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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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The Breakthrough: The Toll of the Sea (1922)

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No matter how often I watch Anna May Wong in her first starring role, no matter how much I prepare myself for the, let’s face it, racism, and no matter how much I say “it was a different time” (I refuse to say that’s an adequate excuse), I find myself both moved by AMW’s performance in itself, but also, for what it represents in the broader scheme of her career. It’s a tough little film.  Essentially, it’s   Madame Butterfly   transposed to China, but without the “hero” realizing he’d made a mistake and that he truly loved Butterfly, or in this case, “Lotus Flower.” No, Allen Carver here is a dolt whose wife pushes him to see Lotus Flower and clear things up. Let’s be clear; there are so many things wrong and not to just 21st century eyes about this film (and for that matter, Puccini’s opera, and the source material before it). I’ll get to all that in due course, but for the uninitiated, the film’s plot is simple and direct. An American man is washed up on the rocky shore...
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First Watch (in the theater) of 2026: A Return and Farewell to Stranger Things

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It’s been awhile since I wrote about the Netflix phenomenon Stranger Things . The main idea was to look at the series as a long-form narrative film, where that one - or others like it - had a definite end in sight as stated by the show runners. I touched on Twin Peaks: the Return later, but for the most part, I don’t review or analyze series here. That said, the first theatrical experience I’ve had this year is the series finale to Stranger Things , Stranger Things: the Rightside Up . This time, I’m treating it like a film because it got a cinematic relearn and I think it deserves a look as the series has maintained a significant cultural profile. The monkey wrench is that it is just one episode from a series and therefore, were I to do a recap, I would be here far longer than I care to be. Instead, I’m going to critique it like any other film based on thematic and narrative content but without much in the way of describing the action; so  - SPOILERS. One fo the primary issues wi...
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