My favorite scene in the history of cinema lies at the heart of Hitchcock’s 1956 masterpiece, “The Man Who Knew Too Much,” a superior remake of his own picture from 1934. His 1942 film, “Saboteur,” had a sequence where a terrorist (played by screen veteran Norman Lloyd, most recently seen in “Trainwreck”) opened fire in a movie theater at the precise moment when gunshots rang out onscreen, killing unsuspecting members of the audience. It’s a place that unites strangers through the emotional journey of a shared experience that, at its best, can be a sacred one.Īlfred Hitchcock’s films thrived on the horror that could be gleaned from set pieces where characters were attacked when they were at their most vulnerable-in the shower, in a field, in a boat, etc. When I brought up the fact that many of these incidents seem to be occurring in communal spaces-particularly churches and movie theaters-McBath said that the shooters are likely looking for attention by choosing “spaces that will attract the greatest numbers of people.” She also noted that for people of faith, “church is the last bastion of safety and love and acceptance,” and that “evil infiltrating the church is like evil infiltrating the heart of God.” The same thing could be said of a movie theater. The day prior to the AFI screening, McBath visited the victims of the church shooting in Charleston. McBath is the subject of two immensely powerful documentaries set for release this year, Marc Silver’s “3 1/2 Minutes, Ten Bullets” and Abigail Disney’s “The Armor of Light,” the latter of which I saw at AFI Docs fest. I had recently spoken with Lucia McBath, the mother of Jordan Davis, an unarmed 17-year-old who was shot to death after a brief verbal altercation in a gas station with a white man more than twice his age. Amy Schumer, star and writer of “Trainwreck,” the film that happened to be playing that night, gave a moving speech soon afterward advocating the importance of gun control, while standing beside her cousin, Sen. The attack occurred less than two weeks after a man fatally shot two audience members in a Louisiana theater before killing himself. He was armed with an airsoft pistol, a hatchet, pepper spray…and a bookbag. Yet another gunman had stormed into a theater-this time in Tennessee-and was killed before he could take any lives. I had carried my laptop bag with me to film screenings for the last several years, but today was different. “No bags allowed,” said the theater attendant. Reggie Nalder in Alfred Hitchcock’s “The Man Who Knew Too Much.” Courtesy of Universal Pictures.
0 kommentar(er)
