Digital platforms offer the possibility of choosing what to watch when it is convenient or the weather is favorable and today it is strange not to find them on our television. The offer is wide, however lovers of classic cinema are in luck because of the daily selection that they show and repeat at different times. They recently put on Tarantula, with the terror dressed as a giant spider, walking without making a sound, getting closer to the characters and the viewer, and on a channel temporarily dedicated to artists and themes, it is Alfred Hitchcock who has occupied it since last Monday. At eight in the morning the broadcast began with his first film, The Girl from London, released in 1929.
Based on a play, it is a luxury to be able to see it so many years after its release, when cinema has evolved so much that it is another world, as it should be. For this reason, black and white film lovers did not miss a second of the screening, you could say that we did not even allow ourselves to blink, because we felt involved, locked in the plot. That was what happened when he saw the patrol car down the street, making its way with chimes, while the music narrated the scene as in the endearing and remembered ComedyCapers. Shortly after we hear the dialogues until the end, dubbed into Spanish with regular voices and without background music. Those in the know will know the reason: the viewer missed her so much as to wish she had been silent because, in reality, the gestures of the actors, the looks, the shadows moving along the wall, the way they walked, the way they twisted, spoke. a handkerchief or showing the lost glove that the villain, the bad guy, uses for blackmail, the English title of the film.
An hour and a half that went by quickly, where we learned to see the elements that Hitchcock made his own, the stairs and the mystery of going up and down, the curtain that hides and at the same time reveals fear, the knife, the lifeless hand, half open, pleading, people going from one place to another without speaking and the intervention of Hitchcock himself on a bus scolding a naughty child with signs. We have seen all this in Vertigo, Rebeca, Marnie the Thief, Psycho, The Man Who Knew Too Much, Perfect Crime and many more. That said, it is a luxury to return to the film at hand and recreate it to reaffirm ourselves in the lack of insight of those who presume to feel ashamed of titles like Gilda, A Streetcar Named Desire or This Girl from London. These do not like cinema, but rather watch movies.
