"What was Clive James thinking?" Maybe the question is when was he thinking it?

From Andrew Gelman:

From The Dreaming Swimmer (1992), one of Clive James’s classic essay collections:

    The best Hitchcock film was directed by someone else. Charade would not be as good as it is if Hitchcock had not developed the genre it epitomises, but Hitchcock could never have created a film so meticulous, plausible, sensitive, light-footed and funny.

Whaaaa? We saw Charade recently, and it was . . . really bad. I mean, sure, I’ve seen worse movies, and the acting was fine for what it was, but, no, I didn’t think it was “meticulous,” “plausible,” “sensitive,” “light-footed,” or “funny.” I’d describe it more as a movie constructed to have these attributes without ever actually achieving them.

So then this makes me wonder: What was Clive James thinking? And, more generally, how to react when someone you admire has different tastes than you?

 

James' claim here may be indefensible but it's not inexplicable.

Tastes are neither fixed nor independent. They evolve over time, and though we might not like to admit it, they are influenced by peers and authority figures. The idea that Charade is, by any stretch of the imagination, a better film than North by Northwest would seem so absurd that no self-respecting critic would dare to say it in public. However, if we go back to the mid-'60s and look at what other critics were saying at the time, Clive James's take is far easier to understand.

 Admittedly, James appears to have written these comments about a quarter-century after Charade came out, but as a '60s intellectual who was interested in the arts, he probably saw the movie in the theater when it was released and followed the critical discussion surrounding both Charade and the Hitchcock films that followed, such as Marnie, Topaz, and Torn Curtain. It seems reasonable to suggest that his opinions about the film were formed in the context of the 1960s, particularly given the limited options he would have had for re-watching the film in the first couple of decades after it was released.

There were many factors that predisposed viewers like James to like Charade in 1963. In style and execution, it was the kind of slick entertainment that was fashionable in 1963. The big-budget (for the time), glamorous European location shooting added an air of sophistication. The supporting cast was excellent. Matthau and Coburn were in the process of breaking big. George Kennedy was an up-and-comer, only four years away from his Cool Hand Luke Oscar.   Cary Grant was Cary Grant—still one of the world’s biggest stars and the unquestioned master of this type of role.

Then there was Audrey Hepburn. It is difficult to overstate how charmed audiences were by Hepburn during her relatively short career. Critics used lots of words like "luminous." I have to admit I never really got the full appeal of Hepburn's innocent waif act, but people at the time could not get enough, particularly when she was cast in romantic comedies with much older leading men (Bogart, Harrison, Astaire, and Grant). Of course this was much more common in movies of the time, the age differences weren't normally nearly as obvious. Lauren Bacall seemed to be 18 going on 40 while Hepburn seemed to be 25 going on 14.

Charade unsurprisingly got raves. None of Alfred Hitchcock's 1960s films received better than mixed reviews upon release. It took Psycho and The Birds years to win over the critics, while the three films that followed are still widely considered second-rate entries into the canon. Critic and general asshole John Simon made a disparaging comment about Hitchcock imitators, then added that with films like Topaz, Hitchcock himself was now one of that group.

When Charade came out to glowing reviews, Hitchcock was in the strange position of being both too old-fashioned and with films like Vertigo, Psycho and the Birds, too ahead of his time. Even the well-reviewed North by Northwest (1959)was generally treated as something of an affectionate self-parody, like an old rock star showing he could still get the crowd on their feet when he ran through the hits.

If you go back and read criticism from the decade, you will find lots of people arguing that Hitchcock had peaked years ago, perhaps even around the time he left Great Britain. These comments have aged badly, but to be completely fair, the last decade of the director's career does unquestionably show signs of decline. While there are lots of critics who will champion Frenzy, everything else he produced after The Birds was decidedly minor.

Calling Charade the best "Hitchcock" film seems crazy today, but the opinion wasn't all that unheard of back when films like it and Marnie were coming out. Still just as wrong, but wrong with lots of company.