The Hitchcock film with the Albert Hall concert climax

[ucanseetheend]

Watched the Hitchock movie today with the famous 12 minute scene in the RAH where the assasin was going to murder the PM during a performance of Arthur Benjamins Storm Clouds Cantata with Bernard Hermann and the LSO , quite impressive . Does anyone have any stories about the scene at the Hall or even was in attendance as an extra or know someone who was.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

Not more ryddu Film Music!

[Nick Armstrong]

Watched the Hitchock movie today with the famous 12 minute scene in the RAH where the assasin was going to murder the PM during a performance of Arthur Benjamins Storm Clouds Cantata with Bernard Hermann and the LSO , quite impressive . Does anyone have any stories about the scene at the Hall or even was in attendance or know someone who was.

Good stuff, isn't it! Would love to hear such stories too.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

Good stuff, isn't it! Would love to hear such stories too.

- Hitch liked it so much that he made it twice: in Britain in 1934, and in the States twenty-two years later. It would be fascinating to hear of any recollections of Hitchcock's directing crowd scenes - I don't think this has been covered in the published works about him.

[mercia]

I've just read an article which reckons it was the Royal Opera House chorus (?)

http://folk.uib.no/smkgg/midi/soundtrackweb/herrmann/articles/phototours/london/page2.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Storm_Clouds_Cantata

[Nick Armstrong]

Hope someone comes forward about the RAH scene, but I have some rather poetic trivia which I discovered when fired up to find about locations for the film having seen in a couple of years ago.

Remember the scene where Jimmy Stewart is on the trail of "Ambrose Chapel"?



It's Plender Street in Camden... the distinctive building in the background is on Royal College Street

Here's a couple of screen-shots I just did on google streetview:





Well, that's where Verlaine and Rimbaud had their turbulent ménage-à-deux in 1873 *

See that plaque just above the greenery on the railings? (Not visible in the film, as it was put up in the late 50s apparently.)







Well, I found it Quite Interesting anyway...




*From The Threepenny Review, James Campbell, Summer 2001:

"It was in Royal College Street that they had their fateful quarrel, the one that led to a near-fatal quarrel in Brussels a week later. The story goes that Rimbaud, leaning from the window, spotted Verlaine walking down the road carrying a fish and a bottle of oil. He threw off a captious insult which Verlaine recorded:

I was approaching the house when I saw Rimbaud observing me through the open window. For no good reason, he started to snigger. I climbed the stairs anyway and went in. “Have you any idea how ridiculous you look with your bottle of oil in one hand and your fish in the other?” said Rimbaud. I retaliated, because, I can assure you, I definitely did not look ridiculous.


Retaliation came in the form of a smack in the face with the fish for Rimbaud, following which Verlaine stormed off and caught the boat to Belgium. A single room in Royal College Street looks to be a lonely place even now; for Rimbaud, penniless, friendless (their expatriate comrades had begun to decode their intimacy), and without his partner in sin, it was desolate. After he had pawned Verlaine’s clothes for a few coins, he wrote a letter which is in turn affecting and sinister:


Do you think that your life will be happier with other people than it was with me? Think about it! Oh! certainly not!…I swear to be very nice to you in the future…I love you very much, and if you don’t want to come back, or for me to join you, you are committing a crime, and you will repent through LONG YEARS by losing all freedom, and by sufferings more dreadful perhaps than any you have undergone."

[mercia]

great location sleuthing. That taxidermist scene is very weird (but memorable), as is the eating scene in "Marrakech".

[Nick Armstrong]

great location sleuthing. That taxidermist scene is very weird (but memorable), as is the eating scene in "Marrakech".

Indeed, thanks mercs. And the Ambrose Chapel scenes (in Brixton apparently) are strange too. Good fillum!!

[clive heath]

....and if you're so desperate that you really want a Q for the ubiquitous map then
Doris Day will do the honours as she did in this film.

[ucanseetheend]

What other films has the RAH appeared in?

[mercia]

What other films has the RAH appeared in?

I think the exterior appears briefly in The Ipcress File and the 1978 version of The 39 Steps
also (apparently) Shine, Brassed Off, The Fourth Protocol and A Touch of Class

[johnb]

What other films has the RAH appeared in?

According to movie-locations.com:
Connecting Rooms
The Knack
The Seventh Veil
Brassed Off
Follow Me
The Fourth Protocol
Spiceworld – the Movie

[vinteuil]

What other films has the RAH appeared in?

... the exterior (steps down) in "The Ipcress File"

[Pabmusic]

What other films has the RAH appeared in?

Hitchcock's first version (1930) of The Man Who Knew Too Much. This was the film, starring Peter Lorre, for which Arthur Benjamin wrote the Stormclouds Cantata - it was used again in full in the remake.

[Serial_Apologist]

zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz zzzzzz