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Put a Hitch in your getalong with Filmmakers' Hitchcock series

01.10.11

October is the month to put a Hitch in your getalong to the Regent Square Theater for Pittsburgh Filmmakers ' Sunday night series, "Hitchcock: Across the Pond." Before he was lured to Hollywood in 1939, the Master of Suspense had a successful, decade-long directing career in England. Two of those early pictures are particular gems, and two others made later in America seem particularly "British."

All four on hand are worth your time and trip to Braddock Avenue. What else are you doing at 8 p.m. Sunday, anyway, except dreading Monday morning?

"There is no suspense in a bang, only in the anticipation of it," declared the cinema's supreme technician, whose flair for visual storytelling, the moving image and emotional manipulation have never been bettered. His English films were as playful and facetious as the Yankee entries, with trademark moments of dark fear and sexual menace.

The main quartet on tap:

• Sunday : "The 39 Steps" (1935, UK): Mistaken identity was a favorite, recurring Hitchcock theme. When a frantic Mata Hari is murdered in his apartment, dashing Robert Donat gets dragged into an international spy-ring plot to steal state secrets. He sets off for Scotland to work on the mystery and on his snappy repartee with cool blonde Madeleine Carroll. Their memorable banter (while handcuffed in bed) set the bickering mode for sophisticated romantic mysteries of the future. "What chance of escape have you got, tied to me?" she asks. "Good question for your husband -- you're the white man's burden," he replies. The adaptation by Alma Reville (Hitchcock's talented wife) includes the deliciously sexy removal of Carroll's stockings, a man with a missing finger and the pivotal character of Mr. Memory (Wylie Watson). The bravura climax in a London music hall is a harbinger of bravura crowded-theater finales to come in "The Man Who Knew Too Much" and "Torn Curtain." (93 minutes)

Source: Pittsburgh Post Gazette