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Tony Perkins -- Hitchcock's Psycho and Welles' The Trial

posted 6 years ago by ecarle (14979)
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I watched Orson Welles "The Trial" on TCM a few weeks ago, been thinking about posting about it here. Here goes.

First of all, isn't it interesting: "The Trial"(1962) was the first movie that Welles made as a director since "Touch of Evil"(1958) So Welles followed a movie starring Janet Leigh with a movie starring Anthony Perkins. And given how little Welles WORKED as a director...Leigh and Perkins could feel pretty proud: each of them got to work with Hitchcock AND with Welles.

Indeed, Peter Bogdanovich wrote that Perkins was most proud to have worked with Welles, which is interesting. Not Hitchcock? Well, Welles was a fellow actor as well as a director, a maker of art and..evidently...very up close and personal in working with Perkins on The Trial. They practically dragged the financially-plagued movie across the finish line as an act of love.

I read up a little on The Trial after I saw it, and, though not quite "provable," what I read was that Welles' specifically wanted Perkins to play the lead in The Trial BECAUSE of his work as Norman Bates, because of Perkins' own surreptitious personality, and because -- thanks to Psycho -- Perkins was a very hot star. (Its true...Psycho didn't really ruin his career; Tony was off to Europe and making movies two to a year.)

One thing is for sure: whereas (as Perkins himself noted) Norman Bates isn't in Psycho for long stretches(the first 30 minutes; Fairvale) Perkins' "K" is in The Trial pretty much all the time. I can't recall a scene that he is not in. Moreover, Welles is often filming Perkins in intimate close-up -- there is one bizarre scene in which the beautiful Perkins and the less-than-beautiful Akim Tamiroff (Grande from Touch of Evil) are "nose to nose" in an extended intense close-up two shot.

Welles' The Trial begins with a fairly odd parable illustrated with a few "cartoon drawings" of vague human figures, as Welles narrates the fable. We can thus tell, from the get-go, that we are in art film territory, and once the "live action" begins - with an enormous close-up of Perkins awakening from his sleep -- the art film is underway.

Simply put, I sure did have trouble engaging with The Trial. Its like I could follow the dialogue("OK, these cop-like characters are hassling Perkins, and he's having none of it), but not so much the story.

Only two years after Psycho, Perkins looks pretty much like he did in Psycho. Maybe slightly longer hair. And his voice and line readings are the same(he hadn't yet fallen into that robotic sing-song cadence of the 80s). Though he's got a lot more words to say in The Trial, and occasionally(and understandably) plays K in a high-pitched nervous panic. Perkins is actually more "jumpy" here than in Psycho.

The Trial is an allegory from Kafka (I already feel like I'm going beyond my depth) and Perkins is certainly a persecuted man in a system that doesn't care(Hitchcock's The Wrong Man got into this, but with no art house flourish.) But the story never really locks in AS a story, to my mind. Its art alright. One clings desperately to the appearance of several beautiful women who unsuccesssfuly come on to Perkins(hmmm): Jeanne Moreau, Romy Scheider, Elsa Martinelli (man those international art babes of the 60s -- though Martinelli would turn up in Hawks' Hatari and Scheider in a Jack Lemmon comedy.)

And eventually, Welles himself turns up, as Perkins' not-terribly-helpful lawyer. Its good to see these actors -- distinctive of face and voice -- together, though I couldn't really make out what they were doing. (Welles would work again with Perkins in Catch 22 AND a dubbed mystery called, I think, "Ten Days Wonder," they WERE pals.)

The film was so unstructured, to my taste, that I just rolled with it. Fell asleep a couple of times, to tell you the truth. I was intrigued by a scene near the end in which Perkins' tormentors of the law pull out a very sharp knife and threaten him with it, near his throat -- the sight of Norman Bates threatened BY a knife is a nice in-joke.

And then things all kinda go to hell.

But I made it. The Trial. Start to finish. I've seen it. I just didn't understand all of it.

What WAS clear, watching it, is that Tony Perkins certainly had a very dynamic star quality that was evidently doomed to never break free to "normal" roles. He's very, very handsome in The Trial, and I was reminded again why folks who played Norman Bates like Henry Thomas and Freddie Highmore (let alone "figurative" Normans like Jeremy Davies and Edward Norton) could never really match what Anthony Perkins brought to Norman. (Vince Vaughn was cast so far away from the Perkins type that its hard to accept him even as a "Norman substitute.")

Eh, that's it. I wish I could say more about "The Trial," but in the final analysis, its not my type of movie.

[–] swanstep (2715) 6 years ago

@ecarle. The Trial (1962) definitely is a bit 'all over the place' and probably a foreshadowing of where, we now know, Welles was going to go later with 'The Other Side of The Wind' and also little-seen fables like 'The Immortal Story'. Deep-down I don't know that this sort of art-house, highly allegorical mode really suited Welles talents (both acting and directing), which work so well within (and pushing against) the more middle-brow constraints of genre and narrative.

It's worth mentioning too that the only version of The Trial we have is the one Welles released in 1962, and that Welles himself was unhappy with some of his last minute edits of. Like so many of Orson's post-Kane works, then, The Trial isn't really finished, properly polished, etc.. For anyone else it's a rough-cut, albeit the sort of rough-cut that has 50 or 60 of the greatest shots in cinema.

As for Perkins really digging Welles. You'd have to guess that they were pretty similar, rare brainiac-types who are also social butterflies good at games and parties.

[–] ecarle (14979) 6 years ago

The Trial (1962) definitely is a bit 'all over the place' and probably a foreshadowing of where, we now know, Welles was going to go later with 'The Other Side of The Wind' and also little-seen fables like 'The Immortal Story'.

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Having seen The Other Side of the Wind this year, yeah, they do rather match up in crazy-quilt style, with individual moments(and actors) of interest even as the rest of the piece doesn't hang together.

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Deep-down I don't know that this sort of art-house, highly allegorical mode really suited Welles talents (both acting and directing), which work so well within (and pushing against) the more middle-brow constraints of genre and narrative.

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Well, as I've said before about myself, I simply don't have the "art house gene" within me to really "get" such works. Perhaps I'm a bit above the basic plotting of a "Send Me No Flowers," but I couldn't really , fully, understand The Trial.
Everything's relative.

On the other hand, on this occasion, Welles certainly seemed to know how to do an art film....Touch of Evil keeps threatening to become one, too -- which is likely why it wasn't the hit that Psycho was. At the same time, as Donald Spoto wrote of Psycho, "It is one of a few films which can be considered as both a box office blockbuster AND an art film."

[–] ecarle (14979) 6 years ago

Meanwhile, back at The Trial: it proves the value of known, attractive actors(and I'd include the overweight Welles here, too -- his face was still handsome and his voice, magnificent.) Perkins and Welles and the pretty ladies keep us interested in at least looking and listening with The Trial.

[–] ecarle (14979) 6 years ago

It's worth mentioning too that the only version of The Trial we have is the one Welles released in 1962, and that Welles himself was unhappy with some of his last minute edits of. Like so many of Orson's post-Kane works, then, The Trial isn't really finished, properly polished, etc.. For anyone else it's a rough-cut, albeit the sort of rough-cut that has 50 or 60 of the greatest shots in cinema.

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I guess that's another issue with Orson: he turned in(forcibly or not) so much unfinished work. Hitchcock played by Old School rules and delivered finished, coherent stories. With the exception, I'd say , of Topaz: three endings filmed, two shipped, I can't say the ending I saw in 1969(the suicide) really WAS the ending.

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As for Perkins really digging Welles. You'd have to guess that they were pretty similar, rare brainiac-types who are also social butterflies good at games and parties.

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Yes, probably a matched pair that way. Hitchcock was said to be fairly reticent and shy at parties, when he went to them at all. A real homebody.

Though Hitchcock did go out of his way to visit Perkins in Paris a year or so after Psycho -- Perkins was there to make a movie, Hitchcock for some sort of honors, but Hitch made sure to visit Tony.

Speaking of Tony Perkins, Paris and Hitchcock: in some "Hitchcock scrapbook" coffee table book I bought some years ago, there is a "both sides" photograph of a postcard sent to Hitchcock from Tony Perkins, with the Arc de Triumphe on it and a Paris postmark. I think it is dated 1961. Perkins is asking if he could be mailed a copy of the "Psycho" screenplay("I seem to have lost my copy.") Ha.

[–] swanstep (2715) 6 years ago

Hitchcock was said to be fairly reticent and shy at parties, when he went to them at all. A real homebody.

This remark reminded me of an improbable Hitch Psycho publicity photo I've always liked that TCM recently tweeted a high-res copy of:
https://twitter.com/tcm/status/819363270200938496?lang=en
A dapper 1960 Hitch - a reminder he got himself in good shape for the worldwide publicity push - hosting a flock of gothically-dressed, pale Grace-Kelly-wannabes/'Robert Palmer video' model-types! It has to have been a Hitchcock fantasy of movie mogul-dom that Wasserman or someone like that set up for him.

[–] ecarle (14979) 6 years ago

Hitchcock was said to be fairly reticent and shy at parties, when he went to them at all. A real homebody.
This remark reminded me of an improbable Hitch Psycho publicity photo I've always liked that TCM recently tweeted a high-res copy of:
https://twitter.com/tcm/status/819363270200938496?lang=en

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Excellent! I've said it before and I'll say it again: every time I think I've seen every photograph from or about Psycho ever published...I see a NEW one.

This one is rather a delight. Hitchcock paired with all those lovely ladies. A sign saying "PSYCHO PARTY" with PSYCHO in its requisite "greatest logo in movie history" mode. What, I wonder -- WAS this party? --

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A dapper 1960 Hitch - a reminder he got himself in good shape for the worldwide publicity push -

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Hitch here reminds us that though, in the thirties and some of the forties, he was huge and rotund -- in later years he did mange to keep his weight down to a middle-aged paunchiness. Seems to me that he COULD have gotten any number of young Hollywood ladies(well, the "professionals" I guess) to give him a roll in the hay. (There was a pretty ugly and overweight producer named Sam Spiegel who married all sorts of beauties and had hookers around in the meantime.)

But Family Man Hitchcock wasn't that way at all, and Alma loved him for it. Until Tippi. Who wasn't having it.

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[–] ecarle (14979) 6 years ago

-- hosting a flock of gothically-dressed, pale Grace-Kelly-wannabes/'Robert Palmer video' model-types! It has to have been a Hitchcock fantasy of movie mogul-dom that Wasserman or someone like that set up for him.

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Well, its a "perk of power." I think we always need to be reminded that the Psycho year of 1960(and the three years after it) were Hitchcock's peak of power -- even as, yes, he made some fine films in the 30's and 40's, too. In 1960...he was recognizable around the world(he was a true star); he had a top-rated TV show; books and a magazine published in his name; a movie career which had recently yielded the big hit North by Northwest and was now yielding the even bigger(and controversial, and landmark) hit Psycho -- plus Lew Wasserman was preparing to lure Hitch to Universal with the biggest deal yet(MCA stock.) Everything about that photo with the "funereal" ladies in black attests to that level of fame. Its also got a little of that "William Castle stunt" look to it.

Thanks for finding that photo, swanstep. I now believe that there are other Psycho photos out there I haven't seen(some months ago, I found one of Perkins coming out the door of the Psycho house with sunset-light filling the frame; I never saw that one.)