My favorite movies were made by Alfred Hitchcock.  My favorite columns are written by Mark Steyn.  When the two collide, blogs at rjmoeller.com happen.

Steyn is an eclectic guy, and his expertise wide-ranging.  In a recent post on his website (steynonline.com) he honored the star of one of Hitch's best flicks: Farley Granger who played the leading role in Strangers on a Train.

Strangers on a Train | Farley Granger | Robert Walker | Movie Trailer | Review

Steyn posits:

Strangers On A Train is the film in which Hitchcock's fascination with duality - with doubles and double-crossing and crossing one's double - is most fruitfully explored. But it benefits from especially expert casting. Originally, William Holden was scheduled for the role of Guy Haines, but he turned it down and, as Hitch subsequently explained, he would have been all wrong. There is undoubtedly a homoerotic frisson to the weird relationship between Guy and the dissolute Bruno and the latter's concoction of a double-murder scheme to bind them together. Robert Walker's Bruno is the performance you remember - lurid, simpering, creepy, insinuating. But Farley Granger's rendering of Guy as bland, passive and insipid is absolutely critical to the balance of the film. An actor as strong as Holden would have ruined the focus and the symmetry. Hitchcock understood better than most directors then or now that few films can recover from casting.

Sixty years after Strangers On A Train, Hitchcock’s position seems more assured than ever. Even the unique if eccentric tribute of Gus van Sant's shot-for-shot remake of Psycho had been prefigured by the remakes of 1950s episodes of the Alfred Hitchcock TV series: they junked the old squaresville black-and-white actors, and re-shot them with hip full-color casts, replacing everybody except Hitchcock, whose arch 30-year old intros were left as is. But Strangers remains one of his most satisfying works, one in which he sets up a contrast not between good and evil but between evil (Bruno) and weakness (Guy). The visual style reinforces the theme: When we first meet them on the train, the director introduces us to his principals via their shows - the first pair entirely ordinary; the second, flashy two-tone brogues.

Even his trademark cameo supports the big picture. In Strangers On A Train, Hitchcock appears on screen ten minutes in, boarding the eponymous train with a unwieldy double-bass. That's both a droll jest, and a good example of his attention to detail: in a film about doubles, even Hitchcock must have a double.

I can't recommend this movie enough.  If you're not used to watching movies made before 1980 (let alone 1960), it may take you a while to adjust to such out-dated features as story-telling, plot development, shots that last longer than 3 seconds, and talented directing.

If you want to borrow my DVD copy of the film, call me at 555-FILK.

The Oscar-winning actor Jon Voight has become something of an outspoken advocate for Center-Right policies and values over the past few years.  Last week, writing in The Washington Times, Voight penned an open letter to the president.  The letter was brief and to the point: Your stances on Israel and the Arizona are both wrong (and are both dangerous).

An excerpt:

You will be the first American president that lied to the Jewish people, and the American people as well, when you said that you would defend Israel, the only Democratic state in the Middle East, against all their enemies. You have done just the opposite. You have propagandized Israel, until they look like they are everyone's enemy — and it has resonated throughout the world.

I do not wish to be inconsistent in my treatment of Hollywood celebrities that speak out on cultural, political, and economic issues.  I've given the likes of Sean Penn and Matt Damon a hard time on this blog for their misguided progressive-liberal views.  I've stated that we must not assume that because someone has the platform to speak that they are therefore worth listening to.

So I am not posting Jon Voight's editorial simply because he is a well-known commodity in the entertainment industry.  I happen to agree with his sentiments, and happy to highlight that the thinking in Hollywood is not monolithic.

by: R.J. Moeller

My favorite director is Alfred Hitchcock.  No one told a story on the silver screen quite like "old Hitch."  I especially love Vertigo, North By Northwest, and Notorious.  Hitchcock mastered the psychological thriller, loved setting his stories amidst grandiose backdrops and landscapes, always paid great attention to detail, and usually crafted tales about characters who get caught up in things beyond their control.

Martin Scorsese is a legendary director in his own right, and although I am not very fond of his obsession with making ultra-violent films, his latest effort Shutter Island, is an effective homage to the greatness of Hitchcock.

As your eyes could tell you from the trailer, Leonardo DiCaprio stars in Shutter Island and does a fantastic job.

It's 1954 (the year Hitch's classic Rear Window was released), and U.S. Marshall Teddy Daniels (Leo) has been called to investigate the disappearance of an inmate at an island mental hospital for the criminally insane called Ashecliff off the coast of Massachusetts.  Teddy's got his new partner Chuck (Mark Ruffalo) along for the investigation, but upon arrival, it becomes apparent to the characters (and audience) that something is not quite right on Shutter Island.

The prison guards are abnormally fidgety, the Marshals are both asked to turn over their firearms (something no federal agent typically has to do), and there is absolutely no trace of the woman who allegedly escaped.  The man running things on Shutter Island is Dr. John Cawley, played exquisitely by Academy Award winner Ben Kingsley, who seems to be thoroughly disinterested in actually helping Teddy and Chuck piece the clues together.

Due to forces beyond their control (a hurricane-like storm that hits the island), the two detectives are stranded overnight and we begin to learn more about Teddy's back-story and what really brought him to the island.

Before becoming a Marshal, Teddy was a soldier in WWII and was personally there for the liberation of the concentration camp at Dachau.  He is plagued by the senseless death and destruction he witnessed in Europe.  To compound his own emotional health issues, Teddy is a grieving widower.  His wife, he claims, was killed in a fire that ravaged the apartment building the two of them had lived in back in Boston.

We learn Teddy requested the assignment to Shutter Island because he believes two key things:  First, that the man who started the fire that killed his wife is imprisoned somewhere on the island.  And second, that Nazi-like medical and psychological tests are being conducted on the criminally insane housed there.  He wants to both confront the killer of his beloved deceased, and gather evidence against the doctors he believes are torturing the patients.

Twists and turns in the story abound from there.

I don't want to give away much more about the plot of Shutter Island.  It's a compelling script with superb acting performances turned in by almost every major and minor character.  The music was disturbing and perfectly set the mood for the entire film (another Hitchcock special).  The psychological twists and turns absolutely keep you on your toes, and as soon as the credits role you will likely feel compelled to start your own group therapy session in hopes of figuring out what exactly just happened over the previous two hours and seventeen minutes.

Shutter Island is rated R for language and intense scenes of death (mostly from shots of concentration camp victims).  Do not take your grandma to this movie.

While not an "instant classic" or "must see", if you like great acting, Hitchcock-like storytelling and maintaining an uneasy feeling in the pit of your stomach for more than two hours, go see Shutter Island (and let me know what you thought of it if you already have).