YouTube is Dumb. Also, Here's Some YouTube Links.

It happened again

Once again, YouTube blocked the latest episode of Public Domain Theater.

At least I didn’t get a copyright strike this time.

At this point, I think we’re giving up on trying to fight YouTube’s overzealous copyright gnomes, and we’ll simply post PDT episodes here on Substack. In fact, you can watch Blackmail with

Casey

and me right now—

How Did Hitch Do That?

Towards the end of that episode of the podcast, we mentioned the Schüfftan process, one of the oldest special effects in movie history, combining mirrors and glass. It was also used to make glowy eyes in Blade Runner—

I’m only familiar with Schüfftan because of his eponymous process, but while researching Blackmail, I came across this fascinating video about Eugen Schüfftan.

Don’t you just love learning about unsung heroes of cinema’s past?

More Blackmail

If you liked our podcast and want to learn more, I cannot recommend the Hitchcock/Truffaut interview book enough. It’s probably the greatest insight into the actual mental processes of a film director. The book is edited for readability, but much of the raw interview audio is available online.

I clipped a small portion about Blackmail, to whet your appetite—

If you want even more in-depth analysis about Blackmail specifically, you should read Tom Ryall’s Blackmail monograph. As is usual with the BFI Classics series, it’s both extremely thorough and yet totally accessible to the casual reader.

Currently, Max is streaming Becoming Hitchcock: The Legacy of Blackmail.¹ I hesitate to recommend it, because the insights are kinda superficial, the writing is sloppy, and Elvis Mitchell’s narration is shockingly disappointing.

The Dark Side of Hitchcock

As also discussed in the PDT episode, Hitch sometimes had a racy sense of humor. Here he is making some off-color jokes while doing a sound test with Anny Ondra—

Is this just a young director half-flirting² with his lead actress? Or is it an indication of something more sinister?

Interestingly, back in 2012, there were twin films (what TV Tropes calls “dueling works”) about Hitchcock—Hitchcock, a theatrically released film about the production of his most famous film, Psycho; and The Girl, an HBO TV movie about filming The Birds. The former is a pretty straightforward inside-baseball Hollywood picture; the latter is straight-up character assassination, depicting Hitch as a womanizer and abuser. I have no idea if either, neither, or both films are accurate, since he died almost exactly a year before I was born. But unfortunately, they’re at least believable, considering what we do know about the rich and powerful in Hollywood.

Coming Attractions

For our next episode of Public Domain Theater, we plan on covering Nosferatu. The original, obviously, not the Robert Eggers remake. Or the Werner Herzog remake. The German bootleg Dracula.³

A little less famous than those iterations is Shadow of the Vampire, a fictionalized account of the production of the first great vampire movie—

I know I hadn’t seen it in a while, but I was still shocked when I saw the date on that trailer. 2000! AD! Where does the time go?

Even more shocking is the guy who made this TikTok, seemingly unaware of who exactly Willem Dafoe is…

@hikhann_What do you do for a living? #foryoupage #viralvideo #foryourepage #fyp #foryou #viral #whatdoyoudoforaliving

Tiktok failed to load.

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Look, I didn’t know every old actor when I was younger, but c’mon, Willem Dafoe? Haven’t you at least seen Spider-Man?⁴ Y’know, the original one, made in [checks notes]… 2002?! AD?

1. Produced by StudioCanal, the French jerks who claim to own Blackmail.

2. Remember, he had been married for about three years at this point.

3. We’ll have a lot more to say about copyright on this one, I promise.

4. I actually got a chance to visit the set of Spider-Man while I was in school, but that’s a story for another day.