When Larry and his father attend church why does he leave? I can't decide if it is because as a werewolf he physically isn't able to make himself go into a sacred place, or is not allowed. Or if he leaves simply because everyone is talking about him and looking at him, and he just doesn't want to be there. What is your opinion?
shareI've always found this to be the single most powerful scene in the film, from standpoints of both thematic richness and economical cinematic eloquence.
To appreciate it fully, it's helpful to consider everything leading up to it. Larry has been estranged from his family and away from the village of his upbringing for eighteen years, a stranger in his own land. Bitten in the woods on his very first night home, he's become responsible for the deaths of Bela the gypsy and Richardson the gravedigger, his sanity is doubted by those closest to him, and he's wracked with guilt and helplessness against forces over which he has no control. With suspicion growing among the townsfolk - "Very strange there were no murders here before Larry Talbot arrived" - and the awful secret he carries, he is the quintessential outsider.
Before leaving for church, Sir John had said, "You know, Larry, belief in the hereafter is a very healthy counterbalance to all the conflicting doubts man is plagued with these days." But in the one place in town where Larry might have hoped to find even a moment of refuge from his burdens, he's instead confronted with the accusatory stares of his neighbors as, row by row, they turn to gaze at him in silent suspicion.
All the film's thematic threads, both real-world and supernatural, have been skillfully woven together here: the fear of townsfolk at unexplained deaths coinciding with Larry's arrival; their almost psychic sense of an otherworldly presence in their midst; the ultimate embodiment of Larry's alienation.
I wonder if Hitchcock had this scene in mind while making the Tides Diner scene in The Birds. His stock in trade was silent suspicion and accusatory stares.
shareThanks for your reply, jay.
The two scenes indeed have much in common. Like Larry, Melanie is an outsider, and this one scene is the most overt in The Birds suggesting anything hinting of the supernatural (as the hysterical mother connects Melanie to the attacks: "Who are you? Where did you come from? I think you're the cause of all this."). And as with Larry, mayhem descends on the little town with her arrival.
The accusatory stares are even staged in much the same way, if on a smaller scale in The Birds: the diner patrons and employees are lined up on either side of the little hallway, evoking the church pews in The Wolf Man, with empty space between them at the center suggesting an aisle.
Whether or not Hitchcock had the church scene in mind, I'd like to think it's one he might have appreciated for communicating so much purely with visuals.
I watched the church scene again online, and it doesn't have a word of dialogue. Hitchcock would indeed admire that.
shareI would like to think it's the former but suspect it's the latter.
BUT, can we discuss how this little town with it's cute shops and smallish houses (except the manor house of course) can possibly have what appears to be Notre Dames baby brother? That church is RIDICULOUSLY huge for a smallish hamlet like that.