San Francisco Chronicle - (Sunday)
Is Alfred Hitchcock a god, or just plain overrated?
Hi Mick: Now that you’re reviewing movies that go straight to the small screen, tell us how that compares to seeing them in a theater.
Patti TsaiSteiner, El Cerrito
Hi Patti: The screen doesn’t matter that much, but I do miss a crowd when watching a comedy. However, this is a small tradeoff when you consider that I’ve been going out two or three nights a week, every week, since 1987. So, having weekday nights free and watching movies at home is a treat — or would seem more like a treat under happier circumstances.
The biggest change has been in the decline in the quality of the movies I’m seeing and their diminished place within the culture. Even then, some of the weirder stuff is interesting and a nice switch from what I’m used to. I enjoyed all eight episodes of Netflix’s reality show “Too Hot to Handle,” even though it was amazing garbage — or maybe because it was amazing garbage. And we’ve finally begun to see movies from top directors opening to streaming, starting with Judd Apatow’s “The King of Staten Island” and Spike Lee’s “Da 5 Bloods.”
Hello Mick: I decided to watch a classic I hadn’t seen since a kid, “To Catch a Thief.” What an overglamorized dishonest piece of fluff. Truffaut made Hitchcock a god. Do we need to rethink this? Yes, “Vertigo,” “Marnie” and “Psycho” approach art, but almost by accident.
Kevin Steed, Oakland
Hello Mick: A lot of the middletier Hitchcocks aren’t holding up well, but his very best are on solid ground. And it doesn’t matter if they were made intentionally or by accident — more great movies are made by accident than by intent, anyway. The truth is that one can find a way to criticize anyone’s body of work — from a certain angle every artist is lacking because no artwork can fully encompass the bigness of life.
Hitchcock’s weakness, which is related to his strength, is that he didn’t have a grand vision. If you compare him to Jean Renoir or Ingmar Bergman or even, in a way, Frank Capra, his work seems small in spirit. At the same time, he was able to convey that small spirit — that fear and paranoia, that voyeurism, luridness and unsavoriness — through visual means, so that viewers could feel it, too.
Hitchcock is basically a case of technical mastery in the service of expressing a very particular and not especially admirable consciousness. His movies articulate aspects of internal life and thought that we all know and have experienced. Imitators can ape his technical mastery, but they can’t replicate his mind, because that mentality, which somehow connects with people, was his alone.
This makes Hitchcock a unique filmmaker, despite his having one big disadvantage: He specialized in suspense movies, and those are best when you see them the first time.
Hi Mick: I agree with you about Rick Steves. We watch him all the time.
Nyna Koppich, Kentfield
Hi Nyna: He’s great. I’m a big fan of his travel shows, and recently I’ve had even more reason to admire him. Despite the fact that his whole touring business has frozen because of the pandemic, he has kept his entire staff on salary.
I saw him in a recent interview, and he said something to the effect that he took the good times, and now he’ll take the bad times. That’s the kind of thing Billy Joel might say in a song, but Rick actually means it.