HITCHCOCK FILM FESTIVAL ON 15 th April 2007.

ALFRED HITCHCOCK
Born: August 13, 1899, Leytonstone, England Died: April 28, 1980

The acknowledged master of the thriller genre he virtually invented, Alfred Hitchcock was also a brilliant technician who deftly blended sex, suspense and humor. He began his filmmaking career in 1919 illustrating title cards for silent films at Paramount's Famous Players-Lasky studio in London. There he learned scripting, editing and art direction, and rose to assistant director in 1922. That year he directed an unfinished film, No. 13 or Mrs. Peabody . His first completed film as director was The Pleasure Garden (1925), an Anglo-German production filmed in Munich. This experience, plus a stint at Germany's UFA studios as an assistant director, help account for the Expressionistic character of his films, both in their visual schemes and thematic concerns. Hitchcock directed 66 films till 1976. He produced many evergreen classics that are being repeatedly viewed by his die-hard fans till today.

Alfred Hitchcock and his family led a quiet and unostentatious life, preferring the comforts of home to the Hollywood milieu around them. In the last year of his life, Hitchcock received the American Film Institute's lifetime achievement award and was knighted in England. He died in 1980 in Los Angeles.

Hitchcock's legacy is vast: books, tributes, film festivals, and imitators abound. Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine, the monthly publication that bears his name, and other "Alfred Hitchcock Presents" anthologies, are still going strong.

THREE FILMS
OF HITCHCOCK

We will be screening PSYCHO, VERTIGO , REAR WINDOW and selected interviews with Hitchcock on 15th April .

Vertigo (1958)

Vertigo is one of Alfred Hitchcock's most powerful, deep, and stunningly beautiful films - it is a film noir that functions on multiple levels. The work is a mesmerizing romantic suspense/thriller about a macabre, doomed romance - a desperate love for an illusion. Hitchcock's intensely personal, self-revealing picture, Vertigo, is the story of a man who is possessed by the image of a lost love and becomes increasingly compulsive in his desire to re-create that image. John "Scottie" Ferguson is a retired San Francisco police detective who suffers from acrophobia and Madeleine is the lady who leads him to high places. A wealthy shipbuilder who is an acquaintance from college days approaches Scottie and asks him to follow his beautiful wife, Madeleine. He fears she is going insane, maybe even contemplating suicide, because she believes she is possessed by a dead ancestor. Scottie is skeptical, but agrees after he sees the beautiful Madeleine.

Click here for trailer of Vertigo.

Vertigo is now generally recognised as one of Hitchcock's greatest films, considered by many to be his masterpiece. It is also a masterpiece of filmmaking technique, including one of cinema's most important innovations-the dolly-out, zoom-in shot that visually represents Scottie's sensation of vertigo. Runtime : 128 minutes

Psycho ( 1960)

" Psycho has a very interesting construction and that game with the audience was fascinating. I was directing the viewers. You might say I was playing them, like an organ." - Alfred Hitchcock

Alfred Hitchcock's powerful, complex psychological thriller, Psycho (1960) is the "mother" of all modern horror suspense films - it single-handedly ushered in an era of inferior screen 'slashers' with blood-letting and graphic, shocking killings

Phoenix officeworker Marion Crane is fed up with the way life has treated her. She has to meet her lover Sam in lunch breaks and they cannot get married because Sam has to give most of his money away in alimony. One Friday Marion is trusted to bank $40,000 by her employer. Seeing the opportunity to take the money and start a new life, Marion leaves town and heads towards Sam's California store. Tired after the long drive and caught in a storm, she gets off the main highway and pulls into The Bates Motel. The motel is managed by a quiet young man called Norman who seems to be dominated by his mother. And here , in this motel , most unexpected things happen.

PSYCHO : CLICK HERE FOR THE GUIDED TOUR BY THE MASTER HIMSELF !

The nightmarish, disturbing film's themes of corruptibility, confused identities, voyeurism, human vulnerabilities and victimization, the deadly effects of money, Oedipal murder, and dark past histories are realistically revealed. Its themes were revealed through repeated uses of motifs, such as birds, eyes, hands, and mirrors. Hitchcock's murder set-pieces are so potent, they can galvanize (and frighten) even a viewer who's seen them before! Bernard Herrmann's legendary (and endlessly imitated) score adds much to the excitement. Runtime 128 minutes.

Rear Window (1954)

Rear Window is an intriguing, brilliant, macabre Hitchcockian visual study of obsessive human curiosity and voyeurism. The film is universally regarded as a classic, and a strong cadre of critics, scholars, and fans considers this to be the director's best feature. Not only does the movie generate an intensely suspenseful and fascinating situation, but it develops a compelling and memorable character: L.B. Jefferies (James Stewart), a top-flight photographer who, as the result of an accident that left him in a leg cast, is confined to his upper-story Manhattan apartment.He spends his time looking out of the rear window observing the neighbours. He begins to suspect that the man opposite may have murdered his wife. Jeff enlists the help of his society model girlfriend Lisa Freemont and his nurse Stella to investigate. This level of danger and suspense is so far elevated above the cheap thrills of the modern slasher films that "Rear Window," intended as entertainment in 1954, is now revealed as art.

Cl ick here for trailer of Rear Window.

This film masterpiece was made entirely on one confined set. built at Paramount Studios - a realistic courtyard composed of 32 apartments . Remarkably, the camera angles are largely from the protagonist's own apartment, so the film viewer (in a dark theatre) sees the inhabitants of the other apartments almost entirely from his point of view - to share in his voyeuristic surveillance. Runtime 112 minutes

Viewing age limit 18 and above.

VENUE : PPG NURSING COLLEGE AUDITORIUM , SARAVANAMPATTI.
Eight kilometers from Gandhipuram bus stand.
1.Bus routes 63 or 13 from Gandhipuram to Keeranatham - alight at Kandaswamy Nagar bus stop.
2. Route 45 from Gandhipuram,to Annur - Koilplayam, alight at Visuvasapuram stop.
Contribution towards lunch and tea -Rs.50
Please confirm your participation to enable us to make food arrangements. Call :9894871105

For more details call : 94430 39630

Next screening on 18th March 2007 Battle Of Algiers

Battle of Algiers trailer

Battle Of Algiers.

Although nearly forty years have passed since its creation, Battle of Algiers is more timely than ever – especially for Americans, given the American involvement in a contemporary colonial war in the Middle East.
The film depicts an episode in the war of independence in the then French Algeria, in the capital city of Algiers. It reconstructs the events of November 1954 to December 1960 in Algiers during the Algerian War of Independence, beginning with the organization of revolutionary cells in the Casbah. From there, it depicts the conflict between native Algerians and European settlers (pied-noirs) in which the two sides exchange acts of increasing violence, leading to the introduction of French paratroopers, under the direction of General Massu and then Colonel Bigeard, to root out the National Liberation Front (FLN). The paratroops are depicted as "winning" the battle by neutralizing the whole FLN leadership through assassination or capture. However, the film ends with a coda, depicting demonstrations and rioting by native Algerians for independence, in which it is suggested that though the French have won the Battle of Algiers, they have lost the war.

The narrative is composed mostly of illustrations of the tactics of both the FLN insurgency and the French counter insurgency, as well as the uglier incidents in the national liberation struggle. It unflinchingly shows atrocities being committed by both sides against civilians. The FLN is shown taking over the Casbah through summary execution of native Algierian criminals and others considered traitors, as well as using terrorism to harass civilian French colonials. The French colonialists are shown using lynch mobs and indiscriminate violence against natives. Paratroops are shown employing torture, intimidation and murder to combat the FLN and MNA insurgents.

Refraining from the conventions of the historical epic, Pontecorvo and Solinas chose not to have a protagonist but several characters based on figures in the conflict. The film begins and ends from the point of view of Ali la Pointe, played by Brahim Hagiag, who corresponds to the historical figure of the same name. He is a criminal radicalized while in prison and is recruited to the FLN by military commander El-hadi Jafar, a fictional version of Saadi Yacef played by himself.

Other characters include the young boy Petit Omar, a street urchin who serves as a messenger for the FLN; Larbi Ben M'hidi, one of the top leaders of the FLN, who is used in the film mainly to give the political rationale for the insurgency; Djamila, Zohra and Hassiba, a trio of female FLN militants called to carry out a revenge attack. In addition, The Battle of Algiers used thousands of Algerian extras in bit parts and crowd shots; the effect Pontecorvo intended was to create the impression of the Casbah's residents as a "chorus", communicating to the viewer through chanting, wailing and physical affect.

The Algerian revolution has been called by many the bloodiest revolution in history. Although the revolutionary forces in Algiers were defeated by the French Army, the long war throughout the country led to the French withdrawal from Algeria. As leftists, the theme of showing the inevitable demise of colonialism as an instrument of Western imperialism was central to Pontecorvo and Solinas's treatment of The Battle of Algiers.
Runtime 121 min. Language : French / English / Arabic . Subtitles : Tamil
Venue : Ashwin Hospital Auditorium ( 4th floor - lift provided), Across Sathy Road, Ganapathy, Coimbatore 12 .
(Part of this write up is from http://en.wikipedia.org )

Gillo Pontecorvo and Battle Of Algiers

The director of the Battle of Algiers, Gillo Pontecorvo was born into an Italian-Jewish family of Pisa in 1919. Like the families of not a few Italian communists, Pontecorvo’s was well-to-do: his father, a cloth manufacturer, owned three factories and employed 1500 workers.The director was introduced to communism in the late ’30s by an older brother, Bruno, who worked as an atomic physicist in Paris, and by Bruno’s circle of anti-fascist friends. During WWII, Pontecorvo worked as a courier and journalist for the Italian Communist Party. But he became disillusioned with the party in 1956 as a result of its support of the Soviet invasion of Hungary: Like many other Italian communists who left the party in disgust at the Soviet invasion of Hungary, however, Pontecorvo did not abandon his communist convictions. Which brings us to Battle of Algiers. Algerian independence was declared and recognized in 1962. In 1965, the government of Algeria gave the director "not only all the necessary permits to shoot the film in Algiers, but put at his disposal – though not completely without charge – the Algerian army for the crowd scenes."

Pontecorvo wanted to shoot his film without using professional actors. Brahim Haggiag, who played Ali La Pointe, had a splendidly dramatic face, but he was a poor illiterate farmer whom Pontecorvo had found in a city market and who hadn’t the faintest idea what cinema was. If one has not seen this film, one cannot begin to imagine Pontecorvo’s extraordinary achievement. The acting is so natural and convincing that many viewers and even some critics assumed that the movie was a documentary. Only a master director could have taken this raw acting material and gotten such performances out of it. And despite his leftist viewpoint, Pontecorvo neither ridicules or demonizes the French.

(from http://www.lewrockwell.com/ )