Rhapsodies

 The theme for this week’s selection was blackmail. From two different extremes of the genre one taking it extremely seriously and to another treating it like dark, comic gold.

The first film My list, Alfred Hitchcock’s Blackmail, tells the story of Alice White (Anny Ondra ) who killed a man in self-defense after he lured her to her apartment and tried to rape her. Unfortunately for her someone saw her go into the building. 

This is the earliest Hitchcock film I’ve ever seen. As well as his first talkie. It’s really interesting to look at this beginning of the masters craft. It’s far from a perfect film, at least by Hitchcock’s standards, but it is so cool to see him beginning the experiments that will develop into his classic techniques.

The next film on my list is the Cohen brothers Burn After Reading. John Malkovich plays Osbourne Cox a CIA analyst who was encouraged to get reassigned due to his drinking. In a rage, he quits. This is the excuse his wife Katie (Tilda Swinton) who has been cheating on him with a married U.S. Marshal Harry Pfarrer, (George Clooney) to divorce him. Before she does this she researches his financial status and puts it on a CD, along with Osbourne’s draft for his autobiography.  Regrettably, the disc is left at a  gym. When trainers Chad (Brad Pitt) and Linda (Frances McDormand) find the disk, they mistake it for CIA secrets and gets the idea to return the disk for a reward. When she and Chad call to return the CD, Osbourne mistaken for blackmailers and things go downhill from there. 

This was a dark but funny parody of the spy thriller, featuring an all-star cast playing a group of self-absorbed idiots who each thinks the world revolves around them and can’t accept reality, much to the fate of everybody around them.