Higher_HIghs

I bet if Cary Grant was 20 years younger, he would have been the first candidate to play James Bond... Wait a minute, he was? Ah, he turned down the role because of his age... Let me start from the beginning then: If Cary Grant was 20 years younger, he WOULD HAVE BEEN the first actor to play James Bond. What does it have to do with Alfred Hitchcock's "Suspicion"? Not much, to tell the truth - it's just that Cary Grant's performance in this classic screamed to me "James Bond, James Bond, James Bond!" despite him playing an opposite character - a gold digger, a hopeless gambler with no source of income and no real ambitions in life. On second thought, was it really an opposite character? Well, there are at least two things these two personas have in common - undeniable charisma and irresistible charm (besides the height, handsome face, jet-black hair, strong jawline, seductive voice, and broad shoulders, of course). Who knows, maybe in another life, where James Bond wasn't lucky enough to find his calling as a secret agent, gambling, avoiding real job, and making heiresses fall in love with him would be his thing. I mean, it isn't much different from what he does already: he gambles with his life, getting the same portion of adrenaline, rush, and thrills on his secret missions as an avid gambler does betting his life savings on a horse; you couldn't convince me that a secret agent is a "real job", and I can't imagine James Bond filling out forms in an office anyway; and we all already know his record when it comes to women. So yeah, in some convoluted way, I see "Suspicion" as a peek into what the life of Agent 007 would have looked like had he not been recruited for a secret intelligence service.

P. S. Finally, Hitchcock's movie that had nothing to do with spies (though it had elements of espionage), but I still managed to weave in the topic anyway 🙃

First, a few words about the film itself. A movie called "F o r e i g n C o r r e s p o n d e n t" (granted, the title is not as bad as "The Lady Vanishes") has no business being as good as it is. Honestly, I didn't expect much from it at all, but the two hours flew by in the blink of an eye. It's divided into implicit chapters that, while being of the same nature, still manage to slightly shift gears and change the mood as the story progresses, so as a viewer, you never get the chance to get bored.

It looks like no matter what the geopolitical situation and hard facts are, people will always tend to believe that the possibility of a war is negligibly small, and all the fuss is just the politicians distracting from real problems, or the media doing what they do best - selling the fear. Whether those assumptions are true or not, it's important to remember that where there's smoke there's fire.

I used to believe that the events preceding the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022 were unique. I thought that the late 2021 and early 2022 were this one-of-a-kind moment in history when for the first time ever, thanks to modern technologies, the world could actually see a war coming months in advance. Little did I know, 80 years earlier, without any satellite images or internet, the world could foresee an impending war in Europe just as clearly. And just as poor Ukrainians refused to believe in the full-blown invasion, Europeans dismissed the posibility of a second war on their continent when the wounds from the Great War had barely healed up. Honestly, I held responsible every Ukranian for staying in the country when the evidence of an impending armed conflict was so strong. Though I could see their point of view: "There's no way an invasion can happen when the entire world knows and talks about it, right? It's not like we're in 1939 Europe when Germany SURPRISED everyone by their aggressive actions, right? I mean, wars only happen when no one expects them, right?". If only they knew history a little better or at least had watched "Foreign Correspondent". Now, how can I blame Ukrainians for not leaving and deciding to take the chance on the eve of the invasion, when obviously, every nation in history has done exactly the same. It's just the human nature to believe in a positive outcome.

Here are the two biggest lessons the film taught me:

• there's nothing special about an impending war being known to everybody, including a civilian like me, months in advance.

• people will always refuse to believe it, no matter how strong the arguments are.

I didn't expect almost a century-old movie to have such an intricate plot! Despite the seemingly convoluted story, the picture - in the best tradition of storytelling - consists of pretty distinct three parts, following the three-act structure to a tee. Interestingly, the first half was reminiscent of "Fight Club", "Shutter Island", and "A Beautiful Mind", while the second reminded me of "Gone Girl" and "Knives Out". Btw, I've seen only a handful of Alfred Hitchcock's movies, but every other one seems to implement the subject of espionage to a certain degree. I had no idea it was one of the director's favorite themes to explore, especially in the beginning of his career. Until I started to explore his early filmography, my entire life the name of Alfred Hitchcock had been associated with "Psycho", thus with the horror genre, but I have yet to see another work of his in that category. What I keep finding is spies, secret agents, conspiracies, and even more spies. Considering his obvious affection for the topic (and the fact he's British doesn't hurt either), I'm surprised he hasn't directed a single adaptation of one of the James Bond books. Well, at least when the first trilogy was concluded, he managed to work with the original James Bond himself, Sean Connery, in his own film "Marnie".