Have You Seen ....... ? by David Thomson - Part 1: Shadow of a Doubt, Don't Look Now and Blue Velvet

These three movies are the first of the forty eight I have listed from David Thomson's Have You Seen..... So Here we go:

I manged to catch up with Hitchcock's 1943Shadow of a Doubt when it was shown on an obscure film channel. David Thomson says that "this was a turning point in Hitchcock cinema". But it was not the best film to start these reviews. It was only because it was a Hitchcock movie that I had never seen that I listed it at all. As Thomson says "So the film lurches in and out ........ much of which has dated badly". I couldn't agree more. The cinematography is the best thing about the film, there is one shot when two men follow Joseph Cotton's Uncle Charlie and the music beat matches their footsteps. The camera follows them from behind and we see Charlie between them. Why Hitchcock said it was his favourite film, I have no idea. We have to sit through an interminable story for an exciting two minutes at the end.

David Thomson says in his review of Don't Look Now "what cool intelligence can do with horror". Personally, I would not describe the film as horror, although there are nasty bits, especially at the very beginning and the end. I think it's more of a psychological thriller, especially about the dangers of seances. We are in Vienna, spookily quiet in 1973, and based on a story by Daphne Du Maurier. The locations are very well shot and director Nicolas Roeg has given the whole movie an eerie feel all the way through.

It was worth watching just for Julie Christie, beautiful, fragile and vulnerable, she's an easy target for the seance sisters after the death of her daughter. But when  she smiles, it is devastating. He costumes are fabulous. I suppose I have to mention Donald Sutherland who is just OK. And the ending is surprisingly nasty.

David Thomson says in his review that "it emerged seemingly from nowhere". Blue Velvet " from 1986 was David Lynch's breakthrough film that he "wrote and directed with an implacable assurance that he never quite matched since". It has been called a "neo-noir mystery thriller" or a psychological horror. I thought it was just too uneven to be classed as a classic. The story does not make a lot of sense, but the style is certainly first class. One to watch at the cinema rather than a TV where the widescreen DVD took up less than half the screen size.

The young Kyle McLachlan gets into trouble after finding an ear and tries to do a detective job on an unhinged Isabella Rossini and a bonkers Dennis Hopper who steals the show. The offbeat music early on is replaced by something more haunting, and is supplemented by  Roy Orbison's In Dreams and Ketty Lester's wonderful Love Letters. And, of course Bobby Vinton's title song.