"American Masters" Hitchcock, Selznick and the End of Hollywood (1998)

User Rating:

7.5/10   

Director:

Michael Epstein

Writer:

Michael Epstein (writer)

TV Series:

"American Masters" (1983)

Original Air Date:

23 October 1998

Genre:

Documentary | Biography | History | Music | Romance

Plot:

Plot Keywords:

Archive Footage | Behind The Scenes | Retrospective | Director | Visionary

Awards:

Won Primetime Emmy. Another 2 wins & 2 nominations

Cast

David O. Selznick	...	Himself (archive footage)
Alfred Hitchcock	...	Himself (archive footage)
Peter Bogdanovich	...	Himself.
rest of cast listed alphabetically:
Judith Anderson	...	(archive footage)
Ingrid Bergman	...	(archive footage)
Raymond Burr	...	(archive footage)
Leo G. Carroll	...	(archive footage)
Michael Chekhov	...	(archive footage)
Paula Cohen	...	Herself
Joan Fontaine	...	(archive footage)
Cary Grant	...	(archive footage)
Gene Hackman	...	Narrator (voice)
Lois Hanby	...	Herself
Al Hirschfeld	...	Himself
Louis Jordan	...	(archive footage)
Robert E. Kapsis	...	Himself (as Bob Kapsis)
David Klune	...	Himself
Leonard Leff	...	Himself
Norman Lloyd	...	Himself
Ronald Neame	...	Himself
Laurence Olivier	...	(archive footage)
Gregory Peck	...	(archive footage)
Father Gene Phillips	...	Himself
Marcella Rabwin	...	Herself
Peggy Robertson	...	Herself
Eva Marie Saint	...	(archive footage)
Thomas Schatz	...	Himself
James Stewart	...	(archive footage)
David Thomson	...	Himself

Runtime:

86 min

Country:

USA

Language:

English

Color:

Black and White | Color

Aspect Ratio:

1.33 : 1

Sound Mix:

Mono

Company:

American Masters

Movie Connections:

Features Gone with the Wind (1939)

Most interesting history lesson

This excellent documentary interweaves the biographies of two highly different but equally important characters of cinema history: David O. Selznick, producer, and Alfred Hitchcock, director. Both stories are indeed worth being told and where they meet and go on together, the film gets even more interesting. Employees of Selznick and co-operators of Hitchcock remember; biographers and historians present their expert comments and archive photographs underline the history lesson. This film really helps to convey a quite comprehensive understanding of the film industry around the 1940s, an idea who David Selznick was and how he used to work (all those memos!) and maybe also a new view on genius Alfred Hitchcock.

One thing struck me a little strange and made me develop some doubts on whether everything said in the film was perfectly true: Hitchcock was portrayed in a positive manner throughout, whereas Selznick had to be the bad guy in most of the cases. It's not impossible that director and writer Michael Epstein had his particular sympathies. But on the other hand I can imagine that producers at this fairly early time in movie history really showed such obvious symptoms of megalomania.