The Big Picture: Hitchcock at the Hollywood Bowl

This past Sunday night, Larry & I were at the Hollywood Bowl (AGAIN) to catch a cool presentation of the music from some of Alfred Hitchcock’s movies by the Hollywood Bowl Orchestra.  By now, I’ve seen quite a few of his movies so it was great to get the full immersion of a live orchestra playing some of these iconic themes to accompany clips from these amazing movies.  What ended up being a surprise was how great the host was, Eva Marie Saint.  

She starred in North By Northwest along with Cary Grant, and as tonight’s host, introduced the music about to be played.  While she was obviously reading a script during the show, she also went off-script quite a bit and joked around with the audience – Ms. Saint was just amazing and endlessly charming.  She looked great too!  When at the end of the night the music being played was from the finale of North By Northwest, the audience cheered loudly when she appeared on screen.  It was a cool experience, I must say.

Beyond Ms. Saint’s fantastic hosting, just getting to hear certain pieces of music live was thrilling:

• Vertigo‘s opening theme music as well as the tragic love theme
• Psycho‘s murder theme is so distinctive to hear, but seeing the violin bows moving in their violent motion was also a treat

The Movies Sampled During the Show (+ the Scene(s) Shown):

1. Montage of Many of Hitchcock’s Movies
2. Strangers on a Train (Opening/Meeting on the Train; Attempting to Save Him)
3. The Lodger (one of his early silent films)
4. The 39 Steps (In the country)
5. Saboteur (Driving in the desert)
6. Rebecca (Exploring the bedroom)
7. Foreign Correspondent (The assassination and car chase)
8. Psycho (Catching Norman in the end)

INTERMISSION

1. Vertigo (Opening Credits; Madeleine’s lament before her final jump)
2. Dial M for Murder (Making the call)
3. Spellbound (Grabbing the book)
4. To Catch a Thief (Seduction by diamonds)
5. North By Northwest (Finale)
6. Encore:  Psycho (Shower Scene)

We actually ended up watching Foreign Correspondent last night as Larry had coincidentally DVR’d it a week or so ago.  It’s a good movie – there’s some issues with pacing and not being able to follow what’s actually happening at time, and also, it’s serious propaganda for getting the US into WWII, BUT, it’s also a whole lot of fun, and surprisingly good special effects in certain setpieces (that crazy airplane one, mainly).

August 31, 2014 – Hitchcock at the Hollywood Bowl