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OKAY, OKAY: IT’S OSCAR TIME

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I think over the years I’ve expressed how phlegmatic I am about the Academy Awards (TM). I don’t hate them, but each year I find them increasingly irrelevant to the merits (or lack thereof) of the films they reward with the little gold guy. I’m way too long in the tooth to think that an Oscar Winner means much other than this is what some members of the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences came up with. Most of the voters are actors, but credit where it is due, I’m often pleasantly surprised at some of the technical awards that are given out, but even there, meh. I’m not necessarily awards-averse. However, I find that festival awards are better litmus tests for figuring out the quality of any given film than, say, the Big Game on Sunday Night. All of this said, this year’s awards are pretty solid. There really isn’t much I have to complain about in terms of nominees and regardless of who wins, I’ll be okay with it. If I’m being honest, I haven’t had a real issue with who’s got ...
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30s Hitch: Hitchcock’s Theories of Music in Film and Waltzes from Vienna (1934)

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This was a pleasant surprise that I was dreading. I have actively avoided watching Waltzes from Vienna because Hitchcock himself was so dismissive of it later in life(1) and pretty much hated the filming process. However, it turns out to be a fairly light entertainment and in terms of Hitchcock’s evolution, more significant than he would let on later in his life.  Despite Hitchcock’s later dismissal of the film, it proved to be a pivotal work for him, at least in regards to the use of music in film. I’m going to quote extensively from an interview conducted in Cinema Quarterly, Winter 1933-1934 with Stephen Watts for two reasons. The first is to demonstrate that this film did have more importance to Hitch than he let on later (even if it might be for purely formal purposes) and also because his remarks on music in film are in themselves worth looking at for what music meant to Hitchcock specifically, but also, its place in early sound film history . Hitchcock’s reflections on t...
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