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The Honolulu Advertiser
Posted on: Friday, October 7, 2005

Hooked on Hitchcock with collector set

By Terry Lawson
Detroit Free Press

It's titled "Alfred Hitchcock — The Masterpiece Collection," and if that is a bit of an overstatement, the truth is that of the 14 Hitchcock films on this 15-disc set (Universal), even the least important are enjoyable or interesting.

Specifically, those would be 1955's "The Trouble With Harry," about a corpse that won't stay buried, with Shirley MacLaine and the Beaver himself, Jerry Mathers, in the cast, and 1976's "Family Plot," Hitchcock's two attempts at dark comedy (although even his nail-bite suspense thrillers contain gallows humor).

To those, add 1948's "Rope," based on a play inspired by the infamous Leopold and Loeb kidnapping/murder case. It's a fascinating but ultimately unsatisfying experiment that saw Hitchcock attempting to shoot a real-time film in one continuous take. Not only was Hitch deprived of one of his art's most valuable elements, editing, the technique only makes the staginess more obvious.

Real Hitchcock fans will already own this set's four uncontestable masterpieces: 1943's "Shadow of A Doubt," with a script by Thornton Wilder, and star Joseph Cotten as a dapper gent who may be a psychopathic murderer; 1954's "Rear Window," starring Jimmy Stewart as a laid-up photographer whose voyeurism has convinced him a neighbor has murdered his wife; 1958's "Vertigo," with Stewart as a cop afflicted with the title disorder and haunted by the memory of the sultry Kim Novak; and 1960's "Psycho," the artfully lurid, still shocking and endlessly influential story of mother-love and its victims (embalmer Tony Perkins and embezzler Janet Leigh).

Hitch's near-masterpiece from 1963, "The Birds," with Rod Taylor and Tippi Hedren in a fishing village besieged by predatory birds, looks identical to its previous release.

The remainder of the set is composed of second-tier Hitchcock, which is to say still pretty great. The 1942 film "Saboteur" stars Robert Cummings as an aircraft factory worker accused of setting a fire actually started by a Nazi agent. The remastering here is superb, the best of the set.

Hitchcock's 1956 remake of his own early classic "The Man Who Knew Too Much," with Stewart and Doris Day, has never been a personal favorite; I prefer the original.

"Marnie," a psycho-sexual thriller from 1964 with Hedren as a compulsive thief who marries one of her intended targets (Sean Connery), is one of Hitchcock's most underrated films, while 1966's "Torn Curtain," a Cold War thriller with Paul Newman and Julie Andrews, has a couple of great set pieces, but is otherwise fairly average.

Both of those titles look about the same to this eye as earlier editions, but 1969's "Topaz," an espionage tale with a complex plot but weak casting, is substantially better-looking than in its earlier video permutations.

Extras that were included on earlier issues have been retained; the best bonus features are the ones that accompany "Psycho," and the best making-of docs are attached to "Shadow" and "Vertigo."

The bonus disc has about 15 minutes of the American Film Institute's Hitchcock tribute, "Psycho" and "Birds" docs, and a ho-hum documentary on Hitchcock.

THAT GLASS SLIPPER

As difficult as it might be to imagine, the two-disc "Cinderella: Special Platinum Edition" (Disney) is the first digital transfer of the 1950 Disney classic, and like its four predecessors in the Platinum line, the visual and sonic restoration is simply remarkable. It's like seeing it brand-new all over again.

It is, of course, packed with extras, including the obligatory making-of doc, "From Rags to Riches," and another on a very different, previously planned version of "Cinderella" that never got made, including some of the scenes that had been tested.

Also included: a featurette on the original Disney animators, reconstructions of songs written for, but deleted from, the finished film, and lots of games for wee ones.