Notes on Review of THE BRIDGE ON THE RIVER KWAI(directed by David Lean) by Trevor Lynch

https://www.unz.com/tlynch/the-bridge-on-the-river-kwai/

Nicholson’s “tragic flaw” is that he does not see that his virtues only really make sense when practiced among his own people, for their benefit. In the prison camp, however, these virtues are being exploited by a ruthless enemy who aims to destroy the Empire that Nicholson so loyally fought to preserve. There’s a lesson in this for white people today, since our openness to strangers, altruism, and moral idealism are being exploited by a system that is destroying us as well.

In a way, it's not so much a personal flaw as a cultural-professional vulnerability among the Anglos. On the one hand, Anglos were imperialist and race-ist and took pride in their blood and heritage. But their empire also claimed to be different from other empires. It wasn't merely about brutal conquest and exploitation of others but bringing of civilization unto benighted folks around the world. A light for both fellow Europeans on the Continent(as the British oh-so-superior to the Teutons, Slavs, and the fallen Latins) and the darker folks around the world. So, the British Empire wasn't just about white man clobbering the darkies but elevating them to higher forms of civilization. As one of the officers in LAWRENCE OF ARABIA explains, it's about 'discipline', not just 'guns'. One could also add excellence and meritocracy. In other words, Brits are better not simply because of their identity but their ability, know-how, dedication, and commitment to quality.
There was a time when Anglos had pride of seed, creed, and deed. They were about blood, culture, and work. So were the Jews, a rival power vying for dominance with the Anglos, an uneasy partner-in-crime. Jews knew that they had to undermine the element of seed and creed to gain control over Anglos. While preserving their own sense of seed/blood, Jews increasingly convinced Anglos in UK and US that they were too good for such ugly tribalism and 'racism'. Jews flattered the Anglos as the better kind of whites who, unlike those backward Italians and Slavs, lived by a higher universal creed and took pride in deed/work than in atavistic tribalism. Anglos increasingly fell for this BS pushed by Jews, but they were especially vulnerable as they were relative late-comers to civilization. While Jews had civilization for 3,500 yrs, predating even the Greeks and Romans, Anglos had been a bunch of barbarians until relatively late in history, and they grew to greatness only after the 17th century. So, Anglos had a weaker sense of roots and identity than the Jews did, and this made Anglos rely more on creed and deed than on seed.
Then, Jews worked on the creed/culture/ideology of the Anglos. Initially, Jews flattered Anglos for developing rule of law and culture of fairness, indeed far more than any other people. Anglos took the bait. Jewish flattery set a trap, however. If indeed Anglos possessed such a wonderful creed, how come they were such hypocrites and betrayed it with their 'racism' and 'classism' and imperialism' — never mind Jews financed much of British Imperialism, and never mind Jewishness has always been race-ist. So, eventually Anglos lost out in seed and creed. Hindus also picked up on the hypocrisy angle. It's like Gandhi said, "Western Civilization. It's a good idear." So, what did the Anglos come to rely on for pride as the years passed and as their outlooks and values changed(or were altered via manipulation)? Only the pride of deed and achievement, but they were bound to lose to Jews in this as well because Jews have higher IQ and are more able. So, once Anglos fixated on achievement and ability as the most admirable things that they should support and serve, they became cucks of Jews who are best at money-making and blacks who are best at sports, something Anglos are crazy about.
The signs of this is already evident in Nicholson who is so fixated on the pride of achievement. Perhaps, David Lean sort of understood because he made movies as the British Empire was crumbling, not least under the domination of the American Empire. Also, his movies required the funding of Jewish Hollywood. He was a proud Brit who had to work for others and make compromises, like Nicholson created his masterpiece(the bridge) under Japanese control.

Nicholson's dilemmas is further complicated by the fact that it's about empire vs empire. In DURKIRK, it's about British soldiers retreating homeward to defend the motherland. That is about true patriotism(though if the British had been more patriotic than imperialistic on the world stage, they wouldn't have gotten involved in another war with Germany that had no beef with the Brits.)
Both the Brits and the Japanese are invaders in Southeast Asia. They are patriots to the extent of serving their own empires, but empires trample on the patriotism of locals, and both Brits and Japanese are violating the lands of Southeast Asians. Thus, neither Japanese nor British can be pure patriots in the movie's setting. They are for imperialism, not nationalism.
Also, betrayal is part of the logic of empire, which is premised on winner-takes-all and losers-do-as-told. British Empire maintained itself through recruiting local collaborators or compradors(or traitors). British Empire required on the treason of the local elites. Japanese were the same way and had their own local flunkies. No empire can sustain itself without encouraging treason among the locals. And this logic seems to have come full circle for the British in RIVER KWAI. Brits work as collaborators of the Japanese(who, following defeat in war, became craven collaborators of the US empire). With universal nationalism, each people/nation is loyal to their own. But under empire, there is one winner and all the losers must betray their own kind in service to the winner. British Empire needed local traitors in Africa, Asia, and the Middle East. And US empire has local cucks all over, like in Poland and Ukraine and Japan and Taiwan. (Currently, as Jews are the top lords of the US empire, white elites betray their own kind and serve their Jewish masters, much like how the Hindus and Hong Kucks once served at the feet of the mighty British.) Imperialism intrinsically fosters treason. It's based on the conquered serving the conqueror. Brits demanded this of locals whom they conquered. So, it's not all that surprising that the conquered soldiers in KWAI RIVER become collaborators to the Japanese.

Of course, one could argue that Nicholson calculated that the Japanese were doomed at any rate. Bridge or no bridge, Japanese were fated to lose to the combined power of US and UK and other allies. So, it's not like the bridge he was building was a make-or-break thing in the war. IF HE REALLY THOUGHT THAT, he perhaps wouldn't have built t. But he figures the Japanese will eventually lose and the bridge will ultimately come to symbolize not Japanese might but British excellence and achievement. His style of thinking is like Temporal Imperialism. Japanese may have the whip hand but they will eventually lose the war, and the bridge will come to symbolize British triumph in the long run. Time will vindicate British virtues of hard work and dedication. It's like black slaves picked cotton and did field work for the white massuhs but, today, blacks use it as a point of pride and done say, "Sheeeeeeeiiiit, WE done built America, even done stack up the White House like a pile of hot cakes."

At any rate, pride of deed is good, but no people can survive without pride of seed and ownership of creed. Jews did a fast one on the Anglos, and it should be lesson for all the world.

The Bridge on the River Kwai is masterful at exploring the fundamental distinction between aristocratic ethos that prizes honor above all else and the bourgeois ethos that prizes comfort, security, long life, and pleasure above all else.

Aristocratic ethos maybe, but not the Aristocratic way. With the passing of years, the aristocrats went from a hardy warrior class to a bunch of tooty-fruity playboys and slouches. While peasants did backbreaking work from sunup to sundown, many aristos whittled away the hours dressing 'gay', acting 'gay', talking 'gay', and etc. They powdered their faces and dressed and acted all whoopsy-doopsy. Just look at the high-born fells in CYRANO DE BERGERAC. Look at this guy's hairdo at 1:35 of the movie. It's ridiculous.

Once the wars ended or became rare, the aristos used their leisure time for little else but comfort and powdering their noses and sniffing snuff and sneezing. Sure, there were duels over honor, but mostly over petty egotistical matters. The aristos were into gambling and putting on big parties with rich food and decadence, and borrowed lots of money from Jews. Look at the aristos in BARRY LYNDON. What a bunch of toots.
True, not all aristos were alike. The Northern Europe types, esp Anglos and Prussians, were more conscientious and responsible. Instead of wasting their fortunes on good times, they used their privilege to run relatively cleaner governments, push social reforms, advance science, and patronize culture. Still, as kids were born into pampered privilege, many turned out to be soft mama's boys and floozers, like the pathetic son in BARRY LYNDON. Or consider Edward Fox's character in THE SERVANT. What a useless clod. Many aristos were about unearned privilege as they were born into position. Others did the work, and they lived off taxing their labor; at the very least, the bourgeoisie ran enterprises and took big risks. And many aristos only cared for comfort and good times. Also, their sense of honor was less about serving the greater good than a matter of personal egotism. Duels over perceived slights or someone stepping on someone's boots.

At least in terms of ethos, the highest value among the bourgeois was respectability, not comfort and pleasure that came with the rise of modern consumerism. Bourgeoisie were into money-making but also into stuff like the Protestant Work Ethic, restraint, discipline, and frugality. They believed work was good. The ideal was to keep working even if one had sufficient wealth for relaxation and leisure. (At the extreme, it could turn into a kind of Scrooge-ism. All work and no play.) Unlike aristocrats who shunned work and preferred leisure and privilege(if they could have it), bourgeoisie felt they should never rest on their laurels and keep working even when they had lots of money. Work was constructive and good for one's character, and so, one must work. Instead of spending one's money on fun and pleasure, invest and expand the business or invest in future enterprise. Or use money for philanthropy and build libraries and universities and do 'good work'.
As the bourgeoisie rose under the aristocracy, they felt culturally inferior and sought to win respectability by emulating the style of the aristos. Some bourgeoisie married into aristo families(on the decline) or bought titles. The bourgeois sense of respectability feared scandal and disdained the shameless and uninhibited, which is why anarchists like Luis Bunuel loved to expose and ridicule bourgeois anxieties and hang-ups. The bourgeoisie were repressed, and it was only with the rise of modernism and Freud's theories that things began to loosen up among the modernist children of the bourgeoisie. Also, the logic of capitalism transformed society from virtuous hard work and productivity to vice-laden hedonism and consumerism, but that came AFTER the cultural eclipse of the bourgeoisie and the rise of impulse-driven youth culture.

The Anglos, more than others, developed a fusion of aristocratic and bourgeois ways. Anglo aristocrats were more productive than most other aristos, and Anglo bourgeoisie were more repressed and respectable than others. There is something of the aristo in Nicholson but also something of the shopkeeper. He's like both a nobleman and a shop manager who counts every last penny. He believes in pride of work. He has boss mentality but also clerk mentality. He's so eager to prove he is worthy.

Since both Saito and Nicholson are master types, albeit at times “temporarily embarrassed” master types, the film needs a well-developed slave type as a contrast.

This is all relative among both the Japanese and Anglos. Saito and Nicholson are both master and servant types. Over their own men, they are masters. But they are also duty-bound servants of men higher up. So, while they are the two highest ranking men in the movie, they are mere servants of men even higher up the chain. Bushido means to serve, and every Japanese, no matter how higher up, was in service to someone higher. Samurai served the daimyo who served a higher daimyo who served the Shogun who, at least in principle, served the Emperor. Even though the Japanese Emperor didn't have much power, he was essential to the Japanese who believed everyone must serve someone higher, finally ending with the divine ruler. Same with the Brits. Everyone served someone higher. Every master was a servant to a superior, with the hierarchy ending with the King or Queen, who though not very powerful, symbolized the highest authority.

This is where Jews are different and perhaps unique. While Jews may play servant roles in society, every Jew, via the Covenant, feels that HE HIMSELF is special and chosen. His ultimate meaning doesn't come from serving someone higher or better but in valuing his own soul and self as having all the worth in the world by his personal connection to the one and only God who chose the Jews.
This is why Jews are the only immigrant group in the US who didn't come to serve others. Everyone else came to serve the mighty Anglos, but Jews had a powerful sense of self and believed, if anyone should serve anyone, the goyim should serve them cuz they got the Covenant, not the lowly goyim. In time, even the Anglos came to serve the Jews with such powerful sense of being.

the character of Commander Shears is a brilliant encapsulation of the slave type: cowardly, dishonest, and cynical about honor. Shears’ character is brought into sharper focus by making him an American, since America is a thoroughly bourgeois society that took pride in throwing off European aristocratic civilization, although vestiges of its ethos survived among the military and Southern planters. Making Shears a womanizer to boot perfected the character.

More like the Fugitive Slave type. A true slave type loves to serve. A slave has a kind of honor of his own. He believes he exists to serve others. He believes the meaning of his life comes from serving the master. A true slave would rather die for his master than live. It's like dogs who live for the love and approval of the master. And in a way, Saito and Nicholson have this slave mentality as well. Like loyal dogs, they will die for higher authority. Saito cannot tolerate the shame of disapproval from higher up. He feels it in his bones. Nicholson is always mindful of his reputation, not only among his inferiors but superiors back home. In a way, the master type and slave type are one and the same, and one cannot exist without the other. A slave believes he must serve and die for his master. In that, he too has a sense of honor. An ideal slave is loyal to the end. Also, an ideal master doesn't merely exploit his slave but appreciates the slave's loyalty, and this binds him to the slave. He must take good care of the slave. And to prove to the slave that he is no weakling and coward, the master must be willing to die alongside the slave. It's like lots of British officers died with the lowly soldiers in World War I.

William Holden's character of Shears isn't a slave type. He has no sense of deep loyalty. He wants to be free and do his own thing. It's a cowboy mentality, and to associate this with 'slave mentality' is ridiculous. Of course, one can say he's a slave to his personal needs and desires, but then, 007 would be a slave too because he loves women and gambling and good times. By the way, womanizing was a sport among the aristos, not so much among the slaves.
Also, Shears doesn't come across so bad because he's caught between empires. If he were an American soldier sent to Iwo Jima but dodged his duties for good times, he would be a lowlife rat. After all, Japan attacked Pearl Harbor, and Americans had to fight back.
But Shears is like a fish out of water between the British and the Japanese in some godforsaken Southeast Asian nowhere-land. Sure, Brits and Yanks are allies, and Japanese are the common enemy, but patriotism is rather hard to sustain in the jungles of Burma or Thailand or Malaysia or whatever. He feels like American soldiers in Vietnam War: "What are we doing HERE?" As far as he can tell, it's a war between empires in Southeast Asia, and he has no feelings about what the 'Japs' or the Brits are doing. He just wants to make it out of there alive.

I wouldn't call him cowardly but resourceful. His dishonesty is a survival mechanism among peoples he doesn't care for. He has little use for the Brits and far less for the Japanese. He doesn't feel like putting his neck on the line for either side. Also, his escape took some courage, and a true coward wouldn't be so brazen. Holden sort of reprises his role in STALAG 17, and George Segal took it up a notch in KING RAT.
Besides, there are varying degrees to cynicism, which doesn't come in one flavor. Some are opportunistically cynical to justify greed and loutishness, and there is something of this to Shears. But cynicism is also a smart response to the BS all around. It'd be nice if US soldiers today were more cynical and saw through the BS about 'honor, country, duty' blah blah when, in effect, they are nothing but attack dogs of the Jewish globo-homo ruling elites. How better things would be if white Americans were more cynical and saw right through the BS of GOP. How better if white progs saw through the BS of MSM and Jewish Power. Shears is both a self-centered egotist and a savvy observer who sees through the BS of authority. And the British who blackmail him into serving the mission are cynical in their own way. If they were really into principle and honor, they would have him prosecuted and even executed for impersonating an officer and etc. But they play him in the most cynical manner. They too know it is a game.

Shears is not bourgeois. He isn't into respectability or reputation, what the bourgeoisie care about most. He cares about being an individualist, being free and his own man. This makes him self-centered and selfish at times, but he's closer to the cowboy than the slave. He wants to roam free, and he doesn't want to fight battles for which he knows little. It's like the William Holden character in THE WILD BUNCH, a film that surely took some pointers from THE BRIDGE ON THE RIVER KWAI. An outlaw, he's out for himself, and he will deal with any side to get his cut.

One can argue that Shears is something of a worm, but a worm seeks freedom, not slavery(though one can argue such a cretin deserves to be a slave). Not to patriotism, not to honor, not to whatever. A worm would be like the Italian character of Lina Wertmuller's SEVEN BEAUTIES who spouts about dignity and 'honor' as a petty mafia hood, but when push comes to shove, chooses to save his own skin wherever and however.
Of course, slavery, used broadly as metaphor, can signify just about anything. Even to the want of freedom because freedom can mean addiction to one's appetites such as gluttony, sloth, and lust.
But, it's so easy to be cynical in war as all sides tell lies and betray trust. In LAWRENCE OF ARABIA, the higher-ups exploit Lawrence's idealism and vanity to goad him into accomplishing something that will then be twisted and corrupted by diplomats who shill for oligarchs of the empire.
It's like the soldiers who fight and die in Sergio Leone's THE GOOD, THE BAD, AND THE UGLY seem foolish compared to the three men who figure life is worth risking only for their share of gold. And yet, freedom gains meaning in attachment to something, and in that sense, Shears is also a doomed figure. He can lie, he can cheat, he can squeeze out of tight situations, but ultimately what is he if he's only for himself, if he has nothing to die for? It's like the thief in Akira Kurosawa's KAGEMUSHA, once having gained a glimpse of the Takeda Clan, wants to be part of it.

Now, are we to believe that Americans embraced slave-mentality because they rejected the aristocratic ways of Europe? -???- Because Americans wanted to be free and not bound to higher authority, they were choosing to be 'slaves'?
In Europe, the general rule was only the noblemen owned land and were armed. In the US, cowboys could claim their own turf and carry their own guns. Somehow, this made the US 'bourgeois' and 'slave'-like? In Europe, freedom and privilege were hogged by the aristocrats while their subjects lived helot-like existences. In the US, every person aspired to be free and equal under the law and maybe own his own plot of land. And anyone could ride horses and own guns. Sounds more like freedom than slavery to me. If something like aristocratism survived in the American South, it was because of black slaves. In other words, aristocracy cannot exist apart from slavery. You can't have one without the other. Thus, aristocratic system is also a slave system.
Many pro-aristocratic romanticists seem to believe that they themselves would have been noblemen lording over the peasants(much like every little girl who reads fairy-tales identifies with the precious princess than with serf girls who made up the bulk of society), but the chances are they would have been peasants because noblemen made up maybe 5% or less of any population in Europe. Aristocracy is slavery because only a few enjoy privilege while the rest are subjects without equal protection of the law.

To be sure, US began as a semi-aristocratic enterprise. The Founding Fathers were bourgeois-aristocrats and landowners(and even slave-masters). And in the beginning, only land-owners could vote, which was less than 20% of the population. Thomas Jefferson believed in 'natural aristocracy' based on merit, which is a bourgeois ideal as success among the business class is determined by ability + diligence; it is earned than inherited(though children who inherit capital and live off interest are like the new aristos). He figured a smart person is a natural aristocrat and should have the freedom to rise freely.
US became something closer to a real democracy under Andrew Jackson the populist, but if we follow Trevor Lynch's logic, Jackson was the great enslaver since he dealt a blow to the quasi-aristocratic form of governance instituted by the Founders.

As for the Southern Aristocracy, what a terrible bunch. The North relied on free white labor and equality under the law. South relied on black slave labor, which made the neo-aristocracy possible, even necessary. Again, aristocracy is built on slavery. If a few are to hog all the wealth and privilege, others must toil as helots.
The North did better than the South for having equally free white folks. The North was bourgeois, the South was aristocratic. It was the South that became the source of the racial woes that came to haunt America by relying on slave labor, especially that of blacks who are more muscular and more aggressive than white folks. And Latin America was even more aristo, with Spanish elites relying on masses of brown helots. How did that turn out?

White Nationalists can fantasize themselves as aristocrats all they want. The fact is aristocracy means special privileges for the 5% and slavery for the rest. How about freedom for all, and that is what Shears represents. Granted, freedom isn't enough as people often do stupid shit with their freedom. And freedom in a degenerate post-bourgeois society like the US immersed in consumerism and vulgarity is being wasted in the worst way.

Because aristocratism means special privileges for a few, it cannot exist apart from slave mentality. For a few to be aristocrats, most must be slaves. For a few to monopolize the power and formulate policy, most must be obedient dogs. That's what we have today in the US though Jews cleverly disguise the neo-aristocratism with calls to 'diversity, equity, inclusion', and other BS. No, the US is about aristocratic rule by Jewish Supremacists who regard the rest of us as slaves or at best serfs. Whites can be either deplorable Field Honkeys who must be whipped or servile House Honkeys, like the Wasp-Cucks in the Deep State, who serve their Jewish masters, darn tootin'.

But the solution isn't aristocratism but neo-fascism, an ideology that ensures equal dignity and protection for all the volk who are served by an elite whose highest vision is the good of the nation and people than its own caste and privilege.

The fact is Nicholsons of the world in US and UK would still loyally and 'honorably' serve the globo-homo Deep State whereas someone like Shears would see the utter BS through cynical eyes. Look at all those 'honorable' men in the CIA, FBI, NSA, and Pentagon. They dutifully serve their civilian leaders who, in turn as political whores, serve their Jewish donor-master class and quasi-prophets of satanic globo-homo.
In this, the 'master' mentality is a 'slave' mentality. The master mentality always feels a need to be within the proximity of power. Thus obsessed with power and control, it doesn't really ask whether something is good or bad. What matters most is to belong in the club and be in the game. Look at the master military class in the US. All slaves of Jews.
Now, if some US soldier saw through the utter BS of the system and used whatever means to get out of the army and no longer serve the Jews, would that be a bad thing? Also, why not be dishonest with a system that is utterly corrupt and mendacious? If goons of the FBI come to your door, should you be honest when the agency is full of dirtbags?
True, Shears is too carefree and self-centered to care about truth or meaning, but he's someone who no longer wants to be a dispensable cog in the system, a slave of masters with their imperial dreams. He's like a cynical version of Dr. Zhivago who doesn't want to fight for the Whites or Red but simply wants to live. Sure, he's a 'deserter' but he never volunteered to serve the Red and has no personal beef in the fight between the Reds and the Whites.

And for someone who wrote a book called WHITE NATIONALISM that calls for universal nationalism for all people, why all this romanticism about the British Empire and sense of honor and duty? Duty to empire?

THE BRIDGE ON THE RIVER KWAI covers some of the concerns of Jean Renoir's GRAND ILLUSION, which is also set in a prison camp and concerns the role of class in modern warfare. Even though it's Germans vs the French, in some ways the German aristocrats and French aristocrats have more in common. In a way, it's the last aristocratic war as well as the first truly people's war(at least on a grand scale) as all sides appeal to nationalist populism despite the outsized role of aristocratic military elements on all sides. Unlike previous wars where aristocrats fought aristocrats with soldiers used as pawns, the common man mattered in World War I. This new Modern War wasn't about lowly soldiers serving the superior classes but the higher classes fighting for the honor of the entire nation where every soldier was worthy of dignity and pride. Or so every side claimed.

Both GRAND ILLUSION and MERRY CHRISTMAS MR. LAWRENCE suggest an aristocratism that goes beyond class. A kind of spiritual aristocratism. In the former, the French aristocrat sacrifices his life so that his men(one a prole, another a Jew) can make the escape. Why would a man of higher caste give his life for men of lower order? Because, at least in the spiritual sense, more is expected of superior men. Similarly, the anti-aristocratic attitude of Jack Celliers(David Bowie) is paradoxically intensely aristocratic, at least in the spiritual sense. Though he rejects the notion of being part of the Superior Breed, he chooses the Herculean task of sacrificing his own life so that others may live. Only a man of superior courage and will could have done that. And this brings us to the figure of Jesus Christ, often referred to as King of Kings. A crass aristo-monarch like Herod is comfy with his privilege and power. His superiority is social-political. But for a man to reach spiritual aristocracy, he must prove a higher morality, greater courage, greater compassion, and greater will to sacrifice himself for the good of others. Thus, aristocratism, at its highest spiritual reaches, sacrifices itself for others(the inferiors) than sits snug and smug in its superiority.

Then Lean ended his career with Ryan’s Daughter (1970) and A Passage to India (1984), which fail as films in part because their slighter stories were overwhelmed by Lean’s epic style of treatment, which had hardened into mannerisms.

Agree about RYAN'S DAUGHTER but not PASSAGE TO INDIA. Though I don't care for the latter, the treatment suits the subject, and it was done with considerable restraint compared to RYAN'S DAUGHTER which is pictorialism gone wild. PASSAGE is stately and measured. It's a grand work set among ancient ruins of India, but it doesn't feel monumental; it focuses mostly on characters and drama than visuals. With Lean's fingers fine-tuning the knob, it varies between intimacy and grandeur than goes for nonstop epic treatment, the failing of RYAN'S DAUGHTER, which is visually 'high volume' at every moment. PASSAGE TO INDIA is also equally literary and visual(even more so than THE BRIDGE ON THE RIVER KWAI that, for all its location shooting and action, feels a bit stagy). But whether some Hindu touched a white woman or not, I simply didn't care and wished the movie featured more elephants.

It's misleading to say Lean ended his career with RYAN'S DAUGHTER and PASSAGE TO INDIA as those two works are separated by fourteen years. They shouldn't be seen as a pair. If anything, their difference owes to the harsh critical rebuke to RYAN'S DAUGHTER having led Lean's self-doubt and discouragement, which nearly ended his film-making career for good. He learned something from the criticism, which is why PASSAGE TO INDIA is so different in style and tone from RYAN'S DAUGHTER. The latter was a case of Lean laying on epic film-making thick in utter disregard of the material. In contrast, PASSAGE TO INDIA has a sense of proportion. It is big when it needs to be, but also personal and intimate in other parts, like in his earlier films(which many critics consider to be his best). Lean learned from the failure, both box-office and critical, of RYAN'S DAUGHTER, which is why PASSAGE TO INDIA was greeted mostly with applause.

What is a Conservative Movie? Notes on Conservatism and Nostalgia in the Arts and Cinema.

https://www.counter-currents.com/2019/08/the-leopard/

The discussion of THE LEOPARD(link above) reminds me of National Review's list of BEST CONSERVATIVE MOVIES: https://www.imdb.com/list/ls000074133/ http://brothersjudd.com/index.cfm/fuseaction/reviews.moviedetail/movie_id/19 https://www.nationalreview.com/magazine/2009/02/23/best-conservative-movies/ https://www.theguardian.com/film/filmblog/2009/feb/20/1

What a philistine list by hack ideologues with no sense of culture. Works like THE LEOPARD weren't listed. Instead, there was PURSUIT OF HAPPYNESS, THE PATRIOT, IT'S A WONDERFUL LIFE, and BICYCLE THIEVES.

PURSUIT OF HAPPYNESS and PATRIOT, which I haven't seen, are surely crap. IT'S A WONDERFUL LIFE and BICYCLE THIEVES are great works and one can find conservative elements in them, but it's disingenuous to call them 'conservative' because IT'S A WONDERFUL LIFE has too much that could be called 'liberal' and the script of BICYCLE THIEVES was by a Marxist-Humanist. One can say the family values element is conservative(but back then, the left wasn't anti-family like it became under increased Jewish, family, and homo influence), but its social critique is essentially leftist.
As for LIVES OF OTHERS, its anti-communism isn't necessarily pro-conservative. If anything, it is an example of Liberal Anti-Communism as the real message of the movie is that inferior hoi polloi like you and I should risk everything, even our lives, for the well-being and privilege of cosmopolitan artists who are surely our superiors.

The National Review list was petty, predictable, partisan, and jingoistic. It lacked imagination, movie knowledge, and bigness of heart. Hardly different from 100 best list you'd find in Premiere magazine if published by GOP hacks.
A genuine list should not favor films simply because conservatives tend to like it. Nor should a movie be chosen because it was made by a conservative, a rare breed in cinema. Movies that could just as easily be labeled liberal should be excluded, like WONDERFUL LIFE. (Indeed, the most ridiculous aspect of the National Review list is the tortured logic that deigns certain works as 'conservative' because of their social policy implications in the Current Year, e.g. if the movie has a high-spirited individual go-getter, maybe it's about libertarianism and lower taxes. There is an air of exaggeration and even desperation in National Review's list because there are so few card-carrying conservatives, let alone Republicans, working in the movie industry here or elsewhere. So, National Review twists logic to argue that certain apolitical or even liberal movies are really 'conservative'. As for films with genuine conservative pedigree, National Review has no interest because, being a hack journal of establishment conservatism, it dares not go near a work that might displease its donor base and philistine readership. Notice there is no mention of Andrei Tarkovsky, the greatest rightist film artist of the 20th century. Too Russian for the NR crowd, it seems. And of course, no mention of THE BIRTH OF A NATION by D.W. Griffith, the father of cinema, because NR is afraid of being called 'racist'. Maybe Dinesh D'Souza can argue that THE BIRTH OF A NATION is really a communist movie.) We must keep in mind that a leftist can make a conservative film just as Jew or atheist can make a Christian film. Some of the greatest Westerns have been made by Europeans who knew little about the real West. Each film need to be judged on its own merit. One must also dispense with the notion that a movie is deserving simply because it's conservative. Too many movies on the NR list aren't all that good but overrated for their presumed(or imagined) ideological content. For a list that bills itself as the BEST Conservative Movies, the works have to be conservative and excellent.
Also keep in mind that because some of the sentiments in the movie are conservative or sympathetic to the conservative viewpoint, it doesn't follow that the movie was conceived or intended to be conservative. Indeed, this applies to THE LEOPARD as well. Luchino Visconti was not proposing the restoration of Sicilian aristocracy. He made it as an elegy to the beauty and majesty that were lost with progress and development; for every gain, there is a loss.

We need a clearer meaning of 'conservative', especially when we are dealing with something as multi-faceted as the Arts. Firstly, it mustn't be confused with reaction or fascism. Both reaction and fascism are activist whereas a certain gentlemanly or dignified passivity is at the core of conservatism. Reactionaries single-mindedly seek to turn back to clock, to reclaim what was lost. They see the past as a golden age. They seek to destroy or suppress innovations whether they be economic, political, technological, or whatever.
Fascism is trickier for it incorporates elements of both right and left. It combines reverence for the past with excitement about the future. It fuses the virility of primitive nature worshiping paganism with transcendental aspirations of higher civilization.
While reaction, conservatism, and fascism can be said to belong on the right of the social or political spectrum, they are not synonymous. This gets even trickier in our age because what passes for conservatism is free market capitalism, the most dynamic and transformative force in the world. Marxists can dream up utopias all they want. In truth, all truly lasting revolutionary economic, social, scientific, and political innovations and changes have arisen from capitalist forces. Even social-democratic nations have economies mainly fueled by capitalism.
So, how odd that today's 'conservative' espouses the most dynamic and uprooting force the world has ever known? A modern conservative basically conserves the most powerful engine of socio-economic change. Take China and India. Since they've adopted global capitalism and free markets, their societies have been changing and growing at breakneck speed. Ideologically, they can be said to have gone 'conservative' in having abandoned their socialist or communist ways. But, capitalism is changing those nations like nothing ever before.

More meaningfully, one can define conservatism thus: The outlook that stands for reverence for the past, preservation of cultural heritage, longing for what may be lost, and etc. A conservative is different from a reactionary in that the former ultimately accepts change even while mourning what will be lost. Reactionaries doggedly cling to the past or struggle to restore it. A conservative understands that change is either necessary or inevitable even as he is threatened by it.

Now, what sets a conservative apart from a liberal(despite the conservative's acceptance of change) is that the former is less willing to simply dump or forget traditions or established conventions as the world changes. His feelings are more invested with the past or the status quo; it's not just a matter of his own power or privilege; he may actually be a poor person but sentimentally attached to the 'old ways'; in this sense, a poor Evangelical in America or poor Italian Catholic woman who feels a sense of loss from change(even though it may economically benefit him or her) can be said to be conservative; he or she doesn't define meaning of life simply on basis of materialism but on cultural norms of what constitutes virtue, sacredness, nobleness, etc. Even if a liberal says "I'll give you $1,000 a month in welfare if you support 'gay marriage'", a poor Evangelical or Catholic will refuse. For many people, a vision of society is as or more important than economic status or power.

Another way to define conservatism would be a search or longing for some core values(in the absence of such), a desire to set down firm roots, to possess a moral compass in life. In this sense, 'Amores Perros' can be said to have conservative themes — though it's certainly not blatantly so and is questioning of globo-capitalism(that prior to 'woke capitalism' was associated with the 'right') — in its rejection of moral relativism and a world defined solely by radicalism or materialism. This isn't to say liberals are immoral or amoral vis-a-vis conservatives. The difference is liberals are less interested in the idea of Core Values. They often take core values as stuffy and rigid or 'essentialist'; they favor fluidity of truth(albeit with rigidity of self-righteousness of the Current Year) in moving away from what society has traditionally deemed as core values, though they tirelessly establish new faddish orthodoxies via political correctness. This venturesomeness can be daring and useful, but it can go off the rails and lead to a world where there is no strong core meaning to guide the individual or unite a increasingly alienated people. Therefore, there lingers a longing for firm values, which is what conservatism(the real kind) offers.

Also, conservatism, though antithetical to relativism, gains special meaning within a relativistic context. In a way, a nostalgic communist in the Russia of the early 1990s could be said to be conservative in the sense that he sought to preserve what had been built up and passed down during 70s yrs of communism. At one time, Christianity was a peripheral and defiant(and even radical) faith; then it became the official dogma and thus 'conservative'. So, conservatism isn't merely about ideology. It can also be a state of mind, a sense of not wanting to let go of what has defined a community and individuals within it. A man can be of leftist ideology yet of conservative personality/mentality/temperament or of rightist ideology yet of liberal personality/mentality/temperament. The mother in GOODBYE LENIN is a diehard communist but also an emotional conservative who clings to what has become familiar to her.

We are largely defined by the ideology we grew up under, yet our personalities and inclinations define how we deal with handed-down spoon-fed values. Newt Gingrich is ideologically conservative but has a somewhat radical personality. Even when conservatives adopt something radical-crazy like 'gay marriage', they try to give it a trad-moralist spin. i.e. "It's conservative cuz 'gays' are adopting family values."
There were Democrats like Richard Daley who were ideologically liberal but had the personality of a conservative family man and head of Irish clan. A conservative is less likely to look down on the past and feel smugly superior; of course, he may feel smugly righteous with established norms(like Archie Bunker). Some conservatives feel it's their duty to counter the rapid pace of change demanded by liberals. As such, they aren't so much anti-liberal as anti-accelerationist. At their best, Liberalism is the accelerator pedal, Conservatism is the brake pedal. There are times when history must be slowed down to make change more cautious and palatable. When Liberalism and Conservatism work together, history works well. Obviously, a car doesn't move forward with its brakes. But then, a car without brakes will soon crash and burn. Today, when Liberalism puts pedal to the metal and Conservatism just cheers it on, we have the currently crazy West of degeneracy and Great Replacement. Of course, most of today's so-called Liberals are white dupes of Jewish supremacist globo-homo power.

In more respects than one, modern conservative reacts against the official ideology of the so-called 'Right'. Though a free market capitalist, he may realize that his favored economic system is overly dynamic and uprooting, therefore needs to be balanced by core values, timeless themes, and even a bit of socialism. (Consider how Tucker Carlson is sounding lately.) He values conservatism precisely because he values change. Because change + change is too much for humanity, he opts for change + balance. He may feel that a counter-power system is necessary to tame the bull-like nature of capitalism. In this sense, a modern conservative is at war with his own party. It's like sailing. To harness the shifting winds to move from place to place, the mast has to be strong and steady. A conservative may feel that extreme liberalism is eager to surrender to the winds whereas his own kind seeks to use them for the ship. He appreciates the power of winds but as something that serves the ship than vice versa. Today, those on the Right want to use the international system for the good of one's own nation, whereas the so-called 'progressives' want to offer up one's nation to the global system. It's 'use the world for the good of our nation' versus 'lose the nation for the good of the world'. (Granted, 'progressives' are really tools of Jews whose secret motto is 'use all the goy world to ensure Jewish supremacist rule forever.') Western Expansion could be said to have been an artful combination of liberal and conservative principles. There was the curiosity to find new lands and go where the winds carried the ships, and yet, there was also mastery of machinery and methodology to ensure that the forces of nature served man than man surrendered to forces of nature. Thus, the West could expand far and wide but still maintain their ways, manners, and values far away from home.

Conservatism has a certain sentimentality for the past, traditions, established conventions, long standing rituals. But, conservatism doesn't have a clear agenda like reactionary-ism nor does it have the quasi-radical edge or the fighting spirit of fascism. Conservatism in the modern era is essentially bourgeois(especially in Europe) or about the Common Man(especially in the US). Conservatives come in different shapes and colors. Some resemble reactionaries. Some tend to be liberalish. But even liberal-ish conservatives who realize that change is necessary may lament that something grand, beautiful, or meaningful will be lost, perhaps for good, with the necessary change. There is a sense of elegy with the resigned acceptance of progress. It's there in MAKIOKA SISTERS and MAGNIFICENT AMBERSONS. Neither film suggests the past was preferable, but they do invoke a sense of what's been lost, forgotten, and paved over by progress. Also, there is a subjectivity to nostalgia. Those without memory of what had once been won't understand the poetry and melancholia. It is why the ending of MAGNIFICENT AMBERSONS is doubly sad. Not only is something lost but there is no one around to share the character's sense of loss.
Conservatism is also a matter of personality, i.e. some feel the loss with greater sensitivity than others do, just like some people mourn the death of their loved ones more strongly. Conservatism isn't merely a preference for previous power-arrangements but nostalgia for how it used-to-be, even if what-had-been was far from ideal. In more ways than one, THE LEOPARD(the film) is more a work of nostalgia than conservatism. It doesn't long for the past in terms of power-politics but acknowledges the regal splendor that passed away with change and modernity; it's like what Ruth Gordon says in HAROLD AND MAUDE: "I don't regret the kingdoms - what sense in borders and nations and patriotism? But I miss the kings. Also, those who knew nothing of this past, culture, and order could hardly miss it as nostalgia is about what one remembers but no longer has. As most people weren't aristocrats, they could hardly feel nostalgic for the aristocratic order, of which they have no memory. For the hoi polloi viewers, their impression of THE LEOPARD will be less of nostalgia than of fascination with a world of riches and grandeur. Still, even the hoi polloi may feel a certain shared-nostalgia because fiction allows the audience to empathize with the characters. To the extent that the viewers come to intimately participate in the life of a prince(especially in a work as masterly as that of Visconti's), they do feel some measure his grief and quiet tragedy.


Libertarian movies shouldn't count as conservative because there is little sense of love or reverence for the past or tradition. Libertarianism is free-market-'fascism'-of-the-individual. If Italian Fascism said there is one and only Il Duce in the form of Mussolini and all Italians must gather around him, Ayn Randism says each person should be his or her own Mussolini(and since she knew everything, every individualist-Mussolini would really be her mental minion; Rand was a radical mono-individualist who decreed how all individuals must think and feel in order to be 'free' and 'rational': Like Her). Rand, as we know, had little respect or love for American or Russian heritage(or for the Jewish one for that matter though she certainly had a Jewish Personality & radical will and supported Zionism against Arabs whom she denigrated as 'barbarians'). What she liked about America was the opportunity for growth, riches, and change fueled by radical individualist freedom. She couldn't have cared less about American folks lived in prairie towns who wore Sunday best for Church attendance.

List of conservative movies should be chosen based on merit alone. Suppose some Homo-Marxist made a movie with noticeable conservative themes. His inclinations shouldn't negate the work's content. But suppose an inferior work was made by a prominent someone known to be 'conservative'. If it isn't good, there's no sense pretending it is just because he happens to be in the 'right' camp. No sense lauding something just because it was made by Mel Gibson or happens to be pro-family or pro-Christian. PASSION was underrated by its detractors but way overrated by hardcore Christian types and Conservatism Inc., which also dutifully wet its pants over BRAVEHEART and THE PATRIOT. Furthermore, no special consideration should be given to crowd-pleasing movies. It's dubious that FORREST GUMP is really a conservative movie, but people like Pat Buchanan slurped up its cheap sentimentality.

It's worth noting that some of the greatest films ever are conservative-themed(or right-wing) yet made by liberals. Why would that be? Maybe because liberals are artistically more curious, open-minded, and experimental whereas conservative themes are meatier and/or more substantive: The bond of blood or triumph of spirit runs deeper than ink of justice. It's rightness vs righteousness. The Right feels right, whereas the Left has to feel righteous. 'Being' itself is right enough for the Right, whereas only 'being right' is right for the Left. We see this in the dichotomy of the White Right and White Left. White Right is content with being white and would be happy to have their own homelands and be left alone. White Left feels justified only when it feels righteous about something, and if opening white nations to the world is deemed the 'right thing to do', they must hysterically go about realizing such vision... if only to feel more self-righteous.

Also, art works through friction and tension, and the tension between liberal curiosity and conservative density makes for interesting dynamics. APOCALYPSE NOW is more interesting for the creative tension between Francis Ford Coppola's liberal leanings and John Milius' right-wing vision. A liberal making a liberal movie might be comfortable with the material; he merely has to endorse it. The element of friction would be absent. However, a liberal working with conservative themes must struggle with them; this makes for creative tension and dialectic sparks.
Also, power, privilege, sanctity, spirituality — the favored themes of conservatism — are ultimately more interesting and resilient than do-goodery and social consciousness. Would most people rather see a movie about Don Corleone or a do-gooder social activist? A leftist revolutionary can be an interesting material for a movie, but he has to be hyper-charged with action. A leftist is interesting for the way he tries to change the world. A conservative is interesting simply for being a part of the world. A leftist must transform the world to have meaning, whereas a conservative already has meaning in his world. The prince of THE LEOPARD merely needs to be an aristocrat to be regal and majestic. In contrast, a leftist revolutionary has to throw bombs or make speeches to be somebody. The king is interesting because he lives in a castle and HAS power. The rebel trying to overthrow the king is interesting because he WANTS power. To the extent that all rebels eventually want power and to rule, they are working toward what eventually becomes the New Conservatism. In the end, it's about power than ideals, and all leftisms become rightisms. Indeed, leftism is essentially the wanna-be new rightism. Look how the Jewish 'Liberals' became the new ruling class in the West and will go about doing just about anything to conserve their power. Granted, Jews aren't merely conservative because they aren't content merely with keeping with what they got but salivate for more and more. They are conservatives with what they have and expansives with what they don't yet have but crave.

Despite being mass entertainment and perhaps the most democratic of art-forms, cinema may essentially be a very conservative art form in one sense: Nearly all movies create larger-than-life-heroes. Rightism is distinct from egalitarian leftism in the acceptance of hierarchy. To be sure, there are different kinds of hierarchies — based on blood, merit, or gangsterism. The thing is, even a movie about leftists like Karl Marx or Vladimir Lenin would mythologize them as a Special Higher being, a king-like or even godlike figure. Presence of larger-than-life figures runs against the ideal of leftism that is egalitarian and says NO ONE should be bigger or larger than anyone else.
But, movies make the heroes and main characters larger-than-life, larger than ordinary mortals. They give us heroes who dwarf the hoi polloi both figuratively and literally(as they're magnified on the big screen). So, 'Michael Collins' isn't just an Irish revolutionary but something like a demigod. Even a whacko like Travis Bickle in TAXI DRIVER becomes a mythic anti-hero. This wouldn't necessarily be the case with drama or novel. Both work on the human level and proportions. They don't present giants on the big screen, whose moments are further heightened by music. Opera's exaggerated vocals may be the closest thing to the exaggerated image of cinema.
Movies almost always create mythic heroes; it's largely due to the size of the screen but also the power of editing and the sped-up narrative(that takes us all over the map across time and space). Now, this isn't the case with the films of the Dardennes Brothers or Jean-Luc Godard. Or with something like Ermano Olmis' TREE OF THE WOODEN CLOGS where the realist-setting and the way of life are more important than any single character. Still, especially with the impact of the Auteur Theory, we do feel the personal signature of the star director as a near-godly presence. Most movies have this power over us. Even a movie about leftists or leftist ideals become rightist or even 'fascist' in its presentation. A profound sense of hierarchy is unmistakable. Take V FOR VENDETTA(a terrible movie to be sure) where the hero becomes not just a warrior for justice but a demagogic super-duper-man of awesomeness. Or take MALCOLM X. He is elevated to silver screen aristocracy, and all the Negro kids in the audience were supposed to stand up and say "I's Macum X."

Now, some genuinely conservative films:

The Leopard, Makioka Sisters, Tokyo Story, Apu Trilogy (boy grows to manhood, seeks freedom, but realizes he's part of something bigger, part of a continuum), Music Room (leading character is a decadent aristo BUT the film captures the seductive allure of leisure and privilege), Andrei Rublev, Stalker, Tree of the Wooden Clogs(critical of social inequality of Old Italy BUT a paean to the virtues and decency of simple god-fearing peasant folks), Diary of a Country Priest, Time Regained, Sunshine(by Szabo, conservative at least in its insistence on importance of Jewish memory), Ride the High Country, Ivan the Terrible, Alexander Nevsky, Nixon, The Godfather, Six Moral Tales, Fanny and Alexander(for family and liberalism), High and Low, Magnificent Ambersons, Chimes at Midnight, Barry Lyndon, An Unfinished Piece for a Mechanical Piano, Burnt by the Sun(revolution destroys a national hero and devours the family unit), Siberiade, Ugetsu, The Long Riders, Birth of a Nation, Once Upon a Time in the West, Farewell My Concubine, Earrings of Madame de, Christmas Story, Radio Days, Man Who Knew Too Much, The Birds, My Father's Glory, My Mother's Castle, Age of Innocence, Time of the Gypsies, Great Expectations, Amorres Perros, Notre Musique, The Return(Russian), Nostalghia(Tarkovsky), Metropolitan, Last Days of Disco.

Notes on VERTIGO(written by Alec Coppel & Samuel Taylor and directed by Alfred Hitchcock) as Discussed by Luke Ford and Kevin Michael Grace

Luke Ford and Kevin Michael Grace discuss VERTIGO, directed by Alfred Hitchcock. VERTIGO dethroned Orson Welles' CITIZEN KANE in the 2012 Sight & Sight poll the Best Movies of All Time. Unlike Welles' masterpiece that is brimming with life and has large cast of characters, VERTIGO is remarkably one of the loneliest movies ever made. Indeed, its appeal to cinephiles is that intense feeling of loneliness. The audience shares in the experience of CITIZEN KANE together. If anything, the most subjective eye in the film, that of the reporter on the trail of 'rosebud', is rendered almost invisible. What we see is a vast array of characters, big and small, reminiscing on the most public of endeavors: Business, Media, Arts, Politics. CITIZEN KANE is more about the seen than the seeing.
In contrast, the viewer is the main protagonist in VERTIGO(as in REAR WINDOW), and his gaze fixates on one thing: Madeleine as woman, ghost, resurrection, and myth. If 'rosebud' remains vague throughout CITIZEN KANE until the very end, we know what Scotty's(James Stewart) 'rosebud' or "Carlotta's Bouquet" is. Even though VERTIGO is an ensemble piece as romance-mystery, it is emotionally a one-man-show. It is about Scotty's fascination with Madeleine that turns into obsession and yearning. The somber tones, melancholic score, and portrait of privacy(so intense and oblivious to everything but its innermost desire) all conspire to make VERTIGO into a one-man-tragedy. Scotty becomes blind and deaf to everything but the siren and her song. One might see a parallel with Liv Ullmann's character in PERSONA who is also incapacitated and admitted to a clinic, but if her ailment remains enigmatic and opaque, there is clarity to Scotty's condition. He wants Madeleine. He has a powerful and all-encompassing longing for someone who can no longer exist in the world of the real.
In a way, Scotty's eagerness to cure Madeleine of her malady is psychological compensation for his inability to overcome his own. No amount of reason can undo his acrophobia, but maybe, reason can cure Madeleine of her irrational affliction with the supernatural. Yet, a part of him doesn't want to see Madeleine cured. Its her forlorn state that makes her even more beautiful and draws him closer to her. She's a damsel in distress, but in another sense, she's the queen of dreams. Its her 'possession' that adds tragic poetry to her physical beauty and charms.
For many years, VERTIGO was unavailable to moviegoers, but upon re-release, it has rapidly gained the status of Hitchcock's greatest work(among so many to choose from). It has also inspired or influenced many notable films: LA JETEE, THE LAST EMBRACE, L'APPARTEMENT, MULHOLLAND DR., A.I: ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE, MOTHMAN PROPHECIES, INCEPTION, SHUTTER ISLAND to name a few.
Scotty represents the two sides of our psychology: Logical & Factual and Creative & Dreamy. Scotty's career as a hard-nosed detective tracking down criminal cases involved his logical and factual side. He lived in a world without ghosts, one where everything had a logical explanation, one where even love was a game between rational strategists. But the faculty of reason, however essential and useful, cannot 'create' or dream. In the end, it is the mist around the object than the object itself that makes us dream, inspiring us to create myths and fairy-tales. And it is upon his encounter with Madeleine that Scotty falls into a dream from which he can't wake(nor wants to). It is telling that, even after the facts are finally known about Madeleine/Judy in the last scene, he so easily falls into her embrace again as if to cling to the myth. Even if it can never be the same, he wants it to go on in another form. Dreams lead to madness but there lies the vision. It's like what William Hurt's character tells David in the final part of A.I.: ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE. If Scotty gradually goes from analyst & tracker to creator & maker(of dreams, albeit a forgery of Elster's sinister masterpiece), David(with the help of Gigolo Joe) uses his analytic skills to track down a dream, one that proves to be impossible as years pass.
As different as CITIZEN KANE and VERTIGO are, there is the theme of obsession at the core of both movies. Even though Kane, unlike Scotty, was a rich public figure(richer than all the Gavin Elsters of the world), he too ended up alone and lonely. And as his ultimate dreams -- becoming governor(then maybe president), being a champion of the People, and being loved -- failed to materialize, he withdrew into a dream of his own creation called Xanudu. With god-complex, he strove to create his own Edenic Ark separate from the fallen world that rejected him. And yet, even in that world, he lost all his friends and finally his wife. If any film incorporated the powerful themes of both CITIZEN KANE and VERTIGO, it'd be Sergio Leone's ONCE UPON A TIME IN A AMERICA where James Woods plays the Kane figure whereas Robert DeNiro the Scotty figure.

1. https://youtu.be/met1c7anQ3E?t=11m23s Kevin Michael Grace says Hitchcock blamed disappointing Box Office on James’ Stewart age but argues it made the character’s desperation all the more palpable. Akin to the elderly professor in BLUE ANGEL? Perhaps, the element of realization than desperation is more crucial as to why Stewart’s age made the story richer. Because the character of Scotty is ‘older’, he feels he’s seen it all, felt it all, been through it all; therefore, nothing can get to him or get under his skin. The passion in the movie takes on greater force precisely because it engulfs a man who seems immune to such emotions. Thus, there’s an element of surprise, as when the middle-aged professor comes upon the nymphet in LOLITA and becomes aroused with sensations novel to him despite his learning and worldliness. Kevin Michael Grace also says the movie is operatic, and it certainly has such moments, especially at the end. But most of the movie proceeds like a fugue, accented by moments that feel like tone poems.

2. https://youtu.be/met1c7anQ3E?t=12m40s Kevin Michael Grace says that a recurring theme in Hitchcock’s movies is the falsely accused or suspected ‘wrong man’ trying to prove his innocence. Hitchcock made a movie of that title, and oddly enough, it’s rather uncharacteristic of his works. Even though many of Hitchcock’s movies do involve the ‘wrong man’, there’s the sense that the real villain is acting out the subconscious desires of the hero, the ‘wrong man’ or ‘wronged man’. It's like what Lancelot says of himself and Guinevere in EXCALIBUR: "we are innocent...but not in our hearts." Consider STRANGERS ON A TRAIN where the hero didn’t murder his wife but almost wanted to strangle her himself. In the movie WRONG MAN, the wronged man is portrayed unambiguously as a good man wrongfully accused(almost scapegoated) by the system and the community. Perhaps, that particular movie was uncharacteristically moralistic(even a bit didactic) because it was based on a true story. But in many of Hitchcock’s movies, the villain acts out the subconscious desire of the hero. The hero has a superego firm enough to restrain his darker impulses. So, the villain, as his Id, steps in to do the job. And then, the hero and villain duke it out, with the good winning over the evil. But the perverse dynamics has the hero really battling himself as the villain's transgression eloquently represents the secret murmurs of the hero's heart. In a way, even as the villain harasses and torments the hero, he has made it doubly good for the latter. In killing the person that the hero really wants dead, the villain served as hero's emissary. And then, in being defeated by the hero, the latter can comfort himself that he’s always been on the side of the good when, in fact, his hidden soul is closer to the villain's than he would like to believe. Thanks to the villain in STRANGERS ON A TRAIN, the hero no longer has to deal with his wicked wife and move onto a new lover. The reason why ROPE doesn’t work is Hitchcock chickened out and failed to present James Stewart’s character as a true nihilist. If the movie had been more courageous, the character should have felt the full force of realization that the boys were actually ‘more’ than him because whereas he could only expound on nihilism in theory, they actually carried it out. Instead, we have Stewart's character telling the boys that, gee whiz, he hadn't mean it; he was just joshing, that’s all. (Furthermore, the story would have been more effective if the killers had been presented as truly intelligent sickos than as morons who think they're smart but really aren't. Because they are presented as essentially shallow and stupid, the murder seems more the product of 'dangerous ideas' than dark souls despite Stewart's sermon at the end about how it was in the dark nature of the boys to have done what they did.) PSYCHO is creepier because there is a sense that the Good can easily slide into Bad. When the woman is on the dark road with the stolen money, her conscience is troubled by voices inside her head accusing her of being a wicked creature, but then, we see her eyes turn radiant like headlights and her lips flicker into a smile as she begins to enjoy the realization that, yes, she is a bad woman and is capable of anything. Her psyche begins to split, and for a moment, her stare anticipates the Norman Bates’ stare at the end of the movie. Of course, Bates is a far more seriously split personality. In a way, he is the villain but also the victim, a ‘wronged man’ to the extent that he sincerely believes he is victimized by the madness of his mother whom he feels obliged to protect as a good son. Not sure if Charles Laughton was channeling Hitchcock, but the ending scene with the watch in THE NIGHT OF THE HUNTER suggests that evil keeps on ticking on and on, even in the hearts of children despite receiving the love and warmth of good people, such as the grandmotherly figure.


3. https://youtu.be/met1c7anQ3E?t=15m22s Kevin Michael Grace says the ‘logic’ of VERTIGO is that of a dream, more precisely a ‘dream of eternal recurrence’, one where the afflicted seems incapable of escaping as every waking moment turns out to be the continuance of the dream. There is something about Scotty’s spellbound dilemma that is obsessively dreamlike. There is a scene in MULHOLLAND DR. where a man tells his friend about a dream at a diner, but it turns out he is in the dream he is talking about, and furthermore, we learn that he and his friend aren’t real but figments of dreams of another person who also happens to be a figment of another person’s dream. I don’t think Scotty’s dilemma is really of that nature, however. The guy who mentions his dream in the diner in MULHOLLAND DR. really doesn’t want to be part of that dream. If anything, he grows morbidly anxious when he begins to realize he’s in that dream again. In contrast to that normal-seeming person who just wants to get on with his life, the real problem with Diane Selwyn is not so much the recurring dream but the recurring reality. She can’t stand the reality and escapes into the dream over and over and over. It’s a dream-fantasy that she, consciously and subconsciously, steers in her preferred direction, but the reality keeps pulling her back to the dire facts of her life. Scotty has one thing in common with her in that what he fears most is not the dream, haunted as he is by it, but by the recurrence of reality. No matter how many times he wants to return to the dream, the fact is Madeleine is dead, and he wasn’t able to save her, no more than he was able to save the cop in the beginning of the story. Of course, it’s worse with Madeleine because he fell in woozy love with her. So, Scotty isn’t someone who’s trying to escape the dream and return to reality but someone who wants to take flight from reality and be with the dream. After Madeleine dies, he is committed to a mental clinic. From the outside, he seems miserable, and of course, he is mourning Madeleine’s death. But there is also a sense that he’s lost in a dream that he doesn’t want to let go. He doesn’t want to be healed because the cure would mean the rational realization that Madeleine is dead and gone forever, and there’s nothing he can do about it. His conscious mind knows this, but a part of his soul just can’t let go and remains with her in the world of dreams, just like Arthur regains contact with Merlin in the dream world in EXCALIBUR. What is the most traumatic moment in MOTHMAN PROPHECIES?

It’s when Laura Linney’s character reminds John Klein(Richard Gere) of the most basic, undeniable, and irreversible fact: His wife died two yrs ago. All these years, Klein knew this fact consciously, but his soul was never able to let it go. So, harrowing and frightening as the Mothman sightings are in the town of Point Pleasant, they offer the hope of contacting the Other World to Klein who is like Orpheus trying to retrieve Eurydice from the Underworld. Dreams can be scary, but they also allow fantasy, escape, and hope. In contrast, reality is final. As melancholic as Scotty’s dreams of Madeleine are, her ghostly presence inhabits that realm. But in the daylight world of reality, there is only the fact that she is gone forever. A story that is closer to the horror of the recurring dream is Stanley Kubrick's THE SHINING, but even there, the character comes to eventually love the dream and fears returning to reality more than anything.

4. https://youtu.be/met1c7anQ3E?t=19m4s Kevin Michael Grace says the reason why Scotty didn’t shack up with Midge is she was never his kind of woman. He was for ‘icy blondes’, like Hitchcock himself. Also, Kevin Michael Grace says Scotty is a deeply romantic person whose hidden romanticism finally emerges in his fantasy of being a ‘powerful man’ who transforms Judy into ‘Madeleine’. But we learn from the conversation between Scotty and Midge that the reason why the two didn’t get married was Midge called it off. If she’d been willing, they might very well have married and settled down. Of course, he was never in great love with her, and the fact that she’d rejected marriage suggests she wasn’t all that crazy about him either(despite her very real feelings for him). They liked each other as friends, and also, they relished their independence more than anything. Both like to regard themselves as modern ‘ironic’ people who are above duty and romance. If they had gotten married, it would have been as friends, as a ‘modern’ couple. The fact that they still see each other and enjoy the other’s company suggest that they are ‘married’ in a way: A marriage of friendship. They are well-educated, smart, and worldly. There isn’t a topic or issue about which they can’t joke or have a good laugh. In a way, the lack of actual marriage between them keeps them ‘married’ as good friends. Real marriage would mean duty and obligations. But their casual ‘friend marriage’ means they can see each other whenever they like but also be alone when they wish to. Each maintains his or her freedom/independence despite their affectionate bond. So, it’d be wrong to say Scotty didn’t marry her because she wasn’t his type. In a way, she was too much his type, and vice versa, as both shared a similar kind of sensibility: Modern, sardonic, irreverent, libertine, and unbound. One gets the sense that they didn’t get married because they valued their friendship more than any sentimental notion of love. She speaks of sexuality as a kind of engineering, with her bra design utilizing the same laws of physics as a bridge. The irony is that the Madeleine’s husband, Gavin Elster, thinks much the same way, albeit for sinister purposes. (One wonders if the evil husband is really romantic or a cold cynical manipulator of romanticism as a sucker’s dream for others. As P. T. Barnum said, "there’s a sucker born every minute".) Anyway, Midge didn’t want to be legally & morally attached to any one person, so she rejected Scotty’s proposal of marriage long ago, and Scotty didn’t take it hard at all since he wasn’t obsessed with her. He probably thought it would have been nice to have a wife like Midge. Midge is the kind of woman with whom things are best kept dry. It is with Madeleine that Scotty takes the plunge and gets wet. In a way, VERTIGO is about 19th century Gothicism intruding into Modernism that thinks itself too smart for old themes and passions. It’s like the modern scientist-doctor who is upended by the magician in Ingmar Bergman’s THE FACE. In a way, both Scotty and Midge get a kind of comeuppance for their modernist conceit that they are above old-fashioned emotions. Scotty does fall for romance, and his mysterious wanderings does make Midge jealous. And when Scotty falls to despair and despondency as his soul spirals into the dream underworld of the dead, Midge also feels the pull. She thought she was above irrational emotions, but she is moved by Scotty’s passion for Madeleine; she is sad that no man could ever feel such feelings for her. Indeed, it is her sensing of Scotty's deepening emotions(for someone else) that brings out the deeper emotions(for Scotty) within herself. Scotty's apparent infatuation with someone else violated the unspoken contract between him and Midge: Their lasting friendship would be premised on either's refusal to commit to any one person or thing. They'd be like two birds free in the air but never settling down to nest. Midge dreads flying alone upon sensing Scotty's choice of a particular tree as his 'home'.

Also, I’m not sure Scotty was always a romantic person. Romanticism emerges from his growing passion for Madeleine, but I think Scotty’s romantic side was latent than hidden. It was there somewhere, but he didn’t know of it and never thought that side of him could ever take shape as it did. That is why he’s so helpless under its hypnotic spell. He was taken by surprise. And it’s very possible that the romantic side of him would never have emerged if not for the artful con pulled off by the sinister husband Gavin Elster. In getting to know Madeleine, it’s not as if Scotty finally found what he’d been looking for. He found what he didn’t know that he’d been looking for, and yet, having found her, she is ‘it’, she is The One, the person who matters more than anything in the world. Also, I’m not so sure that Scotty is into Icy Blondes per se(as Hitchcock was). Rather, it was how he got to know Madeleine, and she happened to be a blonde. Having fallen for her, he associates blondeness with Madeleine, and that’s why he insists that Judy be a blonde. I don’t think any other ‘icy blonde’ would have worked for Scotty. Indeed, Scotty picks Judy out when she is a brunette. Why? She has Madeleine’s face. So, it’s not just the hair color. It’s the face, it is what Madeline wore in dress and shoes, how her face was made up, and it’s how her hair was done. Every detail has to be right. Indeed, when Judy enters the room with blonde hair, Scotty still doesn't feel the magic. He finally feels it only when she does her hair in a particular way. Scotty wants Judy to be like Madeleine in every possible detail, and yet, it is when Judy goes the extra inch to be like Madeleine with the jewelry that the mist finally lifts and Scotty comes to see her(and ‘Madeleine’) with cold eyes.
By the way, I think the significance of Madeleine’s blonde hair owed to Carlotta’s dark hair. Carlotta’s dark ghostly presence has supposedly taken possession of Madeleine’s soul, and Scotty’s role is to bring her out into the light. Thus, blonde hair is less a sexual fetish than a key motif with symbolic value in the mythic puzzle. The myth of Madeleine isn’t possible without the darkness, and in that sense, in having fallen in love with blonde Madeleine, Scotty has also fallen in 'negative' love with brunette Carlotta. Indeed, one might argue that Scotty might have been less taken with Judy Barton if she’d been blonde when they crossed path. It was her brunette hair that reminded him of Carlotta's ghost, from which he was trying to save Madeleine. Thus, in turning brunette Judy to blonde Judy or New Madeleine, Scotty gets to relive the struggle once again, the one he lost.

5. https://youtu.be/met1c7anQ3E?t=22m38s Luke Ford argues that the problem with Scotty is that he rejected a perfectly good woman in Midge in favor of some unattainable fantasy in Madeleine. Luke Ford says he has had the same problems as Scotty in chasing after impossible women than settling down with a Nice Girl. Luke Ford says Midge is approachable whereas Madeleine is not. So, Scotty made a big boo boo. But again, it was Midge who broke off the engagement with Scotty, not vice versa. Also, both Midge and Madeleine are approachable and unapproachable in different ways. Midge is approachable as a friend, a conversationist, a wit. But she isn’t very approachable emotionally. She keeps a certain distance with irony and aloofness. Her independence and career are too important to her. As much as she likes Scotty, she wasn’t going to give up her ‘freedom’ for a life of marriage in which she might have had kids and been a homemaker. She wants to design sexy things for modern women. So, while Scotty can call her up any day and have a good talk with her, she keeps a certain wall around her.
Now, there’s a wall around Madeleine as well. First, she is of a rich family, a socialite. People of high status tend to move around in closed circles, the sort that excludes most people, such as Scotty. Also, Madeleine is high class. (Of course, the Madeleine that Scotty meets is a fake, a fool’s gold. But like the Shadow Warrior of Akira Kurosawa’s KAGEMUSHA, she was drilled to seem as real as possible, and Scotty sure fell for it. But then, he probably never met a socialite of such high standing before, so it’s all new to him. And so very flattering that such a high-class woman would allow a man like him into her life.) Precisely because of Madeleine’s superior status, Scotty is impressed with the opportunity of entering her exclusive world in both the social and personal sense. No matter how gorgeous a whore may be, she is a whore, someone who can be had for a price. In contrast, Madeleine is like a princess, and Scotty feels fortunate to be gradually sliding into her world(like Kubrick's characters relish entry into 'forbidden' domains). And despite her high class and reserved manners, there is something very vulnerable about her. As Kevin Michael Grace argues, vulnerability is appealing to men. Playing the white knight lends status to a man over a woman, however lowly his status and highborn hers. At the end of Akira Kurosawa’s HIDDEN FORTRESS, the two lowly commoners realize that they’d played a role in saving a high-born princess, and they feel a certain pride that can’t be measured in gold. Because Madeleine plays the damsel-in-distress, she becomes approachable to Scotty. She offers an emotional opening to him that was never there with Midge, a ‘strong’ and ‘independent’ woman.

6. https://youtu.be/met1c7anQ3E?t=28m1s Kevin Michael Grace says, "In terms of James Stewart’s guilt, the overwhelming presence of Catholic imagery in this film is not an accident. James Stewart has committed adultery or fornication but it’s involved in an adulterous affair with a married woman... that is one aspect of his guilt." I’m not sure what Kevin Michael Grace means by this. It’s my understanding that the affair between Scotty and Madeleine was NOT consummated in Act One. Now, one could argue there was an adultery-of-the-heart because Scotty fell in love with the woman he was hired to keep an eye on. And they did share kisses. He wasn’t supposed to do that, but then, Judy-as-Madeleine was hired to make him do just that. While Scotty fell madly in love with the fake Madeline, the evil husband felt no love for the real Madeleine, his wife who was slated for murder. Anyway, as the love was not consummated between Scotty and Madeleine, there was no great reason for Scotty to feel any guilt(in regard to Madeleine's husband). Also, even as Scotty fell in mad love for Madeleine, he was trying to the very end to break her out of the spell, thus loyally carrying out the husband’s request. He was still trying to play the 'detective'. If Scotty feels any guilt, it was his failure to stop Madeleine from her death. Despite his growing passion for Madeleine and their kisses, Scotty restrained himself from going further. He held his libido in check. But when Madeleine races up the tower, Scotty is unable to overcome his fear to run after her. His fear proved stronger than his love, and there lies his guilt. (It's like Winston Smith caved to fear over love in 1984 when he freaked out over the rats. And Peter denied Jesus three times out of fear. Fear is that powerful. It's like white men will do nothing to help a white woman being robbed or attacked by black thugs in a metro train or bus because their Fear of the Stronger Negro paralyzes them.) Scotty's love for Madeleine was the kind whereby a man would be willing to give up his own life to save the woman, but when push came to shove, his body was overcome with fear, indeed irrational fear of something harmless. (Thus, it was something stranger than mere cowardice, which is at least rational. Peter was not irrational in fearing the mob that wanted to tear followers of Jesus from limb to limb. And Winston Smith was not irrational to fear the hungry rats eager to gnaw at his face. In contrast, Scotty couldn't save the Great Love of His Life because of his irrational fear of the harmless.) He felt paralyzed, indeed far worse than Peter O’Toole in LORD JIM. Also, there is something especially embarrassing about phobias. They can incapacitate the biggest man before something that doesn’t even frighten a child. Take a phobia over mice. Most children have no problem looking at mice, but even a big strong man with such phobia will shriek and panic like a little girl. A harmless garter snake may do nothing to an old lady, but a man with phobia for snakes, no matter how big and strong he is, will scream or faint like the Cowardly Lion of THE WIZARD OF OZ. Thus, what Scotty feels is not merely guilt. It’s shame. Not only did he fail to prevent Madeleine from her apparent suicide but the reason was he was afraid of heights. The damsel in distress could run up those flight of stairs in a breeze, but a big tall San Francisco detective like him was frozen in abject fear as he barely inched up the stairs step by step. Imagine Dirty Harry who is tough enough to blow away a bunch of armed Negro robbers and international terrorists but shrieks like a girl and freaks out upon seeing a spider due to arachnophobia. Phobias are like passions. They follow their own associative logic that can’t be resolved rationally. A person suffering from phobia rationally knows he is afraid of something harmless or innocuous, but he still can’t overcome his irrational panic. But then, obsessive love has a similar kind of logic. Even as Scotty is a modern rational person who knows about human psychology and the basic bio-chemistry of attraction, his feelings for Madeleine go way beyond the rational and gain total power over him. Scotty is bigger and stronger than Midge, and he would have a physical advantage over her under most circumstances, but he turns into a little child in her arms when he is stricken with a bit of height.
Kevin Michael Grace says Scotty sets a goal for himself to cure his acrophobia little by little and eventually does(and at a ‘terrible cost’). I don’t see it this way. Initially, he appears to entertain the notion of how he could be cured incrementally. He tries this at Midge’s place with the step-ladder, but he fails miserably, and throughout the rest of the movie, we don’t see him bothering to cure himself of the condition. The extent of the height he can tolerate is the ups and downs of the streets of San Francisco. One suspects he would rather not cross the San Francisco bridge. If anything, we only see him below it as he saves Madeleine. However, the diving into the water is a kind of conquering of height but unawares to Scotty. For most of the movie, Scotty is too hung up on Madeleine to think about his acrophobia. He develops a kind of reality-phobia as the real world reminds him that Madeleine is gone forever. He wants to remain in his ghostly dream world. Even though he’s finally released from the clinic/ward, his condition hasn’t really changed. Also, the return to the tower at the end had little to do with curing acrophobia. It was about exposing the truth and forcing Judy-Madeleine into confession. If Scotty is cured, it is almost by accident. Indeed, he is surprised himself that his acrophobia is gone.

7. https://youtu.be/met1c7anQ3E?t=30m23s Luke Ford asks why Judy-Madeleine fell to her death at the end. Kevin Michael Grace says she mistook the nun for the Evil Husband, Gavin Elster. I don’t know about this. Her fright suggests she saw a ghost. Perhaps, in that charged moment, she thought she saw the ghost of Madeleine. VERTIGO is and isn’t a ghost story. There is a rational explanation for everything that happens in the story, but to the extent that human psyches often operate mythically based on obsessions, hopes, and fears, we do lead lives haunted by subjective forces of the mind. So, objectively speaking, it was a nun, but in the fever-dream mind of Judy who’d been through so much, the figure could have appeared a ghost. And in that sense, VERTIGO is a ghost story. Science of psychology promised a more clear and objective understanding of reality, but theories of the subconscious opened up a Pandora’s Box of phantoms and spirits. So, even though Scotty exposed the truth, the myth lived on. The myth of Madeleine being beckoned by Carlotta’s ghost was followed up by the myth of Judy being beckoned by Madeleine’s ghost. And in a way, Judy was herself a ghost. The person she role-played as Madeleine was killed. It began as a hire-for-money, but she really merged with the identity of Madeleine when it worked its magic on Scotty and he fell in love with her. No man had ever fallen in love like that with her-as-Judy. But a handsome man fell deeply in love with her-as-Madeleine. So, in a way, the mask became the face. And when real Madeleine was killed, a part of Judy died with her too. She became a walking dead, and this is why, a part of her wants to be 'resurrected' by Scotty back into Madeleine while another part of her resists this because she wants to be loved as what she really is, Judy Nobody from some small town. Ironically, the resurrection is also a kind of 'murder' because Judy must be buried alive under the ghostly reawakening of Madeleine.

8. https://youtu.be/met1c7anQ3E?t=31m12s Kevin Michael Grace says REAR WINDOW, VERTIGO, and MARNIE have in common the situation of a man trying to transform a woman to his ideal or vision, but this seems a stretch. In REAR WINDOW, Grace Kelly’s character may be nudged in that direction(mostly by her own volition though), but there is nothing obsessive about Stewart’s feelings for her. Indeed, unlike the characters of VERTIGO and MARNIE, Stewart in REAR WINDOW isn’t obsessed with anyone. His only obsession seems to be voyeurism and adventure. He’s a thrill-seeker than a romantic. As much as he feels affection for Grace Kelly’s character, he tries to push her away because domestication means he will have less chance to travel and be free. It’s like George Bailey wanted to see the world and build things before Mary snagged him to stay and be husband-father in Bedford Falls. In a way, the neighbor across the yard is like a dark version of what Stewart's character fears turning into. The man is trapped in a loveless marriage. His wife is an invalid, and he must take care of her, and that means hardly any freedom for himself. So, in a way, the murderer and Stewart’s character have one thing in common: The want of freedom and fear of woman as chain-and-ball around the man's ankle. If the husband has no freedom because he’s stuck in a loveless marriage, Stewart’s character has no freedom ironically because of his injury from excessive freedom & risk-taking. Both want to break free as soon as possible.
If Stewart’s characters in REAR WINDOW and VERTIGO have one thing in common, it is the element of shame in being so incapacitated. In REAR WINDOW, girly Grace Kelly can freely move about while Stewart is always stuck in his apartment because of his injury. (Likewise, Oliver Stone's 9/11 is mostly about heroes who aren't able to do anything and must be saved by others. They are more like Ron Kovic than Rambo.) In VERTIGO, Madeleine and Midge are 'manlier' than Scotty when it comes to handling height. The moment when Stewart feels the most shame in REAR WINDOW is when he feels utterly helpless to save Grace Kelly when she’s attacked by the murderer-husband. But it’s not just the broken leg. He doesn’t even shout across the yard to stop the attack even though Grace Kelly is screaming 'Jeff' over and over. He just squirms with fear and hopes the cops would arrive sooner. It’s as if he was so afraid of giving himself away to the murderer-husband that he reacts like a turtle withdrawing into its own shell.

Indeed, there’s something a bit phony about the guy because, for all his love of adventure, he is a viewer than a participant. After all, he is a photographer. He may wander into danger zones, but he is first and foremost the eye than hands and feet who gets involved in the action. Indeed, his injury resulted from the far more danger-filled actions of OTHERS at the center of the maelstrom. It’s like a photographer at a boxing match getting hurt from a fighter being knocked out of the ring. His danger is nothing like the danger faced by boxers inside the ring who get punched a hundred times.
As for MARNIE, I don’t think the main problem was Tippi Hedren. Besides, Kim Novak wasn’t much of an actress in most of her roles either, and VERTIGO was an exception in her career, as BLADE RUNNER was for Sean Young. And Grace Kelly was extremely narrow in range, really just a pretty face. Problem with MARNIE is it’s both too crazy and too neat. The premise is outlandish, and the resolution is overly sentimental and moralistic. Even after the facts are revealed by means of reason in VERTIGO and PSYCHO, an element of dark mystery remains. We feel that no amount of explanation can really explain the what and why, just like no single piece of the puzzle could explain Charles Foster Kane. But MARNIE ends on a note of Problem Solved, and that’s that. And it’s the silliest kind of Freudian hokum about repressed childhood memory. The clinical psychology of MARNIE, as with SPELLBOUND, is too simple-minded. It turns out Marnie’s sexual neurosis and criminality were rooted in an incident in childhood. Once that was cleared up, she can walk into the sunlight and lead a normal life. Another problem is Sean Connery’s character is presented too straight-and-narrow when he is as perverse and crazy as Marine in his own way. He is a contradiction of being both drawn to a wild woman and wanting to cure & domesticate her. He is too alpha, whereas what makes Stewart's characters more interesting(in Anthony Mann Westerns too) is the combination of alpha daring and beta vulnerability. I suppose Sean Connery's attitude is very English(though the movie is set in America. Funny that Hitchcock was an Englishman who settled in America whereas Kubrick was an American who settled in England). The white hunter who is drawn to adventure and the wild but collects specimens and trophies for zoos and museums. That said, there is a fascinating chemistry between Hedren and Connery in MARNIE, and there are many charged moments that make for greatness. And maybe the trailer for MARNIE is the funniest thing Hitchcock ever did.


9. https://youtu.be/met1c7anQ3E?t=39m28s Kevin Michael Grace offers several explanations of the scene at the McKittrick Hotel where Scotty observes who appears to be Madeleine in one of the windows. Kevin Michael Grace suggests this might be just a ‘plot hole’. Or maybe the Hotel Proprietor is in on the plot. Whatever the case, it could be Hitchcock was channeling a trick used by Henri-Louis Clouzot in LES DIABOLIQUES. The conspirators are playing mind-tricks on Scotty to further subvert his sense of reality. Hitchcock greatly admired LES DIABOLIQUES, and incidentally, VERTIGO was based on a French mystery novel, and some of the Gallic sensibility does come across.


10. https://youtu.be/met1c7anQ3E?t=45m Luke Ford reads from Roger Ebert’s essay that touches on the ‘moral paradox’ of VERTIGO. Of course, the biggest moral paradox is the Evil Husband Gavin Elster plays god, the creator. He taketh away, but he also gaveth. Without his artful con, Scotty never would have experienced the great love of his life. He never would have realized that there was a mytho-romantic side to him, a man of poetry than mere prosaic details of detective work. (It's like something about Julie Christie's character brings out the poet in the hard-nosed businessman in MCCABE AND MRS. MILLER. A man who never did anything except for money all his life puts his life on the line to prove his manhood to fulfill a romantic fantasy.)

And if Judy had never met Gavin, she would have been just some cheap floozy all her life. It was the con that transformed her into a tragic goddess. So, even though the Evil Husband Gavin Elster took everything from James Stewart, including his sanity, Scotty never felt more alive than when swirling in a dream world with Madeleine. And even though Madeleine’s death shattered his heart and mind, he’d never known or imagined such tragic beauty could exist or what it felt like. Gavin Elster, cynical murderer-bastard that he is, was the matchmaker in hell who made Scotty and Judy share a beautiful love as a glimpse of heaven. He was like a sinister version of Clarence in IT’S A WONDERFUL LIFE who messes with Bailey’s mind big time.

11. https://youtu.be/met1c7anQ3E?t=46m41s Kevin Michael Grace recounts the scene in which Midge’s parody-painting of Carlotta Valdez deeply upsets Scotty. He explains the moment as indicative of the madness of obsessive love, one of the most tell-tale signs being the loss of humor. According to Kevin Michael Grace, Midge was just being a good sport and funny girl, but Scotty, going a bit mad over Madeleine, simply couldn’t appreciate the joke. Kevin Michael Grace also says Scotty’s glum reaction is not unlike the mentality of PC Leftists who have lost all sense of humor in their crazed commitment to certain agendas and idols.
But I’m not so sure. Even though Midge presents the painting as a joke, what were her real motives? Wasn’t she trying to hide her jealousy with humor? Indeed, it’s odd that for such an independent and modern woman, she was stalking Scotty like Scotty was stalking Madeleine. So, despite her conceit of being a liberated woman, she did feel a bond with Scotty, and she felt jealous when she suspected he might be seriously besotted with someone else. Midge is afraid to face up to this old-fashioned ‘classic’ side of womanhood, and she resorts to cheap irony to share laughter with Scotty. But it’s not so much a joke for him as a joke on him. Also, she is mocking him and trying to return him to the fold as a fellow ironist and cynic, as if Scotty isn’t capable of any emotions beyond friendship and companionship. Because her relation with Scotty was premised on shared Modern Sensibility, she tries to draw him back to the game that keeps them as bosom-buddies. But Scotty has gone past that. For the first time in his life, he’s found real passion, and it means everything to him. It’s like the realization of the Sam Robards character in FANDANGO. He pretends he’s having fun and the time of his life partying and riding around with his friends when, in truth, what mattered most to him was marrying the girl he dearly loves. And Kevin Costner’s character is like Scotty and Midge rolled into one. The fact is he madly loved her too, but they fell apart. But he still loves her and is upset that his friend is about to marry her. So, when he discovers the marriage has been called off, he tries to convince himself and his friend that it’s all for the best, and that they should all go on some wild trip. But in fact, the friend realizes he made a huge mistake, and Kevin Costner understands too, which is why he hustles a small town community into putting on the wedding for his friend and the woman he still loves.

Likewise, there is another side of Midge that she hides from Scotty and even to herself. Despite her enjoyment of freedom and career, there is a side of her that is lonely and jealous. Even if Scotty and she didn’t get married, the understanding between them was that both were too hip for old-fashioned relationships. So, they’d be best-friends-forever. But then, Scotty really does fall in deep love with another. As much as Scotty and Midge savored each other’s company, they only wet their feet at most. With Madeleine, Scotty took the plunge. And his love for Madeleine is like Catholic Iconography. The non-believers just can’t understand. Someone like Jim Goad can’t understand why the Church and its rituals hold sacred meaning to Kevin Michael Grace. For Goad, the Church is something to be mocked and joked about. From his utterly rationalist point of view, this makes good sense as religion just seems like hocus pocus superstition. But for those who felt the grace of God and are enchanted by beauty of religious iconography and rituals, it’s no joking matter. In a way, PC people are both humorless and humor-excessive. They are utterly humorless about what is sacred to them, like Holy Homo and MLK as Negro god. But they feel nothing but laughing mockery for whatever or whomever they deem to be false, wicked, or evil. So, they are the ones who are likely to laugh and cheer upon watching certain monuments torn down or smashed. It’s like Spanish anarchists were full of laughter when they went about smashing Churches and burning spiritual material.

In a way, Midge was sharing a joke, but it was also an act of desecration. Of course, she didn’t know the full implication of what she was doing, especially as she had this fixed image of Scotty as a fellow ironist and cynic. She was trying to keep him framed in the role suitable for companionship with her. In a sense, she was trying to take possession of Scotty just like Gavin Elster was. She wagered on Scotty the ironist, whereas Gavin wagered on Scotty the latent romantic. And it turns out Gavin was closer to the truth. In some ways, he understood Scotty(or perhaps any man) better than Scotty understood himself. For most of his life, Scotty would have scoffed at the notion of him being a romantic and sincerely too. After all, his chosen profession was detective work, a field that makes people cynical about humanity’s endless depravities and deceptions. When Scotty meets Gavin, he seems utterly jaded, and upon hearing the ghostly tale of Carlotta, he’s about to burst into laughter. It’s like a man who believes he can’t be hypnotized who is hypnotized and doesn’t know he’s under hypnosis. All faith is like a kind of hypnosis, which is why non-religious people can't really understand religious people or any group under some kind of deep devotion to something. But the devotion could be to anything, like idols of pop culture, as with Beatlemania or Grateful Dead Phenom. For the uninitiated, it all seems like a delusion or mania. And yet, those who note this delusion in others may themselves be under their own delusions. It's like a religious person sees the ludicrousness of other religions but not of his own that seems holy and sacred. So, Midge doesn't quite understand the extent of her desecration of what has become iconographic to Scotty. But on a sly level, she was willfully mocking something dear to him out of jealousy she was too proud to admit to.

Finally, Midge’s reaction to Scotty’s disapproval and retreat from her apartment betrays her true feelings about Scotty and the whole situation. She seems very upset that Scotty took umbrage at her antic. If she’s really a light-hearted joker, she would have been unscathed from the situation, but she is visibly upset. She is ashamed that Scotty saw through her. Despite the cover of humor, she knows, Scotty knows, and we know that she was acting out of jealousy and was striking out at the object of Scotty’s devotion. Her joke was a pretense of not caring when, in fact, she cares very much. She is jealous of the fact that Scotty has feelings for another that goes deeper than anything that existed between them. At the end of CHIMES AT MIDNIGHT, Prince Hal gains authority, responsibility, and meaning that rises above the funny business he used to enjoy with Falstaff. It’s about putting away childish things. Same with Becket who rises above serving as plaything for his friend the king. Friendship jealously guards against rival attachments to other people or institutions.

The tragedy in Scotty’s case, of course, is that his discovery of great love turned out to be the child-play of an evil son-of-a-bitch.
Kevin Michael Grace says that Scotty is the sort of man who was looking for The One, the one special kind of woman. But I don’t think so. Scotty wasn’t looking for anyone for most of his life. He seems to be the kind of guy who relished being free and independent. His life seems to have revolved around work and meeting up with friends and companions. He wasn’t bound to anything. Such a life could be lonely, but it was without duties and obligations. He could live the life of a true individualist. Scotty wasn’t searching for The One. It was thrust upon him, and he was mesmerized by a kind of beauty he’d never encountered before and was overwhelmed by emotions within him that he’d never imagined could arise.

12. https://youtu.be/met1c7anQ3E?t=56m30s Luke Ford says Scotty is the kind of man who chases after fantasies because he can’t deal with reality. He surmises that if Scotty hadn’t come upon Madeleine, he would have found someone/something else to be obsessed about. But this is wrong. There’s no indication that Scotty has been a habitual fantasist or an obsessive personality all his life. In a way, Gavin Elster chose him because he’s a ‘virgin’ when it comes to romantic obsessions. Ironically, Scotty’s sense of irony and cynicism is what makes him so ‘innocently’ vulnerable and partial to the trick. It’s like Jack Nicholson’s cocksure cynicism that blinds him to the utter depravity of power in L.A. in CHINATOWN. He’s so sure he knows everything that he fails to see there's even more to 'everything'.
It's as if Gavin Elster sensed that Scotty, being so sure of his skepticism honed on the job as detective, would be like a deer-in-the-headlight when Real Romanticism came rushing right at him. Someone who’d been through previous obsessions might be more self-aware when he falls into another obsession. In contrast, Scotty has no past references to draw from when he falls for Madeleine. He’d never known such emotions before. He’s an amateur, a green, in this field. Luke Ford is wrong to project himself onto Scotty. Ford seems quite self-aware precisely because he’s been through certain bouts of obsession with women and other things. So, even if he were to fall into another one, he’d have a good sense of what is happening to him yet again. He'd be partially immune to the obsessive bug. In contrast, Scotty finds himself in unfamiliar territory.
Scotty is not a serial fantasist. He’s been a factualist all his life, a man of law and law-enforcement, a man who has surely pored over countless stories of crimes, betrayals, deceptions, and etc. He is a veteran in the domain of facts. What he knows nothing about is the realm of myth and fantasy. And because he’s a novice in that field, Elster is able to draw him in slowly and surely. It sort of reminds me of why Stephen Glass was able to fool so many people at The New Republic. The magazine staff was pretty good with checking factual stories. What Glass did was sell outlandish fairy-tales, something for which the editorial staff was unfamiliar in dealing with.

Luke Ford also takes a self-help approach to Scotty’s dilemma, as if the character is a real-life person who could have avoided trouble had he been more self-aware, possibly with the aid of religion and advice columns. But really, purpose of VERTIGO is to explore and poeticize the mythology of love than to offer good advice. If Scotty had been more sensible, there would be no movie.

13. https://youtu.be/met1c7anQ3E?t=1h1m19s Kevin Michael Grace compares Luke Ford to the psychiatrist at the end of PSYCHO who sums up in neat clinical terms what’s really driving the madness behind Norman Bates. Kevin Michael Grace says Hitchcock was winking at the audience when trotting out such explanations because the mystery of evil could never be explained with a pat theory or two. That is true, but it’s also true that Hitchcock was often overly partial to certain psychological theories. There isn’t much winking in SPELLBOUND and MARNIE. Hitchcock really seems to endorse rather crackpot Freudian theories about repressed childhood memories. The resolutions are meant to be neat and final. In SPELLBOUND, it was the repressed memory of Gregory Peck’s character having accidentally killed his younger brother in childhood. In MARNIE, the anti-heroine’s troubles were rooted in the repressed childhood memory of having killed a man who attacked her mother who, it turns out, was a hooker. So, there was the richer and darker Hitchcock who suggested at the mystery of evil, and there was the amateur-psychologist Hitchcock who resolved conflicts with some fashionable theory about the subconscious. Hitchcock was both a nihilist and a moralist. There was an air of the English bourgeoisie about him all his life. He liked form and order, minutely detailing the production from A to Z before the shooting began. Also, there’s a positivist sense in many of his movies that invaluable methods can be drawn from science and medicine to aid in the solving of crime and madness. His films are on the side of civilization, fearful of the natural forces as in THE BIRDS. And yet, another side of Hitchcock felt civilization was a veneer, a veiled masquerade over true human nature that was animal. Myth and Art were spheres where civilization and animal nature could 'safely' create friction to produce the fever-dream. Civilization is like a cage, and we are all like caged birds. We need the cage, but it holds us back from so much truth about us. And yet, without the cage, we revert to animal drives and become beastly like crazy-ass Negroes. So, how do we maintain Order but also draw inspiration from the more vital and virile side of our nature? Through the power of Myths and Art.

The strange thing about VERTIGO is Scotty is both a guardian and trespasser. He takes on the job of guarding Madeleine from madness, chaos, and suicide. His role is to uncover the truth and restore Madeleine to the light. And yet, in his immersion in the passion, his own psyche is thrown into turmoil. Even as he tries desperately to make Madeleine come to the light, he moves into the darkness. This aspect of VERTIGO surely influenced the French romance THE APARTMENT, remade into WICKER PARK. In M. Night Shyamalan's SPLIT, the doctor(Betty Buckley) is also of a dual nature. On the one hand, she wants to cure the patient and draw him into the light, but on the other hand, she is so fascinated with her patient's condition that she comes to see him and others of his kind as near demigods deserving of special admiration. Unknowingly, she is drawn into the darkness.


Anyway, Hitchcock was winking and not winking in many of his movies. A part of him was rolling his eyes at pat theories of events, but there was another side of Hitchcock that was very much like a schoolmarm and instructor. In a way, Hitchcock’s movies draw their power from the tension among the moralism, modernism, and madness. Madness upon madness isn’t very interesting. It’s like black paint on black canvas. It’s the nihilist thread that weaves through the bourgeois moralist or rationalist fabric that gives Hitchcock’s movies the sense of the Serpent slithering in the Garden of Eden. This is why DePalma's movies, for all their debt to Hitchcock, don't really feel Hitchcockian. Hitchcock, like Luis Bunuel, needed the bourgeois world as contra-canvas for his dark fantasies. Indeed, the fantasies were dark precisely because because they were set against tradition, community, and/or rationality(science & medicine). Likewise, Bunuel's bad boy antics were effective only as long as there was the bourgeoisie to mock. The difference was, all said and done, Hitchcock sided with the bourgeoisie whereas Bunuel sided with the anarchy. Despite stylistic similarities, DePalma’s world is too sordid and fallen(indeed shamelessly so) to create the kind of tension between Order and Chaos that is so integral to the Dark Bourgeois gamesmanship of Hitchcock. Also, it’s difficult to sustain romanticism in a pornographic world.

14. https://youtu.be/met1c7anQ3E?t=1h5m6s Kevin Michael Grace says the movie ends with Scotty’s triumph albeit at a tremendous cost. By ‘triumph’, Kevin Michael Grace means Scotty’s solving of the mystery and his cure from acrophobia. But perhaps, ‘triumph’ is too strong a word. Indeed, one gets the sense that maybe Scotty should have ignored the necklace and pretended to carry on as usual. After all, his greatest triumph was the resurrection of Madeleine. By revisiting the tower and making Judy-Madeleine spill the beans, he lost what he’d created. But of course, once he found out about the necklace, he just couldn’t let it go. He had to find out, just like Noodles in ONCE UPON A TIME IN AMERICA had to come face to face with the truth even at the loss of the myth that had lent tragic meaning to his life all these years. Granted, there is both an emotional push and pull — like the camera-work employed to approximate the sensation of vertigo — as Scotty gets closer to the truth. On the one hand, he wants to hear the truth from Judy’s lips. He wants her to vomit out every last bit. Yet, at the same time, he dreads hearing every word because it’s so horrible. He wants to hear, he doesn’t want to hear. He compels her to confess but is triggered into fury by every utterance. It’s like having a bullet or arrow removed from one’s wound. One wants it out but agonizes over the unbearable pain. But finally, all the truth is 'birthed' like a decayed stillborn baby, and Scotty processes all of it. He is finally cleared of the inner illusions that fueled his acrophobia. Still, the power of the myth is such that, even after the poison has been sucked out of him and Judy, he(and she) still can’t let it go. Even though the necklace was the key to solving the puzzle, he is touched by the fact that she was so sentimental about it. And they embrace once again, and maybe that might have been a kind of happy ending. Even after the myth has been shattered, they realize they found real love in each other, and so the myth can evolve into something new. But then Judy falls to her death, and Scotty has some serious explaining to do. He just barely got away with his Chappaquidick Moment the first time Madeleine died. The board none-too-surely accepted his version of events and declared him not responsible for the death. But how will he explain the second death, especially as the woman, Judy, has been made to look just like Madeleine? He has regained sense and sanity, but if he tells the truth of what happened and why he turned Judy into Madeleine II, the world will think him mad.