MovieChat Forums > Psycho (1960) Discussion > December 11, 2017

December 11, 2017

posted 7 years ago by ecarle (14979)
23 replies | jump to latest

December 11, 2017 was a few days ago. (I type this on December 17.) I wasn't around a computer to take note here.

But "Psychophiles in the know" know the significance of December 11, don't we?

Its the first day of the Psycho story, the first fleeting titles superimposed over the great sweeping shot of a desert city in late afternoon torpor:

Phoenix, Arizona
Friday, December 11
Two Forty Three PM

What a lot of movie history is attendant to this on-screen information!

As a matter of place...Phoenix, Arizona. A Southwestern city at the edge of a vast desert, a gateway to the end of America on the Western side(California.) The phoenix is a bird(there will be a lot of birds in Psycho, starting with Marion Crane). And the phoenix is a bird that rises from the ashes of death...ala Mrs. Bates, who, famously, becomes a bird of prey when attacking Marion and Arbogast(especially him, in that high shot and on the foyer floor-- he is "swooped down upon."

Friday: It sets up the entire plot of Marion Crane's embezzlement and flight to her boyfriend in Northern California, by car. Leaving Friday, Marion can be to Sam in Fairvale by Saturday night. And as it turns out, she ends up with Norman Bates on Saturday night instead...and finds herself with enough time to drive BACK to Phoenix and bank the money without anyone knowing. Friday also sets up Lila Crane to be "in Tucson over the weekend" and thus unknowing of Marion's disappearance until it is too late.

2:43 PM: "These extended lunch hours give my boss excess acid," says half naked Marion in a hotel room to half-naked Sam. The line is a nod to an old stomach medicine commercial(how rarely Hitchocck allowed references to modern commercials -- they would date the film.) As Hitchcock points out, this extended lunch hour(perhaps three hours on a one-hour from noon start) is the only time that Marion has to go to bed with her lover. Its a quickie. In a sleazy hotel where "they don't care when you check in, but when your time is up..." Marion's time is up. 2:43 in the afternoon on a Friday also conjures up the mental state of "the week almost being over, the weekend almost here." Sam tries to convince Marion to have some more Friday sex, but as it turns out, there are customers waiting back at the office, including one with 40 grand who wants to take Friday afternoon off "to get a little drinkin' done" with the boss man.

And of great importance: "December 11."

Hitchcock's selection of this date, given the 9 days over which the story transpires, makes Psycho , quite famously "Hitchcock's Christmas movie."

Except nobody talks about Christmas. There are no Xmas decorations at the real estate office or California Charlie's car lot, or the Bates Motel office, in the Bates home, or in the Chambers home, or even at the county courthouse at the end.

The only place where Xmas decorations are visible are in the streets of Phoenix as Marion waits at the intersection to drive out of town. This footage was shot by a second unit crew in December 1959, and Hitchcock was too cheap(Psycho was made out of his own pocket in large) to either send the crew back to Phoenix to reshoot or even to substitute some LA/Hollywood streets(understandable, Hitchcock was a stickler for accuracy in his background footage.)

Back in 1960 -- when Alfred Hitchcock had no knowledge that Psycho would be come a blockbuster, and then a classic that would be re-watchable FOREVER on VHS tapes, DVDs, computer streaming, and cable TV -- Hitchcock thought he could get away with slapping December 11 on a movie that said nothing about Christmas.

Joseph Stefano's written screenplay posts Psycho as taking place in "late summer." But that was only the screenplay. The movie as we have it says everything starts on December 11, which means the timeline is thus:

Friday, December 11: Hotel room tryst, real estate scene, Marion drives off with the cash.

Saturday, December 12: Cop stop on the road in the morning, car switch-and-buy at California Charlie's later that morning, a long days' driver into night and a driving rainstorm that brings Marion to the office of the Bates Motel by Saturday night. Marion dies in the shower that Saturday night, and Norman spends the wee hours cleaning up the crime and burying Marion and her car in the nearby swamp.

[–] ecarle (14979) 7 years ago

FADE OUT. FADE IN.

One week has passed. A week in which Marion's boss and client realize she stole the money("I'll replace it with her fine soft flesh!" raged the client -- but only in Marion's imagination.) A week in which Lila Crane realizes that Marion must have travelled to see Sam, so she's going there too. A week in which Arbogast the private eye has been hired and figured that the woman to follow is Lila Crane. Which he does, all the way to Sam's hardware store in Fairvale. (None of this week is shown or filmed; its all in our minds.)

Saturday, December 19: Sam writes a letter to Marion saying he WILL marry her, after all(oh, the irony! Oh, the anguish for us.) Lila Crane and Arbogast(Milton, says only the novel and the script) descend suspiciously on Sam Loomis at his hardware store. Arbogast spends the day canvassing boarding houses and hotels before finding the Bates Motel. Day turns into dusk turns into dark...until Arbogast is as endangered as Marion was. And he gets killed, too. "Sometimes Saturday night has a lonely sound" remarks Sam to Lila at the hardware store right after see Mother stab Arbo to death on the foyer floor of the house. The wee hours of THIS Saturday night are spent by Norman burying another victim and car in the swamp, by Sam coming dangerously close to the burial while yelling "Arbogast!" over at the motel; and then by Sam and Lila waking up the sheriff and his wife for what feels like a 3:00 am phone call to Norman.

[–] ecarle (14979) 7 years ago

Sunday, December 20: Before church, the sheriff goes out to question Norman. "I saw the whole place" the sheriff says to Sam and Lila AT church. Sam and Lila elect to drive out to the Bates Motel and investigate on their own. For the first time in the movie, we see the house and motel in the bright, cold light of day, not a cloud in the sky, the buildings looking bleached, exposed and vulnerable. They will give up their secrets this afternoon...and Norman will give up his identity. Sunday night takes everyone to the Shasta County courthouse and the psychiatrist's wrap-up of Norman's psyche and his crimes. Norman in his cell is ALMOST the last thing we see -- but Marion's car being dredged up turns out to be the final image of the film. Likely a few days AFTER Sunday December 20...and likely right on top of Christmas Day. Merry Christmas, Sam and Lila! The swamp has a present for you!

I'm posting this on December 17, 2017. In a few days, we will be at the (fictional) 57th Anniversary dates of the murder of Arbogast(December 19) and the capture of Norman Bates(December 20.)

Tis the season of cinematic remembrance.

[–] swanstep (2715) 7 years ago

Great stuff ecarle! Just two, further, I assume fortuitous Xmas connections in Psycho:

1. Norman's candy corn eating has always made sense to me as chewing on some of the typical, sad, unfancied (so mostly ultimately eaten by the hosts!), left-over candy that kind of hangs around reception areas in the US throughout the long holiday/party season that begins with Halloween and continues through Thanksgiving, Xmas and New Year.
2. Marion's feeling she's at the end of her rope with Sam works well for me as Xmas draws near. Office environments (with lechers getting loose) also get wearying that time of year. Obviously too, thinking of Marion and Psycho narrows the gaps between her and Fran Kubelik, and between Psycho and The Apartment (which takes place over the same extended Holiday/Party season and ends on New Year's Eve). I like this!

[–] ecarle (14979) 7 years ago

I return on the night of December 19 -- the 57th Anniversary of the night Arbogast got killed?

Not necessarily. 57 years ago was December 17 of 1960, but Psycho had been out months earlier in that year.

No, I think by the "rules of fiction movies," Psycho is a story told "of recent vintage," looking backwards. Hitchcock himself in his 1960 tour of the Bates property talks of all the "dire, horrible events" as being in the past ("Its for sale now, though I can't imagine who would buy it.")

So Arbogast died 58 years ago tonight. In fiction, yes -- but fiction can have a powerful draw on the imagination. Take "Star Wars," for instance. Or "Star Trek," for that matter. These twin myths have been assimilated so deep into the imaginations of generations that you can FEEL the desire that they "could possibly be real." And The Force is another religion, yes?

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Replying more directly to you, swanstep:

--

Just two, further, I assume fortuitous Xmas connections in Psycho:

1. Norman's candy corn eating has always made sense to me as chewing on some of the typical, sad, unfancied (so mostly ultimately eaten by the hosts!), left-over candy that kind of hangs around reception areas in the US throughout the long holiday/party season that begins with Halloween and continues through Thanksgiving, Xmas and New Year.

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Excellent point. It might just be Halloween candy"hangin' around."

And the idea of the Bates Motel -- or better yet, the Bates HOUSE -- having drawn Trick or Treaters is rather delicious, yes? I can just see some teens in Fairvale positing the Bates House as "that old haunted house off the old highway." And driving out there. a Trick or Treat "terror expedition" to match that of Margaret O'Brien in "Meet Me in St. Louis." Boy oh boy, it would depend on who answered the door: Norman? Norma? Or maybe he just wouldn't answer the door(as when Sam Loomis called.)

[–] ecarle (14979) 7 years ago

2. Marion's feeling she's at the end of her rope with Sam works well for me as Xmas draws near. Office environments (with lechers getting loose) also get wearying that time of year.

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Marion was probably dreading the office Christmas Party. A drunken Cassidy would be in the cards. And maybe that overly aggressive private eye that Lowery hired from time to time on insurance matters -- Arbogast, was that his name? Coming on too strong at that PREVIOUS Christmas party last year? Inviting Marion to go to Vegas with him for New Years? Well, he was smarter than Cassidy. Cooler, too.

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Obviously too, thinking of Marion and Psycho narrows the gaps between her and Fran Kubelik, and between Psycho and The Apartment (which takes place over the same extended Holiday/Party season and ends on New Year's Eve). I like this!

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I like it, too! Its one of those fortuitous "moments of screen history" that put The Apartment and Psycho on a certain collision course -- released within weeks of each other in the summer of 1960, each steered by a "box office auteur" at the top of his game, each out to "push the envelope" in certain ways(Wilder: sex only; Hitchcock: sex and violence.)

And they share being in black-and-white(though The Apartment is in wide screen). And they indeed share "workaday protagonists" who are under the thumb of the Man, in various ways.

But yes indeed, the two films are both overtly set at Christmas time. The Apartment does it with Christmas SCENES -- the office party, the drunk Santa at the bar; a lonely but heartwarming post-near-suicidal Xmas morning and day for Fran and Baxter. Psycho does it with one stray, fatal, date card ("Friday, December 11th") that couldn't HELP but put audiences thinking of Christmas as the days of the story play out and "Saturday" becomes a vital day in the story.

[–] ecarle (14979) 7 years ago

There was a third 1960 film with an emphasis on Christmas -- The Rat Pack's "Ocean's Eleven"(now known as "the old original," ala Psycho). That one headed for a big heist of five casinos in Vegas just as the clock struck New Year's Eve.

And The Apartment climaxes on New Year's Eve, too. (With Shirley MacLaine's face in close up -- realizing that it is Jack Lemmon she loves, not the richer and more powerful Fred MacMurray -- as one of the most exhilarating acting moments in movie history.)

Psycho... New Year's Eve, not so much. Its story pretty much ends with the shrink and the cell on December 20...and then the dredging of that swamp. (Can't imagine they waited more than two days -- respect for the dead.) But, Oh, God Mother...what a horrible Xmas and New Years for Sam and Lila. (All their parents seem to be gone, there's no talk of other siblings...will pain, horror and loneliness bring this couple together after all?)

As with the Christmas time of Psycho, I posit the New Years Eves that climax Ocean's Eleven and The Apartment as being "1959 becomes 1960" -- the past, not the future, with a certain powerful acknowledgement via the three dynamic movies that "the sixties were going to be different." And how!

Meanwhile: Psycho opened in NYC and other East Coast locales on June 16, 1960. But Psycho opened in LOS ANGELES and West Coast locales on August 10, 1960. The same day as "Ocean's Eleven," which beat it. (The Apartment was in release in June in New York along with Psycho, there. What a summer for movie lovers of 1960 movies as re-visited today!)

[–] ecarle (14979) 7 years ago

And this: the original Ocean's Eleven may be snoozy in the narrative, but it is an incredible time capsule of "how fun was had" back then -- and of a Las Vegas that was sparse, low to the ground, more desert than buildings. An amazing filmic record of a time and place long gone.

In Psycho, Cassidy says to Marion "You should spend the weekend in Las Vegas...playground of the world!" If only Marion had taken Cassidy's advice. She would have ended up in Vegas with Danny Ocean and the Rat Pack. And this: Ocean's Eleven has a scene set in(though not filmed in)...you guessed it...Phoenix, Arizona.

Evidently Phoenix and Vegas had a certain "corridor connection." One Vegas casino boss , Gus Greenbaum, lived in Phoenix and was killed there. Psycho style -- while they slept in bed, his and his wife's throats were slashed to "near decapitation." Mafia business. I always felt that Cassidy and Arbogast had a Vegas Vibe...probably some ties to gamblers and mobsters for both men.

[–] ecarle (14979) 7 years ago

A couple of self-analytical thoughts.

ONE: This whole business of "memorizing the timeline of Psycho" is perhaps Film Geek 101 (or Film Nerd, I'll take the hit), but true cinemaphiles tend to latch on to the world that a movie creates. Hitchcock chose to open Psycho on a specific day(Friday) at a specific time(2:43) for clear plot and thematic reasons.

But he chose December 11 to cover for a botched second unit background plate.

And yet: the deed was done. Psycho lovers would internalize that "start date for horror" and extrapolate from there: so Marion dies on Saturday December 12. And Arbogast dies a week later, also on Saturday. And Sam and Lila expose Norman on Sunday, after church.

These things "follow naturally" and make Psycho THAT MUCH MORE REAL in our minds. The film knows what WE know about Fridays and Saturdays and Sundays and Mondays...and works on our emotions, with that knowledge.

And this: I'd be hard-pressed to remember many other movies(ANY other movies?) with so specific a timeline of days. Jaws? The Exorcist? The Godfather(well, that spans years and Don Vito gets shot at Christmastime.) Star Wars?

Nope. Psycho gets some of its power, some of its grip on our imaginations, BECAUSE it is so specific about time.

[–] ecarle (14979) 7 years ago

My second self-analytical thought:

So, while the thoughts of many others are on "Shopping Days left til Christmas," or how to properly salute Hanukkah, or any of the other holidays out there...I'm thinking "Psycho timeline."

Oh, well. It is a matter of bemusement to me that I've now spent so many years camping out at Psycho boards(at imdb and now here) that the movie clearly gets to occupy space in my thinking ALONG WITH EVERYTHING ELSE in my life. Psycho HAS to be on my mind, because I come to its board.

I'm comfortable with this because ...everybody has a favorite movie. Everybody has the movie that "got them," haunted them, took over their life for a time.

I wish "The Music Man" could be that movie(though I doubt swanstep would agree, hah) but it is Psycho. With North by Northwest close on its heels and nicer -- but not more powerful in its grip on my memory.

Therefore, I figure that every December 11, from now til my end(decades, I hope) will conjure up "the Psycho connection" because I made it decades ago and it is hard-wired within me.

I think thinking of Psycho actually provides a little familar warmth and comfort against the harsher realities of today, you ask me.

Psycho: comfort food.

[–] ecarle (14979) 7 years ago

Returning to remark on this:

One film after Psycho (but almost three years later), Hitchcock rather repeated his initial "weekend timeframe for plotting" with...The Birds.

Hitchcock scholar Camille Paglia has noted that The Birds, too, starts "at 2:43 PM on a Friday" (You can see clock arms at that time in a shot of Melanie's hands trying to catch an escaped bird in the birds shop). Hitch knew what he was doing there; I think it might even be 2:46 or so because the movie has been playing for three minutes.

And Friday/Saturday become important to THIS story, too:

Melanie takes the caged love birds to Mitch's SF apartment, but is told in the hallway by Mitch's neighbor(Richard Deacon from The Dick Van Dyke Show), that "Mitch always goes up to Bodega Bay to stay with his family on the weekends."

So Melanie decides to "weekend in Bodega Bay" -- because she wishes to deliver the lovebirds for the birthday of Mitch's sister, Cathy.

Paglia notes this rough timeline:

Saturday: Melanie drives to Bodega Bay, meets Annie, meets Lydia, gets pecked on forehead by gull.
Sunday: Birthday party attack; sparrows attack Brenner living room. (Mitch asks Melanie to not return to SF, to stay in Bodega Bay on Monday, as will he.)
Monday: School's in -- so the birds attack the school kids. Monday lunch crowd gets attacked at the Tides. Monday night into the wee hours -- attacks on the Brenner home and then on Melanie in the attic room.
Tuesday morning: the desperate drive to SF.

This is a more "compact" weekend storyline that Psycho has -- which is really two weekends with a fade out in between -- but you can see that Hitchcock evidently felt the need to "structure time again" very specifically with The Birds.

And how cheeky of him NOT to start The Birds with a title card "Friday, BLANK, 2:43 PM" -- but rather to hide the time of day on the wall clock and get us thinking about Friday and Saturday again...

[–] movieghoul (213) 7 years ago

Also, Rear Window plays Wednesday through Saturday.

[–] ecarle (14979) 7 years ago

I never caught that framework -- though I do recall that the climactic night has policeman Tom Doyle out for a formal evening with his wife(he arrives to rescue Jeff in dinner jacket) , and a baby sitter on duty. So yeah...another notable Saturday night in Hitchcock.

As far as a really LONG space of time in a Hitchcock movie -- Vertigo comes to mind. Scottie's recuperation in the mental hospital is communicated by a leisurely pan shot of San Francisco circa
1957 (anticipatory of the opening shot of Phoenix in Psycho) . I can't recall how many months it took him to recuperate from his catatonia. Of course, he didn't REALLY recuperate from his mental illness...as Judy finds out.

That panning shot of San Francisco, btw, strikes me as one of the great "historical captures" of a city in movie history. Most of that skyline is still there in SF; but surrounded by many taller buildings now.

Meanwhile...the opening skyline of Phoenix in Psycho is pretty much all gone now, all torn down and replaced, save a few buildings.

Psycho captures a Phoenix that has never risen.

[–] movieghoul (213) 7 years ago

In Rear Window, the opening scene of Jeffries on the phone makes it clear that it's a Wednesday, so the ending is clearly on another "fun" Saturday night. So 4 consecutive days, just as The Birds plays out over 4 days, Friday through Monday. And come to think of it, Psycho also plays out over 4 days although they're not consecutive.

And isn't North by Northwest even more compressed over 3 days (except for the train scene at the end)? Likewise, the 1956 Man Who Knew Too Much? And I don't recall the chronology of Trouble WIth Harry, but it couldn't have been too long, or there would have been an awful stench.

And the all time winner for time compression is Rope......80 minutes.

[–] swanstep (2715) 7 years ago

And the all time winner for time compression is Rope......80 minutes.

In-real-timers are almost their own special sub-genre, with some superb exemplars: e.g., High Noon, Cleo from 5 to 7.

Editing as Time-travel: Run Lola Run replays the same 20 minutes 3 times (with a prologue and 2 brief flashback interludes between the runs stretching the film to 80 minutes).
Actual Time-travel: Timecrimes (2007) loops around bits of a single hour.

[–] movieghoul (213) 7 years ago

[–] ecarle (14979) 7 years ago

Oops, had a senior moment there on NBN. I remembered the overnight train to Chicago and the night flight to South Dakota, but forgot about the night in the drunk tank.

So like Rear Window and THe BIrds, NBN does play out over 4 consecutive days

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Intriguing. One element of NXNW that I thought Hitchcock dealt with fairly well was: Roger's inability to bathe over those four days.

Assuming he'd had a bath(or more likely, a shower) on the day he was kidnapped, this means he had no shower the next day(from the Plaza to the UN to the train), nor the next(he didn't shower on the train, had to shave in a train station bathroom and never really got his shower at the Chicago hotel room where Eve was staying.) But when we first see him in the hotel room in Rapid City South Dakota with the Professor, he's in a towel having just had a shower("And pretty well put together at age 55," gushed Time. Or Newsweek.)

So Eve didn't have too stinky a love bout on the train...

[–] ecarle (14979) 7 years ago

And then there is Frenzy, where Richard Blaney's several nights are essentially hide and go seek with homelessness:

Night one: fired from his pub job, he sleeps at the Salvation Army.

Night two: armed with money slipped him by Brenda, he takes a nice hotel room with Babs. (Showers, as I recall -- spoken of, not seen.)

Night three: now broke again, he seeks a night's couch stay with his RAF buddy and wife.

Night four: He's INTENDING to stay with Rusk(what a weird night THAT would have been), but Rusk has the cops nab him instead.

Its another four-day plot EXCEPT...the movie then goes crazy and jumps ahead to Blaney being sentenced for murder. In real life, that would have taken MONTHS. But Hitch didn't much care (plot hole: Rusk managed not to rape-kill with a necktie at ALL during those months?)

Also within that four day continuity, Rusk rape-kills Babs just one day after rape-killing Brenda. One senses at once that Rusk wants to destroy Blaney's women and frame Blaney -- AND that his frenzy is becoming uncontrollable.

[–] [email protected] (5871) 7 years ago

I don't know if this qualifies because no actual dates or weekdays are given, but Alien takes place over a very scary couple of days.

The movie tagline, "In space no one can hear you scream." Well in space, "No one uses a calendar." ha!

The movie opens with the crew coming out of hypersleep. Figure that they spend a few hours getting cleaned up, dressed and having breakfast. They open communications with "Antarctica Tracking Station" because they think they are home.

Captain Dallas calls them together to inform them that the MUTHR computer woke them up to investigate a signal, so a few more hours to get to the planet.

They land, the ship is damaged. The engineers check the damage and Ripley asks how long the repairs will take.

Brett tells Parker, "Tell her 17 hours."
Parker gives himself and Brett a little more wiggle room. He says, "25 hours."

That reminds me of Scotty on Star Trek. in one of the Trek films Kirk asks him if he always exaggerated his repair time to give himself a little leeway. Scotty gives him a smirk and a look as if to say, "What do YOU think?"

We can assume that they are on the planet about 24 hours. Dallas asks Ripley how the repairs are coming. She says that they are pretty much finished. Dallas doesn't care about the fact that they are "still blind on B and C decks."

"I just want to get the hell out of here!"
I think it's safe to say that Captain Dallas didn't linger on the planet. Shortly after they leave, Kane revives and they have their ill-fated last meal. From then on it's a race to find the alien.

We aren't told how much time passes on the Nostromo until the second film. There is one deleted scene on the DVD when Ash says that their supplies are predicated on the fact that the crew spends most of their time in hypersleep. The novelization mentions it in more detail, however I find it hard to believe that they will run out of oxygen so soon on a ship that big.

[–] [email protected] (5871) 7 years ago

Still it adds an element of urgency and desperation to their plight. They must find the alien quickly. They certainly do not want to return to the freezers with that thing running around.

It's some hours until only Ripley, Parker and Lambert are left. Ripley decides to blow up the ship. She asks Parker how long they will have after she sets the self destruct.

Parker says, "If we're not out of here in ten minutes we won't need no rockets to fly through space."

The finale is set up as ten nerve jangling minutes. When Ripley sees the alien blocking her way to the shuttle, she tries to turn off the self destruct. But she's too late to stop the countdown.

In Aliens we find out how long it took from the point when Kane died and Ripley escapes. Vasquez doesn't understand the seriousness of what they are facing.
and seems confident that she can dispatch the creatures with ease.

"I only need to know one thing. Where (pause) they (pause) are."

Ripley tells her that she hopes Vasquez is right because, "Just one of those things managed to wipe out my entire crew in less than twenty four hours."

So I think Alien took place in 48 hours plus change.

[–] ecarle (14979) 7 years ago

Still it adds an element of urgency and desperation to their plight. They must find the alien quickly. They certainly do not want to return to the freezers with that thing running around.

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True. I wonder what the alien could have done to them during sleep? On the one hand, "out of sight out of mind. Asleep, they wouldn't necessarily attract the alien. On the other...they'd be sleeping ducks.

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Ripley tells her that she hopes Vasquez is right because, "Just one of those things managed to wipe out my entire crew in less than twenty four hours."

So I think Alien took place in 48 hours plus change.

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Seems about right. Once the alien goes on his rampage, it seems like the movie almost plays in real time.

Almost.

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Just one of those things managed to wipe out my entire crew in less than twenty four hours."

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One thing I liked about "Aliens" -- certainly demonstrated by its title -- is how the ONE terrifying and hard-to-kill malevolent thing of the first movie was suddenly multiplied beyond comprehension. Without CGI duplication, I might add.

Favorite shot in Aliens: somebody lifts up a ceiling grate, sticks their head up there, points a flashlight and -- WOW -- its like 20 of those aliens all scuttling right towards us.

As someone wrote, by upgrading from one alien to dozens, "the first movie was a horror movie, the second movie was a war movie."

[–] swanstep (2715) 7 years ago

It's worthwhile mentioning that films/single-shot dramas that focus on a single time or period of time follow one of the classical (sort of goes back to Aristotle's Poetics) 'rules' for good drama: unity of time. Aristotle also roughly counseled one location (unity of space) and no sub-plots (unity of action). So a true real-time, 'bottle' feature like Rope follows all the classical rules.

It's obvious to me at least that had Aristotle seen TV and Film he would have instantly grasped that recording performances makes editing and the sort of non-unitariness it represents fundamental to these new media. That is, I imagine A. conceding readily that his rules are guidelines at most for on-stage drama. And, e.g., I imagine a wised-up A. razzing Shakespeare's, multi-location, parallel-action-using, sometimes era-spanning plays as film-wannabes.

[–] ecarle (14979) 7 years ago

It's worthwhile mentioning that films/single-shot dramas that focus on a single time or period of time follow one of the classical (sort of goes back to Aristotle's Poetics) 'rules' for good drama: unity of time.

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I had been thinking about -- but not able to remember -- the "unity of time" concept as this thread continued. And there it is! Thanks, swanstep. Aristotle, as well.

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Aristotle also roughly counseled one location (unity of space) and no sub-plots (unity of action). So a true real-time, 'bottle' feature like Rope follows all the classical rules.

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Yep those two, too. Lifeboat has some of this quality. Here, the crossover is to what are called "Hitchcock's stunt films," of which perhaps Lifeboat and Rope are the only "pure examples"(the characters stuck in one place.) Of course, pretty much any stage play is "stuck in one place," and Hitchcock in his other big movie of a play -- Dial M for Murder -- was pretty insistent on not leaving the apartment(flat) -- much at all. When he did, it was to create suspense with the cutaways to Milland and Cummings at the "stag" event.

[–] ecarle (14979) 7 years ago

It's obvious to me at least that had Aristotle seen TV and Film he would have instantly grasped that recording performances makes editing and the sort of non-unitariness it represents fundamental to these new media. That is, I imagine A. conceding readily that his rules are guidelines at most for on-stage drama.

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Well, DW Griffith was a long ways away...

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And, e.g., I imagine a wised-up A. razzing Shakespeare's, multi-location, parallel-action-using, sometimes era-spanning plays as film-wannabes.

--

Hmm..never thought of that, really.

Hitchcock was pretty meticulous about his story-telling during the preparation of a script, and likely had SOME sense of how many days -- or months -- his stories would play across. Still, I expect that he kept Aristotle's basic unities in mind.

Psycho, for instance, has a certain "unity of space" within the grounds of the Bates Motel and all the deathtrap mazes within it, large and small: the motel, the house, the shower, the staircase, the fruit cellar, the swamp...