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Hitchcock's Movies of the Forties and "Psycho"

posted 4 years ago by ecarle (14979)
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In another post, I looked at "the Hitchcock movies in the ten years before Psycho" -- which really means the 50's...which was Hitchocck's "Golden Era" in some ways, but you have to add Psycho and, says I, The Birds to that era to encompass "the best of the best."

But back up a decade. The forties. Hitchcock -- with that bizarre perfect historical timing he always seemed to have -- ended his 1930's career in England "on the dot" in 1939, travelled to America, and made his first American movie -- "Rebecca" in 1940.

If the 30's was Hitchcock's big "first era"(and a distinctly British one), and the 50's was his "Golden Era"(with huge hits ranging from Technicolor to black and white, and often travelling the world for location footage) the forties was...what?

Well, certainly it was a decade with hits, and famous titles. It seems to me that the forties are ALMOST as important to the Hitchcock career as the 50's, but sometimes lacking in ...something.

Well, size, travel and color for three things.

Consider: In the forties, Americans didn't have TVs. They had radio. They were excited to go to the movies just to SEE the story. It didn't have to have color, it didn't have to have travelogue scenery. It just had to be STORY that could be watched.

Consequently, unlike as in the 50's, Hitchcock didn't always have to film big action set-pieces or chases. And it seems like on the few occasions that he did -- Foreign Correspondent and especially Saboteur -- he really couldn't attract the most major of stars to be in these movies. Cary Grant would appear in the "dramatic" Suspcion and Notorious -- playing borderline (or worse) bad guys, but he wouldn't run cross country for Hitch -- not until 1959. Bob Cummings was distinctly minor for Saboteur as a lead, and even Joel McCrea('Foreign Correspondent") admitted that he got a lot of roles that Gary Cooper turned down(like Foreign Correspondent.)

And how do Hitchocck's forties films relate to..."Psycho"? Seeing as Hitchcock's best biographer, Patrick McGililgan, noted that "Hitchcock's entire career prepared him for Psycho," where do the forties movies come in?

Let's take a look -- though I'll "fess up": some of these movies, I have not seen in years, my memories are vague, weak, and perhaps wrong on details. But -- whatever:

Rebecca (1940.) Made from a much more best-selling and famous novel than "Psycho" -- produced(with a dominating hand) by David O. Selznick but...a "dry run" for Psycho.

Take that house: Manderley. Isn't that the first line of book and film : "Last night I dreamed that I returned to Manderley." Its a big ol' isolated mansion -- just like the Bates House, except more "functional." But just as "haunted" by a figure from the past(spelled out, this time, as dead from the get go.)

Manderley shows you the problems that 20 years earlier gives you: unlike the big, REAL structure that is the Bates Mansion(even if nothing was really inside the backlot set and even if it was built 3/4 size)..Manderley is pretty clearly a model. Plastic maybe. And small in stature.

Still, the hints of Psycho to come are there; "memories of making Rebecca" perhaps directed Hitchcock in his presentation OF Psycho. Mrs. Danvers is nobody's mother(that I can recall?) but she is as menacing in her quiet, manipulative way as Mrs. Bates will be, and near the end, Mrs. Danvers is shown in a silhouette (with flames behind her head) that foreshadows Mrs. Bates in the shower.

Not to mention: the big theme of Vertigo and of Psycho: the grip of the past upon the present. Dead, wonderful Rebecca holds the loyalty of Mrs. D and still haunts her husband(Larry Oliver, on his sole outing with Hitch; its just as well, he's not that memorable here) . Unlike as with Mrs. Bates, the memory of the First Mrs. Olivier CAN be overcome ("I am Mrs. DeWinter!") and the past is revealed as not what it seemed to be anyway.

I'll add this: for all of its Gothic atmosphere and melodrama, "Rebecca" eventually heads into town for all sorts of legal investigations and hearings, it becomes quite modern and a bit dull -- like the psychiatrist scene in Psycho, but without the spectacular horror details. George Sanders arrives as a blackmailing quasi-villain, but rather gives up on the effort and you might say he's a bit like Arbogast in how he comes along fairly late in the film as a "fun" character to distract us from the mopey leads. But Sanders is neither a killer nor killed; he's just "spare."

[–] ecarle (14979) 4 years ago

Foreign Correspondent: Hitchocck's SECOND 1940 film(both were up for Best Picture; Rebecca won) and at once much more in his British 39 Steps tradition and very much looking ahead to the spy chase thriller action of NXNW (a plane crash into the sea is disaster movie BIG and anticpates the crash into the sea of the plane in Cast Away, 60 years later!.)

But there's a MAJOR Psycho influence in Foreign Correspondent -- the assassination of the diplomat at the TOP OF SOME STAIRS. Outdoor stairs -- stone steps, really. The assassin hides a handgun alongside the camera he aims at the diplomat and BANG! A sudden close up of the diplomat's shocked face, covered in blood. Its "the Arbogast slashed face close-up"(and both are inspired by Potemkin) but here, Hitchcock is barely allowed to keep the shot on for less than a second -- its almost subliminal here. 20 years later, Hitchocck could linger on the bloody face of the victim for much longer (the staircase fall in Foreign Correspondent is shown from a distance, with a stunt man tumbling, which shows the wisdom of Hitchock's later "up close and personal" Arbogast fall.

Mr. and Mrs. Smith (1941.) Its a screwball comedy and not "one of the classics." Carole Lombard was starry enough; Robert Montgomery(in when Cary Grant said no), perhaps less so. Its good enough, funny enough, Lombard in particular is good enough.

And I say that it has one element that presages Psycho: the first shot(I believe) of Carole Lombard herself. Its just her eye. In extreme close-up. As she lies face down. But on a bed, not on a bathroom floor. Still...look at it sometime. A very "predictive shot."

CONT

[–] ecarle (14979) 4 years ago

CONT

Suspicion(1941) Much like its "twin," Rebecca, this film centers a bit too much on a timid and flustered Joan Fontaine to draw much interest from me in Hitchcock movies(on the other hand, these two movies together have a whole OTHER set of Hitchocck fans drawn to them.)

I can't really connect Suspicion to Psycho as I can with others of Hitchcock's forties films. I suppose the idea of a charming man being a killer is there(Cary Grant/Anthony Perkins), except Suspicion doesn't posit Grant as a killer in its murky ending. Suspicion, like Psycho, does have a great staircase scene -- Grant bringing the glowing glass of milk up the dark stairs. I suppose that's a weak link.

Saboteur(1942): This is a wrong man thriller, and a spy chase thriller, posited between The 39 Steps and North by Northwest..and it is also a much-needed WWII propaganda film. I guess - rather as with Suspicion -- there's no direct connection there, but there are these points: Saboteur was one of two loan-outs of Hitchcock by Selznick, in the 40s to "Universal." The other was "Shadow of a Doubt" the next year in '43. So Saboteur and Shadow of a Doubt are "paired" as "Hitchcock's two Universal films of the forties" and they are LINKED to Psycho(which was filmed using Universal facilities and technology for Paramount) and the final six Hitchcock films(which were all Universal films.)

Indeed, in between Shadow of a Doubt and The Birds(both "Universal" films), Universal spent some years as "Universal-International," which proved a clunky name(mimicked by the cheapjack American International.) The Birds was the first film to return to "Universal" -- perhaps Hitchcock demanded the change?(He would never allow the Universal logo, 1963-1976, to be used on his final films, either. The movies just began and ended with the words, "A Universal Picture.")

I think the ballroom in Saboteur was filmed on the same soundstage as the Bates mansion interior in Psycho (the "Phantom of the Opera" stage.)

[–] ecarle (14979) 4 years ago

CONT

Also , the "Making of Psycho" DVD suggests...wrongly ..that Hitchcock used the same technique for Fry's fall from the Statue of Liberty in Saboteur for Arbogast's fall down the stairs in Psycho. Nope. Fry(Norman Lloyd's) fall was done by SUPERIMPOSING Lloyd falling away from the camera ONTO background footage of the area below Lady Liberty. Arbogast's fall was done by putting Martin Balsam in a special chair in front of a process screen of MOVING footage going backwards down the stairs. That said, both scenes share the idea of starting with the victim's face and upper body dominating a close-up...and then being "released" into their falls of death (and of course, the shorter fall does not kill Arbogast, Mother follows him to the floor and stabs him to death.)

Next: Shadow of a Doubt(1943.) Now we're talking. Along with the "Universal connection" shared among Saboteur, Shadow of a Doubt and Psycho, Shadow of a Doubt, wrote Richard Schickel "brings us Hitchocck's first full-fledged psychopath," Uncle Charlie(Joseph Cotton.) I've framed "one Hitchcock psycho a decade" for Hitch:

40's: Uncle Charlie
50's: Bruno Anthony
60's: Norman Bates
70's: Bob Rusk

...and as the first, Uncle Charlie, from deep, deep deep in the Hays Code, is the least violent. We never SEE him kill anyone(we LEARN that his victims are rich old widows, whom he hates for living off the money their husbands worked to hard to earn -- but then he spends the money anyway.)

Whereas Bruno Anthony is over on the East Coast of America in Washington DC, and Bob Rusk lives in Covent Garden, London...Uncle Charlie comes to the Northern California town of Santa Rosa -- a real town - which puts him only about 200 miles from Shasta County and Norman Bates home near the fictional Fairvale and the real county seat of Redding.

[–] ecarle (14979) 4 years ago

The real Santa Rosa of SOAD and the fake Fairvale of Psycho FEEL connected. If you know Northern California, you can picture their relative proximity to each other. Both films posit the idea of "unspeakable murderous evil settled in among small town life." Now Uncle Charlie COMES to Santa Rosa -- from the East, whereas Norman is born and stuck in his rural California life, but ultimately, these are very special men -- mentally damaged in a terrible way, driven to kill. (Uncle Charlie alone is given a physiological reason for his psychopathy -- a childhood accident that put him in a coma and damaged his brain.)

As written for and played by Joseph Cotton, Uncle Charlie certainly has his charming side -- both his grown sister and his teenage niece have a love for him that borders on fantasy lust(maybe moreso with the sister); its disturbing. And yet -- unlike the pleasant and polite Norman -- Charlie carries himself with a certain arrogance and contempt for others(particularly other MEN) from the get-go, embarrassing Charlie's ineffectual father at his bank job and saying "I think the whole world is a joke" to the banker.

Uncle Charlie's early nastiness is just a warm up for two later speeches which almost break the Hayes Code with their murderous vitriol...even though not a curse word is uttered. Indeed a TV remake on the Hallmark Hall of Fame in the 90s'(with Mark Harmon of NCIS as Uncle Charlie, and a good one) cut such words as "swine" and "sty" from the speech(To Young Charlie: "Do you know if you ripped the fronts of houses, you'd find swine? The world is a sty!')

[–] ecarle (14979) 4 years ago

Joseph Stefano noted that , once he got the Psycho screenwriting gig, he was put in Hitchcock's screening room for a week or so to watch Hitchcock films. All of them? I have no idea. I do know that Stefano told Hitchocck he liked Vertigo the best.

But we can figure that Stefano watched Shadow of a Doubt and Strangers on a Train and Rope to get a "line on Hitchcock psychos." One of the killers in Rope has a slight stammer under pressure...somehow that made it to Perkins in Psycho. Bruno and Norman have little in common other than boyish good looks(Bruno is way too off-putting to other people.)

But what Uncle Charlie and Norman share ..other than their small town Northern California hunting grounds...are speeches.

I'm guessing when Stefano heard Uncle Charlie rant about how "the world is a hell...a sty...why should it matter what happens within it?" that transferred on to Norman's more sad and desperate "you know what I think, I think all of us are in our own private traps...we scratch and claw to get out of them, but for all of it, we don't budge an inch." Charlie and Norman share a tormented view of the world; Charlie's rage is out there for all to see; Norman's, more hidden."

BTW, its the OTHER speech from SOAD that has its own murderous wit to it. Uncle Charlie can't help but reveal his contempt for widows who don't work and live off the money their husbands died to earn...you see the women "eating the money, drinking the money, losing the money at cards," Uncle Charlie bites at the family dinner table at which he's a guest. When Young Charlie's voice comes on the soundtrack ("But they're alive! They're human beings!) Uncle Charlie looks at US: "Are they?"

[–] ecarle (14979) 4 years ago

Uncle Charlie's inability to hide his nasty, raging side with others will sound in Norman's inability to hide HIS nasty raging side(aka "Mother") when Marion suggests that mother be put "someplace." This was in Robert Bloch's novel, Stefano didn't invent the connection -- but it is there, between the two movies, between the two psychopaths.

Lifeboat(1944) This was a movie at the tail end of WWII, with Hitchcock making a pretty impassioned plea for the Western peoples to work together against the consolidated and ruthless fascism of the Nazi war machine. Lifeboat isn't a spy movie(though Willy the Nazi isn't what he initially seems), or a chase movie. Its a stunt movie -- filmed on one set(surrounded by hundreds of miles of good process work sea.)

But here is the thing: I don't feel that there is any Hitchcock forties movie CLOSER to Psycho than ...Lifeboat. Here's why: for a 1944 Hays Code film, Lifeboat strikes me as a truly shocking work. Early on in the film, we learn that the baby of a mother who climbed on board the lifeboat -- is dead. And then the mother hangs herself over the side of the boat. Later, the survivors must use a fairly dull knife to amputate the leg of a good natured American sailor(William Bendix.) We don't see the amputation, but we see the knife, and the leg, and we KNOW what is going to happen. Later, Willy the Nice Nazi pushes the nice amputee overboard to his death(while everyone else is sleeping.) And later, the survivors figure this out(and other treacheries of Willy, like withholding water from them) and they brutally beat him (his face is bloodied like Arbogast's) like "a pack of dogs"(Hitchcock's words) and throw HIM overboard to his death.

[–] ecarle (14979) 4 years ago

Not to mention: 16 years before Sam and Marion got it on in a Phoenix hotel room, society babe Tallulah Bankhead and shirtless tattooed sailor John Hodiak in "Lifeboat" put a lot of sexy moves on each other and (says I) somehow manage to "do the deed" while the other survivors are sleeping.

"Lifeboat" has a rousing, upbeat ending -- suggesting the coming winning of the war by the allies -- but getting there is one of the most brutal and grim Hitchcock movies in his whole canon. Rather as with Uncle Charlie in his speeches, there is something "nasty" about "Lifeboat" that seems to transcend Hays Code censorship. The movie stays with you.

[–] tino (1) 4 years ago

Hi Ecarle,
I've been enjoying your posts for years (and telegonious', Gubbio's, Swanstep's and the whole gang). Just finished watching "Shadow of a Doubt" again (love it) and came upon a connection to "Psycho" that I'm frankly surprised you failed to mention. Uncle Charlie deposits exactly $40,000 into Joe Newton's bank. That might mean I trump you as the greatest Hitchcock fan. Though it's a close race...
Also, a question to you and the gang---
What constitutes a set-piece?
I ask that because sometimes I see more set-pieces in a film for which it's not given credit. For instance, the traditional thinking is that "Psycho" has three set-pieces--and we all know what they are. But what about Janet Leigh's drive--especially when she's hearing the voices from the car lot to the motel? And Norman's bathroom clean-up? Seems like a set-piece to me, but I don't really know the precise definition of set-piece. Also, Norman taking his mother's corpse into the fruit cellar. If the staircase scene in"Frenzy" (another film I love) is a set-piece, why isn't that scene (which to my mind seems more artful)?
Would love to get some responses to this. And I've been entertained and enlightened by these discussions for years and it's a pleasure to finally have the nerve to jump in.

[–] ecarle (14979) 4 years ago

I've been enjoying your posts for years (and telegonious', Gubbio's, Swanstep's and the whole gang).

--

A great gang...I wish some would "come out and play" a bit more but...they lead lives...

Welcome very much to you, tino. Hope you will feel like chiming in in the future. I'll TRY to keep up with you here.

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Just finished watching "Shadow of a Doubt" again (love it) and came upon a connection to "Psycho" that I'm frankly surprised you failed to mention. Uncle Charlie deposits exactly $40,000 into Joe Newton's bank. That might mean I trump you as the greatest Hitchcock fan.

---

Ha. Oh, I'm not the greatest Hitchcock fan. I'm a fan, but there are entire SCHOLARS devoted to his every scene and moment, in all 53 of his movies(and THAT number is still debated.)

I recall going on some Hitchcock in General board years ago, and after a day of being peppered with in-depth questions about Number Seventeen and Rich and Strange I realized...I had no RIGHT to be on such a general board. So I scurried back to Psycho, where I'm safe. North by Northwest, too.

---

Though it's a close race...

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Join the race...outpace us!

[–] ecarle (14979) 4 years ago

Also, a question to you and the gang---
What constitutes a set-piece?

--

Well, sir(or m'am)...that's a GREAT question when it comes to Hitchcock. Because its a trick question, yes?

Especially in the last third of his career, Hitchcock became famous for "the Hitchcock set-piece" and it seemed like he himself KNEW that he had to deliver at least three of them per movie, with one REALLY great one.

But indeed, what IS a "Hitchcock set-piece"?

Here's an easy definition that(we shall see) soon collapses, but it works for awhile.

A set-piece is:

A murder scene or
An action scene

"Action scenes" as set-pieces are still with us today and are probably the most "usual" definition of a set-piece you can use.

The two murder scenes in Psycho are set-pieces because of their cinematic dexterity, but also in their time , because of their GRISLY HORROR. Its the fact that these two murders "went too far" that made them famous. They aren't like the murders one finds in, say Agatha Christie(a man drinks poison, falls over.) No, these are SLAUGHTERS. And WHERE they happened(a shower, a staircase) made them set-pieces further still.

[–] ecarle (14979) 4 years ago

But now comes a "first problem."

It has been said that North by Northwest has THREE set-pieces: the drunken drive at the beginning, the crop duster in the middle, and Rushmore at the end.

But wait...there is a murder in this movie and aren't ALL murders in Hitchcock...set-pieces?

It would seem to be so. So that murder -- at the UN, in all its "fun shock" and big laughs -- is a set-piece, too.

So that's FOUR set-pieces in North by Northwest. But what of the auction scene? Its "life or death," but it is also screwball. Is it a SCENE? Or a set-piece?

[–] ecarle (14979) 4 years ago

Let's leave that and jump to Psycho, with your input:

You wrote:

BEGIN:

Also, Norman taking his mother's corpse into the fruit cellar. If the staircase scene in"Frenzy" (another film I love) is a set-piece, why isn't that scene (which to my mind seems more artful)?

END

--

Many rave reviews of Frenzy really "zeroed in" on that "Farewell to Babs" staircase shot as the BIG set-piece of the movie(even as there were two more lengthy ones, more on them in a moment.)

Yet, like you(I think?) I recall seeing the Frenzy shot and thinking "But he did one even HARDER to do -- camera rising into the air and twisting to look down -- in Psycho -- and : nobody remembers it. (Because the big THREE set-pieces in Psycho are the two murders and the fruit cellar climax.)

Well, my answer to this is: so Psycho has FOUR set-pieces. The two murders, the fruit cellar climax and..."Norman carries Mother downstairs."

But wait, quoting you again:

BEGIN:

But what about Janet Leigh's drive--especially when she's hearing the voices from the car lot to the motel? And Norman's bathroom clean-up? Seems like a set-piece to me.

END

Well, Janet Leigh is in that car a LOT -- with stand alone dialogue scenes interspersed(the cop, the car salesman) but it really IS a set-piece when she's driving "from day to dusk to dark" in the rain, with those voices, yes?

And as horrific as the shower murder is, is not Norman's clean-up of Marion's corpse(always THERE, reminding us of HER) EQUALLY horrific?(Yes...just not screamable.)

Psycho really and rather ends up being a special case, I think -- its one great scene after another, so its like one great set-piece after another.

There are visual suspense stylings to both the cop scene and the car lot scene that make them" "classic exercises in suspense."

And Marion talking to Norman in the parlor is a set-piece(dialogue, shots, camera angle.)

And Arbogast talking to Norman in the motel office is a set-piece with "something special": that great SHOT where the camera darts under Norman's bobbing throat -- and then circles back to "eye level."

Thus, a side bar: Hitchcock wasn't just famous for set-pieces, he was famous for individual SHOTS:

The camera under Norman's throat.
Norman's eye at the peephole.
The blood down the drain that becomes Marion's eye.

In NXNW:

The high, high angle on Roger running out of the UN.

In Notorious:

Cary Grant , seen from an awakening drunk's POV: upside down and spinning right side up.

In The Birds:

High over Bodega Bay as seagulls float into the frame, gather , and dive down.

---

Here's a thought: for all the Hitchcock movies WITH set-pieces, there are at least a few WITHOUT set pieces:

The Trouble With Harry: the story just meanders amiably along.

I Confess: No real set-pieces until the very end, which is a rather "traditional" climax without Hitch's usual flourish.

The Wrong Man: MAYBE the impressionistic scene in his cell when Fonda is first booked and locked up. But overall: no. "Docudramas from true stories" don't get set-pieces.

And how about Rear Window: Rather like I Confess, Rear Window builds and builds and builds to a climax, not quite a set-piece: Thorwald leaves the "window world" and invades Jeff's world and tries to kill him. Set-piece? Just maybe. Perhaps the BIGGER set-piece is the sequence(and that's yet ANOTHER structural tool - the "sequence" of many shots and even scenes) of Grace Kelly invading Thorwald's apartment; his return; the near death, the pointing at the ring, THORVALD LOOKING STRAIGHT AT US.

And how about To Catch A Thief -- again, no real "Hitchcock set-pieces along the way"(unless you count ROMANTIC set-pieces, more anon)...until the pretty good roof-hanging climax(great process shots here.)

We're reminded that it probably took until NXNW for Hitchcock to decide "a movie can't ONLY have a climax...it has to have action set-pieces from start to finish." Later filmmakers would go to town with this; Hitchcock started it.

Returning to topics hinted about:

The set-pieces in Frenzy.

Many critics liked Frenzy, but one did not. He worked for the Washington Post, and I remember this sentence:

"We know which scenes are supposed to BE the Hitchcock set-pieces, but we wait in vain for them to BECOME Hitchcock set-pieces." He particularly didn't like the "potato truck scene:" "I don't see how ten minutes of Barry Foster wrestling around with a body in a potato sack in a truck can be justly hailed as true Hitchcock."

Eh...maybe not. But maybe...YES. This is a mix of Psycho(Norman disposes of Marion's body) and Strangers on a Train(Bruno reaches desperately for the cigarette lighter.) That makes it "Hitchockian" enough for me --and this one also has a distressingly BEAUTIFUL color scheme -- "deep greens and blues are the colors Hitch chooses." Along with golden red (Rusk's hair) and bright yellow(the potatoes.)

[–] ecarle (14979) 4 years ago

The prolonged rape-murder of Brenda Blaney is a good example of "where you can tell when the set-piece begins"(the low angle with funky music as Rusk comes through the door) but "it doesn't quite play like a Hitchcock set piece." Actually it does -- the way Rusk draws closer and the camera tightens in on Brenda below him, the way he plucks his tiepin out of his tie to announce who he REALLY is(the Necktie Killer.) But perhaps too much of this sequence is too real, too messy, too HUMAN to fit "the Hitchocck set-piece" monicker.

So we'll shift(finally) to:

THE ROMANTIC SET-PIECE.

Ok. "We know what a set-piece is when we see it." Action. Murder. A plane crash into the sea. A berserk carousel. An assassination attempt at an Albert Hall concert. A crop-duster chase.

But what of "romantic set-pieces"?

"The longest kiss ever filmed" is surely a set-piece in Notorious(and it HAS no action scenes, no chases, not even an on-screen murder.

And how about Grant and Saint on the train in NXNW? Their sexy banter in the dining car is a Hays Code-dodging set piece of sorts. As is there "spinning around on the wall" deep kiss in the sleeping car.

There ain't much romance and kissin' in Psycho -- only one scene -- but its a DOOZY for 1960. One critic wrote of "Hitchcock opening his film with a sex scene in the French film tradition" and...well, it sort of IS. The bare skin, the underwear, the "heavy necking" -- I expect Psycho was revered in some quarters for THAT scene alone, right up front in the movie.

Or how about To Catch a Thief. The TWO romance set-pieces may be the biggest set pieces in the movie: Cary and Grace sharing a chicken picnic("Leg or breast?") after driving the curves of Monte Carlo; Cary and Grace sharing banter and seduction in the dark while the rich colors of fireworks in full orgasm blaze away.

Or how about: Vertigo? The BIG KISS when "Madeleine" emerges from the bathroom. Some may have called James Stewart "too old for the part," but I think it is ALL men getting to embrace and kiss Novak as the camera slowly encircles her, and women get to fantasize with or without Jimmy.

---

So to the question : "What is a set-piece?" I offer all of the above. But a definition?

No can do except..."we know one when we see one."

PS. Frenzy has four set-pieces, not three. I count the funny/macabre opening as the nude body floats down the Thames and into a politician's speech. "I say, that's not my club tie, is it?"

[–] [email protected] (5858) 4 years ago

Like you, some of my memories of these films are vague and weak. I want to watch some of them again!

In Suspicion, one of the scenes that stands out for me is when the husband, Cary Grant, is carrying the glass of milk on a tray up the staircase. Yeas ago a friend told me that there was a little lightbulb in the glass to make it glow and stand out.

But there is something menacing about a long walk up a staircase. Arbogast bought it there! In this case the audience imagines a killer is making that long trip upwards.
In "The Birds", Melanie makes a very bad decision to climb the stairs and check out that suspicious noise of birds flapping their wings.
There's something about the added suspense of climbing a staircase. What will happen at the top? It's usually slower than walking across a room.

It's not as bad as being in a shower, but you are vulnerable on a staircase if someone attacks. There's no place to go but DOWN!

[–] ecarle (14979) 4 years ago

Like you, some of my memories of these films are vague and weak. I want to watch some of them again!

---

Well, Hitchcock made 53 films, and it took years(decades) for me to see all of them when they rolled around on TV. I suppose now, I could "stream them all" in a few days. But still, most of them are pleasant and vague memories to me now. I simply can't remember exactly who did what to whom...and when.

I really must watch some Hitchcocks OTHER than my "yearly regulars" -- Psycho, NXNW, Vertigo, The Birds, Rear Window, Frenzy, and Strangers on a Train. (Also, I watch Topaz a lot because it was a great movie night out for me in 1969 -- in a big Palace theater with Hitchcock photos and exhibits all over the lobby.)

---

In Suspicion, one of the scenes that stands out for me is when the husband, Cary Grant, is carrying the glass of milk on a tray up the staircase. Yeas ago a friend told me that there was a little lightbulb in the glass to make it glow and stand out.

---

That's what I've read. Today, all special effects it seems , are farmed out to Silicon Valley or computer wizards in Hollywood itself. In Hitchcock's "primitive" time -- it took simple ingenuity to come up with an idea like "the lightbulb in the glass." Its a great effect...particularly given the overall black darkness of the lighting of the scene.

---

[–] ecarle (14979) 4 years ago

But there is something menacing about a long walk up a staircase. Arbogast bought it there!

---

He sure did. And there is a SECOND great staircase scene in Psycho that is almost as memorable -- the long twisting camera move high into the air and then over Norman as he carries Mother downstairs.

---

In this case the audience imagines a killer is making that long trip upwards.

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Recall that Hitchcock re-shot footage of Arbogast climbing the stairs(hand on railing, feet in profile) when it suggested HE was the killer, not the "killee." Here...the desired effect is different.

--

In "The Birds", Melanie makes a very bad decision to climb the stairs and check out that suspicious noise of birds flapping their wings.
There's something about the added suspense of climbing a staircase. What will happen at the top? It's usually slower than walking across a room.

---

Hitchcock was asked why he had so many staircase scenes in his films. His reply: "Staircases take people up...and they take people down."

---
It's not as bad as being in a shower, but you are vulnerable on a staircase if someone attacks. There's no place to go but DOWN!

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That's right. I always figured that Mother was a shrewd old lady of a killer(even if she only lived in Norman's head.) She chooses to kill Marion in a shower(no escape, slippery, she's naked) and Arbogast on a staircase...he uses the LOCATIONS as "auxillary murder weapons" to the knife. Arbogast might have been able to fight and survive if Mother came at him "on a floor" but once he falls backwards, the stairs help kill him -- as Hitchcock says in the trailer, "he hit the floor, his back broke immediately."

[–] ecarle (14979) 4 years ago

...and back to my "forties Hitchocck films march" -- Psycho connections.

Lifeboat's done. Next: Spellbound.

Much as I always see Saboteur and Shadow of a Doubt as a pair("Hitchcock's 40's Universal loanouts) I see "Spellbound" and "Notorious" as a pair. Both were Selznick productions. Both paired Ingrid Bergman(in the lead{ with a male star. Though there is a problem there: whereas Cary Grant opposite Bergman in Notorious is very much a big star and her equal, Gregory Peck in Spellbound opposite Bergman strikes me as "too early in his career" -- too young, too callow...to be the solid booming-voiced manly man of The Guns of Navarone, Cape Fear and Mockinbird.

No matter. Evidently Spellbound was a bigger hit than Notorious and young forties women swooned for Young Gregory Peck.

Which is where the Psycho connections begin. Peck is tall, young and slender in Spellbound and thus a bit of a dry run for...Anthony Perkins. Indeed, its sad to realize that Perkins could have been the lead in "Spellbound" had it been made in 1960 and ended up psychologically troubled BUT a romantic hero at the same time. Which is how Peck is in Spellbound. He's possibly mad\, possibly a killer, but...Ingrid Bergman cares about him, comes to love him, finds out that he is NOT a killer.

The other clear connection of Spellbound to Psycho is that it opens in..."an institution...a madhouse"...one of those places Norman Bates warned Marion about, We are made aware, early on, that such places house "dangerous people" and that Bergman is in some danger being around them (the idea of a cutesie-pie "Cuckoo's Nest" institution is decades away.) Years later, Robert Bloch wrote an Alfred Hitchcock Hour with Ray Milland as the head of a mental institution who turned out to be one of the inmates -- he's murdered the real head and he and the nutcases have taken over! That is suggested here in "Spellbound" as Greg Peck arrives as "the new doctor in charge" ..but actually may have killed him.

[–] ecarle (14979) 4 years ago

Truth be told, I'm very weak on detail memories of Spellbound. I recall liking it less than Notorious; I've seen Notorious many more times than I've seen Spellbound.

That said, I recall the interesting Dali dream sequence in Spellbound, and how Peck menaces Bergman with a straight razor in some way(that being the weapon that kills Arbogast in the novel of Psycho -- too gory for a 1960 film). I recall doors opening symbolically and a repeated staircase ascent. I recall who the REAL killer is, and the great "practical effect" (a gain fake hand holding a giant fake gun) used to deal with him.

And I recall a LOT of Freud. Evidently , Selznick's hand was heavy in the Spellbound script, and he and his wife were into dreams and Freud. So Spellbound is like "The Psychiatrist Scene in Psycho as an Entire Movie." There is one funny line from the cute old analyst in the film: "Pleasant dreams. We will analyze them in the morning." (THAT actor got a Supporting Actor Oscar nomination as Martin Balsam in Hitchcock never did.)

It is also well known now that "Spellbound" is really a dry run for "Marnie," with the man and woman roles switched, as Bergman tries to find the Dark Secret in Peck's Past that has left him an amnesiac who faints at lines on white(as Marnie will faint when seeing red.) I recall a critic of the early 60's reviewing Marnie and saying "it continues Hitchcock's recent run of psychological studies" -- which would include The Wrong Man(Vera Miles is institutionalized), Vertigo(Scottie is analyzed when catatonic) , Psycho(the shrink scene), The Birds(the psychodrama at the heart of the story among the Brenners, Melanie, and Annie), and Marnie.
Only North by Northwest took a break from all that psychology in that run...but Spellbound was there years earlier to "set the pace." And thus has a strong link to Psycho.

[–] ecarle (14979) 4 years ago

Notorious: the "other half of the Spellbound/Notorious pair" and, for my money, a much better movie than Spellbound, INCREDIBLY ahead of its time on matters of sexuality, adultery, and the "love/hate" aspects of many(all?) romantic relationships.

There are no psychiatrists in Notorious that I can remember, but the whole movie is a study in sadism and masochism, as Cary Grant (for post WWII government reasons) pushes his lover(Bergman) into bed with another man (nice guy Nazi Claude Rains) and proceeds to rage about it. The sadism and masochism are "of the mind" we don't see anybody give or receive pain except mentally. (Bergman, with a tramp's reputation and a Nazi father for guilt -- WILLINGLY submits to marrying Rains and taking on Grant's mean accusations.)

What's notable about Notorious is that while its is a spy film , there are no chases or fistfights or other action of any sort. And what murders occur , occur offscreen(an overly talkative ex-Nazi simply disappears, we don't see him die.) Hitchcock already had Foreign Correspondent and Saboteur under his belt by the time he made Notorious, but he eschewed all action in favor of a very twisted love story filled with suspense...and a glorious but low key happy ending(largely played out on Another Hitchcock Staircase, which is a bit of a Psycho connection.)

[–] ecarle (14979) 4 years ago

But the biggest Psycho connection to Notorious is: Mother. Nice Nazi Claude Rains is a bit of a Mama's boy, and Mama lives under the same roof with him in his Rio Nazi refugee stronghold(along with some other, meaner ex-Nazis.) Mama is sort of a preview for what Mrs. Bates would be like if we could actually SEE her talking to Norman; its the same kind of relationship although Mama Sebastian is a bit less nasty to her son Claude(she prefers the quiet rapier-like put-down to screaming at him.) You kind of figure that Mama Sebastian likes the other Nazis in her house better than her weak son...but when they start trying to poison Bergman, Mama and Son are worried their comrades will find out that Bergman is a spy...and kill all three of them. (Truffaut told Hitchcock, "here we have a movie where the villains themselves are frightened.) Anyway, there are a few more Mamas between Notorious and Psycho, but Madame Sebastian rather sets the template.

The Paradine Case. Or: "The End of Hitchcock and Selznick." Of all the forties Hitchcock's other than Suspicion, this is the one I remember the least. I think I saw it once. The rest of the time, I've read about it. Peck again. Too young again(with gray put in his hair but his face is still young.) And playing British(poorly; they couldn't get Ronald Colman.) With an Ingrid Bergman subistute called only "Valli." (Hmm.) And matching rumpled old character stars in Charles Laughton and Charles Coburn. And a pretty blonde named Ann Todd as Peck's wife(upon whom he will cheat -- perhaps in mind only, I can't remember) with the more alluring foreigner Valli (a bit of a Midge-Scottie-Madeline thing going on here,as I recall.) This is a tale of obsession and humiliation (of lawyer Peck by his client Valli) as I recall, perhaps more of a dry run for Vertigo and Marnie than Psycho. In fact, I can't think of a Psycho connection here, so I'll drop it.(If anybody CAN, please do.)

[–] ecarle (14979) 4 years ago

Rope. Some firsts. Hitchcock's first color film. Hitchcock's first film totally away from Selznick's control(though he escaped to Fox for Lifeboat and ...somewhere...for Foreign Correspondent)...not to mention the two "40's Universals."

The film's opening credits run over a shot of a quiet New York City upscale street(ah -- THAT New York City; long gone) and then the camera swings over, and swings down, and swings in to an upstairs window. Its the opening shot of Psycho! Except we don't glide THROUGH the window; a curtain blocks our view.

We hear a guttural male scream(shades of Arbogast at the bottom of the stairs.) And we CUT suddenly past the curtain, into the room(a large apartment) and into the hideous close-up of a young man at the moment of death, strangled by a rope wielded by one young man while another young man holds his arms. Its a brief moment, but as brutal in its own way as the Psycho murders to come. The "two on one" aspect is mean,unfair, cruel. And one of the young men(the "leader" we shall soon learn) clinically checks the victim for a heartbeat that is no longer there. The victim's fresh body is lowered into a cedar chest in the center of the apartment. When he shall remain -- unseen -- for the body of the film to come.

With the body out of sight(but never out of mind), this opening scene in Rope connects a BIT more to the opening in Psycho in that when the camera entered the room in Psycho, Marion and Sam had likely just completed having sex, whereas when the camera enters the room in Rope, the two killers("Kingpin Brandon and follower Phillip") recall the "pleasure when he went limp" of the victim's death and this, TOO, feels like the aftermath of sex. VERY disturbing.

[–] ecarle (14979) 4 years ago

Rope proceeds to unwind as a great "stunt" -- greater even than Lifeboat's, and a precursor to Rear Window's(whose opening shot this opening scene ALSO recalls.) We all know the stunt -- a "faked" continuous shot -- 10 or so 9-minute takes (how long did it take the editor to cut THIS movie together? A day?)

But the story is great too. Based on a stage play, the film is a study in suspense. Brandon and Phillip proceed to welcome guests to a Sunday late afternoon dinner party -- with food served off the chest! The victim's possible fiancé is there -- and her ex boyfriend. Worst, the boy's father is there -- its heartrending watching him start to worry with his dead son mere feet away from him.

And the star of the movie is there -- James Stewart , in his first movie for Hitchcock, wearing gray in his young hair much like Greg Peck the year before, but more believably "mature." And pompous. And going on and on smugly about the "superiority" of some people and their being "justified"(if only in conjecture) to kill off inferiors. Little does Professor Jimmy know that his prized students have taken his ideas too far.

Which brings in the Psycho connection -- are Brandon and Phillip - -just like Uncle Charlie, Bruno, Norman and Rusk -- "psycho"? Or just er...very mean snobs. These two killers -- and Professor Jimmy -- are clearly linked in their superiority claims to the recently defeated Nazis(and, for that matter, to Uncle Charlie, a WWII era psycho.) As what are known as "dyad" killers(a pair), these guys harken to real life killers Leopold and Loeb and on to the Columbine killers. "One kingpin, one follower -- compelled to kill once BOTH of them commit."

[–] ecarle (14979) 4 years ago

I dunno...I never really feel that Brandon and Philip as a pair have quite the insane depths(and story focus) of the Four Famous Hitchcock Psychos...but I admit them grudgingly to the list as "of counsel", and I will link them to Norman in a couple of ways.

One: Brandon stammers when Stewart asks too many questions(eventually everyone starts to wonder where the missing young man is, and the killers are giving too much away.)

Two: The gay angle. It is suggested that Brandon and Philip are closer than just roomates(but maybe not) and whether it wasn't clear in 1948, its pretty clear now. Meanwhile, Norman Bates does not seem to have gay tendencies(he lusts after Marion through his peephole; he dresses as Mother for a certain reason) but the ACTOR was gay(well, bisexual as he later told the world in a People magazine article) and thus both Rope AND Psycho have some "linked overtones of sexual identity."

Finally, Rope shares with Psycho an emphasis on body disposal...and in both films, missing characters are quite nearby the people searching for them...but dead, and hidden(in the chest, in the swamp.)

Hitchcock's final film of the forties was "Under Capricorn." Like Rope, Hitchcock made "Under Capricorn" under his newly formed "Transatlantic Pictures banner" (kind of Hitchcock's DreamWorks, with releases done by Warner Brothers.) And like "Rope," Hitchcock made "Under Capricorn" in color. And like "Rope," "Under Capricorn" has a lot of "one take scenes"(though not the entire film.)

[–] ecarle (14979) 4 years ago

"Under Capricorn" is a famous Hitchcock anomaly, because it is not a modern-day film; it is a period piece set in 1800's Australia(under Capricorn, get it?) with people wearing flowery outfits.

There IS a connection to a psycho -- Uncle Charlie returns -- Joseph Cotton, miscast evidently as a "rough Australian ex-convict" in a role that Hitchcock wanted Burt Lancaster to play. (Hitch overheard Cotton call the film "Under Cornycrap" which led to some cold shouldering of Joe by Hitch.)

"Under Capricorn" is another Hitch film which I only saw a couple of times. Its very pretty to look at -- there is a purple/blue tint to the film -- and its a BIG vehicle for Ingrid Bergman, this time unburdened by a major male star opposite her(Cotton, as her dangerous husband must compete with the more effete Michael Wilding for her charms.) Bergman plays her role 'all stops out" as an alcoholic(shades of Notorious) who seems to have committed murder(or did she?) And she has a much younger, sexier version of Mrs. Danvers out to drive her nuts(that would be Margaret Leighton this time.) As Hitchcock told Truffaut , a critic noted that "it took 90 minutes for the first shock to arrive": a shrunken head placed on Bergman's clean white pillow by Leighton.

But hey, about that shrunken head....its kinda sorta a dry run for MRS BATES' head and face, yes? NOT a skull...skin wrinkled and tight on the face. Hey, the whole idea of "shrunken heads" has been a nifty adventure-horror motif for decades(and for a hilarious sight gag in Beetlejuice, where the shrunken head is still functional on a human body)...I think its kind of cool that Hitchcock got around to using it once.

[–] ecarle (14979) 4 years ago

But truly -- unless I've missed it - there's not much Psycho foreshadowing in Under Capricorn. Its very much a quasi-remake of Rebecca, touches on the drunken Bergman of Notorious..and looks forward to the twisted love affairs of Vertigo and Marnie. There is this I suppose...somebody who we think is the killer is NOT the killer...but this time, that somehow leads to a happy ending.

---

Again, Hitchcock biographer Patrick McGilligan said that Hitchcock's entire career led to Psycho, and in most (if not all) of these forties films, you can see Hitchcock fixating on things that would still be in his head once it came time to make Psycho. In the forties as much as the fifties, nothing "Psycho" had happened yet -- Ed Gein had not killed and been captured; the novel by Robert Bloch had not been written.

But HITCHCOCK was collecting the themes and shots that would recur in Psycho. As Hitchcock said "self-plagiarism is style." Here are some of them:

Rebecca: The house; the past's grip on the presence; Mrs. Danvers in silouette.

Foreign Correspondent: The staircase murder and the victim's bloodied face.

Suspicion: The staircase scene(glass of deadly milk.)

Mr. and Mrs. Smith: Carole Lombard's eye.

Saboteur: Universal soundstages and a man's special effects-driven death fall.

Shadow of a Doubt. The FIRST Hitchcock Psycho(I don't think the unseen one in The Lodger counts.) Small town Northern California and the evil within. "A psycho's tortured speeches." Universal soundstages. (And let's add: doubles Young Charlie/Uncle Charlie; Bruno/Guy; Marion/Norman; Richard Blaney(RB)/Bob Rusk(BR.)

Lifeboat: The sex. The violence. The knife. The Hays Code torn asunder. Man's inhumanity to man. Blood on a victim's face.

Spellbound: "An institution..a madhouse." Freudian analysis and lots of it. A thin and handsome young man with a blade in his hand.

Notorious: Mother.

[–] ecarle (14979) 4 years ago

Rope: Two psychos for the price of one. The opening window show. Disposed of bodies of missing persons right near the people searching for them(and the young man emerges from the chest as Marion will emerge from the swamp.)

Under Capricorn: A shrunken head that looks like a "Minature Mrs. Bates head."

---

Hitchcock's "forties into fifties cusp" (The Paradine Case, Rope, Under Capricorn, Stage Fright) was seen in some quarters as "Hitchcock's male menopause" -- "solved" by the action-packed wrong man psycho thriller Strangers on a Train and the fifties into the sixties.

But I'm not so sure. Rope in particular seems to have been "rescued" as a Great Hitchcock, and Stage Fright has both a following and interesting stars(Wyman, Dietrich, Todd...and Wilding tagging along from Under Capricorn.)

Meanwhile...Bernard Herrmann and Saul Bass are nowhere to be found, but Hitchcock's forties movies before 1947 seem to be yet ANOTHER string of hits, classics, and mixtures of both. Plus his one and only Best Picture(Rebecca.)

Hitchcock in the 30's(England), 40's AND 50's made a helluva name for himself and a helluva lot of great movies(plus one landmark TV series that went into the 60's.)

Psycho came near the end of an incredible run, and, even while made cheaply and quickly, seemed to reflect al the Hitchcock movies before it.

[–] ecarle (14979) 4 years ago

bump

[–] swanstep (2715) 4 years ago

an Ingrid Bergman subistute called only "Valli."

I agree that Valli feels miscast & out of her depth in (the disastrous) The Paradine Case but, post-Paradise Case, Alida Valli had a pretty interesting filmography.

Most famously she's the emotional centre of The Third Man (1949) as Harry Lime's girl (we never learn exactly what Harry did for her that keeps her loyalty and love in the face of monstrous things he's done to others, but thanks to Valli's performance we don't need to know details; that woman's been through some horror). She gets the famous final shot, one of the greatest in all moviedom. Film immortality.

After that Valli just *keeps on popping up* in interesting, sometimes great films for excellent (mostly Italian) directors:

Senso (1954) (as Farley Granger's love/hate object for Visconti)
Il Grido (1957) (Antonioni)
Eyes without a Face (1960) (Franju; her scary nurse assistant here is the template for lots of Valli's later giallo roles)
Ophelia (1963) (Chabrol)
Oedipus Rex (1967) (Pasolini)
Spider Strategem, 1900, La Luna (Bertolucci)
Suspiria, Inferno (Argento)

And there are probably a bunch of other good 'uns in her filmography, these were just the obvious biggies that jumped out for me and that I've seen. The Third Man assures Valli's immortality but she was around through an interesting period in Euro-film and her filmography shows it.

[–] swanstep (2715) 4 years ago

[–] ecarle (14979) 4 years ago

an Ingrid Bergman subistute called only "Valli."
I agree that Valli feels miscast & out of her depth in (the disastrous) The Paradine Case but, post-Paradise Case, Alida Valli had a pretty interesting filmography.

Most famously she's the emotional centre of The Third Man (1949) as Harry Lime's girl (we never learn exactly what Harry did for her that keeps her loyalty and love in the face of monstrous things he's done to others, but thanks to Valli's performance we don't need to know details; that woman's been through some horror). She gets the famous final shot, one of the greatest in all moviedom. Film immortality.

---

As Cary Grant says to Eva Marie Saint when she outs him as Roger Thornhill "wanted for murder on the front pages":

"Whoops."

The Third Man of course is Valli's biggest claim to fame, and that IS a great final shot --oh, how a woman can just KILL a man with non-attention.

(The shot is homaged with Vera Farmiga and Matt Damon at the end of Scorsese's The Departed in 2006, and more cheekily spoofed with Elliott Gould and Nina Van Pallandt at the end of Altman's The Long Goodbye -- it is THAT influential.)

[–] ecarle (14979) 4 years ago

After that Valli just *keeps on popping up* in interesting, sometimes great films for excellent (mostly Italian) directors:

Senso (1954) (as Farley Granger's love/hate object for Visconti)
Il Grido (1957) (Antonioni)
Eyes without a Face (1960) (Franju; her scary nurse assistant here is the template for lots of Valli's later giallo roles)
Ophelia (1963) (Chabrol)
Oedipus Rex (1967) (Pasolini)
Spider Strategem, 1900, La Luna (Bertolucci)
Suspiria, Inferno (Argento)

---

I've certain READ about all those other films -- interesting that "Senso" reminds us that the "less than" movie star Farley Granger ended up in so many interesting movies for so many interesting directors

and, I really must see Eyes Without a Face from the Psycho year of 1960.

Side-bar: movies really DO take over their years, if you ask me. There was the Godfather Year of 1972 and the Jaws year of 1975 and the Star Wars Year of 1977 and the ET year of 1982. Everybody was talking about THAT movie, that year...and in memory, the movie TAKES the year.

Same with Psycho and 1960. The Apartment and Spartacus and The Magnificent Seven are close...but no cigar.

One year is a two-fer year for me: 1973 was the Exorcist/Sting year...they both came out at the end of the year(as Christmas attractions) were BOTH giant blockbusters(neck and neck, I think The Exorcist won), they were sort of nasty/nice counterparts and...I see 1973 through their eyes.

[–] ecarle (14979) 4 years ago

And there are probably a bunch of other good 'uns in her filmography, these were just the obvious biggies that jumped out for me and that I've seen. The Third Man assures Valli's immortality but she was around through an interesting period in Euro-film and her filmography shows it.

---

I guess we can say that "Hitchcock sure knew how to pick 'em." The star of one of his most risible films(The Paradine Case) goes on to a long career...just not a standard Hollywood career.

And did not "Valli" eventually start acting with her first name. I wonder why Hitchcock cut it off. I can't remember what it was. Maybe too hard to pronounce?

About The Paradine Case. I hold to my belief that "Hitchcock never made a bad movie" with this one. I saw it all the way through once, my memories are weak but there was a spectacular and meaningful shot of Greg Peck leaving a courtroom in shame with the whole giant ROOM accusing him; and I recall an intricate camera movement around Louis Jordan as a courtroom witness(trivia: I believe that Louis Jordan is the only Hitchcock player to have also played BOTH a Bond villain and a Columbo Killer.) I also recall Charles Laughton to be his usual great self(I'm a fan), Charles Coburn being interesting, and Ann Todd being yet another beautiful Hitchcock blonde. But mainly I remember Hitchcock never "leaving his post" AS Hitchcock. Great shots, great camera movements, he was like a "movie making machine" that could do no wrong VISUALLY, even if the script failed him.

And poor Gregory Peck. With Spellbound(a giant hit) and Paradine(not)...he was just too young to give us the full Gregory Peck persona. Unfortunately, Hitchcock had no roles for Peck in his 1958-1966 heyday(Hitch turned down MGM's request that Peck lead NXNW.) I think Hitchcock told Truffaut that he felt Peck "had inexpressive eyes."

There is also(ON topic), the fact that Young Gregory Peck in Spellbound looks a bit like Tony Perkins in hair, face, and build.

[–] ecarle (14979) 4 years ago

Sad to say, a lot of technically better Hollywood actresses end up with less impressive filmographies than Valli's simply because Hollywood is so unadventurous and middle-brow a lot of the time. E.g., I've been gap-filling a bit with Olivia De Havilland recently and, boy, once you get outside her 5-6 best films the quality drops away dramatically.

---

I suppose all the "sub par" DeHavilland films were noticed by DeHavilland herself? She fought Warners to be released from her contract mainly because she HATED a lot of her assigned parts?

Boy, I wonder what our modern movie stars --- Hanks, Roberts, J-Law, Pitt, Denzel -- would think about being ASSIGNED the roles to play. Part of the "movie star persona" these days is what roles a star PICKS for him or herself -- they assemble their own legacy. (With their agent's help.)

The lovely Ms. DeHavilland has been in the news lately with her death at...101? She joins Kirk Douglas in passing the century mark before passing. I daresay that a few of our modern-day stars will hit 100, too -- better health regimes and medicine. Clint looks to make it.

--

The first De Havilland film people tend to mention outside her classics (GWTW, Robin Hod, Captain Blood, The Heiress, The Snake Pit) is Siodmak's The Dark Mirror (1946). At least on first viewing, however, it's an insipid, silly 'which twin is the evil one?' murder mystery. De Havilland's very good in the twin roles but the plot's just dopey, & director Siodmak's largely asleep at the wheel (not something you ever get from Hitchcock, although The Paradine Case is close I suppose)

--

Irony about Hitchcock: he directed some scenes in some of his movies while LITERALLY asleep. In his director's chair. Famous aprocyphal (sp?) story.

Hitch fell asleep directing a scene in Foreign Correspondent. Wakes up, turns to star Joel McCrea:

Hitchcock: Oh, I fell asleep. Was it a good scene, Joel?
Joel: Best in the picture, Hitch!
Hitchcock: Then..print it.

[–] swanstep (2715) 4 years ago

Re: Notorious. NY Magazine's Vulture site has just published a rather nice (at least if you have a taste for David Thomson-ish, highly-polished insinuations), Notorious-centered excerpt from a new book, The Camera Lies: Acting for Hitchcock by Dan Callahan.

Here's the link:
https://www.vulture.com/2020/09/ingrid-bergman-cary-grant-hitchcock-notorious.html

[–] ecarle (14979) 4 years ago

Re: Notorious. NY Magazine's Vulture site has just published a rather nice (at least if you have a taste for David Thomson-ish, highly-polished insinuations), Notorious-centered excerpt from a new book, The Camera Lies: Acting for Hitchcock by Dan Callahan.

--

Thank you for the link, an interesting read, and one that does something I like: "digs deep" into exactly how and why Notorious IS such a sexual film, all the details of actorly bits(Grant putting the scarf around Bergman's bare waist; Bergman stroking Grant's ear with her finger) that create(for the author) an "erotic" effect and (for us) at least a sense that Hitchcock when simpatico with his actors could put a "team effort" into great scenes and a great movie.

I gotta lotta Hitchcock books on the shelf(most of them given to me by OTHERS over the years, who came to know of my fanship)...but this one might be fun. I wonder what OTHER acting in Hitchcock the author details? Perkins with Leigh, perhaps? Though Perkins with Balsam remains a masterclass in staccato naturalism.

I gotta another post percolating on the acting in Hitchcock -- stimulated by recently watching 1960 Best Actor Oscar nominees Spencer Tracy(in Inherit the Wind) and Laurence Olivier(in The Entertainer) and comparing what they did versus what Perkins did in Psycho. It is all subjective as hell, but the comparison raises this "complaint" about Hitchcock that was raised by some actors who worked for him(James Mason , for one) and many critics who wrote about him: that Hitchcock didn't give his actors the TIME or SPEECHES to "work up a great a performance." Mason said something like "Hitchcock uses his actors as puppets, you can see the results in the films" and it is TRUE that Hitchcock liked to position his actors so that great camera moves could envelop them or great montages could capture them. The "great acting" was of a different sort.

I'll try more on this elsewhere, later.

[–] ecarle (14979) 4 years ago

Meanwhile, re: Notorious.

The "literature" and "Great Movies" columns seem to have pinpointed "Shadow of a Doubt" and "Notorious" as the two great Hitchcock pictures of the forties. "Rebecca" won Best Picture and is a famous title, but even Hitchcock felt that that one wasn't a "real" Hitchcock picture. Spellbound was a bigger hit than Notorious, but Bergman/Peck suffers versus Bergman/Grant and the script isn't as sharp. As for the rest of the forties bunch, well -- they are there to compare and contrast.

But I think that Shadow of a Doubt and Notorious have their reputations because both films are extremely modern(or "timeless") in their playout and almost staggeringly perverse in their Hays Code suggestiveness. There's a sexual charge to Uncle Charlie's relationships with both his sister and his niece that is weirder still for how NORMAL it feels(the casting of the dunderheaded Old Angel from Its a Wonderful Life as the husband/father only underlines this.)

Meanwhile, in Notorious, Ingrid Bergman is an alcoholic tramp(or whatever a ladies man is in reverse), but for very noble reasons, she and Cary Grant probably have some hot sex that turns into deep love BUT..Grant's gotta push Bergman into Claude Rains marital bed "for king and country." Results: everybody hates everybody else, even while deeply in love with them.(And that includes RAINS, who loves the woman who is "playing" him and must be killed.)

I like the CONTRAST between Shadow of a Doubt(Homespun Americana in Your Small Town, USA, with "regular people") and Notorious(Exotic spy intrigue in faraway Rio de Janeiro --with NOT regular people -- sexual spies, Nazis, alcoholics, sadists.)

With all that said, there are 1940s constraints on Shadow of a Doubt and Notorious, and "missing elements"(Bernard Herrmann, Saul Bass) that keep them from the top of my list. Psycho(roughly sprung from Shadow of a Doubt) and North by Northwest(roughly sprung from Notorious) "did it the best."

[–] ecarle (14979) 4 years ago

And a bit on Ingrid Bergman:

The excerpt from "Acting in Hitchcock" details the close friendship of Hitchcock and Ingrid Bergman, which extended to his giving her free reign in her acting choices.

Decades later, someone wrote a piece on the rather effervescent hosting job Ingrid Bergman did for that infamous "AFI Salute to Hitchcock" in 1979.

The CBS-taped-and-televised event is one of the great "split personality" events in movie history. And it IS movie history. On the one side: so many of the great Hitchcock actors, all in one place: Grant and Stewart(white-haired and flanking Alfred and Alma on either side of them at their table); Bergman (hosting); Perkins and Leigh on stage together; A roundelay of players from Judith Anderson to Rod Taylor to Vera Miles to Tippi Hedren(yes, she was there) to Sean Connery...

...and...on the OTHER side...cuts to Alfred Hitchcock, sitting there, wrote Truffaut(who was also a presenter) "like Mrs. Bates' corpse." It wasn't quite that bad, but much younger filmmakers than Hitch had trouble properly reacting to out of nowhere shots of them at these AFI events; Hitchcock couldn't handle it at all.. Still, he looked tired and old and inattentive, and it was only the star power in the room(which included modern lights like Streisand, Matthau and Caine in the room, plus Christopher Superman Reeve, newly hot) to make the history it was.

Of the "Hitchcock Four" biggest leading players, only Princess Grace was missing that night, so Bergman got all the spotlight as the female host. And here is the point: her love of Hitchcock, her friendship with Hitchcock, her admiration for Hitchcock and...her realization that "it was almost all over" was PALPABLE in that hosting job. At the end, Bergman spoke tearily to Hitchcock and hugged him hard, pulling Grant into the embrace and making a statement for the ages about "the people who make the movies."

[–] ecarle (14979) 4 years ago

Some writer on Bergman's hosting of the 1979 AFI event observed, "there are rumors that Hitchocck and Bergman had some sort of affair back in the forties, Bergman's behavior here would seem to confirm it." Maybe...but just as likely it confirmed her platonic love and friendship for the man. That was in 1979. Hitchcock died the next year in 1980, and as the 80's rolled on, we lost Bergman, and Grant, and even (young in his fifties) Truffaut.

The AFI event proved a "last hurrah" for more people than just Hitchcock.