top left: The Foreign Correspondent; right: Lifeboat.
bottom left: To Catch a Thief; right: North by Northwest.
Watching Alfred Hitchcock’s remake of his own The Man Who Knew Too Much this evening I realised I’d missed the director’s customary cameo appearance, and furthermore didn’t remember which scene it was supposed to be in. One of my film books lists all the cameo spots but better than that are websites such as this one that show you the actual shots.
The Man Who Knew Too Much (1956).
For the record his appearance in The Man Who… is in the crowd at a Marrakech market with his back to the camera, so he’s easier to miss than in other films from this period.
Last Year in Marienbad (1962).
And while we’re on the subject, mention should be made of Hitchcock’s appearance in Alain Resnais’s Last Year in Marienbad, a film he had nothing to do with. A brief shot shows a cardboard cut-out of the director in a hotel corridor and the way the figure is positioned always makes me think he’s floating above the floor. The timing of the appearance is apt—11 minutes in—since Hitchcock always put his cameos near the beginning of the film so as not to distract the audience later on.
Previously on { feuilleton }
• Alex in the Chelsea Drug Store
• Borges in Performance
