An elderly woman hires Blanche, a psychic with a tarnished reputation, and her boyfriend George — she wants to find her nephew Arthur, who was given up for adoption as a child. The couple tries to track him down, now a grown man, in San Francisco. However, Arthur himself turns out to be a man with a dark past, implicated in murder and theft.
4k movies reviews
Well… That was the end of the great Alfred Hitchcock’s career. The pioneer and classic of world cinema, who during his lifetime gave us, ordinary onlookers, 55 feature-length films, which in turn gave the world such a stable concept as ‘Hitchcock film’.
Until the end of his days he was devoted to the genre of ‘detective’, which under his watch began to live a new life. The famous close-ups of faces, the play of light and shadow, the thrilling plot and vivid characters. He damn well owns this genre in the film industry. It’s the same thing you hear from so many great directors these days: ‘I was very influenced by Alfred Hitchcock… Thanks to Alfred Hitchcock I am me now.” etc.
It’s not for nothing that they say that everything comes from childhood. So one day, little Alfred’s parents left their son at home to sleep, and they went for a night walk, without warning the boy about it. The poor boy, finding no one at home but him and the darkness, remembered that feeling of loss, alienation and fear for the rest of his life. The little boy eventually grew into a real master of suspense, who knows how to scare the audience like no other. Another curious fact from his biography: as a child, Alfred happened, as a joke for one of his relatives to show him the real side of life, to be in jail. His father told his 5-year-old son to give a letter to his acquaintance, the chief of police. He read it and took the child to his cell. He did release him after five minutes and warned him that if he did not behave properly, he would spend the rest of his life behind bars. The father, who punished his son for a minor offence, had clearly gone too far: prison had been ingrained into Hitchcock’s head all his life, and he was afraid of iron bars and police like fire. But he loved to play up the theme of a falsely accused man in his films (remember 1956’s The Wrong Man).
His immortal masterpieces (‘Psychosis’, ‘Strangers on a Train’, ‘Window Into the Yard’, ‘Vertigo’, etc.) and his creative activities were summed up by the master with ‘The Family Conspiracy’, which in the best Hitchcockian tradition features detective, thriller, comedy, as well as the beloved close-ups, retro music that immerses the film with double power, characters and, of course, plot. There are two parallel storylines in the film.
In one storyline, Blanche Tyler (Barbara Harris) is a charlatan who presents herself as a psychic and cab driver George Lumley (Bruce Dern) is on assignment by Miss Rainbird (Kathleen Nesbitt) to find her lost nephew. In another storyline, jeweler Arthur Edamson (William Divine) and his girlfriend Fran (Karen Black) kidnap people for ransom. Then the storylines, of course, intersect. Once again we are treated to a mystery, a clue and Hitchcock’s trademark cameo role. Whether by coincidence or foreshadowing, his final cameo is at the register of births and deaths. Hence the meaning of the role. Of course, Hitchcock didn’t think much of it, nor did he suggest that it was his last film before his death, but now it’s already a double meaning. The death of the Great Master, and his new birth… Ooh…
One hundred and eleven years ago, Hitchcock was born. Thirty years since this great man passed away. And decades, decades, and decades more as he will be remembered as one of the greatest, as one of the most sensational filmmakers in the world and throughout history. And to sum up all this writing, I can only say this: ‘I was deeply influenced by Alfred Hitchcock…. Thanks to Alfred Hitchcock, I am me now.
Info Blu-ray
Video
Codec: HEVC / H.265 (59.4 Mb/s)
Resolution: Native 4K (2160p)
HDR: HDR10
Aspect ratio: 1.85:1
Original aspect ratio: 1.85:1
Audio
English: DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 Mono (48kHz, 24-bit)
English: Dolby Digital 2.0
Spanish: DTS 2.0 Mono
Spanish (latino): DTS 2.0 Mono
French: DTS 2.0
German: DTS 2.0
Italian: DTS 2.0
Japanese: DTS 2.0
Subtitles
English SDH, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Spanish, Spanish (latino), Danish, Dutch, Norwegian, Swedish.
