The Best Double Feature Ever?

Does anybody else remember double features?  You know, when you get to watch two movies with one ticket?  Last night for the princely sum of $7.00 (a small popcorn was $1) I saw two Hitch masterpieces, first "Dial M for Murder" and then "To Catch a Thief."  They went together like an entrée and dessert.  The first is dark, the second light.  In the first the most beautiful woman ever in movies has blue circles under her eyes and in the second she wears clothes and drives a car that shows her off to breathtaking advantage.

I went by myself.  My two best movie buddies were basking in Boston instead of being at the Stanford Theatre with me as the natural order of things ordain.  Last time I saw "Dial M" was in D.C. in the 1980's.  I saw it in 3-D which was loads of fun.  It was filmed that way, but by the time the movie's release date came around, the fad was over and so it was released in 2-D.  One thing I'd forgotten was that Mark, the Robert Cummings character, was a mystery writer.  Using his fertile brain, he figures the whole thing out. 

In "To Catch A Thief," the Cary Grant character tries to pass as a lumber magnate from Portland.  Yeah, right.  (His alias was Conrad Burns, the same name as the future senator from Montana who lost reelection largely because of a YouTube clip showing him napping during a Senate hearing.)  Cary at 51 is seen as just right for Grace Kelly at 26 by the mother played by Jesse Royce Landis who is only eight years older than Cary.  And the teenaged character Danielle keeps trying to get Cary to run away with her.  (Interestingly, Danielle is played by Brigitte Auber who in real life was a year-and-a-half older than Grace Kelly.) Maybe times have changed, maybe not.  The Riviera scenes are almost as gorgeous as la princesse.  One scene that put a frisson up my spine:  when Grace is driving recklessly over mountain roads where a bad turn would lead to a fall of hundreds of feet.  Of course, such a crash is how Princess Grace died in real life.  I really love how smart Francie, the Grace Kelly character, is; she's a more than even match for Cary's John Robie, "The Cat."  And the last line is perhaps the best in any film save perhaps Joe E. Brown's in "Some Like It Hot."

"Vertigo" this weekend and "North by Northwest" the next. 

Comments

[Peter]

Among the things we lack here in Philadelphia, the Next Great City, according to some of its more pathetic civic boosters, is a decent repertory movie house. It's been years since I saw Hitch on a big screen, probably the most recent rerelease of "Rear Window."
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Detectives Beyond Borders
"Because Murder Is More Fun Away From Home"
http://www.detectivesbeyondborders.blogspot.com/

[Sophie]

no, a double feature is when you back your pickup into the space at the drive-in, set up your beach lounge chairs and get out the Virginia Slims Menthol Lights and 6 of Pabst that you got from the night clerk at the gas station, and settle in for a long night.

Sheesh. Y'all coastal folk don't know nothin.

[Keith Raffel]

Peter, Come on down!

Sophie, I do remember the Moffet Drive-In at 101 and what's now Shoreline. Now it's a multiplex. And the Palo Alto Drive in -- now Greer Park. And the Redwood Drive in -- now miniature golf and race cars. Sigh.