The Big Picture - Top Five Hitchcock Movies and ‘Psycho’ at 60

Episode Date: September 4, 2020

The Master of Suspense's classic film ‘Psycho’ turns 60 this month, so Sean and Amanda have convened Chris Ryan and The New York Times' Wesley Morris for a deep conversation about the filmmaker's career and best work. They pick their top fives and discuss at length what makes Hitchcock's work resonate to this day. Hosts: Sean Fennessey and Amanda Dobbins Guests: Chris Ryan and Wesley Morris Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

I'm Sean Fennessy. I'm Amanda Dobbins. And this is The Big Picture, a conversation show about Alfred Hitchcock. That's right. It's time to look at Hitch. It is the 60th anniversary of his most well-known film, Psycho. To celebrate and choose some top fives, we've brought on two Big Picture all-stars, Chris Ryan and Wesley Morris.

Hi, Chris. Hi, Wesley. Hi, Sean. Hi, everybody. Hi, Amanda. Hi, Chris. Hi, Wesley. Hi, Sean. Hi, everybody. Hi, Amanda. Hi, Chris. Hi, Wesley. Hi, Amanda, Chris, and Sean. So guys, let's just jump right into a Hitchcock conversation. Chris, I'm going to start with you because I know you've got some big feelings, some big emotional thoughts about the film director, Alfred Hitchcock. When I say Hitchcock, what do you think?

Um, the human mind, I guess, you know, I know that that's like really general and generic, but I feel like he was really instrumental in mapping for me in an early age. When I first started seeing his movies,

the nooks and crannies and the darkest corners of the human mind, both in terms of how your mind responds to the way a film is cut or the way a camera moves or the way something is framed or lit, but also just making these almost subconscious level when you're younger. And then I think as you read more and you study this film as more and more of an overt awareness, these connections he's making between sex and death and mothers and sons and husbands and wives and lovers and everything in between, that really introduced me to a whole world

of feelings and thoughts that I don't think, I think is like a very formative artist in my life. Wesley, what about you? What is Hitchcock to you? Well, I like that Chris started with the brain, with the mind. I was going to, my first answer was going to be

a little snarky, is the human belly. That too. But, I mean, I think I would have been joking, but I actually might be serious in that the man had an enormous cinematic appetite for all kinds of stuff. Right. And he like his genius comes out of.

It's funny because he has different phases, which I guess we can talk about. There are like his interests change and the older he gets, the dirtier he gets in some ways. And I find him I find his interests and his appetites to be fascinating. I think that, you know, obviously, if you're making if you're if you're making a list of, you know. The 10 most important filmmakers ever. He's definitely one of them. And personally, I just sort of like how I love a movie that has a sense of psychology.

And even in Hitchcock, like, it doesn't always, I mean, like the human, like the, like a human psychology, nothing really makes sense, but the thing that doesn't always make sense, it can be explained. You know, I,

I brought this down off my bookshelf. One of the great, I mean, I don't know if you guys have a copy of this, Robin Woods, um, his, his like a revised version of his,

uh, of his Hitchcock obsession. Um, but I do like, a revised version of his Hitchcock obsession. But I do, like, he's just endlessly fascinating. You can write about him and still never get to the bottom of what it is. I mean, Robin Woods revisited him numerous times and is still always finding new things in Hitchcock. I don't know. I just really, I like how you, like, we'll talk about the specific movies,

but, you know, even something like To Catch a Thief, there's always something, and it's not a deep movie, but it's got a lot happening visually. And I guess the question, another thing we can talk about is just like, like which, how do you watch one of his movies? Where do you, and I guess that depends on who you are and where you are in your life and how much you know how to watch or are interested in feeling.

But that's the thing I come back to over and over again when I watch one of his movies, which is like, how am I watching this? So, Amanda, who are you and how do you watch Alfred Hitchcock's movies? I mean, my answer is a reflection of me and my interest, which is, you know, I watch him a lot I'm preparing for a film podcast with my three best film buddies versus when I'm watching it, say, with my mom on TCM, which is how I encountered a lot of his movies for the first time. is most important to me is like entertainment as art as like real high art and that his films can contain the psychological depths that chris was talking about and like eight different phases of like film history and can yield uh psychological and visual and technical examinations and can withstand like decades of film school but are also, but because of that, they're fun to watch. And there still is that entertainment pleasure principle. And this idea that just because something is fun, doesn't mean that it can't also be like intelligent and have craft and have great performances that there is a real fine art, I would say, to making something that people want to watch. And I am

always in pursuit of the really fun thing done as well as possible. And I think a lot of people don't take fun and entertainment and audiences, frankly, seriously enough. And he certainly did. Yeah, I think you could say he was obsessed with them in many ways, especially in the later part of his career and some of the movies that we'll be talking about for sure. He seems to get off on the idea of tantalizing the people watching his movies, like maybe literally get off the way that he organizes. Hopefully not too literally. I mean, I don't know. You never can tell. But I agree with everything that you guys are saying. I especially agree with what you're saying, Amanda, which is I think that he's kind of the platonic ideal for what we're looking for on this show, right? He's somebody who's a mass

entertainer who can be explored and examined. And I'd use the word withstand. I think that's a really good way of thinking about it. We are 60 years on from Psycho, and I found a lot to think about and talk about watching it again. It's probably the film of his that I've seen the most. And it does all of those things. It is the belly. It is the mind. It's definitely the sexual organs, you know, it's, and in some cases it's the heart, though, not frequently the heart, which is maybe, maybe arguably his one flaw is that he very rarely taps into the heart every once in a while, but it seems to be more the brain and desire is what is really what's driving him.

But, you know, I was just trying to write down some words that I think are even that flash across my mind when I think of him. And obviously we're talking about sex and kind of transgression and glamour and beauty and even humor and the technical power that he has. But I think the number one thing is suspense, right? He's the master of suspense. He's the person who keeps you glued to your seat. Chris, do you feel like Hitchcock resonates right now with people? I think he does, even if they don't know it. So I think that he does in the sense that some of our best or most popular or both working filmmakers, you can directly trace them back to Hitchcock, whether you're talking about Fincher or Christopher Nolan or even pre-blockbuster Denis Villeneuve in some ways, like with Prisoners and Enemy. So I think that he definitely still shows

up in the theaters, even if people aren't watching Psycho with their mom on TCM as much as we would love them to be. Amanda, I love that. For the record, Psycho was not the one I was watching with my mom, but that's okay. It's not like the other ones are so wholesome. You know what I mean? It's true. But, you know, there is like Rebecca's one that I watched a lot with my mom. And actually, Rebecca, my mother was telling me she reread the book and revisited the movie in quarantine, which my mother is not the person who's just like, let me put on a Hitchcock film for the fun of it. But I think that like speaks to his reach. But also that I don't really think I understood all of the subtext of Rebecca,

the first or fourth or eighth time that I saw it. And then you become an adult and you're just like, wow, now I have some dissertations to write. They're all kind of like this. Yeah. Yeah. Like what, you know, I mean, I don't know how many you guys saw before you were 18 or 21 or whatever, when you weren't fully formed. But the impression they make if you watch enough of them early enough, and I don't know how to explain this, but because they're so mysterious, I am incapable of understanding what's happening even as an adult because I saw them so early. Yeah. And they filled a part of my psyche that hadn't developed yet. And so even as a grown man now, I still can't feel, I mean, and in some ways they're not meant to be deciphered in that sort of logic oriented way or even narratively.

Like the movies make, if you die, I mean, I'm not a screenwriting teacher, but if you diagram these movies, I mean, with certain exceptions, like Strangers on a Train, they don't, either they're not interesting, you get, like, one line, and there's not a lot of this way, or it's like a kaleidoscope, and you, good luck trying to figure out that one, Picasso. And so I just am always, I love movies where I either forget something happens, even though I've seen it a lot, or I don't, I leave the movie no less enlightened in terms of my understanding of it than I did when I got there. That's such a good point.

I was just, while you were talking, remembered something that I hadn't remembered before we, you know, for this podcast, which was, I know that I saw Vertigo way before I understood what the fuck we're gonna talk about. Oh yeah, Vertigo is, yeah, yeah. But I remember Vertigo making me deeply uncomfortable as a boy, you know,

even though I didn't understand why. And I think that that's one of the things that's so amazing about him. For all of these different things that these movies do, the one thing that he made me super aware of was my role as audience, was my role as a plaything for this person who was going to be manipulating my emotional and intellectual reaction to a piece of art even though i may

not even understand why it was happening yeah i think the thing is he is obsessed with his own interests and it turns out that his own interests have more in common with his audience than I think society would like us to believe, you know, and that's probably, probably a note I've cribbed from hearing other filmmakers talk about him. You know, Chris, you mentioned David Fincher. David Fincher might be the most interesting person to talk about Hitchcock and he certainly is cribbing from him frequently. You know, there are certain rules and he pulled a pin and rolled a grenade into the middle of that conference room

and destroyed all those rules. But I think that the truth is, is that most people are interested in desire and they're interested in the slightly perverted and they're interested in, you know, being kind of emotionally drawn out. You know, I feel like a lot of these stories are about people who are recessed,

who are forced to be drawn out. Rebecca is very much about that. Even North by Northwest, which is more of like a pop entertainment, is about drawing somebody out and kind of revealing who they are. There's all kinds of mistaken identity and confusion. And I really respond to what you're saying, Wesley, too,

because I think that even his best movies don't classically make sense. They're not necessarily coherent in any way. And yet he has this reputation as this big crowd pleaser. People kept coming back again and again to his movies, despite the fact that you could sometimes get to the end of them and say, what does that mean? Or what even happened? And we were talking about Nolan earlier this week with Adam Naiman about tenant. And in many ways, I think Nolan kind of shares that with him where there are times where you get to the end of a Nolan movie and you're like, I don't think this made sense, but there are a lot of people for whom that's actually exciting and compelling. Do you feel like you're thinking of him, Wesley, when you're, when you're writing

film criticism is, is Hitchcock one of those people who you flash on or do you have to be, do you have to kind of like force yourself to return to his work? No, because it's so omnipresent and the lessons that you learn, I mean, depending on what you're, it also depends on how you were educated too, right? Like if you, I think that if you get taught and I don't know, I'd be curious to know what film programs, you know, film theory programs are focused on now. forces in your film education were Godard and Hitchcock, two very different directors who, and weirdly in my case, Riefenstahl, she came up with this, like an interesting amount too. And not necessarily morally either. But just as a, as a crafts person, she came up a lot. Um, or she came up a lot. Or she came up more than some other people is the way I should say it.

But Hitchcock, I would say, you know, he's a lesson that you learn. And I think one of the ways, like, you get taught how to watch movies by watching Hitchcock because you will never stop learning. And there's so many things to think about. And all of the things that we're sort of hung up on today with respect to identity and representation, not necessarily racial, but if we want to talk about whiteness, I'm here with respect to women and how a woman's mind is very much a part of the plot of these movies. And as far as I know, you guys can correct me if I'm wrong, I can only remember one woman writing the script for one of his films, and that's Marnie which has a great script Dorothy Parker did work on Saboteur

I think that's the only other example he has a lot of uncredited writers but yeah I think there might have been one or two she's the only credited she's the only she's the sole credit on Marnie and the only woman I can think of obviously he's adapted novels by women but I think there's just so many

different ways to appreciate how he's just in other people's movies. I was watching Strangers on the Train for this conversation a couple days ago, and I was like, oh, I have not talked to Jordan Peele about Alfred Hitchcock, but I wonder whether or not, you know, some of that amusement park stuff and just the question of crissing and crossing and meeting on the train and having a kind of, the idea of a, if they're not out of Hitch know, applying that form not to the human psyche

necessarily, but to American society. And that is so, that's such a rich place to begin to think about where to take his influence, but you can see it all over the place. You know, I mean, like Almodovar to this day is still, you know, besotted with Hitchcock. I don't know. I mean, yeah, I think, I think about him. You're thinking about him even when you're not thinking about him. The problem of course, is that people who try to do him are kind of bad at it. Yeah.

It's impossible to replicate. Right. I, you know, I mean, one of the things i was thinking about one he he obviously gets some credit for treating female characters with a level of sophistication that was uncommon but also he has this pretty fraught reputation about the way that he treated actresses over time and obviously he's also notorious for sort of you know amplifying and sexualizing a certain feminine ideal in his mind. On the other hand, he does this really interesting thing with good and evil, where so many of his villains are more sympathetic or more nuanced than most other movies,

especially from the 40s and 50s, where there is a kind of- Or especially more charming, you know? Absolutely. from the 40s and 50s where there is a kind of especially more chart more charming you know absolutely yeah and so you get this like the idea of the hitchcock characterization is so complicated because you know there are good things and bad things about everybody and there are there is no clarity and like the way that we're trained to watch movies when we're kids which is you know cowboy wears white hat and and kills bad guy in black hat is kind of exploded by a lot of these Hitchcock movies. What do you think about kind of his relationship and the way that he builds out characters? Well, I, you mentioned his offscreen, um,

I guess, treatment of, um, many of the women that he worked with and, you know, obviously the, the tippy head drin, uh, relationship was quite complicated. And I think you do have to, you know, it's so, I always feel like I'm betraying everyone when I'm like, you have to put it to the side a bit, but it is, I think it is a different thing than the characters that he creates in the films. Even though I think certainly the way that he portrays, especially women in his films is informed by some of, they're obviously related. They are related. So, you know, I don't know what to do, but to say, I guess you have to hold all those things in your mind at once, as we have to do for a lot of things in terms of the characters and especially the female characters I mean so I'm not a blonde woman uh never been a blonde woman uh just have never even dyed my hair I'm like definitively not a blonde woman and so it's very interesting I I think I watched these movies and particularly the Grace Kelly movies, because I think those are the ones I caught early on. I'm not like watching me. I'm just watching a totally other different type of

creature. And I like found it pretty fascinating, you know, and I was like, okay, so this is, I guess some women are like this and, or, you know, some women can do this and, and what must that be like? And it's definitely not what I do, but that's kind of interesting. And I, I think he has such a, he obviously repeats characters, but has such a specific gift for specific characterization and, and types of people that in the same way that I was learning how to watch movies, I was learning about this particular, as Wesley alluded, like white blonde ideal from these people or from these characters or to learn what like a charming villain is. I think I was more just like studying and being like, huh, didn't know that mine's worked that way. Chris, when you see Tippi

Hedren on screen or Janet Leigh or Grace Kelly, do you think I see myself in those women? I do think that there's a really interesting thing with him because it's a conversation I have all the time, especially as it relates to television, but even with movies as well. It's like, oh, you know, the Coen brothers, they just don't love their characters. You know, this this director this writer i don't why would i spend time with these people that the director doesn't even seem to love them they don't like them and that never occurs to me with hitchcock i've never i never think do i want to spend time with this person like is this person likable does the director love this person and that's just like very freeing i find it you know what i mean i find it very freeing to separate character from person and to separate character from um some sort of transactional like relationship between about whether or not like i

identify with and i like them you know the amanda's point about the blonde hair is very interesting i mean like i suppose i see bits and pieces of myself, especially in Ingrid Bergman. But, you know, I think the thing, I think of it almost as like a study, you know? I don't think of it as this sort of referendum on whether or not he thought this or he felt this, and this was his view of humanity.

I don't imagine that his view of humanity was particularly high, but it's such a liberating thing to watch his movies and not be concerned with that. Well, I actually think that's interesting, Chris, because I think that his view of humanity is actually, he holds it in high esteem. Because if you think about one of my Hitchcock shows, okay, two things.

I'm going to go back to something that you and Amanda are talking about, which is the idea of this question of identification. I think to the extent that it matters how we treated the people in his movies, I mean, lots of actors are on the record as saying they had a miserable time working with him, except for Farley Granger, who said it was one of the best things that's ever happened to him. I can only, I can't imagine why, Mr. Granger, in your case. is important because it takes it it allows for the people playing these parts to not literally be furniture but but as close to literally being furniture as possible and so you are really experiencing the world of the film not the story of a person um and the worlds of his movies are what you were there to experience. And it takes a lot of the representative pressure off. I mean, not that he was even thinking about how to depict the sort of morality of how to depict a woman. But conversely, you as a viewer aren't... I think it shortchanges the development of a world by thinking about them in terms of gender, although the movies themselves understand how gender works.

I just think that there's such a richness with respect to men and women and how messed up and dysfunctional both genders are separately and together. And then the other thing that I was just before, like I was, I cut myself off. Maybe I answered my own question. I, or like, like made my, I already made the point, but you said something and I was going to start saying something and I stopped myself to make the other point. What was I saying? I don't remember now. Well, does he like his characters or does he like humans?

Cause, and you- Oh, yes. Thank you, Amanda. Yeah, because I want to rebut it later, but go ahead. Well, I was just going to say that like, well, I don't know. Well, here's what I would say. I would say that he ultimately creates part of the world that he is building. There is right and wrong and there is morality.

And my one misgiving about Hitchcock is that he never truly embraces the dark side of the worlds he creates. He creates dark worlds, but there's always a moral framework within them to tell an audience what's right or wrong. I mean, all those terrible endings where somebody comes and explains what was going on or like, or in the middle has to explain something or the ways in which, you know, like in the

original, um, the man who knew too much, the one from 34 where the daughter is missing, but nobody seems, nobody really seems stressed out about it. Like, and it, it, you know, we can talk about MacGuffins later on, but in terms of what you need to believe or need to know or feel or experience in order to believe the world that he's building, sometimes it doesn't always work out or make sense. But ultimately what we're dealing with is a,

is a, is a, is a sort of very understandable moral universe of, of right and wrong. And it's, it's almost, that's the only simple part of, of what he does, which is that there are good people, there is good and there is bad. And the genius, his genius is to conflate them within the furniture of his people. But ultimately he's on the side of some kind of morality. I mean, it's not complete, but I mean, if he weren't that he'd be David Lynch, I would say. If he weren't that he'd be Brian De Palma, where the lessons that those two people learn from Hitchcock is to remove the moral framework and just let the crazy be crazy. Amanda, do you want to rebut any meaningful point?

No, I mean, I agree with Wesley. But I think the first time around, you were talking about how we've used humanity. And that was what Chris was talking about. And I, I, you're, I think you're a hundred percent right about the good and evil and morality

in the movies. And then I think he hates basically every human, most of all, and most of all himself, there is just a tremendous amount of self-loathing in every single one of these movies whether it's about the characters that he's created or anytime there's like an allegory for like filmmaking he's just like well i'm the creepiest person whoever was and also like here are all the things i want and can't have and so i'm going to

put them in also cut your hair this way. Yeah. And I know it's bad because I understand what right and wrong is, but also like I'm a control freak in myself. And so I just have to make a whole movie about like this eternal struggle to not be able to be what I think I should be. A man with very high standards, which I really relate to. Yeah, there's so much to unpack, right?

Everything that you guys have said. The one thing that we should say is his key collaborator, to Wesley's point about a female screenwriter, is not Cary Grant, is not Jimmy Stewart, is not Grace Kelly. It's Alma Reveal, who is his wife. Right. And she's the person who, though she's not the sole credited

screenwriter on his films, is clearly his number one sounding board. And the person, especially through the first 30 or so years of his career, he looks to, to provide some guidance. And maybe that's where you get some of that psychological complexity in his female characters that many of his contemporaries didn't have. But to answer your point about the actors and the kind of the way that he saw actors as chess pieces, just like he saw the best boy and the gaffer and the cinematographer. I wonder if some of that comes from the fact that Hitchcock is basically as old as mainstream movie going. He starts making movies in the mid-20s, and he makes movies through the 70s. And there's really no filmmaker who worked through that entire period of time and held

relevance through that period of time. So in many cases, we talk about the morality that comes into movie logic as we understand it, or MacGuffins, you mentioned Wesley, or the idea of the conflicted hero or the charming villain. Did he invent these things? Was he the signature creator of some of these key aspects that we think about when we think of movies? Because there's so much text and subtext to look at him with that it's almost kind of stupid for us to be doing an episode about his work because you could do a five-year-long podcast project about his work.

Like it is so deep. I'm sure many people have. I'm sure they have. I'm sure they have. And we'll just scratch the surface here. I mean, you could do a five-year project on the lifespan of Vertigo. You know, the way that that movie,

the way it was received and the way that it was made and the way that it has changed over time and whether it actually is or is not his kind of crowning achievement as so many people have said in the last 25 or 30 years. And we'll never get to the bottom of everything, right? We'll never say this is the definitive point of view on Hitchcock. But the thing is, is his influence is so overwhelming to me, not just in terms of the filmmakers that we're citing here or even the kinds of movies that we get. And then the Jordan Peele point is a great point. But more specifically, just like the flow of a movie, the way a movie rolls out,

just feel so informed by the pacing he landed on, the way he chose music. His music is so, so impactful and important to the way that movie music sounds right now. It's the number two credit. It's like it's every movie. The last person credited before Hitchcock is the composer. I think it's not unreasonable to say that he's the most influential person who made movies, which is pretty daunting. And you mentioned Godard as part of the- Because you don't get the other influential people without him. Exactly. And obviously, Hitchcock-Truffaut is this very famous text where Truffaut interviews

him and talks to him about technique. And him and Godard were so influenced by all the things that Hitchcock did. Even just the critical theory has evolved so much basically in tandem with Hitchcock, like the way that somebody has thought of. This is a guy who never won a Best Director Oscar in his career because he was considered an entertainer. You know, he wasn't considered a great artist. And then that changes over time.

And I don't know, it's a fascinating thing. I mean, I think on the one hand, he's probably been examined too much. And on the other hand, I think he's probably worthy of like another 50 years of analysis. I mean, speaking of analysis, uh, I feel like in addition to all the things that makes him great, um, all the things, in addition to all the things that make him great, I think that his interest in what we would now call pop psychology, but really was like, like a full throated belief in, in the, in the personification or Freudian thinking. Right. Um, and what it, what was happening to, to, you know, psychology and, you know, the mental health industries in the 50s and 60s with respect to people getting analysis and understanding themselves in tandem with

really thinking through a Freudian model of psychology and psychoanalysis. There were other people who were attempting to represent that but not as explicitly you know you could watch Fassbender for instance and you can apply Freud to Fassbender but Hitchcock was the person who was like he was explicitly yeah right he was a he was he is openly Freudian in his in his in his understanding of his character as a psychologist, which sometimes deserves him because there's something about Freud that is bottomless also. And it can be dissatisfying as a movie-going experience in some ways if you were looking for closure or tidiness

or clarity or understanding about behavior. Because again, I never really feel like you're watching, we can talk about this, but like, I would say he's only got like two or three great characters. So really what we're talking about is the construction of, in these worlds, like their correspondence with Freud and Freud's priorities, he kind of lives and dies by how much Freud he understands and how much Freud he can make cinema out of. When you say he only has two or three characters, do you mean like two or three character archetypes that he returns to over and over again? No, I mean, two or three great characters. Like two or three characters

who are interesting and human. I mean, the test would be how many of these people can you remember their character name versus that's Jimmy Stewart. Right, right, right. And that was a weird challenge to go back through.

And I'm like, you know, and then Jimmy Stewart says this. And I'm like, oh, wait, but is it Rupert? Is it Rudolph? I can't remember his name. And it's like, that's like a really interesting test where he, you know, so much of what he did in movies

happened way before he even lit a light on set. You know, before it was so mapped out that really the filmmaking part of it was kind of putting together furniture. It was, you know, he's just following instructions that he had himself written. And I think that sometimes that dampens the maybe the signatory moments that we associate with like quote unquote great characters. I think also in terms of characters, one thing he does a lot he does use like movie stars whose characters like we're already familiar with and like plays against them he's like I mean well

Wesley you and I are just obsessed with movie stars but like this is this is the he uses Cary Grant and you get like the most Cary Grant performance of all time and you also get in Notorious like a Cary Grant who's like barely Cary Grant at all. He's playing against these ideas that we have associated with Jimmy Stewart and Grace Kelly, he kind of invents. And it's a different way of plumbing psychology, I guess, and how the audience relates to someone and how the audience relates to psychology. But it is true that it's the movie stars and not like the photographer that Jimmy Stewart is in Rear Window, whose name, Chris, I cannot remember.

It's written on his cast. Don't remember it. Is that? Oh my God. It just went out of my brain too. You want to know the rear window character's name? Yeah. It's like LB Jeffries or something.

Oh yeah. That's it. Ding, ding, ding. Okay. But I don't know what the L and the B stand for anyway. It's Jeff, right? He's Jeff. They call him Jeff.

He keeps calling him Jeff. Yeah. It's a very interesting point. And I wonder if that's why, because he's made over 50 feature films. I wonder if that's why his best known and best loved movies are the movies that have the biggest movie stars. I mean, those are really his signature films are Ingrid Bergman, Cary Grant, Jimmy Stewart, Grace Kelly, you know, I guess perhaps Janet Leigh and Anthony Perkins to a lesser extent.

And maybe this is an opportunity. Much, much lesser, right? I mean, like the star of Hitchcock is Hitchcock. I mean, the star of Psycho is Hitchcock. Yes. Yes. That's what everybody wanted to go. And the marketing, right? The marketing and Hitchcock are the stars of Psycho. And that's one of the things I wonder, I don't actually know this. Maybe you know this Wesley, just from doing some study, but at what point did an Alfred Hitchcock picture become the strongest selling point for a new movie? You know, was that happening in the fort Alfred Hitchcock picture become the strongest selling point for a

new movie? You know, was that happening in the forties, you know, by the time of Spellbound, could you sell a movie on Hitchcock's name? No, I mean, I, you could, but it had to be part of a package, right? Like, I mean, they still, what we are like laying on now is what, I mean, even in the sixties, what we would describe as a tourism, like, you know, 50 years ago, um, he was still, you know, well, obviously well regarded, but it wasn't like, you know, he was in the same pile and trying to distinguish himself as, as, you know, a bunch of other directors. And he had a point of view that, you know, a studio head could recognize.

But the star, I mean, the people calling the shots were still Selznick and, you know, you know, and DeMille and all of those guys. I mean, Selznick is the person who, you know, was,

I think, was it Selznick who was annoyed with Strangers on a Train? I can't remember now. I'm getting all my Hitchcock. They made a series of movies in the 40s together. Right. And, you know, I mean, there was some tension between who was in charge of the production.

Was it Selznick or was it Hitchcock? Which is, you know, that was just not happening. I mean, it was him versus the studio in the 60s. To the extent that there was a versus. But if we're talking about singular outsized talents who couldn't be tamed and were therefore sunk, we're talking about Orson Welles. that he had to play by some of the rules, which is kind of why, you know, the movies kind of work the way they do, where they're torn between how crazy they want to go and how much, how aware he is that an audience is going to have to pay to see the film.

Which goes back to Amanda's original point. Right. He threaded the fucking needle better than any filmmaker ever, probably. Right, right, right. Oh, can I say one other thing about identification? And you guys were joking about chris i don't like understanding grace kelly and not like you know relating to grace kelly and eric berman but i would say that ingrid bergman and well mostly for

me grace kelly it isn't so much that like her being this archetype um of you, patrician, blonde, waspiness is the hook. It's more the way her character, her characters function in those films. Like in Rear Window, one of the most exciting experiences I think anybody as a moviegoer is ever going to have

is the moment where, and he, you know, the genius of Hitchcock is he finds a way to turn this moment into cinema, but the moment where Grace Kelly the genius of Hitchcock is, he finds a way to turn this moment into cinema, but the moment where Grace Kelly goes from skeptic to getting in the sidecar of the plot. And it's such a great moment. And it's like, you thought you were watching Jimmy Stewart's movie. You thought this was about Jeff, Jeff, Jeffries. But no, it is actually about her. And it's about the moment she goes from being disbelieving to the moment

she believes. And it doesn't matter who that person is. Although like the insidious nature of all the things we know about the movies and race and like it could probably in 19, you know, 54 could only have been, you know only have been this blonde princess. But nonetheless, I'm not watching that. All I'm watching is a person realize that the thing that she didn't think was going on 20 minutes ago is possibly, probably happening is one of the great things about Hitchcock

in terms of who you're asked to identify with. And it's usually not the conventional person. I need to get off this podcast to write my blog post about how Rear Window is actually about Grace Kelly getting red-pilled. Let's use this as an opportunity to talk about psycho, which is the reason that we're having this chat. It's the 60th anniversary and only one of us has it in his or her top five.

So I'm going to, I'm going to, I'm going to out you, as having this movie on your list. I came very close to making it my number five. And then at the last minute, my wife kind of bullied me out of moving it out so that we would have more movies to talk about because we're going to talk about Psycho here regardless. But you have it at number four, Wesley. Obviously, one of the most influential films ever made. And I find it fascinating that

Amanda, Chris, and I did not put it on our lists, even though it's the one that I've seen the most and have perhaps thought about the most and is very kind of academically and pop entertainment history kind of beaten into your head about what it means and why it was impressive and powerful. Chris, do you like the movie Psycho? I think I revere it more than I like it, which is the case for a couple of these movies. A couple of the great Hitchcock movies is that I'm just like, I really, really, every eight years,

I should fire this up and just kind of get the cobwebs off and remember how good this can be. But I'm not necessarily dialing up Psycho on a Sunday the way I would some of his other movies. Amanda, what about you? Do you respond to this movie at all? Yeah, of course. Because I think it's so interesting to watch kind of the ur example of a genre when you are not really a consumer of said genre, which is to say, I don't as everyone knows, I don't watch a ton of horror movies. It's just not how I like have fun on a Saturday night.

But this is obviously like the the horror film. And and I know that because I like know about the shower scene. I didn't know like, and I like know things about the pacing that I have just like picked up from being like a citizen of the pop culture universe for however long I've been alive. And those moments are still like extremely exciting. I rewatched it last night because I do my homework, like Sean asks. And it's, you know, I do think even if you don't have however many, I guess, what, 60 years? Yeah, 60 years of significance attached to those moments, they're still just like very viscerally exciting and memorable. My question is just kind of, don't you guys get bored of horror movies after a while?

Like once the killing starts, I just am kind of like, okay, I know what's going on. So that was, that's my response. And here in some ways, like the pacing and like the forward thrust of it kind of, um,

doesn't hook me in the same way, but yeah, I'm pro psycho. What are you thinking? I'm going to come on this podcast and be like, I hate psycho. No, no,

but I think you start. Sure. This is a safe space for you to do that. and be like, I hate Psycho? No, no. You could. But I think, I saved that for another one. This is a safe space for you to do. Okay. This is such a funny example, though, to ask that question about don't you ever get sick of the killing? Because aside from the fact

that from a technical standpoint, it's obviously an extraordinary kind of leap forward for moviemaking, right? And the particular nature in which he maps everything out has been examined over and over again. But more specifically, it's because this movie is just not like a lot of other movies.

And that was the point of it. It did two things. One, obviously, it kind of breaks the narrative expectations over its knee in killing the main character 40 minutes into the movie. Spoiler alert for those of you who haven't seen Psycho. If you're listening to this and you haven't seen Psycho, I don't know what the fuck is wrong with you. Oh, Psycho. I thought you were talking about Psycho. But in addition to that, you know, this is not really like a movie about sick kills,

even though it's probably best understood for its big kill scene. You know, it's something different than that. It seems to be about manipulating audience and keeping a secret, you know, and it's the characters are keeping secrets and Hitchcock wants the audience to keep a secret so it isn't spoiled for people. You know, it really is kind of like at the forefront of don't tell anyone about what happens in this movie, which is a little bit kind of outside of the text, but it just doesn't feel, I don't feel a lot of horror history

kind of played out through Psycho, even though it's considered one of the signature films. I don't know. Wesley, what is it that you love about it? And why did it make your list? Well, I don't think of it as a horror movie, for one thing. I mean, I don't think of it... I think of it as...

The genius of the movie is that it's my favorite kind of movie. My favorite, absolute favorite. If it has a genre, it's the side A, side B, right? It's the thing that gets flipped over, right? You got to like midway through the last track ends, you got to flip it over and it's a completely different listening experience, right? It's like, I like that I think I'm watching one thing. I mean, we can go through the movies

that have this side A, side B thing, because it's kind of, there are enough of them to have a conversation about, but they're rare. And when somebody can achieve that through either the filmmaking or the screenwriting, it's just exceptional. But the thing about the movie, and I'm stealing this from our friend Robin Wood, is the movies, I mean, it's not one of the deeper points he makes about the films, but in Psycho, he observes that the movie is essentially about the present and the past. And the ways in which present actions, as time goes on, obviously creates a past. And so a thing we see Marion do in the present, by the midway point, becomes a thing she did in the past and has to turn back around and fix. And what I love about that idea is in order to make that interesting, he has to then change, he has to change the genre of the movie

because at this point in 1960, the kind of movie that Psycho is for like its first hour is not a movie that anybody else was making in 1960. He's making a 40s film noir in 1960 and that's the first hour of the movie. And it is a thing of the past.

It feels like the past. There's something about Janet Leigh's, I mean, you're watching a pair, I mean, with all due respect to the movie, I'm just trying to give it like, I'm trying to bring it to reduce it to its most essential sort of formal and tonal elements. You're watching an episode of Perry Mason.

If Perry Mason were about the person committing the crime before Perry Mason shows up. And imagine thinking that you're watching some episode of TV and then all of a sudden, this woman is, you're seeing her being peeped at through a wall. Then you see her take a shower and enjoy the sort of the symbolic act

of washing her sins away. And you think, oh, great. We're now going to watch a redemption story by this woman who is cleansing herself of her crimes and her like immorality only to be slashed to death and die. And there's still another hour left in the movie. I just feel like it's just a holy shit. Even though even watching it now, it's like, I just laugh. I just laugh.

Wesley, you got to stop bringing up Robin Wood because when I go on a podcast, I don't expect to get dunked on by like a film theory textbook. And now I'm like, boy, am I a moron? Is that the smartest thing I've ever heard? I mean, you're not a moron. It's just that the thing that I love about Psycho also is, again, it is not a movie that makes sense at the human level. Like, I think the thing that's great about Hitchcock,

and Psycho is a really great example of this, although I'm sure that, like like all your guys' favorite movies have some aspect of this too. I love the period from like Vertigo to Marnie, although I would include Torn Curtain in this too, which comes after Marnie, 66, as being about manifestations and not about people. They're about psychological and neurotic manifestations.

And that is the sort of driving engine of the atmosphere of the film. It's about emotions and feelings and neuroses and not about people necessarily. And Psycho to me is, it's not the best example of that in Hitchcock, but the way that it sprung on you where you're watching an anti-psychological movie for an hour become a complete psychological movie in the second hour in some ways. I would also say that the, like, Arbogast's death is way more, like, shocking to me than Marion Crane's in some way, especially once you've seen the movie a bunch of times. Because that to me is, we talk about suspension with Hitchcock,

but I actually wonder if the more useful way to think about him is dread. Because even when you know what's going to happen, it's not so much that you're in suspense. I always forget that it happens actually. Almost every time. He's so good at setting the table for dread. Like these images, like, you know, when you see through the shower curtain, you're watching Marion have this exhilarating shower and she's still like, you know, loving bathing herself.

And then you see, you know, the looming shadow through the translucent shower curtain. It's just, I mean, I don't know. I wasn't there in 1960, but I've read about it. It was people screaming. Screaming. Screaming. And it's just like sitting alone in your house, you're just like, oh my God, I've seen this 10 times, 15 times. And I'm still, there's something in the pit of my stomach that just is, is revulsed.

And that's just, that is the best feeling in movie going, I would say. And I think the thing is, is he always pays off the dread. You know, his, those kills, the Arbogast, is so shocking and so beautiful and so disorienting in the same way that the Marion kill is so picked over. I mean, there's an entire documentary called 7852 completely devoted to the shower sequence and how he did it and what it means and what the theory says about it

and how fans and film theorists have looked at it in the past. And it's amazing that it's still so worthy of examination in that way. And yet I, it still just does kind of feel like scraping the surface, which is really weird because like so many of his other films, the source text is this like perfectly fine page Turner novel that is loosely based on the Ed Gein murders. And you guys read it.

I've never read it. I think I've thumbed through it in like a library in the past. It's a Robert block novel. Um, you know, that was a bestseller in its time, but it's not considered high art in the same way that psycho is. But I was thinking about this movie in the way that it's been examined and recontextualized over and over again.

And also parodied, you know? The Bernard Herrmann score and that looming shadow that you're describing behind the shower curtain. And just the dread and kind of making fun of it. Almost like the Leslie Nielsen aspect of this movie, too. I used to think it had, it had like reduced its power, but now I feel like it's the opposite. There's just this, like all this whole world of psycho admiration and commentary that makes it that much bigger and deeper. Like it does, it really does feel like it's on a par with star Wars and ET and a handful of other movies that are just like, if there are 10 films,

10 films made in America that demand your attention, it probably makes that list, right? I don't know, Amanda, what do you think? Yeah, absolutely. And as I was saying, to some extent, I think that's how I consumed it. Rewatching it again last night, I knew obviously when I was rewatching it last night what happened, but I don't think I ever saw this movie without knowing what happened. And I mean, that was just like an impossibility of my age and where, you know, when I saw it and how I even knew about it, you come with the knowledge of the shower scene and you know who Norman Bates is. And, you know, like I've seen like the parodies or the SNL skits or like the references and that it enriches it in one way, but does also take away not the power of the shower scene because like that, that shadow that you can see through the curtain is still just freaky every single time.

Cause that is just an example of like actual like craft and that's how you put an image together. But I, I yearn for a somehow, some sort of time travel machine where I could go and just actually have the experience that Wesley was talking about where it just gets flipped, gets flipped on you. And you don't know what's coming and you don't know what the second half and you can experience like that actual, that psychological shift yourself because it is, it's messing with the psychology of the audience as well but you have had that i would say because you've seen pulp fiction and i mean there's the only comparable time i can think of where something like that has happened and where you're just like oh my god what and you look at your watch and you're like well, oh my God, what?

And you look at your watch and you're like, well, wait, but there's stuff I saw in the trailer that hasn't happened yet. Is this over? What the fuck? And I mean, that to me comes out of Psycho. Yeah, that's maybe Pulp Fiction is another one of those movies in those 10 movies that I'm referring to, you to. Casablanca and The Wizard of Oz and Star Wars and Psycho and maybe Pulp Fiction, I don't know.

The thing that I'm so fascinated by with it too is just the casting choices that he makes and who he decides to put into these parts that he seems to have some consciousness that there's going to be something iconic in this movie's bearing, right? If you read about the way that the movie was marketed and the way that it was presented to audiences, you could see that he knew he had something. And secrecy, it was of a major order. And I don't know a whole lot about Janet Leigh. I haven't read any Janet Leigh biographies, for example. And Anthony Perkins is a really interesting figure in the history of movies for a lot of reasons. I guess maybe Fear Strikes Out is probably his biggest role before this, Wesley? Yeah, yeah, yeah. That seems right.

And they both bring something very specific and very charged to those roles. In Janet Leigh, you have this just classic sex pot right and she's a character who is kind of morally ambiguous who does good things and bad things and who commits this crime and even as we're watching her it's very rare that you see the main character of your movie do something that is just so openly wrong and that that's kind of what leads to that punishment and i there's a conflation of like her sexuality right what's what's the wrong thing because there's technically depending on you know who you are when you're watching this movie like there's two wrong things there's the

there's the sex that opens the movie and you know the camera just sort of drifts through a window so suddenly you're you're like creeping on them. Um, and the, the, the, the theft is a totally spontaneous act to, to, to take the moral stigma out of the sex that she's been having to like, to like provide a way for them to be like on the up and up as a, as a, as a couple. Amanda, do you think Marion Crane should have been punished for her actions? No, but you know, except that, except that in the world of Hitchcock, she has to be as everyone does. And I don't even think that she has to be as a woman necessarily. I think there are kind of, there are other examples where we could talk a bit more about his relationship to the woman in the film and what she has to go through in order to redeem herself.

But in this one, it's just how he sees humanity, that everybody is kind of doing stuff for themselves and doing what they want to do. And then that ultimately your wishes and impulses and the things that you most want in life are going to be what ruin you. Sex. I think that's on point. Sex is the thing that's going to like lead to your downfall. Like wanting it, trying to like, I mean, having it at all. I mean, his greatest contribution to the horror genre is not the shower sequence. It is the, is the, is the sort of moral punishment

for having desire. And you don't get a slasher movie without, you know, what's being, I mean, she doesn't really die for the sex. She dies essentially if you want to have a rationale for why Marion Crane dies. It's at the suggestion that Norman put her away, essentially. I mean, at least that's how I felt this time that I watched it. But the impetus for her stealing the money is sex. And so the ultimate sort of in the scheme of the moral framework of the film, she has to be punished for having had this illicit sex. It wasn't like some of the other sex that happens in Hitchcock where somebody's married, but he used to be married and he's paying alimony. By the way, John Gavin, Chilean-Mexican, by the way.

This is what Hollywood does. Super sexy John Gavin, a Chilean and a Mexican, played white dudes his whole life. Died a huge Republican supporter, donor, ambassador to Mexico under Reagan, I believe. His buddy Ronald Reagan. Anyway, John Gavin but I I don't know

I like I think that sex is the place at least you know for me in that run from

maybe to catch a thief to I would stop at Marnie like but you know it happens throughout like you know if you're watching

Strangers on the Train, I mean, do you guys think that movie's about, like, Farley Granger just wanting to get it on with the witch's face? I mean, this is not a new idea. Like, I'm not the first person to say this. First person to say this. But to see it so blatantly as a grown person, you know. It's like a key homoerotic subtext movie, right?

That's what the whole movie is. In many ways, the whole movie is about that homoerotic subtext movie right that's like that's what the whole movie is that in many ways the whole movie is about that subtextual i mean that's the thing same with yeah yeah they're yeah rebecca as well it's also not subtextual at all it's just right there right rope it's right there my guy is jerking off a champagne bottle like yeah that's the thing too it's and in many ways he makes the quiet part loud and sometimes that's his best talent right he says the themes are obvious let me make them even more obvious to you but on the other hand i think psycho might be the most revered and analyzed movie with the worst ending and it really has that key that key version of an ending that you're talking about wesley

where a psychiatrist comes into a room and just explains a character's psychology and motivations for five minutes yeah like that's just such a it's such a strange choice and and i while i do like the final sequence of norman you know in his own head and hearing his mother's voice and you know he wouldn't hurt a fly. I do love the closing moments of the movie. I still think they're really effective. The psychiatrist sequence is like downright bad. Like it's downright over the top.

Can I ask a question about that sequence? Because I mean, I agree with you and I was rewatching it last night and reflecting on the ways in which it's just like a classic, like Hercule Poirot. Now I will explain the mystery to the assembled guests, except now I'm explaining like how, you know, I'm explaining human psychology to everybody. But, you know, to your point, Wesley, that like Hitchcock is leaning on Freudian analysis and kind of making a lot of that public for a lot of people. Was there a common understanding of what a psychopath was in

1960 that people who had seen this movie would have been like, oh, okay, so that's what's going on here? Or is it just because they have to supply psychology to the American public in 1960? I don't think anybody had ever seen anybody die like that before. Okay. And I think the story, and correct me if I'm wrong, Sean, but I think that that was one of those endings that they, that wasn't the original ending, right? No, it's not.

And it's one of those things where I think Hitchcock, because he's constantly battling with producers and studios throughout his career, sometimes had to accede to some of their demands and sometimes changed things to satisfy financiers and even sometimes satisfy audiences. You can tell that sometimes he has a little bit of contempt or frustration at needing to clarify what he means by things. And that's why it's so interesting. The cycle ending to me always strikes me as

a kind of fuck you to audiences after the failure of Vertigo. So Vertigo is not a hit and is by far his most psychological film and his film that is so clearly about obsession and what sex does to people, what attraction and desire and lust does to people. And it was not well-received, you know, the critically, the reviews were mixed and it didn't really do very well at the box office. And Psycho seems to see, feels like him kind of rubbing our nose in it a little bit, you know, saying like, you want murder? I'll show you murder. You want explanation? I'll give you explanation. And that's part of what makes it great, right? It's an orgy, you know?

It's a total, it's a conflagration. It's all the things that he does well all mixed up together, just not in the order that we expect them to come in. And so I think it's, I still think it's profound. And now I have regrets after thinking about it and talking to you guys about it, about not putting it in my top five. I feel like I fucked up. Oh, well. There's other not putting it in my top five. I feel like I fucked up. Oh, well.

There's other stuff to put in the top five. Yeah. It's not like you wound up putting like, you know, around the world in 80 days in the top five. You know, you did okay with this. I didn't put that on because he didn't direct that movie. And that would have been a really weird choice. It would have been great content.

Let's just take a quick break before we start sharing our top fives because we've got some lists to go through Wesley I'm going to start with you why don't you tell us your number five and why number five is Marnie again I'm a big fan of manifestation psychological neurotic manifestation

era Hitchcock. Um, I really like, this is a movie that works for me almost entirely on a formal level. I like how, how made it looks like it is. Like, I don't know if you guys seen this. Yeah. I rewatched it as adults. Um, cause I saw it as a kid and didn Like, I don't know. Have you guys seen this? Yeah. I rewatched last night. Have you seen it as adults? Because I saw it as a kid and didn't know what was going on. Like, I really, because there's not even any visual aids. Like, it's just like the screen would turn red sometimes. You're like, whoa, what's Marnie's deal?

And, you know, that opening shot of that yellow bag. I mean, by the way, I think a lot of Amodovar's tricks that he stole and then improved, I think he took from Marty. What I like about this film is it is a real attempt to try to understand how to represent psychological trauma without ever having to spell out what the trauma is. And also to take all of Hitchcock's preoccupations with criminality and sexuality

and to figure out a way to dramatize those things in the realm of a romance, um, is, but you know, it's kind of a creepy romance, right? Like she's there for how many days, two days before Sean Connery,

by the way, for no money for Marnie is basically the story of a woman played by Tippi Hedren, who is a kleptomaniac and, and, uh, like she's an asexual kleptomaniac and an asexual kleptomaniac, essentially, who takes a job, a clerical job, working for Sean Connery,

basically on the run from having stolen some money before. So it's Marion Crane from Psycho meets Tippi Hedren from The Birds meets Grace Kelly in some other, some like some version of Grace Kelly that never really existed in, in which she was, she was cold and inaccessible. And the movie is about how frigid and, and sexually inaccessible to be Hedren is to Sean Connery, who just wants to warm her up and get her to talk. And she just won't do it.

But she's so aware of what he's trying to do that it makes her resist even more. But the problem with the movie is, again, the ending, where it has to explain exactly what's wrong with Marnie. But even that, to me, is really interesting. The idea that like, this is not about a particular woman's trauma. It's about, it's, it's a possible explanation for sexual dysfunction. Not like this thing happened to me, an individual human being.

It's like, why would somebody have some sexual dysfunction? Maybe the time that their mom did this, you know, was, I won't ruin it for anybody who hasn't seen it, but it's, it, it's, it's more, it's more compelling to me than it isn't. And I just like, I just like how good it looks and how committed Tippi Hedren is. There's a great shot of her reaching, putting her hand in a Sean Connery safe, not a metaphor. And just the way that she looks at her trembling gloved hand is just, she does not get a lot of credit as being a good actress, but she is so good in this movie just in terms of hitting her marks and conveying the psychological struggle of wanting this thing that you also are trying desperately to repress. I don't know. It's not a great character, but that is a very good

performance by Tippi Hedren. It's committed. It's fully committed. It's really a stroke of genius casting movie because you've got Tippi Hedren immediately after the birds. Then she obviously goes on to create this incredible legacy of beautiful blonde actresses, including Melanie Griffith and Dakota Johnson, who have, I seem to be, I think in their careers addressing the repression that Tippi's characters are forced to go through almost literally. Sean, that is so true. Yes. Yes.

And also it's Sean Connery in 1964. And what are the three movies that Sean Connery makes directly before this? Dr. No from Russia with Love and Goldfinger. And the first thing he chooses to do post James Bond is this incredible, strange, weird Hitchcock movie. It says a lot. It's just great timing for everybody involved. It's a good pick. Amanda, what's your number five? Oh, sorry. Go ahead. It's just so sexy. That's it. Sean Connery, really good shocker, but yes, young Sean Connery. You just can't believe it. You just can't believe it. I agree with everything that Wesley just said, uh, about Sean Connery. Um, and, and also Marnie. Um, my number five is in a different direction though. not at all um it's to catch a thief

uh because if you thought that i was not going to pick the carrie grant grace kelly rom-com caper set on the french riviera then we have not met at all um it is real pleasure principle to me in in just it looks beautiful. Like the, the French reference. Yeah. And the costumes and, and the location, in addition to being like a area of personal enthusiasm to me, just like are, are filmed with such care. They are characters in the movie, but, um, you know, you want to talk about sexuality and criminality. It is also there in To Catch a Thief, but in just a low stakes way that I think you could either interpret as like fun and a caper or possibly like super nihilistic that like sex and relationships are like all lies. And we're all just kind of saying what we want to each other and trying to get what we want out of the situation. And then hopefully at the end, we end up with someone who looks like Cary Grant or Grace Kelly

and aren't the other girl who gets arrested. The poor other girls in Hitchcock's movies, we need to talk about them. The girls who aren't is what we should call them. The girls who aren't. Yeah, that's true. The midges, the midges of Hitchcock. I know.

Yeah, you know, I guess it's like minor hitchcock but i think it's definitely one of the ones that i've seen more often and it's also in addition to touching on a lot of the major hitchcock themes um really funny it has like a 40s screwball element to it that this this scene with the fireworks which is you know the seduction scene that doesn't actually have any sex at one point carrie grant is just like yelling at grace kelly being like like you know women who need weird excitement which is like the funniest lot like it's like he just yells at her and i have thought about that all week long of just like women who need weird excitement i guess i've one of them so you know sex humor uh beautiful things and people who are emotionally repressed and just trying to get what they want a great hitchcock movie i agree it's an

interesting one it's it's got some of the hallmarks right like it's shot by robert burks it's got grace kelly it's got some of the kind of key, it's got all this, this technicolor experience, but it also is, I think if you go in expecting a Hitchcock movie, you might walk out a little dissatisfied, right? You know, like you almost need to experience it without too much weight because it doesn't do what most of his films do in terms of that dread and that kind of like fearful ambiance that comes in from a lot of his movies. But it really moves. I mean, he's so good at pacing in every movie. And this one is just like, it is a one-piece garment that just really can handle the wind.

It's a flag. A flag does that. Wow. You just, you invented flags just now wesley that's that was amazing uh chris what's your number five is it a flag bound no it's spellbound uh it is 1945 and it's uh ben hecht script among other people and i think this is my vertigo. Like, I don't know. I have always really, really, really respected vertigo. I don't know if I've ever loved it.

And maybe there's something about the inversion of the roles here where I feel like Ingrid Bergman is trying to shape Gregory Peck into what she wants. She so wants him to be who he is not throughout most of this movie. That desire that you might have to shape someone, I think is a very powerful one. It's an

incredible setting. Hitchcock, great choice to go to an asylum. Seems like a perfect place for you. I was watching it last night and gotta say, Larry David voice, the Salvadorador dali sequence pretty good pretty pretty good it's like does that should we remark upon the fact that two of the great artists of the 20th century were just like let's let's let's team up let's just drop this dream sequence on people it's incredible watch. Watch the throne, but in movies.

Yes. So Bergman's great. Very broken, frail Gregory Peck, which is a very good Gregory Peck. And just a- He always seemed broken and frail to me. I don't know. I know, I know. But like when I think of the iconic version of him,

I think of him as being this very stoic, wholesome person, but like his best performances are when he's all fucked up like this. So I adore Spellbound, that's number five. You know, we never brought this one up when we were talking about Shutter Island recently, Chris. Yeah, I know. There's so much Spellbound in Shutter

Island, right? Yep. Absolutely. So that's a great pick. None of us have any of those three films that you guys just named on the rest of our lists. So that's a great pick. None of us have any of those three films that you guys just named on the rest of our lists. So those are individual and brilliant films, all three of them. My number five is going to come up later in the episode.

So I'm going to withhold it and we'll talk about it when it shows up later on Wesley's list. Dun, dun, dun. So let's go to Wesley's number four, which we already discussed, which was Psycho. Is there anything else that anybody needs to add about Psycho, Wesley, you in particular? No.

I just think that any time... I think that one of the things... I'm curious if I offer this as a reason that it wasn't on anybody else's list, is that you've so thoroughly absorbed it that maybe there's nothing to get out of it for right now. And when you go back in 10 years, you would reconsider it in some way. I don't know.

I mean, I hadn't watched it until like the last couple of weeks. The last time I watched it before that was years ago. It was maybe like 10 years ago. No, it was the last time I watched it was when the Gus Van Sant movie, the remake came out. By the way, you guys, I will say that that Gus Van Sant movie got shit on by everybody when it came out. And I think everybody missed the point, which was not, everybody missed the point. He wasn't trying to, it was like for Gus Van Sant to like, to try to remake in a movie that he would never make himself,

um, to see how a great movie is made in a style that is not, is nothing like his. It's just one of the most interesting things a filmmaker has ever done. And I find that the way that he set a rule, I don't know if this is a real rule that he set, but it's clear that it's happening. He does everything in his shot-for-shot remake,

but he can do whatever he wants to do in the frame of the shots. And I just... Do you guys like that movie? Unequivocally, no. I don't. But guys like that movie? Do you? Unequivocally, no, I don't. But I like what you said and I like the idea of it. And when I sit down to watch it,

all I can think to myself is why. None of those thoughtful reasons that you're suggesting feel apparent to me when I'm watching the movie, which is, it is just a true, why would I watch this experience? And also it does feel very miscast, honestly. And a true, why would I watch this experience? And also it does feel very miscast, honestly. And that's, that's part of why I don't like Vince, Vince Vaughn is your problem. Okay. Yeah. I thought he was really good at it. Julianne Moore is really

good. William H. Macy and Hayes. I mean, I don't know. I really, it really worked for me. Sorry. Moving on. It's a great take. I mean, it's just great podcast material, if nothing else. So Amanda and I share a number four and we're going to hold that too because it shows up on someone else's list later in the conversation. So Chris, what is your number four? Foreign Correspondent.

Great pick. I love spy movies and I love newspaper movies. And this is both of those things. Joel McRae plays an American journalist named Johnny Jones who goes by the name, I think, Harley Haverstock or what's the pen name he uses? I can't remember. It's some-

Huntley Haverstock. Huntley Haverstock, yeah. And so he goes to England to get the scoop on this second world war that's coming. And he's in London and gets enmeshed in this huge conspiracy espionage story that involves body doubles and assassinations and has an iconic scene at a windmill. And is just peak fucking Hitchcock bullshit where you're just like, what the fuck? This guy died, but now he has another person who's shown up at this convention.

What's going on? And a lot of it is driven by Joel McRae's editor being like, well, you got to go to Holland to get an interview with this guy, which I'm like, did you guys have the budget for that? That's great.

Back then. Ultimately, I don't want to turn this into like, shots are great, but there are some crazy shots in Foreign Correspondent. My favorite is just all the umbrellas moving

after the assassination. It just like, invents seven or eight directors' careers. You know? I mean, yeah. His shot making, I mean, yeah, okay.

Yeah, I agree. I've not seen that movie in a long time, but the shots, they stay with you. And it was written by Robert Benchley or the dialogue was written by Robert Benchley and it crackles. Like it is just absolutely electric. It's really funny.

So a foreign correspondent, number four. Great pick. As I said, Amanda and I are skipping number four, which means we're going to number three for Wesley, who's returning to Tippi Hedren. Oh, the birds. Again, manifestation movie. But the thing that I love about this one is that,

okay, so there's a, earlier in this conversation, I mentioned that there are ways to watch him. And it depends on where you are in your life and what your interests are and who you might be. And I find that as satisfying as Foreign Correspondent and Notorious and Suspicion and Strangers on a Train, a handful of other movies,

I keep coming back to the things that I don't understand, right? I really like watching something over and over again where I really feel like this is going to be the occasion that it all makes sense. There's something I missed. And I saw The Birds, probably like the three of you, too early. It was like the ABC Sunday night movie or something, or I saw it on TV, like network television, some night of the week. And it freaked me out. And just the sight of everybody running and fleeing, and the birds didn't look fake. Anyway, but the idea that this bird attack

is a manifestation of this relationship between Tippi Hedren's character and John Saxon's character. It's John Saxon, right? No, is it John Saxon? The idea, oh, wait, no, it's Rod. It's Rod Taylor. It's Rod Taylor, right. Yeah, how could I forget? No, it's, is it John Saxon? The idea, oh wait, no, it's Rod. It's Rod Taylor. It's Rod Taylor, right. Yeah, how could I forget?

Oh my God. Again, they just don't make them like they did in the 50s and 60s. I'm sorry. Oh my God, Rod Taylor. Just that Roger Federer face that he's got. Yeah, Hitchcock's taste in men is just as good as his taste in women.

That's the thing. All of his men are very hot. Yeah. Yes. Correct. So. I don't know. I don't need to say anything rude about late stage Jimmy Stewart on this podcast.

So keep going. We'll get to Vertigo. Don't worry. By all means. There'll be a circle in hell for you. Just go on. Sure. It's fine.

Go ahead. The birds. I just, I really, really love that there's so many things we don't know. Every time you watch it, you think you know. The movie doesn't try to explain. The one, the crowning achievement of the movie is there is no shrink that comes in and says,

well, you know. The reason there's a big ornithology crisis and we've, I, ornithologist, doctor, blah, blah, blah, blah, I've come to explain to you why, Tippi Hedren, you are in trouble. Why these things keep happening to you. Like, I've watched this movie thinking that Jessica Tandy's character, who plays Rod Taylor's mother, is controlling the birds and making them attack Tibi Hedren. Just the way that in these small town settings, these very basic things like wanting to have sex with someone against the wishes of some other person, in this case, another mother, can bring on the damnation of an entire place in the form

of these horrible creatures. I i just i love it and i like just as a watching experience just the opening of the door and she looks in the room and it's just full of those birds it's like crazy you're amanda skeeved out and it never fails to freak you out it's a frightening disgusting image i turned it off i like i the thing is is is that I was not brave enough to put the birds on my list because I cannot sit through the birds because I tried to watch it this week. Soon as those birds came out of the fireplace, I was like, I'm out. I'm not doing this. This is too creepy.

And that's a testament to Hitchcock, right? I was honestly trying to figure out whether my fear of crowds of birds are something that he understands and is reflecting in the movie or whether I learned that crowds of birds are creepy from the birds. But let me tell you, I know the intersections in Los Angeles where the birds circle. Okay. Hollywood in Vermont, Rowena and Hyperion. Like I'm not going near those places. And it's because of this movie and because of how creepy those birds are.

So like, no. Well, it's so funny, Wesley, that you describe it as a kind of a psychological manifestation movie. Because it also just feels so clearly like a man should not fuck with nature movie. You know, this is nature's revenge. And there's so many ominous shots shots especially at the end of the movie from the bird's eye view literally yeah the birds looking down on the pitiful humans and their inability to handle this crisis and you know Amanda and I did a top five apocalypse movies episode a couple of months ago and I regret not putting this in there. This is the, by the way, it's a really good, thanks for listening to the big picture,

bud. Thank you. Thanks for checking in a lot. It's great. Uh, but this movie, this is like one of the ultimate doom movies. This is the,

like, what do you do? All of the like a 24 freak out horror movies. They all owe a huge debt to this movie because this is like, this is inexplicable terror and that's so much more powerful. We don't know why. Right. more powerful we don't know why right right we don't know um that's why there shouldn't be a psychiatrist in the movie right it just works on so many different levels and it's the one where he it's the one of these movies to me where he

just where he doesn't give up on um he just lets the the conceit be the conceit without needing to satisfy people as to what the problem is. It's also- The happening, Shyamalan's, I mean, nobody, I can't believe I just said the name of that movie in this podcast, but a real, one of Hitchcock's many progenies, M. Night Shyamalan, who for a while really had it until, you know, he started to become, if you can be literal and metaphorical at the same time, that is where he wound up by the time The Happening comes. Where like his illusions were literal about metaphorical things that he just was too, was just not imaginative enough about in terms of how to make them cinema. Anyway, next. Sorry.

He also, just one last thing about the birds. He invents one of my favorite sub-genres in this movie, which is I'm going to cast Veronica Cartwright to freak the fuck out in my movie. Oh, yes. Yes. Which, you know, she shows up an alien doing the same thing. Invasion of the Body Snatchers.

You know, Witches of Eastwick. Veronica Carly melting down, that's one of the best things in movies. And he was the first one to discover that. Chris, I think we're on to you now. For number three? Number three, a movie we've mentioned a little bit here in this conversation. What's your pick? Rope.

Ooh. I love this movie because it's not a whodunit. It's a will they get away with it? And there are definitely long stretches of this movie where they're going to get away with it. And I think that obviously you're kind of watching it from

you're waiting for Jimmy Stewart's character for this ex-housemaster from their private school to figure thismy stewart's character for this ex housemaster from their private school to like figure this out and there's all this fucked up stuff about uber benches and superiority and and class but you know for as virtuistic as this movie is it's obvious if you don't know this is it's uh it's told quote unquote as one shot but there are actually some subtle edits within it um I never really even think about that. I never really even think about the fact that it's just one shot or even that it's just one setting. And this and Lifeboat are the one setting movies. But did you make any more than

that, Sean? Any more one setting movies like that? I don't think so. I think those are the two. So this movie is set during a dinner party where these two absolute shitlords have murdered their friend to see if they can get away with it. And they then have a dinner party to basically flaunt it. I mean, they're getting away with it, but they want to challenge themselves and see if they can invite the victim's close friends and family and also get the basically tacit approval of their mentor, played by Jimmy Stewart, for what they have done. And it is really, really sexually charged. John Dahl and Farley Granger play the two killers. And I don't know. I just fucking love a mystery dinner party, I guess. I was curious how you guys felt about Rope. I'm sort of torn about it because I feel like it does satisfy the one thing about Hitchcock that I'm frequently disappointed in, in terms of how fucked up a movie can be. Again, my frustration though, is that those guys' craziness is offset by the mannerist way in which the film is made.

So it's so easy. I mean, multiple viewings sort of, you become a nerd to the conceit I think is there to sort of distract in some ways from both the sort of depraved nature of the event, but also to sort of, well, I don't know, there's no getting around the homoerotics in this movie, right? Like there's not even homoerotic. It's just here are two gay guys. And I don't know if jimmy stewart knows he's playing a gay guy but that guy is definitely gay um and i i don't know i just you know there's a there's a way in which like there's a there's a version of hitchcock where the mannerism sort of upstages all the other interesting psychological and, and, um, interpersonal things that are happening. So really the form becomes more important than, than, than everything else. And sometimes that like in psycho, for instance, that really works. Um, but here, I don't know. I just, I have now, I haven't seen it in, in about 10 years. Another one I haven't watched in a while. But I had a hard time even 10 years ago getting past the conceit.

But again, it's still fascinating to watch what you're watching, which is like two sick people. It's based on the Leopold and Loeb case. I think from the 30s or like the early 40s. Bad history, Wesley. But it takes that shocking case and manages to almost literally formalize it in the form of a dinner party. And it's clever, but I think to me, that's all it is. Well, it's an interesting... I don't know if any of you guys have seen this movie, seen Compulsion, but Compulsion is almost like a docudrama version of the Leopold and Logue case. And it charts that story over a course of time.

And it's not a bad film. And it features a really hilarious, way over the top Orson Welles performance as a lawyer. Oh, I've never seen Compulsion. It's interesting, but it's not nearly as interesting as a lawyer. I've never seen Compulsion. It's interesting, but it's not nearly as interesting as Rope. Even just from a purely technical perspective, Rope obviously is, you know, Hitchcock is one of those people who you can see gets bored with the work. And so, he keeps throwing roadblocks in front of himself to make it more interesting. And that's the dynamic that he's created here. And I mean, think of how many times this movie has been ripped off now.

We just went through the 1917 narrative over the course of the last 12 months. And this is kind of where that starts. I mean, that kind of unbroken continuity is where it begins. So number three for Amanda, I'm going to ask you to hold it, Amanda. So that we can talk about it a little bit later. I've been silenced for picking all the greatest films, basically because I have the most overlap with everyone, and that's the best taste.

I don't get to speak, but that's fine. If it makes you feel any better, I haven't been able to speak about any of my films yet either, until now, because my number three is your number two and also Wesley's number two. And that movie is North by Northwest. Has anyone ever told you that you overplay your various roles rather severely, Mr. Kaplan? First, you're the outraged Madison Avenue man who claims he's been mistaken for someone else. Then you play the fugitive from justice, supposedly trying to clear his name of a crime he knows he didn't commit.

Now you play the peevish lover, stung by jealousy and betrayal. Seems to me you fellows could stand a little less training from the FBI and a little more from the actor's studio. Apparently the only performance that will satisfy you is when I play dead in your very next role. You'll be quite convincing, I assure you. Don't lose it for $25. Thank you. Which, reputationally, is considered

a Hollywood classic. It's considered one of the most glamorous, exciting, thrilling stories ever put to film. This is an incredibly weird movie. One of the weirdest movies

that I can remember. At times, remarkably incoherent. At times, purposefully confusing. But also features almost all of his signatures. We were just talking about, for example, the homoerotic subtext in a lot of his movies. This has one of the key storylines in that respect. We talk about his set pieces and his shots. This has the Mount Rushmore shot, which is a callback to the Statue of Liberty shot

in Saboteur. This has one of the key Cary Grant performances as a person who is... It's remarkable to think that someone like Roger Thornhill could walk through the world in a successful and dashing advertising executive and ever be confused for anyone else. And yet that is the premise of the movie. There are few more singular people than Cary Grant. And yet no one believes that he's essentially this proxy for Cary Grant. White dudes, y'all look alike. We all know. We all know. We knew it in the 50s yeah it does feature a rare unambiguously bad villain in james mason who is clearly just uh a fascist monster and a manipulator of people but you know so good at that he's wonderful he if this movie features my all-time favorite line in all Hitchcock movies, which is when Cary Grant says, I believe you'd be happier if I were playing dead.

And he said, it'll be your... I can't even remember exactly. I can't do James Mason. I wish I could do James Mason. He's basically like, it's your next part and you'll be wonderful in it. You know, something to that effect. It's your next part and you'll be wonderful in it. Yeah.

That was pretty good. And then also, you know, Eva Marie Saint, another beautiful blonde ice queen in the Hitchcock arsenal who is asked to do a little bit more than most women in movies like this is asked to do ultimately.

She really, she is the ambiguous centrifugal force who you can never kind of see which direction she's moving in. She really, she is the ambiguous centrifugal force who you can never kind of see where, which direction she's moving in. She seems very, she's very influenced, but she's also grabs

a certain amount of personal liberty in the story. And on top of that, it's just, it's absolutely gorgeous to look at. The, the,

the way that it's shot, the color, the costumes are unbelievable. I think this is still Edith Head and we haven't even used Edith Head's name. Yeah, we haven't even used Edith Head's name. Yeah, we haven't even said Edith Head. I mean, she is such a huge part of his movies

and the famous suit that he wears and even what she's wearing throughout this film is just an absolutely astonishing big top Hollywood production. It is like the platonic ideal in many ways of that for me. So Amanda, what is it that you respond to in North by Northwest? I mean, everything you just said, but you know, I love James Bond movies and this invents James Bond movies. I mean, it's a dashing man in the possibly the greatest movie

suit of all time, um, doing something, trying to get himself out of a situation, which is not like a James Bond movie, but everything else, it's like a series of locations and, uh, an evil, possibly fascist villain who is going to end the world unless, unless Cary Grant saves things. Great. Sign me up. Like, and the more ridiculous the set pieces as they go on the better, which is how you get to, um, Mount Rushmore, which, you know, there is like a little bit of an in-joke quality to that, which I enjoy as well. But yeah, it's my type of movie with probably my favorite, like, old Hollywood male movie star. I think Cary Grant is it for me. And this is, this is to me is P. Cary Grant. Or at least it's like the, it's the essential Cary Grant in terms of what makes him Cary Grant.

Yes. I think it's, I think it's bringing up baby and this are the sort of like the two polarities, right? Those are the two like Wesley, what about you? What do you dig about it?

I mean, nobody ever thinks of Hitchcock this way, but it's just the most, one of those glamorous movies ever made. It is just glamorous. It is such an advertisement for beauty and handsomeness, not just of people, but of locations and of space and of situations.

I mean, what a luxury to be mistaken for, to be for Cary Grant. Um, when you're, when you're actually Cary Grant, what a luxury to be mistaken for anybody and not be, not be killed, you know? Um, but, but to still be running for your life. Um, but in pursuit of, of clearing your name at the same time, or, you know, it's just,

it, it just, you know, there is a, is that a, that cabin sequence? Unbelievable. It is,

I don't know. It just, everything about this movie is sort of designed to make you salivate and stress you out. And, you know, the absurdities you know, the Mount Rushmore sequence is, I would say it's actually bad but

it's Mount Rushmore somebody had the audacity to stage an action sequence on the noses and eyes of, you know what is characterized on Mount Westmore as American greatness. But it's kind of mocking it at the same time. This is a monument to greatness, but we're going to have people swinging off of it and almost falling off of it.

It is such a shrinking down of this monument to American greatness that even that is sort of pleasurable and takes the technical badness out of it. I don't know. I just really love... There is never a time when this movie is randomly on. It should be on more than it actually is. But anytime I encounter, if I'm walking by a place that is showing like a restaurant or some place in public that's showing this movie, I will stop what I'm doing to just watch as much of it as I have time to watch. I will miss a meeting to watch this movie on the street with no sound. I think when you're born in America, they should give you a kit. And in the kit, you find one bottle of Budweiser beer,

one Hershey bar, one subscription to the Watch podcast, and one copy of North by Northwest. That's what should be in the, if you want to learn how to be an American, this is what you have to do. Well, I would throw a copy of The Fire next time in there too, just so you know what it's going to cost you to be that American. Just drink that beer and read your James Baldwin, just so you know. Chris, you hate America, which is why you hate this film, right? That's why it's not on your list? No, whenever I do these, I just try to be like a unique little flower, you know what I mean? And I have a couple here that are canon and they're just like hall of famer hitchcock movies but i also wanted to get a little bit more uh you know bespoke no it's a good call i we didn't even

mention the crop duster sequence which is one of the most iconic in the history of cinema and uh i'm reminded when you mentioned that that sort of that forest set house towards the end of the movie and that exchange between who is it? It's, it's James Mason and Martin Landau, right? Yeah. Yes.

If you go back and watch the Steven Soderbergh movie, the limey, the final 25 minutes of that movie is basically an homage to that entire sequence. Same kind of house, same kind of experience peering into that house, what's happening inside the house. That's where the power is.

Anyway, North by Northwest is very special and very important. So we've knocked out my number three, Amanda's number two, and Wesley's number two,

which takes us to Chris's number two, which is my number four, and Amanda's number four, which is what, Chris? Notorious. Oh, you love me. Why didn't you tell me before?

I know, but I couldn't see straight or think straight. I was a fat-headed guy full of pain. It tore me up not having you. No, no. Jesus Christ, this movie is good. This movie is fucked up too. I forgot about that. Like in my mind, I'm like,

it's Cary Grant and Ingrid Bergman and they are spies in Brazil and what more could you want? And then you just remember, oh, he pimps her out. I forgot. This movie is so depraved in so many ways and the tension between its elegance

and its grace and its airiness and its charm and what the movie is about, which is about basically honeypotting a Nazi, is so wild to me. But this movie has got everything that you would want, honestly, from when you're sitting and watching a movie. I was just still discovering stuff about this after however many times I've seen it over however many years.

I was watching it the other night, and there's a moment on the plane early in the movie where Cary Grant tells Ingrid Bergman that her father has died from poisoning and Hitchcock just stabs in someone laughing from three rows back. It was like, ha ha ha. And Ingrid Bergman was just like, fuck,

you know, like, but it's, it's just like this, this sick sense of humor, this sick, um, codependent relationship there. You, you wind up kind of like, kind of liking Claude Rains in this movie. of humor, this sick, um, codependent relationship there.

You, you wind up kind of like, kind of liking Claude Rains in this movie. I mean, it's just the, the, the way it just sweeps you off your feet is, is wonderful.

I'd love to hear what you guys think about it. Amanda, what do you love about it? You got mad at me when I, you saw that I was choosing this. Why? Because I did have kind of like some preconceptions in my head of what everyone on this podcast would pick. And I too, well, actually not you, Wesley. I was very excited.

You are always surprising, but I kind of thought I knew Sean's list in particular and a little bit Chris's list. And I was trying to plan accordingly. And then Sean took two movies that I thought were going to be squarely in the Amanda corner. But Amanda, when we do this, aren't you and I the Chuck and Nancy? Don't we like come together and get stuff done? Yes, we do. And we did like not to spoil anything, but we are going to later on this podcast. But Sean in particular, his number two and Notorious together, I was just like, damn, like I really I didn't think you were going to do both of these.

But I think for Notorious, for me, like Chris, I like spy movies. And again, I do often think about it in terms of being like, oh, well, it's Cary Grant and Ingrid Bergman, like, being spies. Great, great stuff. And I think I saw this, I mean, I certainly saw this after Casablanca after I saw Casablanca um but I also think I saw it with like the shadow of Casablanca Casablanca hanging over me which like it still kind of does always I mean I'm I'm a human being um but also not really expecting Ingrid Bergman to to be doing what she does in this movie and every time I watch it part of me is just kind of like Ingrid Bergman, like, please, like, get it together. Like, this is not what we do in World War II or thereabouts, Ingrid Bergman, okay? And so then I go on the journey through her.

And in a lot of ways, you know, what they ask her to do is really, really messed up. And what happens is really messed up. But I do think this movie is more interested in the morality of what they ask the woman to do and what the woman is going through than a lot of Hitchcock movies. And maybe some of that is because it's like Ingrid Bergman and I'm just emotionally invested in her. But I think it's interesting

to see her at the center of it in this way. And also honestly, because I do consume so many spy movies to kind of explore the morality of like spy stuff. Yeah, agent running. Yeah, because you know, the fact of the matter is, it's like there's always like honey potting

or something off, like referenced in a movie. And people are doing all sorts of horrific thing in spy movies, but you're just supposed to be like, well, be for king and country. And in this, it really, it like examines and makes you feel pretty slimy about a lot of them. They also, they flip it where in a lot of spy films, what happens is an agent running is an agent running an asset will fall for the asset once they've already asked them

to do something fucked up. And they'll be like, oh, now I'm compromised. He falls for her before he asks for the fucked up thing. So it's not as much of a gut punch, but it's a gut punch for Devlin in Notorious too because he's just like, I'm on this fucking Brazilian vacation with Ingrid Bergman.

This is great times. And then he's like, oh, I got to get her to do what now? Okay. And that's the kind of little twist that he adds sometimes that's just great.

The one thing about this, well, there's a couple of things that I respond to about it. One, I think what Wesley was saying saying earlier about psycho and the way that the present is instantly passed and we're reflecting on it is a huge part of this and the inescapability of the past is a huge part of this story and a huge part of ingrid bergman's character and the kind of like the anxiety that her being asked to be put in this position draws out of her. And I agree with Amanda that it's more sensitive to this kind of figure than some of his other films are, but honestly that perhaps this is very me,

but I think that this is the single best shot in his career is in this movie. And it's at the ballroom gala when the camera is overhead and it trails down the stairs and it moves in and it's slowly zooms in and zooms in and zooms in and zooms in. And then you see the key in Ingrid Bergman's hand. And Wesley, you mentioned MacGuffins and the key obviously is the, the key isn't the MacGuffin necessarily, but the pursuit of the key leads us to the MacGuffin of this movie, which is ultimately I think uranium ore, which is stored in a wine cellar. And. Crazy thing to have in a movie during a war, by the way, or like just after a war, like just, whoa.

And that's another thing is that he was always, the same way that Casablanca is like this, he was always making movies in real time about these issues. You know, Saboteur is the same way. That movie is in 1942 about the construction of airplanes during World War II. And he had an ability to reflect the times in a way that most filmmakers, even now, who work in these same kind of modes of suspense and horror, they don't necessarily work to reflect what's going on literally in the real world. And he did it all the time.

And this movie is just an example of that. But more specifically, this is kind of him, I think, reaching a kind of technical power and also knowing that it was so much harder to do those things 80 years ago when this movie was made than it is now. The idea of doing a shot like that takes days of planning days, maybe even weeks. And if after you've seen it enough times and you start to look more closely at the way that he does things, I'd like my admiration for it grows. And that's one of the reasons why it's on the list among all the other reasons you pointed out,

what were you going to say? Was it? Oh, I, I agree with you guys. I, the thing that I wanted to have, I mean,

I guess I made this to catch a thief. I mean, I, I started, I guess I made this North by Northwest for me, but I, I wanted to put something on the list that like, that spoke to this other Hitchcock, but I want to, that I do think Notorious is the most mature Hitchcock movie. I think it's the one where he could have gone down this track that essentially put the George Q cores and, um,

Michael Cortese's and, you know, like this other class of very serious, dramatic director out of business, um, where all, everybody would have wanted to keep working with Alfred Hitchcock to make these sort of serious,

romantic, romantic, topical Hollywood movies. But, you know, and again, like this is not about like what other directors can't do, but the thing that makes him great is he knows how to make a shot. He knows he's got a great eye and he's got a great imagination for what the camera can do. And he's also like the instinct. A lot of what is psychologically interesting about Hitchcock to me is the cutting. The editing tells you as much about what's happening in the character's mind as where the camera is telling you to look. It's the assemblage

of these images into something that feels psychological. This is not so much the case in Notorious, but you're still watching something that for me is a cut above anything near it in terms of what we would classify as Hollywood melodrama from that great age of the 1940s. Yeah, I'm glad that three out of four of us put it. I mean, I could have done it as well, but I did not. So it turns out that I am the only person who has the next film on his list. I imagine, Amanda, it's right outside the top five for you. It was, again, I was a little bit mad that you took it because I was like, well, I just thought I would have this one and get to talk about it. But we can talk about it now.

I'd be happy to join in the conversation. Let's talk about it now. My number two pick is Rebecca. I didn't expect to see you, Mrs. Danvers. I noticed that the window wasn't closed and I came up to see if I could fasten it. Why did you say that? I closed it before I left the room. You opened it yourself, didn't you?

You've always wanted to see this room, haven't you, madam? Why did you never ask me to show it to you? I was ready to show it to you every day. And Rebecca is notable for many reasons. That Hollywood 1940s melodrama that you're describing, Wesley, I think this might be the pinnacle of that style. And it's

notable for being the only movie that Hitchcock made that won Best Picture. It's a production with David O. Selznick when they were still getting along before that relationship completely was frayed in the 1940s. Though it sounds like the friction created great creativity between them.

And this is a lot of different kinds of films. It's a psychological thriller. It's a ghost story. It's a romantic melodrama. It's a kind of bodice ripper in a way. And it's a story, I think, about torture in some ways too, and the complex relationship

between these characters. And it features some of my favorite performances in any film ever really, but I think Joan Fontaine is a really interesting figure. Her name has not been uttered yet, even though she appears in two of my favorites, Rebecca and also Suspicion, which is one of the most fun Hitchcock movies.

Such a great movie that also features a really fun Cary Grant performance. And this movie is similarly gorgeous and obsessed with representation in a way and what this home represents and also Manderley, the home, and also what the specter, the aura of Laurence Olivier's dead wife, who is named Rebecca. And notably, we don't ever get to know what Joan Fontaine's character's name is. She's just Mrs. De Winter. She's but a shadow. And Rebecca is everything. She's the light, which is obviously not the case. As we go through this

story, we learn that things are not exactly as they seem with Rebecca. And the reason Laurence Olivier is so mysterious and so distraught is because Rebecca was a bit more complicated than that. But I think from a formal perspective and even emotionally, like this is as close as as Hitchcock got to pursuing heart and pursuing a kind of like emotionalism, which is not really something that he necessarily seems so keen on as he gets older. Amanda, what is it that you respond to? I mean, this to me is a horror movie. This to me is a, like, it is told from the perspective of a young woman who doesn't really know what she's getting herself into. And then everywhere she goes, people are turning on her. And to me, like the very memorable scene from this movie, which I think I was, like I said, I was given this at a very young age. I think I was given the novel, Rebecca, like way, way, way, way too early.

But that's fine. So I was learning a little bit about things from this book and the movie. But this scene in which Laurence Olivier is just like, here's let me tell you really what happened. And this like kind of tortured, loving, but like distant husband who you're like doing everything you possibly can to please. And you're just going to like work any situation at all to try to make this man happy. And then he's like, yes, actually, the problem is I killed my first wife. And you're just like, and that is just, that's a twist that has stayed with me in every single relationship that I've had with a man, romantic or otherwise, you just, you don't

know what's coming. And then, you know, the Mrs. Ambrose character is obviously such a great character and like the visual elements of it. And of course, like the shadow of Rebecca. I think, you know, in terms of a movie being told from a woman's perspective, it's not great what happens to the woman in the movie, but I do find it pretty interesting. And I've thought a lot about it. One of the great films. We're down to the end here. So we all have number ones remaining. We're going to start with you, Wesley, which is your number one is my number five. What is it? It's Vertigo. It's Vertigo. Listen, I would love, I mean, I love Rebecca. I haven't seen Rebecca in a long time. I was going to try to watch it for today, but I didn't get to.

I'm curious to see how I feel about it since I've watched it about six years ago. I think that movie is fantastic. Talk about repression and whatever we mean by the return of the repressed. Fontaine is great. It looks great. The sweep of it, but it also feels like it is of a piece

with a moment in Hollywood and it is a, it is, it is, uh, it's a Hollywood movie that Alfred Hitchcock directed to me. Um, it doesn't feel, it's a great movie period, but is it a great Hitchcock movie? I don't know. I mean, it's got a lot of Hitchcock themes and it's technically perfect. And it's something that plays with the audience a lot. But though all the themes in that movie are explored in a much crazier way to me, a lot of those themes in Vertigo,

where you have, you think that what you're watching is the story of this cop who is convalescing. And what it should be under ordinary circumstances, if like this were a Bob Hope Lucille Ball movie, it would have been about how this cop had an accident and now he's trapped at home with his girlfriend, wife, or whatever.

And she's driving him nuts with this corset business. And he just needs to get out of the house. And so, I mean, I don't know. Who would show up? It would be Rita Hayworth or somebody like that. She'd show up, or maybe not Rita Hayworth. It'd be like, she's too good. She's too big. It'd have to be like Mamie Van Doren or somebody would show up and give him some distraction for a weekend or something. But no, no is dictating him, and doesn't understand how much he's repressed about not only being neurotic, but about his sexuality.

And this figure shows up in the form of, you know, he's chasing this woman and he thinks he's, I mean, I'm not going to lay out the plot of Vertigo, but the ways in which, this isn't quite a side A, side B movie, but it's very close in that, you know, there's a constant in the sides and that's Jimmy Stewart's character, but the movie sort of like flips on itself and becomes this, this other story of obsession. He's, he's like obsessed twice. Um,

and it's the one movie of Hitchcock's that I think is just top to bottom. Perfect. Um, Rebecca is, Rebecca is pretty close. Um, this is, this is a perfect movie,

and it's a perfect Hitchcock movie in that it doesn't matter how many times you watch this film, you are never going to... So Moby is stripped in some ways. You're never going to understand what really happened. Nobody comes and explains anything at the end,

and you are then left with what is hitchcock's greatest character this is scotty officer scotty is great when it like one of his great women in barbara barbara belgetti's mad midge um the symbols are. This corset idea, the brassiere, these things that constrict and hold, but also support that a woman knows instinctively that a man finds sort of like strange and limiting and feminine. The symbols are great. The metaphors are great.

It doesn't matter how many times you watch this movie, you really won't remember how things connect to each other. Every scene and many shots are surprises. If you ask me to tell you the plot of this movie, honestly, I'd fuck something up. And I've seen this movie

15 times, probably. I don't know. It wins the sight and sound poll um i don't know if it wins every if it's one every year but like the last three i think it was either one or two yeah this is the one that unseated citizen kane right yeah and you i i get it i do not want this to be one of those movies that i don't get out of Citizen Kane what I get out of Vertigo, which is just limitlessness in terms of what it is and what it means. And something about the way that he is trying to understand sex and lust and his own issues with being punished for wanting is fascinating.

And just erections and falling off of them and impotence. And it's never metaphorical enough. It's never symbolic enough. I don't know. I just think it is one of the great movies about attraction that I've ever seen. I think the reason that it has been supplanted in the sight and sound polls over the last couple of decades is Citizen Kane is a vision of a filmmaker's take on something. It's Orson Welles' take on power, on the rise of a certain kind of power, on expression, on politics, and on psychology

in some ways, right? On childhood trauma. But it doesn't feel like the essence of Orson Welles' mind and interests. It feels like the best possible iteration of that story, the most sophisticated telling of that story. Vertigo feels like what we understand is in Hitchcock's mind. It feels like he has pushed his thumbprint on the print of the movie. And maybe that's just projection, the same way that there's projections throughout all of his movies. But to me, it feels most like the movie of him trying to capture why he's so obsessed with filmmaking, why he's so obsessed with beauty, why he's so obsessed with desire,

and why he's so obsessed with obsession. And it's technically an amazing movie. It's an incredibly unsatisfying movie the first two or three times that you see it. And I think that's a reason why it's still divisive. I think obviously among cinephiles and critics, it is so hugely admired. But I think among just kind of workaday Hitchcock fans, there's still something kind of impenetrable about it because it ends quite tragically, but abruptly but abruptly i mean the end of that movie is just

like wait where where did the movie go like we're not gonna you're not gonna you're not gonna tell me what what all this was or who scotty really is and i think the one thing that's interesting about it too i was thinking about this as we were talking about north by northwest and psycho and these movies all come in succession he He goes Vertigo, North by Northwest, Psycho, which is insane. It's a major run. It's yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's incredible. And there's a credible kind of Reddit style case that all three of those movies are happening in the mind, their dreams of the main character. That in a way, Roger Thornhill is having a daydream at a boring day of work and that he is a pursued man, or that Norman Bates is fantasizing about his idea of a sexual woman who would come into his life unannounced. But most specifically, the vertigo theory is that

at the very beginning of the movie, when Scotty is pursuing a criminal and leaping from roof to roof, and he leaps onto that roof, and he grabs, and he misses, and he grabs onto the gutter. From that moment forward, there's a theory that the rest of the movie is all in his mind, and that everything else is a manifestation of fear and anxiety and what vertigo provokes inside your mind, which is, you know, forgive the pun, but pretty heady stuff. I mean, that's really the idea that you can read that deeply into something and suggest that is powerful. I never liked the dream interpretation to that because I respect them and I think fine, but it kind of lets the movie... I don't like when you

find out and I feel like this might be a thing that Chris hates. I'm going to predict that Chris hates this too. I don't like when you find out something's a dream. I fucking hate that. I really hate it. And if at the end of Vertigo, Scotty had woken up and been like, oh, that was close. Midge, I love you. Like, it'd be terrible.

And I'm not saying the people who think it's a dream, that's not what they're saying. But I love that the film's reality is the manifestation of, of confusion and suppression, but also like the, the consequences of letting go of what you're suppressing and, and, and holding back. Like, this is what happens when you go for what you want. Um, you get re-traumatized. I don't know. I just, I mean, it is, it is just a, it's a perfect movie. I could watch this tomorrow and be like, wait, everything I said to you guys yesterday, take it back. I have different feelings about

this movie now and I still love it, but it's a totally different movie to me. Also the all-time best Hitchcock score, in my opinion. Bernard Herrmann at the absolute pinnacle of his stuff. Okay, so that's Vertigo. Chris and Amanda share a number one, which is just downright adorable. Who would like to speak first on their number one? Chris, you go ahead. Well, I'll just do this.

I'll just do this. You're a guest. Here's the number one movie. Lisa, Carol, Fremont. You guys probably can't. I just did a bit. I just did a thing where I turned on all my lights.

That was really good. It was very good. It's Rear Window. But Mandy, you go first. You want me to take it? Yeah, you go first. All I had was that bit.

I have no thoughts on Rear Window. That was very good. I think in a lot of ways this is a summation of all of the hitchcock things that we've been talking about for the last like i don't know eight hours at this point but in terms of um psychology and in terms of repression and in terms of um psychodrama and also it's one of the most accessible um like plots and stories you can watch rear window as a story about someone staring at a window and like wanting to know more about their neighbors and then even in terms of like the mcguffin of it all he has to he like is at least like solving a murder and like the murder itself is like a bit ridiculous but you can go from plot a to c a b to c it's like a story and then it just it it works both

on that level and on the level of like we're all creeps who are like sitting here at home uh staring at the rest of the world rather than participating in it, which I think honestly is also a great summation of, uh, or one summation of filmmaking, possibly a more cynical version of, of filmmaking. But I think if vertigo is both like, what is the filmmaking experience and like trying to, um, make peace and also chastise yourself for aspects of it then i think rear window is a little bit about um i don't know admitting or more honestly speaking about the fact that we're all just a little bit perverted and all a little bit interested in what's going on elsewhere um i also think it's a great new york movie a great summer movie a great murder mystery and and great movie star

movie and great movie star movie and probably my favorite of the Grace Kelly performances yeah it's the best oh it's it's it's her but I would say it's her my it's my favorite performance by her yeah for sure yeah Bobby I was gonna say that Bobby should play the interaction between the two of them about the

differences between them when she's sort of spread out on the seat there with her dress and it's just like more glamour shut up for a minute if your opinion is as rude as your manner I don't think I care to hear it

oh come on now simmer down I can't fit in here you can't fit in there I mean according to you people should be born live and die on the same spot shut up also Thelma Ritter in there. I mean, according to you, people should be born, live, and die on the same spot. Shut up! Also, Thelma Ritter.

Like, Thelma Ritter, one of our great, you know, just national treasure. It's not a secret. Everybody who knows Thelma Ritter knows Thelma Ritter's great. She was appreciated in her time, but her contributions to this movie as like, like the opposite of Grace Kelly in terms of like moving

through the other side of the looking glass in some ways. And also just like common sense. I think maybe sometimes I get a little frustrated with Vertigo because it's so self-indulgent. It's like so, so self, you know, self-involved and that, and that is like the power of it in a lot of ways. But in Rear Window, you have several different people providing the different perspectives to Jimmy Stewart of just being like, OK, but actually, like, here is how normal people live or here are how relationships work. And then ultimately, everyone does kind of get sucked into it. As you, Wesley, who pointed out the moment when Grace Kelly is like, okay, yeah, now we're going to get down to business and solve this.

One of the great moments of all time in a movie, I will say. Exactly. And it's more exciting because she's been skeptical about it for a while. I will just say that I can't in good conscience choose Rear Window for my list because my wife's favorite movie of all time is Dial M for Murder. And that's a movie that's probably been on in our home more than any other. And that is definitely her favorite Grace Kelly performance.

And I don't know if it's mine. I mean, that movie is remarkable just for Ray Moland. That's one of the all-time best but I think that you know the work that they did together is pretty amazing and it all comes in succession to write it goes it could dial in for murder and and rear window are in the same year they came out in the same year and then the

following years to catch a thief which is I mean you it's really hard to put this stuff in context like that's pretty amazing yeah and then she was like you know what I is, I mean, it's really hard to put this stuff in context. Like, that's pretty amazing. Yeah. And then she was like, you know what? I'm out. I'm hanging it up.

Right to Monica. She meets Prince Rainier like on this, while she's there filming to catch a thief, which is hilarious or not hilarious, actually,

as it turned out. Yeah. The other thing I wanted to say about Rear Window, just briefly, and this is timely, but definitely a great horror movie. Like in terms of being stuck in the house and looking out in the world and

trying to imagine your place in it, I was like, wow, this is resonating in a new way for me. Yeah. I mean, it is a movie about movie making. It's a movie about movie watching. It's a movie about like the depraved nature of both of those things. There are these moments in other Hitchcock movies where somebody will address the theme of the Hitchcock movie like, well, everybody loves him. Don't you love a murder? Don't you love a terrible death story? Don't we all love... I think Strangers on a Train is maybe the one that keeps hitting that note over and over again about how pleasurable it is to experience these stories of people dying and death. But I think the thing that's appealing about Rear Window is it finds a way to turn that attraction into a very good pop entertainment. And, you know, To Catch a Thief, Rear Window,

and North by Northwest, I think are her, are his three great, like just, just pure pop movies that don't need any of the, the sort of manifestation stuff I've been talking about to, to work. They're just like great contraptions from beginning to end. And they're just a pleasure to, to work. They're just like great contraptions from beginning to end and they're just a pleasure to watch. Yeah, I mean, I would only add

I was reading about the making of the movie last night and I was reading about them taking six weeks to recreate Ninth Street

in the West Village on the Paramount lot. And I was just thinking about the craft that goes into these movies. And every choice is so considered and perfect. And everything from, obviously her costuming is so impeccable,

but just the space that both characters occupy, the way the camera frames them within that space, it's like there's not a single thing that seems superfluous or tossed off but it also never feels worried over and uh that's so so rare in movies because you see a lot of movies that are like self-consciously like kind of weird or like they have these flourishes and every single thing is of a piece in rear window Window. It is a note-perfect piece of culture to me. Yeah, I would agree with that. So one movie left, my number one. It's a movie

that's come up a few times in this conversation, and I have a very specific reason for liking it, which maybe makes me somewhat less than human, but I'm going to share it. One of the things I feel a kinship with hitchcock about is the my absolute cynicism and distrust of people and strangers on a train is perhaps the most acidic movie ever made it is in the deepest depths of doubt and despair of humanity now let's say that that you'd like to get rid of your wife it That's a morbid thought. No, no, no, no, no, no. Just suppose. Let's say that you had a very good reason. Now, let's...

No, no, let's... Let's say that you'd be afraid to kill her. You know why. You'd get caught. And what would trip you up? The motive. Ah. Now, here's my idea.

I'm afraid I haven't got time to listen, Bruce. Listen. It's so simple, too. Two fellows meet accidentally, like's my idea. I'm afraid I haven't got time to listen, Bruce. Listen. It's so simple, too. Two fellows meet accidentally, like you and me. No connection between them at all. Never saw each other before. Each one has somebody that he'd like to get rid of. So, they swap murders. Swap murders?

Each fellow does the other fellow's murder then there's nothing to connect them each one has murdered a total stranger like you do my murder i do yours coming into my and it also features the union of two pretty incredible people who've you know um have a lot in common but not everything in common and that's alfred hitchcock and patricia highsmith and strangers on a train is highsmith's first novel. And I would say not her best based on the books that I've read, but it does something that so many of her great books do,

which is that it's very easy to explain what the movie is about in two sentences. Just like it's very easy to explain what her novels are about in two sentences, but that very rarely captures the depths of the story. And Strangers on a Train is a movie that all you need to do is watch the first three minutes and it all walks in. It's just incredible what he accomplishes in a very small window of time to

get you invested in the story between these two men. And they, they're maybe agreed upon, maybe not agreed upon pact to commit murder for one another. And even though this movie is not the most beautiful to look at Hitchcock film, it's black and white is not in that incredible technical crisp. I mean,

but again, pleasurable, pleasurable, like it's crispness both, you know, visually and also in its, in its editing and the framing. Yeah,

it's tight. That's, that's, that's, that's exactly what I was going to say. It's, it's a, it's a, it's a diamond That's it. That's exactly what I was going to say. It's a diamond, the way that he shaped it.

And it's propulsive, and it's got incredible set pieces, and it's got all of that dread, particularly in the first murder, the murder of the Miriam character, when we watch Bruno track her through the carnival. Punished for wearing glasses. It's just brutal. Or is she punished for being a bad person and

withholding the divorce from the character? That's the thing. Every character in this movie is guilty. They're guilty of something that, you know, Anne is guilty of trying to break up a marriage. You know, there's a vanity going on with Farley Granger's character that is, there's a kind of lack of seriousness that he's being punished for. It's a really brutalist movie about how Hitchcock sees people. And a lot of this conversation we've been having is like, you know, does he like his characters? Is he, you know, purely a machinist who's moving chess pieces around? This to me feels like the banging gavel on what he thinks about human relationships. And maybe that's not a necessarily healthy reason for loving it, but I do love it for that reason. In 1951, at the absolute height

of Eisenhower post-war, let's put America's decent face on and grow the suburbs. This is what Alfred Hitchcock saw in America. That's just amazing to me. And what America wanted to see in itself, it was a huge hit. Yes. So that's it. I mean, are there any stray movies you guys didn't get to talk about that you want to just give any shout outs to? I will say that the opening sequence

in the 34 version of The Man Who Knew Too Much, because Hitchcock made that movie twice, once in 34 and once in 56 with Jimmy Stewart. The opening, that's, do you guys remember this? There's a shot on the slopes. Not a shot, it's a sequence. And it's like, it opens on the slopes in San Moritz. And this is when there's a blackout, right?

Is it a, it's such a blur. Like, no, it's just like, there's an accident. There's a, there's a blackout, right? Is it a, it's such a blur. Like, no, it's just like, there's an accident. There's a, there's a- You're thinking, aren't you thinking of 39 Steps? No, no, no. Similar, but this is just, this is not a plot thing. Well, it is a little bit, but like the opening sequence is just like,

there's some kind of like physical altercation that like is like somebody uh skiing into a crowd or something and you know there's a lot of kerfuffle but the way that it is represented in in the montage is just exhilarating eisensteinian you know catch it while your eyes can grab it sort of um free-for-. And it's unlike the only time I can think that he's got to see, you know, the sequence like that, I guess, um, suspicion, um, and then psycho, the shout, the, the, the shower sequence where like the images are coming at you so fast that you can't keep up with them, but it's very brief. And it's the only moment in

the movie where that's the case. But I love that. CR, anything you want to shout out here? I'll just shout out the British stuff on Criterion right now. The Criterion Channel stuff. Oh, that's on that. Yeah. Yeah, so I just love those early, not early early, but like that 30s era.

I think 39 Steps and Lodger and a couple other things around there. So, I mean, there's not a lot of bad Hitchcock movies. Yeah, it's hard. We basically just completely skipped over the 1930s, even though some of his most acclaimed movies happened then. Because the 50s and 60s movies are so powerful and so iconic that it feels strange to have a conversation like this

without them being the centerpiece. Amanda, anything you want to cite? Yeah, and speaking of the 30s, I did have 39 Steps on my honorable mentions, and I didn't put it on the list just because it has a lot of similarities with North by Northwest. And at the end of the day, Northwest is the same movie on a much grander scale with Cary Grant, but 39 Steps still plays. That movie was made in 1935. That is wild. Like if I rewatched it last week and it could be made now,

just in terms of how I think, and like the cleverness of the script and the movement and the, and how it keeps going, just like a delight. I think that's true of so many of the movies we've named. They, they, they play to this day.

There are so few films that hold up 80, 70, 60 years later. Wesley, Chris, Amanda, thank you so much for this marathon of this orgy of Hitchcock thoughts. I appreciate it. Thanks, Sean. Thanks for having us. Thank you.