#peterlorre

HITCHCOCKPALOOZA #3
#alfredhitchcock #hitchcock #hitchcockfilms #films #hitchcockpalooza #thriller #movies #drama #romantic #silentfilms #talkiefilms #earlycinema #classiccinema #blackandwhitefilms #robertburks #cinematography #greatmoviedirectors #filmdirectors #secretagent #rope #thefarmerswife #torncurtain #julieandrews #paulnewman #johngielgud #peterlorre #jimmystewart #farleygranger
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Secret Agent (1936): This one features a young, very Sherlockian-looking John Gielgud. Peter Lorre plays another secret agent who gets very irritated by Gielgud’s too-goody-Britishism. Most interesting scene: a metal button spinning along the rim of a bowl. The dialogue in this film is quite good, as it is in nearly all the early Hitchcock talkies. Realistic and witty, even the ‘nice’ characters can be punchy. A german grandmother, speaking perfect English herself, asks the American in her group to speak a little German. “Why, your pronunciation is just terrible,” she says sweetly. There are love scenes, but not the horrible melodramatic kind. Hitchcock’s lovers, when they are not sparring, are enjoying each other’s banter in a more congenial manner— as Lorre’s character puts it, “the morning husband and wife exercises.” The rest of the film is not uninteresting when the scenes are about the characters, but the WWI-related plot is quite workaday, and the only point of interest are the war events that glide into that most famous biopic made almost 30 years later, Lawrence of Arabia. This Hitchcock is not one of the great ones, but it has its moments.
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REVIEWS CONTINUE IN COMMENTS (at Franklin, Tennessee)
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