House of Games

Watching it now, this film fits into a mold that is very recognizable. Mamet has contributed to this with two later con movies of the same tone. But when it was released, it was something else. The film has numerous odes to and touches of Hitchcock, but Mamet adds a new texture to the formula. The first is the acting skills present. Hitchcock sometimes had amazing actors in the likes of Henry Fonda and others, but mainly he dealt with Hollywood likes. Mamet utilizes a lot of his theater crew in House of Games. The second is the stage aspect from Mamet that injects into the story. The characters have a much more developed script with a greater degree of nuances and language to attack the themes. Mamet is remiscient of Billy Wilder who dealt with different genres and stories but always carried a tone of craftmanship to everything he did because he was always the writer. Hitchcock would pick from a jumble of projects and once Hollywood executives understood he was geared toward suspense, the offers of scripts sometimes became too repititious of what he had already done. Like Wilder, Mamet injects an organic center into a common Hollywood story and makes it his own.