First, sorry, I should have introduced myself last time. ("Editor's
Day" is part of my Hitchcock Scholars website, now functional again.)
Second, I should probably have trimmed the post for clarity and
emphasis. (Obviously, I'm far from saying that ALL great art has
something intriguing or archetypal at its core - some, paraphrased, can
sound positively banal or silly! Certain films by, say, Ozu or
Bresson!) And, third, I should have picked up another error: it was
John Taintor Foote, not Horton Foote, who in 'The Saturday Evening Post'
stole the idea from Buchan's 'Mr Standfast' of the 'loose' woman whose
'higher' motivation is to serve her country. A case of sleeping with
the enemy for a 'good' cause! Cf Alicia in NOTORIOUS.
That said, what I'm hoping to garner are instances from Film-Philosophy
members of some such intriguing or archetypal situations in art and
film, epecially ones that appeal to a philosophical turn of mind.
Meanwhile, I've posted further to my Yahoo Hitchcock Enthusiasts and
Scholars group, as follows:
One example I didn't give, but might have, last time is Hitchcock's
ROPE, a film which - whether it's great art or not - I suspect that he
chose to make because of its bizarre situation: civilised people
unwittingly becoming 'cannibals' or partaking at a virtual
'sacrificial feast'. Hitchcock had an eye, or ear, for just this sort
of thing. I'm thinking now of when Leonard, in NORTH BY NORTHWEST,
prepares to do away with Thornhill and speaks of the bourbon as 'a
libation', i.e., a drink offering to the gods!
A final point. As my example of 'The Aspern Papers' last time was
meant to suggest, sometimes an artist is 'turned on' by an idea, even
if it is only finally the story's 'MacGuffin'. The idea that Henry
James uses in this story, of a set of papers that had been penned by a
famous poet and are held by a very old lady who had once been his
mistress - both papers and mistress serve as tangible links to a
vanished age - is indeed a powerful one, I think. (Compare how many of
us want to make a pilgrimage to San Francisco to see the actual places
where VERTIGO was shot!)
- Ken Mogg
http://www.labyrinth.net.au/~muffin/news-home_c.html
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