I’d seen an awful print of this years ago on television and wasn’t particularly impressed; the sharpness of the Criterion restoration foregrounds the ugliness a little more forcefully. That showing was also, I think, missing the murderous protagonist Mark slumping, spent, after seeing the climax of the filmed killing that starts the movie. I’m going to guess that that particular shot was instrumental in provoking a lot of the hostility with which the film was met.
Still a disturbing film, and one that obviously made a big impression on Scorsese (who championed its restoration) and De Palma (who built Raising Cain atop the protagonist’s backstory)
I’m embarrassed to say I’ve seen nothing else of Michael Powell’s; I’m interested in seeing The Red Shoes.
I couldn’t place Anna Massey at first and then realized that she’d gone on to figure prominently in Hitchcock’s Frenzy.
I thought the finale was not as well-staged as it could have been - not to give anything away, but something is shown to happen but doesn’t look as though it’s really happening.
Mark sometimes looks eerily like a certain M. Sellez.
What I learned from this film
“All this filming isn’t healthy”
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