MissGoddess

>>>Hey...who wouldn't want the chance to make...create the person of their dream<<< I hadn't thought of it that way, very interesting. Losing the one you love, especially under such circumstances, is something difficult for even a strong person to come to grips with. Ferguson was not strong and he couldn't accept Madeleine was gone. How many hundreds of millions of people throughout time have felt the same?

I love that quote by Maria Schell in The Hanging Tree. She understood his character before she even laid eyes on him---and wow, what a treat when she finally did see him!

>>>For a man who acted so blase about his acting & being in the film business, he's one of the luckiest s.o.b.'s alive in terms of the leading ladies he got to work and kiss: Jean Simmons, Jane Greer, Deborah Kerr, Ava Gardner, Jane Russell, Marilyn, Loretta Young. Gosh!! <<< Hee! You said it. And not to forget Shirley McLaine, with whom he had an intense affair.

Interesting observations about Gary's on and offscreen complexity, Dan.

>>>well i definitely love his goody two shoe/innocent roles best<<< Theresa-Angel: There you go, being angelic again! What did I tell you? Hee! Seriously, I think he's adorable when he's sweet, too.

Oild Buddy CS, jr: >>>Well, Judy Barton isn't Madeleine's double, Scottie just comes to believe that<<< I meant to express it in the sense of Hitch's playing with the concept of the double or doppleganger. Yes, the public and critics were not warm toward *Vertigo* at its release. I usually don't agree with modern critics about lots of things, but I am glad they appreciate this film more today. However, I doubt many find it as romantic as I continue to.

This one Hitchcock movie, more than any other, seems to strike people very differently. Either they love it or hate it---with the critics mostly loving it. For once I agree with them, even if many of the things read into have still escaped me and though there are some scenes I don't understand. For me, it is Hitchcock's most deeply romantic, shimmeringly melancholic movie. For others, James Stewart's "Scottie Ferguson" is weird---for me, he is tragic. And it's the only time Jimmy has ever elicited so much compassion from me for one of his characters. Not even in *It's a Wonderful Life* did I feel as much empathy, maybe because that character was sounder, but not Scottie. Scottie wasn't always responsible for himself or his actions. Maybe that's why control became so important to him after he met "Madeleine's" double. It's a movie about falling. Falling from heights, as we do in love, and falling for a terrible trick. Let me know *your* thoughts, good bad or indifferent about Vertigo---and whether or not you think it was the master's "masterpiece".

Maybe it's my view of Cooper being primarily a "hero" in his films but I never thought of his character, Link, in *Man of the West* as being a killer. In his past, yes. We all are imperfect and for some, the primary struggle they have is with violent behavior. In a world where a man had to fight to stay alive, I'm sure violence was a knee-jerk reaction that was hard for men to lose. But by the time Link boards the train in the opening of MotW, the west has been pretty much "civilized", or is getting there. Link's inner humanity, that which caused him to walk away from "Pop" and his ghoulish ken, is uppermost at this point. What happens later, what is fascinating is watching the struggle Gary shows of a man who finds his hard-won civility slipping off and the old, violent ways creeping back. But Gary in the end only kills to end the cycle of violence that Lee J. Cobb is perpetuating. I'm not justifyinig that---but I find it hard to judge him either, especially in light of what that old buzzard did to Julie London's character. One other point, Arthur O'Connell's character jumps in front of Gary to take the bullet to save his life. I'll never forget how astonished I was by that character twist. It's fairly often in movies that the evil are shown redeeming themselves, but the merely craven? Almost never, except in Mann's and Ford's films. Of course, the reason I like Gary in MotW and The Hanging Tree may simply be because I definitely like his "hard guy" roles best.

*Undercurrent*

*The Big Steal*

*Suddenly*

*Sleep My Love*

But then I got a *Second Chance*

I got a *Raw Deal* here...

*My Forbidden Past*

That's Miss Fallen Angel, Frank.

*The Dark Corner - Mark Stevens & Clifton Webb*

*The Killers*

Searching for Eleanor.....

*Fallen Angel* The title of which has always made me ponder: Who is the angel that has fallen? Alice Faye? Linda Darnell? Dana Andrews?

*Edge of Doom*

*Detective Story*

*The Big Combo - Cornel Wilde and Earl Holliman*

*Angel Face*