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The Best 1960 Review of Psycho Ever Written

posted 7 years ago by ecarle (14979)
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I will have to spread this original 1960 review over several posts. I found it in "The Hitchcock Zone." Of the 50 or so reviews of Psycho I have found in years of research -- reviews FROM 1960 when the film was first being experienced -- I've always consdered this the best one.

It is by Ernest Callenbach, for Film Quarterly. 1960:

Psycho

Hitchcock is said to be very pleased with this film, and well he might be. In it he has abandoned the commercial geniality of his recent work and turned to out-and-out horror and psychopathology: there are two gruesome knife-murders portrayed in more or less full view, and an attempted third one.

The film begins with a drab, matter-of-fact scene in a hotel bedroom (the girl's unwholesomeness -- she later steals $40,000 -- is no doubt established equally by the fact of her being found in bed with a man, though wearing bra and half-slip, and by the fact that it is midday). It imperceptibly shifts to a level of macabre pathology, unbearable suspense, and particularly gory death.

In it, indeed, Hitchcock's necrophiliac voyeurism comes to some kind of horrifying climax. Phallic-shaped knives swish past navels, blood drips into bathtubs, eyes stare in death along the floor, huge gashes appear in a man's amazed face, and so forth. So well is the picture made, moreover, that it can lead audiences to do something they hardly ever do any more -- cry out to the characters, in hopes of dissuading them from going to the doom that has been cleverly established as awaiting them. (It turns out to be a slightly different doom than the audience believes; and in the third instance it is thwarted, slightly improbably: in this we see the usual Hitchcock, unbothered by problems of motivation and concerned only with the joy of giving one more turn to the screw. But on the whole one does not need, in Psycho, the suspension of common sense usually required to enjoy Hitchcock.)

The key to the excellent shift in levels (it is perhaps more a smooth descent, from apparent "normality" to utter ghastliness) is provided, unbelievable as it may seem, by Anthony Perkins, who in this film is revealed to be an actor after all. Instead of the rather wooden person we have seen in Desire under the Elms or On the Beach, Perkins here gives us first a charming, shy, lonely boy; then a lecherous, dangerous, frustrated youth; then a frightened, sinister, criminally insane man; and finally he is revealed (there is no real reason to conceal the final twist, which is equally horrifying if one knows about it in advance) as a psychological hermaphrodite who has killed and mummified his mother but preserved her in half of his own personality, so to speak, and who "in her person" commits the murders motivated by the sexuality or fears of the other half of his personality.

All this is explained, in the obligatory rationality-scene at the end, by a young psychologist in the police office. This scene supposedly restores the audience to some real frame of reference. Meanwhile Perkins, sitting in a nearby cell, hears his "mother's" voice in internal monologue, meditating on "her son's" fate. The camera closes in, but not too close, on his face, now utterly strange, intense, mad. (It is probably the most apt use ever made of internal monologue.)

All this is very nice, if not quite the kind of thing one would recommend to sensitive souls. It is superbly constructed, both shot-by-shot and in the overall organization by which the shocks are distributed and built up to. (The music by Bernard Herrmann, an old radio man, is conventional suspense stuff but immensely effective.)

Aside from Perkins, the acting is ordinary but satisfactory. Hitchcock is said to have once remarked that "Actors are cattle," and this is all that is really required in many of his pictures. The suspense mechanism is all; style is all; deception is all. To allow the personae involved to become human beings would destroy everything, in the usual Hitchcock film. Psycho is better: the people are acceptable, at any rate; there is no need to make excuses for them.

[–] ecarle (14979) 7 years ago

Still, it is the film itself that grips one-in these times, a remarkable achievement, and a hint that "realism" in the cinema is perhaps not so important as people think. Psycho is full of jokes, twists, pieces of nastiness that one would think gratuitous in any other film-maker. Hitchcock forces one to realize that these things are the point. How lovely, he would doubtless say, about the way Janet Leigh, a faintly playful, quite sexy broad, is done in! She gambols in the shower, like somebody in an advertisement, while in the background a figure blurred by the shower curtain enters the room, approaches, grips the edge of the curtain ... Then, in a flurry of quick cutting which managed to get past the censors yet remains the goriest thing seen on film in a long time, she is stabbed to death, and slumps hideously to the floor in a series of movements over which the camera lingers lovingly.

[–] ecarle (14979) 7 years ago

MORE

Psycho is surely the sickest film ever made. It is also one of the most technically exciting films of recent years, and perhaps an omen: only, it appears, in films whose subject-matter is trivial and sometimes phony can Hollywood film-makers find the inspiration or the freedom to make really ingenious films. The trickery of Psycho is more imaginative and far more elegantly contrived than the all-out seriousness of Nun's Story, not to mention the gigantism of Ben-Hur.

There is, to be sure, a "serious" subject to all trivial films, and in the case of Hitchcock the elucidation of the hidden motives upon which he has built his seemingly unimportant remains an intriguing job for some intrepid critic. In the meantime, anybody who likes gore, or who likes Hitchcock, will be made happy by Psycho. The tone of Hitchcock's recorded plug for the picture-delightfully charlatanish, reassuringly and almost smugly personal -- is a perfectly sound introduction to the film.

END REVIEW

Next, I would like to analyze a few of the sentences from the review. Since the first time I read this review(around 1975 or so, in a bound volume of Film Quarterlys at a library), many of these sentences have stuck in my mind as from being from MANY 1960 reviews.

No...they are all but in just this one: Ernest Callenbach's.

Its definitive.

MORE

[–] ecarle (14979) 7 years ago

SOME ANALYSIS:

"Hitchcock is said to be very pleased with this film, and well he might be."

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Where did Callenbach get that? Well, perhaps the box office?

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In it he has abandoned the commercial geniality of his recent work and turned to out-and-out horror and psychopathology:

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The way the world seems to have taken this. Not only a shocker of a movie: a shock TO the movies.

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there are two gruesome knife-murders portrayed in more or less full view,

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Remains the real historic clout of the film -- with one of the murders soaring high into the stratosphere of the history of fear...at the movies or anywhere else.

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and an attempted third one.

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That the fruit cellar scene does NOT end in Lila's murder, but nonetheless raised the roof with audience screams, points to the power of this film.

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The film begins with a drab, matter-of-fact scene in a hotel bedroom (the girl's unwholesomeness -- she later steals $40,000 -- is no doubt established equally by the fact of her being found in bed with a man, though wearing bra and half-slip, and by the fact that it is midday).

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Note taken. Callenbach seems to "get this scene" on all levels except perhaps with less of a sense of the erotic.

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It imperceptibly shifts to a level of macabre pathology, unbearable suspense, and particularly gory death.

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Again, we sense Callenbach "cutting to the chase" about the powers of Psycho in 1960 and the impacts it had. It remains necessary to remind ourselves that unlike Star Wars or Raiders or Batman...this was a very very SHOCKING and creepy kind of blockbuster. I think it took The Exorcist to beat it on sheer visceral impact(if not suspense, humor, plotting...) And yet...kids were admitted.

[–] ecarle (14979) 7 years ago

In it, indeed, Hitchcock's necrophiliac voyeurism comes to some kind of horrifying climax.

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In 1960, this may well have "felt" the case.

The voyeurism had been strong in Rear Window and Vertigo; necophilia in Vertigo. These were the two classic-classics from Hitchocck BEFORE Psycho, and "necrophiliac voyeurism" likely sounded in works like Rebecca and Rope and The Trouble With Harry as well, on first thought.

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Phallic-shaped knives swish past navels,

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So he saw that! I guess it wasn't THAT hidden. (I'm not talking about the blurry nipples at the scenes end, but the navel/knife juxtaposition.)

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blood drips into bathtubs, eyes stare in death along the floor,

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Key elements of the shower scene, along with the navel above.

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huge gashes appear in a man's amazed face,

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But here, a nod to the key "gore" of Arbogast's killing -- and much more brutal looking in 1960 than it would be today.

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So well is the picture made, moreover,

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This was NOT one of the reviews that missed Hitchcock's skill.

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that it can lead audiences to do something they hardly ever do any more -- cry out to the characters, in hopes of dissuading them from going to the doom that has been cleverly established as awaiting them.

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Another reason for the big box office...the audience PARTICIPATES. And its as classic a motif as Hitchcock ever indulged himself. When Arbogast and later Lila enter that house...the suspense is delicious and delirious.

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(It turns out to be a slightly different doom than the audience believes;

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Callenbach here alludes to the twist, and will, later, give it away gleefully.

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[–] ecarle (14979) 7 years ago

and in the third instance it is thwarted, slightly improbably:

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Well, yeah, but not IMPOSSIBLY thwarted. Hitchcock "timed" his scenes to add some plausibility. Sam had enough time to wake up, run up the hill, enter the house, and run down to the fruit cellar on Lila's screams(and Norman's "posing" stance). You can time this against the shots of Norman entering the house while Lila goes down to the cellar.

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in this we see the usual Hitchcock, unbothered by problems of motivation and concerned only with the joy of giving one more turn to the screw.

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Oh, sort of. But he was out to make Psycho a shocker than pulled no punches and left the audience screaming and reeling.

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But on the whole one does not need, in Psycho, the suspension of common sense usually required to enjoy Hitchcock.)

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That is quite true. Versus the plots of Vertigo and NXNW, Psycho is pretty plausible.

[–] ecarle (14979) 7 years ago

The key to the excellent shift in levels (it is perhaps more a smooth descent, from apparent "normality" to utter ghastliness) is provided, unbelievable as it may seem, by Anthony Perkins, who in this film is revealed to be an actor after all.

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I've remembered this passage for years -- but didn't remember that it was in the Callenbach review.

It reminds us: not only was Anthony Perkins Oscar-caliber, for-the-ages great in Psycho..it was rather a total surprise at the time. His "Friendly Persuasion" Oscar nom was perhaps too "automatic" to prove his acting chops...and then he was miscast or in bad movies for a few years before Psycho showed everybody what Perkins could REALLY do.

And remember what Hitchcock said to Perkins: "Tony, you ARE this picture."

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Instead of the rather wooden person we have seen in Desire under the Elms or On the Beach, Perkins here gives us first a charming, shy, lonely boy; then a lecherous, dangerous, frustrated youth; then a frightened, sinister, criminally insane man; and finally he is revealed (there is no real reason to conceal the final twist, which is equally horrifying if one knows about it in advance) as a psychological hermaphrodite who has killed and mummified his mother

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Looks like Callenbach caught everything Perkins was pitching in that great performance -- so perfectly written by Stefano.

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Aside from Perkins, the acting is ordinary but satisfactory.

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Callenbach missed the boat here. What he says below, tells us why, but the years have demonstrated that Janet Leigh(Oscar-nommed) and Martin Balsam gave their all, Miles and Gavin were good, and that small gallery of "types" in the supporting cast were all expertly cast and played.

[–] ecarle (14979) 7 years ago

Meanwhile Perkins, sitting in a nearby cell, hears his "mother's" voice in internal monologue, meditating on "her son's" fate. The camera closes in, but not too close, on his face, now utterly strange, intense, mad. (It is probably the most apt use ever made of internal monologue.)

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Again, we're in 1960 and Callenbach is ready to state that this scene has "probably the most apt use ever made of internal dialogue."

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All this is very nice, if not quite the kind of thing one would recommend to sensitive souls.

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Ha. That needed to be said about Psycho a lot that year. Kids and adults alike had nightmares. Well, some of them. Tougher souls had a great time.

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It is superbly constructed, both shot-by-shot and in the overall organization by which the shocks are distributed and built up to.

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Callenbach got in 1960 what is clear and saluted today.

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(The music by Bernard Herrmann, an old radio man, is conventional suspense stuff but immensely effective.)

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Callenbach underplays any awe here but here's the thing: I think this may be the ONLY 1960 review of Psycho that even MENTIONED Herrmann by name. I guess another generation of us had to come along who would be "wowed" by exciting movie scores.

[–] ecarle (14979) 7 years ago

Psycho is surely the sickest film ever made.

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This is the sentence I have always remembered from the Callenbach, a a statement to later generations about exactly how Psycho "came down" in 1960 and what people felt about it. Whether parents and staid adults condemned it, tried to ban it or declared it "evil," a generation fell in love with the fact that such a film had been made, that the Hays Code had been kicked off its rails and the way had been cleared for the movies to change.

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It is also one of the most technically exciting films of recent years, and perhaps an omen: only, it appears, in films whose subject-matter is trivial and sometimes phony can Hollywood film-makers find the inspiration or the freedom to make really ingenious films.

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Ernest Callenbach...sooth sayer.

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The trickery of Psycho is more imaginative and far more elegantly contrived than the all-out seriousness of Nun's Story, not to mention the gigantism of Ben-Hur.

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...and there's a couple of "you are there 1960" comparisons as to what Psycho was "bucking."

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In the meantime, anybody who likes gore, or who likes Hitchcock, will be made happy by Psycho.

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That's a rave. And that seems to have been the reason for the box office.

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The tone of Hitchcock's recorded plug for the picture-delightfully charlatanish, reassuringly and almost smugly personal -- is a perfectly sound introduction to the film.

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Callenbach "got that," too.

Truly the best review of Psycho I've ever read from 1960, both for "getting it" in terms of 1960 impact, and for sensing what Psycho would mean to the movies that were just around the corner...for decades.

[–] ecarle (14979) 7 years ago

Aside from Perkins, the acting is ordinary but satisfactory. Hitchcock is said to have once remarked that "Actors are cattle," and this is all that is really required in many of his pictures. The suspense mechanism is all; style is all; deception is all. To allow the personae involved to become human beings would destroy everything, in the usual Hitchcock film. Psycho is better: the people are acceptable, at any rate; there is no need to make excuses for them.

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Not much traction on this admittedly long multi-segment post, but I thought I would return to the one part of the Callenbach review which cuts to the bone on Hitchcock's reputation as "a great director -- or not quite."

The acting.

Callenbach looks at the acting in Psycho this way:

Aside from Perkins, the acting is ordinary but satisfactory.

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One can see the issue here. What Anthony Perkins was asked to do, asked to BE, in Psycho, required the young actor to go deeper than he ever went before, and to be USED for his persona so that much of the work isn't quite "work" at all. Perkins IS Perkins in Psycho, just finally with good lines to say and a character that fits his quirky, good looking personality.

And with such a spectacular character as Norman Bates being introduced, everybody else IS rather "ordinary but satisfactory." Funny thing, by Callenbach's grouping everybody else together, John Gavin here reaches acting equality with Janet Leigh and Oscar-winner-to be Martin Balsam.

[–] ecarle (14979) 7 years ago

Callenbach cuts further to the bone:

"The suspense mechanism is all; style is all; deception is all" -- acting beyond fitting into THOSE elements isn't much demanded by Hitchcock(says Callenbach). Particularly in Psycho where -- more than in other films -- deception IS all.

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And then Callenbach says this:

"To allow the personae involved to become human beings would destroy everything IN THE USUAL HITCHCOCK FILM. (Emphasis mine.) And then: "Psycho is better: the people are acceptable, at any rate, there is no need to make excuses for them."

Hmmm. Where there reasons to make excuses for Alicia and Devlin and especially Alex Sebastian in Notorious? Weren't they palpable, pained relatable human beings?

Or how about Scottie in Vertigo? Obsessed, yes, borderline madman, yes -- a movie character, sure. But human as hell. We could RELATE to his desperate obsession. And we really felt for Judy.

I "get" what Callenbach is saying here, but I'm not sure he's right.

Take Arbogast.

When push comes to shove, Balsam's "big acting duty" in Psycho is to climb those stairs while Hitchcock grips us with unbearable suspense. And yet Balsam ACTS superbly in this sequence. All his facial expressions when he enters the foyer and looks around and decides to mount the stairs. The nature of his expression (confident but wary) as he climbs the stairs. And then the spectacular changes to his bloodied face while under knife attack and falling. That's ACTING. Of a very intense sort.

Except, well before that point, Balsam acts, quite well, opposite Perkins in the parlor, as does Perkins with him. The two men may be enacting mere "suspense mystery dialogue," but they create identifiable, real human beings.

As Callenbach rather concedes that they do. Callenbach does seem to praise the acting in Psycho for being more realistic and naturalistic than in other Hitchcock films (To Catch a Thief, perhaps?)

[–] ecarle (14979) 7 years ago

Me, I'll always understand that Hitchcock didn't let actors do those kind of pages-long speeches and deep-back-story emotive dialogues that drove other kinds of Hollywood films.

But I very much think Hitchcock found some other way for actors to be great on film. So much of the great acting in Psycho comes from the actors not saying a word. Marion on the road; Norman cleaning up the murder, Arbogast deciding to climb that hill to the house and climb those stairs; Lila making her own determined but scared climb to the house.

On point:

I was watching a movie called "The Fugitive Kind" the other day. Its from '59, around the time of Psycho. Its got a trifecta of method actors: Brando, Joanne Woodward, Anna Magnani. BIG emoters. And the film opens with Brando being questioned by an off-screen judge and reeling off pages of speech (written by Tennessee Williams) in Brando's peak style.

"The Fugitive Kind" is not listed as one of the great films. Even with Brando, Woodward and Magnini -- all revered in their time. The acting is emotive, constant, ever-flowing, ever melodramatic -- TONS of the kind of stuff that actors want to do that Hitchcock rarely let them do.

And I found it more false than much of the acting in Psycho -- certainly the acting of Perkins, Leigh, and Balsam. (And John Anderson and Mort Mills, for that matter.)

[–] telegonus (736) 7 years ago

I cut Callenbach a lot of slack for having seen Psycho when it was new, in the theater, and without being able to stop the film, edit it, rewatch certain key scenes, so as to analyze the film's skill and, especially, to appreciate its superb dialogue and, yes, the splendid acting by damn near everyone, with even the much maligned John Gavin in fine form,--for John Gavin.

[–] ecarle (14979) 7 years ago

Hi, telegonus. Welcome to my multi-post. Hah.

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I cut Callenbach a lot of slack for having seen Psycho when it was new, in the theater, and without being able to stop the film, edit it, rewatch certain key scenes, so as to analyze the film's skill and, especially, to appreciate its superb dialogue and, yes, the splendid acting by damn near everyone, with even the much maligned John Gavin in fine form,--for John Gavin

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Agreed in general. So many of the 1960 reviews of Psycho seemed to take it at face value..seeing only the "story," missing the cinematic art. I can't think of a review OTHER than this one that mentioned Herrmann's music.

So I give Callenbach points for catching a lot of how great Psycho was "beyond the story," and for predicting its value in "taking the movies to a new place": genre as dazzling A movie.

That said, he could only see so far. His derision of the acting in Psycho(save Perkins) on the one hand, while finding it BETTER than acting in other Hitchcocks, on the other, is perhaps the only place where I find him off the mark about WHY Psycho was so good. One reason it was so good WAS that the acting was so good. Beyond Perkins' unique, first-time-ever, one-of-a-kind performance, Janet Leigh was being sexual and brave and vulnerable and motherly all at once; Martin Balsam was investing a standard private eye role with method-realism and an amiable sense of improv; Miles and Gavin were playing their rather thin roles with incredible conviction and tension, and everybody from Cassidy to the cop to California Charlie to Sheriff Chambers to the psychiatrist were...memorable.

Anyway, I think within the limitations of a 1960 "first look," Callenbach saw more than others saw.

[–] ecarle (14979) 7 years ago

One other thing: it is said that initial poor reviews of Psycho in some quarters changed when it became such a huge hit. The Time review got better each week in the "capsule review section" and then they named Psycho one of the ten best of the years.

Prompting Hitchcock to say, years later: "My films go from being failures to being classics without being successes."

He was asked for an example. He named Psycho.

I think that's probably the ONLY movie he was really thinking about...but of course Psycho was a HUGE success.

So maybe he was thinking of Vertigo. THAT fits the quote better.

[–] telegonus (736) 7 years ago

I just finished watching a couple of good Hitchcock half-hours, so I'm in the mood, sort of.

It's cruelly ironic, as I think about it, that this highly successful and much praised man, an icon even in his time, a world famous celebrity for nearly thirty years by the time he died, did not live long enough to see that his most financially successful film, Psycho, would go on to be widely regarded by many (yes, I know, maybe not most) critics as his crowning achievement. Maybe at some unconscious level he knew it.

At the time of Hitchcock's death, however, much praised as he was, he was more in auteur mode than the Man Who Made Psycho mode. Psycho was a cult classic, a favorite of many, and hugely influential, yet in 1980 Hitchcock's critical reputation had even his admirers still somewhat torn,--and this had been going on for decades--between his "better" British films,--more natural, more artistic, and pure Hitch--and his later American work: Selznick-driven early on,--in itself not a bad thing but not quite Hitch, and there's some truth in this--and later on, the glossy entertainment phase which began, ironically, with the proto-Psycho Strangers On A Train.

In the intervening decades, in other words up till now, there's been a more, if you'll excuse the expression, holistic approach to Hitchcock's work, as more of a continuum than movies split up over decades and periods. There's still some of that, but not so much as forty years ago, when Hitchcock's reputation was more fragmented, so to speak, and when Psycho was still, in the minds of many, controversial, and to some critics regarded as no better than well made trash. Pulp raised to the level of art, in a manner of speaking,--always that--but not high art. As we've been carrying on these conversations for more years than I care to remember,--it can't be ten, but maybe--and we're not the only ones, the tide has turned, and Psycho is coming more and more to be regarded as Hitchcock's best work.

[–] ecarle (14979) 7 years ago

I just finished watching a couple of good Hitchcock half-hours, so I'm in the mood, sort of.

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Well, glad you were in that mood when you posted. You may be out of it now! As for me...checking in before a brief summer "disappearing act." Off and on. I'm here and there.

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It's cruelly ironic, as I think about it, that this highly successful and much praised man, an icon even in his time, a world famous celebrity for nearly thirty years by the time he died, did not live long enough to see that his most financially successful film, Psycho, would go on to be widely regarded by many (yes, I know, maybe not most) critics as his crowning achievement. Maybe at some unconscious level he knew it.

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Hitch seemed ambivalent about Psycho. He knew it was his biggest hit and the one that put the most money in his pocket(something like $150 million PERSONALLY, adjusted for inflation?) but he evidently felt that he worked beneath his best artistic gifts, and he probably knew that the "Psycho" audience of 1960 was pretty much the "13 Ghosts" audience of 1960, too.

Except the huge box office of Psycho (Number one or number two for '60, unheard of heights for Hitch) was way up from "13 Ghosts." Hitch took the William Castle formula and all those other sources we cite here....and made them Hitchcock's Own Horror. (NONE of those influences really matched how Psycho hit the world, and theaters, and movies.)

[–] ecarle (14979) 7 years ago

Anyway, Joe Stefano quoted Hitch as saying after Psycho hit "Here I make all these great movies and this bloody piece of crap can't stop earning." (Stefano later "amended the story" to Hitchcock simply staring at him with hands upraised like "I don't know why its so big.")

Elsewhere, Hitchcock called Psycho "my Boogie Man's gonna get you movie." All true, and if Hitch was somewhat embarrassed by this, I think even his feelings changed pretty quick as the world developed a Psycho cult. Hitchcock also lived through the 1965 re-release, the CBS cancellation -- the huge-rated local LA showing in '67 (wanna bet that Hitchcock the Beverly Hills Homebody -- with no movie to make that year -- WATCHED it?) Hitch saw a lot happen with Psycho.

And he saw Vertigo take off in academic circles, too. Robin Wood prounouncing it "one of the four or five masterpieces cinema has given us" happened in 1965. Donald Spoto made a similar claim in 1977. Hitchcock lived to see THAT, too.

[–] ecarle (14979) 7 years ago

At the time of Hitchcock's death, however, much praised as he was, he was more in auteur mode than the Man Who Made Psycho mode. Psycho was a cult classic, a favorite of many, and hugely influential, yet in 1980 Hitchcock's critical reputation had even his admirers still somewhat torn,--and this had been going on for decades--between his "better" British films,--more natural, more artistic, and pure Hitch--

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Two high-brow critics -- Dwight MacDonald at the New Yorker and Stanley Kauffman -- saw Hitchcock's 50s/60s cusp films(from Vertigo through The Birds) as MUCH worse than his British stuff. I guess you had to be there. Psycho was some sort of affront to the tweedy yet dark works of the 30's.

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and his later American work: Selznick-driven early on,--in itself not a bad thing but not quite Hitch, and there's some truth in this--and later on, the glossy entertainment phase which began, ironically, with the proto-Psycho Strangers On A Train.

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[–] ecarle (14979) 7 years ago

Enough decades have gone by that folks seem to "lock in" the Hitchcock greatness period as starting in 1951 (Strangers on a Train) and ending in 1960 (Psycho.) Or '63 (The Birds.) And sometimes '64 (for the few who find Marnie a masterpiece. Not me.)

Look

Strangers on a Train
I Confess
Dial M for Murder
Rear Window
To Catch A Thief
The Trouble With Harry
The Wrong Man
Vertigo
North by Northwest
Psycho

Incredible. Classics. Hits. And "personal films" (I Confess, The Trouble With Harry, The Wrong Man) that Hitchcock rather awarded to himself for making the hits and the classics.

The Big AFI four are in there (Rear Window, Vertigo, NXNW, Psycho) and for my money, The Wrong Man deserves to be with them. To Catch a Thief and Man '56 are great entertainments, one light, one dark. And Strangers on a Train -- rather breaking a midlife crisis from The Paradine Case through Stage Fright -- announced Hitchcock as The Guy Who Could Do Entertainment. A psycho. A strangling. A runaway carousel.

The fans of the British work weren't much impressed with the 50's/60s stuff. The horror to me about that period is that everybody -- friend AND foe -- seemed to take these back-to-back masterworks FOR GRANTED.

But Hitchcock's fans were coming. In the 60s, driven by TV broadcasts, college revivals and YOUTH.

By the way: If Hitchcock's forties stuff looks a bit stiff and more dramatic than thrillerish well...it was the forties. That's what studios did, and that's what Hitchcock had to do. He needed the changing times to unleash.

That said, two of his forties films -- Saboteur and Foreign Correspondent -- very much look forward to Bond, Raiders, and Die Hard, you ask me.

[–] ecarle (14979) 7 years ago

In the intervening decades, in other words up till now, there's been a more, if you'll excuse the expression, holistic approach to Hitchcock's work, as more of a continuum than movies split up over decades and periods. There's still some of that, but not so much as forty years ago, when Hitchcock's reputation was more fragmented, so to speak,

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Interesting. I"ve just spent some time doing just that -- "fragmenting" Hitch (30's , 40's, 50s) and yet...there is a great continuity across the decades. I like to say that Hitchcock was like " a movie making machine." No matter WHAT kind of story, in what kind of year, of what kind of quality, was fed into the machine...it came out looking and feeling and sounding like a Hitchcock.

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and when Psycho was still, in the minds of many, controversial, and to some critics regarded as no better than well made trash. Pulp raised to the level of art, in a manner of speaking,--always that--but not high art.

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The reviews said this and yet....c'mon. The camera moves. The shot of Perkins' eye. The shot of Leigh's eye. This was ART.

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As we've been carrying on these conversations for more years than I care to remember,--it can't be ten, but maybe--

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Could be. The imdb stuff transferred unevenly here. I've found conversations on "Hombre" from 2006. But ya gotta admit, we've transformed Psycho into somewhat of a "world unto its own," with some repitition (for newbies) and some polishing of points. But mainly as a reference to OTHER works: Hitchcock, Bates Motel, Hitchocck/Truffaut(the film), The Girl, and now 78/52 come to mind. We are NOT the only ones keeping Psycho fresh and discussable.

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[–] ecarle (14979) 7 years ago

and we're not the only ones, the tide has turned, and Psycho is coming more and more to be regarded as Hitchcock's best work.

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I think it is. It functioned on at least two levels: movie and event. And the EVENT worked on two levels: rocking 1960 and setting the pace for the rest of the movie century. That it has begat sequels and TV series and remakes and docudramas...it is Hitchcock's main contribution to culture, the survivor.

Odd how Vertigo ends up being pitted against it. The two movies share a lot -- themes(the past locks up the present) , a Herrman score, madness. And yet, Vertigo seems so very much an "old" film of the Golden Era, playing by Golden Era rules even in its shocks. Not so, Psycho.

I remain convinced that, as a "one-two punch," North by Northwest and Psycho are the two cultural twins in Hitchcock's canon. Both revolutionized how exciting the thriller could really be -- one with action, one with horror, barely a year apart and from much the same creative team. The rest is, literally, history.

[–] telegonus (736) 7 years ago

Yes, Hitch got awfully lucky with his back to back box-office hits in 1959-60. I think that his TV show had something to do with this. On the surface he didn't really need it, yet if you think about it the series gave him exposure and that long running mystery magazine, plus the tie-in books, which made Alfred Hitchcock a household name. It seemed to give him a charge of energy and inspiration lacking in the work of a lot of older directors of more or less the same generation.

As to the "culture twins", actually there seem to be a fair number in Hitchcock's canon, going back at least to Rebecca and Suspicion, with the same leading lady, in each case involved with a man who may or may not be out to do her in. His next few films were one offs, and then came the two with Bergman. Alike? Not really, as to plot, though each seems to have more than a whiff of the Freudian. Bergman ties them together.

After that, Hitchcock seemed to slip into a slough of despond mode, only coming fully back to life with Strangers On A Train, which, with its troubled male leads ties it to the film that came immediately before (Stage Fright) and the one that came next (I Confess). Maybe this is the now well into middle age director reflecting on youth, not his but youth in general, on maleness, using handsome young men as surrogates for some of the issues that (perhaps) plagued him. Or maybe I'm getting a bit Freudian or psychoanalytic here...

The Grace Kelly pictures seem to function as a group from 1954-56, which may also be Hitchcock wondering where all the time went and using the persona of Miss Kelly as a template. Yeah, I know. Whatever. After that, plus the remake of The Man Who Knew Too Much came three more one offs, as there were in the early Forties, with each a very different sort of film from the other: The Trouble With Harry I can't get into at all. It's like Alfred Goes Ealing. He should have just gone back to England to get that out of his system, not NEW England.

[–] telegonus (736) 7 years ago

Oops! I have to post a second time, EC, just like you:

The Wrong Man was sort of like Alfred Does Sidney Lumet, except that Sidney Lumet was only about to start his movie directing career, so it can't be. Not literally. I do think it owes something to television. It doesn't play like a Hitchcock episode but it does have the feel of a Studio One or a Philco Playhouse to it. After that: ye gods, Vertigo. I've never been able to warm up to this one. It's so unentertaining (sic) that it might almost be a Hitchcock picture for people who don't like Hitchcock, by which I mean for those moviegoers who have no sense of humor. If so, Vertigo's for you.

Then come the dynamic due of North By Northwest and Psycho. After that, the long wait, the longest period in Hitchcock's career since he started, up till then, when he didn't make a movie (three years). The two with Tippi Hedren are rather sad, especially the second one. But truly, to roll out an old warhorse of a turn of phrase, to channel a certain Mr. Marx (no, not Groucho), "history repeats itself, first as tragedy, then as farce". By which I mean after Grace, le deluge: first Vera Miles not even wanting to be a serious replacement for Miss Kelly (even as she was a far better actress), and then maybe Kim Novak simply not measuring up (as an actress, I mean). By the time Hitch "discovered" the thirtysomething Miss Hedren it's like he was entering not his second childhood but his second adolescence. While they have their charms I find both The Birds and Marnie to be sub-par Hitch, and that's coming off his greatest run ever, almost ten years. But then we all grow old, and Alfred Hitchcock was stouter and more sedentary than most.

[–] ecarle (14979) 7 years ago

The Wrong Man was sort of like Alfred Does Sidney Lumet, except that Sidney Lumet was only about to start his movie directing career, so it can't be. Not literally.

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Funny you should mention that. The Wrong Man is sometimes listed as a 1957 release. It came out at Xmas 1956 in some "Oscar releases" in NYC and LA, but the rest of the nation saw it in 1957.

And 1957 is the year of Lumet's DEBUT film, 12 Angry Men.

"The Wrong Man" and "12 Angry Men" are rather twinned. In a big way. Henry Fonda as the star...with all the realistic social justice power he brought to his later roles. Both b/w. Both set in New York City(or boroughs) and with the grit of that city in place and people.

It has been noted that whereas Fonda IS the wrong man in The Wrong Man, he's out to FREE the wrong man(teenager) in 12 Angry Men, so we are getting a "continuity" about the American justice system circa 1957 in both films.

"Reversibly," a lot of Lumet's technique in 12 Angry Men is...Hitchcockian. The stunt of 12 men in one small room, as the camera shows the room closing in on them as their faces are held in increasingly tight close-ups. 12 Angry Men looks a lot like a Hitchcock movie in camera angles and close-ups. And hey...Martin Balsam's in there!

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I do think it owes something to television. It doesn't play like a Hitchcock episode but it does have the feel of a Studio One or a Philco Playhouse to it.

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Well, 12 Angry Men was a TV play first, and The Wrong Man was a "true story" portrayed on TV in the early fifties, where Hitchcock saw it and decided to adapt it for the movies. (The TV "wrong man" was played by Robert Ellenstein, the bald henchman Licht in North by Northwest!)

[–] ecarle (14979) 7 years ago

After that: ye gods, Vertigo. I've never been able to warm up to this one. It's so unentertaining (sic) that it might almost be a Hitchcock picture for people who don't like Hitchcock, by which I mean for those moviegoers who have no sense of humor. If so, Vertigo's for you.

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That about sums it up. All those Sight and Sound voters who made Vertigo (for now) the greatest film of all time seem not only to be rejecting some other possible choices(The Godfather? Casablanca? 2001?) but rejecting some other HITCHCOCK choices(Psycho? Rear Window? North by Northwest?) in favor of a film that did little business and was revered by, like, nobody, in its time.

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I'll go to my grave fascinated by how Hitchcock ended up with one of his lesser hits enshrined at the cost of his bigger hits with more "connection" to the masses. Its like Vertigo is some sort of "bonus Hitchcock controversy" in his personal history.

That said, perhaps due to the relentless drum-thumping for Vertigo's greatness...I GREW to like it. It wasn't immediate, as with NXNW, Rear Window, Psycho, or...for that matter...Frenzy.

I respond to Herrmann's great score and Saul Bass's great credit sequence. I respond to the gorgeous yet melancholy footage of an impossibly empty San Francisco. I respond much more to Kim Novak's emotionally besieged Judy than to James Stewart's bullying, prematurely aged and nutzo Scottie.

And I expect it took MY aging to get me to this point -- but I respond to the film's study of how we lose the past and desperately try to bring it back. And can't. We can't bring back lost family, lost loves, lost power...lost times.

[–] ecarle (14979) 7 years ago

Then come the dynamic due of North By Northwest and Psycho. After that, the long wait, the longest period in Hitchcock's career since he started, up till then, when he didn't make a movie (three years).

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It wasn't as bad as James Cameron after Titanic(12 years to Avatar!), but Hitchcock's well-oiled assembly line certainly broke down after the back-to-back success of NXNW and Psycho, with the latter hitting REALLY big.

But Hitch was a competitor, and a trooper. He had The Birds before the cameras within two years of Psycho, even if it took another to get its effects finished and to get it released.

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The two with Tippi Hedren are rather sad, especially the second one.

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In my proffered "imaginary mini-series about Hitchcock," the Tippi Hedren story would get a couple of grim episodes. Tippi came to Hitchcock as part of a greater whole: (1) the massive success of Psycho at Paramount and (2) Hitchcock's move, at Lew Wasserman's insistence, to the lesser studio, Universal. Tippi Hedren is in the first two Universal Hitchcocks(aside from the 40s loanouts), and that MEANS something. I'm not sure what...Hitchcock was at once at the top of his game(with the TV series too) and...about to fall off the mountain. Universal is where it would happen.

[–] ecarle (14979) 7 years ago

By which I mean after Grace, le deluge: first Vera Miles not even wanting to be a serious replacement for Miss Kelly (even as she was a far better actress),

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Interesting about Vera Miles, yes? A great performance in The Wrong Man; she WOULD have been great in Vertigo and...her somewhat maligned character Lila in Psycho has proved after all these years to be a performance of great intensity and "held back fear"(Julianne Moore turned Lila into a harpy in the remake.)

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and then maybe Kim Novak simply not measuring up (as an actress, I mean).

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To Hitchcock, evidently. But she gave "Vertigo" a bankable star to match Stewart, she's sexy as hell, and she IS good in the movie. Ms. Novak is still alive and she KNOWS what that movie will mean for her legacy.

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By the time Hitch "discovered" the thirtysomething Miss Hedren it's like he was entering not his second childhood but his second adolescence.

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What happened? What happened? What HAPPENED? Why did Hitchcock elect to try to "make a star"? Hitchcock in particular often cast his leads only after they proved themselves worthy in other films-- Eva Marie Saint, for instance. There was then, and is now, something "un-starlike" about Tippi Hedren in her two coveted lead roles.

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While they have their charms I find both The Birds and Marnie to be sub-par Hitch, and that's coming off his greatest run ever, almost ten years.

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Well, it had to end sometime. The Birds is a "split decision" to me. All the set-pieces and horror action are top of the line Hitchcock to me, up there with the best things he ever gave cinema history. But the script? The non-birds story? The hysteria? The Birds is a movie at war with itself.

As for Marnie, its just not a story I can warm up to(as you put it) at all. And the climactic murder(of Bruce Dern) is silly and poorly staged, a real come-down from the Psycho killings(even with the process shot for Arbo's death.)

[–] ecarle (14979) 7 years ago

Yes, Hitch got awfully lucky with his back to back box-office hits in 1959-60.

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One can consider Hitchcock's "great run" as a trilogy:

Vertigo
North by Northwest
Psycho

But Vertigo was nowhere near the hit that the second two were.

One can add in a fourth film in a row and find Hitchcock to have dominated cinema for a few years:

Vertigo
North by Northwest
Psycho
The Birds

(Some French critic said that these four films in a row made Hitchcock the most important man in the world from 1958 to 1963!)

But there are flaws with The Birds, and it shares with Vertigo a bit too much over-emotional seriousness.

Nope -- to my mind -- it is the back-to-back "dynamic duo"(as you nicely put it) of North by Northwest and Psycho that re-set the thriller mechanism for all time. EVERY thriller made since then ties back to one of those films or the other one -- with North by Northwest sounding in all our comic book hero movies right now(Spiderman Homecoming has a cliffhanger on the Washington Monument) even as Psycho keeps informing the horror side of the equation("Split.")

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[–] ecarle (14979) 7 years ago

I think that his TV show had something to do with this. On the surface he didn't really need it, yet if you think about it the series gave him exposure and that long running mystery magazine, plus the tie-in books, which made Alfred Hitchcock a household name. It seemed to give him a charge of energy and inspiration lacking in the work of a lot of older directors of more or less the same generation.

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Yes, truly so -- and the TV series got audiences excited about Alfred Hitchcock as a STAR.

Hitchcock "hosts" the NXNW trailer as the owner of the " Alfred Hitchcock Travel Agency" and pitches Grant's adventure as a "summer vacation."

But then, Psycho has Hitchcock not only hosting the entire, six-minute long trailer but -- without showing a single scene or actor from the movie! (Except Vera Miles subbing in a remake of the shower scene at the very end.)

If you look at the trailer for the 1956 "Man Who Knew Too Much," you'll see that James Stewart is the "host" of it, looking right out at us. Hitchcock's TV show wasn't the big hit thing just yet.

But by NXNW...Hitchcock is the star. And the TV show gave him t hat stardom.

Hitchcock "stars" in the trailers for

NXNW
Psycho
The Birds
Marnie

Marnie was the Hitchcock film before the TV series went off the air. It seems that Hitchcock backed away from hosting his trailers after that for awhile --he's a photograph in the Torn Curtain trailer and speaks but once in the Topaz trailer.

Once Hitchcock knew he had a potential comeback hit in Frenzy, he did THAT trailer"the old way" -- as the host. It was nostalgic AND hurtful. He was so much older in that trailer, so much more overweight in the face. "We couldn't go home again."

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[–] ecarle (14979) 7 years ago

Still, and as you say, telegonus, the TV series kept Hitchcock hip. He approved the story choices and among them were tales of the mob, cheating spouses, rebellious juvenile deliquents, and even the occult. Those stories plus the actors(Steve McQueen, Robert Redford) and directors (Robert Altman, William Freidkin, Sydney Pollock) making them -- kept Hitchcock hip even as old-timers like John Ford and Frank Capra were openly rebelling against "the new."

[–] ecarle (14979) 7 years ago

As to the "culture twins", actually there seem to be a fair number in Hitchcock's canon,

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Weird, isn't it? Little "doubling ups," a certain twinning on Hitchcock's part.

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going back at least to Rebecca and Suspicion, with the same leading lady, in each case involved with a man who may or may not be out to do her in.

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I'm afraid that Joan Fontaine is pretty much the same in both films, the kind of woman I'm not much interested in...mousy and afraid...and not quite believable when the spine finally turns up.

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His next few films were one offs,

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Including the "studio twinned" two for Universal -- Saboteur and Shadow of a Doubt -- which seem to share a kind of modest, near-B level feeling, and "everyday characters."

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and then came the two with Bergman. Alike? Not really, as to plot, though each seems to have more than a whiff of the Freudian. Bergman ties them together.

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Yes. Bergman and Peck in Spellbound.
Bergman and Grant in Notorious.

Both for Selznick, and both heavy on the romance, light on the action. I find Notorious the far better film -- Grant is more cool than the young and callow Peck -- and Notorious has a smart, intelligent economy of action to it.

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Some other "twinnings" (as I find them):

Strangers on a Train and I Confess: both films are b/w Warners movies with Dimitri Tiomkin scores, both about a cruel killer framing a good man for murder...and TELLING HIM. But Strangers was big, fun, exciting. I Confess is dour, stoic, religious.

Rear Window and To Catch a Thief. Grace Kelly made Dial M, too, but THESE two both have witty John Michael Hayes scripts, top Paramount production values, and "older man romances". Though Grace looks much better matched with Cary than with Jimmy, you ask me. Thelma Ritter and Wendell Corey find rough supporting role equivalents in Jessie Royce Landis and John Williams, too.

[–] ecarle (14979) 7 years ago

The Wrong Man and Vertigo. Both films "lack humor and action." Hitchcock knew in both cases that he was going against his grain as an entertainer, and going for deep, depressing tragedy.

The films share scenes in which (a) a shrink tells a person that their loved one has suffered a mental breakdown and (b) that person walks away and alone down a long hall into darkness. I've always figured that Hitchcock repeated these scenes in Vertigo because he figured nobody saw them in The Wrong Man.

North by Northwest and Psycho. On the surface, these are more opposites than twins: one is big budget in Technicolor and VistaVision; the other is low budget b/w on a TV budget. One has the happiest of endings, the other ends in sheer horror. But they ARE twins -- the two greatest overall entertainment/art films of Hitchcock's career, with Bernard Herrmann and Saul Bass along to capture the mood.

Psycho and The Birds. Hitchcock was out to "top" Psycho, and he did -- in sheer number of set-pieces. But Psycho and The Birds are twinned as Hitchcock's two "back to back horror movies." There is more fantasy in The Birds, but that farmer gets his eyes pecked out and Tippi attacked by birds in the upstairs room is a dead ringer for Janet attacked in the shower. It will remain forever interesting that Hitchcock threw away a new teenage horror fan audience and got all stodgy with Marnie, Torn Curtain, and Topaz. "Wha happened?"

[–] ecarle (14979) 7 years ago

Torn Curtain and Topaz.

They both start with the letters "To." (Believe me, this has caused people to confuse which one is which.)

They are both about the Cold War and the conflict of the West with the Communists. (One movie is about the Iron Curtain, the other about the Cuban Missile Crisis -- the two big Communist threats of their time.)

They are both about defectors(Newman to Russia; a Russian to the US)...suggesting to me that Hitchcock was communicating on HIS defection (England to Hollywood).

And they are both considered subpar works of decline.

But not by me.

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Frenzy and Family Plot.

About all they share is starting with "F." They are like Torn Curtain and Topaz starting with "To."

And Frenzy is as brutal and sickening as Family Plot is lightweight and upbeat.

But they share this: they are end-of-the-line Hitchcock works, minus major stars, small in size and heavy on the telling of tales about hardscabble folks who are hustling for their livings (Blaney, Babs, Blanche, Lumley.)

[–] ecarle (14979) 7 years ago

The Trouble With Harry I can't get into at all.

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Its an acquired taste, that's for sure.

I rather like the first five minutes or so. No story. Just those beautiful shots of the Vermont countryside as Herrmann's music provides us with a sense of peace and calm and warmth. I run those five minutes just to calm down sometimes. How ironic -- this is Herrmann's first score for Hitch and it is, for the most part, SWEET . And kind. And beautiful.

It no wonder that Herrmann's next overture for a Hitchcock film -- The Man Who Knew Too Much -- is all thunder and menace and portent: "Here, Hitch, let me show you what I can REALLY do!"

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It's like Alfred Goes Ealing. He should have just gone back to England to get that out of his system, not NEW England.

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Ha. Yes, so odd that it is set in New England but whenever Edmund Gwenn speaks, I find the whole thing British as hell. And very much Hitchcock at his most personal. (THIS film is his most personal to me, not Vertigo.)

All that said, I DO like The Trouble With Harry. Its a quirky little movie, to me. With great beauty and heart.