But -- as suggested by the Anthony Hopkins film "Hitchocck" of 2012 -- perhaps not even North by Northwest was enough for Hitchcock to ditch an aura of being "old fashioned" and "past his prime years as a hitmaker."
I found Hitchcock (2012)'s suggestion that Hitch was desperate for a hit/relevance in 1959 completely risible. I fear that Waters' remark may reflect the contagiousness of this silly idea/misinformation.
NbNW was a big hit (but had been expensive). Vertigo wasn't a bomb (but a disappointed Hitch had put a lot of energy into it), rather it did a little bit better than break even (from rentals or assuming Studio keeps half the gross) from the US+Canada alone, so all the money made overseas (esp. in Paris where The Wrong Man had also been huge) was profit. His TV show and publishing empire continued to make bank, and, partially making up for lacking Oscar love he's definitely at this point the only director-star since De Mille, the most famous, known by name and face, film director in the world. And in the late '50s Francophile Hitch sees serious critical interest (including first books) develop in France.
Psycho is a climactic moment for all sorts of reasons but that Hitch was in a needed-to-change, needed-a-hit funk beforehand isn't one of them.
Ecarle has long touted the idea of a multi-season series dramatizing Hitchcock's career. Hitch-at-a-loose-end, needing-a-hit would occur a few times in such a series, e.g., around 1950 and around 1970 especially. By way of contrast, 1959 as a low doesn't fly.
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ecarle (14979)
8 years ago
I found Hitchcock (2012)'s suggestion that Hitch was desperate for a hit/relevance in 1959 completely risible.
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Yeah. I really shouldn't put much stock in "Hitchcock," what with the scene where Hitch shares Ed Gein murder scene photos at a cocktail party and how the movie says "Alma did everything."
Still, I really think the point of THAT movie was to suggest that even if he was successful in '59, Hitchcock felt that Diabolique had outshone his work in a new way(and he couldn't find Psycho to match it for several years) and that there was gold in them thar William Castle movies.
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I fear that Waters' remark may reflect the contagiousness of this silly idea/misinformation.
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Probably. I suppose I picked Waters remark to "start a thread." You know, some argumentation. I appreciate the comments we got.
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NbNW was a big hit (but had been expensive). Vertigo wasn't a bomb (but a disappointed Hitch had put a lot of energy into it), rather it did a little bit better than break even (from rentals or assuming Studio keeps half the gross) from the US+Canada alone, so all the money made overseas (esp. in Paris where The Wrong Man had also been huge) was profit.
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I didn't know that about The Wrong Man . I suppose also important here is that "away from the box office," the critical community "that counted"(the young ones, not Stanley Kauffmann or Bosley Crowther) saw Hitchcock delivering one masterwork after another with a certain "tonal change" that BEGINS with The Wrong Man. (Which is when John Michael Hayes stopped writing Hitchcock scripts, after four in a row.)
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ecarle (14979)
8 years ago
The blockbuster grosses on low investment of Psycho were a once-in-a-lifetime thing for Hitch, but I'm sure he had gauged his work as a profitable producer very well in the fifties. With To Catch a Thief and Man '56 as big hits, he could indulge himself with The Trouble With Harry and The Wrong Man(for which he took no pay). When The Wrong Man and Vertigo underperformed, he sorta kinda remade The 39 Steps(and Saboteur, and The Lady Vanishes) as NXNW and did great, did fine. He knew how to split up his hits and his art.
The oddity is probably that he managed to follow up a big hit(NXNW) with an even bigger hit(Psycho.) He rarely did things that big back to back, that "entertaining" back to back. (Instead we've got I Confess following Strangers on a Train; The Wrong Man following Man '56.)
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ecarle (14979)
8 years ago
Ecarle has long touted the idea of a multi-season series dramatizing Hitchcock's career.
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And where oh where, is a taker? Ryan Murphy, c'mon!
Hell...Matthew Weiner or David Chase. They both threaded Hitchcock all through Mad Men(especially) and The Sopranos.
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Hitch-at-a-loose-end, needing-a-hit would occur a few times in such a series, e.g., around 1950 and around 1970 especially. By way of contrast, 1959 as a low doesn't fly.
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True. The 1950 and 1970 change-ups came after long slumps -- The Paradine Case through Stage Fright begat Strangers on a Train. Marnie through Topaz begat Frenzy. Interesting how similar Strangers and a Train and Frenzy ARE: A wrong man and a psycho. One strangles the other's ex or estranged wife. Hitchcock said of both pictures(to Truffaut about Strangers, to the press about Frenzy) that he made them to " run for cover" -- to go for a tried and true formula story to get a needed hit.
But hey, he did that with North by Northwest, too, didn't he? A wrong man, no psycho. Spies. Romance. Comedy. "Run for cover." After the depressing plots of The Wrong Man and Vertigo...a corrective.
And this: Hitch DOES seem to have found "the turn of the decade" a time to "do something new." 1940: Come to America(Rebecca.) 1950: "Something fast and wild" (Strangers on a Train, released in '51.) 1960: 'Something more fast and wild and violent and censor-busting" (Psycho.) 1970: "Something fast and wild and sexual and R-rated"(Frenzy, book found in 1970, film made in '71 for '72.)
That three out of four times, it was psychos that made for the decade boost, well..."run for cover." Psychos were Hitchcock's best villains, really.
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ecarle (14979)
8 years ago
Just a quick thought.
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Thank you for joining in!
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I don't think that what Water's is quoted as saying is a million miles from what some of Hitchcock's peers and critics thought and said at the time.
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I have engaged swanstep in support of the idea that Hitchocck was NOT in a slump, but I can certainly engage you in that there seems to have been some sort of "taking for granted" of him during that period. I'm not looking to "play both sides here" so much as to say that John Waters remark SHOULD be considered.
Me, I used to see Vertigo, NXNW, Psycho and The Birds as some sort of grand slam that the public must have worshiped in those years. But it was not so. Vertigo came and went, NXNW was evidently seen as a good thriller, nothing more("It became bigger and bigger over the years," said its screenwriter, Ernest Lehman.) In those same years, movies like Gigi, Ben-Hur, West Side Story and The Guns of Navarone were big, too. And John Wayne movies. And Doris Day.
Psycho was a huge hit, but the first reviews were very dismissive or disgusted by it(Time magazine rather famously switched to seeing it as a masterpiece AFTER it became a huge hit; after an outraged pan, they changed their capsule reviews of the film with each week after it opened and it made the Ten Best List of '60.)
And The Birds -- ironically -- was taken to task: "It isn't as scary as Psycho."
But with all this said, there can be no doubt that Hitchcock had very few periods to match the power of his 1958-1963 group, and Psycho is the game changer that made all the others look great.
(Other possible periods of galvanic Hitchocckian achievement are likely the 30's corridor with The 39 Steps and The Lady Vanishes; and the Rebecca/Suspicion opening game in America.)
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