Hitchcock's humor

Rating: 6/10 (7 July 2009)

This is a suspense; which, of course, is an interesting place to talk about Hitchcock's sense of humor. James Stewart's, Thelma Ritter's (the no-nonsense nurse, God bless her soul), and, lo behold, even Grace Kelly's! Which makes me wonder why Chinese movies can be funny, but are generally not very humorous. Humor is not a lipstick that is applied at the last moment, to lighten things up. As the New Yorker film critic Anthony Lane puts it, humor in movies should be "something that is already there---a luminous, natural coloring under the thrills, a blush in the very notion of romance". That's why the comic moments in Chinese movies always strike me as contrived, as carefully--but separately--planned, like in Sad, really.