Hitchcock

from pinoydvd, in response to gurang:

"I agree that The Birds could have been a very great film, but the first thirty minutes are a deadly bore, interesting only when the birds start foreshadowing their attack."

I think it IS a great film.  The first thirty minutes are problematic, but I'm usually sufficently entertained by Robert Taylor and Tippi Hedren's banter, the efficient way Hitchcock whips things along from San Francisco to apartment to Bodega Bay (I had the chance to go there, I didn't--damn) to the boat (it's something like the chase Novak gives Stewart at the start of Vertigo, only without the lush music). But feathers really do start to fly when the birds start misbehaving.

"Psycho is marvelous in how it forces the audience to identify with Norman Bates through a few point-of-view shots."

See, the horror of Psycho isn't the thriller setpieces (tho I think people do still grip their armchairs the first time Martin Balsam steps up the stairs) but Bates' character--a man we totally like but who is eventually revealed to us to be a monster.  It's that devil-next-door quality that gets you.

"Notorious is of course, Bergman at her most radiant, you can't believe that she's as slutty as she is being made out to be. Notorious is also, perhaps, the best translation into film of the notion that "true love conquers all""

Also please note that Cary Grant is an unregenerate SOB here, and that it's not a love affair, it's a love triangle--with Claude Rains sounding the most tragic notes.  That ending is remarkable, with Rains turning to, literally, face the music.

"North by Northwest is a sheer delight."

The easiest to love. Wouldja believe Hitchcock broke the law when he filmed Grant getting off in front of the UN building? (He did it without permission, under the nose of the UN security guards that you can actually see in the shot).