Alfred Hitchcock
426 connections found
Filmography
Rebecca 1940 
Vertigo 1958 
Rope 1948 
Spellbound 1945 
Psycho 1960 
The Birds 1963 
North by Northwest 1959 
The Wrong Man 1956 
Rear Window 1954 
The 39 Steps 1935 
Sabotage 1936 
The Lady Vanishes 1938 
Torn Curtain 1966 
Marnie 1964 
Dial M for Murder 1954 
To Catch a Thief 1955 
Stage Fright 1950 
Strangers on a Train 1951 
The Man Who Knew Too Much 1956 
Lifeboat 1944 
The Ring 1927 
Notorious 1946 
Frenzy 1972 
Shadow of a Doubt 1943 
Foreign Correspondent 1940 
Murder! 1930 
The Skin Game 1931 
Secret Agent 1936 
Saboteur 1942 
The Trouble with Harry 1955 
Blackmail 1929 
The Lodger: A Story of the London Fog 1927 
The Paradine Case 1947 
Suspicion 1941 
Jamaica Inn 1939 
Under Capricorn 1949 
Mr. & Mrs. Smith 1941 
I Confess 1953 
The Pleasure Garden 1925 
Easy Virtue 1928 
Topaz 1969 
The Man Who Knew Too Much 1934 View:
Connections, in both directions
Mission: Impossible - Rogue Nation (2015)
Directed by Christopher McQuarrie
influenced by The Man Who Knew Too Much (1956)
Visuals Plot
Here director Christopher McQuarrie, who directed Cruise in Jack Reacher, has his own Hitchcock moves - in a scene set against a performance of Turandot in the Vienna State Opera which recalls the Royal Albert Hall assassination scene in The Man Who Knew Too Much - the 1956 movie, which, like Rogue Nation also takes an excursion to Morocco.
Ethan must foil an elaborate assassination attempt during opening night at the Vienna State Opera (clearly inspired by a similar setup in Alfred Hitchcock’s “The Man Who Knew Too Much”).
McQuarrie is working from the template of classic James Bond movies and Alfred Hitchcock suspense films like 1956’s “The Man Who Knew Too Much,” whose Albert Hall assassination sequence “Rogue Nation” borrows and amplifies about a third of the way in.
Indeed there’s a sequence at the Vienna State Opera that’s a clear homage to Alfred Hitchcock’s “The Man Who Knew Too Much” that has no less than three shooters involved in an assassination plot with Ethan and Benji trying to thwart them.
Writer-director Christopher McQuarrie sets up an elaborate assassination sequence that deliberately references Alfred Hitchcock's The Man Who Knew Too Much.
During one of my favorite scenes, Benji helps out Ethan backstage during a performance of the Puccini opera “Turandot,” Hunt tries to foil an assassination (Hitchcock fans are sure to recognize several nods to “The Man Who Knew Too Much”).
Stoker (2013)
Directed by Park Chan-wook
influenced by Shadow of a Doubt (1943), Psycho (1960), Vertigo (1958), Frenzy (1972), Strangers on a Train (1951), Marnie (1964)
Characters Plot Themes
The bad vibes Uncle Charlie emits as his courtship of Evelyn inspires disgust (or is it jealousy?) in India can't help but remind you of Joseph Cotten's Uncle Charlie in Hitchcock's "Shadow of a Doubt."
There are nods to Hitchcock's Shadow of a Doubt and the beautiful but dysfunctional families of Douglas Sirk's lush melodramas, but Park's usual themes of sex, death and revenge are still very much in evidence and - happily - they have been only slightly toned down.
The screenplay by actor-turned-writer Wentworth Miller (Prison Break) definitely betrays his background in literary studies, as the story’s revelations about a frozen-in-time aristocratic family’s deep dark secrets and still pulsing vein of murderousness feels one part Emily Bronte, one part Tennessee Williams, and one part Bram Stoker (hence the title, we might imagine), although its twisted uncle-niece relationship and use of the name “Uncle Charlie” immediately evokes Alfred Hitchcock’s disturbing Shadow of a Doubt (1943), which turned the platitudes of small-town Americana on its head.
The American debut of kind-to-be-cruel South Korean filmmaker Park Chan-wook (“Old Boy,” “Lady Vengeance”), based on a script by the actor Wentworth Miller (“Prison Break”) with rewrites by Erin Cressida Wilson (“Secretary”) is a brisk, chilly variation on themes in Alfred Hitchcock’s “Shadow of a Doubt,” but it never finds a convincing shape of its own.
(Since the film has definite ties to Alfred Hitchcock’s 1943 film Shadow of a Doubt, it seems not unlike the name Charles is coincidental.)
He's there after a long absence for his brother's funeral and is always referred to as Uncle Charlie, an invitation to identify him with Joseph Cotten's charming psychopathic murderer in Hitchcock's Shadow of a Doubt .
Having watched a number of martial arts and horror films recently, I have sadly been exposed to both, albeit in the (perhaps) excusable context of old school grindhouse flicks, so by the time yours truly arrived at a screening for the new Rear Window ripoff -- excuse me, homage -- Disturbia I'd all but completely lost patience for either telegraphed punches or teenagers with too much time and too little sense.Unfortunately, Disturbia stars a teenager -- Shia LeBeouf -- who seems to have no shortage whatsoever of good sense, so the only mystery that remains in this catalogue of fright-film clich?s is why he accepted the role.
In a modern reworking of Rear Window , troubled teenager Kale (Shia LaBeouf) blames himself for his father's death; his behavior lands him under house arrest for the summer.
Resembling, without copying, the voyeuristic storyline of Hitchcockâs Rear Window, Disturbia also brings to mind other techno-thrillers like Coppolaâs The Conversation or fear-of-neighbors comedies like Joe Danteâs The âburbs.
A contemporary remake of Alfred Hitchcock's Rear Window, the film is likewise witty and intelligent — that is, until the final act, when it eschews the tension of an unreliable point of view for modern horror elements.
" Disturbia " is a low-cal version of " Rear Window ."
The teen thriller "Disturbia," in which a housebound voyeur stumbles upon a possible murderer across the way, is basically an uncredited remake of the 1954 Alfred Hitchcock classic "Rear Window" (which was in turn based on a 1942 Cornell Woolrich story).
What Lies Beneath (2000)
Directed by Robert Zemeckis
influenced by Rear Window (1954), Suspicion (1941), Psycho (1960), Rebecca (1940), Dial M for Murder (1954), The Birds (1963)
Plot Visuals Characters
Director Robert Zemeckis has called What Lies Beneath his "Hitchcock" picture, and if we accept that increasingly preposterous notion, the picture most called to mind by the film's first hour is not Rear Window, despite superficial plot similarities, but The Birds.
As the story unwinds, there are various tributes to Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining and Alfred Hitchcock’s Rear Window, but Zemeckis wrings the suspense so skillfully from Clark Gregg’s restrained script that his obvious nods to the greats are easily forgiven.
Just look at the major Hollywood releases this summer: First "Mission: Impossible 2" borrows a plot from "Notorious," then "X-Men" takes a Statue of Liberty climax from "Saboteur," and finally we have Robert Zemeckisâ "What Lies Beneath," which cribs from so many Hitchcock thrillers itâs impossible to mention them all, but the chief victims are "Rear Window," "Rebecca," and "Suspicion."
Robert Zemeckis ("Forrest Gump") takes Clark Gregg's highly derivative haunted house script and pours on the Hitchcockian visual flourishes, unapologetically pilfering from the Master's "Rear Window" and "Psycho," among others.
Alfred Hitchcock was very good at directing this kind of movie, where a nosy neighbor gets involved in someone else's business ("Rear Window").
It features the voyeuristic neighbor from Rear Window, the unsettling bathroom from Psycho, even an icy blonde in the form of Michelle Pfeiffer.
Femme Fatale (2002)
Directed by Brian De Palma
influenced by Vertigo (1958), Rear Window (1954), Psycho (1960), Marnie (1964)
Characters Visuals
That gives you some idea of "Femme Fatale's" knotted heritage, and it gets worse, with homages to Hitchcock's "Rear Window" battling homages to his own "Obsession."
Rebecca Romijn-Stamos' role is much like the heroines in "Vertigo" and "Rear Window," except for the so-called arty sex and nude scenes.
Forced by financial strain, Nicolas sells his stolen snap, then finds himself spying on Lily/Laure through a camera lens a la Jimmy Steward in "Rear Window."
The compulsion to watch is why De Palma keeps returning to "Vertigo" and "Rear Window," and it accounts for the very quality of his bristling style -- the propulsive camerawork, the ostentatious cutting, even the way he grabs our attention as if he were grabbing our throats, trying to force us to see what he sees.
With Femme Fatale, De Palma references his past obsessions Nicholas voyeuristic photography is yet another homage to Rear Window , Laures assumption of a new identity and Nicholas following her around winks at Vertigo and this time around, De Palma even makes an odd nod to Its a Wonderful Life .
This time, it's mostly Vertigo, with Romijn-Stamos not quite evoking Kim Novak.
Phantom Thread (2017)
Directed by Paul Thomas Anderson
influenced by Rebecca (1940), Vertigo (1958), Marnie (1964), Suspicion (1941), Notorious (1946)
Themes Characters
If Phantom Thread is Anderson’s Hitchcock film—Notorious and Suspicion, two other tales of perilous marriage, have also been mentioned by critics—it is an example of what Bloom calls “the return of the dead,” a maneuver by which “the new poem’s achievement makes it seem to us, not as though the precursor were writing it, but as though the later poet himself had written the precursor’s characteristic work.”
There are shades of Hitchcock, notably Rebecca and Notorious.
But here, influenced heavily by the haunting suspense of Hitchcock’s “Rebecca,” an older Anderson dramatizes the other side of love.
The film, which Anderson, in an interview with the New York Times , likened to gothic romances like Rebecca, Vertigo, and Gaslight, is as much about female frustration as it is about the spark of creativity.
When the second Mrs de Winter questions her husband and home in Rebecca, her fear and insecurity, as well as her love and longing, were real, deeply, sensitively understood.
Beyond the dazzling performances of Daniel Day-Lewis, Vicky Krieps, and Lesley Manville; the swooping and/or oddly angled luminous 35-mm cinematography by Anderson himself; and the almost omnipresent orchestral score by Jonny Greenwood, which suggests Nelson Riddle on ecstasy, the movie’s uniqueness is its fluidly shifting tone, as if the ghosts of genres as diverse as gothic mysteries (Hitchcock’s Rebecca), screwball comedies (Hawks’s Bringing Up Baby), perverse, obsessional romances (Kubrick’s Lolita), and Angela Carter’s feminist inversions of classic fairy tales were dancing at the edge of the collective consciousness of everyone involved, including the viewer.
Crimson Peak (2015)
Directed by Guillermo del Toro
influenced by Rebecca (1940), Notorious (1946), Suspicion (1941), Psycho (1960)
Themes Characters Visuals
Nineteenth-century Gothic has rarely looked so sumptuous as it does in Guillermo del Toro’s “Crimson Peak,” a lusciously atmospheric period homage to such classics as “Wuthering Heights,” “Jane Eyre” and “Rebecca” that also manages to integrate reminiscences of “Gaslight,” “Notorious,” “The Shining” and even “Dragonwyck” into the mix.
She may be channeling Judith Anderson’s Mrs. Danvers from Hitchcock’s Rebecca, but she’s no less effective for that, and she is harrowing in a scene when Lucille does nothing more than talk about her mother while feeding porridge to an ill Edith.
It plays as a miscalculation on del Toro’s part, like he’s nodding a little too vigorously at Mrs. Danvers from Alfred Hitchcock’s Rebecca — a stated influence — though Chastain is able to shine in a few moments of quiet, emotional introspection.
It reminded me of silvery black and white classics like House on Haunted Hill , Gaslight , Rebecca , Dragonwyck , Wuthering Heights , et al – except of course that Crimson Peak lives up to its title and is awash with glorious, saturated color.
Though it draws inspiration from Rebecca, Notorious, and Jane Eyre, the sensibility is pure Del Toro.
You just know something ghastly is lurking under her unruffled demeanor — she reminds me of the Mrs. Danvers character in “Rebecca.”
His idea: To avoid establishing any motives, the boys should kill one another’s bosses, a plan that evokes references to (and jokes about) Alfred Hitchcock’s Strangers on a Train.
The movie rightly makes a nod to Alfred Hitchcock's Strangers on a Train and even Throw Mama From a Train .
Heavily inspired by Alfred Hitchcock’s “Strangers on a Train” and Danny DeVito’s “Throw Mama from the Train,” “Horrible Bosses” is silly, absurd and overly moronic, but that’s what makes it so appealing and fun.
With blunt references to Strangers on a Train, they decide to criss-cross murder the bosses, with help from Jamie Foxx as an ex-con who turns down the job as hitman but says, “I’m going to be your murder consultant.”
Now those of you who are big film fans will probably recognize that bit about having them kill each others’ bosses as a direct reference to Hitchcock’s Strangers on a Train .
Those of you who are big film fans will probably recognize the bit about having the main characters kill each others’ bosses as a direct reference to Hitchcock’s Strangers on a Train.
One scene evokes Alfred Hitchcock's The Birds, another scene borrows heavily from Alien, and there are flourishes from Lassie and Jaws thrown in for effect.
One scene will even evoke warm comparisons to Alfred Hitchcock’s “The Birds.”
But best in show goes to the sequence where park visitors are attacked by pterodactyls that pluck them from the ground like mice—an homage to "The Birds" that amounts to Treverrow doing Spielberg doing Hitchcock.
Trevorrow has littered the film with sly callbacks to the original “Jurassic Park,” plus amusing nods to “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid,” “The Birds” and many others.
He references countless other monster movies, including obvious ones like King Kong and Godzilla and less evident choices like The Birds and (especially) Aliens .
In its attempt to be bigger, louder and toothier, the film not only rehashes executive producer Steven Spielberg's original but borrows from his "Jaws" as well as "The Birds," "Oz's" flying monkeys and "Predator."
The only thing about it that speaks to Hollywood is its mood, a glorious homage to the classic films of the 1940s, particularly espionage thrillers like Hitchcock's "Notorious."
An erotic, violent melodrama, filled with echoes of such Hitchcock movies as "Notorious" and "Suspicion," Lee's movie is composed of one highly flammable ingredient after another.
A spy-who-loved-me story reminiscent of Notorious (had Hitchcock added S&M sex), the NC-17 Lust is lush and seductive.
Several Hitchcock references are made during the movie, and the before long it becomes obvious that Lust, Caution�s natural touchstone is his Notorious, which definitively covered similar, sexually embroiled ground.
Kimi (2022)
Directed by Steven Soderbergh
influenced by Rear Window (1954), Shadow of a Doubt (1943), Vertigo (1958), Psycho (1960), Spellbound (1945)
Themes Visuals Plot
The story is an exercise in techno-paranoia, which is always fun, with echoes of such genre classics as Coppola's The Conversation , De Palma's Blow Out , and Antonioni's Blowup , along with grateful nods to Alfred Hitchcock's Rear Window .
What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: Hitchcock is a clear reference point here, from the apartment-on-high views of Rear Window to the psychological angles of Shadow of a Doubt and Spellbound .
It certainly is built as an ordinary genre piece — so ordinary you’ll be reminded of other paranoid suspense films during the whole eighty-nine-minute running time, starting with Alfred Hitchcock’s Rear Window (1954) and carrying on through countless descendants to 2021’s The Woman in the Window .
It borrows familiar elements of voyeurism from Rear Window (1954) and combines them with the paranoia and omnipresent recording of The Conversation (1974) and Blow Out (1981), and it reinvigorates these ideas.
The setting of a confined apartment and sense of voyeurism will bring up parallels with Alfred Hitchcock’s Rear Window (1954).
With “Kimi,” Soderbergh pays homage to Hitchcock (in particular “Rear Window”) and the 1974 classic “The Conversation” in a lean, no-frills psychological thriller featuring some of the finest work in Zoë Kravitz’s career.
The Woman in the Window (2021)
Directed by Joe Wright
influenced by Rear Window (1954), Spellbound (1945)
Plot Visuals
Now to be fair, “The Woman in the Window” is hardly the first project to come along with a premise clearly inspired by Alfred Hitchcock’s 1954 classic “Rear Window”—hell, I even remember it serving as the inspiration for an episode of “Kate & Allie” back in the day—but I cannot rightly remember a film that has done so little with the concept.
In its opening moments, it borrows the foreboding tracking shots and moody lighting of David Fincher thrillers, and a scene from Rear Window playing on a television telegraphs its obvious inspiration from the Alfred Hitchcock classic.
One of the obvious touchstones for The Woman in the Window is Rear Window , which director Joe Wright (of Atonement and Darkest Hour ) embraces to the point of styling his film like a Hitchcock pastiche, with a lurid palette and homages in framing.
Based on the novel of the same name by A.J. Finn, The Woman in the Window is undeniably indebted to similar cinematic and literary touchstones, ranging from Alfred Hitchcock’s Rear Window (itself an adaptation of the short story “It Had to Be Murder”) to the 1995 thriller Copycat.
Any reference to Alfred Hitchcock’s Rear Window is strictly intentional: early on we catch a glimpse of James Stewart’s face, in all its neurotic postwar glory, on Anna’s TV screen.
Clearly inspired by the works of Alfred Hitchcock, most notably “Rear Window,” this stagey, clunky production is set almost entirely in and around the New York City apartment of Dr. Anna Fox (Adams), a psychologist with agoraphobia who is separated from her husband (Anthony Mackie) and daughter and seems to be suffering from paranoid delusions brought on by a dangerous mixture of meds and alcohol.
I’d like to end by saying that this is a bit of an underrated film that holds up solid to the test of time with its obvious similarities to Alfred Hitchcock’s film Rear Window (1954) that played as some inspiration.
Eventually, Franklin had the idea that the killer wouldn’t be the truck driver, but the driver would be the witness to a series of murders committed by someone out there, in the vein of Alfred Hitchcock’s Rear Window .
Road Games is inspired largely by the works of Alfred Hitchcock, in particular, the brilliant Rear Window .
The parallels between this film and Hitchcock’s Rear Window are undeniable and director Richard Franklin even stated that he wanted to make Rear Window on the road.
If you’ve seen 1954’s REAR WINDOW, there can be no doubt which Hitchcock movie Franklin and De Roche have taken as inspiration.REAR WINDOW is also a film about a hero stuck in an enclosed space, who catches wind of a crime and is deemed crazy by the authorities, leaving him to take matters into his own hands.
What cements Roadgames‘ Hitchcockian overtones, though, is the way Franklin borrows the basic premise of Rear Window (1954), replacing its apartment block window setting with the windscreen of a truck.
Split (2017)
Directed by M. Night Shyamalan
influenced by Psycho (1960), Vertigo (1958), Spellbound (1945), Rope (1948), The Birds (1963)
Visuals Characters
The film looks spectacular, full of Hitchcockian homages that remind one of Vertigo and Psycho, to name only a few.
It’s a number that substantially ups the game on earlier horror incarnations of the disorder such as Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde and Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho , the latter of which gets several obvious references throughout.
He’s obviously and respectfully nodding to silken, scary movie predecessors played by Anthony Perkins in Psycho and Anthony Hopkins in The Silence of the Lambs, but he’s better here than he’s been since Atonement because he’s complex and oddly sympathetic—in addition to being a deeply creepy lunatic.
The film’s B-movie aesthetic is enhanced further by McAvoy’s confidently showy performance, which feels like an homage to Psycho’s Anthony Perkins and other actors who have played imbalanced bogeymen.
Writer-director M. Night Shyamalan reminds everyone why folks used to associate him with Alfred Hitchcock, swiping a mental condition from Psycho, a sympathetic shrink from Spellbound, and a bold theorist from Rope.
Shyamalan has never bothered hiding his adoration of Hitchcock, and in Split, the references start with the movie’s Psycho-inspired title sequence.
The Skin I Live In (2011)
Directed by Pedro Almodóvar
influenced by Vertigo (1958), Rebecca (1940)
Themes Characters
There are echoes of Georges Franju’s Eyes Without a Face, Hitchcock’s Vertigo and just about anybody’s Frankenstein.
In a Hitchockian twist of the Vertigo variety, Almodóvar eventually reveals that characters are not who we think they are and the very idea of victimhood, which seems so clear-cut at the beginning, is actually a sticky, murky morass that leaves the theater with us.
"Vertigo," "Eyes Without a Face," "Rebecca," "Frankenstein" and every mad doctor movie ever made, including "The Island of Lost Souls," are mixed into this movie's DNA.
Part “Vertigo,” part “Beauty and the Beast,” part “Bride of Frankenstein,” Pedro Almodóvar’s “The Skin I Live In” is yet another casually masterful work from a director who has barely put a foot wrong in his 30 (!) years of feature filmmaking.
Like James Stewart's lovesick griever in Vertigo, who alters the couture and coiffure of a sales clerk to make her resemble his dead dream girl, Robert has sculpted Vera into the living effigy of his late wife.
Cornet and Suárez are young, dumb and callow, while enigmatic Marisa Paredes, the most interesting character in the movie, is like Garbo doing Mrs. Danvers in Rebecca.
Body Double (1984)
Directed by Brian De Palma
influenced by Rear Window (1954), Vertigo (1958), Psycho (1960), Marnie (1964), The Birds (1963)
Plot Characters
Chafing at the then-widespread complaints that he was just a misogynistic Hitchcock knock-off obsessed with graphic violence and nudity, De Palma concocted this hilarious mash-up of “Rear Window” and “Vertigo” that just so happens to be chock full of graphic violence and nudity.
At first, he seems to be doing Stewart in "Rear Window".
In sequences inspired by " Rear Window ," he begins to follow the woman (Deborah Shelton), but he keeps his distance because he's caught in the same dilemma as James Stewart was in the Hitchcock picture: He is, after all, technically a Peeping Tom, and he wouldn't know the woman was in danger if he hadn't been breaking the law.
Just as De Palma's excellent Dressed to Kill was an homage-or-rip-off-take-your-pick of Hitchcock's Psycho, Body Double uses both The Master's Vertigo and Rear Window as its twin starting points and then wanders off in its own delirious direction.
This time out, he most explicitly references a trio of Hitch�s films (Vertigo, Rear Window, and Psycho) that he had previously paid extensive tribute to with better end results (most notably in Obsession, Sisters, Dressed to Kill).
Body Double is another sexed-up Hitchcockian thriller from Brian De Palma that really took a beating from most critics when it opened in the fall of 1984 -- I guess audiences (and critics) in '84 just weren't ready for a movie that borrowed from classic Hitchcock thrillers (Vertigo and Rear Window in particular) containing porn stars and driller killers.
Rare positives include art direction, production design and costumes that are seamless in their period flavor, and a handful of arty shots (one, taking place in a movie theater, is a wily reference to the famous moment in Alfred Hitchcock's "Strangers on a Train" set at a tennis match).
There's a shot in a movie theater that reminds us of the tennis match in Strangers on a Train (1951).
Otherwise, were the audience in Manns marvelous little homage to the Strangers on a Train tennis match, looking left and right and up and down in a theater and still missing everything.
Mann’s homage to Alfred Hitchcock’s “Strangers on a Train” — a bit in a movie theater where we notice Dillinger because he’s the only person whose head is not moving back and forth — is clever.
The Cary Grant North by Northwest reference is part and parcel of the script’s glib post-modern approach where everyone is sufficiently pop-culture savvy to relate the events of the film to other films.
Like Cary Grant in Hitchcock’s “North by Northwest” (which is directly referenced by one character), Josh Hartnett is a man who is repeatedly mistaken for somebody else.
(In fact, North by Northwest is explicitly referenced.)
It aspires to be in the same company as Hitchcock's classic "North By Northwest," but that's only a pipe dream.
The script brings up references to Hitchcock’s North by Northwest and James Bond films, and even the casting of Willis and Liu, who have been strongly associated with previous Tarantino films, contributes to this film’s active overstatement of the company it wishes to keep.
It's a twisty-turny tale, ever so slightly reminiscent of "North by Northwest" (a connection that this film is quick to point out) about a seemingly regular guy (Josh Hartnett) who appears to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.
The Double (2014)
Directed by Richard Ayoade
influenced by Rear Window (1954)
Visuals Characters Themes
It does, however, often recall the bizarre surrealism of David Lynch or Terry Gilliam’s “Brazil,” and even overtly references Alfred Hitchcock’s “Rear Window” and David Fincher’s “Fight Club.”
Ayoade’s treatment of the material is boldly stylized, with aesthetic nods to directors as varied as Terry Gilliam and Jean-Pierre Jeunet to Alfred Hitchcock – from whose Rear Window the film borrows heavily in constructing Simon’s unrequited romance with Hannah.
In the film, we watch Simon James (Jesse Eisenberg, whose deep-set cheeks and geometric frame recall an Edward Hopper figure) spying on Hannah (Mia Wasikowska, ostensibly lamblike, though her fierce side rears its head) from his apartment window through a phallic telescope à la Rear Window .
Like Jimmy Stewart in Rear Window, Simon’s voyeurism is a product of his immobility: not of a physical crippling as in Hitchcock’s picture, but of an emotional-existential hobbling.
There’s a cocktail of loneliness and voyeurism a la Rear Window for Eisenberg’s Simon.
For one thing, Simon's voyeurism is straight from Rear Window.
The Tourist (2010)
Directed by Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck
influenced by To Catch a Thief (1955), North by Northwest (1959), Strangers on a Train (1951)
Themes Plot Dialogue Characters
Whereas the ordeal undergone by Cary Grant 's character in " North by Northwest " taught him to step up to the plate and be a mensch, what Depp's character goes through here -- he's a widower, you see, and hence something of a sad sack -- might be meant to teach him to enjoy life.
Granted, it sort of sounds like a Hitchcock thriller like "North By Northwest" where a common man is mistaken for another and then goes on the run from those who want the latter.
While on the surface “The Tourist” appears to be an espionage action thriller, it really is a tale about mistaken identity, a la Hitchcock’s “North by Northwest.”
Saying that Jolie’s character “tends to fall in love with anyone she’s spent more than a train ride with” isn’t exactly a “North by Northwest”-grade quip.
This “realistic” performance may fit the requirements of the script, but we might recall that when Cary Grant played a “normal” man wrongly pursued by both villains and police in “North by Northwest,” he still managed to be as charming and watchable as, well, Cary Grant.
Are Depp and Jolie trying to channel Cary Grant and Eva Marie-Saint in "North by Northwest," or is something weirder and more inscrutable afoot?