The late-night/early-morning spot for Cubs fans asks which Cubs catcher will have the better 2025
It’s Wednesday night here at BCB After Dark: the hippest hangout for night owls, early risers, new parents and Cubs fans abroad. Please come in out of the cold and join us. There’s no cover charge this evening. We can check your coat for you. We still have a few tables available. Bring your own beverage.
BCB After Dark is the place for you to talk baseball, music, movies, or anything else you need to get off your chest, as long as it is within the rules of the site. The late-nighters are encouraged to get the party started, but everyone else is invited to join in as you wake up the next morning and into the afternoon.
Yesterday I asked you who your current choice is for the Cubs’ fifth starter. There were two clear favorites and the vote between those two was close, but Javier Assad edged out Ben Brown, 41 percent to 39 percent.
Here’s the part where we listen to tunes and talk about movies. The BCB Winter Hitchcock Classic is in full swing and we’re to the point where we are talking about the four films I expect any of you who care in the least about this have seen. But those of you who don’t care in the least can skip ahead now. You won’t hurt my feelings.
We’ve been doing vocal jazz all week, so in keeping in that theme, we have the immortal Ella Fitzgerald doing a Burt Bacharach/Hal David song, “A House is Not A Home” in 1969. This was originally a modest hit for Dionne Warwick and of course, that version is great. But so is Ella’s version here.
You voted in the BCB Winter Hitchcock Classic and to no one’s surprise, North by Northwest (1959) moved on to the third round over The Birds (1963). Both films are classics, of course, but as I noted, North by Northwest is one of the great all-time crowd pleasers.
Tonight we have another one of what I’m calling “The Big Four” with Rear Window (1954). It takes on Suspicion (1941), which beat The Lodger in the first round.
Rear Window (1954). Starring James Stewart, Grace Kelly, Wendell Corey and Thelma Ritter.
In the preface to the revised edition of Hitchcock/Truffaut, French new wave director François Truffaut relates an incident that happened in 1962 as he was promoting his film Jules et Jim:
I noticed that every journalist asked me the same question: “Why do the critics of Cahiers du Cinéma take Hitchcock so seriously? He’s rich and successful, but his movies have no substance.” In the course of an interview during which I praised Rear Window to the skies, an American critic surprised me by commenting “You love Rear Window because, as a stranger to New York, you know nothing about Greenwich Village.” To this absurd statement, I replied “Rear Window is not about Greenwich Village, it is a film about cinema, and I do know cinema.”
And really, that sums up what Rear Window is all about. It’s about us, the audience, and the visceral pleasure we get from just watching the lives of others. Of course, we also love it because it looks glorious and it features Jimmy Stewart, Grace Kelly, Thelma Ritter, Wendell Corey, Raymond Burr and the guy who would go on to create Alvin and the Chipmunks (Ross Bagdasarian). But most of all, we love Rear Window because it shares with us the sheer pleasure we get from watching the movies.
Next time you watch Rear Window, notice the way that Hitchcock frames the action. Every scene is shot from the point of view or apartment of Jeff (Stewart), the wheelchair-bound voyeur who immerses himself in the lives of his neighbors, with two exceptions. One is the climax when Jeff falls out the window, naturally enough. The other scene to take a more general point of view is the crucial turning point when the death of the dog is discovered. That one change of perspective is a way of telling us that something really important has happened, even if it’s not immediately apparent why it’s important.
The setup of Rear Window is easy enough to understand. Jeff is a jet-setting photographer who is going crazy because he’s stuck in his room after a serious accident broke his leg. His beautiful and rich model girlfriend Lisa (Kelly) is deeply in love with him and wants to marry him. Jeff doesn’t want to get married and he claims the reason is that Lisa is just too perfect. But the real reason is that Jeff has some very traditional ideas about women and marriage and he simply doesn’t want to be tied down to a woman who doesn’t share his adventurous outlook. Jeff doesn’t want to be domesticated. Yet while he’s recovering, he immerses himself in the sheer domesticity of all of his neighbors.
Jeff follows the lives of the people in seven different apartments across the courtyard from his in Greenwich Village. It works out nicely thematically that all of their stories revolve around love and/or marriage, the very issue that Jeff is struggling with as to Lisa.
While we can occasionally hear noises coming out of these apartments, particularly music from The Songwriter (Bagdasarian), it’s generally difficult to pick out any words and certainly eavesdropping on a conversation is nearly impossible for Jeff. (Again, the exception here is the turning point of the death of the dog.) So basically Jeff has seven silent movies to watch, which feeds in to the idea that the key to understanding Hitchcock is being familiar with his origins in the silent pictures era. There’s also a weird television connection that whenever one apartment/story is over, Jeff can change the channel to another one.
Of course, anyone familiar with Rear Window (and I’m assuming all of you who take the time to read this are) knows that one story begins to dominate the narrative because Jeff believes he’s witnessed a murder. Jeff sees Thorwald (Burr) arguing with his wife (Irene Winston) at the beginning of the film, but soon thereafter, she disappears. Jeff thinks she’s been murdered, but Lisa, his nurse Stella (Ritter) and a police detective who is a friend of his (Corey) dismiss it as the delusions of the overactive imagination of a man who has been cooped up in his room too long. But slowly, the evidence starts to build up against Thorwald and Lisa and Stella, at least, come around to Jeff’s point of view. Additionally, the rich model whom Jeff has dismissed as a fragile china doll previously starts to engage in some truly dangerous activities to try to prove Jeff right. This begins to alter Jeff’s opinion of Lisa—if she survives.
Making Lisa an heiress and a model gives legendary costumer Edith Head a chance to go nuts on making Grace Kelly look fabulous. It also allows for the costume change at the end of the film—where Kelly is wearing more sensible clothes but still looking incredible—hit more. The film also ends with the interesting note of Lisa reading a book about the Himalayas, only to put it down and pick up a fashion magazine once Jeff falls asleep. She’s willing to compromise and meet Jeff halfway—but she’s not willing to become a completely different person to make Jeff happy.
There’s also never been a movie that wasn’t made better because Thelma Ritter was in it. She was one of the legendary character actresses of all time.
I should mention the beautiful set that Hitchcock had made for Rear Window. There wasn’t a stage big enough to contain a three-story apartment building, so the set designers had to cut out the floor so they could use the stage basement for the bottom floor of the apartment. There was also a very elaborate lighting system to recreate four different times of day. Grace Kelly said she was sad to leave it when filming was over—that it had felt like home by the time they were done.
Hitchcock’s one complaint about the film in Hitchcock/Truffaut was the musical score by Franz Waxman. Hitchcock had worked with Waxman before in Rebecca, but then he was very much making a film to please David O. Selznick. Hitchcock had some very strong ideas about what the music in his pictures should sound like and this wasn’t it. In particular, he wanted the score to tie in much more strongly with what The Songwriter was working on. Still, I doubt anyone really hears the Waxman score and thinks poorly of it. It’s not up to the standards that Hitchcock would achieve with Bernard Herrmann starting with The Trouble With Harry in 1955, but it’s good.
The real genius of Rear Window is that Hitchcock gives the audience the illusion that they are watching a movie about a murder when they’re really watching a movie about themselves. And honestly, we don’t come off looking that well, even if we’re proven correct in the end.
Here’s a trailer for a re-release of Rear Window.
Suspicion (1941). Starring Cary Grant and Joan Fontaine.
Here’s what I wrote last time on Suspicion.
Suspicion is the first of four films that Hitchcock made with Cary Grant and the second with Joan Fontaine, after the success of Rebecca the year before. It’s a psychological thriller where Fontaine plays a spinster heiress who marries a playboy who may or may not be a killer. He also may or may not be trying to murder her for the insurance money. If you want to call it a film noir, I won’t argue with you.
Fontaine plays Lina, a bookish and lonely heiress who gets swept off her feet by Johnny Aysgarth (Grant) and elopes with him after a whirlwind marriage against the wishes of her parents. It is very difficult to accept that a rich woman who looks like a 23-year-old Joan Fontaine would be lacking in suitors, even if she does wear glasses and conservative clothing. But that’s Hollywood for you. It’s not hard to believe that she’d get swept off her feet by Grant, who is a charming playboy of a somewhat questionable reputation.
The desperate Lina marries Johnny without knowing him very well and it turns out that was a mistake. Johnny is a charming reprobate with no money and a gambling problem. The only source of income that the two have is Lina’s inheritance, which is a problem because Lina’s parents are both still alive.
Johnny’s friend “Beaky” (Nigel Bruce) shows up and accidentally reveals that Johnny hadn’t been going to work when he leaves home in the morning, instead going to the track. Lina discovers that Johnny had been fired from his job for stealing money (to pay off gambling debts, presumably) but that his cousin/employer won’t call the police if Johnny pays the money back. Money he doesn’t have at the moment.
Soon, Johnny enlists Beaky in an investment opportunity that Lina fears is a con. Johnny gets very angry when Lina tries to talk Beaky out of it. Suspiciously angry. The investment is a development on the edge of a cliff that would be really easy to push someone over. Johnny and Beaky go out to see it one day and Lina is convinced Beaky won’t come back alive. But he does, and Johnny announces the development is off.
Beaky then heads out to Paris, where he then turns up dead after having been seen in the company of a man who fits Johnny description. There’s also a life insurance policy on Lina’s life that would go a long ways towards paying off Johnny’s debts.
The problem with Suspicion, according to Hitchcock, is that SPOILER FOR THE REST OF THIS PARAGRAPH you cannot make Cary Grant a murderer. François Truffaut asked Hitchcock if Grant wouldn’t go along with it and Hitchcock said the problem wasn’t Grant, it was the audience and therefore, the producers. They can accept a beloved actor like Grant as a charming swindler if he’s redeemed at the end, but murder is a step too far. As such, the suspense of the film is lessened because no one believes that they’d actually let Cary Grant play a cold-blooded killer. END SPOILERS
Despite the problems with the plot described in the spoiler paragraph, Suspicion still manages to thrill. The famous glass of milk that Grant brings Fontaine near the end of the film was lit by putting a bulb inside the glass so it glows as Grant walks up the stairs with it. It’s a beautifully-shot and chilling scene. The plot certainly piles on circumstantial evidence upon circumstantial evidence to make Lina and us begin to question what the truth is.
The real attraction of Suspicion is Grant and Fontaine. Cary Grant is the greatest Hollywood star of all-time—his charisma was so great that you’d sit through nearly anything to be with him for a few hours. Fontaine won the Academy Award for Best Actress for Suspicion, famously beating her own sister/rival Olivia de Havilland. Fontaine is good here, but I think she was better the year before in Rebecca. But she does capture that combination of love, paranoia and fear that makes here character pop.
I don’t have anything more to add to that except the English setting of Suspicion shows that Hitchcock still didn’t feel comfortable setting films in the United States. That soon would change with his next film, Saboteur.
Here’s the trailer for Suspicion.
So now it’s time to vote:
You have until Monday to cast your vote. Up next, Psycho (1960) faces off against Spellbound (1945). You have seen Psycho, right?
Also, Turner Classic Movies is doing a marathon of early Hitchcock films tonight and next Wednesday. You’ve already missed tonight’s films unless you live on the West Coast, but they will be re-running the brand new documentary Becoming Hitchcock: The Legacy of Blackmail. I have not seen it yet—my daughter had a basketball game this evening, but it’s recorded on my DVR. It will also be re-run next Wednesday. Hopefully they’ll all be available on demand soon as well.
Welcome back to everyone who skips the music and movies.
Today was the first day of the international signing period and the Cubs signed . . .no one. That’s very odd because Baseball America listed the Cubs as one of five teams with an “exciting” crop of international amateurs ready to sign. (sub. req)
To be clear, none of the players expected to sign with the Cubs signed with anyone else. It’s just that the announcements which come on January 15 of every year did not come today for the Cubs.
I don’t have a question about this, but I’m throwing this out for discussion. No, I do not believe that the delay is about Roki Sasaki possibly changing his mind and re-considering the Cubs. That’s not happening. But I do believe that this has something to do with Sasaki.
The three teams remaining in the Sasaki sweepstakes will probably need to break their agreements with their Latin American signings to give Sasaki his bonus. They can also trade for more bonus pool money. Could the Cubs be looking to sign one of the newly-homeless prospects from the Dodgers, Padres or Blue Jays? Could they be looking to pick up a prospect by trading pool money to one of those teams?
I don’t know, but it seems likely that one of those two possibilities will happen. I guess the worst that happens is that the players expected to sign with the Cubs sign a week late. The worst would actually be if one of the Cubs expected signees decides he’s tired of waiting and signs elsewhere, but that’s extremely unlikely. It’s not like other teams have a lot bonus pool money floating around. Although the Cubs are not the only team that have held off on announcing any international signings. But they also have players they have handshake agreements with.
As I said, I don’t have a question on this. I’m just throwing it out for discussion.
Tonight’s question concerns the Cubs two main catchers, Miguel Amaya and Carson Kelly. It’s simply “Which catcher do you think will have the better 2025 season?” It’s also a way of asking which catcher will end up getting more time behind the plate.
Amaya struggled badly to start his sophomore season, hitting just .201/.266/.288 before the All-Star Game. But he found his hitting stroke in the second half, putting up a line of .271/.316/.444 after the break. Amaya gets high marks for handling the pitching staff—he was the catcher for the Cubs’ combined no-hitter last year. But he’s struggled badly on defense in controlling the running game. Overall the defensive metrics rate Amaya as a good catcher, but the arm is an issue.
Kelly, on the other hand, has a good arm and also gets high marks in all facets of defense and handling a pitching staff. Unlike Amaya, however, he really isn’t familiar with any of the Cubs pitchers, but he shouldn’t have a problem getting up to speed in Spring Training. Kelly had a better season at the plate last year, but his overall 96 OPS+ last year was well out of line with what he did in 2022 (75) and 2023 (51—ugh). Unlike Amaya, Kelly was better in the first half last year than after the break.
In case you were wondering, Amaya is 25 and Kelly is 30.
So which Cubs catcher do you think will have the better 2025 season? Which one do you think will get more time behind the plate?
Thanks for stopping by this evening. We’ve enjoyed hosting you all week. Please get home safely. Stay warm out there. Recycle any cans and bottles. Tip your waitstaff. And join Sara Sanchez tomorrow night for more BCB After Dark.