Hitchcock closes his career with this film with no further pretensions than to show his capacity creating good clasical cinema, which values are unfortunately much maligned nowadays.
A comedy with touches of suspense and intrigue (triangle without a base) where two apparently unrelated plots end up coming together in a suspenseful climax.
Glamor and elegance finally seem banished in this catch-up with the new times of the mythical director, but not his ability to impose interesting and ambiguous characters with whom the director expects us to identify.
The first scene is very long, and its comic tone seems somewhat crude and obvious, but from there everything picks up pace. The most surprising moment is the first change between the first and the second plot: when, after a very slow start, the plot seems to pick up pace, an abrupt change leads us into another plot that seems to be from a totally different movie. From there it's all about how those two plots come together and how those two movies become one.
In the cast, Bruce Dern and Karen Black stand out. I admit that I have never been enthusiastic about Barbara Harris's sense of comedy, often too evident and her exaggerated lack of sophistication can be somewhat rude.
It's not up there with the brilliant Frenzy (by far his best movie since the early sixties), but it's still a decent, fun, and interesting movie, from a director far from his best days, but who still had interesting things to say about the movies, their rhythm and structure.
A comedy with touches of suspense and intrigue (triangle without a base) where two apparently unrelated plots end up coming together in a suspenseful climax.
Glamor and elegance finally seem banished in this catch-up with the new times of the mythical director, but not his ability to impose interesting and ambiguous characters with whom the director expects us to identify.
The first scene is very long, and its comic tone seems somewhat crude and obvious, but from there everything picks up pace. The most surprising moment is the first change between the first and the second plot: when, after a very slow start, the plot seems to pick up pace, an abrupt change leads us into another plot that seems to be from a totally different movie. From there it's all about how those two plots come together and how those two movies become one.
In the cast, Bruce Dern and Karen Black stand out. I admit that I have never been enthusiastic about Barbara Harris's sense of comedy, often too evident and her exaggerated lack of sophistication can be somewhat rude.
It's not up there with the brilliant Frenzy (by far his best movie since the early sixties), but it's still a decent, fun, and interesting movie, from a director far from his best days, but who still had interesting things to say about the movies, their rhythm and structure.