Sometimes I really don't keep up with the news! I hold my hands up to never having heard of Martin Scorsese's THE KEY TO RESERVA. Martin Scorsese discovers three pages of an unfilmed Alfred Hitchcock project and decides to film just those three pages. He knows nothing of the plot beyond what is on the pages and there is a missing page before the final one. Scorsese's mission is to preserve a film that has never been made! Are you still with me? It is, of course, all a cineaste in-joke which you really have to be into Hitchcock to get or, perhaps more importantly, into the sort of film enthusiast fanaticism that infects Mr. Scorcese - and to a degree - me, and you (as you are reading this blog). If you love Hitchcock or Scorcese, then you'll love THE KEY TO RESERVA. It's great fun and if you don't start laughing out loud thirty seconds before the end my name's not Roger Ebert. Rating ***Oh, yes...you can watch THE KEY TO RESERVA in its entirity at:
http://www.scorsesefilmfreixenet.com/video_eng.htm
2 comments:
I absolutely loved every aspect of this project. From Scorsese's ernest "Well, I cannot shoot it the way I would make it, but I certainly cannot make what Hitchcock would've made" to the final MAN WHO KNEW TOO MUCH meets NORTH BY NORTHWEST 3 minute final product.
Martin Scorsese is, perhaps, the most famous film fan and is one of the important figures in film's preservation. In that respect, this is one of his most important projects. Without the preservation, however, it is still a fun little piece of film-lore.
But surely the point is that the whole thing is a joke ? There is no preservation of an unfilmed Hitchcock extract because Scorsese made the whole thing up for an advertising project for a wine company! Scorsese is such a good director and a damn good actor that he just draws you into the joke. It's also because of Martin Scorcese's passion for film preservation that he is the ideal director for this piece of fake preservation. It's importance is that it is a Scorcese film because a piece of preservation it ain't.
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