Ace in the Hole - MatthewHunt

Vertigo's present prominence within Hitchcock's oeuvre contrasts very pleasingly with the
obscurity in which it languished for many decades after its disappointing critical reception in
1958. It simply disappeared for 25 years. If you didn't know a film collector with a bashed-up,
bleached-out 16mm college-circuit print, or know someone archive-savvy at Paramount or
MCA, then you probably had to wait until its re-release in 1983 to see what all the fuss was
about. The simultaneous reissue of five of his Technicolor American films - two of them,
Vertigo and Rear Window, certifiable masterpieces - seemed at the time a characteristically
Hitchcockian publicity gambit, guaranteeing massive attention for the quintet. And of course
you felt like he was speaking to you from beyond the grave, which would have put a smile on
his great, pinkly beaming face. And Vertigo - the lost jewel of legend finally disinterred -
proved worth the long wait. Now it enjoys the esteem it always deserved, being often cited as
one of the enduring masterpieces of world cinema, and one of Hitchcock's foremost
achievements. As dreamlike as anything by Buñuel, and quite as fetishy, it tells the same
story two times: a man twice falls in love with a woman who isn't there, and twice he causes
her death, the first time by abetting her murder; the second time destroying her sense of
herself and, with it, his own soul. James Stewart gave his darkest, most disturbing
performance, Kim Novak showed depths she never plumbed again, and Hitchcock's technical
skills and formal gifts were never more eerily displayed.
John Patterson
Victim
(Basil Dearden, 1961)
Dirk Bogarde, the "Idol of the Odeons" of 1950s Britain, here transcended his pretty-boy
reputation and hinted at his own sexuality by playing a homosexual barrister under the
shadow of blackmail. More important as an adjunct to the then forthcoming Woffinden Report,
perhaps, but still a highly compelling drama.
Videodrome
(David Cronenberg, 1983)
In hiring the young James Woods, Cronenberg had for the first time an actor who could
breathe life into his dialogue; he really needed a fine actor to ground this one as it presents
some of his most out-there ideas. Woods' sleazy cable station owner is lost in a hallucinatory
world of breathing videocassettes, biomechanical guns, cancerous eruptions of flesh and
conspiracies. TV is to blame.
Village of the Damned
(Wolf Rilla, 1960)
With nothing more spectacular than a few blonde wigs and occasional glowing-eye special
effects, this flab-free film manages to portray one of the creepiest alien invasions ever.
Staging the invasion in the middle of families - in the womb, even - adds a disturbing and
claustrophobic level to the usual paranoia that is hard to shake off.
Violent Cop
(Takeshi Kitano, 1990)
"Beat" Takeshi's directorial breakthrough stars himself, of course, as a blank, bullish cop
dealing with his problems very, very badly. As he strides around a grey, cluttered Tokyo in
search of drug pushers and crooked feds, there are lots of eerie existential pauses followed
by increasingly nasty confrontations, very few of which end well. Quietly, brutally brilliant.
Viridiana
(Luis Buñuel, 1961)
Invited back to his native, now-Fascist Spain in 1960, Bunuel threw his hosts' (inarguably
foolhardy) kindness back in their collective faces with this outrageous satire of the goodly
deeds of a naive novitiate (Sylvia Pinal) cast into the secular realm. It threw the Spanish
Catholic establishment into uproar, causing Franco to burn all copies.
Vivre Sa Vie
(Jean-Luc Godard, 1962)