High Anxiety

1977 - Dir: Mel Brookes - 1 hour 34 minutes

Shown at the FeckenOdeon on 31st March, 2012

Mel Brookes isn’t subtle. Mel Brookes takes the proverbial sledgehammer to crack a nut. Mel Brookes is an acquired taste (and, judging by one comment in our audience survey, at least one of our members has yet to acquire it!)…. BUT Mel Brookes loves movies. Most of his films are affectionate tributes to classic genres - westerns in Blazing Saddles, Horror in Young Frankenstein, silents in Silent Movie, etc. In High Anxiety he tackles Hitchcock - The Master’s technique involves grand set pieces, overplayed characters and spectacular visual effects - all grist to the Brookes mill but it could be said that the target is too obvious. The big Hitchcock moments all receive the treatment - let’s face it, they’d been asking for it! Perhaps the one major mistake Brookes makes is in casting himself as the straight man - he’s incapable of playing straight and we could wish for less mugging and more acting. To be fair, he took the role at short notice when Gene Wilder’s schedule on another film overran. The “supporting cast” is magnificent - Madeleine Kahn as a breathy (verging on the asthmatic) blonde, Harvey Korman as a mad doctor and, towering below them all, Cloris Leachman as the terrifying Nurse Diesel. It’s all great fun and doesn’t ask to be taken seriously so have another drink, relax and just allow yourself to be carried along by the silliness of it all… Howard Morris, who plays Professor Little Old Man (Lilomann!!!), is better known as the voice of thousands of cartoon characters. He rarely appeared in vision and died aged 85 in 2005 shortly after completing the voices of a Lion and a Zebra in “The Wild Thornberrys”. The bird droppings were actually mayonnaise and chopped spinach - you really wanted to know that!

The Man Who Knew Too Much (1934)

1934 - Dir: Alfred Hitchcock - 1 hr 17 minutes

Shown at The FeckenOdeon on 31st March, 2012

Following the dismal failure of his first and only musical, Waltzes from Vienna, Alfred Hitchcock gratefully accepted a five-year deal with Michael Balcon's Gaumont British studios. The Man Who Knew Too Much, released in 1934, was the first in a series of increasingly confident pictures which would make his name worldwide, and lead ultimately to his departure for Hollywood in 1939. The film's theme of ordinary people caught up by chance in a grand conspiracy is one that Hitchcock would rework throughout his career. He even remade The Man Who Knew Too Much in Hollywood (in 1955), with James Stewart and Doris Day replacing Leslie Banks and Edna Best, in a version which is certainly slicker but arguably inferior to the original.His mastery of visual terror is becoming evident. The images are graphic rather than explicit and the dramatic black and white photography is worthy of the silent era German expressionists. Hitchcock achieved a casting coup in attracting the German actor Peter Lorre to play the villain. Lorre was passing through Britain on his way to Hollywood, where he would find new fame in The Maltese Falcon and Casablanca. Lorre and Hitchcock shared what has been described as “an unusual sense of humour”…..