Film Comment (1976) - Plots and patterns
Details
- article: Plots and patterns
- author(s): Roger Greenspun
- journal: Film Comment (01/Jun/1976)
- issue: volume 12, issue 3, page 20
- journal ISSN: 0015-119X
- Sloan's Alfred Hitchcock: A Filmography and Bibliography (1995) — page 420, #456
- keywords: "The Rainbird Pattern" - by Victor Canning, Alfred Hitchcock, Barbara Harris, Bruce Dern, Ed Lauter, Ernest Lehman, Grace Kelly, James Stewart, Janet Leigh, Karen Black, Kim Novak, Marnie (1964), North by Northwest (1959), Psycho (1960), Rear Window (1954), Roger Greenspun, Shadow of a Doubt (1943), The 39 Steps (1935), To Catch a Thief (1955), Topaz (1969), Torn Curtain (1966), Under Capricorn (1949), Vertigo (1958), Victor Canning, William Devane
Links
Abstract
Review of Family Plot (1976)
Grace Kelly's overwhelming profile in rear window or her smoothly orchestrated first kiss (not the God-awful fireworks) in TO CATCH A THIEF; Kim Novak heartbreaking in a soft sweater late in VERTIGO; Laura Elliot's fatal provocation in STRANGERS ON A TRAIN; or Janet Leigh stripped down to her brassiere for heavy lunch-hour petting in PSYCHO - there isn't really much of it, but when it appears it is very potent, enviable, guilty. [...] the beginning of family plot, which is also one of the most gorgeous justifications I can recall for the mechanics of camera movement in recent movies-all in one sweeping turn that links Barbara Harris with Cathleen Nesbit, and including in its view a rich and fanatically detailed living room setting-this seems as important as Barbara Harris's wink at the end, and indeed, may even furnish the weight of deliberate darkness that balances it.
Article
