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May 10, 2016

Episode 270: Stage Fright (1950)

Special Guest: Patrick McGilligan
Guest Co-Hosts: Tania Modleski, Filip Önell

Seen as one of the "lesser" of Alfred Hitchcock's films, Stage Fright (1950) is a fascinating update of the themes explored in Murder! (1930) as well as a interesting take on the reliability of narrators.

Joining Mike this week are Professor Tania Modleski (author of The Women Who Knew Too Much) and Filip Önell. Returning for another interview is author Patrick McGilligan, author of Alfred Hitchcock: A Life in Darkness and Light. The second part of the interview with Mr. McGilligan can be heard on the upcoming Vertigo episode.

Download Episode Now:

Links:
Buy Stage Fright on DVD
Buy The Women Who Knew Too Much by Tania Modleski
Buy Alfred Hitchcock: A Life in Darkness and Light by Patrick McGilligan
Visit The Hitchcock Zone
Visit The Hitchcock Project
Visit the official Marlene Dietrich website
Read about Stage Fright at Fridays with Hitchcock
Read about Filip Önell's Nightbreed Fan Edit

Music:
"Stage Fright Rhapsody" - Rumon Gamba
"The Laziest Gal in Town" - Marlene Dietrich

Watch:

1 comment:

  1. This episode is pretty good, the analysis definitely adds a lot to this "lesser" Hitchcock film. I appreciated Filip Önell's presence as his perspective made things more interesting. I felt this sort of perspective was painfully absent from the Vertigo episode, which just felt like a bunch of people gushing over what a brilliant masterpiece it is. It's important to have a voice that feels a little more grounded or contrary to the rest of the panel.

    On the subject of a couple of the oddball shots that were discussed:

    The first one, that obviously processed shot, I'm not sure why Mike is so quick to rule out the possibility of there being technical reasons for the shot. Hitchcock, throughout his career made all sorts of odd technical decisions with mixed results. He was hardly infallible in the technical department. I'm guessing this particular example had something to do with Dietrich's lighting requests coming up against practical needs in lighting the rest of the set causing them to have to do some weird composite thing.

    Now as for the slow motion shot as she steps from the carriage. I'm guessing it's because in this scene they are supposed to be sneaking along on tip toes, so they had to slow the shot down so the door would be moving slow enough to appear as if it wouldn't be making any noise. I'm guessing at normal speed it looked to be swinging open a little too violently.

    They both look like decisions made in post-production when they took a closer look, noticed some problems with the footage, and came up with these solutions to patch over the issues.

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