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Perkins and the Picture of the Bird on the Wall of Cabin One

posted 5 years ago by ecarle (14979)
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I found an interview with Anthony Perkins that I had not found before. Just a tidbit here and there in it, but something to work with.

As a "prelim," I'll note that I saw Perkins on TV in the 80's I think, promoting a Psycho sequel, and saying something sort of funny like "Hitchcock was very collaborative and nice on Psycho; maybe he decided just that one time not to be the dictator people say he was on other films."

But in this particular print interview, Perkins refined that statement more seriously, saying "I think he was tired of being written up as controlling and decided on this movie to be more collaborative." Or something like that.

It boiled down to Hitchcock accepting Perkins' suggestions for light changes to script and scenes.

I had already known(as perhaps so had you), that it was Perkins' idea for Norman to nibble on Kandy Korn. It added things to the character: a direct connection to Halloween(its a candy OF that macabre holiday); a childish aspect to Norman; and(in a matter of HITCHCOCK's improvisation), the basis for that great camera swing under Norman's throat while he chews the candy, coming off like a bird from below.

It is also known that Hitchcock let Perkins re-write his lines in the parlor scene somewhat; it is believed that Norman's dialogue about his father dying when Norman was five was meant to match Perkins own life -- HIS father(actor Osgood Perkins) died when Perkins was five, and Perkins, too, grew up fatherless and an only child.

In this particular "new"(to me) interview, Perkins notes that one of the things where Hitchcock went with the improv was this:

When Norman runs into Cabin One and discovers Marion's (unseen for now) body in the bathroom, he wheels around, puts his hand over his mouth in horror, and crashes backwards into the wall by the bathroom door -- knocking one of the pictures on that wall to the ground.

It is a picture of a bird.

Here's the thing. Evidently the script(which I know we have access to here) had Norman only crashing into the wall. The picture(painting? photo?) isn't supposed to fall.

But it DID fall on the first take, and as Hitchcock went for a corrective second take, Perkins said: "Hey, why don't we make the picture falling part of the purposeful action of this moment? And can you do a close-up of it on the floor?"

Hitchcock said "that's a lovely idea" and that's what we get in the movie. A "bit" that requires a second camera set-up (for the close-up) but that rather effortlessly continues the "bird" motif in the movie and ties into the "knocking off" of Marion Crane much as the picture is knocked off the wall. Symbolism of a very low-key, "natural" type.

I go into my later years sometimes mocking the seriousness of the movie business and movie acting. Is movie acting all THAT hard? Is movie-making all THAT creative?

Well, something like this bird picture falling down is a test. Hitchcock and Perkins(and screenwriter Joseph Stefano) all contributed to something to this moment; Stefano in writing the narrative action as we begin("Norman discovers Marion's body"); Perkins taking the accident of the picture falling and turning it into a directed moment; Hitchcock APPROVING the change and adding a new camera set-up for the close-up (the picture falls face up, doesn't it? We can see the bird on the floor AND on the wall.)

Is this profound? Is this as difficult as , say , rocket science?

Well, sort of, yes. Hitchcock, Stefano and Perkins were working to make Psycho a solid new release in 1960...but also giving this film moments that would live forever long AFTER its release.

There are other aspects to the picture falling. One is the "visceral" sense: not only does the picture falling get a close-up, it gets a sound effect of sorts, a "flat splat" as the picture hits the carpet that adds "ear candy flavor" to the scene.

And this: Perkins puts his hand over his mouth -- in horror? to fight nausea?(Vince Vaughn went for nausea big time in the remake). Whichever it is, Norman with his hand over his mouth became the motif for at least two publicity stills -- one of which was very famous(with Norman's hand outstretched) and that became part of a billboard all over Los Angeles in November of 1967 to promote the film's first-time local debut. (I recall seeing one of those billboards next to the Los Angeles Coliseum where thousands could see it heading into and out of football games.) That billboard also became a print ad in TV Guide and newspapers.

So that little moment became very, very big.

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[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

I'm reminded with Perkins telling the story of the bird picture falling, an interview with ANOTHER Hitchcock psycho -- Barry Foster, who played Bob Rusk in Frenzy -- of an idea that Foster gave Hitchcock for a Frenzy scene, which Hitchcock also used even as it required changing the shot.

Its the scene where Rusk first enters Brenda Blaney's office to confront her about not finding him dates through her "marriage bureau"(what an odd name for a dating service? British?)

The script just called for Rusk to enter, stand, and verbally confront Brenda. But Foster looked at the set, saw a filing cabinet against the wall and asked Hitchcock, "What if I rifle through the cabinet drawers, opening them and slamming them in agitation?" Hitchcock said yes, the camera was moved, and Foster added that bit of business to the scene. It DOES give Rusk a bit more menace, a weird intensity and agitation that we never saw in his "laid back" earlier scenes with Richard Blaney(Jon Finch.) And as with the "flat splat" of the bird picture falling in Psycho , here we get the "ear candy sound" of the metallic doors opening and slamming shut.

I also like how, having concluded all his drawer slamming, Rusk spins and says something as his face freezes into an inhuman, bug-eyed expression:

"If you can fix up a lot of idiots, why not ME? HMMM?"

Its just plain weird. And while, not necessarily as memorable as Psycho(and its bird picture fall), its memorable.

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[–] MizhuB (165) 5 years ago

Hitchcock said "that's a lovely idea" and that's what we get in the movie. A "bit" that requires a second camera set-up (for the close-up)...

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Wouldn't that also include at least a CHANGE in the next camera set-up.

Norman sits on the bed, seemingly to compose himself for a few seconds. Then he gets up off the bed and before he enters the bathroom, he hangs the picture back UP on the wall. Or am I mistaken?

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[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

Wouldn't that also include at least a CHANGE in the next camera set-up.

Norman sits on the bed, seemingly to compose himself for a few seconds. Then he gets up off the bed and before he enters the bathroom, he hangs the picture back UP on the wall. Or am I mistaken?

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No, I don't think you are mistaken. Hitchcock captures that detail. Perhaps this demonstrates why an actor's "quick suggestion to add something" can actually add time and work to a production schedule.

That said, I assume the script called for the shot of Norman sitting on the bed and going back to the bathroom so -- they could just include the replacement of the bird picture in the same set-up.

Still, Hitchcock, as a director, had to make snap decisions like this all the time --"Shall I take Perkins suggestion? Is it good enough? Is it too much trouble? Am I ready for this movie to have this bird moment in it FOR ALL TIME?"

The answer, here, was yes.

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[–] Doghouse (447) 5 years ago

It would depend on the sequence in which they were shot. The next set-up is a wider shot of Perkins (from about the waist up) that follows him over to the window (which he closes) and then to the bed, where he sits. In this wider shot, the picture's already off the wall. Assuming this one was done after the tighter one that came before, no change would have been necessary, except to make sure the picture was still missing when they set up for the wider shot.

If you'll permit, he doesn't hang the picture back up until after he's wrapped up Marion's body and taken it out to the car, and has re-entered the room to remove all of her belongings.

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[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

It would depend on the sequence in which they were shot.

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Welcome, doghouse!

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The next set-up is a wider shot of Perkins (from about the waist up) that follows him over to the window (which he closes)

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A "bookend" to his opening the window earlier("stuffy in here") which allowed Marion to hear Mother call her horrible names. I always wondered if Norman/Mother did that on purpose(opening the window, making the loud speech.)

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and then to the bed, where he sits. In this wider shot, the picture's already off the wall. Assuming this one was done after the tighter one that came before, no change would have been necessary, except to make sure the picture was still missing when they set up for the wider shot.

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If you'll permit, he doesn't hang the picture back up until after he's wrapped up Marion's body and taken it out to the car, and has re-entered the room to remove all of her belongings.

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I WILL permit, absolutely. Even as much as I supposedly "know" Psycho(frame by frame? no, not really), I can't remember everything in it. But we have folks here who DO remember, or can check the DVD when I can't, etc.

The picture staying off the wall for some time demonstrates how Hitchcock filmed this part in sequence(I'm guessing.)

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[–] MizhuB (165) 5 years ago

The picture staying off the wall for some time demonstrates how Hitchcock filmed this part in sequence(I'm guessing.)

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Very likely, considering the quick shooting schedule and budget.

But it reminds me of a goof in 'Vertigo'.

When Kim Novak emerges from the bathroom in that sort of ethereal green lighting, it cuts back and forth between Novak and Stewart.

There's a pink reading lamp on the headboard of her bed. In one shot, it isn't there. The next shot, it's back again.

So obviously they shot it at least twice, although Novak looks the same. So does everything else.

What was the reason for it to be filmed twice? And HOW could they miss something like that?

Especially considering Hitchcock's known attention to detail.


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[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

Very likely, considering the quick shooting schedule and budget.

But it reminds me of a goof in 'Vertigo'.

When Kim Novak emerges from the bathroom in that sort of ethereal green lighting, it cuts back and forth between Novak and Stewart.

There's a pink reading lamp on the headboard of her bed. In one shot, it isn't there. The next shot, it's back again.

So obviously they shot it at least twice, although Novak looks the same. So does everything else.

What was the reason for it to be filmed twice? And HOW could they miss something like that?

Especially considering Hitchcock's known attention to detail.

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Well, for all his well known attention for detail I think Hitchcock, though better than many, wasn't perfect. Perhaps the stress and strain of attempting that shot with Novak twice led to him not wanting to do it a third time.

There's a story that while watching the rushes for Arbogast climbing the stairs, in Psycho, a crew member told Hitchcock something he already knew: the background on Arbo went out of focus for awhile. Said Hitch: "I can live with that." And he did. The soft focus is in the finished film -- but helps create the idea that Arbo is in a "netherworld."

PS. I've seen Vertigo many a time...and I never caught that detail with the lamp. But then I'm not a very precise movie watcher!

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[–] MizhuB (165) 5 years ago

There's a story that while watching the rushes for Arbogast climbing the stairs, in Psycho, a crew member told Hitchcock something he already knew: the background on Arbo went out of focus for awhile. Said Hitch: "I can live with that." And he did. The soft focus is in the finished film -- but helps create the idea that Arbo is in a "netherworld."

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I've noticed that, but I always ignore it because my focus was always on Arbogast, and what he was about to face.

But I will say, as a kid when I first saw PSYCHO the first few times, I DIDN'T notice it. I was too filled with suspense. The shower scene was slashed to pieces (pun intended) so wasn't that bad, but from the very first time I saw it on TV, Arbogast's murder was intact. I remember saying to my school chums, 'He gets slashed at the top, then sort of falls backwards like a leaf falling from a tree'. The way we put things when we're kids.

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PS. I've seen Vertigo many a time...and I never caught that detail with the lamp.

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To me, it was always a big Goof. Even if Hitchcock filmed it two or three times, what did he do? Strike the set in between then put it back together again? And HOW would they miss such an obvious prop? It's a big, pink reading lamp on the headboard. It doesn't make sense to me.

I do love Vertigo though. I've often gone back and forth through the years about which film was my favorite Hitchcock. Vertigo OR Psycho.


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[–] Doghouse (447) 5 years ago

"When Kim Novak emerges from the bathroom in that sort of ethereal green lighting, it cuts back and forth between Novak and Stewart.

There's a pink reading lamp on the headboard of her bed. In one shot, it isn't there. The next shot, it's back again.

So obviously they shot it at least twice, although Novak looks the same. So does everything else.

What was the reason for it to be filmed twice? And HOW could they miss something like that?

Especially considering Hitchcock's known attention to detail."
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I just took a look at it, MizhuB.

First, let's consider the action: Novak walks out of the bathroom and toward the camera into a closeup, and Stewart's reaction shots are intercut. Normally, you'd expect Novak's footage to have been one continuous take but, as you point out, it's not. And if you look closely, you'll notice there's a change aside from the lamp, albeit a more subtle one: although Novak's costumed and coiffed the same, you can see a difference in the wave of her pompadour between the first two cuts (without the lamp) and the others.

I have a theory (ecarle can tell you I sometimes have them): the first were done on a different day from the rest, and probably a later one. I'm going to guess that Hitchcock did shoot it first as one continuous take, and viewing the dailies, decided he wasn't satisfied with the "green glow" effect when she first came out, and went back to reshoot only her exit from the bathroom. The set probably wouldn't have been struck as there were other scenes requiring it, but it might have been "un-dressed" - lamp, bedspread and other accessories removed - and not preserved as a "hot set," as Hitchcock didn't anticipate any more shooting on it as it was from that angle when he wrapped for the day.

And when they went back and re-dressed the set, some property person simply forgot the lamp, and nobody else caught it. It can happen, even to Hitchcock.

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[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

First, let's consider the action: Novak walks out of the bathroom and toward the camera into a closeup, and Stewart's reaction shots are intercut. Normally, you'd expect Novak's footage to have been one continuous take but, as you point out, it's not. And if you look closely, you'll notice there's a change aside from the lamp, albeit a more subtle one: although Novak's costumed and coiffed the same, you can see a difference in the wave of her pompadour between the first two cuts (without the lamp) and the others.

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I've personally been amazed to read that many movie scenes in which someone is delivering a long speech, multiple different takes -- done on different days -- are spliced together to get "the best performance." The director will know when an actor was really hitting the lines "big" -- and the the director will have the line the actor said on Tuesday lead into the line the actor said on Wednesday.

Examples include Spencer Tracy's speech at the end of Guess Who's Coming to Dinner; Peter Finch's speeches in Network..and a pretty funny one: Sean Connery talking in his apartment to Kevin Costner in The Untouchables. The camera cuts from Costner to Connery and back to Costner and back to Connery and sometimes Connery's shirt collar is buttoned, and sometimes it is not!

Jack Nicholson evidently had this visual problem in some movie -- A Few Good Men, maybe? -- and director Tim Burton in Mars Attacks and Nicholson decided to spoof it ON PURPOSE. They had Nicholson do a speech with his tie loose, and then with his tie tight, and Burton intercut the mismatching shots as an "in joke."

But I digress.

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[–] Doghouse (447) 5 years ago

"I've personally been amazed to read that many movie scenes in which someone is delivering a long speech, multiple different takes -- done on different days -- are spliced together to get "the best performance." The director will know when an actor was really hitting the lines "big" -- and the the director will have the line the actor said on Tuesday lead into the line the actor said on Wednesday."
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Here's an illusion-shattering one. Accounts of Judy Garland holding a concert stage for hours or stationing herself by the piano at a party and singing until dawn are legendary. But there's a YouTube video of unedited A Star Is Born recording sessions revealing that even her performances of songs were sometimes stitched together from multiple takes: a few bars from one take; the next few from another; the next few from still another.

And because of her erratic unreliability during that long shoot, there are single scenes lasting only a few minutes comprised of takes done weeks apart. One, for example, takes place in Norman Maine's car as he drives Esther home. It begins with a two shot of them on the front seat, then alternates between closeups of each. They never got the full scene with Garland and Mason on the set at the same time, so Mason's reaction shots were done with him alone, while Garland's closeups - with Maine offscreen except for his hand on the steering wheel - were done with husband/producer Sid Luft next to her on the seat, hand-doubling for Mason.

Hands again.

I can well imagine how that drives actors who favor the stage crazy, how others prefer the freedom to fine-tune a performance before the camera ("Can I do just that last bit again?"), while still others comfortably adapt themselves to both. But what even those stage-preferring actors never mention when expounding on their craft is that the same piecemeal approach common to films applies during stage rehearsals.


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[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

I have a theory (ecarle can tell you I sometimes have them):

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Indeed...and they are good ones.

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the first were done on a different day from the rest, and probably a later one.

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Ala Tracy, Finch, and Connery...also those mismatched takes were likely done the same day with Finch and Connery (Tracy's health meant he couldn't work very long each day.)

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I'm going to guess that Hitchcock did shoot it first as one continuous take, and viewing the dailies, decided he wasn't satisfied with the "green glow" effect when she first came out, and went back to reshoot only her exit from the bathroom.

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Getting that green glow just right must have been the devil's own time of it. The result: movie history on a grand scale(helped immensely by Herrmann and the two actors.)

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The set probably wouldn't have been struck as there were other scenes requiring it, but it might have been "un-dressed" - lamp, bedspread and other accessories removed - and not preserved as a "hot set," as Hitchcock didn't anticipate any more shooting on it as it was from that angle when he wrapped for the day.

And when they went back and re-dressed the set, some property person simply forgot the lamp, and nobody else caught it. It can happen, even to Hitchcock.

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That all makes sense. One wonders if Hitchcock simply didn't see this in the rushes, or saw it and said "I can live with that." No way to get the set back up and the strenuous work for the green lighting underway again, I suppose.

Let's keep in mind that, on Psycho, rather than send the second unit crew back to Phoenix to film the streets without Xmas decorations, Hitchcock simply slapped the title "Friday December 11" on the film and Psycho rather instantly became "wrong" -- no other Xmas decorations in the movie, no Xmas trees, nobody talks about Xmas. Hitchcock "could live with that."


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[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

And yet, I have read that on his final two films, Hitchocck DID go back and re-shoot problematic scenes, at some expense:

Frenzy: Hitchcock didn't like the work of the extras and the bit players in the medium shot(he's in it) of a crowd looking at a river body with some chat about Jack the Ripper. Hitch went back another week to the Thames, hired new extras and actors, and re-shot the scene.

Family Plot: Villain Arthur Adamson meets with the FBI in his jewelry store. Hitch didn't like the China plates in a case behind the actors, so he brought everybody back weeks later, put new plates in the case, shot it again.

I'm always amazed how little I know about how shots and scenes are "mixed and matched" in movies and we never know it "out here."

Here's an amazing one:

In the 1988 road movie thriller buddy movie "Midnight Run", bounty hunter Robert DeNiro and prisoner Charles Grodin(a really nice guy in the film) end up struggling to survive in some river rapids. I believe the scene is set in Arizona, maybe New Mexico. And SOME of the river shots are filmed in one of those states.

But for the close-ups on the two men in the water, the director, cast and crew(some of them)flew to NEW ZEALAND. To film DeNiro and Grodin in the raging waters. So in the middle of this America-set sequence, there are cuts to footage from New Zealand!

I find that amazing. A long, long, LONG flight for our stars just to get those moments.

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[–] MizhuB (165) 5 years ago

Yes, I can understand all of those things, but me being a kind of a pain in the butt, I can't help wondering, 'Then what is the CONTINUITY person for?'

Most of the examples you guys have cited are the director not liking the shot and doing it over again. And that makes sense. But they don't always involve mistakes, just do-overs.

But for the continuity person to miss something as obvious as a relatively big, pink reading lamp, I just don't understand. Guess I'm a schtickler for details. At least the ones I catch.

I've read that many, if not most directors are more than willing to let things like that go (the collar first inside, then outside), in order to use the best takes. It just bugs me ;)

Case in point: There's a big mistake in Fatal Attraction that many people have noticed. When Douglas and Close are arguing in her bedroom, there's a close up of her under the blankets, and her breasts are exposed. Then cut to a side view, and they're suddenly covered.

I remember the director being interviewed and he was specifically asked about that 'goof'.

He said, 'Of course I saw it. But those were the best takes.'

But I can also tell you (as delicately as I can) that the audience in the theater immediately laughed and pretty much said, 'What happened to her T*TS?'

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[–] Doghouse (447) 5 years ago

Of course you're right: that's exactly what a continuity person is for, and yet they do sometimes just screw up.

There's a scene in Inherit the Wind in which Spencer Tracy and Gene Kelly are conversing in a hotel room; Kelly's on his feet and Tracy reclines on a bed, a nightstand with a lamp next to it. In the longshot, the lamp is an entirely different one from that appearing when the angle changes to a closeup of Kelly next to the bed.

We've talked about Hitchcock's attention to detail, but we're also all aware of the quirks, fixations and obsessions of his eccentric personality. China plates in a display case could be enough to reshoot a scene for Family Plot, while other details were dismissed with his casual "It's only a mooooovie" disinterest. I'm sure no one noticed the china plates, and most might argue Hitchcock's time would have been better spent fixing what ecarle calls "the blue screen that ate Bruce Dern's head."

I know I do.

I honestly never noticed the Vertigo reading lamp before your mention, but yeah, those continuity goofs bug me too. When I spot them, that is. Strangely, they're less annoying and even fun when someone else does.

Love the Fatal Attraction story.

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[–] MizhuB (165) 5 years ago

I'm veering way off topic here, but I also remember a story about Hitch filming 'Saboteur' with Robert Cummings.

In one scene, he's locked in some room, and figuring a way to get out, he puts a match to the sprinkler head, which pops and starts to spray water all over and (I think) sets off the fire alarm for the building.

Someone in production asked him, 'But how will that explain to the audience exactly how he got out of that room?'.

Hitch replied, 'They'll never ask'.

Tippi Hedren asking what her motivation would be to go upstairs into that attic alone. 'Your paycheck/Because I'm telling you to'. I've heard both stories.

Aaah, Hitch. Sometimes he was right with us, and sometimes he forgot about us. The explanation of 'It's only a mooooovie' can only go so far when that 'mooooovie' starts to defy logic.

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[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

I'm veering way off topic here, but I also remember a story about Hitch filming 'Saboteur' with Robert Cummings.

In one scene, he's locked in some room, and figuring a way to get out, he puts a match to the sprinkler head, which pops and starts to spray water all over and (I think) sets off the fire alarm for the building.

Someone in production asked him, 'But how will that explain to the audience exactly how he got out of that room?'.

Hitch replied, 'They'll never ask'.

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Hitch -- and other filmmakers -- I'd say right up to today's modern "Sopranos era" sometimes roll the dice on not explaining things and letting the audience figure out how we got from point A to point....C?

I'll add that "Sopranos" show runner David Chase aggravated me a bit with his rather smug confidence in flat out not telling us what happened to certain characters -- a Russian thug who dispappears, a rapist who is identified but gets away with it -- as if "in real life, you don't find out either." Well, I think in real life, the rapist WOULD be further dealt with, the Russian WOULD be sought and/or located..etc.

As for Hitchcock, it was really a matter of just throwing out certain "connection" scenes and winging it. As here in Saboteur(in which also, as I recall, a big cardboard piece of paper is thrown from a skyscraper and lands below as...a small note. Or vice versa.)


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[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

Tippi Hedren asking what her motivation would be to go upstairs into that attic alone. 'Your paycheck/Because I'm telling you to'. I've heard both stories.

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And I've heard/read both stories as applying to Balsam wondering why HE goes upstairs in Psycho.

Though Hedren actually told her story on video, so I think she's the one. Or maybe both of them.

By the way, Hitchcock may have said what he said, but it is pretty clear in both movies EXACTLY why the characters go up the stairs. Arbogast, to question Mom(and maybe find Marion.) Melanie, to investigate bird noises(and she doesn't want to wake up the exhausted Mitch.)

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Aaah, Hitch. Sometimes he was right with us, and sometimes he forgot about us.

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Yeah. It was as if he had hot and cold running "logic demands."

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The explanation of 'It's only a mooooovie' can only go so far when that 'mooooovie' starts to defy logic.

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But y'know, I don't think Hitchcock and filmmakers of his time ever anticipated the coming of VHS/DVD and internet streaming so that people could watch these movies ENDLESSLY and pick apart the gaps in logic. Hitchcock was banking on one, two, three viewings tops.

BTW, much as I like Frenzy, the "logic defying" in the third act of that one is hard to take. Blaney is imprisoned for Rusk's killings...and Rusk's killings STOP. Until the one night that Blaney breaks out to kill Rusk and...Rusk has just killed another woman. As one critic wrote, "all this could have been solved if Blaney escaped his holding cell BEFORE trial, after a few days, but not when months pass before Rusk kills again.

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[–] Doghouse (447) 5 years ago

"I'm veering way off topic here..."
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Oh, not so far off. I think I said on the old IMDB board once, "One way or another, all roads lead to Psycho" (as ecarle's Peter Gunn thread hints). And when the road is a Hitchcock one, you get there quicker. It's what we do here, right?
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"Hitch replied, 'They'll never ask'."
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For anyone who does, it's enough that setting off the alarm is something that will attract attention. The rest can be imagined. I've seen people complain that Scotty's rescue from hanging onto the rain gutter in Vertigo is never explained. Well, they can imagine anything they like: someone else came along and pulled him up, for instance. He escaped. What's the difference how, and what value would showing it have added?

Two of my most-watched movies, Bullitt and Chinatown, are full of unanswered questions, but I don't consider them to be defying logic or plot holes. Any theory a viewer has that gets them from Point A to B is as good as another, and affects no outcomes either way. Were the hitmen hired by the mob or Ross himself? Who cares? Everyone thinks he's dead, and that's all he wants. Was Mulwray killed because of the dam project or Katherine, or both? Doesn't matter: we learn who did it, and each motive is credible.

I respect films that respect their viewers' intelligence, trusting them to fill in unimportant details for themselves.





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[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

We've talked about Hitchcock's attention to detail, but we're also all aware of the quirks, fixations and obsessions of his eccentric personality. China plates in a display case could be enough to reshoot a scene for Family Plot, while other details were dismissed with his casual "It's only a mooooovie" disinterest.

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Hitchcock may have contracted "old man's detail disease" on his final films. He fired actors who didn't please him, and one famous musical composer(Mancini, off of Frenzy.) This going back for detailed re-shoots may have been a way to impose a certain power that he feared he was losing(and he was...he was in his final decade of life.)

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I'm sure no one noticed the china plates,

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I got this story from William Devane off of the Family Plot DVD documentary, and recall that Devane said he got away with a "bit"(picking lint off of an FBI man's jacket) that Hitchcock had vetoed the first time they filmed the scene. Director's details versus actor's details.

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and most might argue Hitchcock's time would have been better spent fixing what ecarle calls "the blue screen that ate Bruce Dern's head."

I know I do.

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Ha. I'm a little spooked to see that you have remembered one of my "old time phrases" from this board. I'm always KNOWING I'm repeating myself when I say certain things again(the three key pieces of information in the shrink scene; the various TV showings and non-showings of Psycho) but I'm hoping that I'm reaching a new audience with some of it. Even with the "old" audience(you), I hope you realize that I am simply referencing past remarks in a new context.

And so: "The blue screen that ate Bruce Dern's head." Its terrible because it happens so early in the film and the film never recovers from it, and the film rather RETURNS to it(the runaway car scene is great as far as I'm concerned but that screen is eating their heads, just a little less graphic with daytime sky rather than night.)

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[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

About "the blue screen that ate Bruce Dern's head." The way Hitchcock's defenders at Universal told it, he wanted to use regular process screens(dangerous enough in 1976) but the studio convinced him to use a new "in the lab" process where you film the actors against a black screen and in the lab the background footage is merged.

We ended up with these terrible shots, mainly of people in cars...and Family Plot has a LOT of scenes with people in cars(Sometimes Dern and Harris; sometimes Devane and Black.)

And yet, is not this process what "became" CGI, where people act in green rooms and all the background is put in later via computer? (See: Sin City.)

One of the sadder things in movie promotion is a shot of Dern and Harris in the runaway car. The background is entirely black -- they didn't even bother to put the daytime sky and mountain road behind them!

I'll make this rueful remark, too: Frenzy opens with a sequence that is filmed with great crystal clarity and realism -- the speech by the Thames. Whenever I watch that scene, I think: "Man, Hitchcock really still knew how to mount a perfect looking scene -- helped by DP Gil Taylor."

But Family Plot semi-opens(second scene) with the Green Screen That Ate Bruce Dern's head. Whenever I watch that scene I think: "It only took four years for Hitchcock to go from looking perfect to looking super-fake."

And that's why -- despite the "nicer" content and pretty good script for Family Plot -- Frenzy is one of the great ones, and Family Plot is not. Which made me sad then, and makes me sad now. Hitch should have gone out with a great one.

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[–] Doghouse (447) 5 years ago

"About "the blue screen that ate Bruce Dern's head." The way Hitchcock's defenders at Universal told it, he wanted to use regular process screens(dangerous enough in 1976) but the studio convinced him to use a new "in the lab" process where you film the actors against a black screen and in the lab the background footage is merged."
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I have a theory (again).

For many years, the standard "traveling matte" process involved three "plates:" the background; the foreground (actors); an intermediate "shadow plate" (a silhouette of the foreground that blocked the background from bleeding through). In the early experimental days, the intermediate plate hadn't yet become standard.

In the 1936 Swing Time, Fred Astaire dances against a blank background upon which appear three gigantic shadows of him, apparently mimicking his steps. When he's directly in front of one of these solidly black shadows, he's fine, but when his head or a limb strays beyond the boundaries of one, it becomes semi-transparent.

Another problem that plagued the process was reflected light. Different colors were employed - white, blue, green - but they all tended to reflect light onto the actors' backs, yielding an undesired "halo" effect.

So here's the theory: by using a black background, I'm guessing they thought they could streamline (and cheapen) the process by eliminating both the shadow plate and the reflection problem. Didn't quite work out that way. I've always considered traveling matte to produce an effect inferior to already-phony-enough rear projection anyway.

Incidentally, if you'd written that "old time phrase" only once, I'd still have remembered it. Always loved its humor and charm.

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[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

Yes, I can understand all of those things, but me being a kind of a pain in the butt, I can't help wondering, 'Then what is the CONTINUITY person for?'

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That's one of the toughest jobs in Hollywood, isn't it? I suppose with the Vertigo lamp, they should have kept notes on how the set was dressed ("Two lamps, one vase, one ashtray") before the items were taken off.

On YouTube, you can find a series(well, different people make them) of "gaffes in movies." Many movies have a LOT of gaffes. I do recall in one called "gaffes in Psycho," there weren't really all that many, and one of the commenters on the clips noted: "Psycho almost has no gaffes, it shows you Hitchcock's quality control."

But the truth, is...I never saw ANY of those gaffes in Psycho. And I saw The Untouchables four times in its year of release and never noticed Connery's collar jump -- I only noticed that when Siskel and Ebert SHOWED the clip on their show -- and I'll bet somebody brought it to THEIR attention.

Filmmakers are banking on casual viewers like me to not even see Connery's collar jump. I recall liking the scene; liking how young Costner is recruiting "the last honest cop in Chicago," and an old Irish one at that, to join his team; listening to David Mamet's great lines -- I just never noticed Connery's collar.

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[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

Most of the examples you guys have cited are the director not liking the shot and doing it over again. And that makes sense. But they don't always involve mistakes, just do-overs.

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Well, evidently missing props speak to some time(days? weeks?) between set-ups and a failure to account for all the props. Maybe?

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But for the continuity person to miss something as obvious as a relatively big, pink reading lamp, I just don't understand. Guess I'm a schtickler for details. At least the ones I catch.

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You missed your calling, maybe? YOU should have been a continuity person as you are stickler for details. I on the other hand, would be fired the first day on that job. ("Uh, it looks the same to me, Hitch.") Hah.

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I've read that many, if not most directors are more than willing to let things like that go (the collar first inside, then outside), in order to use the best takes. It just bugs me ;)

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Seems to be the case. They will go for the acting, the line reading, the facial expression, and just cross their fingers that the audience misses the gaffe.

Now, as a matter of "poignance," two of my examples were because of the actor's physical issues:

Spencer Tracy was famously very ill when he agreed to do Guess Who's Coming to Dinner as what he intended to be his final picture. To use him , director Stanley Kramer and co-star Kate Hepburn deferred their salaries as further insurance. The filming was almost a macabre race against Tracy's imminent death. A "minor" scene was saved as Tracy's last. He noted to Kramer, "if you lose me before we can do this last scene, you've still got a movie." Because by then Tracy HAD filmed his big speech at the end of the movie.


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[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

Anyway, to get Tracy on film for that big speech, Kramer directed everybody EXCEPT Tracy in the master shot and on their close-ups(Hepburn, Sidney Poitier, others) got all their lines, and then filmed Tracy alone for his, as best as he could do, each day. Then Kramer "mixed and matched" Tracy's best line readings and expressions from different days of work.

Tracy even finished that final "minor" scene(a visit with Kate to an ice cream parlor), finished the movie...and died two weeks later.

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Network. Peter Finch his famous stalking, ranting "I'm as mad as hell" speech in one take. Director Sidney Lumet asked for "just one more." Finch began it, took it a certain distance, and stopped: "I just can't finish, Sidney. Its taking too much out of me physically." OK. Lumet used part of the finished first take and the unfinished second take , mixed together.

And Finch died , of a heart attack, practically in Lumet's arms at the Beverly Hills Hotel, a couple of months later. Maybe less. Evidently Finch's stamina loss on the set was a clue to his poor health.

Interesting: both Tracy and Finch got posthumous Oscar nominations for their final performances. Only Finch won.

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[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago


Case in point: There's a big mistake in Fatal Attraction that many people have noticed. When Douglas and Close are arguing in her bedroom, there's a close up of her under the blankets, and her breasts are exposed. Then cut to a side view, and they're suddenly covered.

I remember the director being interviewed and he was specifically asked about that 'goof'.

He said, 'Of course I saw it. But those were the best takes.'

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Well, there you go. And again...evidently the director trusts that a lot of audience members WON'T see it(I don't remember, years ago). But you'd think in this case, people would notice.

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But I can also tell you (as delicately as I can) that the audience in the theater immediately laughed and pretty much said, 'What happened to her T*TS?'

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Man, I must be a sloppy movie watcher. I let all these things go.

Speaking of "chosen takes" (as this thread has turned into a rather delightful review of them)...near the end of The Manchurian Candidate, as Sinatra has a long speech holding up two handfuls of Queen of Hearts cards...things are a bit out of focus. Critics thought it was a nice "surreal" touch. Director John Frankenheimer not only said it was Sinatra's best take -- Sinatra wasn't going to DO another take.

Which leads to this horror story:

Sam Peckinpah filmed "Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid" in Mexico and had to ship rushes back and forth to Los Angeles. After shooting about 1/3 of the film, he found that the shots were ALL slightly out of focus -- he'd been using a camera with a damaged lens.

Famously Evil Corporate MGM boss James Aubrey wired back "keep the out of focus shots and finish the film; the audience will live with it." But Peckinpah decided to keep sneaking re-shoots of the out of focus scenes. I think he fixed all of them, dropped some of them.

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[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

Y'know, I don't know about the rest of your folks' stories, but I get mine by buying and reading books about filmmakers and filmmaking -- I've got books about Network, Peckinpah, Hitchcock, Sinatra, Perkins...and the Guess Who's Coming to Dinner stories are from Mark Harris' book about the five Best Picture nominees of 1967.

I think it is fun to share these stories on Moviechat...perhaps its a way for some of you to read these books without having to read them!

Its a fun reading hobby -- learning how movies are REALLY made, and what REALLY goes into making them.

I am wondering where the Judy Garland /Star is Born material came from. A book about Garland? Or the movie?

Speaking of A Star is Born, I found a book about its star, James Mason in bookstore one time, browsed it, never bought it, never found it again.

But I recall reading that Mason wasn't too crazy about North by Northwest. First, Grant got paid almost four times as much and Mason was by then used to star roles. Second, Mason felt that he really didn't succeed with his "Not quite sporting, using real bullets" line at the end of the film(the audience was already cheering over it.) Third -- and really the entry point, was Mason saying to his interviewer: "Not really much to say about that one, is there? I just showed up and did my job." North by Northwest!!!????

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[–] Doghouse (447) 5 years ago

"I am wondering where the Judy Garland /Star is Born material came from. A book about Garland? Or the movie?"
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Mostly from Ron Haver, who spearheaded the 1981-83 effort to restore the film to its original length, and published a book about both the production and the restoration in 1988.

It was he who was the director of film programs at LACMA from the '70s - '90s, and organized the weeks-long Hitchcock festival there in '73. Fabulous event at which, if memory serves, everything extant that Hitchcock had ever directed - film and TV - was shown, along with matinee programs of documentaries, and lectures dissecting, with on-screen aids, various aspects of his creative and technical styles.

It was at the opening night screening of Vertigo that Hitchcock and James Stewart came and did an audience Q&A (moderated by Haver) about all their work together.

I've told this story before about that night. One questioner noted a particular pose of the silhouetted figure of Scotty as he falls through his nightmare, and that Stewart had adopted the same pose at the fadeout as he stands on the ledge of the bell tower.

Hitchcock's shrugging response: "That must have been a choice the actor made." Another example of Hitchcock's on again/off again relationship with detail. And "the actor," of course, was sitting right next to him, unfazed and offering no amplification or remark.

But what was memorable about it was that Hitchcock referred to him as "Jimmy" in the context of offscreen anecdotes ("When Jimmy and I were in London…"), but as only "the actor" in the context of anything appearing onscreen in the finished films ("We see the actor going from one official to the next trying to explain what's about to happen..."). And with which, "the actor," "Jimmy," seemed completely comfortable.

Once committed to celluloid, he became little more than a prop.

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[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

"I am wondering where the Judy Garland /Star is Born material came from. A book about Garland? Or the movie?"
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Mostly from Ron Haver, who spearheaded the 1981-83 effort to restore the film to its original length, and published a book about both the production and the restoration in 1988.

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Aha. I figured something like that. I am reminded that the restoration of A Star Is Born is one of the great stories of "the afterlife of movies." With entire scenes missing and/or recreated only by stills, the Star is Born restoration was a more difficult project than simply "restoring everything that is already there" that was done with Vertigo.

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It was he who was the director of film programs at LACMA from the '70s - '90s, and organized the weeks-long Hitchcock festival there in '73. Fabulous event at which, if memory serves, everything extant that Hitchcock had ever directed - film and TV - was shown, along with matinee programs of documentaries, and lectures dissecting, with on-screen aids, various aspects of his creative and technical styles.

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I have my own personal story about that, which is nice but not as nice as your actually ATTENDING this event.

In my case, I had not yet moved back to LA (folks may note that I moved back and forth to that city over a 30 year period). I lived in another town in another part of the state.

However, my father knew a man who worked at MCA-Universal(they had worked together in a previous workplace) and that man gave my father the PROGRAM from that event with a note: "I thought your son might be interested in this."

What amazed me was my realization that my father must have told this man that I was a Hitchcock buff(which I very much was, crazily so, at that young age) and this man remembered me when he had access to that program. I had no idea my father had noticed my "Hitchcock jones."

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[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

It was at the opening night screening of Vertigo that Hitchcock and James Stewart came and did an audience Q&A (moderated by Haver) about all their work together.

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You got to go?

See, all I've got is that Family Plot premiere in '76. And crashing Hitchcock's office in '75. And standing outside his memorial service in '80. I was back in LA then.

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I've told this story before about that night. One questioner noted a particular pose of the silhouetted figure of Scotty as he falls through his nightmare, and that Stewart had adopted the same pose at the fadeout as he stands on the ledge of the bell tower.

Hitchcock's shrugging response: "That must have been a choice the actor made." Another example of Hitchcock's on again/off again relationship with detail. And "the actor," of course, was sitting right next to him, unfazed and offering no amplification or remark.

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Ha. As often is the case, the viewer/audience member is more astute about the movie moment than the actor or director. I guess that happens a lot. I recall Joseph Cotton saying -- only about 30 years after making it -- that when he was asked questions about Shadow of a Doubt, he'd say "sorry, that was years ago. I don't remember a thing about working on it." REALLY?

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[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

But what was memorable about it was that Hitchcock referred to him as "Jimmy" in the context of offscreen anecdotes ("When Jimmy and I were in London…"), but as only "the actor" in the context of anything appearing onscreen in the finished films ("We see the actor going from one official to the next trying to explain what's about to happen..."). And with which, "the actor," "Jimmy," seemed completely comfortable.

Once committed to celluloid, he became little more than a prop.

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Sounds like Hitchcock. I recall his remark to Bogdanovich about working with Anthony Perkins and Martin Balsam on Psycho:

"Tony and Balsam are intelligent men, you can't really direct them, you leave them to work things out."

"Tony" = a major star, a personal friend of a great director.

"Balsam" = a guy who just did a job...Hitchcock respected his work, but they weren't going to be pals.

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[–] Doghouse (447) 5 years ago

"You got to go?"
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I guess I must've been taking vacation time, because I practically lived at that festival: the matinees day after day; attending screenings almost every night. It was Hitchcock nirvana, and I gorged on it (pardon the mixed metaphors).
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"See, all I've got is that Family Plot premiere in '76. And crashing Hitchcock's office in '75. And standing outside his memorial service in '80. I was back in LA then."
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Don't forget about finding the Family Plot stage. And I've reread your accounts of the premiere so many times that your memories have almost superseded my own (I do go back and revisit some of the archived threads from time to time). It's so cool that we have that shared experience, if from different perspectives.
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"I recall Joseph Cotton saying -- only about 30 years after making it -- that when he was asked questions about Shadow of a Doubt, he'd say "sorry, that was years ago. I don't remember a thing about working on it." REALLY?"
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I can buy it. My only acting experience was a half-dozen shows in high school, and about as many in community theater or for friends' college film or video school projects through the '70s. My recollections are nothing more than the briefest momentary flashes of some, and absolutely nothing of others. And Cotten was on the stage/screen for over 40 years. Just another day at the office (?).

I briefly spoke with him in the lobby of the Nuart Theater when he was there for a screening of one of his films, but which one and what either of us said is also lost in the mists of time.

That's another reason I so enjoy your recalled experiences. I can imagine them so easily, and for some reason, I can retain things I've read better than things I did. Weird.

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[–] MizhuB (165) 5 years ago

On YouTube, you can find a series(well, different people make them) of "gaffes in movies." Many movies have a LOT of gaffes.

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I love watching those YouTube gaffes. Even for movies I haven't seen.

It's seemed to me that many movies made in the 40's or 50's are full of them. There are a lot shots including things like a close-up of a man scratching his head, and in the very next shot, his hands are at his side.

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[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

It's seemed to me that many movies made in the 40's or 50's are full of them. There are a lot shots including things like a close-up of a man scratching his head, and in the very next shot, his hands are at his side.

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Well, there were a lot of "Bs" made a breakneck speed in those decades and suppose continuity was a luxury that couldn't be afforded.

I think a couple of "gaffes" in Psycho are crew members being reflected in the car window at California Charlie's and on a window at the Bates Motel as Sam and Lila walk the porch in daytime. Well, I never saw those gaffes in any viewings of Psyhco, and it is HARD to see those crew members even if you are looking for them...they are blurry figures.

In my favorite Kirk Douglas movie(and his), Lonely are the Brave, he is having a dramatic talk with ex-lover Gena Rowlands outside, near her car. You can see the crew member reflected in the car window, realizing he's reflected, and slowly lowering himself to get out of the shot. But its still there only if you look hard.

What's "sweet" about all this is the moviemakers belief that for these "fake stories about fake people" to FEEL real...the telltale clues of movie-making should be removed whenever possible.

Something about the suspension of disbelief....

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[–] MizhuB (165) 5 years ago

Let's keep in mind that, on Psycho, rather than send the second unit crew back to Phoenix to film the streets without Xmas decorations, Hitchcock simply slapped the title "Friday December 11" on the film and Psycho rather instantly became "wrong" -- no other Xmas decorations in the movie, no Xmas trees, nobody talks about Xmas. Hitchcock "could live with that."

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And let's not forget the fact that when Lowrey enters the office, he says, 'It's as hot as fresh milk! You girls oughtta get your boss to Air Condition you up! He can afford it today.'

I've never been to Phoenix, but I doubt that in early December, nobody would be walking around wearing so much as a light jacket, and a day being referred to 'As hot as fresh milk.'

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[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago


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And let's not forget the fact that when Lowrey enters the office, he says, 'It's as hot as fresh milk! You girls oughtta get your boss to Air Condition you up! He can afford it today.'

I've never been to Phoenix, but I doubt that in early December, nobody would be walking around wearing so much as a light jacket, and a day being referred to 'As hot as fresh milk.'

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Indeed, Stefano's published screenplay specifies up front that the Psycho story takes place in "late summer." So a whole segment on Phoenix heat and no air conditioning fit THAT timing for the story.

I've been in San Diego in the summer when it was 80 degrees, so MAYBE Phoenix could duplicate that. But summer in Phoenix is REALLY hot -- I have been there in July. So Cassidy's lines fit the "late summer" script that Psyhco was.

Its known that Hitchcock pretty much invested his own money in Psycho and was determined to keep costs down. I assume on the shoestring budget of Psycho, Hitchcock couldn't bring himself to the costs of flying a second unit back to Phoenix to film background plates for another day. So "Friday, December 11" entered film history, along with Marion dying on Saturday December 12, Arbogast dying one week later on Saturday December 19, Norman being captured on Sunday, December 20, and the psychiatrist scene taking place on Sunday night, Decembe 20, in a room with "17" on the calendar(gaffe, or just in the story the pages haven't been pulled over the weekend?)

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[–] Doghouse (447) 5 years ago

"Getting that green glow just right must have been the devil's own time of it. The result: movie history on a grand scale(helped immensely by Herrmann and the two actors.)"
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From the look of it, my surmise has always been that, in the end, it was aided by some in-the-lab "fog effect" work in post.

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[–] MizhuB (165) 5 years ago

From the look of it, my surmise has always been that, in the end, it was aided by some in-the-lab "fog effect" work in post.
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I agree. As much as I love the movie (and I do), that shot has always looked very fake to me. But I just go with it. Hitch was always mostly about the visuals. I've read that he always saw movies as 'Pictures without words.'

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[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

From the look of it, my surmise has always been that, in the end, it was aided by some in-the-lab "fog effect" work in post.

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Yes. Likely so.

You know, I prefer NXNW and Psycho in the Hitchcock canon to Vertigo before them. But Vertigo has its own "effects" and great moments. Judy/Madeleine emerging from the bathroom -- and Herrmann's all-encompassing classical love music...is a moment of great, incredible and perverse power that NXNW and Psycho do NOT have. (But then, they aren't supposed to). This is the accomplishment of Vertigo alone in the Hitchcock canon...and that's another reason to be awed by Hitchcock's "variety of approaches' to his work. Its also a reason that even if I like NXNW and Psycho better, I DO like Vertigo -- love would be a better word -- and when I am in ITS world, I respond accordingly to ITS power.

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[–] Doghouse (447) 5 years ago

Here's the part that strikes me about this story: the shot on Perkins is so tight, and he (and the camera) whip around so fast as he backs up against the wall, that the picture being knocked off can't actually be seen in the shot.

I always assumed it was planned, as you can't tell it's fallen until the closeup of it landing down at his feet. It's typical of so many little "staccato accent" moments of picture and sound editing to be found in Hitchcock's films going back decades before. Which makes it all the more delicious a story, not only for his acceptance of the suggestion, but for incorporating it in such a way as to make it look as though it was conceived from the get-go with as much precision as, say, any edited-down-to-the-frame shot in the shower murder.

And here's a wild, albeit educated, guess: the likelihood is that the insert of the picture was done at some later time, and those aren't even Perkins's feet seen in the shot. It's unusual to use the high-priced talent in that way. An example from another Hitchcock picture is the quick closeup insert of Jeff placing the flashbulbs in his lap in Rear Window: those are clearly not Stewart's hands.

One of my favorite stories about It's a Mad...World is stuntman Carey Loftin's about Kramer finding him drinking in the hotel bar one evening, and asking him gravely, "Have you looked at the call sheet for tomorrow morning?"

"No, what do I have to do?"

Kramer answered, "Let me put it this way: if I were scheduled for what you are in the morning, I'd be up in my room asleep right now."

Loftin dutifully paid his tab and retired. The next morning, he discovered his foot was doubling for Durante's for the bucket-kicking shot. Loftin finished the story by adding, "From then on, I always checked the next day's call sheet."

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[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

Here's the part that strikes me about this story: the shot on Perkins is so tight, and he (and the camera) whip around so fast as he backs up against the wall, that the picture being knocked off can't actually be seen in the shot.

I always assumed it was planned, as you can't tell it's fallen until the closeup of it landing down at his feet.

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Well, maybe Perkins knocked the picture off and THEN told Hitchcock "how about a close-up of it on the floor?" A second take wouldn't even be needed....

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[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

It's typical of so many little "staccato accent" moments of picture and sound editing to be found in Hitchcock's films going back decades before.

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Yes. Most movies (good ones, that is) have such moments of sight and sound, but Hitchcock movies are especially flavorful. Its as if he studied his scripts and shots to see where a particularly evocative sound effect could be added.

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Which makes it all the more delicious a story, not only for his acceptance of the suggestion, but for incorporating it in such a way as to make it look as though it was conceived from the get-go with as much precision as, say, any edited-down-to-the-frame shot in the shower murder.

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Yep. See, we never would have known. And I tell you, I'm heading for my copy of the Stefano script when I can. If it has the bird picture falling, then Perkins was either not telling the truth, or -- the script was doctored after the fact to add effects.

I'm hoping its not in the script.

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[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

And here's a wild, albeit educated, guess: the likelihood is that the insert of the picture was done at some later time, and those aren't even Perkins's feet seen in the shot. It's unusual to use the high-priced talent in that way.

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Yeah, I've always felt that hand and foot doubles -- as opposed to body doubles -- are a real Hollywood weirdness. OF COURSE the big star isn't needed. But hopefully the feet/hands match.

Here's one: A close up on Cary Grant's hands writing the note to Eva Marie Saint no the matchbook when he is hiding in Vandamm's Mount Rushmore lair. The hands only are shown, they are tan, a bit hairy -- I always wonder: did Cary Grant agree to do that? Probably not, but they seem like Cary Grant hands.

And of course, during the shower scene, key shots are of Marion's FEET, usually with blood spilling around them. Likely the same body double(Marli Renfro) offered her feet for posterity.

One wonders why QT didn't remake Psycho. HE likes barefoot shots...

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An example from another Hitchcock picture is the quick closeup insert of Jeff placing the flashbulbs in his lap in Rear Window: those are clearly not Stewart's hands.

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Hmm...I'll have to go take a look.

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[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

We can figure that a shot of "Norman's feet near bird picture" was dictated to the continuity girl(that's what they called them back then) and added to an ongoing list of such shots to be done "at another time."

I'm reminded that for all of Hitchcock's stories about falling ill with the flu on the day that Arbogast's staircase climb was shot(he let Hilton Green film the shot, we are told, but only the staircase climb, not the murder), the Rebello book notes that Martin Balsam was brought back to work on the staircase scene AFTER the body of Psycho had been filmed(he shot the murder scene in January; this was in February.) I've always figured that Hitchcock brought Balsam back to make sure that HITCHCOCK re-shot the early footage on the staircase scene. Arbogast in the foyer just looks too profound to me.

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[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

One of my favorite stories about It's a Mad...World is stuntman Carey Loftin's about Kramer finding him drinking in the hotel bar one evening, and asking him gravely, "Have you looked at the call sheet for tomorrow morning?"

"No, what do I have to do?"

Kramer answered, "Let me put it this way: if I were scheduled for what you are in the morning, I'd be up in my room asleep right now."

Loftin dutifully paid his tab and retired. The next morning, he discovered his foot was doubling for Durante's for the bucket-kicking shot. Loftin finished the story by adding, "From then on, I always checked the next day's call sheet."

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Well, movie makers are practical jokers, aren't they? And film directors like to wield their power.

Interesting. As I recall, that foot had to kick that can with power, distance and accuracy. I would figure a trained stunt man would be sought for the shot.

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[–] Doghouse (447) 5 years ago

"A close up on Cary Grant's hands writing the note to Eva Marie Saint no the matchbook when he is hiding in Vandamm's Mount Rushmore lair. The hands only are shown, they are tan, a bit hairy -- I always wonder: did Cary Grant agree to do that? Probably not, but they seem like Cary Grant hands."
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I've noticed that. They DO look like Grant's hands. I got two theories.

The first involves Grant's and Hitchcock's mutual trust and attention to detail. We know the story about Grant checking out the 20th Century Limited drawing room set, telling Hitch, "You can't shoot on that set as it stands," and Hitchcock ordering it rebuilt on purely on Grant's say so and to his specs.

I pause here to interject the more famous story about Claudette Colbert balking at showing her leg in It Happened One Night, Capra hiring a double for the shot, and Colbert reversing herself when she didn't consider the double's gams shapely enough. That allowed Capra to do something he couldn't have with a double: showing Colbert pulling up her skirt first in a full shot before cutting to the closeup.

So Grant's attention to detail, as well as consciousness of his image right down to his fingertips, may have been acute enough that he made himself available for the insert. And perhaps Stewart's vanity didn't extend that far.

The second goes along similar lines, but instead involves only Grant's theoretical insistence that a hand double's own appendages look enough like his. Or maybe even better. One also has to consider what those hands were required to do: one writing quickly and legibly on a matchbook cover held by the other. My handwriting's terrible enough on a nice, flat, solid surface, so I could never do that. But then, I'm not Cary Grant. Or his hand double.

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[–] MizhuB (165) 5 years ago

If you'll permit, he doesn't hang the picture back up until after he's wrapped up Marion's body and taken it out to the car, and has re-entered the room to remove all of her belongings.

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I WILL permit, absolutely. Even as much as I supposedly "know" Psycho(frame by frame? no, not really), I can't remember everything in it.

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Same here. As many times as I've seen PSYCHO and think I remember it, there's always someone else who remembers more. Doghouse is absolutely right. As soon as he mentioned it, I thought, 'Yes! That's how it went...'

I haven't watched PSYCHO in 4 or 5 years. I guess I don't remember things as precisely as I thought I did.

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[–] Doghouse (447) 5 years ago

Thanks, MizhuB.

My recall of analytical things like sequence is not always so hot, but two things about that particular section of Norman "wip[ing] away all traces of the crime he was convinced his mother had committed" stick in memory. The first is the ominous three-note music cue that accompanies Norman's final entry into Cabin One (the same one we hear at the end just after, "Why, she wouldn't even harm a fly").

The second is the in-the-moment acting Perkins does in the scene: his manner is orderly, methodical and thorough, yet the undercurrent of nervous urgency that Norman needs to keep under control is something that Perkins skillfully makes apparent. After stuffing Marion's clothes and purse into the suitcase, he glances around the room and, oh, look: there are some things over on the desk. It all looks completely unrehearsed and spontaneous. And all the while he's thinking, thinking, thinking: "Anything here? How 'bout over there?"

Even more so is his sudden notice of the picture on the rug as he heads toward the bathroom and, a moment later, spotting her belt on the bureau just outside it out of the corner of his eye. "Whoo! Almost missed that."

Performances are so often measured by big dramatics, but I always find myself noticing little, ordinary, non-verbal things that scenes call for actors to perform ("business" in theater parlance) and to make look impromptu and genuine. One of my yardsticks is anything, verbal or otherwise, that tells me not what the actor is thinking, but what the character is.

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[–] MizhuB (165) 5 years ago

Performances are so often measured by big dramatics, but I always find myself noticing little, ordinary, non-verbal things that scenes call for actors to perform ("business" in theater parlance) and to make look impromptu and genuine. One of my yardsticks is anything, verbal or otherwise, that tells me not what the actor is thinking, but what the character is.

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I absolutely know what you're talking about. And now that you've reminded me of the actual sequence of events, I agree that Perkins' performance in that scene still keeps the attention, even though he has nothing to say.

In fact, he says nothing during that entire scene, starting from when he first bursts into Marion's room until he sinks her car in the swamp. But you don't take your eyes off of him.

If he'd overacted it, I don't think it would have played as well. He played it very naturally. He behaved as Norman would. Not as Perkins playing Norman.

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[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

And I tell you, I'm heading for my copy of the Stefano script when I can. If it has the bird picture falling, then Perkins was either not telling the truth, or -- the script was doctored after the fact to add effects.

I'm hoping its not in the script.

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I've since read the pages in the script and....the bird picture falling is NOT in the script. No mention of the picture, no falling of the picture, no picking up of the picture, no re-mounting of the picture.

So Perkins' story is ....corroborated!

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[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

I absolutely know what you're talking about. And now that you've reminded me of the actual sequence of events, I agree that Perkins' performance in that scene still keeps the attention, even though he has nothing to say.

In fact, he says nothing during that entire scene, starting from when he first bursts into Marion's room until he sinks her car in the swamp. But you don't take your eyes off of him.

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And here we have another reason that Anthony Perkins was ROBBED at the 1960 Oscars...not even a NOMINATION for work that proved to be very carefully controlled and compelling on first watch...and became classic in the decades after.

By contrast, in Welles "The Trial" of 1962 -- admittedly playing a desperate, possibly wrongly accused man-- Perkins overacts and jumps around, et.

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If he'd overacted it, I don't think it would have played as well. He played it very naturally. He behaved as Norman would. Not as Perkins playing Norman.

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Indeed. Perkins found a key(if not THE key) to playing Norman Bates: keep it low key, keep it simple. We fill in the blanks.

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[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

Its pretty amazing, that clean-up and burial scene.

I believe it runs 9 minutes with no dialogue. And only Perkins on the screen.

Well not ONLY Perkins...the presence of the corpse of Marion Crane(body double or no) is part of the horror of Psycho, apart from the two murders and the climax. How unsettling -how sickening -- that corpse must have been in 1960.

I've joked that only Alfred Hitchcock could make 9 minutes of housework fascinating. But of course, its the grim details of the scene that linger: Norman washing the blood off his hands, Norman wrapping Marion in a shower curtain and clutching her tight to his face. Norman carryhing Marion -- like a bride over the threshold -- out to the car. And then, with Marion in the trunk, all that "follow up clean up" -- the room key on the floor; the suitcase and clothes...the belt. The newspaper(the presence of that item maintains suspense through the entire scene even as Marion's corpse maintains terror.)

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[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

My recall of analytical things like sequence is not always so hot, but two things about that particular section of Norman "wip[ing] away all traces of the crime he was convinced his mother had committed" stick in memory.

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Funny how that psychiatrist's lines seem so perfectly written and fitting...one at a time.

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The first is the ominous three-note music cue that accompanies Norman's final entry into Cabin One (the same one we hear at the end just after, "Why, she wouldn't even harm a fly").

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I call this the "three notes of madness." The film famously climaxes with them, and when Arbogast goes up to the house(and his doom), they occur TWICE: once at the edge of the motel porch as he beholds the Bates House yet again; and again when he reaches the porch OF the Bates House. Its as if the three notes of madness seal his doom TWICE: once when he beholds the house(doomed); once when he reaches the porch of the house(REALLY doomed.)

I trust we know that those same three notes of madness come at the very end of Taxi Driver(also scored by Herrmann, his last score before dying in 1975, though released before another film with one of his scores, Obsession.)

I trust we know that those same three notes of madness occur in Star Wars about 2/3 in, when our three heroes emerge from a grating after storm troopers walk over it.





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[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

The second is the in-the-moment acting Perkins does in the scene: his manner is orderly, methodical and thorough, yet the undercurrent of nervous urgency that Norman needs to keep under control is something that Perkins skillfully makes apparent.

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His jaw is nicely tight at times, like he is grinding his teeth to hold back the nausea and concentrate on the tasks at hand. (Which reminds me -- at some public showing of Psycho where there were some wise guys in the audience cracking jokes at the screen, when Sam confronts Norman across the motel counter as Norman's jaw clenches tight and actually wobbles, when Sam says "40 thousand is a lot of money, what could you do with it?

A guy in the audience yelled "YOU COULD BUY A NEW JAW!" Funny, I guess.

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After stuffing Marion's clothes and purse into the suitcase, he glances around the room and, oh, look: there are some things over on the desk. It all looks completely unrehearsed and spontaneous. And all the while he's thinking, thinking, thinking: "Anything here? How 'bout over there?"

Even more so is his sudden notice of the picture on the rug as he heads toward the bathroom and, a moment later, spotting her belt on the bureau just outside it out of the corner of his eye. "Whoo! Almost missed that."

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I think I had to see Psycho a few times before I noticed Norman notice the belt...its a last bit of care regarding an object he might have missed.

And of course, he takes the newspaper -- and never opens it. Hitchcock was "The Master of Suspense," and Psycho demonstrates that he could keep several strains of suspense going at once: the BIG suspense of Arbogast climbing the stairs to his doom, the low-key suspense of US knowing but Norman NOT, that a fortune is in that newspaper. Hitch had a great definition of suspense: "Giving the audience information that the characters on screen don't have." WE know a killer is waiting for Arbogast at the top of the stairs. WE know that there's $39,300 in that newspaper. Arbogast and Norman...don't.

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[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

Performances are so often measured by big dramatics, but I always find myself noticing little, ordinary, non-verbal things that scenes call for actors to perform ("business" in theater parlance) and to make look impromptu and genuine.

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I consider so much of Hitchcock's great work to be the "deadpan work," the cool and low-key stuff that he could accumulate in great detail simply by breaking a scene into close-ups. He also got his actors to be deadpan -- at least his best actors: Grant in everything; Perkins, Leigh and Balsam in Psycho.

One reason I'm less warm towards The Birds and Marnie is that they focus too often on hysteria. I prefer the cool, deadpan Hitchcock scenes.

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One of my yardsticks is anything, verbal or otherwise, that tells me not what the actor is thinking, but what the character is.

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Hitchcock did a lot of that, and his best actors knew how to ACT it. I tell ya, in Van Sant's Psycho, some high-falutin' actors like Julianne Moore and William H. Macy seem to have trouble doing the requisite "silent acting" that Vera Miles and Martin Balsam did so well. Their expressions are too false and busy , sometimes.

And what IS Norman thinking as he cleans up? Well, indeed, mainly he's looking to eliminate every trace of Marion Crane -- even as(I suppose, once the twist is known), keeping his mind off the realities of the murder.


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[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

I've noticed that. They DO look like Grant's hands.

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Isn't that weird? Perhaps there is a good look at his real hands in the medium/master shot of Grant.

Also -- though there are some cutaways to Grant's face -- we look at those hands a LONG time. Perhaps Hitch felt we should see the real hands.

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I got two theories.

The first involves Grant's and Hitchcock's mutual trust and attention to detail. We know the story about Grant checking out the 20th Century Limited drawing room set, telling Hitch, "You can't shoot on that set as it stands," and Hitchcock ordering it rebuilt on purely on Grant's say so and to his specs.

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That story works for me!

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The second goes along similar lines, but instead involves only Grant's theoretical insistence that a hand double's own appendages look enough like his. Or maybe even better.

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THAT story works for me!

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One also has to consider what those hands were required to do: one writing quickly and legibly on a matchbook cover held by the other. My handwriting's terrible enough on a nice, flat, solid surface, so I could never do that. But then, I'm not Cary Grant. Or his hand double

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I recall it looking hard to do as well -- perhaps Hitchcock basked in how interesting this shot really was -- the hands, the neat handwriting, the writing being done on a MATCHBOOK.

But hey, one year and one film later, Hitchcock gave us another famous hand close-up. Just one hand, this time.

The hand of Norman/Norma Bates with the fly crawling over it. The hand seems just delicate enough to really be that of Anthony Perkins...but we don't know, do we?

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[–] Doghouse (447) 5 years ago

A show of hands.
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"But hey, one year and one film later, Hitchcock gave us another famous hand close-up. Just one hand, this time.

The hand of Norman/Norma Bates with the fly crawling over it. The hand seems just delicate enough to really be that of Anthony Perkins...but we don't know, do we?"
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I'm gonna seem to contradict myself a bit here with regard to what I said about using "the high-priced talent in that way." Feet unseen within a pair of shoes is one thing; hands are another (my observation about Stewart's in Rear Window - by which I stick - notwithstanding; sometimes, things just slip by).

Hitchcock films are full of meaningful closeups of hands: Ivor Novello's handcuffed ones in The Lodger; Sylvia Sydney's picking up the carving knife in Sabotage; Robert Cummings's restraining Norman Lloyd's from setting off the bomb or gripping the sleeve in Saboteur; Teresa Wright's displaying the ring in Shadow Of A Doubt; Grant's reaching for the steering wheel in Notorious; Robert Walker's straining to retrieve the dropped lighter in Strangers On A Train; Grace Kelly's loosely handling the wheel of her speeding car and Grant's nervously fidgety ones in To Catch A Thief; Henry Fonda inspecting his fingerprint-ink-stained ones in The Wrong Man; Grant's gently restraining Eve Marie Saint's as it holds her suitcase in North By Northwest; Sean Connery's reassuring gestures toward Tippi Hedren as he tries to get the gun from her in Marnie. That's already too many to mention among even too many more others.

And now this question is going to sound sexist: are different men's hands more distinguishable than different women's? Are those really Kelly's gloved ones in To Catch A Thief? Is that actually Janet Leigh's clawing at the tile or gripping the shower curtain? No opinion.

cont'd...

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[–] Doghouse (447) 5 years ago

And where women's feet are concerned, even in shoes, the rules change a bit, as the legs attached to them are so often involved. Hauling Kim Novak up some wooden stairs for a from-the-knees-down insert of her feet being dragged in Vertigo is some pretty rough treatment for a name actress on loan from another studio. As is an ankle being grabbed by Barry Foster, sending the actress sprawling, even for not-much-known-outside-England Barbara Leigh Hunt.

And that's without going into the peculiar Hitchcock pathology of breaking down female players. I'm going to guess that all those disembodied limbs during the final attack in The Birds are Hedren's, given the stories about shooting the sequence, but otherwise, again no opinion.

An interjection: there's a 1935 film called Reckless that required non-dancer Jean Harlow's participation in two dance sequences. In one, closeups of her and her partner are intercut with longshots of the partner with a dance double. In the other, a shot begins on a closeup of Harlow while taps are heard, and as the camera tilts from her head down to her feet, there's a quick dissolve mid-body to the dance double's skillfully tapping ones. Ah, Hollywood movie magic.

Back to Perkins: with his distinctively bony physical type, not just any hand would do. And I'm not even sure it's the kind of insert that could be palmed off on an AD. The hand seems quite precisely posed, and then you have the matter of getting the fly to perform and capturing it on film. I'd like to think that Perkins was dedicated enough to sit still for that for the duration required, particularly for a Hitchcock project (and even if done by an AD).

How I do love minutiae.

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[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

And that's without going into the peculiar Hitchcock pathology of breaking down female players. I'm going to guess that all those disembodied limbs during the final attack in The Birds are Hedren's, given the stories about shooting the sequence, but otherwise, again no opinion.

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Well , Hedren herself said that she felt Hitchcock went for an unknown -- her -- for Melanie in order to have an actress he could subject to all that torture.

But this: I'm old enough to remember Hedren going on the Today show to promote The Birds and BASKING in the promotional story of her needing to be hospitalized briefly after that bird attack scene. I don't think she was physically hurt in it, but certainly scared (I would be, with birds tied to me by strings.)

That said, it was pretty grueling for Janet Leigh to film that shower scene(and to lie on the floor) and Balsam reportedly hurt his back filming the staircase fall. Eva Marie Saint got a deep cut on her wrist on the Mount Rushmore set in NXNW which stayed with her as a scar to this day. In short, actors can get manhandled -- and woman handled -- on movie sets.

Don't get me started on what William Friedkin did to his players on The Exorcist...

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[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

An interjection: there's a 1935 film called Reckless that required non-dancer Jean Harlow's participation in two dance sequences. In one, closeups of her and her partner are intercut with longshots of the partner with a dance double. In the other, a shot begins on a closeup of Harlow while taps are heard, and as the camera tilts from her head down to her feet, there's a quick dissolve mid-body to the dance double's skillfully tapping ones. Ah, Hollywood movie magic.

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Nifty stuff. Relatedly, I could have sworn that Paul Newman really did some card tricks in The Sting til one time I saw the scene and saw the "blip" shot between a pro(his HANDS) and the tilt up to Newman's face.



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[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

Back to Perkins: with his distinctively bony physical type, not just any hand would do. And I'm not even sure it's the kind of insert that could be palmed off on an AD. The hand seems quite precisely posed, and then you have the matter of getting the fly to perform and capturing it on film. I'd like to think that Perkins was dedicated enough to sit still for that for the duration required, particularly for a Hitchcock project (and even if done by an AD).

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Probably so. I looked at the scene again, and there is even a precision to how Norman's hand sticks out of the blanket in the long travelling shot up to Perkins in the cell. Perkins hand is pretty visible there, and bony. Perhaps Hitchcock himself directed the final close-up with the fly; it wasn't a throwaway insert. And don't they have "fly wranglers" for these things. Perhaps a few flies died...

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How I do love minutiae.

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Me, too. And Hitchcock, three. In spades.

Indeed, I think part of the eternal allure of Hitchcock is all that detail work in his films. He wasn't big on letting his actors just hang out in medium shot and shoot the breeze(ala Rio Bravo.) Everything was broken down into detail.

In Psycho: how about that shot of an entire uneaten take-out lunch(sandwich on paper plate, soft drink) in the hotel room in Psycho. Sam's line is "You never did bother to eat your lunch." We SEE the lunch. The connection is made: Marion's lunch...was Sam. But there is something to seeing that lunch in all its sad little glory that gives "oopmph" to this scene.

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[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

A show of hands.

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There's your nifty title for the essay you could craft out of your study of hands in Hitchcock.
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"But hey, one year and one film later, Hitchcock gave us another famous hand close-up. Just one hand, this time.

The hand of Norman/Norma Bates with the fly crawling over it. The hand seems just delicate enough to really be that of Anthony Perkins...but we don't know, do we?"
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I'm gonna seem to contradict myself a bit here with regard to what I said about using "the high-priced talent in that way." Feet unseen within a pair of shoes is one thing; hands are another (my observation about Stewart's in Rear Window - by which I stick - notwithstanding; sometimes, things just slip by).

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My guess is that 90 percent of the time, a hand double is used, and that the other 10 percent, either the actor is method and DEMANDS their their hands be used, or the actor is low paid and has to cut the cost of a hand double by using his/her own hands.

One can almost picture a "hand double casting director," with perhaps a set stable of hands: tan hands, pale hands, thick hands, slender hands, calloused hands(for a cowboy movie or war picture) etc.

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And now this question is going to sound sexist: are different men's hands more distinguishable than different women's? Are those really Kelly's gloved ones in To Catch A Thief? Is that actually Janet Leigh's clawing at the tile or gripping the shower curtain? No opinion.

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A fair question. Er...one pretty hand is much like another? I do believe that it has to be Marli Renfro's hand gripping at the shower curtain, because her blurry breasts are in the same shot. I expect Leigh wasn't used for the (great) close-up on the splayed hand clawing at the tile(it looks like a starfish.)

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[–] Doghouse (447) 5 years ago

"One can almost picture a "hand double casting director," with perhaps a set stable of hands: tan hands, pale hands, thick hands, slender hands, calloused hands(for a cowboy movie or war picture) etc."
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I'm willing to bet that's actually the case. I know they do it for advertising.

I used to know a guy, darkly handsome and vaguely exotic-looking, who was a print model. Below the images on his composite sheet was some text comprising a thumbnail CV: "6-1. 170. Black/green. Available for fashion or product. Excellent hands."

I questioned him about the last phrase, and he explained that agents and advertisers had categorical grades for hands, and that his had indeed been judged to be in the "excellent" category.

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[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

Hitchcock films are full of meaningful closeups of hands

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It seemed to be part of his motif -- focusing on details -- that certain body parts could take on lives of their own: Robert Walker's hand slowly straining down, down, down into the gutter looks after awhile like some sort of creature -- a spider made out of flesh! -- with too-even sausage like fingers straining.

Marion's hand suddenly slapping onto the shower tiles(again) reminds me of a starfish.

And there could be the sexual/love aspect of joined hands -- when Eva Marie Saint caresses Grant's hand as he extends his lighter, the gesture is sexual but Herrmann's old fashioned love music suggests: "these two sexual warriors will connect in love."

And Hitch certainly knew the value of hands as...murder weapons. The close up on BOTH of Uncle Charlie's hands as he flexes his fingers as if in memory of the murders they have committed...

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[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

And where women's feet are concerned, even in shoes, the rules change a bit, as the legs attached to them are so often involved.

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I'm reminded of QT's famous foot fetish and I will confess here: I know nothing from foot fetishes. Feet are feet, to me. This is an area where I feel entirely out of my depth.

On the other hand, many a Hitchcock scholar has deemed him a "fetishist" and he himself(likely trying to sound sexually sophisticated) spoke to Truffaut of the Stewart character in Vertigo and the Connery character in Marnie having a "fetish-like" obsession with their women. OK, if Hitch says so.

But I suppose Hitchcock's emphasis on feet and hands and eye close-ups, etc, could be seen as somewhat a fetish.

How about this one: Martin Landau's foot crushing and grinding down slowly on Cary Grant's hand in NXNW. I bet that was NOT Grant's hand. Except Landau told a story of how he "worried" Grant when Grant asked him to make sure to fake the foot crushing. True? I have no idea. Maybe the foot crushing in the medium shot?

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[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

Hauling Kim Novak up some wooden stairs for a from-the-knees-down insert of her feet being dragged in Vertigo is some pretty rough treatment for a name actress on loan from another studio.

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Had to be not only a double, but a stunt double.

You know, at imdb, there is a list of the doubles for Perkins, Leigh, Balsam, Miles and Gavin. These doubles generally were just used for pre-lighting purposes. In Balsam's case, his double rehearsed the attack on the staircase landing for a few nights in a row so it would be "all ready to go" when Balsam stepped in(that's why its so perfect, and that's why its not good enough in the Van Sant.)

But when possible injury is at risk -- Novak being dragged up the stairs, Leigh-Hunt being thrown to the floor -- I believe that stunt doubles were used.

I might add that the shot of Novak(Judy)'s legs being dragged up the stairs is at once classic Hitchcock "detail"(most other directors would skip it) and an indictment of Scottie's mad rage. Judy may be an accomplice to murder but...that's no way to treat a lady.

Same with Rusk, but worse -- when he grabs Brenda's ankle and she hits the floor violently, I can speak for most men in the theater: we wanted to kill Rusk. Certainly with his later actions against her. He's a disgrace to our sex.

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[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

As is an ankle being grabbed by Barry Foster, sending the actress sprawling, even for not-much-known-outside-England Barbara Leigh Hunt.

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Speaking of Barry Foster and stunt doubles -- I rented the British zombie comedy "Shaun of the Dead" once, and watched it with "pop up trivia subtitles". One was that a particular actor in a fight scene(not a zombie) was listed as "Barry Foster's stunt double in Alfred Hitchcock's Frenzy." The Shaun director was a Hitchcock fan and a Frenzy fan -- he introduced a screening of Frenzy once at Tarantino's West LA Movie Theater, The New Beverly -- and evidently wanted this noted.

I wondered: where did Barry Foster NEED a stunt double in Frenzy? I decided: when he falls out of the potato truck onto asphalt. Hey, Rusk DID just fall off a potato truck!

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[–] Doghouse (447) 5 years ago

"I wondered: where did Barry Foster NEED a stunt double in Frenzy? I decided: when he falls out of the potato truck onto asphalt. Hey, Rusk DID just fall off a potato truck!"
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Hah! But at least not the turnip truck.

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[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

Hah! But at least not the turnip truck.

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Oops...that's the phrase, isn't it?

I think I've used potato truck over the years in honor of Frenzy.

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[–] Doghouse (447) 5 years ago

"I think I've used potato truck over the years in honor of Frenzy."
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Y'know, I think I may borrow it, with your permission. I like the sound of it better, and also when people modify old sayings with new references.

I wonder if anyone's ever used a sight gag of someone actually falling off a turnip truck in a film. Maybe a silent comedy. It would work for introducing the kind of naïve bumpkins played by Harry Langdon or perhaps Harold Lloyd.

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[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

Y'know, I think I may borrow it, with your permission.

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You are most welcome to!

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I like the sound of it better, and also when people modify old sayings with new references.

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And seriously, I realize that I may have been saying "potato truck" for decades now having imprinted the Frenzy potato truck scene into my consciousness.

About which:

I recall the Time reviewer giving Frenzy a positive review(not the "very best" Newsweek rave, but a good one) and then doing an interview with Hitchcock in which the reviewer said "the potato truck scene in Frenzy is sure to be enshrined by the Cahierists"(French movie buffs writing in that magazine.)

I read that before seeing Frenzy, and so I waited anxiously for the "big potato truck scene," which was certainly lengthy, but very odd(its an amalgamation of Bruno reaching in the grate for the lighter and Norman cleaning up Marion's body.)

Some time later, I read(years after the fact) Gary Arnold of the Washington Post's PAN of Frenzy(he came in late and said all the raves were wrong. Sneaky.) Said Arnold: "I don't think the sight of Barry Foster wrestling around with a corpse in the back of a potato truck is reputable as prime Hitchcock."

Eh, maybe. Maybe not. Its no crop duster scene or Rushmore chase or even a good juicy murder scene. But the potato truck scene IS in the tradition of body disposal and evidence retrieval.


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[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

I've always liked the potato truck scene not for the "narrative"(its pretty straightforward; Rusk has to get that tiepin from Babs' dead hand), but rather for the sound effects(the grinding gears of the truck); the fast edits, and above all the COLORS of the scene: Rusk's butterscotch hair against the blue night sky, the mix of green and a kind of yellow-gold with the potatoes.

And this: whereas the murder of Brenda was shown in all its detail and horror, we never saw the murder of the heroine Babs. But now we have to spend all this time with Babs as a corpse, and even though the scene has a comic tone(Rusk keeps failing to get the pin), it has a deep strain of both horror, and above all, sadness. We thought Babs -- like Lila in Psycho -- would survive. She doesn't. Frenzy is very bleak.

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[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

I wonder if anyone's ever used a sight gag of someone actually falling off a turnip truck in a film. Maybe a silent comedy. It would work for introducing the kind of naïve bumpkins played by Harry Langdon or perhaps Harold Lloyd.

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I wouldn't doubt it. So many things begin as "specific to their time" and just grow over the years into mythic phraseology.

Like "In like Flynn." Errol, I believe. A long time ago...

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[–] Doghouse (447) 5 years ago

"Said Arnold: 'I don't think the sight of Barry Foster wrestling around with a corpse in the back of a potato truck is reputable as prime Hitchcock.'"
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There's one in every crowd, huh?

I remember thinking in 1972 that this was pure Hitchcock, even if unprecedented in the graphic presentation of its dark humor not allowed in earlier eras. This was still the man who had devoted an extended and detailed sequence - however discreetly depicted - to the disposal of a woman's nude corpse twelve years prior, and had already built two entire films around the central device of an inconvenient decedent in earlier, more genteel periods.

As you say: "tradition."

It was as though the potato truck sequence was one toward which Hitchcock had been inching for decades, having gone to the brink of what was permissible in 1948, 1955 or 1960, and which was inevitable with all restrictive shackles finally thrown off. And that he was able to mine some of the biggest - albeit most uncomfortable - laughs puts the crowning Hitchcock stamp on it. The Car That Wouldn't Sink all over again.

And yet, still handled with a degree of delicacy: like the shower scene, context and editing bring reactions of distaste not to what's actually seen, but to what they make us think about. Shower and swamp rolled into one.

Let Mr. Arnold stick that in his potato sack.

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[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

"Said Arnold: 'I don't think the sight of Barry Foster wrestling around with a corpse in the back of a potato truck is reputable as prime Hitchcock.'"
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There's one in every crowd, huh?

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Yes, indeed. I read uniform raves for Frenzy in 1972 (the "comeback" was a contact high), but one Hitchcock book quoted that from the Arnold review and I tracked it down and the whole review was pretty dismissive of Hitchcock's achievement.

I'm going to get the adjectives wrong, but Arnold wrote something like "Frenzy is rather better than Hitchcock's recent films, but not profoundly better or even significantly better." He just didn't much respond to any of it.

But I recall two phrases that were "food for thought":

ONE: "One recognizes which scenes are intended to be Hitchcock set-pieces, but one waits in vain for them to BECOME Hitchcock set-pieces."

TWO: "The film seems to keep losing track of one of the hero while following the villain, and vice versa."

As to ONE, yeah, I kind of get it. The three set-pieces in Frenzy are the extended rape-murder of Brenda; the staircase shot that expresses the unseen rape-murder of Babs; and the potato truck scene. Again, not quite Rushmore or a berserk carousel; Frenzy is an old man's movie with rather "small scale" set pieces. But they ARE set-pieces, Mr. Arnold. The Brenda murder is the inverse of the shower scene: broad daylight at noon, in your office with hundreds of people nearby. It adds the style of the necktie and the new wave reality of rape(or failed rape.) The "Farewell to Babs" staircase shot is one of the greatest in Hitchcock. And the potato truck? Well, you cover it quite well.

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[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

As to TWO, well, Frenzy does feel like it "splits" between Blaney and Rusk. They only get four brief scenes together. And the Rusk scenes are the interesting ones. But...how else could that story be told? Unlike as in Strangers on a Train, where Guy knows Bruno is bad from the get-go...Blaney doesn't know that Rusk is the killer til near the very end.


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[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

I remember thinking in 1972 that this was pure Hitchcock, even if unprecedented in the graphic presentation of its dark humor not allowed in earlier eras.

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Yes, though Hitchcock had "shocked the world" with Psycho, and was now competing with a host of R-rated directors, Frenzy was still his "gloves off" statement, HIS R-rated movie and very disturbing accordingly because of his powers. It was also stylish (the neckties), atmospheric(Covent Garden and all those worker bees milling about) and funny.

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This was still the man who had devoted an extended and detailed sequence - however discreetly depicted - to the disposal of a woman's nude corpse twelve years prior, and had already built two entire films around the central device of an inconvenient decedent in earlier, more genteel periods.

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There you go. To those "in the know" about Hitchcock, the potato truck scene had those three predcessors. (Psycho, The Trouble With Harry, Rope, if I get you.)And I'd throw in Bruno straining to reach the cigarette lighter, as well.

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As you say: "tradition."

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And as Richard Schickel in Life wrote in 1972: "If Hitchcock is perfectly capable of imitating himself, he doesn't need to leave the job to a man like Peter Bogdanovich."

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It was as though the potato truck sequence was one toward which Hitchcock had been inching for decades, having gone to the brink of what was permissible in 1948, 1955 or 1960, and which was inevitable with all restrictive shackles finally thrown off. And that he was able to mine some of the biggest - albeit most uncomfortable - laughs puts the crowning Hitchcock stamp on it. The Car That Wouldn't Sink all over again.

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All over again.

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[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

I've always said that the REAL shock in Frenzy isn't the graphic murder of Brenda, but rather its how -- just like that, and NOT seen(except in a brief flashback later) -- Babs suddenly falls prey to Rusk, outta nowhere.

Because in Strangers on a Train, Miriam gets killed, but Ruth Roman lives on as the heroine. In Psycho, Marion gets killed, but Lila lives on as the heroine. We figure in Frenzy, that Brenda gets killed, and Babs WILL live on as the heroine, but NO...Hitch is at his most bleak here, all the ladies die (you could say that Babs is Arbogast -- the second murder -- but doing it to two ladies in a row really stings.)

And though we don't see Babs raped and killed as with Brenda, the presence of her nude corpse (face hidden til the end) in the potato truck scene makes sure that amidst all the black humor and cinema...we are profoundly moved. Sickened, even.

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And yet, still handled with a degree of delicacy: like the shower scene, context and editing bring reactions of distaste not to what's actually seen, but to what they make us think about. Shower and swamp rolled into one.

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Yes...and with a masterly confidence that Hitchcock had not shown since at least The Birds.

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Let Mr. Arnold stick that in his potato sack.

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Where ever he is!

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[–] Doghouse (447) 5 years ago

"I'm reminded of QT's famous foot fetish and I will confess here: I know nothing from foot fetishes. Feet are feet, to me. This is an area where I feel entirely out of my depth."
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A favorite story. Irving Thalberg was viewing dailies with Erich von Stroheim, and questioned the director's extended tracking shot of shoes lined up in a wardrobe.

"That's to establish that the character has a foot fetish," von Stroheim explained.

Thalberg answered, "It establishes this much: you have a footage fetish."

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[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

Thalberg answered, "It establishes this much: you have a footage fetish."

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THAT, I can understand. Hah! Directors Stanley Kubrick and Warren Beatty had this footage fetish, too.

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[–] [deleted] 5 years ago

Wouldn't it have been wonderful if Hitch could have been in a cameo on Psycho II? Preferably as a member of the parole board?

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[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

It would be the stiffest performance since John Gavin in "Psycho."

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