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MIT lectures on Hitchcock

posted 6 years ago by swanstep (2769)
21 replies | jump to latest

MIT has lots of courses up on youtube, including one on film:
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLUl4u3cNGP63wurgwdJKo6UEYBWDLnmCj
Hitchcock is the primary topic of Lectures 9 & 10 but is discussed in passing in many others as you'd imagine. The Professor, David Thorburn, is never less than enthusiastic & interesting. He makes the odd amusing error (e.g., saying that Rusk in Frenzy is played by Caine!) but is otherwise pretty reliable I'd say. Psycho is briefly discussed but the two Hitchcocks the students watch in the course are Shadow of a Doubt & Rear Window.

p.s. It's the 50th anniv. of The Wild Bunch this year so books are blooming on the topic. Here's a review:
https://www.vulture.com/2019/02/the-wild-bunch-is-still-the-best-western-ever-made.html

[–] ecarle (14979) 6 years ago

Thank you for these links, swanstep

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Hitchcock is the primary topic of Lectures 9 & 10 but is discussed in passing in many others as you'd imagine.

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Well, Hitch is kind of the magnetic north to all generations of film -- among his peers when he worked for 5 decades(plus the TV series in there for stardom and wealth), and as an influence ever since. The mix of showmanship and craft he displayed is unbeatable.

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The Professor, David Thorburn, is never less than enthusiastic & interesting. He makes the odd amusing error (e.g., saying that Rusk in Frenzy is played by Caine!)

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Hah. Well, Barry Foster looked and sounded enough like Caine it happens. Truth be told, I think Foster at his Frenzy age was better looking than Caine...but Caine got there first with the voice and persona.

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but is otherwise pretty reliable I'd say. Psycho is briefly discussed but the two Hitchcocks the students watch in the course are Shadow of a Doubt & Rear Window.

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Its funny. Once one has a Psycho obsession (for the movie, its blockbusterhood, and its historic impact), its hard to reconcile with the fact that there ARE other, great Hitchcock pictures. And Shadow of a Doubt very much anticipates Psycho in some of the madman's speeches, the Northern California small town setting, the b/w cinematography. Though Rear Window anticipates Psycho in the bathtub clean-up and knives on display. Plus Stewart's peeping as a precursor to Perkins.

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[–] ecarle (14979) 6 years ago

p.s. It's the 50th anniv. of The Wild Bunch this year so books are blooming on the topic. Here's a review:
https://www.vulture.com/2019/02/the-wild-bunch-is-still-the-best-western-ever-made.html

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Wow. 50 years.

Back in 2010, some magazines ran articles on the 50th Anniversary of Psycho. And I couldn't think back THOSE 50 years to Psycho, as I was too young to know of its release. But The Wild Bunch -- 9 years later at the end of the 60s? My chase after and dark love affair with THAT film comes back to me in a rush. I recall it opening in the summer of 1969 while I was on vacation in bucolic backwater Ohio visiting relatives. It was playing at a nearby Ohio theater and I pored over the print ad(which, famously features a group of men from behind who in no way match The Wild Bunch -- there's like TEN of them.) But I couldn't get anybody to take me. So I caught up with it in the fall at a night showing with my father that lasted until midnight or so. We walked out of a near-empty theater (downtown, a big old giant Palace theater, one screen only, and it was a BIG screen), onto dark late night streets and it was very eerie in the aftermath of that bloodbath movie.

It took a few years and a few re-viewings(often the company of other guys) for The Wild Bunch to lock in, but it did. My favorite three movies are Psycho, North by Northwest, and The Wild Bunch. Everything else is a level below. And its funny -- matching Psycho to The Wild Bunch is pretty easy, yes? (Landmark bloody violence, but also landmark cinematic fireworks)....but North by Northwest? I think it fits the other two because they aren't just movies, they are life experiences, perfect start to finish adventures that create a world and give everything they've got to entertaining us. And never leaving us.

[–] ecarle (14979) 6 years ago

The Vulture article amused me a bit, because most articles on The Wild Bunch, including this one, hit all the same notes, in all the same ways. But that speaks to how perfectly the movie expressed itself.

Maybe I'll have more to say about The Wild Bunch as 2019 moves on, but I do think what's weird about it is that for all the takes on how brutal and bloody it was, that final gunbattle is pretty much the most exciting sequence I've ever seen put on film. The fact that the horror of The Wild Bunch co-exists with the excitement of The Wild Bunch(and the sad emotion of The Wild Bunch) is one of the key reasons it has lasted.

And oh....William Holden. What a perfect piece of casting. Pike Bishop was supposed to be Lee Marvin, but he backed out. Then the script went to Gregory Peck, Charlton Heston, Burt Lancaster, James Stewart, Richard Boone..but William Holden was the right guy. The perfect guy. It was his linkage to the sophistication of Billy Wilder and the doomed heroism of Bridge on the River Kwai, his screen persona as at once very man-next-door handsome and very cynical. And now, the cute Golden Boy had aged. What a performance. What a role. Winnowed down to one great line: "Let's go."

[–] MizhuB (165) 6 years ago

[–] ecarle (14979) 6 years ago

The Professor, David Thorburn, is never less than enthusiastic & interesting. He makes the odd amusing error (e.g., saying that Rusk in Frenzy is played by Caine!)

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I'm picky about accuracy ;)

Not that I'm a know-it-all, but when someone makes a mistake like that, their credibility goes downhill.

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This can be an issue.

There was a Hitchcock scholar(now deceased, I believe) named Raymond Durgnat who wrote a book on Hitchcock movies and opened his chapter on Vertigo with "James Stewart chases a criminal across the rooftops of Los Angeles." Oops. Big oops. Durgnant's critical reputation never quite recovered from that, though he went on to write the most in-depth scene by scene study book of Psycho(movie compared to script scenes) called "A Long Hard Look at Psycho."

But even in his writings on Psycho, Durgnat wrote himself into a small corner. In an essay on Psycho called "Inside Norman Bates," he conceptualized California Charlie as very much HELPING Marion buy that car and hit the road and complete her mission(in comparison, wrote Durgnat, to the cop who is trying to stop her.) Well, those of us who have seen Psycho know that California Charlie isn't very helpful at all, and keeps resisting Marion's efforts to buy that car fast(without a test drive) and get out of there.

I can understand people interpreting ambiguous character behavior in different ways, but California Charlie is NOT ambiguous and NOT helpful. Durgnat wrote his book about Psycho a coupla decades after his essay "Inside Norman Bates," and was only kinda/sorta willing to concede(this time) that California Charlie was less than helpful. I think Durgnat twisted things to say that while resistant, Charlie DID provide Marion with the car and a means to escape the old car.

All this said, I for one get things wrong around here all the time. But I correct them. And I'm not a lecturer or author.

[–] Doghouse (457) 6 years ago

Another error the Professor made related to Strangers On A Train, describing the forced quid pro quo as Guy killing Bruno's wife.

Ah, well.

"Enthusiastic" is an understated term for Thorburn's lecturing style. The guy is so animated and bombastic as to be almost tiring. I watched both his Hitchcock lectures along with two on musicals, and as entertaining as it is to see someone so passionate about his topics, it's a wonder he can sustain the energy level for periods approaching an hour. He strikes me as someone with so much to say that his mouth and brain don't always remain synched up, resulting in tangents, self-interruptions and "uh, uh, uh, the, the, the, it's it's its" peppering his speech while searching frantically for his next phrase.

But we all have our priorities, and perhaps to him, specifics about casting or plot are merely secondary details. To be fair, none of his errors dilute or negate any of the points he makes, which tend more toward thematic, artistic and stylistic concerns than the whos/whats/hows. It would be different if he'd been examining Caine's imaginary Frenzy performance or the character of Bruno's equally imaginary wife. That would be worrisome.

But given his focus on the attributes that make Hitchcock Hitchcock, I can cut him some slack.

[–] swanstep (2769) 6 years ago

Another error the Professor made related to Strangers On A Train, describing the forced quid pro quo as Guy killing Bruno's wife.

[–] Doghouse (457) 6 years ago

It seems akin to something some director said (might have been James Cameron referring to Titanic, now I think of it) about reflecting the "truth" of events if not the necessarily all the "facts." It's also reminiscent of Hitchcock's own remarks about the MacGuffin device: "If you don't like uranium, we can make it industrial diamonds; it doesn't matter." So Professor Thorburn creates his own mini-MacGuffins: Caine or Foster; wife or father; makes no substantive difference either way. And in additional consideration of Hitchcock's tendencies toward anecdotal revisionism, it's strangely appropriate in a way.

Going back to your original post, I had no idea MIT was conducting such courses, but it's quite encouraging, film being a medium that's as much technical as artistic (as well as commercial, if we're being honest). If it's at a somewhat introductory level where Hitchcock's concerned, covering ground with which you and ecarle - and myself, if I may - are well familiar, it may be acknowledgment of the possibility that very few students aspiring to MIT have film careers in mind at the outset.

Whatever the reasoning, it's a pleasant surprise.

[–] ecarle (14979) 6 years ago

Yep, I put that down to his talking a mile a minute... and, in general, to his wanting often just to quickly sketch comparison cases off the main track of his lectures. He usually wants just to reference a particular shot or plot point or character but he ends up saying a little more... and, objectively speaking, getting into trouble when he does! (For another example, Thorburn makes Family Plot sound like Son-of-Frenzy, which is *way* off. Could he have confused it with the unmade Kaleidoscope/First Frenzy?).

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I've got to go watch these clips now. Its conceiveable that he "switched titles" in his mind on Family Plot and the unmade Frenzy. The "made" Frenzy and Family Plot certainly stand as opposites back to back at Hitchcock's End: his most sick and brutal movie vs. possibly his most light and non-violent one(for the times.)

Speaking of Family Plot, I've recently read two pieces by a writer named Michael Wood on "Family Plot" in which, knowing he might be ridiculed, he announces that "Family Plot is Hitchcock's best movie since North by Northwest," and that it was a great one to go out on. I'm not sure I agree with Wood on the technicals or importance of the film(vs Psycho, The Birds, and Frenzy) but he does zero in on what I think is so great about the film: that final stretch of Rube Goldberg like coincidences that bring Madame Blanche face to face with Arthur Adamson in his home garage. As Wood puts it, not only does the Blanche story literally "invade and block" the Adamson story(her car blocks his), but Blanche arrives at Adamson's garage trailing his entire past as Eddie Shoebridge with her -- it catches up with him.

Wood's point is that Family Plot is a profound marvel of thematic storytelling and structure, and thus better than Psycho, The Birds, Marnie, Torn Curtain, Topaz, and Frenzy.

Hmmm...

[–] ecarle (14979) 6 years ago

Another error the Professor made related to Strangers On A Train, describing the forced quid pro quo as Guy killing Bruno's wife.

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Hah. If BRUNO had a wife, we'd have quite a different tale...

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Ah, well.

"Enthusiastic" is an understated term for Thorburn's lecturing style. The guy is so animated and bombastic as to be almost tiring. I watched both his Hitchcock lectures along with two on musicals, and as entertaining as it is to see someone so passionate about his topics, it's a wonder he can sustain the energy level for periods approaching an hour.

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I'm afraid I haven't been able to sample the links yet, but certainly "lecturer style" can be a big deal. I'd say on balance, an "over-excited, all over the place lecturer" is better than one who's pace is monotone drone.

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He strikes me as someone with so much to say that his mouth and brain don't always remain synched up, resulting in tangents, self-interruptions and "uh, uh, uh, the, the, the, it's it's its" peppering his speech while searching frantically for his next phrase.

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Hah. Well, I can relate...here. His talking. My writing. The thoughts can flow pretty rapidly when discussing something that really excites you...and Hitchcock can be most exciting, indeed. Moreover, so many of his movies intersect, "group up" and match up that you can hardly think of one movie(Psycho) without triggering thoughts of some to many others(Strangers on a Train, Shadow of a Doubt, Frenzy, Family Plot.) Its all of a piece with Hitchcock.

[–] ecarle (14979) 6 years ago

But we all have our priorities, and perhaps to him, specifics about casting or plot are merely secondary details. To be fair, none of his errors dilute or negate any of the points he makes, which tend more toward thematic, artistic and stylistic concerns than the whos/whats/hows.

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This is true. The plot facts -- or even the star actor -- don't particularly matter in accuracy as long as the overall thrust of the thematic analysis is sound. Which , by the way, is why Raymond Durgnat placing Vertigo in Los Angeles just leads to a total mis-read of the whole movie. San Francisco IS the movie(plus some points north and south.)

[–] ecarle (14979) 6 years ago

--- It would be different if he'd been examining Caine's imaginary Frenzy performance

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Its funny. I saw Frenzy on release in 1972 but I did not learn of Michael Caine being approached for Rusk until 1999 -- when Peter Bogdanovich announced this as part of his introduction to the Frenzy Brenda Blaney murder clip at the Hitchcock Centennial at the Academy in LA ("Caine turned down the part because he thought it would ruin his career, and when you see this clip, you'll see why.")

Suddenly, I saw Caine as Rusk in that scene...and it didn't work. I literally couldn't SEE Caine playing the Brenda Blaney scene. Put another way, the scene is perhaps only as brutal and harrowing as it is BECAUSE a near-unknown(Foster) took the role and did whatever Hitchcock told him to do(ditto Barbara Leigh-Hunt, a tyro in for first-offered Glenda Jackson.)

I might add, however, that the other night I watched Paul Mazursky's "Blume in Love" for the first time since it was released(in 1973) and I was mildly shocked to see the film climax with "hero" George Segal's rape of his ex-wife (Susan Anspach.) That scene lacked the horror of the Frenzy stuff -- Segal doesn't kill his ex -- but it was still pretty disturbing to see good ol' George Segal(a star near Caine level at the time) do that on screen. (The couple reconciles after the rape -- shades of Marnie-- and there was that "Straw Dogs" misogynistic element of the ex-wife starting to enjoy the attack in certain expressions)

Oh, well, it was the times...

[–] ecarle (14979) 6 years ago

So Professor Thorburn creates his own mini-MacGuffins: Caine or Foster; wife or father; makes no substantive difference either way. And in additional consideration of Hitchcock's tendencies toward anecdotal revisionism, it's strangely appropriate in a way.

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Great points, across the board. The very fact that Thorburn makes those mistakes "perks up the ears" of those of us who know these movies intimately. The mistakes even create suspense -- "No! No! It wasn't Michael Caine! Somebody TELL him!")

Meanwhile, Hitchcock himself indeed DID have a trend towards "anecdotal revisionism," but he was a Hollywood denizen, they do that a lot.

I can't prove this one, but I've always suspected it :

Truffaut: I love that line, "that crop duster is dusting crops where there ain't no crops." Was that your line?
Hitchcock: That was my line, yes.

Yes? Unprovable, but I don't think Hitch was one to give credit to others. Much.

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Going back to your original post, I had no idea MIT was conducting such courses, but it's quite encouraging, film being a medium that's as much technical as artistic (as well as commercial, if we're being honest).

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All three, yes. And I was surprised by that, too. When I think "MIT," I think classes of such a high level math, science and computer proficiency that I wouldn't last ten minutes in one.

Well...they like to watch movies, too.

And Hitchcock's movies do have a sort of mathematical precision to them. For instance, I think that Psycho plays out in scenes of three, six, and nine minutes. I've never timed them.

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[–] ecarle (14979) 6 years ago

If it's at a somewhat introductory level where Hitchcock's concerned, covering ground with which you and ecarle - and myself, if I may -

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You may. Welcome, doghouse!

There is a pull watching clips like this -- and I just got through watching some of Thorsen's work -- of thinking, "boy, would I like to have a room of students to listen to MY ideas on Hitchcock." But, Thorson earned his professorship, so its him, not me. Or swanstep. Or doghouse. And I'm sure the latter two would be great lecturers, too!

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are well familiar, it may be acknowledgment of the possibility that very few students aspiring to MIT have film careers in mind at the outset.

Whatever the reasoning, it's a pleasant surprise.

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Perhaps a relaxation for them...a removal from the nuts and bolts of technical education.

[–] ecarle (14979) 6 years ago

I skimmed some of Thorsen's lectures and I found his insights interesting enough, his presentation indeed "up there."

I liked his decision to read the entirety of Uncle Charlie's vicious speech to Young Charlie in the Til Two bar: About "the world is a sty," and "if you ripped the fronts off of those houses, you'd find swine" and "the world is a hell, what does it matter what happens in it." Such a dark, nihilistic(Thorson's word) vision and yet....I've certainly shared a least part of it over the years, in my own dark moments. A cursory review of the political pages can put you in Uncle Charlie's view real fast.

And yet, we humans struggle to overcome "the Uncle Charlie worldview" and to remind ourselves daily of what is right with the world. I'm always impressed by the politeness of strangers around me, and all my family ties, while strained at times, have come through in the end.

Uncle Charlie's worldview is what happens when the madness "locks in" -- and his speech is a clear precursor to Norman's more plaintive worldview: "I think we're all in our own private traps...we scratch and claw , only at each other, and for all of it, we don't budge an inch." Joseph Stefano reportedly watched Shadow of a Doubt and a few other Hitchocck movies in Hitch's screening room before writing Psycho -- here's the proof that he did.

[–] ecarle (14979) 6 years ago

Meanwhile, Thorsen's lingering on the "pornographic" aspects of the Frenzy strangulation are correct enough, though Hitchcock wasn't quite as graphic as Thorson makes it sound(it was largely "in our mind" thanks to a few abstract shots.) And -- in a big mistake on Thorsen's part, I think -- there is no nudity in Family Plot -- though there is more profanity than usual in a Hitchcock movie in that one.

Its odd: Hitchcock films from Psycho on had their share of violence and sex and nastiness, but he "reversed course" with the fairly nice Family Plot and who is to say that if Hitchcock had lived(a miracle) to work in the Spielberg-Lucas era, he might not have "dialed back" to a North by Northwest/To Catch a Thief level of family-friendly suspense pictures(with lots of matte paintings and process work). Hitch went with the flow of the times; the late sixties and early seventies were very perverse indeed "at the movies."

[–] swanstep (2769) 6 years ago

are well familiar, it may be acknowledgment of the possibility that very few students aspiring to MIT have film careers in mind at the outset.
Whatever the reasoning, it's a pleasant surprise.
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Perhaps a relaxation for them...a removal from the nuts and bolts of technical education.

I think it's still common to require that even the hardest core engineers or pre-Med types get at least a couple of credits in the arts or humanities or social sciences. And if you talk to people with these sorts of backgrounds they often treasure their memory of, e.g., that Art History survey they did, or that Plato-to-NATO or Guns,Germs&Steel (Western) Civ, or whatever. It's not just relaxation, the mind-opening and -enriching is real.

[–] swanstep (2769) 6 years ago

Paul Mazursky's "Blume in Love".... I was mildly shocked to see the film climax with "hero" George Segal's rape of his ex-wife... (The couple reconciles after the rape -- shades of Marnie-- and there was that "Straw Dogs" misogynistic element of the ex-wife starting to enjoy the attack in certain expressions)...Oh, well, it was the times...

Yes it was....High Plains Drifter (1973) begins with our hero Clint raping as it were in broad daylight (and with lots of witnesses) the mouthy town tart who kinda gets in his way. She protests heartily at the time, tries to shoot Clint for it the next day, and also begs the sheriff to arrest him for raping her... But it's all treated as a big joke: she was a mouthy broad who was asking for it, who just doesn't now want to admit that she wanted that rough treatment, that all her no's were really yes's, that she enjoyed it, and so on. And she & Clint go on to have a consensual arrangement.

You can't recommend HPD to people today (as I do) without warning them beforehand that it's going to open with a rape by the hero treated as causally as we still treat other violence dished out by the cool-guy-hero. In 1973 the cool hero could dish it out to *everybody* and they'd let him, and even like it (at least eventually). We think differently now (about life and about our heroes).

[–] ecarle (14979) 6 years ago

[deleted]

[–] ecarle (14979) 6 years ago

Yes it was....High Plains Drifter (1973)

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Ah, yes. High Plains Drifter. I remember THAT scene.

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begins with our hero Clint raping as it were in broad daylight (and with lots of witnesses) the mouthy town tart who kinda gets in his way. She protests heartily at the time, tries to shoot Clint for it the next day, and also begs the sheriff to arrest him for raping her... But it's all treated as a big joke: she was a mouthy broad who was asking for it, who just doesn't now want to admit that she wanted that rough treatment, that all her no's were really yes's, that she enjoyed it, and so on. And she & Clint go on to have a consensual arrangement.

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And the woman rather enjoys the rape when it occurs...eventually. This element was present in Straw Dogs and Blume in Love, too. At least Hitchcock, in Frenzy, fought that element: the victim fights, hates, fears, and is ashamed by what happens to her. And the audience feels all of that . No titillation. When, earlier in the film, a lawyer jokes about the rapes committed by the Necktie Strangler as being "a silver lining" to the murders, we are shown the process later and we are retroactively revulsed by the lawyer's joke.

[–] ecarle (14979) 6 years ago

You can't recommend HPD to people today (as I do)

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There was a poster at IMDb for a few years named joekiddlouispalma, I think, who wrote at length about HPD, very much his "Psycho" as I recall. I'm sure the posts are archived here. I found newfound respect for HPD from his posts. Back in 1973, I saw it at the drive-in with "the gang"(young men AND young women) and I was rather embarrassed by it. Who you see a movie with matters.

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without warning them beforehand that it's going to open with a rape by the hero treated as causally as we still treat other violence dished out by the cool-guy-hero. In 1973 the cool hero could dish it out to *everybody* and they'd let him, and even like it (at least eventually). We think differently now (about life and about our heroes).

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I tell you, I was a late teenager then, but I was rather bothered by the Eastwood character in those first ten minutes. The whole take seemed to be "sex and violence Clint." The character is out for revenge, but boy is he "R-rated" in going about it. Folks have to remember that Clint Eastwood was as much a product of the R rating as everything else that came with that screen freedom. Clint and the R rating really arrived together, in 1968. He shot bad guys in the back(John Wayne would never do that, the Hays Code didn't allow it, either). His appetites were sexual(John Wayne was courtly and/or courted.) HIs violence was merciless and cruel. And he shifted that character from the Western to Dirty Harry and gave it contemporary relevance.

He was what folks wanted.