I get the sense that Stahl partisans (Stahlinists? Anybody?) want to get past comparisons to Douglas Sirk. Here in Bologna, there have been a conspicuous lack of references to the latter in conversations and official introductions. But Stahl will always be compared to Sirk -- the wild convergence of their careers at crucial moments across decades ensures that. And they make for a good study in contrasts: a lot of the lazy characterisations of Sirk’s style that still run rampant…

Glorious. Retroactively makes me respect MARNIE even more. That was a hell of a bold shift for Hedren and Hitchcock after something as abstract as this. They obviously both sensed the darkness that stirs within Melanie in the last reel and, heading inward in MARNIE, exploded it. The tensions inside Hedren's great, delicate performance in BIRDS seldom surface, but when they do, it is disquieting like nothing else in the film (I'm thinking of the child-like confusion of Melanie spluttering,…