The truth is that this is a perfectly cast movie that suffers from not having enough time to do the story justice and not having the technology needed. You can see why they have mistakenly tried to remake it so many times, I'm warily eyeing you Netflix, because the movie has the potential but falls short. But all these other wannabes, they don't realize they can never ever match the greatness of Laurence Olivier and Joan Fontaine. Seriously, Charles Dance as Maxim de Winter? NO! Whomever thought that, just no. They deserve to die with a bolt through the gut, if you know what I mean. In fact if you look at the scenes that are almost directly lifted word for word from the book, I'm thinking particularly of the scene where Maxim confesses to his new bride in the cottage in the cove, it enraptures you. The spark between the characters and the way it's shot, with "Rebecca" rising from the daybed. Some of the best cinema you will ever see.

But it's not just the spark between the leads that makes it perfectly cast. Fontaine has that wonderful bewildered look that she has mastered to perfection, but also she has such a gaucheness that you wonder at times if it's inexperienced acting, but when you get to the end of the movie you realize that it was a purposeful naivety, it's no wonder she was nominated for an Oscar for this role. As for Olivier? He is Maxim. There is no other actor that can ever do this role justice which again makes the flaws that much more obvious. As for Judith Anderson as Mrs. Danvers? The way she's able to keep that severe yet distanced look in her eyes that goes into crazy overload when she shows off Rebecca's room. I defy you to find someone who could do that as well!

One aspect of the movie that I had the biggest problem with though was something that they really couldn't control and that is that the movie is in black and white. Yes it did come out a year after The Wizard of Oz premiered in glorious Technicolor, but Hitchcock was never swayed by what he could do instead doing what he thought worked with the movie. Why else was Psycho in black and white? He must have thought that color was untried and that black and white adhered to the Gothic nature of the story. But that's what makes the book so unique. It is a Gothic story but there is riotous color in the book. The red flowers being a bloody reminder of Rebecca, the bluebells and the hydranga flowering in the woods and along the drive. There is such colorful life flowing from every page that it jars you to see this bleak world on screen. Yet another reason to space out your reading and your watching of Rebecca.

But hands down, the biggest issue I had was with the music. A lot of people I think don't take music into consideration in films and movies. It's just something there in the background that fuels the mood. Yet if it's done badly it jars discordantly and pulls you out of the moment. I am probably more aware then most people of this because my brother is a music nut and I've spent enough time around him that I am aware of music more often then not. I was overjoyed recently when I was able to successfully "hear" that Grantchester was scored by the same person who does Downton Abbey.

If you really want a shock, go back and watch some of your favorite movies from the 80s and you'll be in for a musical surprise, as your eardrums bleed. Rebecca's music is like a pendulum, either overly cheerful like you're skipping through a woods on a summer morning, or bizarrely ominous. There is no middle ground. The music is very bi-polar in this regard. You can see why later Hitchcock stuck to using composers like Bernard Herrmann, who were able to create memorable music that fit the movie and elevated it to another level. The very least Rebecca could do to improve itself is get a new score.

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 0 comments  

Labels: Charles Dance, Daphne Du Maurier, Downton Abbey, Du Maurier December, Grantchester, Hitchcock, Joan Fontaine, Judith Anderson, Laurence Olivier, Maxim de Winter, Mrs. Danvers, Psycho, Rear Window, Rebecca, Vertigo

The Stranger by Albert Camus
Published by: Vintage International
Publication Date: 1942
Format: Paperback, 123 Pages
Rating: ★★
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Meursault's mother has died. He makes the long trek to her funeral, it was cost prohibitive to keep her with him and they had nothing more to say to each other. He feels that he should feel something, but there is nothing but the heat of the day and the inconvenience to his daily routine. The day after his mother's funeral he begins a long desired affair with Marie, a co-worker, going to a silly movie and having sex. Things are going along swimmingly with Marie, though she presses for marriage. Meursault says if she wants to get married they should get married, it makes no difference to him. He is passivity personified. He even helps his neighbor Raymond pen a missive to his mistress, seeing that there's no harm in it. Meursault's naivety as to his situation with Raymond will be his undoing. One day at the beach Meursault shoots and kills the brother of Raymond's mistress. The day was hot and the gang of men were following Raymond and Meursault and Marie to the beach. They had an altercation but everything seemed to be over. Then Meursault wandered back to the cool little cove where they first encountered the men, hoping to rest. The Arab was there and then he was dead. Killed by the gun Raymond gave to Meursault. Meursault confesses to his crime. He puts up no protest. The trial is tiring, but he is sure that he will get off. The sentence passed down is a shock to him.

If you read for pleasure versus reading for a class you quickly realize that just because a book is defined as a classic doesn't mean it actually has to be good. In fact some of the most lauded and praised classics might be the most deathly and dull books you'll ever read. While I wouldn't classify The Stranger as the "worst" classic I've ever read, I will say that of all the members of my book club I liked it the least. Though my ambivalence to the book and how it influenced existentialism doesn't preclude it from being a good book to discuss. So while the book might not have met my expectations the discussion that arose from it was engaging, and I think that's why this book has stuck around. It's not perfect but it is perfect to get people talking. As to why The Stranger didn't blow me away, I've read similar books that are better written. D'entre les Mortes by Boileau and Narcejac, which was the basis for the movie Vertigo, captures existentialism and fatalism far better than The Stranger ever does. And it also has that very French vibe as well. But seeing as this book is written later, it was probably influenced by Camus. Therefore I suggest looking to a contemporary of Camus, mainly Daphne Du Maurier. Her short stories succinctly capture the feeling of The Stranger but with better writing. Just because she has been erroneously labelled as a "romance writer" it has lead to her being overlooked. Camus might be a good discussion topic, but for true existentialism go to Du Maurier.

Despite preferring Du Maurier, I am not going to argue the "classic" status of The Stranger. The truth is it is a classic. The reason this is is there is a timelessness to the book. Aside from the method of Meursault's execution and one mention of a movie star, I challenge you to pinpoint the time period of this piece. Not only could it have been set anytime during the past century, it could easily happen now. As my friend Mike pointed out, Meursault could just as easily have been going to a movie by Adam Sandler. Think of that. Could a man be condemned for enjoying an Adam Sandler movie? Now that would add an interesting modern take to the book without changing any of the underlying themes that Camus is trying to get across. Camus was all about the absurdity of life, that a man could be condemned for not showing what society thought as proper grief at his mother's death. If Camus were still alive I think the absurdity of being condemned for laughing at one of the worst comedians of all time would appeal to him. Plus, can you imagine the stir this modern take would create? It almost makes me want to make it into a film myself.

What is odd about The Stranger is despite having a first person narrator it almost feels like it was written in the third person. The reason for this is the passivity of Meursault. He outwardly has no emotions, no desires, he doesn't even really have a personality so to speak. He just follows the ebb and flow of life never really questioning anything until he is faced with his imminent death. One of my friends pointed out that this leads to a refreshing narrator because he does not have any ego. I personally would disagree. Yes he is passive, but being passive doesn't mean that at the bottom of all that there isn't an ego. The truth is he has a very well defined id. An id that is more animal than human. He only goes with the flow if it isn't an inconvenience to him. But look at his train of thought, it's all about food and sex and swimming. He only thinks about stuff that provides gratification to himself. He has an ego, but an animalistic ego that is all about his comfort. Sure he'll marry his girlfriend, what difference does it make to him, all he cares about is having someone around for sex. If marriage will secure this, then why not? The only incident in his entire life that isn't about his own pleasure was the murder he is accused of. He just did it because. Though you could argue that it was because of that nice cool cove.

But really, why kill this man? This is an action completely out of character. Meursault derived no apparent pleasure from it, and that was how he lived his entire life, so why do it? My theory is that there is something seriously wrong with him. Yes, you could look at the entire book as an emotionless man fighting against the inevitability of death and finally finding fire within, but I think that it is a study of a man who was seriously ill. I think that Meursault had a brain tumor. The book oddly backs this up. Firstly, people who have brain tumors often seem off, they don't understand how society works and are therefore often detached. Like people with aspergers they don't get social cues. They also don't understand dangerous situations, often having a childlike naivete. Therefore not crying at his mother's funeral doesn't seem odd to Meursault, while it's a "hanging" offense to the jury. His single-mindedness with devotion only to his own pleasure would also indicate that he has a tumor. But what I think is most significant is his reaction to the sun and heat. The sun is always too bright and overwhelms him. His brain can't process the light streaming through his eyes and he often complains of the sun and his head, much like someone with a migraine would. Only I don't think this is any migraine. I think that Meursault is a sick man because of something inside. This something doesn't see anything wrong with shooting a guy full of holes because it has no mechanism for censure of right and wrong. It lends an entirely different spin to the story but oddly backs up the futility of life. He is inevitably going to die so why fight? In fact he might not have had long to live even if he wasn't executed.

Obviously talking about life and death and this book being the epitome of existentialism, God will enter into it. The first half of the book leading to the murder followed by the second half of trial and condemnation, don't quite fit together. It's like Camus was trying to just show us this man's personality in part one but part two was where all the moral and philosophical reasoning reside. Which makes the second half far heavier. We only see Meursault lose his temper once and that is to the priest who visits him. Obviously this is the important part highlighted by English teachers the world over as the crux of the book. But by the time I reached this point I just didn't care. I didn't care if our antihero did or didn't accept Christ into his life. I didn't care if he was executed. I didn't care if he lived or died. That is the fault at the very center of this book. Yes we can discuss it, yes it might be a fascinating discussion, but a book comes down to the readers investment in the hero or antihero. I could not care less what happened to Meursault! But maybe that's the point? Maybe Camus is playing a double game? For those actually invested there's Meursault's struggle to come to terms with his death, and for the reader there's the struggle to actually care about the book. Or maybe I'm seriously just reading too much into things and applying meaning where there is none because so many people I know liked it and I thought it was just meh. Yep. Still meh.

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 0 comments  

Labels: Adam Sandler, Albert Camus, Aspergers, Boileau and Narcejac, Book Clubs, Brain Tumor, D'entre les Mortes, Daphne Du Maurier, Execution, Existentialism, French, Id, The Stranger, Trial, Vertigo

Maurice
Based on the book by E.M. Forster
Starring: James Wilby, Hugh Grant, Rupert Graves, Denholm Elliott, Simon Callow, Billie Whitelaw, Barry Foster, Judy Parfitt, Phoebe Nicholls, Ben Kingsley, Patrick Godfrey, Mark Tandy, Kitty Aldridge, Helena Michell, Catherine Rabett, and Peter Eyre
Release Date: September 15th, 1987
Rating: ★★
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Despite a kindly teacher telling Maurice the facts of life before he ventured out into the "real world" he doesn't really believe that he will be like other men with a wife and a home. This thought of his prepubescent self seems to be prophetic as when he's at college at Cambridge he falls in love with his fellow student Clive Durham. They begin an affair of the heart, not of the body. They leave college and continue to be the center of each others lives. This happy situation can not last. A mutual friend, Risley, who has their predilections is caught in a sting operation and arrested and sentenced to six months hard labor for gross indecency. This incident shakes Clive's life to pieces. He and Maurice have been deluding themselves, and from now on they are to be nothing more than friends. Maurice doesn't want to accept this, but quite quickly he sees that Clive is moving on with his life. Clive is soon married and he and his wife Anne are settling into their country estate, Pendersleigh, and having friends round for the weekend and campaigning, living the life of a country squire. They finally convince Maurice to visit, and it will be a fateful one for Maurice. It is during this visit that he meets Alec Scudder, the under-gamekeeper of Pendersleigh. Despite Maurice trying to "cure" himself via hypnosis, Scudder, and his feelings for him, show Maurice that perhaps he doesn't want to change. Perhaps he has found what he had thought he had with Clive? Only this time is it real?

In college my friends and I used to all pile onto one couch in my parent's house and watch movies. They usually would be OK watching whatever film I had planned on viewing, and seeing as this was during the time when I tried to watch an entire actor's oeuvre, they'd sometimes be stuck watching Richard E. Grant for a summer, as we worked our way from Henry and June to Spice World. Ironically, of the two, I would recommend Spice World as the better film, I think Henry and June actually ended up in an impromptu trip to the liquor store in order to finish it. For some arcane and forgotten reason Maurice was watched on one of these nights. I really can not understand what possessed me to suggest it, this was at the height of my James Wilby hatred, seriously, until the Bertie and Elizabeth TV movie I really thought he was a dick cause he could only play them, plus I was also starting a period of hating Rupert Graves which was never fully broken till Sherlock. There are three conceivable reasons as to why we picked Maurice up at Video Station on that summer night, it was either because of Merchant and Ivory, or Hugh Grant, or because I was trying to find a period film that my friend Matt might be willing to watch. I should note that he did not watch it with us. All I remember of the film is that I was shocked we all remained awake through the whole film. Even the most exciting of films, which this is not, often resulted in nap time... hmm, maybe I should have connected letting me choose the film and nap time prior to now.... Needless to say, the film left almost no impression on me, yet I would gladly go back to that night we all watched it just to have one more night with us all piled on that couch never really thinking it would one day end.

If the movie had spent half as much time finding a properly fitting cast as it did fitting every single square inch of frame with Victorian and Edwardian tat then it would have been a flawless film. Instead it suffers from three bad casting decisions, James Wilby as Maurice, Rupert Graves as the laughable lower class Scudder, he can not pull off that accent in the least, and Ben Kingsley as, well, I'm not quite sure what he's supposed to be, maybe Texan? James Wilby is all wrong because he hadn't developed enough as an actor at this point and has no inherent charm like Hugh Grant. Instead we are left with a hero who is basically a cardboard cut out. At times he was so two-dimensional that I actually think having a cardboard cut out deliver the lines would have been more successful. To have the entire film rest on his shoulders is laughable. A strong force is needed for a title role, and by casting Wilby the movie failed before it started. But this was a failure that was forced on them because Julian Sands pulled out at the last minute. Could Julian Sands have made the film work? I can't tell you that... I can say that Wilby has made films I enjoy while Sands hasn't. As for Scudder... well, there it was just the fault of trying to force an accent one someone who was incapable of doing one. I have come to admire Rupert Graves over the years, but he is distinctly working middle class. The lower class accent combined with the bad grammar and language skills didn't work coming out of his mouth. In fact, they were laughable. But nothing will beat the fact that when Ben Kingsley showed up as the hypnotherapist and launched into his indescribable accent, the film, which was at a tipping point from art to farce until that moment, went straight to farce.

The worst part of the entire movie is the confluence of these three in a dream sequence that was obviously ripped off of Vertigo and threw out every bit of style and structure the film had thus far established. Previously the film is unique in that it lacked a score, any music in the film is classical pieces that usually were practical, a pianola, a gramophone, you get the idea. Yet the dream sequence is scored? That's an odd choice. And floridly scored like an untalented Edwardian Bernard Herrmann dropped by. Then the laying of images over each other with color flashes. This is getting more and more like Vertigo by the second. When Ben Kingsley's head started floating in the center of the screen, I was laughing so hard tears were streaming down my face. I just can't rectify this clash, to have a period film that is so distinctly staid and proper to have this stylistic French new wave interpretive dream makes NO SENSE! Much like in Vertigo, the dream is the crisis point of the movie, it's time for the lead to move forward with their life or forfeit it. But just because we have two characters in the grip of a life altering decision as focused through a fever dream doesn't mean that they should be so similar. Fifty years separate these stories, and that is a gulf that can not be breached. Even if Maurice had tried to incorporate the subconscious trying to tell the conscious self it's true desire, even if there had been some psychoanalysis going on, this was with out a doubt the number one way it should not have been handled.

But the film did handle some issues well, and the changes made aided the film and brought more clarity to the story than the book. The biggest change was how Clive's "conversion" was handled. In the book he just realizes as he's nursed back to health that he is no longer attracted to men. This is very flimsy reasoning. Ruth Prawer Jhabvala, James Ivory's usual writing partner, had the inspired idea to actually give justification to this conversion through the underused character of Risley. In the book Risley is important for awakening Maurice's interests and inadvertently introducing him to Clive, and later for recommending the hypnotherapist. Instead we are shown a plausible and slightly hinted at story about what really happened to Risley when he was off stage. Risley is caught in a sting operation to entrap homosexuals, and despite being a Viscount, is sentenced to six months hard labor and may never hold a government position due to his proclivities and his arrest. This terrifies Clive into having cold sweats. Clive is also a well respected member of the aristocracy, he hopes to hold a position in government, and he has been living a double life for years. He has a crisis at a dinner at Maurice's house. Not brought on by his recent illness and the fear of telling Maurice they are through, but because he fears exposure and must give up the one thing that matters to him if he isn't to face the same fate as Risley. This, not only makes more sense, but gives Clive more depth. It shows that his sexual orientation isn't just a phase he was going through, but something that would always be a part of him that he pushed aside in order to survive. The last scene of the movie, with Clive and his wife, after Maurice has confronted Clive about being in love with Scudder, it shows a wistfulness, a longing that what Maurice and Scudder have, that is what he wants but is too scared to embrace.

In fact, much of the film is a refocusing of the narrative on Clive. While this honing in does the story the disservice of sidelining Maurice's family, the truth is their hatred of Maurice doesn't serve the narrative if you are actually trying to make him likable. But the fact is if this film had sidelined Maurice just like it did his family, it could have been a better film. By adding more depth to Clive, seeing the whole story through his eyes becomes far more fascinating then just following around the unsympathetic and flat Maurice. One thing I found interesting though is the film really focused in on Clive as being asexual. He loves men, but never physically. He NEVER acts on his impulses. As we see later with his wife, they too have a very chaste relationship, almost like siblings. The book doesn't go to great lengths to stress the fact that Clive and Maurice's love is unconsummated, and in fact, if it wasn't for Forster's insistence that their love had no physical side in the afterward, I would argue that they did have a physical relationship. In fact, I'd go so far as to say that Forster added that afterward to try to make the book more palatable by insisting that it was only Scudder and Maurice getting it on, and that Clive was above reproach, aside from that "phase" he went through prior to Greece, but he never acted on his impulses. Again, I think that this gives Clive more depth. You see him not as someone who had two loves in his life and is now content. Instead he is a man always thwarted by his desires he is trying to repress. It makes him a tragic figure. In the book Clive is just the awakening and Scudder is the prize. Clive being perfectly content in his post Maurice life. This little tweak changes that all. It adds more to the story and with Hugh Grant's portrayal of Clive we are given the one and only redeeming facet of the film.

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 0 comments  

Labels: Asexual, Ben Kinsgley, Bernard Herrmann, E.M. Forster, Forster Fall, Henry and June, Homosexuality, Hugh Grant, James Wilby, Maurice, Richard E. Grant, Risley, Rupert Graves, Sherlock Holmes, Spice Girls, Vertigo

Rebecca
Based on the book by Daphne Du Maurier
Starring: Laurence Olivier, Joan Fontaine, Judith Anderson, Leo G. Carroll, and Alfred Hitchcock
Release Date: 1940
Rating: ★★★
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Maxim de Winter has taken a new bride. After a hasty proposal followed by a hasty marriage in a registrar office in the south of France, the newlyweds are off to England and his great estate of Manderley. The second Mrs. de Winter feels lost and out of place there. She feels as if everything she does is being compared to Maxim's first wife, Rebecca. Rebecca whose initials are strewn all over the stationary, Rebecca whose room is keep as a shrine by the housekeeper Mrs. Danvers, Rebecca who could pull off class and wear a black dress and pearls without anyone batting an eyelash. And finally, Rebecca, whose memory sends her new husband into sulks and fits of rage. Will Rebecca be the end of them? 

My entire life I have had a little bit of a Hitchcock obsession. It could be that I'm drawn to great filmmaking with a darker edge, or it could be that I have embraced him because we share the same birthday, either way his films are the pinnacle of what cinema is about for me. For years I went back and forth between Rebecca and Rear Window as to which was my favorite of his films, that was until I saw Vertigo and it can now never be shifted in my heart as his true masterpiece. In recent years I've taken to watching Hitchcock movies on the big screen and only resorting to watching my DVDs if I can't help it.

For some reason Rebecca is never shown in these retrospectives at the various art house cinemas. This means I haven't seen Rebecca in many years now. It was an odd and jarring experience rewatching the movie. I've revisited my other two favorite Hitchcock films so many times that they have changed and grown with me, but Rebecca feels as if it belongs to a different me. I can still see the reasons I loved it back in high school, I can picture myself begging my parents for a copy of the movie poster for my room, and yet... and yet I see the flaws more clearly.

Of course, ideally you shouldn't finish the book, set it down and reach for the remote, that can never end well. And yet I did just that. Yes, despite knowing that this couldn't end well, I did it anyway. All that was wrong jumped out at me with more force then ever before, I wasn't charmed by the old film, I was baffled that I ever saw anything but a bad miniature as Joan Fontaine narrates the opening lines of the book. This isn't to say that the movie is a train wreck, far from it. It just doesn't compare to the depth you get in the book.

The truth is that this is a perfectly cast movie that suffers from not having enough time to do the story justice and not having the technology needed. You can see why they have mistakenly tried to remake it six times, because the movie has the potential but falls short. But all these other wannabes, they don't realize they can never ever match the greatness of Laurence Olivier and Joan Fontaine. Seriously, Charles Dance as Maxim de Winter? NO! Whomever thought that, just no. They deserve to die with a bolt through the gut, if you know what I mean. In fact if you look at the scenes that are almost directly lifted word for word from the book, I'm thinking particularly of the scene where Maxim confesses to his new bride in the cottage in the cove, it enraptures you. The spark between the characters and the way it's shot, with "Rebecca" rising from the daybed. Some of the best cinema you will ever see.

But it's not just the spark between the leads that makes it perfectly cast. Fontaine has that wonderful bewildered look that she has mastered to perfection, but also she has such a gaucheness that you wonder at times if it's inexperienced acting, but when you get to the end of the movie you realize that it was a purposeful naivety, it's no wonder she was nominated for an Oscar for this role. As for Olivier, he is Maxim. There is no other actor that can ever do this role justice which again makes the flaws that much more obvious. As for Judith Anderson as Mrs. Danvers? The way she's able to keep that severe yet distanced look in her eyes that goes into crazy overload when she shows off Rebecca's room. I defy you to find someone who could do that as well!

One aspect of the movie that I had the biggest problem with though was something that they really couldn't control and that is that the movie is in black and white. Yes it did come out a year after The Wizard of Oz premiered in glorious Technicolor, but Hitchcock was never swayed by what he could do instead doing what he thought worked with the movie. Why else was Psycho in black and white? He must have thought that color was untried and that black and white adhered to the Gothic nature of the story. But that's what makes the book so unique. It is a Gothic story but there is riotous color in the book. The red flowers being a bloody reminder of Rebecca, the bluebells and the hydranga flowering in the woods and along the drive. There is such colorful life flowing from every page that it jars you to see this bleak world on screen. Yet another reason to space out your reading and your watching of Rebecca.

But hands down, the biggest issue I had was with the music. A lot of people I think don't take music into consideration in films and movies. It's just something there in the background that fuels the mood. Yet if it's done badly it jars discordantly and pulls you out of the moment. I am probably more aware then most people of this because my brother is a music nut and I've spent enough time around him that I am aware of music more often then not. I was overjoyed recently when I was able to successfully "hear" that Grantchester was scored by the same person who does Downton Abbey.

If you really want a shock, go back and watch some of your favorite movies from the 80s and you'll be in for a musical surprise, as your eardrums bleed. Rebecca's music is like a pendulum, either overly cheerful like you're skipping through a woods on a summer morning, or bizarrely ominous. There is no middle ground. The music is very bi-polar in this regard. You can see why later Hitchcock stuck to using composers like Bernard Herrmann, who were able to create memorable music that fit the movie and elevated it to another level. The very least Rebecca could do to improve itself was get a new score.

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 0 comments  

Labels: Charles Dance, Daphne Du Maurier, Downton Abbey, Grantchester, Hitchcock, Joan Fontaine, Judith Anderson, Laurence Olivier, Maxim de Winter, Mrs. Danvers, Psycho, Rear Window, Rebecca, The Wizard of Oz, Vertigo

Michael Tolliver Lives by Armistead Maupin
Published by: Harper Perennial
Publication Date: June 12th, 2007
Format: Paperback, 320 Pages
Rating: ★★
To Buy
Michael Tolliver has survived. Almost 20 years since he found out he was HIV Positive, he has outlived many who thought they would be burying him. Thack is long gone, but now he has the much younger Ben, who loves Michael not just for his "daddy" status, but for who he is. Anna is still around, though the house on Barbary Lane has been sold. Brian still runs the nursery, having bought Michael out when he decided to do free lance gardening and landscaping. No one has much contact with Mary Ann since her desertion, but her daughter is working in media in the spirit of her mother, though as a sex blogger, versus a television host. These people are Michael's "logical" family, compared to his "biological" family back in Florida which is preparing itself for the death of the matriarch. A strange thing is happening to Michael, in a time when he didn't think he'd see tomorrow, he is now watching those he loves die. From Mona to his mother, the grief others would bear for him is now his own. But with the grief there is a joy. The joy of each day, the joy in finding Ben, the joy in finding some sort of acceptance from his mother, the joy in reconnecting with his brother. When you live in a world where once all was lost, finding these little joys, and sometimes the bigger joys of a threesome, mean everything.

Taking a drastic break from the style of the previous novels in the Tales of the City series, here we don't get vignettes on the characters lives, but we follow Michael in a first person narrative and learn about what has happened to the characters through his revelations and reminiscences. While I applaud Maupin for taking such a risk in diverging from his set tone, I don't think it really works. The reason the Tales of the City books captured me was their humorous take on life flitting from one character to the other and how they all somehow were intertwined in the greater scheme of things. Through triumph and tragedy, we followed that motley crew. Now we have a kind of, this is your life, where Michael goes, "hey, remember Mona, she's dead." It's like little call outs to the past with terse summaries and no development. Instead we find ourselves in a world of aging gay men, where Michael has lucked out and got himself a young'un, but they're perfectly willing to have a very graphic three way. The Mouse of the past, who was scared of the disease he carried, seems now cavalier about sex because apparently everyone assumes everyone is positive. This just seemed a little too tawdry to me, and considering the level it takes to make me squeamish, yeah, this wasn't really expected. But every once in awhile there was a glimpse of the pervious books. With Anna picking out a cat at animal control, because the humane society animals seemed to have it too good. Or in my favorite part, Michael's GPS system which he's named Carlotta, after the mad Carlotta in Vertigo. This being because one time, for no particular reason she said "There is no fifth destination." This non sequitur has now become a phrase of choice in the Tolliver household, and this phrase gives me hope for the next book, Mary Ann in Autumn... because as much as some aspects of this book annoyed me, I need to know what happens to these beloved characters.

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 0 comments  

Labels: Anna Madrigal, Armistead Maupin, Carlotta Valdes, GPS, HIV, Mary Ann in Autumn, Michael Tolliver, Michael Tolliver Lives, Tales of the City, Vertigo

Vertigo by Alfred Hitchcock
Based on the book by Boileau and Narcejac
Release Date: May 9th, 1958
Starring: James Stewart, Kim Novak, Barbara Bel Geddes, Tom Helmore
Rating: ★★★★★
To Buy
John "Scottie" Ferguson has left the police force. After the tragic death of his colleague following a criminal through San Francisco's rooftops he has severe agoraphobia. He spends his spare time hanging around his friend Midge's apparent, which she doesn't seem to mind in the least. One day he gets a call from an old college buddy, Gavin Elster, who wants to see him. Gavin wants Scottie to use his spare time to find out what's wrong with his wife, Madeleine. He doesn't know what's wrong with her. He has not taken her to doctors because he fears that she is possessed, as he tells Scottie "Do you think the dead can live again?" Scottie reluctantly agrees to at least see Madeleine. That night at Ernie's Scottie catches a glimpse of Madeleine and there is no doubt he will accept the case. The following day he trails Madeleine from a florist to a grave to a painting in an art museum to a hotel. The painting being the most unnerving, in that the flowers match those in the painting, as does Madeleine's hairdo. What's even stranger is that the portrait is the woman whose grave Madeleine visited earlier in the day. With Midge's help, they learn the history of the woman, Carlotta Valdes, who lived in the hotel Madeleine visited and committed suicide after her lover took their child for his own. When Scottie presents this information to Gavin, it's clear Gavin knew all this and more, as Carlotta is Madeleine's great-grandmother. But Madeleine does not know this, so it can't be an obsession with her family's history. Scottie continues to trail Madeleine and even hauls her out of the bay after an apparent suicide attempt. Scottie now becomes her protector and they start to fall for each other. But soon a fall from a bell tower will end Madeleine's life and Scottie's will be shattered. Time passes and Scottie wanders the streets he walked with Madeleine till one day he sees Judy. Judy, not only looks like Madeleine, but unbeknownst to Scottie, she is the Madeleine he knew, the one hired to help Gavin murder his wife and use Scottie as a pawn. But Judy, instead of running, decides to stay and hopefully get Scottie to love her for her. But all he wants is to turn her back into Madeleine. Can either of them survive this destructive path they are on?

As Hitchcock said, in regard to adapting a book for the screen: "What I do is to read a story only once, and if I like the basic idea, I just forget all about the book and start to create cinema." This is what takes the fairly good book by Boileau and Narcejac with unlikable characters and no real passion, and turns it into a classic of cinema. Hitchcock added mystery to Madeleine by us going with Scottie on his discovery of her "possession." He also gave the characters a love for each other, that made Judy stay for love, not to play out some sick game. But more than anything, with the score and the beauty of San Francisco, we fall under the spell of the story. Instead of watching the headlong rush to oblivion that the book captures so well, we are wound in the web of a story, slowly building and entwining us like the lissajou spirals of the opening credits. Like the book before, being a love letter to Paris, here we have a love letter to San Francisco. This film is the quintessential film of that beautiful city. I don't think that the film would be what it is if Hitchcock himself was not so in love with the city. Plus, there could not be a worse place for an agoraphobic to live, which gives a certain dark jab to the character of Scottie. Of course, I find it interesting how much the film does mirror aspects of Hitchcock's life. His obsession with Grace Kelly could easily be Scottie's obsession for Madeleine. Whatever it was that made the fates align so perfectly for this movie makes me easily proclaim it one of my favorites and now that I've read the book, it's amazing to me how Hitchcock distilled it down and made a classic out of a decent novel.

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 0 comments  

Labels: Boileau and Narcejac, Carlotta Valdes, Gavin Elster, Grace Kelly, Hitchcock, James Stewart, Judy Barton, Kim Novak, Lissajou Spirals, Madeleine, Paris, San Francisco, Scottie, Vertigo

Vertigo (The Living and the Dead/D'entre les Mortes) by Boileau and Narcejac
Published by: Bloomsbury
Publication Date: 1956
Format: Paperback, 170 Pages
Challenge: Thriller and Suspense
Rating: ★★★
To Buy
Roger Flavieres begrudgingly went into the police force, but after his partner dies tragically because of his own fear of heights he quits and goes into the law. One day his old school friend Gevigne looks him up because he is in the midst of a very odd situation at home. His wife, Madeleine, seems remote. She has also been behaving very oddly. Gevigne is convinced it has something to do with Madeleine's great grandmother, Pauline Lagerlac, who killed herself. He's not sure what is going on, but thinks the the spirit of Pauline is inhabiting his wife. Flavieres, thinking it perhaps an act of a dissatisfied wife is thrown when he learns that Madeleine knows nothing of Pauline. Intrigued he agrees to trail her. Flavieres instantly becomes obsessed with Madeleine, whose behaviour bears out Gevigne's theory. She sits in a hotel room in a house that Pauline once lived in and often visits Pauline's grave, but not with a sense of someone visiting an ancestors grave, but of someone visiting their home. After Flavieres rescues Madeleine from a suicide attempt by drowning, the same method Pauline used, he decides not to leave her side. But in the fatalistic days leading up to full out war with Germany, Paris is hardly the place to keep a vibrant, young woman in the here and now, versus slipping into some unhappy past. What Flavieres had dreaded from his first loosing his heart to Madeleine comes to pass. On a frantic drive through the country she rushes out of the car and into a church with a tall bell tower. Unable to follow her to such heights, Flaviers cannot stop the inevitable, Madeleine throws herself off the top of the tower. Having lost the woman he loves and with the war beginning, Flavieres leaves. He leaves Gevigne being investigated for his wife's murder, he leaves his practice and he leaves France. Four years later he returns to Paris a broken drunkard. But a new obsession gripes him when he sees a woman in a newsreel who is Madeleine, but isn't at the same time. Rushing to Marseilles he eventually encounters Renee Sourange, Madeleine's doppelganger. Flavieres becomes more obsessed than ever thinking that Renee IS Madeleine. That it is possible for someone to live again. Just as it took awhile for Madeleine to realize she was once Pauline, he is sure that Renee will eventually realize she is Madeleine. But what if the truth is darker than that, not dealing with spirits, but with the connivances of man?

There is no chance while reading this book that you will be able to separate it from the film it became. Vertigo is one of Hitchcock's best films and one of my favorites. But, it is interesting to see what captured Hitchcock's imagination and what he kept and what he discarded. The book is written in a very basic prose with all the facts laid bare before you. At first there is no mystery. Flavieres has all the information handed to him and he just must bear witness to the veracity of Gevigne's observations. It is more Flavieres inner self loathing and self obsession with Madeleine that is the driving force of the book. None of the characters are very likable, and Madeleine does not seem the type of woman to entrance and capture the ferocity of feelings she receives from Flavieres. Once Madeleine "lives again" it's just a waiting game as to who will break first. Will Flavieres drink himself to death? Will Renee admit she is Madeleine? Or is it all in Flavieres head? If you have seen the film, you will know that the outcome is tragic. But the book is even darker, laying the death of Renee not just on Flavieres conscious but, quite literally, on his hands. Instead of Renee staying for any real affection, she just seems to be playing her part a second time and reenacting the earlier mystery to ride herself of Flavieres. The fatalism of life during wartime is perfectly captured in the downward spiral of these two souls who are desperately lost. The original title, The Living and the Dead, or in a more direct translation, Enter the Dead, is more fitting to the book than Hitchcock's title Vertigo. Even if it is that downward spiral that Hitchcock captured in a more mysterious, more visual way. But the tower, the grey dress, the painting, the drawing, the hair... all of it are essential to both. All of it comes together as a fascinating study of man.

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 0 comments  

Labels: Boileau and Narcejac, Enter the Dead, Flavieres, Gevigne, Hitchcock, Madeleine, Paris, Reading Challenge, The Living and the Dead, Vertigo, WWII

You've heard the whispering in the halls. A shifty glance from a co-conspirator. So you've heard the rumors are true? Why would I spread false gossip? I'm turning a year older this month, so therefore I must leave behind rumor and insinuation and proudly declare my age (but only if you message me secretly by carrier pigeon). My birthday, besides being extra cool cause it's on Friday the 13th, is also cool for the fact I share it with a very famous film director. I'm sure you're dizzying with anticipation! Yes, if you didn't get the picture above or the lame joke, I share my birthday with Alfred Hitchcock. Besides being perhaps the best film director ever for suspense he also has a long connection with literature. Many, in fact, almost all of his movies are adaptations of books. Rebecca being the more obvious, as the book by Daphne Du Maurier has fame equal to the movie. But even Vertigo and Rear Window have their basis in literature. I thought it would be fun to read the books and then compare them to the movies for a month long Hitchcockian Hoot'nanny (yes, I did struggle to think up some good alliteration for that, but alliterate I did do.) What will I be reviewing... well, I'm going to do one book and movie combo a week, so that's at least four, and no, I did not do this just to have a Daphne Du Maurier binge, even if that's what it looks like... There will be Vertigo, Jamaica Inn, Rebecca and Rear Window or The Birds (depending if I can find my copy of Rear Window... I know it's around her somewhere, and no, that wasn't a stack of books falling over and burying me alive that you heard!) But besides that, there will (hopefully) be guest posts and of course a giveaway! Drop me a line if you want to participate, or just read and watch along! The more the merrier! Now onto the giveaway...

The Prize:
The Alfred Hitchcock movie of your choice on DVD from Amazon, full list here, or use the widget on the left hand side.

• +1 for answering the question: Which is your favorite Hitchcock movie and why?
• +2 for becoming a follower
• +10 if you are already a follower
• +10 for each time you advertise this contest - blog post, sidebar, twitter (please @MzLizard), etc. (but you only get credit for the first post, so tweet all you like, and I thank you for it, but you'll only get the +10 once). Also please leave a link!

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 12 comments  

Labels: Birthday, Daphne Du Maurier, Giveaway, Hitchcock, Hitchcockian Hoot'nanny, Jamaica Inn, Rear Window, Rebecca, The Birds, Vertigo

So, not as productive reading-wise as the last readathon, but the few books I read were awesome. How have you done? This past week I've been participating in Kristen's Huge TBR Readathon (Mac 2, as I refer to it) over at Bookworming in the 21st Century, and while not the quantity of the last readathon, I really had lots of fun. Plus, being in a book minded mood, thanks to said readathon, two of the days, when I had a headache and didn't feel up to reading, I cleaned my books and organized shelves, which has been a long time in the coming!

So what have I read you ask?
Hare-Raising Tale: A Fletcher Mystery and The Principal's on the Roof: A Fletcher Mystery by Elizabeth Levy (a sort of revisioning of my favorite series as a kid, the Something Queer Mysteries, for a younger audience, also a slightly more "pc" series title.)

Carpe Jugulum by Terry Pratchett (The 23 Discworld novel and the 6th Witches novel, I just love Terry Pratchett and there's nothing I love better than the Witches, so a perfect read!)

Vertigo by Boileau-Narcejac (Otherwise known as Enter the Dead, this was the inspiration for Hitchcock's classic Vertigo and I have been curious to read it for many years. It was interesting, but I will always love the film more... and for more Hitchcock, wait till next month is all I'm going to say...)

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 4 comments  

Labels: A Fletcher Mystery, BookWorming in the 21st Century, Carpe Jugulum, Discworld, Elizabeth Levy, Hare-Raising Take, Hitchcock, The Huge TBR Readathon, The Principal's on the Roof, Vertigo