ratbastid

What's brilliant about Hitchcock is what he withholds, what he doesn't show. The "why" of The Birds is that way. In Rope, everything from the grisly contents of the trunk in to the homosexual subtext happens in the domain of "obvious but pointedly ignored". Maybe the best example of that is the famous shower scene from Psycho, which is one of the most intense murder scenes in the history of film, and is almost certainly LESS graphic than how you remember it. It's all about framing with Hitchcock--the movie frame as a window looking out on a world where what's shown and what's not are carefully constructed and are equally important. LITERALLY, in the case of Rear Window, where Jimmy Stewart's window is exactly the same proportions as a movie screen.

I saw the latest "Final Cut" version of Blade Runner on the big screen a couple nights ago. AWESOME. The way Scott uses retina-flash to signal who's real and who's artificial is gorgeous and brilliant.