Can this really be a thriller? I'd always thought that thrillers might be great entertainment but couldn't be great movies, yet this one led me to alter my opinion. The only other ones I can call to mind are the very best Hitchcocks like Vertigo.
If you're not American, you might at first imagine that a lot of the movie would be lost on you (Korean war, McCarthy references, Abraham Lincoln). Well I didn't particularly know a great deal about any of these, but actually it doesn't at all detract from enjoying and appreciating the film. If anything it heightens the paranoia. If you don't know too much about the background, you can imagine anything could happen.
Wonderfully atmospheric - I can't think of another movie that induces paranoiac feeling in the audience as well. This comes to a head when Marco meets Rosie on the train - and I think that is the reason why Janet Leigh's character was included. It's so well handled. Their first comments could be flirtatious chat-up lines or they could be passwords to recognise each other. Even when Rosie says something not quite right, and Marco tells her: you should have said..., we are not sure whether this means she is an opposing agent who knew only part of the intro routine.
A lot of people commented on the wonderful techniques that compare with the very best, especially the swirling camera-work, and the uniformly excellent acting. Few people mentioned the score, which (in my humble opinion), is one of the best of all time, beautiful but somehow heightening the tension. It tends to appear just before you are going to become even more paranoiac and is part of the movie's subtle conditioning I think.
All in all this is a most excellent movie and very enjoyable too. It was placed around position 60 in the American Film Institute top 100, but personally I would have put it about 30 higher.
If you're not American, you might at first imagine that a lot of the movie would be lost on you (Korean war, McCarthy references, Abraham Lincoln). Well I didn't particularly know a great deal about any of these, but actually it doesn't at all detract from enjoying and appreciating the film. If anything it heightens the paranoia. If you don't know too much about the background, you can imagine anything could happen.
Wonderfully atmospheric - I can't think of another movie that induces paranoiac feeling in the audience as well. This comes to a head when Marco meets Rosie on the train - and I think that is the reason why Janet Leigh's character was included. It's so well handled. Their first comments could be flirtatious chat-up lines or they could be passwords to recognise each other. Even when Rosie says something not quite right, and Marco tells her: you should have said..., we are not sure whether this means she is an opposing agent who knew only part of the intro routine.
A lot of people commented on the wonderful techniques that compare with the very best, especially the swirling camera-work, and the uniformly excellent acting. Few people mentioned the score, which (in my humble opinion), is one of the best of all time, beautiful but somehow heightening the tension. It tends to appear just before you are going to become even more paranoiac and is part of the movie's subtle conditioning I think.
All in all this is a most excellent movie and very enjoyable too. It was placed around position 60 in the American Film Institute top 100, but personally I would have put it about 30 higher.