Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck
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To Catch a Thief (1955)
Directed by Alfred Hitchcock
influenced The Tourist (2010)
Visuals Themes Plot
Showing off your stars, ogling the Grand Canal and draping everyone in Colleen Atwood’s glamorous threads is not enough in itself to pass as Hitchcock homage, unless your favourite Hitchcock film is To Catch a Thief.
There was a moment when I thought maybe "The Tourist" could be like one of Hitchcock's fun, elegant thrillers like "To Catch a Thief."
What it was not, however, was a particularly dazzling piece of filmmaking, which makes von Donnersmarck precisely the wrong guy to direct The Tourist, a cosmopolitan trifle along the lines of Charade or Alfred Hitchcocks To Catch A Thief.
And then, if you're thinking about The Tourist, with Johnny Depp and Angelina Jolie (who were perhaps thinking about Cary Grant, Grace Kelly, and Audrey Hepburn), well, think about adding To Catch a Thief or Charade to your Netflix queue instead.
At times, it tries too hard to capture the style of Hitchcock classics like "To Catch A Thief" and "North By Northwest".
There the film turns into a misguided iteration of Alfred Hitchcock’s classic 1955 romp “To Catch a Thief,” complete with a ball.
Charade (1963)
Directed by Stanley Donen
influenced The Tourist (2010)
Visuals Dialogue Plot Characters Themes
At the very least, it ought to play out like a slick imitation of a Stanley Donen film, like Charade (1963).
They also share some decent dialogue, the sharpness of which harkens back to romantic capers like “The Lady Eve’’ and “Charade.’’
What it was not, however, was a particularly dazzling piece of filmmaking, which makes von Donnersmarck precisely the wrong guy to direct The Tourist, a cosmopolitan trifle along the lines of Charade or Alfred Hitchcocks To Catch A Thief.
The motivations of characters shift as easily as Cary Grant’s in “Charade.”
And then, if you're thinking about The Tourist, with Johnny Depp and Angelina Jolie (who were perhaps thinking about Cary Grant, Grace Kelly, and Audrey Hepburn), well, think about adding To Catch a Thief or Charade to your Netflix queue instead.
"The Tourist" is a facsimile of a masquerade of a gloss on "Charade," and on all the lesser cinematic charades that followed in the wake of director Stanley Donen 's 1963 picture.
North by Northwest (1959)
Directed by Alfred Hitchcock
influenced The Tourist (2010)
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?
As besotted as he seems to be by his cast, von Donnersmarck is also in thrall to any number of other movies and directors, including "The French Connection," from which he borrows Elise's Paris Metro escape, and a dance scene that seems straight out of Gilliam's "The Fisher King."
They also share some decent dialogue, the sharpness of which harkens back to romantic capers like “The Lady Eve’’ and “Charade.’’
Here she just walks around with her nose in the air and vocally channels Julie Andrews in " Darling Lili ."
"The Lives of Others" has similarities to Francis Ford Coppola's 1974 classic "The Conversation" but with undercurrents that resound across an entire century of European political history.
A delicate cross between a Robert Ludlum political thriller and Francis Coppola's voyeuristic nightmare The Conversation, The Lives of Others, which swept the German Film Awards, is a fascinating look into the political and psychological underpinnings of communist control in the former German Democratic Republic.
The Lives of Others is the best surveillance movie since The Conversation.
Think of it as " The Conversation " behind the Iron Curtain.
As besotted as he seems to be by his cast, von Donnersmarck is also in thrall to any number of other movies and directors, including "The French Connection," from which he borrows Elise's Paris Metro escape, and a dance scene that seems straight out of Gilliam's "The Fisher King."
Venice is exotically captured by cinematographer John Seale (2006's " Poseidon "), but all it really does is serve to make one wish he or she was watching 1973's Nicolas Roeg masterpiece " Don't Look Now ," instead.
From the moment Elise (Jolie) appears on screen – in a cream gown and fur lifted from Breakfast At Tiffany’s – we are transported to a shimmering realm of 1950’s glare and colour where subtlety and originality have been obliterated.
A Short Film About Love (1988)
Directed by Krzysztof Kieślowski
influenced The Lives of Others (2006)
Themes
Francis Coppola explored similar territory in 1972 in The Conversation, but The Lives of Others reminded me more of the work of the late, great Polish director Krzysztof Kieslowski, especially A Short Film About Love.
Think of the great Michel Piccoli, for whom Emmanuelle Béart so patiently posed, hour upon hour, in Jacques Rivette’s “La Belle Noiseuse” (1991), and whose intensity, like Mühe’s, never flagged.
Even its casting of Steven Berkoff as the gangster, instead of a rent-a-villain like Bill Nighy or Terence Stamp , is a clue that Henckel von Donnersmarck, working from a script by Christopher McQuarrie (" The Usual Suspects ") and Julian Fellowes (" Gosford Park "), wasn't interested in cookie-cutter cat-and-mouse tricks.
A screenplay by an Oscar-winning supergroup, consisting of von Donnersmarck, Christopher McQuarrie ( The Usual Suspects ) and Julian Fellowes ( Gosford Park ), can't quite make it all believable.
Given von Donnersmarck’s obvious talent behind the camera, the fact that the screenwriting team also include Oscar winners Christopher McQuarrie (The Usual Suspects) and Julian Fellowes (Gosford Park), and the combined wattage and eccentricity of stars Angelina Jolie and Johnny Depp, you wouldn’t expect The Tourist to be anything less than intriguing, if not scintillating.
Von Donnersmarck shares credit for the appallingly lackluster script with Christopher McQuarrie ("The Usual Suspects") and Julian Fellowes ("Gosford Park").
But von Donnersmarck and his fellow Oscar-winning screenwriters (Christopher McQuarrie of "The Usual Suspects" and Julian Fellowes of "Gosford Park") run seriously out of inspiration, perhaps an hour or so in.
The screenplay is by Julian Fellowes ("Gosford Park"), Christopher McQuarrie ("The Usual Suspects"), and director Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck ("The Lives of Others"), based on the 2005 French film, "Anthony Zimmer."
Unlike 2008's "Duplicity," this isn't a movie built on cleverness.
"Duplicity," some of you may recall, was a rather diabolically clever and highly complex romantic thriller starring Julia Roberts and Clive Owen that rather famously flopped at the box office in 2009.
Tony Gilroy’s “Duplicity,’’ with Julia Roberts and Clive Owen, managed to pull off a similar version of this with great confidence and a lighter touch.
American audiences, I suspect, may have trouble warming to the film, since they tend to resist movies with any mentions of INTERPOL (why is that?), just as they resist twisty affairs with a predominantly facetious tone (such as "Duplicity," the one with Clive Owen and Julia Roberts ).
Even its casting of Steven Berkoff as the gangster, instead of a rent-a-villain like Bill Nighy or Terence Stamp , is a clue that Henckel von Donnersmarck, working from a script by Christopher McQuarrie (" The Usual Suspects ") and Julian Fellowes (" Gosford Park "), wasn't interested in cookie-cutter cat-and-mouse tricks.
A screenplay by an Oscar-winning supergroup, consisting of von Donnersmarck, Christopher McQuarrie ( The Usual Suspects ) and Julian Fellowes ( Gosford Park ), can't quite make it all believable.
So, one could easily imagine that this picture -- which was, after all, directed by the highly acclaimed man behind " The Lives of Others ," Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck , and written in part by Christopher McQuarrie, who's also partially responsible for the clever " The Usual Suspects " -- might have started off as one thing and got so dumbed down in the executive "notes" that it became something wholly other, and rather awful.
Given von Donnersmarck’s obvious talent behind the camera, the fact that the screenwriting team also include Oscar winners Christopher McQuarrie (The Usual Suspects) and Julian Fellowes (Gosford Park), and the combined wattage and eccentricity of stars Angelina Jolie and Johnny Depp, you wouldn’t expect The Tourist to be anything less than intriguing, if not scintillating.
Von Donnersmarck shares credit for the appallingly lackluster script with Christopher McQuarrie ("The Usual Suspects") and Julian Fellowes ("Gosford Park").
But von Donnersmarck and his fellow Oscar-winning screenwriters (Christopher McQuarrie of "The Usual Suspects" and Julian Fellowes of "Gosford Park") run seriously out of inspiration, perhaps an hour or so in.
These Strangers on a Train tracked by those who want To Catch a Thief are not in a Hitchcockian thriller, though that's clearly the style director Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck was trying to achieve.
But Strangers on a Train this is not.
It feels like science fiction -- "Fahrenheit 451" or "THX-1138" or " Brazil ," with roots in Kafka and Orwell -- but the chilling and chilly dystopian world of writer-director Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck's "The Lives of Others" existed.
Grubitz asks Weisler to open a surveillance file on Georg Dreyman (Sebastian Koch, from "Gloomy Sunday"), a handsome playwright who's friendly to the regime but too intelligent to really be trusted.
The play is by Socialist writer Georg Dreyman (Sebastian Koch, "Gloomy Sunday," "Amen"), who Grubitz claims is their least subversive author, even liked by Hempf.
I don't post trailers here too often, but this one has so many things that intrigue me: Guillermo del Toro, fabulous period costumes, "Pan's Labyrinth"-ish creatures, stylish horror, creepy old houses, moody piano playing, Tom Hiddleston, Jessica Chastain, Mia Wasikowska, Charlie Hunnam . . .
Much like Clair Noto’s famously influential and unproduced sci-fi script “The Tourist,” picked over by “Men in Black” and several sci-fi properties, many of the core conceits in “Ghost In The Shell” have been liberally borrowed from.