Alfred Hitchcock Presents...

Just finished watching first Psycho and then To Catch a Thief. I have watched Psycho before, but realized I hadn't seen it in a while and that I wasn't remembering much of it. I hadn't seen To Catch a Thief before, so it was new to me. It's fun to go back and watch older movies, as you see and learn so much from them.

Note: Minor spoilers ahead. However, if you haven't seen Psycho or To Catch a Thief yet... well, watch them first and then come back here. My blog will keep.

A few things struck me while viewing these old classics:

• Acting, by and large, has gotten much better today. Or, at least, we expect more nuance and craft in what we watch today, no matter how frivolous or small the role may be. In Hitchcock's time, actors were simply a cog in the entire clockwork of a movie, and it didn't matter if some of the smaller roles were wooden or without nuance, as long as they drove the movie forward.

In Psycho, for example, the actor who played Sam was a bit wooden and had little range. The cop who follows Marion before she arrives at the Bates Motel was, at best, one-note and without character. Today, directors wouldn't stand for that. Even though what Hitchcock presented was enough to move the story along, today's audiences generally laugh and do not take seriously such one-note performances. Hitch thought nothing of completely redubbing all of one actor's lines in To Catch a Thief, because he spoke no English and his voice wasn't right (you can really hear the difference between when the character speaks French and when the re-dubbed voice speaks English).

• How few chances that it seems like Hitchcock took in his movies.

This problem is really one of perspective. These moves were made in the 1950s and 1960s, and the fact that the angles and shots that Hitch set up were avant garde for the time is obscured by the fact that every director today has the freedom to use such shots and to spice up their work with interesting camera angles and lighting. And, frankly, many directors rip off... I mean, "pay homage to" ... Hitchcock whenever they can, as he was a master of his craft.

• The "twist" movie has been around for much longer than M. Night Shyamalan.

Many of Hitch's movies are based on some sort of twist or surprise, like Norman Bates being caught wearing his mother's clothing at the end of Psycho or the "nice" girl winding up being the real thief in To Catch a Thief. But they simply don't have the same impact for today's audiences, that have twists thrown at them on TV, in video games, and in movies all the time. For example, although I hadn't seen it before, the very first scene that introduces the young girl, Danielle, left me saying, "Oh, well, she's the real thief." Low and behold, she was! This is not because Hitch did something wrong or that there was too much information given, it is simply that I'm a product of my time and that it is rare that any movie or TV show surprises me in a whodunnit.

• Hitchcock didn't need to use "shaky-cam" to give his audiences a sense of action and intensity.

Any long-time reader of this blog knows that I HATE shaky-cam with a passion. It adds NOTHING to a movie except a sense of nausea and confusion about what is going on. Learn from the masters and put your damn camera on a stabilizer, tripod, or, if digital, ensure that picture stabilization is turned "on," please! If your action scene is so poorly conceived and directed that the only way you can save it is to add shaky-cam, stop and reconsider the scene in its entirety. If Hitchcock (and Spielberg, Scorsese, et al) do not need it, YOU DON'T NEED IT EITHER!

Watching these old movies is a great way to entertain and teach younger audience members about the craft of film making. Watching the humble beginnings of things helps new filmmakers to learn and grow their own style, while be cognizant of what has come before and the restraints under which so many directors used to work.

And, frankly, it is a heck of a lot of fun, too!