The 1943 RKO Falcon picture, The Falcon in Danger, also has a notable "lying flashback;" oddly enough, I first saw it (at the age of 12) not long after I'd seen Stage Fright and been shocked by the flashback deception in it; I was so paranoid after Stage Fright that I immediately got suspicious of the flashbacking character in the Falcon picture, and wasn't surprised when he turned out to be the culprit.
Donald Benson considers the thorny topic of lying flashbacks:
I can accept "lying flashbacks' when it's clear somebody is telling the tale. What bothers me a bit is when a character is recounting events and the flashback includes stuff he/she couldn't have witnessed (a narrow exception being for somebody recounting a theory of what happened).
"Witness for the Prosecution", if I recollect correctly, artfully skated over the "lying flashback" thin ice. Events and behaviors appeared to support the spin the speaker was putting on them, but didn't contradict the truth eventually revealed.
What galls me is when science or the art of illusion are cited, painfully inaccurately, to deal with a major plot point. Especially in a whodunit (Just revisited "Charlie Chan in the Secret Service", where a small hidden eletromagnet pointed at a gun mounted on a wall could pull it forward without affecting any other objects.)
I've never seen it, although I've seen clips in various Dietrich docs that look fabulous. Does STAGE FRIGHT play better if we think of it as a Dietrich flick, rather than as a Hitchcock? I need to sign up with Warner Streaming, they have FACE OF FU MANCHU and Burton's vicious VILLAIN on there.
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"Stage Fright" is like an old friend to me. One of those movies I'm always happy to enjoy.
I can only think of one other movie with a "lying flashback", 1943s "Sherlock Holmes Faces Death".
Hitchcock was never one to play by the rules. Let us not forget that this is a man who made a movie of The 39 Steps without the 39 steps.
The 1943 RKO Falcon picture, The Falcon in Danger, also has a notable "lying flashback;" oddly enough, I first saw it (at the age of 12) not long after I'd seen Stage Fright and been shocked by the flashback deception in it; I was so paranoid after Stage Fright that I immediately got suspicious of the flashbacking character in the Falcon picture, and wasn't surprised when he turned out to be the culprit.
Donald Benson considers the thorny topic of lying flashbacks:
I can accept "lying flashbacks' when it's clear somebody is telling the tale. What bothers me a bit is when a character is recounting events and the flashback includes stuff he/she couldn't have witnessed (a narrow exception being for somebody recounting a theory of what happened).
"Witness for the Prosecution", if I recollect correctly, artfully skated over the "lying flashback" thin ice. Events and behaviors appeared to support the spin the speaker was putting on them, but didn't contradict the truth eventually revealed.
What galls me is when science or the art of illusion are cited, painfully inaccurately, to deal with a major plot point. Especially in a whodunit (Just revisited "Charlie Chan in the Secret Service", where a small hidden eletromagnet pointed at a gun mounted on a wall could pull it forward without affecting any other objects.)
I've never seen it, although I've seen clips in various Dietrich docs that look fabulous. Does STAGE FRIGHT play better if we think of it as a Dietrich flick, rather than as a Hitchcock? I need to sign up with Warner Streaming, they have FACE OF FU MANCHU and Burton's vicious VILLAIN on there.
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