Mystery - A Debriefing

*The American Film Institute’s Top Ten American Mysteries*

My Interpretation

#10 - The Usual Suspects: The Usual Suspects is good for most of the movie, but the last fifteen minutes or so are what makes it great. That ending fills my heart with joy and triumph.

#9 - Dial M For Murder: I definitely liked how everything in this movie was introduced early on - the movie never once ad to explain itself - but Dial M For Murder pales in comparison to the other Hitchcock movies. It just doesn't quite have the same spark.

#8 - Blue Velvet: Blue Velvet was, to me, occasionally needlessly violent, and not really all the interesting to me, but was pretty good, I guess. I just wasn't captured by this movie: I don't think I even really want to watch it again.

#7 - North By Northwest: I watch North By Northwest in Thrillers.

#6 - The Maltese Falcon: I really liked The Maltese Falcon. It has a really great cast, what with Humphry Bogart and Peter Lorre, it's classic film noir, and it's really fun to me. Awesome movie, I liked it a lot.

#5 - The Third Man: A lot like The Usual Suspects, most of The Third Man isn't that impressive - except for the ten minutes that Orson Welles is in. Those ten minutes are some of the best ten minutes of the entire list. I cannot wait until I see Orson Welles in something else.

#4 - Laura: You know, I had totally forgotten about Laura. It was a nice movie, definitely, but it hasn't stuck with me, obviously. It had a good twist, though, and Vincent Price before he started taking roles in horror "movie," and without a mustache.

#3 - Rear Window: Rear Window was my favorite movie of the set. The mystery is fantastic and the characters are great, and you really get to know the secondary characters. The ending is very happy and peaceful and the movie is very self-contained. It's terrific.

#2 - Chinatown: Chinatown definitely stood out for me as a good movie, but it wasn't really a movie I liked. I didn't dislike it either, though. I thought that Jack Nicholson was great and I liked the way it used old film noir tropes, and I thought it had really good imagery, with the desert, and the nose-bandage. It definitely feels a lot grittier and darker than a lot of the older movies, even the Hitchcocks.

#1 - Vertigo: Vertigo is absolutely the best movie of the set. It's unsettling and disturbing, it has a twist that comes out of nowhere, but still fits with the rest of plot, and everyone in it is fantastic. One of the reasons people actually like this movie so much is that it's supposed to be really personal for Alfred Hitchcock - Apparently he was very controlling in his relationships. I thought it was fantastic, and it's really stuck with me.

Mystery #1 - Vertigo (1958)

Vertigo is a lot different than I expected it to be. It's an Alfred Hitchcock movie, with Jimmy Stewart's and Kim Novak. Jimmy Stewart plays the retired detective John Ferguson, whose nickname is Scottie, for some reason. He's retired because he suffers from severe acrophobia and vertigo. One of Scottie's old buddies comes to him and hires him to trail his wife, Kim Novak, named Madeline (Or is she?), whom he thinks is possessed. So Scottie does. And Madeline wonders around the city, and it appears that she's possessed by one of her relatives who committed suicide. And then Madeline committed suicide. And then it gets weird. That there is only half the movie.

Vertigo is really fantastic. It's one of those movie that you sort of have to watch twice, and I wish I had, but I already sealed the Netflix envelope. Alas. The mood of Vertigo is really strong. It's a very creepy and very disturbing movie. I look back on this movie and the main impression I have of it is very unsettling and disquieting. I look back on it, and I just feel sort of gross. The whole movie just adds up to exactly what it should be. I just love it. I think I'm really a fan of Alfred Hitchcock movies.

Vertigo is famous for two things: The dream sequence, and the camera effect. The dream sequence is really terrific. It's stylized enough that it doesn't look that dated yet, and it's really creepy, and it really feels like a nightmare. The camera effect is an effect designed to convey the sensation of vertigo. It's this very unsettling effect where they move the camera toward the view, but zoom out. The frame stays the same, but the perspective changes. It works really well. Even though that's not what vertigo looks like, it's definitely exactly what it feels like, which is awesome.

Vertigo is definitely the best mystery, which is awesome. I liked it a lot and I want to watch it again. I'm definitely looking forward to when I get to watch another Alfred Hitchcock movie.

Mystery #2 - Chinatown (1974)

Chinatown is very dark movie. It is film noir at its noir-est. It’s actually neo-noir, because it’s from the seventies, but it’s a lot darker even then The Third Man. It’s a Jack Nicholson movie – He’s a detective, and he’s investigating the disappearance of water in California. There's a theme running through the whole movie that Chinatown, which is where everyone used to work, is a place of lawlessness and brutalness and no rules. It's a bad place. The whole point of the movie is that everywhere is Chinatown. The world is Chinatown. "Forget it, audience," says the movie. "It's Chinatown." It is very dark.

Chinatown is undoubtedly a good movie. It takes common old film noir elements, and it subverts them, and plays on the audience's expectations, and use them to create a movie that is even more twisted and depressing than film noir usually is. I mean, this movie leaves The Third Man in the dust on the darkness scale, even without Orson Welles. Chinatown does have Jack Nicholson, though, and I've said that before, and I will say it again: There is no one scarier than Jack Nicholson. And he's terrific in this movie - this is before he started doing that sneer-y thing, so he looks totally different than usual.

I was definitely entertained while watching the movie, but it hasn't really stuck with me. When I think back at it, I like the mood, but I almost never think about it. I think of a lot of the other movies I've watched almost constantly. Chinatown just hasn't made an impression on me. Good imagery, though - The nose-bandage will really stick with me.

Mystery #3 - Rear Window (1954)

Rear Window is another Alfred Hitchcock movie, starring Jimmy Stewart and Grace Kelly. In it, Jimmy Stewart is laid up with a broken leg, and has started spying on his neighbors out of the rear window of his apartment. Part of the movie is about his neighbors - their lives, hopes and dreams, their loves, et cetera. The other part is about a particular neighbor who Jimmy Stewart thinks has murdered his wife. That's the mystery. So Jimmy Stewart spends all of his time watching this neighbor through his binoculars or, because he's a photographer, a long-focus lens. That's actually really practical - we did that to the White House when we were in Washington D.C. - Did you know they have a bee hive? Grace Kelly is his fiancée, and she also thinks that the neighbor's a murderer, and they're trying to convince a detective buddy that Jimmy Stewart has that it's true.

I really like Rear Window - It's probably my favorite mystery so far. The actual murder is definitely the main plot, but it also has more to it. The neighbors that Jimmy Stewart are just terrifically crafted characters, even though you never see them talk, and you really care for them - but in a sort of detached, distant way, which is the point - that's how Jimmy Stewart feels about them.

The problem with having really big-name stars in movies is that I usually don't actually both to learn the name of the character, because they're so obviously that actor. I almost can't associate them with a separate character. Especially since Jimmy Stewart always plays very similar characters - Nice, but in a gruff, scary way. Well, I say always, but truth be told, I've only ever seen two Jimmy Stewart movies: This, and It's a Wonderful Life (Good movie). Two data points isn't a pattern, but so far that seems to be the general Jimmy Stewart persona. Which is cool - I really like it in this movie, and in It's a Wonderful Life. But that's why Jimmy Stewart's character is Jimmy Stewart in my head, and not Jeff.

I liked Grace Kelly a lot better in this movie than I did in Dial M for Murder. Admittedly, she didn't really have much of a character to play in that movie. This character is much better - she feels more like a person than a victim. I also liked the other female character of the movie - Stella, Jimmy Stewart’s nurse, played by Thelma Ritter, who disapproves of his spying on his neighbors. She's great. Which reminds me: Did you know that Lawrence of Arabia is the longest movie to not have a single woman in a speaking role in it? Yeah, true story. But that is not true of this movie – It is, for one thing, much shorter than Lawrence of Arabia.

Again, two data points don't make a pattern, but things are looking good for Alfred Hitchcock. Each of the Hitchcock movies I've seen have been like exquisitely crafted soufflés of cinema. I just love how much care goes into these movies and how every detail is looked at and thought of and fixed even before the movie is filmed, and how you can tell in the finished product. The Alfred Hitchcock cameo in this movie reflects that, because he’s shown winding a clock, symbolizing his control of the whole operation. Some may call Hitchcock’s insane attention to detail obsession, but I call that a healthy dose of perfectionism and I fully support it. I say micromanage on, Alfred Hitchcock. Micromanage on. Because, of course, if anyone can micromanage from beyond the grave, it’s Alfred Hitchcock.

This movie is just a wonderful example of cinema. It’s a terrific movie because it’s really an unusal story and an unusual way of making a movie. I love how self-contained it feels – At the time, it was one of the largest sets ever built on a sound stage – and I love how you experienced the same thing as the characters – You get close to the neighbors, but stay total strangers at the same time, and you doubt that that man is a murder until more evidence is offered up and it just feels very suspenseful and important. When you’re watching this movie, it is really important. This movie does exactly what it wants to do, and that makes me really happy. I love to see things that are well-done. Except in steak. I prefer that rare.

Mystery #4 - Laura (1944)

Internet, do you know what this is? That's right: It's a Whodunit. It's not that I don't like the other movies that aren't Whodunits, but for me, the Whodunit is the pinnacle of all the sub-genres of mystery. I like learning the answer as the characters do, and gathering clues and guessing. It's like a movie and a game, all in one. And Laura is definitely a Whodunit. It's also yet another film noir film, although it's not nearly as cynical as the other one's have been. It starts with a murder, and the whole movie goes through the investigation until the murder is solved. There is a twist in the middle, and the twist is bizarrely similar to the one in The Third Man, although unfortunately it doesn't bring Orson Welles into the movie. Vincent Price is in the movie though, which I didn't even notice until about halfway through because his character isn't creepy at all and he isn't wearing a mustache.

Laura, of the title, is the murder victim (Or is she?) and Vincent Price and some other guy are her suitors, and Dana Andrews is the detective investigating the case - he falls in love with Laura through the investigation, too, so we have a sort of love square. It's actually really hard to guess who the murder is in this movie. I had suspected everyone at one point or another, but I never had a really certain guess. I was thrown off until the very end.

This movie isn't really special like most of the other one's are. Most of them have a dramatic twist, or founded a genre, or are controversial, or have Orson Welles in them or something like that, but Laura is just really good, I guess. It just stands out for itself. I've noticed that most of the movies on this list are from the forties and fifties, and very few are modern. I guess that's because it's not really a genre people use any more. That, or people don't know how to do it anymore.

Laura is a good movie, and I liked it. I don't know I'm going to particularly remember it though. It was very good, but really nothing particularly special. I'm going to remember The Maltese Falcon better, for example. I was really happy to finally see a classic Whodunit, though.

Mystery #5 - The Third Man (1950)

The Third Man is another film noir movie, which means it was very cynical and depressing, which is always nice. However, because of the way the sound is recorded, and because everyone has a weird accent and everyone's German, I found it really hard to understand the dialogue in this movie. It was therefore really hard for me to follow the storyline of the movie, so I felt really disconnected from the movie. I didn't absorb the themes or the characters or the moral dilemmas or anything. It was just another slightly-muffled film noir movie, although it did have a really cool-looking Ferris wheel toward the end, which was great visually, and another image at the end that really stuck with me, with trees and a car and a girl walking. It looked really great. But that was about it.

Other than those things, and the balloon salesman, there really was only one thing about this movie that I feel will stick with me. Orson Welles is in this movie. He's only in it for...maybe ten minutes, but he is a scene-stealer, I tell you. I knew that Orson Welles was supposed to be a really good actor, but I'd never seen him in anything before this, and I didn't know what he looked like. He has top billing on the Netflix instant menu, so I had figured that he was the main character. The guy who actually plays the main character, Joseph Cotten, isn't really all that impressive, and I was really confused. "Is that Orson Welles?" I said to myself. "Well he doesn't seem all that special at all." And then, probably an hour into the movie, the actual Orson Welles showed up, and the minute he started talking I knew - That is Orson Welles. He was amazing. For me, he made this a good movie. All of his lines were good and meaningful and well-delivered, and I could actually understand him, and I almost knew what the movie was about for ten minutes. It was like some crazy, life-changing acting-viewing experience.

The point is, Orson Welles is very good, and he makes this movie awesome. Without him, it's just another film noir movie with a Ferris wheel. I didn't even give a summary of this movie - that's how much Orson Welles takes up The Third Man.

Mystery #6 - The Maltese Falcon (1941)

North By Northwest was mystery number seven, and that movie ranks higher in the Thrillers list, so I'll watch that latter. The Maltese Falcon is the first film noir movie ever, unless you count M, and is the first Hard Boiled Detective movie. It's the first movie I've ever seen with Humphrey Bogart in it, and as it turns out, he's pretty awesome. Peter Lorre is also in this movie, and Internet: I love Peter Lorre. He's great - probably one of my favorite actors from the Golden Age. He's a small creepy Eastern European man and he almost always plays the character he plays in The Maltese Falcon - A somewhat sympathetic and ineffectual, yet still creepy, villain. He's awesome.

The Maltese Falcon is a Sam Spade movie - Sam Spade is the film noir protagonist. Is he a good guy? Is he a jerk? We don't know! He's very unflappable though - nothing phases Sam Spade. This movie is just such a classic movie. I'd never even seen it before, and it was still so familiar. It's been parodied so often and it launched a whole genre, and it's obviously a very influential movie. It was really cool to watch it. The Maltese Falcon is just a fun movie. I really enjoyed watching it. Everyone had trench coats and fedoras, and Sam Spade had an awesome secretary and he uses slang that I can't really understand but it's okay because it sounds cool. I'd totally gladly watch this again. It was cool.

I'm still not totally sure exactly what this movie is about, mostly because of the slang, but I do know that this little team of criminals is trying to get hold of this fancy, expensive bird statue (The Maltese Falcon) and Sam Spade is aiding them and thwarting them at the same time and his partners dead. It's very confusing - I'm still not sure if I've exactly sorted everything else, but it doesn't really matter because I enjoyed it regardless. This is just a fun movie. It's just awesome. It's definitely my favorite movie so far, even though it still wasn't a Whodunnit.

Mystery #8 - Blue Velvet (1986)

Blue Velvet is David Lynch movie mostly about the dark, violent underbelly of idyllic small-town America, and frustratingly, is still not a traditional mystery. I'm not even sure what the mystery might be in this movie, although admittedly that might be because I was cross stitching for big chunks of it. There's really not much for the audience to figure out, and there aren't any answers, anyway. This isn't really a major failing for the film or anything, but I was kind of hoping for it. Ah well.

Blue Velvet is about a small town youth named Jeffery Beaumont (Kyle MacLachlan, by the way), which unfortunately only reminds me of the town in Footloose, who gets mixed up in amateur detective work when he finds an ear in a field and is plunged into the violent and sexual world of the criminal underworld. Isabella Rossellini is also in it. Blue Velvet reminds me a lot of A Clockwork Orange. Both of the movies are extremely violent and sexual, and both of them use music that doesn't match the actions of the movie - A Clockwork Orange uses classical, and Blue Velvet uses 50's, crooner-style music. The similarities really end there, I guess, but they're still pretty strong to me. Blue Velvet seems a lot more polished and cleaner than A Clockwork Orange does, but the sex and violence in A Clockwork Orange seems less, I don't know, gratuitous. A Clockwork Orange seems to be actually trying to say something about sex and violence, while Blue Velvet just seems to be violent. And sex-filled. It's not that I have any inherent problem with these elements being in fiction, but I feel like there should be some sort of use for them. When I compare the two movies, Blue Velvet just comes up short. It doesn't raise any moral questions, it doesn't make you think, it's not depressing in an artsy way. A Clockwork Orange does all of these things, and I think that makes it a better movie.

I guess the point is that I didn't really like Blue Velvet. It was alright - I didn't really dislike it, either - but when I think of the other two movies that I've watched in this genre, I can come with specific reasons I liked them. The ending of The Usual Suspects was so well-presented that it filled my heart with joy and triumph all the way through the credits, and everything in Dial M For Murder was so cleverly presented beforehand that the movie didn't have to explain itself. I really can't think of anything in Blue Velvet that I specifically thought was good, though. I can't think of a reason for it to be a good movie. So, if I were the American Film Institute, and of course I'm not, so that makes a difference, but if I were, I would have put Blue Velvet below both The Usual Suspects and Dial M For Murder.

I have high hopes for the next movie though - Chances are very high that it will be an actual mystery.

Mystery #9 - Dial M For Murder (1954)

Dial M For Murder is my first ever Alfred Hitchcock movie (Who was, as I'm sure I don't need to point out, a knight), unless you count the original The Man Who Knew Too Much, which I don't because I really wasn't paying much attention to it. So far, things seem to be boding well for the master of horror and suspense, because I really liked this movie. I was entertained through the whole thing, it was well-done, all of the actors were really good. It's not even supposed to be one of the better Hitchcock movies out there. It was not, though, actually very mysterious at all. It was a mystery in the sense that it was about solving a crime, as the American Film Institute defines it, but it was not a mystery in the sense that the audience doesn't know anything.

You see, Dial M For Murder is about a man who plans to murder his wife by blackmailing someone else to do it for him. He helps out the murder by getting his wife out of bed by calling their apartment, which is where the title comes from. We learn all of this in the first half hour or so of the movie, so their really isn't much mystery for the audience. I was hoping for some good old-fashioned Who Dunnits, but out of the movies I've watched so far I haven't got one. The Usual Suspects wasn't really even about solving a crime so much, either. The movie doesn't want you to think too hard about who Kaiser Soze might be, and therefore the culprit is. There simply isn't that much mystery in Dial M for Murder, despite it being labeled as such. Sure, people solve a mystery, but not the audience, which I've always thought was essential in a mystery.

But that's beside the point. I did really like Dial M for Murder. What's crazy about this movie is that every single element that ever becomes even slightly important in the plot has been introduced earlier. The movie never has to explain itself because we've already seen what's happened, which is terrific. I haven't seen a movie like that before. It's so neat and put together and knows exactly what it's doing all of the time. I read on that Alfred Hitchcock meticulously planned every element of his movies for months before they were filmed, and often became depressed during filming because it was comparatively boring. I don't have any trouble believing this. Everything in this movie is there from the beginning, and nothing comes out of nowhere. It's absolutely fantastic.

Grace Kelly is the wife in this movie, and she seems...nice. I don't really know anything about Grace Kelly, other than the fact that she was supposed to be very elegant and married into the royal family of Monaco, and this is the first time I've ever seen her in a movie. I was hoping it would be more exciting than it was, since she's such a big movie star, but she didn't really stand out anymore than the rest of the cast. The guy who played the murder, Ray Milland, was very good - He was very menacing and sophisticated and charming at the same time, qualities I personally always look for in a murder - and John Williams, not the composer, I assume, was a competent police officer, which is always a comfort. Police are very often useless in fiction, and I don't like that. It's scary. And of course Alfred Hitchcock was in it. I think that one of the things I'll enjoy the most about watching Hitchcock movies is looking for Hitchcock himself. I already knew where he was in this one - it's a pretty famous example - but I'm ready for the hunt in future movies. I'm actually very excited about it.

And speaking of future movies, here's to one of them actually being mysterious in the future. And as for endings, I've decided not to spoil them, but anything happening in the first half of the movie is fair game.

Mystery #10 - The Usual Suspects (1995)

The Usual Suspects is a Bryan Singer movie about five thieves and con men who are all brought together into a lineup, and then start planning big crimes together. Most of the movie is Kevin Spacey's character, Verbal Kint, who is one of the criminals, telling the story of the crime that the police are actually investigating. Some sort of large boat has been stolen from and blown up by them, and Special Agent David Kujan is pretty sure he knows what happened, and wants Kevin Spacey to admit it. There's also some sort of criminal mastermind phantom guy called Keyser Soze, who's behind the five criminals committing the crime in the first place. It's a really cool movie - very nineties, though, so it kind of felt like I was watching it on TV, even though I wasn't.

The Usual Suspects is really famous for having a crazy twist ending. And it does. It's very Murder of Roger Ackroyd. The thing is, though, I knew that there was a twist ending when I started watching it. Because I was expecting it, it was really easy to figure out what the twist was, and I did about halfway through. All you have to do is think of the most shocking possible ending. The movie is also spoiled for you if you speak Turkish, but that's beside the point. If I went into this movie not expecting the ending though, I would have been really surprised. Even though I knew what the ending was going to be, it was still really cool when they revealed it. The way they did it was just awesome. The best part of this movie is easily the end, surprising or not. The rest of the movie is fine, but the end is great.

Besides the end though, he rest of the movie was good, but not as impressive. Which brings me to an important issue. Should I reveal the endings of the mysteries? I mean, a mystery is no good if you already know the ending. If people want to go and watch these movies, they'll be ruined for them. You can see my dilemma. I'll have to consider it.

Genre #3 - Mystery

The American Film Institute defines "mystery" as "a genre that revolves around the solution of a crime." I'd never thought of mystery as specific to crime, but now that I really think about it, I can't think of anything that I would consider mystery that doesn't have crime in it. A couple of Sherlock Holmes stories, I guess, but that's about it. Sherlock Holmes never appears on the list, though - they're not really good movies, to be honest. There is, hoverer, no less than four Hitchcock movies, some film noir, and a hard boiled detective movie (In fact, the hard-boiled detective movie.)

I'm actually very excited about the mysteries - I haven't seen any of them, and I haven't even heard of half of them (The half that aren't Hitchcock movies). This means that I don't know the endings of any of them, so hopefully I'll be surprised by all of them. After all, the best part of a mystery is the ending.