"BTW, has Arbogast's car been so precisely identified? If not, that's a real good guessed estimate of make, model, and year."
- I was pretty sure about the make and year, but verified it with the Internet Movie Car Database. It's been at least 20 years since I could tell one make from another (smaller ones today are so bizarrely sculpted that they look like athletic shoes on wheels, and the big ones look like the boxes they came in), but as a youngster, I could identify the make, model and year of every car I saw (but neither knew nor cared anything about how they worked, and still don't).
"The Psycho screenplay has a brief scene in which Arbogast RENTS that car, in Fairvale. A little pain for THAT company."
- It may seem an insignificant deletion, but it's one that shapes the narrative, or at least a viewer's inferences about unstated events taking place during the week between Marion's theft and Arbogast's arrival. Until I first read the screenplay a few years back, I'd simply assumed the car to be his own, driven from Phoenix as he tracked Marion over what he'd deduced was her route.
Either way, it raises another question: how did he find out about Sam and his hardware store in Fairvale? He'd never met Lila. Was Lowery aware of Sam and about his relationship with Marion? Or was Caroline? Although it's never stopped me, it probably doesn't do to give these little things too much thought. Enough to surmise that someone who throws cash around the way Cassidy does hires the best.
"And this: I expect that Norman was banking on that swamp to STAY a swamp, and never to dry out revealing a mini-car lot(don't forget his other female victims) there in the mud. How embarrassing if it had dried out..."
- And another thing it's probably best not to think about: it's occurred to me along the way that, at some point, Norman had to start keeping track of just where he pushed each one into that swamp, lest they begin piling up on one another.
When Marion's Ford stopped sinking, could Norman have been thinking, "Uh oh, is it sitting on top of that girl's Studebaker?"
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ecarle (14979)
5 years ago
"BTW, has Arbogast's car been so precisely identified? If not, that's a real good guessed estimate of make, model, and year."
- I was pretty sure about the make and year, but verified it with the Internet Movie Car Database. It's been at least 20 years since I could tell one make from another (smaller ones today are so bizarrely sculpted that they look like athletic shoes on wheels, and the big ones look like the boxes they came in), but as a youngster, I could identify the make, model and year of every car I saw (but neither knew nor cared anything about how they worked, and still don't).
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Excellent! Quite a talent...and you've filled in a blank on Psycho of some importance: Arbogast's car. (There's been a fair amount of writing about Marion's TWO cars.) I do know that all the cars in Psycho were Fords or their offshoots -- Ford sponsored Hitchcock's show. Famously , all the cars at California Charlies(really "Mahler's Car Lot" in North Hollywood near Universal Studios) were replaced by Fords for that scene.
As a sidebar, I have a young teenager in my life and HE seems to know every make and model of every car he sees ...on sight.
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ecarle (14979)
5 years ago
"The Psycho screenplay has a brief scene in which Arbogast RENTS that car, in Fairvale. A little pain for THAT company."
- It may seem an insignificant deletion, but it's one that shapes the narrative, or at least a viewer's inferences about unstated events taking place during the week between Marion's theft and Arbogast's arrival. Until I first read the screenplay a few years back, I'd simply assumed the car to be his own, driven from Phoenix as he tracked Marion over what he'd deduced was her route.
Either way, it raises another question: how did he find out about Sam and his hardware store in Fairvale? He'd never met Lila. Was Lowery aware of Sam and about his relationship with Marion? Or was Caroline? Although it's never stopped me, it probably doesn't do to give these little things too much thought. Enough to surmise that someone who throws cash around the way Cassidy does hires the best.
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Arbo's the best, no doubt about it, I think. I've always figured that Arbogast was promised a "Christmas bonus." Get the money back from Marion by Christmas -- more money to Arbogast.
But really what your musings above "zero in on " for me, is that great super-concise "Sam Loomis Hardware scene" in which Sam is RE-introduced and two NEW characters are introduced: Lila and Arbogast. This just could be my favorite expository scene of all time simply because of how COMPACT it is. There is a bare minimum of dialogue, but it gets EVERYTHING set up, and we get good, solid glimpse of the personalities of Sam(newly under stress), Lila(always under stress) and Arbogast(never under stress.)
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ecarle (14979)
5 years ago
It all boils down to this exchange:
Arbogast: Where is she, Miss Crane?
Lila: I don't know you.
Arbogast: Oh, I know you don't...if you did, I wouldn't have been able to follow you.
Bing. Bang. Boom.
PAGES of exposition reduced to three lines. Arbogast didn't follow Marion's trail from Phoenix, Arizona to Fairvale, California. He followed LILA. And since we saw Lila get out of a cab -- we figure she didn't DRIVE(like Marion did.) She FLEW (like Marion says Sam always does.) With Arbogast probably following her right onto the plane and catching a follow-up cab right behind Lila(he just appears in the hardware store window, we never see him disembark a cab.)
Its funny about Hitchocck. The concision of this plot development("I know you don't. Otherwise I wouldn't have been able to follow you") is SO concise that maybe a true thriller lover(say a thriller NOVEL lover) will say: "This dialogue is way too SHORT. They don't linger on details. Am I being cheated?"
For in Bloch's book, Arbogast recounts -- for about two pages -- how he drove all of Marion's(Mary's) route and found out that she switched cars TWICE. And somehow he arrived at Fairvale -- I suppose knowing the destination from love letters and then driving the distance.
Quicker and simpler in the movie -- "I know you don't. That's why I was able to follow you."
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ecarle (14979)
5 years ago
"And this: I expect that Norman was banking on that swamp to STAY a swamp, and never to dry out revealing a mini-car lot(don't forget his other female victims) there in the mud. How embarrassing if it had dried out..."
- And another thing it's probably best not to think about: it's occurred to me along the way that, at some point, Norman had to start keeping track of just where he pushed each one into that swamp, lest they begin piling up on one another.
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Yes! Hitchcock is pretty careful to stage the shot by the swamp in a different "visual place" for the postscript to Arbogast's car going down, versus Marion's car. Norman's closer to the house, it seems, on a whole other side of the swamp(pond/mini-lake.) This shot is one of the greatest in all of Hitchcock(and Psycho is filled with them). As a "visual," Norman now looks brooding and menacing, and yet still afraid. Perkins' razor thin frame here, in dark slacks and sweater, gives him a "vampire" look. And yet, as a matter of "plot" it is a FUNNY shot. The audience LAUGHS("Oops, here we go again") even as Norman reveals a new, darker personality than ever before. (Don't worry, he'll get worse.) The slow camera move towards Perkins is a very "modern" touch.
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When Marion's Ford stopped sinking, could Norman have been thinking, "Uh oh, is it sitting on top of that girl's Studebaker?
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Hah. Likely so! I had not thought about that before.
Of course, the film brilliantly keeps the swamp "never fully visible." EXACTLY how big it is..we never know. Moreover: it is a "surprise" when it does reveal itself: Mother and Norman have been given a "perfect burial ground" for CARS and PEOPLE. No hard digging for human graves. No harder digging for car graves.
Brilliant novel, brilliant script, brilliant movie.
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Doghouse (447)
5 years ago
"It all boils down to this exchange:
Arbogast: Where is she, Miss Crane?
Lila: I don't know you.
Arbogast: Oh, I know you don't...if you did, I wouldn't have been able to follow you.
Bing. Bang. Boom."
- You've been eminently kind and gentle, but it hit me with a bing, a bang and a boom just the same as when, for instance, I realize I've walked past my own car while looking for it in a parking lot, forgotten my own phone number or failed to recognize the neighbor I've known for 12 years when seeing her in the supermarket.
They have a name for that. Moments, some kind of moments...oh, what do they call them? They happen to seniors...it's right on the tip of my tongue. Well, whatever they're called, I guess I had one. I know those lines of dialogue perfectly well but, for the moment - Poof! - they and what they mean were just...gone.
And I so admire that kind of economy, in both dialogue and visuals; saying so much by saying so little, as with the shot of Perkins you described in the next reply.
I just took a look at it again, and noticed how seamlessly the "dolly in" is integrated with a "zoom." It's often difficult to make a "zoom" look anything but lazy (or maybe that's just my own prejudice from so much overuse in the late '60s - early '70s), but this was quite elegantly done.
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ecarle (14979)
5 years ago
"It all boils down to this exchange:
Arbogast: Where is she, Miss Crane?
Lila: I don't know you.
Arbogast: Oh, I know you don't...if you did, I wouldn't have been able to follow you.
Bing. Bang. Boom."
- You've been eminently kind and gentle, but it hit me with a bing, a bang and a boom just the same as when, for instance, I realize I've walked past my own car while looking for it in a parking lot, forgotten my own phone number or failed to recognize the neighbor I've known for 12 years when seeing her in the supermarket.
They have a name for that. Moments, some kind of moments...oh, what do they call them? They happen to seniors...it's right on the tip of my tongue. Well, whatever they're called, I guess I had one. I know those lines of dialogue perfectly well but, for the moment - Poof! - they and what they mean were just...gone.
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Well, I want to make sure that you know I wasn't going for a "Gotcha!" (however kindly expressed)...it was more like "Yeah, how Arbogast got up there is quietly hidden in ONE exchange, ONE line of dialogue"-- and the audience is just expected to figure it out. And its a bit more complex that than. Whereas Arbogast's first appearance outside the hardware store is a big ominous close-up(well, several of them)...Lila is introduced in a medium shot to make sure that we see the cab drop her off. We LEARN that Lila took a cab(we see it); we GUESS that Arbogast took a cab(because he followed her.)
And thus does Hitchcock tell his story. One of the pleasures of watching a Hitchcock picture is to study "how he tells the story," how he puts it together.
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ecarle (14979)
5 years ago
I can imagine this dialogue between Hitchcock and Stefano when they were taking their meetings on the script:
Stefano: So in this Bloch book, Arbogast talks about following Mary's trail on the highway and finding out that she switched cars twice. You want that in the film? Flashbacks?
Hitchcock: No, I don't think we need to go into all that detail. Just cover this with some dialogue about how he followed the sister to Fairvale, perhaps.
Hitchcock himself noted that novels he filmed were "more attenuated in the story telling, they have to be." That short bit of dialogue between Arbogast and Lila would keep Bloch's already-short book SUPER short -- he had to "attenuate" with a coupla pages about Arbogast's journey.
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ecarle (14979)
5 years ago
I realize I've walked past my own car while looking for it in a parking lot, forgotten my own phone number or failed to recognize the neighbor I've known for 12 years when seeing her in the supermarket.
They have a name for that. Moments, some kind of moments...oh, what do they call them? They happen to seniors...it's right on the tip of my tongue. Well, whatever they're called, I guess I had one. I know those lines of dialogue perfectly well but, for the moment - Poof! - they and what they mean were just...gone.
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Oh, I know them well. I have forgotten where I parked my car(at a great distance from my meeting place) twice in the past two months and now I have to make sure to remember before I walk away from the car(I chalk this up to absent-mindedness as much as age). Back in July, I introduced myself at a major event to a man I already knew(but not well, and he was dressed up in a suit and tie I'd never seen him in, he was usually a shirtsleeves guy.) And if I lose a thought -- uh oh, its not coming back.
While I feel quite vibrant in many ways at "this age," I am noticing the computer starting to break down and I've found the easiest way out is to tell other people it is happening "but hey, everything else is working!")
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ecarle (14979)
5 years ago
And I so admire that kind of economy, in both dialogue and visuals; saying so much by saying so little, as with the shot of Perkins you described in the next reply.
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Screenwriter Jay Presson Allen said that on the "Marnie" script, she wanted to write a montage scene of Mark and Marnie on honeymoon. Hitchcock suggested: "How about one shot of flowers and champagne and a card: "Congratulations on your marriage." Or something like that. Hitch began in silent films and learned how to "compress" information into visuals.
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I just took a look at it again, and noticed how seamlessly the "dolly in" is integrated with a "zoom." It's often difficult to make a "zoom" look anything but lazy (or maybe that's just my own prejudice from so much overuse in the late '60s - early '70s), but this was quite elegantly done
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I'll have to take another look. Its a powerful, moody, elegant shot -- with a humor that Hitchcock seemed to pull off when others couldn't. ("Here we go again.") And oh -- Norman's slacks aren't dark, I got that wrong. But his sweater is black.
Also, ASIDE from the humor, I think this is where the movie says: "Norman Bates is simply not that nice a guy." His face has changed from shy and warm and boyish to ice cold, haunted, grim. We are "halfway to his face in the cell at the end," revelations-wise.
PS. ANOTHER Hitchcock single shot of great mood, grimness and humor comes in Frenzy when Bob Rusk emerges with a wheelbarrow with a potato sack on it. Our mind flashes quickly: Who is THIS man in the apron? Oh, its Rusk! Why is he dressed like that? Oh, he's disguised himself as a Covent Garden workman. What's in the potato sack? Potatoes -- that older man in the pub said he was shipping potatoes -- OH MY GOD, that's the body of Babs in there! One shot, mere seconds to process all this information.
This shot is not only in the movie, it became an evocative production photo which is on Barry Foster's IMDb page.
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Doghouse (447)
5 years ago
"Hitch began in silent films and learned how to "compress" information into visuals."
- I like that you chose the word "compress;" it's something I had in mind when replying earlier. Hitchcock talked about playing audiences like an organ, but the pacing of his films is rather like the playing of a concertina: compression here (the Arbogast/Lila exchange; the swamp shot); expansion there (Norman and Marion in the parlor; the cleanup sequence; Arbogast's "last ascent").
A scene I like to cite to others to illustrate the power of editing is Scotty's first encounter with "Madeline" that's also an example of both compression and expansion at the same time.
What's the action? A woman walks past a man at the bar, pauses behind him momentarily, then exits. Nuthin' to it, right? Compression. Yet, with ten wordless crosscutting closeups across about 30 seconds depicting that simple action, the dramatic impact has occurred: he's begun to fall under her spell, and is a goner from then on. Expansion.
In Laura, there's action of nearly equal simplicity: a detective in the apartment of a murdered woman has been reading her private letters. Clutching a bundle of them, he walks into her bedroom, wanders to the dresser, fondles her handkerchief, sniffs her perfume, moves to the wardrobe and looks at her clothes, then leaves the room.
He's falling in love with the dead woman. But Otto Preminger stages the whole thing in one uninterrupted longshot lasting nearly a minute, and it falls onto the shoulders of actor Dana Andrews, through his alternating body language of wistfulness and impatient anxiety, to carry the dramatic weight, as though he were a stage player within the proscenium.
Two men hopelessly captivated by a woman they don't know. Two directors visually depicting it. Two entirely different approaches. But Preminger needs a scene minutes later with Clifton Webb telling Andrews (and the audience) he's falling in love. And Hitchcock doesn't.
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ecarle (14979)
5 years ago
"Hitch began in silent films and learned how to "compress" information into visuals."
- I like that you chose the word "compress;" it's something I had in mind when replying earlier. Hitchcock talked about playing audiences like an organ, but the pacing of his films is rather like the playing of a concertina: compression here (the Arbogast/Lila exchange; the swamp shot); expansion there (Norman and Marion in the parlor; the cleanup sequence; Arbogast's "last ascent").
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Yes, Hitchcock (at his best, at least) seemed to have an uncanny sense of which scenes should run quickly(the first hardware store scene in Psycho) and which scenes should run long(Norman and Marion in the parlor.) Compression/expansion. And Psycho also has the great "lesson in storytelling" that is(1) the clean-up and burial at swamp of Marion's body being shown in all its detail and then (2) the clean-up and burial at swamp of Arbogast's body not being shown at all. Its Hitch "checking things off": "You've been through THIS process, no need to watch it again."(Except I always figured getting Arbogast out of that house and into his car was tougher than with Marion at the motel.)
A more "dire" example of expansion/compression comes in Frenzy. The first murder in the film is shown in heartbreaking, horrific detail, start to finish. And when the second murder comes along, Hitchcock elects not to show it at all, allowing us to simply IMAGINE it happening behind closed doors. Its almost worse(and certainly sadder) than the first , graphic, murder.
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ecarle (14979)
5 years ago
A scene I like to cite to others to illustrate the power of editing is Scotty's first encounter with "Madeline" that's also an example of both compression and expansion at the same time.
What's the action? A woman walks past a man at the bar, pauses behind him momentarily, then exits. Nuthin' to it, right? Compression. Yet, with ten wordless crosscutting closeups across about 30 seconds depicting that simple action, the dramatic impact has occurred: he's begun to fall under her spell, and is a goner from then on. Expansion.
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That scene in Vertigo certainly stands apart from scenes in the grotty b/w Psycho and the grotty color Frenzy. Here we are in a room of lush, almost too-much red, a swanky dining room filled with couples "dressed to the nines"(there's another era) -- Elster in his tuxedo and Madeleine in her gown. An elegant camera move across the room to the woman(seen only from behind), intercut with Scottie(James Stewart) in a "masculine pose in a masculine room"(the bar) having himself a drink while scoping the women out.
And Herrmann's lush music, of course.
Its a different KIND of Hitchcock scene - romantic, pretty, swooning and boy do we "get it" -- NOW, Scottie's gonna take this case. Women are the sexy sex, still, and men get the pain and pleasure of the shot to the heart that a gorgeous woman can bring on visual sighting.
Novak's gown is green , right? I think I've seen a photograph from this scene, and its like a rush of color....red and green, Christmassy but not really. Not what you come to Psycho to see.
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ecarle (14979)
5 years ago
In Laura, there's action of nearly equal simplicity: a detective in the apartment of a murdered woman has been reading her private letters. Clutching a bundle of them, he walks into her bedroom, wanders to the dresser, fondles her handkerchief, sniffs her perfume, moves to the wardrobe and looks at her clothes, then leaves the room.
He's falling in love with the dead woman. But Otto Preminger stages the whole thing in one uninterrupted longshot lasting nearly a minute, and it falls onto the shoulders of actor Dana Andrews, through his alternating body language of wistfulness and impatient anxiety, to carry the dramatic weight, as though he were a stage player within the proscenium.
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I like a number of Preminger's films - mainly his legal/political films from Anatomy of a Murder through Advise and Consent to In Harm's Way -- but he was more "straightforward" in his direction than Hitchcock, and that Laura scene is a good illustration.
Still...its classic stuff.. a man falling in love with a dead woman, and Vertigo will carry it a bit further when Scottie mourns Madeleine. In both films, the "dead woman" comes back to life and the man gets her, but only in one of the films is a happy ending possible.
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Two men hopelessly captivated by a woman they don't know. Two directors visually depicting it. Two entirely different approaches. But Preminger needs a scene minutes later with Clifton Webb telling Andrews (and the audience) he's falling in love. And Hitchcock doesn't.
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Hitchcock doesn't. He either told his stories too well(and imparted his themes as well), or trusted his audience to "get it." I always liked that about Hitch.
Though he rather fell down on the job in that regard, at the very end of his career.
Family Plot. William Devane pulls off his bravura kidnapping of a bishop in front of his "religiously polite" parishers. We GET it. But Devane has to TELL Karen Black what he's done: "They were all too religiously polite to interfere," he says.
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ecarle (14979)
5 years ago
Note in passing: a rather weird Burt Reynolds film of 1981 -- Sharkey's Machine -- elects to "homage" Laura quite directly, with Burt wandering around the apartment of the "dead" Rachel Ward. Reynolds directed this film when he was peaking - and about to decline -- as a major star, and its a mismatch of macho "Dirty Harry" cop movie, Laura love story, and Rear Window Hitchcock homage.
Between the source novel, the screenplay and the erratic storytelling on screen(the TONE also changes, from comic to romantic to brutal), "Sharkey's Machine" still manages to pull off a "Laura remake" somewhere in there...
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