Scorsese Does Hitchcock

January 16th, 2008 |

Okay, an anonymous someone linked this Martin Scorsese video in my comments at the end of November, but not knowing the anonymous someone (due to the anonymity), I didn’t watch it immediately. Then Cinematical posted it a couple of weeks later, but that was right when I went home, and had restricted internet access, so I didn’t watch it immediately. But I have watched it now, and it is awesome. The premise is that Scorsese has found three and half pages of a script that Alfred Hitchcock intended to film but never did. So Scorsese does it, in Hitchcock’s style. (It’s all made up, by the way; there is no long-lost Key of Reserva script.) And he does it perfectly, down to the camera angles and pacing. I caught references to North by Northwest, Vertigo, Rear Window, The Man Who Knew Too Much, The Birds and maybe Saboteur and Notorious. There are probably others. I’d love to see more cinephile directors homage their favorites like this.

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Viewing 4 Comments

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    That was brilliant. I think I spotted Vertigo, The Man Who Knew Too Much, The Birds and Rope.

    What was Notorious, Rear Window and North by Northwest?

    It would be so much fun to analyse this with all the references as part of an essay on Hitchcock films.
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    The music is all from North by Northwest, but also one of the shots of him hanging off the balcony looked like either North by Northwest (hanging off Mt. Rushmore) or Saboteur (hanging off the Statue of Liberty), but could have just been Vertigo--certainly the fall off the balcony is Vertigo. Wow, I didn't realize that Hitchcock had so many people hanging off stuff. Rear Window, right after the one guy fell, a photographer snapped a photo of the guy on the balcony, and the flash blinded him, like Jeffries blinded the bad guy with his flash in Rear Window. Notorious, I don't know. I think the key and the "top secret" hidden in the cork reminded me of the plot device in Notorious, for some reason (what even was it? I almost said microfilm, but that was North by Northwest). So, see, I'm probably making up Notorious. Where did you see Rope?
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    Ooo, I should have realised that blinding camera flash one.
    Is Notorious the one with the cup of poisonous tea? If it is then all I remember of that film is the foreground teacup shot. :P

    When the guy attacks him with the violin bow it reminded me a lot of the murder scene in Rope. One of the shots might have been quite similar.

    The initials on the hankerchief is bugging me. Very familiar, but I don't know why.
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    Yeah, Claude Rains is trying to poison Ingrid Bergman because he suspects she's an enemy spy (not without cause).

    Ah, I haven't seen Rope for ages; you could very well be right.

    Good eye on the handkerchief! I didn't see that the first time through! The initials are R.O.T., which are Cary Grant's initials in North by Northwest: Roger O. Thornhill, and the "O" stands for nothing. Awesome.

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