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Reviews
Vertigo (1958)
More plot holes than a collander
Why the widespread adulation of Hitchcock ? Vertigo requires one buys into the totally unbelievable plot and sub-plots, which is only possible if one possesses no critical faculty whatsoever, thus for the discerning viewer, the only possible judgement on the film is that the whole affair is 'daft', and a waste of time, and unworthy of the generous acclaim heaped on it by the so-called 'learned critics'. In many of his films Hitchcock sneers at his audience, promulgating his personal distaste of the human race, investing his films with misogyny, viciousness, scorn and his own sense of omnipotence in manipulating characters with scant disregard for any valid sense of human feeling. In 'Vertigo', the two main characters are lonely losers, who, unaware of their own failings, who look for redemption where there can be none due to their unredeemed flaws.
Meetings with Remarkable Men (1979)
Meetings with an Unremarkable Film
I first saw the preview of the film in Santa Fe, 1979, having flown from London to so do, and to meet Mme de Hartman. I re-watched the film in November 2016; Mme de Hartmann was a remarkable woman, and this film is remarkable only for a)its dullness; the script is risible and ponderously 'worthy'; the acting is wooden,sets are stilted , and some of the backdrops look like wallpaper; Terence Stamp lisps; Athol Fugard sports an incongruous Boer accent.(The Movements section in the finale gives a taste of what might have been). and, b)the helpless and hopeless directing of Peter Brooks- contrasted to his other efforts-like the Mahabarata- suggest him to have been following and demonstrating one of the Gurdjieff Work Maxims' Man is Asleep'.