Glorious excess

Rating: 10/10 (3 June 2006)

This picture and I are the same age, and I would like to think that I have worn equally as well over the years. Give a genius a big enough budget, and let him create! Hitchcock wasn't content with any ordinary house to be the villain's headquarters -- it had to be a specially-constructed Frank Lloyd Wright house, on a studio set. And why Mount Rushmore? I've spent years thinking about why he chose that one. Did Ernest Lehman write a script and submit it to Hitchcock, or did Hitchhock go to Lehman and say, "Write me a script with these elements"? Or did they meet in a room and collaborate? There is lots of money being spent in lots of places. Hitchcock couldn't just film in a grove of trees -- again, it had to be on a perfectly-controlled studio set, where I would imagine every tree was placed exactly correct. I can think of entire movies being shot on the budget it must have taken to create that forest. So sit back and relax and be entertained. I still marvel at the dinner table scene between Roger and Eve, the dialogue timed perfectly with the action outside the window as the train slows down, stops, and two policemen get out of a car. Beautiful scene, like clockwork.