Head over to Top Ten Films and read my list of the greatest performances in Alfred Hitchcock movies.

The Most Beautiful Screen Couples.

I was thinking the other day how much beauty is demanded from current celebrities yet few are able to deliver it in a sense of wholeness (you know being actually beautiful as opposed to engineered to fit societal standards).
What we mostly get now is an army of fembots and pumped Adonises who all sorta look the same and fail to take our breath away in the manner that a look at Audrey Hepburn's waifish facial features did or in the manner with which William Holden's non-six pack made our jaw drop to the floor.
It's true that standards have certainly been altered throughout the years but when it comes to beauty I'm the kind of man who is faithful to the classics.
Therefore when people exclaim how Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie are the most beautiful couple in recent movies all I see is a good looking man and a voluptuously vulgar woman trying to trick us
into believing they're worthy of being paired with these people:


10. Ali McGraw & Ryan O'Neal in Love Story.

Say what you will about the movie's quality (I think it's terribly corny and just plain dull) but Ryan and Ali are a match made in heaven.
I once heard someone say that the film's tragic finale was karma for the couple's beauty. Sometimes you can't have it all, can you?


9. Gwyneth Paltrow & Ethan Hawke in Great Expectations.

Compiling this list and trying to concentrate mostly on legendary movie stars I really couldn't get these two out of my head.
Paltrow for one, has all the cruel beauty Jean Simmons had in David Lean's version, but her counterpart in that one didn't have the boyish good looks and effortless handsomeness of Hawke who in this movie can't help but surrender under Gwyn's spell.
Can you blame him?


8. Grace Kelly & Cary Grant in To Catch a Thief.

Hitch really knew how to pair them up and by putting together a decadently handsome Grant with soon to be princess Kelly, he created one of those rare couples that are as beautiful as they are electric.
Watch them together in any scene of this movie and you will see the sexual tension trespass into orgasmic realms.
It's not for nothing that legend has it that Grace had one last plebeian fling and surrendered to Cary's charms before leaving for Monaco.


7. Faye Dunaway & Warren Beatty in Bonnie and Clyde.

Beauty isn't a crime.


6. Robert Redord & Paul Newman in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.

Poor Katharine Ross really stood no chance when she was paired with two of the most beautiful men that ever lived.
In this exciting revisionist Western, Paul and Bob play the legendary outlaws with a knack for stealing, riding bikes and jumping off cliffs.
Watch how they compliment each other in ways beyond mere sidekick-ism. The kind of chemistry they achieve is magical.


5. Ingrid Bergman & Cary Grant in Notorious.

Hitch does it again, in this sexy, dark spy thriller he pairs Bergman's warm beauty with Grant's caddish good looks. What results isn't a breathtaking match but also one of the most ingenious screen pairings of all time.
Watching these two make either love or war is surrendering to forces beyond our control.


4. Natalie Wood & James Dean in Rebel Without a Cause.

Natalie and James fire up the screen with all their angst, helplessness and hormones. The coming of age classic is legendary for the way in which adolescents became lead characters up and front but it's also memorable for creating two sexual icons who proved even pretty people have problems (inventing the whole WB and CW concepts fifty years before they did).
Oh and just because the piece is about couples and not groups, we must exclude Sal Mineo from this entry.


3. Elizabeth Taylor & Montgomery Clift in A Place in the Sun.

Poor Shelley Winters and all but you have to confess you too wanted Monty and Liz to end up together in this one...


2. Audrey Hepbrun & William Holden in Sabrina.

We all know who Sabrina chooses but can you really blame the ingenue for wanting William Holden so badly?


1. Natalie Wood & Warren Beatty in Splendor in the Grass.

The first time I watched this movie I had no doubt anyone would lose their mind over being dumped by Warren Beatty but not only is this movie heartbreaking for the way in which Wood surrenders to playing poor Deanie Loomis (who knew she had that depth?) but also because it provided audiences everywhere with a first look at how cruel the 60's would become in cinematic terms.
If not even Warren and Natalie could have a happy ending what was there for the rest of the world in such a chaotic decade?


So what do you think? Any other screen couple that makes you drool and feel all fuzzy and lustful?

While Watching "Casablanca"...

...particularly that beautiful scene with "La Marseillese" play-off I wondered what it would've been like to watch the movie when it was released.
Sure now it's a classic that occurred almost accidentally as we know, but back then it was risky propaganda that could've gotten the people who made it in trouble if the Nazis invaded our continent.
What would've it been like to either get all hopeful over Bogey and Bergman or cynical at how fantastical the outcome might've been.
"Casablanca" does take place in the middle of WWII and it's such a miracle that its central theme doesn't age.
But then I wondered what would you have thought of the movie if you were walking by the theater lobby and saw that poster?
Bergman certainly looks glorious throughout the film (it's arguably the movie were she looked the loveliest) but isn't its idea of Rita Hayworth-esque glamour something completely off base from what "Casablanca" actually is?
Perhaps it's a matter of ingenious marketing strategies and they intended to lure the men by teasing them with sexy Ingrid (first time I've paired those two words...).
Whatever the reason it's yet another proof of the many ways in which we can approach "Casablanca" as if we were going for the very first time.

The Passion of Ingrid Bergman.

Given how "Europa '51" is Roberto Rossellini's attempt to bring Francis of Assisi to neorealist life, it makes total sense that he would ask cinematographer Aldo Tonti to light and shoot Ingrid Bergman like a saint huh?

But not any saint, the film's light plan seems to be drawn straight out of C.T Dreyer's "The Passion of Joan of Arc".

Bergman, has rarely looked as tremulous and ethereal.

While Watching "Intermezzo"...

Many things caught my attention, including the fact that it's a remake made only three years after the original one was made in Sweden.
"Intermezzo" has Lesliw Howard play Holger Brandt a world famous violinist who falls in love with his daughter's (Ann Todd) piano teacher Anita Hoffman (Ingrid Bergman)
Apparently Hollywood loved the remakes even back then. Fortunately though that isn't what makes the film memorable, among other things it has...


A superb, almost vanguardist, use of editing.
During one key scene the ice floating on the river announcing the end of winter suddenly turns into a sky filled with clouds (spring).
The interplay of sounds, dialogues and the striking beauty of the images would've made any Russian film theorist feel proud of Hollywood.

It features the American debut of the incredible Ingrid Bergman, who was only 24 back then and was reprising her role from the Swedish version of the film.
For being her first English speaking role she is fantastic (watch how she created her classy accent in this film) and throughout the whole movie she looks stunning.

The costumes by Irene and Travis Banton are perhaps some of the best ever created for Ms. Bergman. The column dress she wears above is stunning and made her look incredibly sexy while remaining elegant and appropriate for a concert pianist.
The belts become a leitmotif in her wardrobe (constricting guilt perhaps?) that flatter her figure and make her even more goddess-y.

She is also aided by cinematographer Gregg Toland who according to Hollywood lore was reprimanded by producer David O. Selznick who asked him why did Bergman appear so "ghastly" in his version, when she looked so beautiful in the Swedish one.
Toland replied how in Sweden she wasn't forced to wear so much makeup and Selznick obviously made them redo all her scenes with a more natural look.
The result is what became Bergman's signature look: a sort of divine aura made enigmatic by the fact that her divinity looks attainable.
Leslie Howard's character tells Bergman "you don't look real in this light".
It's as if the line was made to compliment Toland's breathtaking work.

Bergman and Howard learned how to play their instruments for the film, but of course them being geniuses in the screenplay their thespian abilities limited them to learn basic techniques to make them appear convincing onscreen.
Bergman is all fire and passion (even when the velocity camera tricks become too obvious some times).

Howard, who wasn't as good an actor as he thought, had a little more work done. His difficult violin scenes involved two professional players holding and playing the instrument for him. This is why they're made in closeups.

"Intermezzo" is a rather short feature length film, even for the era. It's only about seventy minutes long and one would wonder how they make the emotional impact work in such limited time.
The answer lies in its wonderful use of symbolism, metaphors and altogether visual economy.
The image above conveys the moment when the leads realize they have fallen in love and without a single obvious line of dialogue we come to understand it, as we do with many other situations in the film.

Upon watching her touch her husband's instrument (read that as you wish) Holger's wife (Edna Best) understand Anita's role in his life.

A romantic scene gives way to a wonderfully realized, melancholic goodbye. Notice how we only see their faces reflected in the antique shop, as if their love was also some sort of luxury only to be contemplated through a glass.

Holger's daughter listens to her father play on the radio. He has left their house and his presence (as noted by the picture) has left a great emptiness in his little girl.
The juxtaposition of the radio and the picture (both representations of parenthood gone missing) are only the more heartbreaking after seeing how the characters move around them.
Todd and Best are fantastic in these scenes.

And if there is something of particular notice about "Intermezzo" is how perhaps it's not only the weepy, melodramatic story many seem to think of, but is in fact an ode to masculinity.
When the film begins and we meet Holger's son Eric (Douglas Scott) his father first tells him that he can no longer kiss him (like he did his wife and daughter) and proceeds to shake his hand, establishing a distance between them that reaffirms their roles as males in society, but completely forgets their emotional (blood?) bonds.
Later his daughter calls her brother "stupid" to which Anita replies "he's a boy" as if to negate the preceding statement. Can men do no wrong in this society?
Eric disappears throughout most of the film as it's obvious that Holger's devotion is towards women. When he leaves his house and goes to France he befriends a little girl (Marie Flynn) who reminds him of his own daughter.

It is only upon his return to Sweden, and after tragedy strikes, that Holger finally reaches out to his son confessing "it is I who needs you now".
Can it be that all along Eric has been a representation of Holger himself? Was his rejection of his son a symbol of how he chose to deal with his midlife crisis without any responsibilites towards his role as a "man"?
By acknowledging that he needs his son, perhpas he's saying that he needs to become what others expected him to be (his son still is "fresh" and has made no wrong turns or big mistake sin his life, one can assume).
This notion of Eric's importance to the plot and to Holger's catharsis is suggested during one of his short scenes where he asks his father if he can go watch a movie.
He had asked his mother to interced for him offscreen and when he reminds her she tells him she'd forgotten all about it.
It's as if the movie is denying itself its actual central theme as well and trying to pass off as just another romantic drama.

A Woman of Ill Repute.

The tagline in the poster for 1949's "Under Capricorn" read "Ingrid Bergman shows you the heights and the depths to which a woman like this can go".
Why not concentrate on the power of the actual plot twists, the presence of the other actors or the fact that it was directed by Hitchcock and instead concentrate on Bergman and her abilities?
Can it be perhaps that the marketing team was trying to sell the film based on the scandal that was going on in the actress' life?
"Under Capricorn" was released in September 1949, time by which Bergman had left her husband, and daughter, to live with legendary director Roberto Rossellini in Italy.
It's well known that she gave birth to several children with him, that she became persona non grata in the United States and that she ended making one of those legendary comebacks a few years later winning two subsequent Oscars that make her only second in number of all time wins.
What caught my eye though was what would happen of marketing people now tried to sell us the films based on actual scandals?
Can it be that movie marketing, as bad as most of it seems, has actually gone classy?

While Watching "Notorious"...

...I couldn't help but feel elated by how brilliant Hitchcock's symbolism is and how it serves as a delicious disguise for his truly wicked subconscious.
A lot has been made about how his trademarks became as expected as his cameos, but in what I consider to be his greatest film, even after a million viewings they provide new layers and ways of reading what's going on with his characters.
For example the stairs in "Notorious" have such a key role that they could easily spoil the plot, but instead help the actors and hint at things we never saw coming.
I was struck in particular by the scene where Alexander Sebastian (Claude Rains) finds out what his wife Alicia is up to. He climbs the stairs of his home with a mixture of anger, thirst for revenge and selfpity.
Hitch however turns things upside down for him in the last, so-good-it's-worthy-of-the-whole-film, scene where he has to go down those same stairs feeling the exact same opposite as before.
This time the steps are aiding Devlin (Cary Grant) who is the film's central character and whose see-saw of a heart is the real storyline we're supposed to follow. Grant was never better than in this scene and the way Hitchcock makes those steps almost grin at us is nothing if not extraordinary.

Method of Classic Love.

"I will tell them that the play is over, go home!"