Streaming Shuffle
Sometimes a chef famous for rare steak and complicated soufflés will also make a pretty good casserole.
The Manxman1 is an Alfred Hitchcock movie that, unlike his masterpieces, didn’t need to be made by Alfred Hitchcock. Hitchcock himself was dismissive of the picture: it didn’t feel like it belonged to him. But he was a cinematic craftsman as well as a visionary, and even when he was indifferent towards or uninspired by his material, he could make art out of it. This is a poignant, painful, well-made film.
The film (the last of Hitchcock’s silent era) takes place on the Isle of Man, where the social classes intermingle and we’re all friends here, really, but some of us are respectable, so we have to think of our positions, but you get that, right? Happy-go-lucky fisherman Pete (Carl Brisson) and on-the-rise lawyer Philip (Malcolm Keen) are old friends—just like brothers, though you wonder if Philip’s aunt would be able to pick Pete out of a crowd. They’re both in love with the effervescent Kate (Anny Ondra), who works at her father’s pub. Pete is open about his feelings; Philip isn’t.
There’s a fundamental reserve to Keen’s performance that contrasts well with Brisson’s puppyish neon sign of a face; Ondra is somewhere between the two, legible to the camera but not to the men in her life. Pete can’t read Kate—though, touchingly, it’s out of a naïve belief that he can take her at her word and she’d tell him if he couldn’t, not because he’s overwritten her with a fantasy—and Philip won’t. He’s afraid to, because understanding her would create the pressure to act, to answer. Deep down, he knows she won’t go with the family legacy that’s already laid out for him like a suit of clothes.
Pete wants to marry Kate, but he’s so poor that her stern, finger-wagging father won’t even hear of it.2 Undaunted, Pete makes a late-night appeal at Kate’s window: they’ll promise themselves to each other now, he’ll go away and make his fortune, and they can marry when he gets back.
It’s one of the earliest demonstrations of what expressive, subtle acting Ondra can do without a single word. A whole story unfolds on her face in this scene, but three especially key details are the beat of confusion and (barely checked) disappointment when she realizes that this rendezvous is with Pete alone, with Philip only along so Pete can stand on his shoulders; the way she briefly succumbs to the romance of Pete’s pitch, swept up in it all for a split second that is, unfortunately, still long enough to agree; and the way her giddiness fades as she sees an excited Pete telling Philip about it. She knows what she’s done. Of the three of central characters, Kate is by far the best at understanding herself, accepting the weight of her actions, knowing both the grandiosity and occasional ugliness of her feelings. It makes her the dramatic center of The Manxman, despite the film’s title.
Pete asks Philip to look after Kate while he’s gone, a strategy that has never worked out for any man in any movie, and probably not for any man in real life, either. Kate’s infatuation soon turns into a deeper love: Hitchcock portrays this by letting the film flip through her diary, which sounds like it would be cumbersome but actually feels like a graceful and beautifully concise bit of storytelling. When they get the news that Pete has died at sea, Kate’s reaction is both understandable and chilling: “Philip—we’re free.” In the most Hitchcockian scene in the movie and a call-forward to the train going into the tunnel in North by Northwest, they consummate their relationship in the mill while the camera lingers on the millstones grinding together.3
But Pete isn’t dead. Soon enough, he’s home, financially secure, and sure that his best friend and fiancée will be delighted to see him.
The Manxman leans into the agony of its love triangle, wringing every drop of fraught, angsty drama it can out of its scenario without resorting to anything farfetched: there’s nothing in the second half that isn’t satisfactorily set up and explained by the first. Outside the one contrivance of Pete’s “rumors of my death have been greatly exaggerated” adventure, this all evolves naturally and with a bitter inevitability. It’s three people, none with particularly bad intentions, hurting each other to the point of despair and all getting tragically refined and reforged in the process. With some starkly gorgeous Cornish scenery thrown in as lagniappe.
The Manxman is now streaming on Amazon Prime, Tubi, and Kanopy.
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Lauren James
Lauren James is a writer who wears many different hats (and pen names). She lives in Connecticut with her wife and two cats.
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Conversation
I wrote about one of Hitchcock’s non-thrillers for Looper, considered one of his worst, way back in 2021: https://www.looper.com/600117/is-this-alfred-hitchcocks-worst-film-of-all-time/ It is funny to think of THE auteur as a guy doing work for hire stuff or whatever caught his fancy.
As soon as you said this, I thought, “I bet it’s Juno and the Paycock,” and SURE ENOUGH.
I’m even a Sean O’Casey casual fan but can imagine the mix not meshing well!
I feel like this happened once or twice even when he became THE Alfred Hitchcock. I don’t really get the sense that he’s all that invested in Dial M for Murder other than the actual murder scene (and maybe playing around with 3D). And for a lead-in to the famously personal Vertigo, To Catch a Thief is a pretty snoozy caper film where I think his only touch is cutting to fireworks during a makeout session to hint at hanky-panky.
I’ve seen a chunk of the latter, it sure is snoozy.
To Catch Some Z’s, amirite?
I love Dial M. But it’s very much an experiment (like Rope).
Also, he didn’t have to work hard on these films. He had Grace Kelly.
Funny, I thought that ELSTREE CROSSING or WALTZES OF VIENNA took the prize.
I’m intermittently re-watching Hitchcock thrillers in chronolofical order at the moment, and during the pandemic I tried to watch all of them but even under stay at home conditions the thought of watching more stuff like DOWNHILL and THE FARMER’S DAUGHTER proved too daunting. THE RING, while a fight picture rather than a thriller, contains a number of Hitchcockian motifs, and RICH AND STRANGE is interesting as a kind of fusion of F. Scott Fitzgerald and Evelyn Waugh.
What did we watch?
High and Low — it sounds like Kurosawa and company changed a decent amount from the Ed McBain novel but the McBain vibes are still extremely strong here, particularly in the procedural second half. While this is long it’s full of dramatic action and desperation. I am guessing the main change is the depiction of the cops here, no one is corrupt or technically incompetent but there is a real sense of these guys missing the bigger picture — the dramatic action in the first half belongs to Mifune and Kurosawa’s god-level blocking continually highlights the cops’ silence and inaction on his moral dilemma, which is really not a dilemma at all and Mifune knows it, but they won’t tell him. And in the second half … well, they let a woman get killed, right? George V. Higgins would pick this up in The Rat On Fire, the “we need to string this out to really nab the guy” gone bad, but here it is openly bloodthirsty (prison sentence vs. death penalty) and guess what, more blood is spilled. Very grim stuff and I think it is somewhat backgrounded by our killer looking like an avatar of death himself, those sunglasses glowing with an inner inhuman light. But at the very end it’s just him and Mifune and another work of potential influence comes to mind — this is Frank Grimes staring down Homer Simpson, only Grimes is both more vicious and more accurate in his assessment of the oppressor and Homer knows it. And there’s nothing more to say.
As good as Kurosawa’s samurai stuff is, I wish he’d done more contemporary / noir kinda stuff because I love him in that mode.
A little stray cat ran into my house and is living in my bathroom so I only had time to finish off the Superman “World’s Finest” 3-parter. A lot of fun and is obviously in 66 minutes versus 2.5 hours a far better Batman/Superman story than Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice (that stupid subtitle…). That movie has to manufacture a lot of the dramatic tension between the characters where this gets how the contrasting modus operandi creates friction as well as works well together. (Where Batman can’t knock down a wall, Superman can blow through it, if Superman can see through Bats’ mask, well, Batman can put a tracer on him, etc.) Not exactly a crazy take that the Timmverse understands the characters and Snyder does not*.
*Snyder sort of gets Batman but he is clearly baffled by Superman and projects a lot of Randian lonely individualist bullshit onto a good-natured hero.
Lois and Bruce/Batman is just such an interesting idea that I’m surprised no one ever did it before this. I have to wonder if Dana Delaney clearly meshing well with the late great Kevin Conroy previous in Mask of the Phantasm was one reason they took this route. Though I would add that there’s really not much commitment on S:TAS to Lois and Clark/Superman.
Oh totally, they make sense as a competent, high-powered power couple in theory, and it adds some color and dramatic irony to the dichotomy when Bruce comments, “She’s crazy about Bruce Wayne and Superman – it’s the other guys she’s not sure about.” The way they stretch out Lois and Superman works well for a TV show or, say, a comic book (though I know they’re married at this point).
Despite DC’s own efforts in one poorly received reboot, Lois and Clark have been married since 1996. There are still stories set before the wedding, but fair to say that the fans want them to be married. I expect following a TV that started with them married, we will see them married in the movies pretty fast.
What does Wally think of this? (The stray, I mean… although I wouldn’t be against hearing his thoughts on “World’s Finest” if he has any).
She’s more not into him which always happens when female cats come in the house, I swear to god. It’s gonna make him a cat incel somehow, but I’m keeping them separated.
“New cat, into the bathroom. Wally, into the Friend Zone. Now!”
Wooooo live stray cats!!
The X-Files, “Beyond the Sea” and “Gender Bender”
“Beyond the Sea” is a gorgeous episode, The Exorcist III (hi, Brad Dourif!) redone with a more wistful, bittersweet edge … and a dash of Silence of the Lambs. Dourif is, as usual, flawlessly intense, making Boggs a spitty, sweaty, damp-eyed presence who grabs and holds attention; it feels like he’s a hermit crab moving in and out of his shell, retreating when he needs to regroup, but always coming back full force. Sometimes he’s a con artist (and killer) desperately trying to stay alive, sometimes he’s a kind of charismatic minister and prophet, sometimes he has a sense of transcendence. He’s always doing something, and because he’s Brad Dourif, it’s always great.
But no matter how magnetic he is, this is Scully’s episode, as she gets an unsettling premonition of her father’s death–Don Davis in the armchair, his lips moving with no sound coming out, is very Twin Peaksian, unsurprisingly–and then spends the rest of the episode grappling with her still-raw loss and how it opens her up to, for the first time, want to believe. (In a nice but not overplayed role reversal, Mulder is the skeptic this episode: it’d be bad if it felt arbitrary, but having him be the one who wrote Boggs’s profile gives it a sturdy rationale.) I’d say she gets a tiny bit too openly emotional with Boggs at one point, but aside from that, it all feels real and is beautifully handled. Maybe Gillian Anderson’s best episode so far: all the vulnerability is perfectly portrayed, and her incandescent fury when she thinks Boggs might have gotten Mulder killed is incredible.
When I see an episode of ’90s TV titled “Gender Bender,” I’m a little on my guard about where this is going to go, but “Gender Bender” was … surprisingly chill on that front? It helps that neither Mulder nor Scully delve into what any of this morphing means for Marty’s (or the rest of the Kindred’s) identity–they mostly stay focused on the case, and while they’re surprised by where it goes, there’s no sense of revulsion or oh-so-wacky shock. Not bad. And even aside from all that, it’s a solid episode, with an intriguing mystery and some good science fictional details (the pheromones, the clay). Honestly, aliens disguising themselves as knockoff Amish makes sense.
The show consistently makes Mulder a skeptic in the face of any religious stuff and Scully more cautiously a believer – I think it’s mainly done for the irony, but these characters are so strong that it works for me. Mulder’s skepticism in religious stuff is heavily tinged with bitterness, where his emotions actually do get the better of him for once, and the same is really true for Scully where she becomes indecisive, but in a believable and compelling way. I forget the precise episode, but there’s a sequence later on where she ends up following a series of signs from God in a chase sequence that I love.
I like the balance, that Scully’s normally the skeptic but her faith is so strong, and Mulder’s willing to believe in anything but religion.
Speaking as a Pennsylvanian, being an alien on Earth and pretending to be Amish or Mennonite makes so much sense. Nobody would ever bother you, let alone make you interact with other people.
Beyond the Sea was the first 10/10 on my X-Files spreadsheet! Wonderful episode.
Justified, Season Two, Episode Four, “For Blood Or Money”
Classic Justified. Rachel carries the weight of the episodic story, and indeed, Raylan’s plots end up feeling like both a necessary series of scenes advancing the season’s plot and like a way to keep the main character in the episode; he’s mainly observing, even in those. Clinton’s whole story is amazing; the first scene with him feels like a short film all in itself with the theme of authoritarianism failing. Orlando is like a negative print of Raylan, all force and violence even when he means well, treating Clinton like an idiot child instead of a fellow person. Everything Orlando does is just escalating the conflict between him and Clinton, making him feel stupid and powerless. In the longer sense, everything Clinton does is an emotional decision, even right up to the end when he chooses redemption and kindness with his son – effectively taking responsibility when he sees his own child in front of him.
I practically cheered when I saw Chadwick Boseman’s name in the opening credits, and I was delighted when he got the most Leonardian character doing the most Leonardian things in the episode. From a purely plot perspective, his character is almost nothing; Clinton steals his car and then he shows up at the end. It’s the load of details that make him memorable; the fact that he wants to be a gangsta, the fact that Clinton (accidentally!) shoots him in the hand, ruining that dream, and even the late reveal that his car had a load of drugs in it when Clinton stole it. The Shield shows that you don’t need any details to make a story work; Justified shows it can help if you do it right.
The scene with Gary verged on a Michael Scott scene. The difference is that Gary is perfectly capable of having a real conversation, he just keeps getting caught up in the idea of a person. Much like Michael, he even has a level of competence he’s actually quite good in; as both Raylan and Winona imply, his insight to get divorced to protect Winona is quite a good one, he just happens to benefit from it in a brownie points and self-image kind of way. Actually, you could think of it as a Vic Mackey move too.
It’s a small note, but I love that Mags isn’t quite as emotionally stable as she seems to believe she is, and it strikes me as a very deliberate choice by both writers and Margo Martindale to present her that way. Limited material success can tend to make a person think they’ve achieved spiritual success. There is a core of insecurity to Mags that she’s never quite confronted.
Question: does Walton Goggins look hot in hornrimmed glasses, or does he look hot in anything? Answer: the first one, because Lee Russell is not hot.
Biggest Laugh: “Are you wearing pants? […] I suppose there’s no reason to get up.”
Top Ownage: Whipping out a gun and declaring, “I’m an associate of none-a-ya-god-damn business.”
I feel like everyone’s hotness benefits from glasses, honestly. There are a few X-Files scenes where Mulder is in glasses, and every time, my wife and I both wind up saying, “Unf,” at the same time at how good he looks.
Compromise position: Walton Goggins is innately hot in anything, he’s just such a committed actor that he sometimes chooses to turn that off for the role.
That’s a great point about Mags, and I think it’s really key to her character. It also has to have an impact on her that she’s smart enough to know that she’s failed as a parent, that none of her sons are able to either run or definitively walk away from the empire she’s created: she wants to be embedded in a place, and stay embedded in it, leaving a legacy behind, but right now she feels alone.
“I feel like everyone’s hotness benefits from glasses, honestly”
Agreed! I cannot explain why but glasses are crazy hot.
I cracked up laughing at Raylan’s reaction when Winona tells him about Gary’s divorce pitch: the slight eyebrow raise of approval at the smart move being made, but also the tiny smile because it’s Gary and the fact that it’s a move is so transparent.
The Thin Man Goes Home – The fifth in the series, the first after the death of original director WS Van Dyke, and the only one filmed during WWII as Myrna Loy would have preferred to focus on volunteer work but the studio insisted. Home for Nick Charles turns out to be small town America (and unsurprisingly but still disappointingly not in a neighborhood of Greek immigrants since Nick in the novel is Greek). And while Nick for some reason has decided to go on vacation to see his somewhat estranged dad, work of course follows him and there’s soon a dead body at the door. The exurban setting (and the lack of drinking since it was wartime and everyone should be sober) don’t serve anyone well, but the mystery is pretty good, even if there are loose ends. And Powell and Loy are never anything but great. (Weirdly, Nick and Nora go to visit without their kid, who apparently would rather go to school. The grandparents don’t seem even a little upset.)
The Practice, “Trial and Error” – I suspect that the titles IMDb is using for the first season are not real titles. That is way too on the nose for even David E. Kelley. Main case: Bobby has been hired for a wrongful death suit by the grieving father of a woman killed by her boyfriend, and we watch a lawyer even more conniving than Bobby defend the killer. Second case: the suit against Big Tobacco, and Bobby has decided to let Lindsey try the case. Third case: the guy who exposed himself in the pilot is back. Plus Jimmy joins the firm, and Rebecca yells at Bobby for yelling at her. This show is hard to write about because it’s constantly serialized. Maybe I will move recaps to the Captain’s Log and just do highlights. Guests include Jane Kaczmarek (DA), John C. McGinley (judge), and Arye Gross (rabbi).
I wanted to dislike this Thin Man because it’s so strait-laced and conventional compared to the lush looseness of the original. But there’s just too much to love. Nora for once letting the mask drop and coming to Nick’s defense, the scene where they push through the train crowd, and especially the gag where Nora is shadowing someone and pretends to be a window shopper, but the window she stops at is a barber bishop and all the guys come out to hit on her.
The scene on the train made no sense to me till I saw that of course the train is packed, there are fewer trains for civilians, don’t know there’s a war on? (The whole film is a time capsule of the time, down to the murder weapon being a Japanese sniper gun brought home as a souvenier.)
China Moon (1994): a fast-paced neo noir with great performances by Ed Harris, Madeleine Stowe, and a youthful-looking Benicio del Toro. The double cross(es) has layers of complexity, and, in part, exploits a guy’s creepy behavior. But the directing seems rather uninspired; maybe that’s why, after being filmed in 1991, it was shelved for three years.
Postscript: I wanted to make sure to cover a Hitchcock film this week so I’d have an excuse to mention that, starting tomorrow, I’ll also be doing weekly articles recapping and reviewing Alfred Hitchcock Presents! (And eventually other classic anthology shows as well, but at one episode a week, I’ll be on AHP for, uh, quite a while.) If anyone wants to follow along, the first episode is “Revenge.”
/end of blatant self-promotion
Maybe I can finally get myself to watch. Every time I try, I do one episode and then forget it.
The perils of completely standalone episodes!
I played Funeral March for a Marionette as my solo piece in high school.
It’s such a fiendishly catchy bit of music.
Ooh that sounds fun. UK streaming options seem appalling but the DVDs are pretty cheap…
I’ve picked up the DVDs myself–a lot of the classic Roald Dahl episodes like “Lamb to the Slaughter” and “Man from the South” are inexplicably missing from streaming, and that situation could not be borne.
Ah nice, that’s good info! I have picked up a cheap copy of season one and will join the party when it arrives!
Great episode! This is good incentive for me to finally check out more – I’ve seen some here and there. Maybe too early to get into this but from what I’ve seen it looks like The Twilight Zone was the writers’ show, AHP was for directors.
Oh, that’s an interesting question that I’ll have to think about. I know there are a couple TZ episodes that stand out to me partly for their direction, but I’d generally agree that the writing is what steers it all. I’ll have to ponder the AHP side of it more, but that would make sense. (And it checks out as a division based on the skill-sets of the people who set the tone for it all, with Serling as a writer and Hitch as a director.)
Oh, yeah, the prequel to The Irishman.
Little baby De Niro throwing a tantrum but still moving like a 70-year-old.
After an unexpected delay, I’m ready to reschedule Happ Hour! after the holiday weekend. Tuesday July 8th of next week works for me. How does that work for eeveryone else?
I’m good.
Now that I’m back at work I can only do Thursday nights your time (my Friday day). But I’ve had a good run of being able to attend so if Tuesday works for everyone else please go ahead without me!
Thursdays usually work for me but next week I’m on jury duty and can’t vouch for my time. I’m glad to see you back to work.
“It makes her the dramatic center of The Manxman, despite the film’s title.“
Maybe The Manxwoman didn’t fit on the poster?