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Paul McCartney and George Harrison take an interest in Rosemary Frankland in “A Hard Day's Night,” most critical cinemagoer, the fiercest enemy of Beatle-style songs. This still leaves the fans with a closeup view of their adored ones and 12 numbers which they tear off as only they can. None is allowed undue prominence, though Ringo (who plays truant and defiantly roams London like a tramp) makes the biggest impression. But for me, John Lennon quietly clowning away, a lazy half-concealed smile on his good-looking sheep’s face, wins the day. Puzzled Whatever has happened to Alfred Hitchcock? Has he been paddling too long in the Shallow water of TV films, or has a high-brow praise in Les Cahiers du Cinéma gone to his head ? It is very hard to under stand how this once original maker of unexpected thril lers could perpetrate any thing so trite and boring as “Marnie” (X). For two hours and ten minutes he expects to follow “Tippi” Hedren, who is a sexually frigid girl with a compulsive tend ency to rob her employers. Sean Connery, a pub lisher only once seen within a mile of a book, sets about trying to cure her on both counts and to find out why the screen goes puce every one she sees something rea. After wading through long, tedious scenes of sexual fencing, the solution is found in a Baltimore rooming house. In a flash back—yes even that! — we see what happened to another one stormy night years , when “Tippi” was a little girl. Women's magazine psy chiatry (once the mental “blockage” is cleared the heroine's automatically cured); crudely painted backcloths; laughable dia logue; muddled continuity; and only one scene—the girl tip-toeing away from a crime in_ silence—with a hint of “Hitch” in his old role of a scalp-tingler. The Reason At one point “Tippie” is saved from committing suicide in a ship’s swim ming pool. (Suicide has been her solution to escape from the honeymoon atten tions of Mr. Connery.) “Why didn't you throw yourself over the side,” asks
Newspaper Details
Liverpool Echo
Liverpool, Middlesex, GB
Sat, Jul 11, 1964
Page 28
Full Page
Clipped by
Lucia A.
