The killer moment: The legendary opening tracking shot – an uninterrupted three-and-a-half-minutes following a bomb’s delivery in a car trunk – is the obvious choice (and the correct one). It’s only in the past two decades that we’ve been able to appreciate this masterpiece nearly as its creator intended.
They eventually recut the film against Welles’s wishes. The result was an impossibly rich Welles movie that could be held up to Citizen Kane: a brutal, explicitly sexual crime story a satire on race and prejudice a sad-eyed lament for wild pre-conformist America and one of the most gorgeously directed films of all time – even the dialogue scenes play like ballet. It was star Charlton Heston who lobbied for Welles to be handed the directorial reins, and who backed him – at least initially – against interference by the studio, Universal. Leaning down, Beckert lures a child into conversation: ‘What a pretty ball you have there.’įamously, Orson Welles’s involvement in this magnificently sleazy borderlands crime flick was meant to be strictly in front of the camera: he was hired to play Hank Quinlan, the grotesque corrupt sheriff, and nothing more. The killer moment: In front of a wanted poster, a dark silhouette appears.
Lang also turned Edvard Grieg's ‘In the Hall of the Mountain King’ – whistled by Beckert, but not Lorre, who couldn't whistle – into an instant signature of aural menace. (Filmed under the working title Murderer Among Us, Nazi party members refused Lang studio space.) The movie is immortal for Peter Lorre's career-defining performance as Hans Beckert, trapped by sweaty urges and a dragnet of cops and mobsters. M is cinema's darkest landmark: a portrait of awful appetites that was revolutionary for also being an oblique mirror on society at large. Berlin's most moneyed and celebrated director, Fritz Lang, was drawn to the subject, which would become the spine of his first sound film, in many ways the commercial birth of the modern psychothriller. Several real-life child murderers, cannibals and serial killers – their nicknames are grisly enough: the Butcher of Hanover, the Vampire of Düsseldorf – terrorised Germany in the 1920s. The killer moment: It has to be the crop-duster sequence, which begins like a Western standoff and ends with the suavest man in cinema face down in the dirt. But it’s Grant’s movie: a Hollywood A-lister happy to be the punchline when the scene calls for it. And the cast? Eva Marie Saint, James Mason, Martin Landau and Jessie Royce Landis – heroes, villains and worried mothers, they’re all having a ball. It’s all a tribute to Hitch and his ensemble of behind-the-camera talents, including screenwriter Ernest Lehman, Saul Bass (designer of the iconic title sequence) and Bernard Herrmann, whose score lends menace and levity in equal measure. Of course, making a movie this effortless is hard work. The greatest joy in Alfred Hitchcock’s spy caper is how effortless it all feels: a gliding magic-carpet ride from New York to Mount Rushmore, via Chicago and a Midwestern bus stop, as Cary Grant’s ad man suffers a potentially fatal outbreak of Wrong Man-itis. If there’s a thriller out there more exhilarating, sexier or packed with iconic moments than this one, we’ve yet to see it. 😬 The 20 best thriller movies on Netflix 🕯️ The 35 steamiest erotic thrillers ever made Written by A bbey Bender, Joshua Rothkopf, Phil de Semlyen, Tom Huddleston, Andy Kryza, Tomris Laffly & Matthew Singer Here are the 100 greatest thrillers ever made. But the best of them will always draw you in, make you sweat and leave you breathless. In other words, the thriller contains multitudes. But as a category of movie, the thriller is also loosely defined – within the genre, you’ll find examples of science fiction, horror, heists, action, even comedy, along with the ever-nebulous ‘psychological thriller’ subdivision.
In the pantheon of the best thrillers ever made, you’ll find murder, political intrigue, espionage, conspiracy, manipulation, gaslighting, and, of course, lots and lots of crime. Exactly how it initiates those reactions, however, varies greatly. When done right, a thriller provokes a physical response more than any other genre, bar horror. Are your palms sweaty? Your teeth clenched? Is your heart pumping and your leg shaking uncontrollably? If so, the chances are that the movie you’re watching is doing its job. What makes a great thriller? Well, let’s see.
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