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The Big Three, The Big Four, The Big Five, and The Big Seven

posted 6 years ago by ecarle (14979)
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Vera Miles, promoting Psycho II in 1983 said, "Psycho is Alfred Hitchcock's most famous movie, but it is not his best movie."

She never said which Hitchcock film WAS his best movie. And I kind of wondered which one Vera thought Hitchcock's best movie was. Vertigo, maybe, which would be an irony -- for Hitchcock strongly wanted Vera Miles to star IN Vertigo. Could Miles be that warm towards her "movie that got away"(because she got pregnant, is the story, but the truth is that she had the baby in time to make Vertigo but by then Lew Wasserman had steered Hitch to a bigger star, Kim Novak.)

Or maybe Vera liked the cinematic precision and mismatched romance of Rear Window. Or the dark romance of Notorious. Or the grand action romance of North by Northwest.

I doubt it was The Birds.

As my presence on this board attests, I've come to find Psycho to be above and apart from the rest of Hitchcock's canon, some sort of (as Hitch himself called it) "once in a lifetime" achievement that reflected the taboo story it told, the shocking way in which the story WAS told, and elements that would never repeat in the movies again(those murders being so new in their violence; the perfect mixed locale of a shabby motel and the old Gothic house u pthe hill behind it; the presence AND performance of Anthony Perkins.)

But there can be no doubt that Psycho oftimes confounds people in its power -- so much of it is so SMALL, so minimal, so...cheapjack. NXNW has that massive cliffhanger on Mount Rushmore; The Birds is filled with spectacular action set-pieces of bird attacks -- beside those two films Psycho is about: a coupla murders and a brief struggle in a fruit cellar? Ah, but to quote Roger Ebert, "a movie isn't about what it is about...it is about how it is about it."

The image of Arbogast climbing the hill to the Bates house -- framed to the right by a sliver of the side wall of the motel -- simply cannot be replicated on the page in words. Its "movie," and its so perfect to me that it has to be accidental. Now one movie before that, in NXNW, Cary Grant strolls a steep drive-way up to Vandamm's Rushmore house in a shot that matches this Arbogast shot, but it just isn't quite the same. The Technicolor day-for-night is a little "rough" versus the clean perfection of the Arbogast shot.

And that's just one of the ways in which the "cheap" Psycho gives us things the other great Hitchcock movies do not. And the other movies give us things Psycho doesn't have -- romances(tragic in Vertigo, happy in everything else), sweeping locales(SF and NYC), and even in the movie that "stays put"(Rear Window), a sense of a near-carnival of images.

There's one more great Hitchcock movie that puts Psycho a little bit to shame in one regard. The movie is Strangers on a Train, and it, too, is about a charming boyish psychopath (Robert Walker) but that one is staged BIG(Washington DC and its monuments, the tennis courts of Forest Hills) and climaxes BIG(with that cathartic fight on a berserk carousel spinning like a whirling dervish). Why, Psycho and its coupla murders and a struggle in a fruit cellar hardly competes with all THAT. And yet Psycho feels(to me) more powerful and haunting than Strangers on a Train(though I think Pauline Kael picked Strangers on a Train as her favorite Hitchcock film.)

My premise here is that Psycho is "the one" for me, but that's not quite right. "North by Northwest" used to tie Psycho on my list, and has given up its primacy with me because I think more film history is being made by Psycho and darker things happen in Psycho that a person simply never forgets. Still, Psycho, North by Northwest, and The Wild Bunch are my "level one" three favorite films, so NXNW is kinda special to me.

All of this is introduction to the idea that Psycho kinda sorta has to "share the stage" with a minimum of two other films and, say some(including maybe me), a maximum of six other films as "Hitchcock's Best." Let's look at the variables:

THE BIG THREE:

In a row, Hitchcock made Vertigo(1958), North by Northwest(1959) and Psycho(1960.) Three great films, one of which was a big hit and one of which was a year-definining blockbuster. Still they share this: these are the only three Hitchcock films with Saul Bass credit sequences, and Bass' credits combined with Bernard Herrmann's credit music makes these three films in the Hitchcock canon that cannot be duplicated. Herrmann didn't score Rear Window and didn't get to put music on The Birds. Bass did Vertigo, NXNW, and Psycho and left Hitchcock for good.(Or vice versa.)

[–] ecarle (14979) 6 years ago

Now the AFI in its two "100 greatest movies of all time" polls added to this Big Three a fourth as a great Hitchcock movie -- Rear Window. And I agree Rear Window is great. But it doesn't have music by Bernard Herrmann, it doesn't have a credit sequence by Saul Bass...and it comes four years before the Big Three and thus feels a bit "older and apart" from them (part of the historical draw of The Big Three is that they happen at the end of the fifties into 1960, a time of ramping up for change, at the movies, in America and in the world. They feel more MODERN than Rear Window, great as it is.)

I also think that the Big Three in various ways, encapsulate the three main "thriller types" of Hitchcock, both in terms of the movies made before them, and the movies made after them. Here:

Vertigo. "Twisted romance." Rebecca, Suspicion, Spellbound, Notorious, Under Capricorn....Marnie after.

NXNW: "Spy thriller." The 39 Steps, The Lady Vanishes, Foreign Correspondent, Saboteur, Lifeboat, Notorious(a twofer), The Man Who Knew Too Much(both versions)....Torn Curtain and Topaz after.

Psycho: "Psychopath thriller." The Lodger, Shadow of a Doubt, Rope, Strangers on a Train..The Birds(psycho birds) and Frenzy thereafter.

I tend to base my Hitchcock fanship around "The Big Three" before any other combination, but there ARE other combinations:

[–] ecarle (14979) 6 years ago

THE BIG FOUR

There are, actually, altnerating "Big Fours."

The AFI "Big Four" are the four Hitchcock movies that AFI voters determined should be on the list of the greatest movies ever made: Vertigo, Psycho, NXNW, and Rear Window. (Psycho and Vertigo "switched position" from the first list to the second list ten years later; but the second list had more critics voting than outsiders.) Note that the AFI found no room on its 100 list for Notorious or Rebecca or Spellbound or The Birds. Let alone Shadow of a Doubt(Hitchcock's personal favorite) or Strangers on a Train. (Though one year, AFI did a "100 Greatest Thrillers list" -- and most all of those made the grade. Psycho was, proudly for me, Number One, followed in some order by The Exorcist , Jaws and...North by Northwest! Also proudly for me.

But there is another "Big Four." And it is the back-to-back-to-back-to-back achievement of Vertigo-NXNW-Psycho-The Birds. Some French critic-director -- Godard perhaps -- said that, "with those four films, Hitchcock ruled the world in those years." Hitchcock's audience -- now including a younger generation who were fans of his TV show AND fans of action(NXNW) and horror(Psycho/The Birds) was, I expect, downright giddy to see what Hitchcock would give them next, and those four times, he didn't disappoint. The bell tower sequences in Vertigo; the car chase, crop duster and Rushmore sequences in NXNW; the murders(one above the other) and twist ending climax of Psycho; the spectacular special effects and filled-to-the-brim action/horror set-pieces in The Birds.

[–] ecarle (14979) 6 years ago

It was a spectacular run, those four movies, and I think that's what hurt Marnie when Hitchcock returned to a "Vertigo" mode(with less technical finesse.) And Torn Curtain and Topaz couldn't match those four(especially the spy film, NXNW.) And even when Frenzy made its comeback splash in 1972 with a clear nod to Psycho it was noted that it wasn't Psycho...it didn't draw nearly the crowds or make near the history that Psycho did (though I can name three critics who thought Frenzy was BETTER than Psycho. But there's three in every crowd.)

The only problem with Vertigo/NXNW/Psycho/The Birds as a "Big Four" seems to be the critical derision that The Birds has never shaken...about its script. Psycho and NXNW are perfectly written for dialogue and structure; Vertigo less so, but its pretty good. But there's something about the script for The Birds that plays "wrong" -- overlong before The Birds show up, too much family psychodrama, uninteresting characters. And that terribly written, terribly acted scene on the hilltop at the birthday party -- which Birds screenwriter Evan Hunter swore was written by Hitchcock himself.

Which brings us to The Big Five:

The Big Five reconciles a problem by combining the "AFI Big Four" with the "Four in a Row" and giving us:

Rear Window
Vertigo
NXNW
Psycho
The Birds

I have actually seen these five Hitchcock movies packaged together as a set -- I guess Universal cut a deal with Warners to buy NXNW(originally an MGM film), because the other four are owned by Universal even though three were originally Paramounts, thus:

Rear Window Paramount
Vertigo Paramount
NXNW MGM (the only Hitchcock MGM movie...but a doozy)
Psycho Paramount(but made by Universal and bought by Universal around 1969)
The Birds(Universal -- the only TRUE Universal movie of these five, and thus rather the problematic one in the five)

[–] ecarle (14979) 6 years ago

Even allowing for Hitchcock's sole Best Picture, Rebecca, and many other Hitchcock films that have been revered at different levels(Shadow of a Doubt, Notorious...To Catch a Thief, Spellbound) I think The Big Five may "where it is at" for Hitchocck today. Most everybody knows Rear Window, Vertigo(if only through its Sight and Sound notoriety), and North by Northwest. And I'd say that together, Psycho and The Birds are the two most famous Hitchcock films today with the public -- for their modernistic horror element. (And "Bates Motel." And all those TV news blips about mild bird attacks -- "Like a scene out of Alfred Hitchcock's The Birds...")

Which brings me to:

THE GOLDEN SEVEN

Some writer somewhere gave us this grouping. Basically, he took the Big Five, subtracted The Birds(for inferior script?) and added two forties movies and a reknowned fifties work:

Shadow of a Doubt
Notorious
Strangers on a Train
Rear Window
Vertigo
NXNW
Psycho

Well...that's pretty prestigious. "Notorious" certainly has its fans. Truffaut and Ebert found it the best Hitchcock film. I say its the one that's most ahead of its time -- its 1946 and its like the entire movie is about sex and adultery and "governmental prostitution." Plus the love-hate-love affair of Grant(mean) and Bergman(drunk) is very, very adult stuff. My beef with Notorious is simple: no action, no on-screen murders, no Bernard Herrmann. Its simply not the entertainment machine that later Hitchcock films would be.

Shadow of the Doubt is rather the inverse of Notorious: Whereas Notorious is set in glamourous Rio and is about adventurers who place themselves in danger, SOAD is set in a NorCal small town and is about very, very ordinary middle class people -- and one upper middle class psychopath. Like Notorious, it suffers from a radio-era, Hays Code button down feeling; we never SEE Uncle Charlie strangle anyone (compare that to watching Bob Rusk strangle a victim long and hard in Frenzy.)

[–] ecarle (14979) 6 years ago

Still, SOAD and Notorious seem to have survived as "Hitchcock's best of the forties"(overtaking famous titles like Rebecca and Spellbound -- both of which I find inferior TO SOAD and Notorious) and hence their places on the "Golden Seven" list.

Along with: Strangers on a Train. This one DOES merit acclaim. First of all , it broke a big slump for Hitchcock. Whatever one thought of the pictures, The Paradine Case, Rope, Under Capricorn and Stage Fright didn't feel like "Peak Hitchcock"(though Rope comes close) and Hitchcock seemed to figure that out as the fifties got underway: Strangers on a Train MOVES , from the opening meeting between the strangers on a train, through the fairgrounds murder sequence, to the tennis match/sewer grating grab suspense sequence and onto a lollapalooza of an action finale(I don't think there's another full-out fight between villain and hero in all of Hitchcock, and its on that crazy carousel.) Strangers on a Train was something Hitchocck had not had in years: a top ten performer at the box office for 1951 (Vertigo and Frenzy, for two, were no Top Ten in their years.)

And Strangers on a Train has that great performance by Robert Walker as the psychopath Bruno Anthony. He's a "dry run" for Norman Bates -- handsome, boyish, charming....but completely out of his mind. And we tend to "go to his side" beside ourselves. Except he's truly a villain, relishing his chance to get Guy sent to prison, mentially tormenting Guy's girlfriend...brutally killing Guy's ex-wife. All this and Walker "did something" with his vocal and facial performance. There's a gay vibe, yes. But there's also an otherworldly "spaced out" vibe. And he's quite capable -- in a heterosexual way -- of seducing Miriam at the fairgrounds.

[–] ecarle (14979) 6 years ago

Its sort of funny that Strangers on a Train didn't get to join Rear Window, Vertigo, NXNW and Psycho on the AFI list. But they had to draw the line somewhere, I guess. It strikes me as good enough to join them. Well, perhaps ALMOST good enough. While in some places, the 1951 script is incredibly adult(the estranged wife is picked up by Bruno while on a date with TWO guys, while pregnant with another guy's baby -- not her husband Guy's), at other times it is rather quaint and silly, not quite "deep enough" to join the Big Four.

An issue I have with "Golden Seven" is that I can think of so many other really good(if not great) Hitchocck movies that could be added to the Big Five: To Catch a Thief, The Wrong Man, Frenzy(those three above all for me)...Spellbound and Rebecca perhaps for others. And Foreign Correspondent could be on a best list. And Marnie has its fans. Etc.

I think, for me, in the final analysis, it boils down to The Big Three: Vertigo. NXNW. Psycho. In a row. With Saul Bass credits and Bernard Herrmann scores. So "climactic" of the Hitchcock films before them, so deadly to the Hitchcock films after them by means of comparison. I can't think of another director who hit so well three in a row(and then a near-great fourth in The Birds.) Its likely these three films began my love affair with Hitchcock and have kept it going as he fades back forgetten in time behind Spielberg and Scorsese and QT and the "cast of scores" of directors that swanstep could name.

But all THAT said, I think modernly, it comes down to : The Big One.

Psycho.

Its all by itself as unforgettable in the history of this fellow's life at the movies.

[–] MizhuB (165) 6 years ago

As usual, a very thoughtful post, ecarle.

But I disagree with one thing you said:

"Most everybody knows Rear Window, Vertigo(if only through its Sight and Sound notoriety), and North by Northwest. And I'd say that together, Psycho and The Birds are the two most famous Hitchcock films today with the public -- for their modernistic horror element."

=========

I know I've said this once before, so forgive me for saying it again.

I was at a party at least EIGHT years ago and the conversation turned to movies. Someone mentioned Alfred Hitchcock and EVERYBODY under 30 said, 'Who's Alfred Hitchcock?'

Those of us over 30 (Ok, 40. Ok, 50) were incredulous. How could anyone not know who he is?

Us elders started rattling off the names of his movies. Rear Window? Vertigo? North by Northwest? The Birds? Not to mention never having heard of his popular TV show.

They all sat there shaking their heads. They'd never heard of any of them. I said, Psycho?

One girl said, 'I saw Psycho! I thought it sucked!'

I asked her if it was the original. She didn't know. I asked her if it was in B/W or color. She said 'color. I never watch old movies.'

I told her, 'That was the remake. THAT sucked.'

So I don't think you can still say 'Most everybody knows...' or 'Everybody remembers...'

Because the sad fact is, IMO, most under-40s don't know him or his films at all.

There was only one woman there in her 30's who said, 'I saw one of his films. I rented FRENZY to watch with my daughter. We only watch it till the end because it was so BAD, we were laughing the whole way through.'

Laughing at FRENZY. How times change.

[–] ecarle (14979) 6 years ago

I know I've said this once before, so forgive me for saying it again.

--

Oh, I think we return to certain topics here...from a new angle...often enough. Your reminders to me here reflect a "change" necessary to what my OP was intended to say.

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I was at a party at least EIGHT years ago and the conversation turned to movies. Someone mentioned Alfred Hitchcock and EVERYBODY under 30 said, 'Who's Alfred Hitchcock?'

---

So true. I now have teenagers around me and ...no idea. I'll show them something and...they are polite, but it is all "too old" now, I'm afraid. I would guess that today's teenagers and college students are getting Hitchcock movies pretty much "in the classroom only," but as a mainstream matter...Hitchcock is not only gone in the past, but I'd say that certain folks who followed him : Peckinpah and Fosse(dead); Spielberg and Scorsese(alive) really don't have the cachet they once had with youth.

The MOVIES have changed. The"Captain Obvious" knowledge that Marvel Movies rule the roost nowadays(and they only need to release two or three a year to dominate box office)...this IS what the movies of the early 21st Century are. The directors aren't particularly famous; Stan Lee(dead only recently) is the true auteur here(and I know that was a bit controversial, there were some other guys attendant to things.)

I sometimes have to applaud Hitchcock for the fact that he managed to find a new story to make a movie from ONCE A YEAR(at his peak.) Rear Window was different from Vertigo was different from NXNW was different from Psycho. Nowadays, Iron Man was able to be in 20 some movies over 11 years...

[–] ecarle (14979) 6 years ago

Those of us over 30 (Ok, 40. Ok, 50)

--

OK, 60.

---

were incredulous. How could anyone not know who he is?

--

I have to admit, I don't quite get this. When I was a kid and a teen, TV was filled with everything from silent movies starring Harry Langdon to 40's movies starring Humphrey Bogart, and I liked these things, and I asked my parents about them(the Langdon movies were made before THEY were born), and they knew , and I learned.

I refuse to do that "these kids today" thing, but -- these kids today don't seem to have much historical interest in movies. Attention spans are short. The teenagers I mentioned above are very nice, hard working people, but frankly they don't even know who Hannibal Lecter is, let alone Norman Bates.

I expect the kids would say "why commit so much time to things made before we were born?" and they'd probably be right. Hitchcock was hot in his era, which I missed or was too young for(I was "movie savvy" about the time he made Torn Curtain, not before.) Then Hitchcock was hot in the "film studies" era of the 70's (with Frenzy hitting big enough and Family Plot a little less so.) Then, weirdly enough, Hitch was hot in the 80's -- his "lost five" were re-released(including the great Vertigo and Rear Window); Psycho II made a bundle(studies showed 80% name recognition of the title) and Alfred Hitchcock Presents returned to TV in new episodes.

But perhaps with the end of the 80's, Hitchcock really began his fade out. There were a few attempts to revive him in the 90's -- festivals on TCM and the old American Movie Classics; Van Sant's Psycho, the theatrical re-make of Dial M and the poor ABC remake of Rear Window(with poor Chris Reeve anchoring it). But those projects were mainly, I'd say, for middle-aged people -- even Van Sant's Psycho was likely meant to attract folks older than the usual teen bloodhounds.

[–] ecarle (14979) 6 years ago

I was thinking of my anecdote about how TV newscasters used to say "like a scene out of Hitchcock's The Birds" to describe mild real bird attacks...but I don't think they do that anymore, because indeed in this time, neither Hitchcock nor The Birds have much cachet.

Perhaps the American Film Institute got it right. They released their first 100 Greatest Films list(with a TV show to accompany it) in 1997; they released their second 100 Greatest Films list ten years later in 2007. But nothing in 2017. I think the AFI realizes that the 20th Century was the century for "stand alone movies." The 21st Century is about "series movies and franchise movies." Hitchcock belongs back in the 20th Century, where he mattered. Today, he is a historical figure for study among a younger generation and a "wayback machine to our childhoods" for those of us who came in near the end. (I cannot even imagine who saw The 39 Steps or Rebecca, and what they thought of it. Most of those folks are LONG dead.)

Hitchcock/Truffaut was a "training manual on cinema" for a lot of teens. It came out in 1967, perhaps that was the "peak Hitchcock worship" year.

[–] ecarle (14979) 6 years ago

Us elders started rattling off the names of his movies. Rear Window? Vertigo? North by Northwest? The Birds? Not to mention never having heard of his popular TV show.

--

Alas and alack.

---

They all sat there shaking their heads. They'd never heard of any of them. I said, Psycho?

--

That's your biggest chance.

---
One girl said, 'I saw Psycho! I thought it sucked!'

I asked her if it was the original. She didn't know. I asked her if it was in B/W or color. She said 'color. I never watch old movies.'

I told her, 'That was the remake. THAT sucked.'

---
Indeed it did. Though it retained enough of Hitchcock's original compositions and camera movements to feel somewhat like he'd come to life in 1998.

But honestly. The two "kills" in Psycho are just so tame -- in number and in gore -- than what came after. I was looking at a Psycho clip the other day for this board on YouTube, and it was near a "kill count" clip for a recent movie called The Belko Experiment, which evidently slaughtered 84 people -- quite graphically -- in one show. Psycho simply isn't Psycho anymore, as a shocker. (And yet, the scenes of Marion and Arbogast getting it are like cinematic Mount Rushmore to me.)

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So I don't think you can still say 'Most everybody knows...' or 'Everybody remembers...'

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No. That's the big correction I need to make to my OP.

Either that COULD be said..probably right up to 1983(the year of Psycho II and the Hitchcock Five re-releases)

Or only CAN be said by those of us, OK, over 40, 50, 60, (and someday 70 and 80.)

Oh, well. Every generation gets its own.

[–] ecarle (14979) 6 years ago

I'd still say that the comparisons of Big Three, Big Four, Big Five, and Big Seven all "fit" -- a retroactive look at Hitchcock's career as an "academic" matter. Those WERE the movies that mattered, and they are the main classics he left behind. Although I always liked Leonard Maltin's comment(trying to defend Topaz on a DVD documentary) "If Hitchcock had ONLY made Rebecca...or ONLY made Notorious...or ONLY made Rear Window...or ONLY made Psycho.....he'd be a great director."

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There was only one woman there in her 30's who said, 'I saw one of his films. I rented FRENZY to watch with my daughter. We only watch it till the end because it was so BAD, we were laughing the whole way through.'

Laughing at FRENZY. How times change.

---

Well, Frenzy. Ostensibly his most distasteful and repellent film -- as fit 1972 when it was made(I expect he would have made Spielberg-like PG matte painting adventures had he lived into the 80's.)

I can't imagine anyone LAUGHING through the scene of Rusk taunting, terrorizing, raping and strangling Brenda Blaney. Its a fictional scene that disturbed me from the first time I saw it and it speaks to me about "real" psychopathic violence.

And Frenzy certainly has some intentional laughs around the edges, principally with the Oxford dinners. And some gruesome laughs in the potato truck.

But, well...it was made in 1972 using classic Hitchcock techniques that dated back to the 30s and maybe, that's a little funny looking right now.

No matter. Its like my favorite songs from the 70s. Nobody who hears those songs now for the first time, or sees a Hitchcock movie today for the first time...REALLY gets the emotional effect of "the first time I saw them or heard them."

You had to be there...

[–] liscarkat (18393) 6 years ago

Hitchcock made several great movies before the 1950s. It didn't all start with "Rear Window".

[–] ecarle (14979) 6 years ago

Hitchcock made several great movies before the 1950s. It didn't all start with "Rear Window".

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I certainly take that point.

Indeed, you can read some reviews by the New Republic critic Stanley Kauffmann in the years from Vertigo through North by Northwest through Psycho through The Birds in which he found ALL of them to be awful failures compared to the "great British films upon which Hitchcock built his reputation." Honestly. He called Vertigo "an asinine bore," and found NXNW to be "whorish." He joked about the real Hitchcock having died "only to be replaced by this inferior substitute." Etc.

I expect that this is a common issue for critics and non-critics alike. Folks believe that Scorsese was TRULY a genius around the time of Taxi Driver and Raging Bull; his newer stuff is "entertainment." Folks prefer Woody Allen's "early, funny pictures." (I know I do - and Allen was a genuine movie star himself back then.) Spielberg may be directing prestige history lessons now(Lincoln, Bridge of Spies), but his REAL glory was the genre stuff from Duel to Jaws to Close Encounters to Raiders to ET.

And so it can be with Hitchcock. He had such a varied, decades-long career, that folks can be fans of different parts of it: The British films. The Selznick films. The forties films.

That said, the AFI list (the first one) came from a vote of critics AND people who actually worked in the movie business and it was Rear Window, Vertigo, NXNW and Psycho that made the grade. "Mid-late Hitchcock" which featured set-pieces of action and murder that influenced everybody after(including Scorsese and Spielberg.)

I suppose it might be interesting to conjure up a "big four" from earlier decades:

The 30's: Sabotage, The Man Who Knew Too Much, The 39 Steps, The Lady Vanishes.

The 40s: Rebecca, Shadow of a Doubt, Spellbound, Notorious.

...for instance.