4K UHD Blu-ray Review: The Alfred Hitchcock Classics Collection - Rear Window (1954), Vertigo (1958), Psycho (1960), & The Birds (1963)

Now Available

Introduction:

In this dazzling new collection from Universal Studios, four of director Alfred Hitchcock's most famous films – including Rear Window, Vertigo, Psycho, and The Birds – have been newly restored and transferred to 4K ultra high definition Blu-ray. Gathered together in one collection, although I just intended to spot check the transfers of a few of the films that I know particularly well, these 4K releases are so pristine that each title seduced me entirely, regardless of how many times I've seen the movies over the years.

Loaded with extra footage, including making-of-featurettes, analytical documentaries, interviews, an alternate ending to The Birds, and the original Hitchcock approved theatrical cut of Psycho (which had been unavailable on home entertainment in the past), this highly recommended box set serves up each film on 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray, Blu-ray, and offers a 4K digital code for the titles as well.

When I first received the set, I initially planned to give you a nice short overview of the transfer and bonus features of each movie but I was soon surprised to find myself so invigorated by these films I know so well that I decided to take a closer look at all four works in chronological order. In doing so, I hope to dissect not only what this new 4K box set release is like but also what it is that I find so very compelling about what we see, hear, and are meant to understand in each one of Hitchcock's movies.

Warning: This article contains gentle spoilers. Really, though, can you blame me? Reading about Hitchcock's movies is easily the most fun (and the most valuable) after you know just what the hell is going on. 

Rear Window (1954)

“If you don't pull me out of this swamp of boredom, I'm gonna do something drastic!” At the same time that James Stewart's L.B. “Jeff” Jeffries delivers this ultimatum to his boss by phone in Rear Window, we see through our wounded photojournalist's eyes for the first time the neighbor living in the Greenwich Village apartment building across the courtyard from Jeff who will manage to do both. Played with subtle menace by Raymond Burr, Lars Thorwald quickly becomes the new focus of Jeff's voyeuristic obsession in Rear Window. 

A creature of habit whose eyes earn him not only a living but also fuel him creatively, intellectually, and body and soul, after six weeks of being sidelined with a broken leg, the wheelchair-bound man has started to go a little stir crazy. Watching his neighbors like they're his new favorite soap opera, Jeff becomes fascinated by the comings-and-goings of those whom he and his dutiful nurse Stella (Thelma Ritter) nickname Miss Torso and Miss Lonelyhearts. But none of the residents capture his imagination quite as much as Lars Thorwald, who Jeff fears might have killed his wife.

While, much like Melanie Daniels in The Birds or Gavin Elster in Vertigo, no one believes Jeff at first – which is a recurring theme throughout Hitchcock's filmography – soon even his regal, high society girlfriend Lisa (played by the luminous Grace Kelly) must admit that Thorwald's behavior is so suspiciously puzzling that Jeff might be onto something after all.

Once again working with his frequent 1950s collaborator in the form of screenwriter John Michael Hayes (who also wrote To Catch a Thief, The Trouble With Harry, and Hitch's remake of his own 1934 film The Man Who Knew Too Much), Hitchcock's Rear Window is one of the filmmaker's most timelessly crowd-pleasing and accessible thrillers. Adapted from the 1942 short story “It Had to Be Murder,” by Cornell Woolrich, the cleverly quippy, acerbic, and suspenseful script, which earned Hayes an Edgar Award and an Oscar nomination, might just be the best one that Hitchcock ever committed to the screen.

Riveting on multiple levels, because of the very overt way that Hitchcock weaves in voyeurism and scopophilia (which makes it the perfect film to pair with the director's masterpiece Vertigo, also starring Jimmy Stewart), it's arguably one of his most personal pictures due to its both celebration and criticism of a man who – much like Hitchcock and the audience – likes to watch.

Describing the film as a parable, in his 1954 review of Rear Window, critic turned director François Truffaut (who would later conduct in-depth interviews with Hitchcock, which were published in a masterful film reference book) argued that Rear Window was about cinema itself. For example, "the courtyard is the world, the reporter/photographer is the filmmaker, [and] the binoculars stand for the camera and its lenses,” he elegantly surmised in his piece and it's an intriguing assessment of Window's components overall.

Additionally of interest to me given the disability narrative at play throughout, since Jeff is forced to use a wheelchair and feels cut off from the world because of this, his desire to join the others and throw himself in the middle of dangerous, or exciting situations manifests itself in a myriad of ways. From gazing out the window with just his eyes to graduating to binoculars and then moving onto a telephoto lens, the temporarily disabled Jeff tries to get closer and closer to the action with each act of the movie. This openly phallic symbolism (which suggests that he feels impotent) becomes even more curious on repeat viewings. Moreover, we begin to see how bold the film is in its decision to let the women be the ones who actively help solve the Lars Thorwald mystery by throwing themselves into the middle of dicey situations in ways that Jeff – who is left only with his eyes – cannot.

Easily my favorite Grace Kelly performance in a Hitchcock film, followed by the underrated Dial “M” for Murder, and the lovely, lightly entertaining if, especially by comparison to Window, slight To Catch a Thief, even though she's nearly upstaged by her jaw-droppingly gorgeous costumes by Edith Head, Kelly exudes a delightful sense of mischief in Rear Window that's a joy to behold. 

And, fittingly for Hitch, it's only when her character Lisa puts her life on the line – to such an extent that all Stewart can do is helplessly watch – that Jeff becomes the most attracted to her sexually. Less interested in the regal beauty when she's six feet away from him than he is when she's sixty-five feet away and suddenly (slightly) less attainable, this spark of mortal danger lights a fire in their relationship like nothing else. 

Astonishingly, Kelly is even more ethereal in this 4K restoration than I've ever seen her before. The new edition improves each character's skin color and texture and boosts the soundscape to such an extent that we truly feel like we can hear those voices drifting across the courtyard to us in the richly textured DTS sound as though we're sitting in that wheelchair along with our audience surrogate, Jeff. 

Arriving with a plethora of bonus material you can pore over after you finish the film, Rear Window also works as a great gateway movie to new and young film fans looking to discover the work and range of the Master of Suspense. 

Vertigo (1958)

In my eyes, Alfred Hitchcock's most challenging and ambitious film (and also his best), Vertigo takes the voyeuristic behavior of James Stewart's male protagonist several steps further than the wheelchair sleuth he played in Rear Window to paint one of the most disturbing portraits of compulsive scopophilia ever committed to the screen.

Forced into retirement from the San Francisco Police Department when a rooftop chase leaves one officer dead and Stewart's veteran detective John “Scottie” Ferguson frozen with fear, although he's able to get rid of his cane and corset shortly into the movie, vertigo is one disability that might just be permanent.

Asked to do a favor for an old college acquaintance (Tom Helmore) who fears that his young wife (Kim Novak) has become suddenly possessed by a long-dead spirit as she disappears for hours at a time and can't remember where she's gone, Scottie begins to follow the beguiling beauty around the streets, shops, cemeteries, and landmark sites of San Francisco.

Growing increasingly infatuated with Novak's Madeleine Elster with each successive stop, although he's given permission to look this time in Vertigo as opposed to just spying on his neighbors on his own accord in Rear Window, there's something much more disturbing and primal about his desires in this one, which we begin to suspect even before the film enters its sinister second half. 

Drinking her in while committing to memory where every pin in her hair goes or how she sits on a pillow on the floor after he fishes her out of the San Francisco Bay (and undresses her offscreen at his home while he waits for her clothes to dry), while it's clear that Scottie is falling in love with his friend's wife, Hitchcock tries to play off any alarm we might feel in a variety of ways.

Still nursing quite the unrequited crush on her old college fiancé, Scottie's long-suffering best friend Midge (Barbara Bel Geddes) becomes something of a red herring in Vertigo. She mercilessly teases Scottie about his obvious attraction to Madeleine and acts out in her frustration by painting a truly creepy portrait of herself in one scene and in another, follows her following friend around herself. Additionally shirking some of the responsibility for Scottie's behavior off on this idea of supernatural possession, it's only after Vertigo switches gears yet again and shows us the aftermath of the first half's twist that we realize that what Scottie has been feeling all along goes far beyond simple love.

Intriguingly, the film is said to be the favorite work in Hitchcock's filmography of the largest number of directors, including Vertigo obsessives Brian De Palma and Martin Scorsese. When you analyze what the film does, in leading us – like Scottie in his first day of following Madeleine through the streets of San Francisco – around the corner of so many half mysteries before it goes down an altogether different avenue moments later, their affection for the film on a structural level makes complete sense. But when you start to break it down from a psychosexual standpoint, there's much more there to dissect. From the way that Vertigo, like Stewart's Scottie, not only derives pleasure out of watching (which in itself is just like our relationship to film) but also wants to control or “direct” Madeleine's double Judy (also played by Novak) to look and act a certain way in the film's last act, Vertigo is about the role of a filmmaker above all.

One of the eeriest portraits of single-minded male obsession that I've ever seen, Vertigo is fascinating in the way that Judy is forced to submit to the whims of an aggressively dominant man who essentially breaks her down to get the performance he wants, much like Hitchcock did with Novak on the set. Whether you're watching the movie through a psychological, sex and gender, or purely filmic lens, there's so much in Vertigo to discuss that it's no wonder that, despite opening to mixed reviews in 1958, it's only grown in critical esteem over the years.

I will, of course, freely admit that Vertigo (which was adapted from Pierre Boileau and Thomas Narcejac's novel D'Entre Les Morts by screenwriters Alec Coppel and Samuel A. Taylor), undeniably plays the best the first time you watch it from a plot perspective alone. Similarly, much like other Hitchcock endeavors, it's a film that inspires a fast rewatch to take a closer look at the things you missed the first time around, now that you know how it all turns out.

Yet, everything else about Vertigo, from the subtleties in the performances (just look at what Bel Geddes can do with an eyebrow raise), to the long takes and dizzyingly vertiginous cinematography, to Bernard Herrmann's sweepingly romantic score, to everything going on just below the surface make it one movie that you can't help but want to revisit again and again.

While Vertigo has been restored and remastered multiple times over the years – and it's the Hitch film I've seen the most times in my life – once again, I became easily entranced by Hitch's masterpiece when I put the disc in to, as I'd intended, simply spot check the new 4K transfer.

Watching it through from start to finish one more time, I couldn't help but notice that this format boosts the clarity of each image like never before, which ensures a better match between shots that were filmed in the studio and those captured on the streets of San Francisco. Rendering the contrast between the formerly high polish interiors and airy, slightly blown out exteriors so that there's less of a jolt between the different textures, this effect is especially apparent in the sequence where Novak and Stewart wander around the woods of Big Basin Redwoods State Park, which used to look ever so slightly dated in previous versions but absolutely shines in the new 4K release.

Filling the disc with some of my favorite previously available bonus features, including lengthy behind-the-scenes featurettes and mini-documentaries where everyone from those who worked on the film to others (including some of our greatest directors) share their passion for Vertigo, there's much to obsess over in this one.

Psycho (1960)

The crowning achievement of master composer Bernard Herrmann's career, although most people immediately conjure up the way that he uses the sounds of the instruments in his orchestra as weapons slicing through Janet Leigh's flesh in Psycho's notorious shower scene, the DTS soundtrack of the new 4K transfer has you looking over your shoulder as soon as the movie starts.

Assaulting your senses with fast-paced credits and music that pours out of every speaker in the most startling of ways, as brilliant as Hitchcock's horrific Psycho is as arguably the first mainstream slasher movie ever made, it would be nowhere near as effective without Bernard Herrmann's score. After all, sound is – as Francis Ford Coppola once famously said – at least half the picture. 

Shooting the film quickly, in black-and-white, and on the cheap with his own production company and “Alfred Hitchcock Presents” TV unit at Universal after Paramount rejected his pitch to bring Robert Bloch's 1959 novel – inspired by the shocking case of Wisconsin murderer Ed Gein – to the screen, Psycho is Hitchcock's greatest experimental effort.

Bloch's eponymous novel was adapted by relative newcomer Joseph Stefano, who word is was actually in therapy due to issues surrounding his own relationship with his mother when he penned the screenplay, which would go on to win him an Edgar Award.

A film so dependent upon surprises that not only did Hitchcock order that no fans be admitted into the theater after the movie started, he's also said to have asked his assistant to purchase any and all copies of the novel that she could find to keep prospective viewers in the dark.

Beginning like a seedy noir, then flirting with an old-fashioned detective story angle before it moves straight into horror, Psycho is revolutionary in the way that it shifts our sympathies to the man who will be revealed as the murderer (Anthony Perkins) fairly early into the movie, once it kills off its protagonist played by Janet Leigh. Never letting our minds wander or our attention waver, while this is easily the most harrowing comeuppance for one of Hitchcock's famous cool blondes – as Phoenix real estate secretary Leigh makes the reckless decision to embezzle forty thousand dollars from a lascivious, self-satisfied rich man and goes on the run – it also gives us one of the most disturbing misogynists in Hitch's entire filmography. 

Although Joseph Cotten's deceptively charming Uncle Charlie hated women with a gleeful passion in the brilliant, often overlooked masterpiece Shadow of a Doubt and you see various levels of Hitch's own sexual frustration with women throughout his filmography (see especially Vertigo and Marnie), it's presented to the most alarming degree in Psycho. Punishing women who dare turn him on, whether they're aware of this or – as is in the case of Leigh who is observed through a peephole – are not, the meek Perkins is so stunted in his sexual development that he's scapegoated and cast everything off on his “mother” once he dispatches the women who invade his thoughts.

“I don't hate her,” Norman Bates (Perkins) tells the sympathetic Marion Crane (Leigh) about his mother in their longest scene together, before he clarifies, “I hate what she's become.” As it turns out, what she becomes is him. And it's only after we know this that we realize how cleverly Bloch, Stefano, Perkins, and Hitchcock made us hate “her” before we understand that we too are guilty of a little internal misogyny in being so quick to blame this woman – who, by all accounts, might have been a piece of work as well – for all of Norman's problems.

Easily Hitchcock's most famous film, Psycho spawned a controversial shot-by-shot color remake from Gus Van Sant, along with numerous sequels, and TV spinoffs, including the critically acclaimed prequel Bates Motel). Sixty years after its release, Psycho still plays like gangbusters no matter how many times you've seen it but this latest 4K release is especially noteworthy.

Going back to restore the vintage frames and elements in Hitchcock's preferred original theatrical cut of the film, which was unveiled to audiences in 1960, as opposed to only giving us the version of the film that was most widely available on TV, VHS, and DVD over the past thirty years, this edition gives fans their choice of which cut they prefer to watch.

The main difference between the two versions is that the newer cut removed some of the film's more erotically charged moments to slightly sanitize it for everyday audiences watching today, which is kind of amazing when you consider the fact that it was even more sexually disturbing back in 1960. Yet either way that you watch Psycho, it will undoubtedly inspire goosebumps, sustained as much by the performances and what Hitchcock chooses to reveal when with clever camera angles as it is driven by Herrmann's nerve-shatteringly evocative score.


The Birds (1963)

Most likely owing to a childhood fear of wrongful persecution that developed after his father reportedly had him locked in a jail cell overnight when he was a young boy, almost as ubiquitous as the wrong man motif used throughout his filmography is the recurring Hitchcockian theme of nobody believing his protagonist when trouble arises.

From assuming that Iris Henderson is lying about the vanished Miss Froy in The Lady Vanishes to L.B. "Jeff" Jeffries trying to get his friend at the NYPD to investigate his suspected murderer neighbor Lars Thorwald in Rear Window, Hitchcock movies are full of characters who could've prevented harm, if only someone had taken their dubious yet credible warnings more seriously. Sure enough, these instances are most memorable when coupled with a protagonist's innocence of a crime in Hitch's popular wrong man movies like North By Northwest. But beyond the two films that I cited earlier, one of my favorite examples of this intriguing dilemma is in The Birds, which uses internal misogyny and a woman's reputation against her to such an extent that otherwise intelligent characters refuse to believe their own eyes because it matches this "undesirable" woman's warnings that something very wrong is happening in the sky.

Of particular interest to viewers watching today in a post Me Too society where predominantly women (but also some men) still struggle to be believed when they recount the shocking actions that they've endured to bring their truth to light, The Birds stars then-newcomer Tippi Hendren as the mischievous daughter of a wealthy newspaper owner. Known for playing practical jokes, some of which have resulted in legal action, Tippi Hendren's heroine Melanie Daniels is a classic “woman with a past.”

Attracting the attention of a lawyer (Rod Taylor) who'd seen her in a recent court appearance, shortly into the movie, Melanie drives out to Bodega Bay, California to deliver two lovebirds to the eleven-year-old sister (Veronica Cartwright) of Taylor's Mitch Brenner, with whom she meets cute in a pet shop early on in the film.

Seeing the two size each other up in the store amid the backdrop of swarms of birds kept enclosed in cages, we can't help but wonder if the birds who will soon treat Melanie – and indeed everyone else – like prey are getting revenge on us for daring to try to corral and control them. And although we see and/or hear birds whenever Hedren is onscreen, Hitchcock waits an extended amount of time to deliver the first attack when – after she's delivered her small birdcage to Mitch's home – she rows back across Bodega Bay and a seagull swoops down to swipe her forehead, almost accidentally.

“That's the damndest thing I ever saw,” Mitch observes as he helps her out of the boat and brings her to a local cafe to clean the cut. But even though the birds draw first blood in Hitch's film, that action won't be their last by a long-shot as birds of all feathers begin to flock together and hunt down Bodega Bay residents in packs.

Trying to warn everyone – including her newspaperman father – to take her seriously after the next big assault, every woman watching can recognize the frustration in Melanie as we listen to her explain that no, she is not hysterical and is in fact telling the God's honest truth. Suddenly the object of ignorant suspicion by townspeople who start wondering if they're in the midst of a plague and if she – perhaps the embodiment of evil – has somehow brought this to them all, watching average citizens shamefully begin to embrace a ridiculous conspiracy theory makes The Birds especially timely in this era of 2020, COVID, and Trump.

Hitchcock's first film after Psycho, The Birds works exceptionally well as a double feature with its predecessor, given the way it seems to weirdly foreshadow the terror to come in the eerie sequence with Norman Bates where he discusses his love of not only taxidermy but especially of stuffing birds, whom he describes as passive creatures, while also likening them to his “harmless” mother.

Loosely based on Rebecca author Daphne du Maurier's titular 1952 short story, which was adapted for the screen by “Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine” contributor and “Alfred Hitchcock Presents” television writer Evan Hunter (who would go on to publish mystery novels under the name Ed McBain), The Birds was Hitchcock's first and only “creature feature.”

A monster movie Hitchcock style, and one that was made largely with real live birds as well as over two hundred thousand dollars worth of mechanical ones which were created specifically for the movie, the film was so intricate from a technical perspective that it required various departments to complete their work at other studios, including Fox, Disney, and MGM. Made without a conventional score, although he used source music occasionally throughout, the film's soundtrack mainly consists of the sounds of birds chirping, hooting, and flapping their wings as they soar through the air looking for their next victim.

And when you factor in the hell and injuries that Hitchcock allegedly put Hedren through on the set after she spurned his lustful advances (in an account that was released after the filmmaker's death and also backed up by her co-star Rod Taylor) as well as its horrific attack sequences, The Birds remains just as disturbing as ever. Cleaning up some of the dated effects evident in the old home video editions of The Birds, this flawless restoration and transfer to 4K makes the film look light-years better than I'd ever seen it before, particularly during the agonizing sequence where Melanie runs with the schoolkids away from both a murder of crows and murderous blackbirds, who've begun to flock together.

Taking horror in a different direction after he broke a new mold in Psycho, The Birds afforded the man – who famously said he hated actors – the ultimate opportunity to work with as few of them as possible to create one of his most uniquely suspenseful works, where one town refuses to listen to a woman they're prejudiced against . . . until its too late.

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Film Intuition Interview: Chris Lemmon On His Book, His Father's Legendary Career and The Jack Lemmon Film Collection

(Originally Published along with all of Film Intuition's other interviews, TV, book & music reviews, and news in Jen's P.O.V. -- Misc. Reviews, News & Interviews)

The Film Intuition Interview:
Chris Lemmon Chats With Jen Johans
About His Book, His Father's Legendary Career
& Sony's The Jack Lemmon Film Collection

View Video Clips from the New DVD Collection

Read the Film Intuition Review of the Set






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Author's Note: As just one of millions of film lovers who have cherished the wondrous performances which have been captured on film over the course of the life and career of two-time Oscar winner and twenty-two time Golden Globe nominated actor Jack Lemmon-- it was truly an honor to have the opportunity to interview his son and biographer, Chris Lemmon.

Warm, gracious, funny, and entertaining-- speaking with Chris was proof enough that the Lemmon hadn't fallen too far from the tree. And very quickly I realized that given his penchant for storytelling and painting visual pictures with his memories of his beloved friend and father, when the time came to transcribe the conversation, it would be best to structure it solely with Chris's own words.

So without further ado, I'm incredibly humbled and thrilled to offer Film Intuition's loyal readers and fellow Jack Lemmon fans, my conversation with Chris Lemmon regarding Sony's brand new collection of Jack's work.

Chris Lemmon: We're so excited; this is the first shot for all five of them. And on top of that we were able to marry the theme of the book into the bonus documentary so well with these specific five titles that really basically give you a ten year slice of my father's life, his career and him as a person and an artist [which] is really just something original that I don't think has been done before.



Boy, I just couldn't be more pleased. All five separately I think are terrific works and very varied-- they show so many sides of pop because that's what he was, he was so multifaceted as a performer. I like all five of 'em and not just individually but for that specific reason that-- combined they give you almost like a history or a biography of him not just as an actor but as a person because he imbued his performances with so much of himself. So you literally see him grow from an up-and-coming star to the top Hollywood box office draw over the course of a ten year period when you take these films together as a whole.

I think he liked all of them but I really feel that he had a special affinity for Notorious Landlady only because Dick [director Richard Quine] was such a close friend and Dick and Kim [Novak] were together as a couple when they were filming that so there was a lot of off-camera emotion involved there as well. I think that when you have rich friendships like that it can only help to augment what's going on on camera no matter what it is you're playing. And also I think because it turned out to be such a hell of a good film.



Not to mention I think that Sony does as good of a job as can be done with all of their box sets; they're always tastefully done. Again, to use one of my father's favorite phrases, I'm tickled pink.



Dad clicked well with everybody. Blake [Edwards] and Dick [Richard Quine] had such a great relationship that it's just unfortunate Dick's life ended at an earlier age because I think he would've gone on to do all sorts of fun stuff. But in the book [Chris Lemmon's book A Twist of Lemmon] Blake's one quote is if I had anybody to choose to do a film with it would be Jack Lemmon.

And that happens in this business; you run across people you click with and you work with them again and again and Blake adored pop and used him whenever he could and obviously saw how multifaceted Jack Lemmon was because he was able to use him in everything from The Great Race to the Days of Wine and Roses and that's a pretty broad spectrum if you take a look at it.

The Great Race was always one of my very favorite films of my father's and to this day I still defend my stance that it's one of the great films ever made; I don't care whether it's a wacky comedy or not. I adore The Great Race and I think he was-- pardon my French-- balls-out-brilliant in it.

In the third grade or something like that, a little kid comes running up and says, "you see that kid over there-- that's Robert Conrad's son. He's the guy who acts as Jim West on The Wild Wild West; he's more famous than your dad."

And I say, "Well yeah, sure he is, he's Jim West." And when he was running away I remember thinking to myself, "I didn't know my dad was famous, I thought he was just an actor."

Jack Lemmon

DVD Review: The Jack Lemmon Film Collection (Phffft!; Operation Mad Ball; The Notorious Landlady; Under the Yum Yum Tree; Good Neighbor Sam)

Now Available to Own on DVD

An Introduction

With the bonus of an all-new documentary hosted by Chris Lemmon featuring accounts of those who worked with or were friends of the legendary actor Jack Lemmon such as Kevin Spacey and Shirley MacLaine-- five previously unreleased works from Lemmon's Columbia Pictures endeavors finally make their way to DVD in this must-own set.

Naturally skeptical about the movies since-- as both a classic film lover and one who was especially fond of Jack Lemmon-- I was shocked to realize that I hadn't seen any of the five titles (and in fact had only heard of Under the Yum Yum Tree). Luckily, I was thrilled to discover that each one was entertaining in their own way. And in fact, after viewing two in particular-- Good Neighbor Sam and The Notorious Landlady-- I realized at once that I wouldn't hesitate to include both of those in a list of the actor's very best movies.

Since we're normally accustomed to thinking about Lemmon in terms of his partnerships with his best friend and best onscreen counterpart Walter Matthau as well as his great collaborations with Neil Simon and Billy Wilder, it was a tremendous discovery to see the way he fostered many excellent friendships and working alliances early on in his career.

And to this end, the collection features some notable overlaps in regards to two works co-starring Kim Novak, a few directed by Richard Quine, a lively duo from filmmaker David Swift, and a couple penned by Blake Edwards that showed his early dazzling ability to blend pratfalls with complicated monologues to endlessly witty effect in five vastly different films reviewed below.

Phffft!
(1954)
Director: Mark Robson
Writer: George Axelrod

To quote the luminous and vastly underrated Ms. Kim Novak who appears in the film's trailer-- while referencing the impossible to pronounce and abysmal title-- "if you can't say it, see it." Yet despite the fact that she's front and center in the trailer as part of Columbia Pictures' attempts to elevate Kim Novak as a "rising love goddess" in the same vein as their rival studio's Marilyn Monroe, Novak's part in Phffft! is relatively small and silly.

And this is especially in comparison to the film's real draw for fans of the year's previous collaboration between Judy Holliday and Jack Lemmon in the lovely George Cukor classic It Should Happen to You as they were no doubt eager to see them reunite.

Penned by George Axelrod (who also wrote the cinematic classics Breakfast at Tiffany's and The Seven Year Itch), the movie opens with an amusing set-up of marital discontent as-- after eight years of life together as man and wife-- Judy Holliday's character Nina announces that she wants a divorce.

Annoyed that she's interrupting the sexy hard-boiled pulp novel he tries to read throughout the film (as a great running gag as he's stopped in the foreplay stage every single time) and just as glad at the prospect of putting a stop to their relationship that's fizzled out, Lemmon's Robert agrees far too easily and quickly for Nina's taste that the feeling is mutual and the same thought had occurred to him.

While clearly they seem to be on the same page-- personal inventory wise if not literally as Robert has to reluctantly close his book-- the way the couple continues to argue over the grounds of the arrangement and who thought of dumping the other one first makes viewers instantly realize that perhaps the shock of addressing their boredom has most likely made their marriage come alive for the first time in years. Still they dash to Reno for a quickie divorce with both predictably trying to figure out the best way to move on, especially when they're still professionally involved with one another.

Making drastic changes as Nina and Robert attempt first to occupy their time with self-improvement activities with Holliday's decision to learn a foreign language and Lemmon's choice to pursue painting (before realizing they have no talent in either area)-- inevitably they begin seeking romantic companionship in the strangest of ways.

Whereas Holliday's Nina mistakes what she assumes is a seductive come-on by the leading man of the show she writes for only to discover that like most actors he just wants a better part, Lemmon goes the early mid-life crisis route by buying a sports-car and taking the awful advice of philandering ladies man Jack Carson who informs him to grow a mustache and fixes him up with the pom-pom dancing Novak.

And soon enough the two realize their efforts are actually bringing them closer together as witnessed in one of the movie's standouts when they're surprised to discover they've both taken dancing lessons and proceed to show off with their respective partners only for their "dance off" to find them literally sweeping each other off their feet. However-- and true to romantic comedy form in addition to increasing our own amusement-- they fight their obvious attraction the entire way right until an ending that seems to have possibly influenced Pillow Talk.

Despite the age of the film which suffers as the weakest digital transfer in the set by making you strain for the remote to emphasize the volume-- and possibly if your television is able, get rid of excess noise from the dated print-- it's a great deal of fun.

And although it won't be mistaken for the second time around romantic comedy divorce hits (or "comedies of remarriage" as scholars have labeled them) like Cary Grant's efforts The Awful Truth and The Philadelphia Story-- it makes a terrific companion to It Should Happen to You and once again celebrates the deft physical timing of the two leads that they're able to punctuate with some truly classic Axelrod lines (yet dialogue-wise, Carson gets the best material).

Also on the DVD, you'll want to be sure to check out the hidden twenty-two minute television gem Marriageable Male which shows an impossibly young Jack Lemmon pretending he's a male model (and perhaps foreshadowing his great passion for golf, striking a pose with a club) in order to try and drive a wedge between advertising artist Ida Lupino and her brainy fiance she's currently supporting.

A true blast and one that has a great deal of potential as a comedic work-- making my writer brain work overtime in figuring out how we could write something like that that's feature length today-- in many ways, despite being one fourth of the length, Marriageable Male is just as impressive as Phffft!

Operation Mad Ball
(1957)
Director: Richard Quine
Writers: Arthur Carter (based on his play), Blake Edwards & Jed Harris

Two years after Jack Lemmon won the Best Supporting Actor Academy Award for John Ford and Mervyn LeRoy's military comedy-drama Mister Roberts, he returned to familiar and audience favored territory via Arthur Carter's comedic stage-play about servicemen trying to throw a big party despite their overbearing Captain Lock as co-written for director Richard Quine by Blake Edwards and Jed Harris.

While the result was a lighthearted romp that an interviewee in the box set's documentary likens the movie as a possible precursor to the hit film and spin-off TV series M*A*S*H-- in my eyes Operation Mad Ball plays like a 105 minute episode of The Phil Silvers Show a.k.a Bilko or Sergeant Bilko which ruled the CBS airwaves as a three-time Emmy award-winning Best Comedy Series for 143 episodes from 1955-1959.

Despite the familiarity of the admittedly minor plot and the fact that the film never fully manages to shake its theatrical roots as what-- at times-- essentially feels like a filmed version of the play, it's bolstered considerably by Jack Lemmon's tremendously mischievous charm and fast-talking, good-hearted yet downright conman World War II vet, Private Hogan.

Set post-war in September of '45 in an unclassified area of France, director Quine (who would work with Lemmon six times) and co-writer Blake Edwards' work is elevated immensely given Lemmon's energetic performance as he tries to wheel and deal his way out of Lock's insistent wish to court-martial him. And Lock's desire to rid Hogan from sight we soon ascertain derived mainly because Hogan is smarter than the man as well as having the distinction of being the most decorated private in the war, but one who tarnished the Captain's good will by deciding to run crap games as part of occupational therapy.

When he gets caught telling a nurse how beautiful she looks in the moonlight and-- given her position as an officer whereas enlisted men don't have that opportunity and therefore are forbidden from becoming romantically involved with an officer-- Lock goes ballistic and after Hogan manages to evoke the Geneva Convention in his defense, Lock re-assigns Hogan to the mortuary.

The bulk of the film-- in addition to the cliched subplot of Lemmon trying to woo the beautiful nurse-- consists of him leading the other soldiers in the planning and execution of a celebratory ball in honor of a young man who's shipping off for the pacific and away from his own female lieutenant sweetheart.

Although overall, it's the weakest disc in the set-- the cast and dialogue manage to make it work very well. With a great foil for Lemmon in Ernie Kovacs and nice supporting work by Mickey Rooney, the ensemble comedy makes a nice Saturday afternoon time-waster as we delight in seeing Lemmon play a part that one decade later would've no doubt have been given to his buddy Walter Matthau.

The Notorious Landlady
(1962)
Director: Richard Quine
Writers: Blake Edwards & Larry Gelbart
(Based on a story by Margery Sharp)

Although he acknowledges that his father would've been thrilled that all of these titles are finally being made available to the public, when I interviewed Chris Lemmon recently, he noted that if he had to choose one, he believed that his father Jack would've been particularly pleased with the debut of The Notorious Landlady.

It's a tremendous achievement by all involved including his great friends Richard Quine (who directed Lemmon for the fifth time in this ingeniously plotted work), Kim Novak (in yet another pairing of the two), and screenwriter Blake Edwards who in the exact same year had directed Lemmon in the wildly different and deeply moving film Days of Wine and Roses.

With a crackerjack script by Edwards who partnered with future M*A*S*H and Tootsie writer Larry Gelbart providing a solid foundation for the cast and crew alike, the movie manages to blend together as many genres as possible as it weaves a tapestry which starts with a seemingly simplistic plot that grows increasingly complicated with every twist and turn.

Notorious Landlady begins quite notoriously indeed as a wicked comedy crossed with gothic tinged noir as Novak's beautiful London resident Carly Hardwicke is suspected of murdering her husband whose body hasn't been found. Unable to rent out a room in her flat because she's under the suspicion of all of Scotland Yard and her nosy neighbors-- and likewise in desperate need of money-- Carly has all but given up on the idea that someone will arrive without knowledge of the possible crime.

However, as an American diplomat just arriving in the country from being stationed in Saudi Arabia, Jack Lemmon's smooth talking Bill Gridley proves to be the ideal candidate for her new tenant. For after catching even the briefest glimpse of Novak's radiant beauty (which can't even be hidden with a scarf or in the black and white photography), he flirts with shameless abandon and tells Carly he'd sign a one hundred year lease.

With the two sending off tangible sparks just in their opening moments together onscreen (no doubt augmented by the fact that they'd worked together previously in various projects for Columbia and Novak's serious off-screen romantic relationship with Quine helped solidify their friendship all the more), Gelbart and Edwards' innuendo filled conversational teases and romantic wordplay make it even funnier when Gridley inevitably discovers the truth about Carly's past from his superior Fred Astaire.

Persuaded by Astaire and forced by Scotland Yard not to cause an international incident given Lemmon's pleas that she's so angelic she has to be innocent, they encourage him to get even closer to Carly and report back on all of his findings. Shocked that they're asking him "to be a male Mata Hari," Lemmon initially refuses but is too smitten to stay away and far more worried when Astaire lays down the law that under no circumstances is Novak to realize he's been informed of her past.

"If she knows I know, I go?" Lemmon's Gridley asks and with the threat that he'll be sent either back to Saudi Arabia or somewhere even more remote if he fails, makes a spectacle out of international diplomacy or America's foreign relations in England, Lemmon grudgingly agrees to Astaire's terms.

And while this alone is the ideal So I Married an Axe Murderer style impetus for a great dark romantic comedy, the filmmakers constantly change genres when a real genuine mystery is revealed including foul play and a courtroom drama (dragged out a bit too long), a blackmail situation with danger, intrigue and more.

Although given its 123 minute running time and especially in a post-crime incident, a lull in the pacing that screeches the fast-paced plot to a grinding halt thereafter, making the second half a bit uneven-- all is forgiven and the entire film is saved by one wondrously choreographed homage to the silent comedies of Harold Lloyd, Charlie Chaplin, and Buster Keaton.

With Novak and Lemmon showing off their natural skills at pratfalls, wordless physical humor, and energy as they run around a Concert By the Sea, chase a wheelchair down a hill and more all in sync with the music-- it's a moment of sheer cinematic joy and among some of Lemmon's best onscreen sequences-- not to mention one that no doubt helped propel Edwards' affinity for silly physical humor he'd use again with Lemmon in The Great Race as well as with Peter Sellers in The Party and The Pink Panther series.

Under the Yum Yum Tree
(1963)
Writer/Director: David Swift
(Based on the play by Lawrence Roman)

Earlier I mentioned that-- had it been made later-- Lemmon's role in Operation Mad Ball may indeed have been given to Walter Matthau. And in the case of former Pollyanna and The Parent Trap Walt Disney Studios writer/director David Swift's first foray into '60s "sexless" sex comedies with the box office smash Under the Yum Yum Tree-- had playwright Lawrence Roman not originally written it for Jack Lemmon, I think it's safe to say that Lemmon's Some Like it Hot and The Great Race costar Tony Sex and the Single Girl Curtis would've been tapped to play the lecherous landlord in this two-time Golden Globe nominated work.

I mean, when you imagine a kinky peeping tom who only rents apartments to young women whom he plies with stuffed animals and heart shaped keys, the last person you'd imagine going for the role is our beloved "Everyman" Jack Lemmon a.k.a. the individual Chris Lemmon joked in both his book and the set's documentary called himself both "modest" and "America's Sweetheart." However, Jack Lemmon has marvelous fun trying to seduce sweet young things and break up two happy college sweethearts in this dated but entertaining work.

As the Sony Picture Home Entertainment box set's documentary notes, a scheduling conflict prevented Lemmon from taking part in Lawrence Roman's play when it made its run on the stage but he definitely made it up to the playwright by tackling it for the big screen in a film that would become one of the top-grossing pictures of 1963. And likewise it ended up garnering Lemmon one of his record-setting twenty-two Golden Globe nominations he would accumulate over the course of his amazing career.

Essentially you can think of Yum Yum as a male-centric version of a Doris Day or Sandra Dee film but one that goes much further than Pillow Talk, Send Me No Flowers, If a Man Answers, or That Funny Feeling.

In doing so, Swift's film casts the adorable Carol Lynley as the object of Lemmon's latest lust-filled obsession in one of two virginal roles which finds Lynley's Robin and her boyfriend Dave (Dean Jones as the other virgin in a nice gender switch) deciding not to give into holy matrimony just as an excuse or legal permission to have sex. Instead Lynley's Robin makes the choice that they will test their compatibility sans literally sleeping together by ironically "sleeping together" albeit in separate beds in the same apartment as a trial run at cohabitation.

And to this end with a daring idea of two kids shacking up without a certificate from city hall, Swift makes the era's other sexless sex comedies of Day and Dee look downright Disney by comparison. And this is especially the case given Swift's bold choice to move the similarly themed plot-lines of those stars' comical mistaken identity or misunderstanding narratives of loopy l'amour sabotage into the same terrain that Lemmon's other frequent collaborator Billy Wilder mined with his Hot co-star Marilyn Monroe in The Seven Year Itch (in which incidentally Wilder had hoped to cast Lemmon's later on-screen soul mate Walter Matthau).

Now finding Lemmon inside that (Wilder again) Apartment he stood outside of in the Oscar winning classic-- he dons a Hugh Hefner style wardrobe and makes it his mission to try and shag Robin by cleverly getting Dave out of the picture, wearing out the young man by urging him to take out his raging hormones with an endless regime of exercise.

And continuing his lascivious quest Lemmon's described "sneaking, crawling, dirty man" enters the young lovebirds' apartment on any whim with the repeated excuse that he needs to water the (plastic!) plants as well as taking to listening outside their door, trying to peep through windows to further insinuate himself in his hopeful disintegration of their relationship.

While of course there's no question that pure romance will conquer all in the end-- I confess at first the "ick" factor of seeing Lemmon as a sleaze took a little while to adjust to cinematically. Nonetheless the politically incorrect and eerily stalker-esque Yum Yum still remains quite a riot-- if only to catch Lemmon in a truly against-type role as a morally bankrupt leering playboy-- especially in moments wherein you feel like you've broken through that fourth wall and can truly see him visibly loving every minute of playing such a crazy part.

Good Neighbor Sam
(1964)
Director: David Swift
Writers: David Swift, Everett Greenbaum & James Fritzell
(Based on the book by Jack Finney)

While there's no doubt that the only way that Yum Yum could be made today would be as an eerie thriller, during David Swift's follow-up "sexless" sex comedy with Jack Lemmon the next year in the infinitely lovable Good Neighbor Sam, I couldn't help but wish someone would try and play with this piece again since it's a work of purely comedic Lemmon gold.

Not since I caught director Frank Oz's 2007 gem Death at a Funeral have I been so thoroughly convinced that this work would make one incredible stage production in the same spirit of British bedroom farces including the one utilized to brilliant effect by Peter Bogdanovich in Noises Off.

The set-up alone is priceless as Lemmon's all-American people pleasing suburban husband, father, and routinely overlooked advertising employee (one of the many men in gray flannel suits of the era so to speak) finds himself in two unbelievably strange situations all in the course of twenty-four hours.

Things start going Sam's way when his company's big time client-- the prudish and pious owner of Nurdlinger's Eggs (a game Edward G. Robinson)-- threatens to leave the firm when he runs background checks on all of the unwholesome men assigned to his account living Mad Men style Don Draper like lives of extramarital sin and pleasure. And much to his surprise, the previously ignored Sam Bissell is suddenly the company's MVP since his life is as clean as his vacuum-like name.

Having been given a major promotion to run the account, Sam rushes home to celebrate with the wife he adores (Lemmon's Great Race co-star Dorothy Provine) only to end up walking in on her best friend Janet (Romy Schneider) taking a shower. Incredibly embarrassed, Sam realizes he'd forgotten that his wife Minerva was picking up the divorced Janet from the airport where she's newly arrived from France to organize her grandfather's estate. Luckily, the trio laugh off the confusion and go out celebrating, only to realize that Sam and Janet are going to have to get a whole lot closer in the future so that Minerva's friend can inherit fifteen million dollars.

Upon learning that her grandfather left everything to his favorite relative, Janet's thrilled but her happiness dampens considerably when it's revealed that there's a clause attached to the will stating that she has to be married in order to receive it. However, due to a difference in California law, Janet ascertains that she's legally still married yet before she can collect on the money, her unscrupulous and greedy cousins arrive-- mistake Sam for her "husband" and then hire a 'round the clock detective to make sure she's blissfully wed.

Although Sam continually sneaks back and forth between the two houses (as conveniently Janet has rented the newly vacant place next door), further complications arise when Janet is also mistaken for Mrs. Bissell when she drives him to work to ward off the detectives and also when Janet's ex arrives out of the blue and decides that he'll keep up appearances too by staying with Minerva for the time being.

With all the on-the-surface, unintentional swinging happening, Swift's comedy grows incredibly funny as the two real couples and two fake couples get irrationally jealous as well as irrationally close--much to the delight of viewers. Of course, in an era of romantic comedies where deal-making and "pretend you're my fiance" or gimmicky paradigms are commonplace, it may not seem like (to those who have yet to check it out) that Good Neighbor Sam offers anything other than what we're usually presented with at the multiplex. However, it's in the constant raising of the stakes, the delightful twists and admittedly silly yet refreshingly likable quartet of characters who never feel like one of today's interchangeable rom-com "types" that make it well worth your while.

Although like The Notorious Landlady, the whopping 130 minute running time seems a bit excessive for a comedy (even one as complicated as this one) but it's the marriage of great innuendo again with slapstick, sight gags, and terrific supporting players that keep you from growing bored with what could've been a rather incredulous plot.

And in the end it's a pure delight and like Landlady and the TV short Marriageable Male one of the creative and jubilant titles in the collection that makes me recommend picking up The Jack Lemmon Film Collection without hesitation.