Psycho and "The Frisson"

"Frisson" is a French word, I believe. And I probably should put an accent on it somewhere.

But it is rather key to Hitchcock's filmmaking...and the classic hits of other filmmakers too. Let's take a look:

Since I don't have a dictionary handy(let alone a French dictionary) I can only illustrate "the frisson" with these examples:

PSYCHO: As Arbogast climbs the stairs, the cut to a door opening slowly, casting light on the carpeted floor.

THE BIRDS: A single bird appears in the fireplace. "Mitch?" asks Melanie (then, HUNDREDS of them flood the room via the chimney.)

NORTH BY NORTHWEST: A spoken line BECOMES "the frisson": "That's funny" "What?" "That crop duster's dusting crops where there ain't no crops."

REAR WINDOW: Jeff excitedly answers his phone in the dark, thinking he's talking to his cop pal. "Hurry! I think Thorwald's leaving!" But the line goes dead. That WAS Thorwald.

FRENZY: Close-up: Rusk's hand, plucking the tiepin from his tie, moving it to his lapel, and sticking the tiepin IN the lapel.

Yes, that's "the frisson" and its a great sensation to feel in the playing of a suspense thriller.

I'll separate one out: when I watched "Rear Window" on NBC Saturday Night at the Movies in September of 1966, if there is ONE memory I have of the experience, it is that moment when Jeff answered the phone and it clicked dead. I was so young then that a legitmate tingle went up my spine, and my nerves accelerated into high tension as the unseen Thorwald's shadow appeared in the crack of light under Jeff Jeffries door. The frission hit me in 1966...and I've never forgotten it since.

But I CONNECTED it to another frisson, in another movie, that I saw at the theater the next year: Wait Until Dark.

Sympathetic bad guy Richard Crenna has decided to leave poor blind Audrey Hepburn alone. Crenna tells Hepburn that his partner, Jack Weston, has killed the psycho amongst them(Alan Arkin) and Audrey has nothing more to worry about.

Except we -- the audience -- know that Weston did NOT kill Arkin...Arkin killed Weston(crushed him with a car.)

So this moment:

Crenna with the apartment door open and behind him, about to leave:

CRENNA: And Susy, I just want you to know that -- (he gasps, his eyes bug out, he freezes...he falls forward, dead with Arkin's knife in his back, Arkin stepping creepily in behind him.)

That "Crenna moment" was what you might call a "screaming frisson"(the audience went nuts as the psycho Arkin entered the room and plucked the knife out of Crenna's back) and, weirdly, I have always connected "Jeff at the phone" in Rear Window with "Crenna at the door" in Wait Until Dark. Something about how an "expected" scene swerves into danger: fatal danger for Crenna, POSSIBLE fatal danger for Jeff.

I suppose another key thing about frissons is that you can't have too many of them in a movie. Psycho has the "door opening" frisson(which happens in a LOT of movies, but never with more style than here), and I suppose the door opening into the bathroom behind Janet Leigh showering is one before that. (Perhaps the ENTIRE slow creep of mother up to the shower curtain is "the frisson" here.)

Bonnie and Clyde has the "frisson" of Clyde looking across a short distance from where he is standing outside, to Bonnie in their car and both of them realizing that they are about to die. The Wild Bunch has the frisson of ..well, pretty much the entire WALK of the bunch to their final doom.

But I daresay Hitchcock was the master of the frisson. They're everywhere in his work. (Try the moment where Melanie rises to look and sees all the birds on the monkey bars at the school. Or all the birds waiting for her in the upstairs bedroom.)

Even the lowly Topaz has a great frisson: An extreme close-up on Rico Parra's meaty hand turning a doorknob(he will kick in that door and discover enemy spies in the hotel room on the other side.)

Frissons are a very satisfying explication of suspense.