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Hitchcock's Ten Greatest Villains -- PART TWO

posted 4 years ago by ecarle (14979)
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NUMBER EIGHT: Raymond Burr, as Lars Thorwald, in Rear Window(1954)

Lars Thorwald kills his wife with the curtains closed, within a 50-yard radius of about 30 apartment complex neighbors (how? we don't see...no gunshot, just a crash...likely strangling or stabbing).

To get rid of his wife's body with all those neighbors around, Lars Thorwald chops her body up into pieces(in the apartment SHOWER-BATH), and carries the pieces -- in shifts -- out to the Hudson River for disposal in his costume jewelry saleman's suitcase.

Lars Thorwald breaks the neck of a sweet little dog and leaves the body for all the neighbors to see(the owner screams to the unknown killer?"Why'd you do it? Because he LIKED ya?")

Lars Thorwald tells a female neighbor who offers advice on his gardening "Why don't you just SHUT UP?"

...and yet, at the climax, and a few times before that, we are meant to feel SORRY for Lars Thorwald. "What do you want from me?" he begs his snooping neighbor Jeff Jeffries(James Stewart.) "Money? I HAVE no money"

Lars Thorwald speaks to something about Hitchcock that was always, perversely, and humanly there: bad guys can have good qualities.

As Stewart spies on his various neighbors through various camera lenses -- famously he's a globe-trotting photographer trapped in his apartment with a broken leg -- there are a couple of views that should attract him first: the leggy dancer in the tight leotards("Miss Torso" -- her legs aren't her only selling point) and the newlyweds who are pretty much "going at it all the time"(the husband's stamina gives out first.).

But there are more dramatic views: Miss Lonelyhearts, the middle-aged loser at love; and the single Songwriter, who seems blocked and sad by HIS middle age("Men," the radio blares to him "are you over 40? Lost that energy?). And the childless couple whose dog is their child.

And then there are the Thorwalds -- a bickering couple who become a complacent single when the wife "takes a long trip" and disappears.

One critic noted that all the "window people" in Rear Window have "flash card simple" relationships, carefully crafted by Hitchcock and his screenwriter John Michael Hayes to be played out in "pantomime snippets." Over the radio and record music and traffic sounds of Greenwich Village in summer (so all the windows will be open and many curtains raised), we make out only a little of what is said -- we mainly SEE things.

So we see that Lars Thorwald is a big, lumbering man with a downtrodden sad manner (we feel sorry for him) and an "invalid" wife who never leaves her bed and always nags him (we feel sorrier for him) and who even laughs at him when he brings her a rose with her breakfast(we REALLY feel sorry for him.) But wait -- poor downtrodden Thorwald seems to have a girlfriend on the side -- he has a relaxed phone call that is a bit romantic in tone.

Its enough, this minimal information -- and the man himself -- to give us a "sense" of Lars Thorwald and why he might do what he does. Murder most foul.

Lars Thorwald is unique among Hitchcock villains because he's not thin (like any of the four Great Hitchcock Psychos) or a dandy. Late in the film, he wears a bright blue suit and tie that match his deep blue eyes...but he is just as likely to be seen lounging around in open shirt...or undershirt. Lars is middle-aged, white-haired(WHITE, or blond? Raymond Burr was in his 30s at the time, I believe) bespectacled. He's rather "Hitchcock's great schulmp villain." (Though there is least one more overweight villain in Hitchcock -- Willie the Nazi in Lifeboat.)

There's this, and one wonders when Hitchcock decided on it: with his size, his white hair, and his eyeglasses, Lars Thorwald is rather a ringer for Hitchcock's mentor/nemesis, David O. Selznick. This is one of those "why'd he do that?" mysteries of Hitchcock (like "why no music in the Birds, or why a mix of LA and SF in Family Plot?) Hitchcock seems to have known what he was doing making the Selznick connection. And David O. LEFT his wife for a younger model -- actress Jennifer Jones, wife of Hitchocck heavy Robert Walker(Bruno Anthony.)

Thorwald's hulking size slowly shifts from sad and downtrodden to strapping and menacing as we realize what he is capable of: dismembering his wife(he moves her head from a flower garden to a hatbox in his closet.) Strangling a little dog. Trapping Jeff's girlfriend(the luminous Grace Kelly) in his apartment and starting to attack HER before the cops get there.

And finally and famously, Lars leaves Jeff's "fantasy window world" to lumber on over in the darkness to confront his tormentor. It is again a mark of Hitchcock's "mastery of human behavior" that we are at once very scared for Jeff and yet also DESIRING that Lars punish Jeff for all of his voyeuristic behavior towards ALL.

[–] ecarle (14979) 4 years ago

Lars lurches slowly towards Jeff in the dark. Jeff can't get out of his wheelchair. He uses his photographer's tools this time to defend himself: flash bulbs that drench the room in white light and fade into a reddening of the screen(Jeff's eyes blinded, or Thorwald's? Either way, it is great cinema.)

Lars reaches Jeff and the wheelchair. There is a fight, a struggle, with Jeff hanging from his third floor ledge(shades of Vertigo from a much higher height to come) and with Jeff FALLING...into the arms of the cops but still breaking BOTH legs -- re-breaking the first break, breaking another leg.

The cops grab Thorwald and the villain is captured...but Hitchcock sure does seem to determine that Jeff Jeffries deserves a little something to remember his "bad deeds" by. I have always felt that a man with two broken legs and 1954 medical care will spend the rest of his life in pain and somewhat crippled. Hitchcock didn't give his hero much of a happy ending -- even with the lovely Grace Kelly ready for marriage.

Rear Window was evidently Hitchcock's biggest hit before Psycho, and made more money in a 1962 theatrical re-release AFTER Psycho ("See Rear Window," the ads said , "if your nerves can stand it after PSYCHO!"

And certainly Rear Window "forsees" Psycho in key ways: voyeurism(Jeff peeping on his neighbors through a lens; Norman peepin on Marion through his peephole.) Big knives and a bathtub(Lars chops up his wife's body in a bathtub; Norman stabs Marion in a bathtub.) (NOTE IN PASSING: 1965 Re-Release Ads for "Psycho" told readers: "Psycho and the shower-bath scene are back. Shower bath. SHOWER BATH. How specific, but how true -- both Cabin One and Thorwald's apartment have a shower bath. NOT a shower stall. NOT a bathtub.)

[–] ecarle (14979) 4 years ago

But the big question is this: what Lars Thorwald is capable of(killing his wife and then chopping her body into pieces)....does this make HIM a ...psycho?

Maybe. I stand by my "take" that Hitchcock had only four major decade-by-decade psychos (Charlie, Bruno, Norman, and Bob)...BUT the sanity of a few other Hitchcock heavies is in question, I suppose.

Motive is part of it. Norman and Rusk kill because they MUST -- just TO kill - but there is a sexual component. Uncle Charlie kills because(as Hitchcock says) "he is on a mission"(to kill the rich widows who exploit their husband's hard work) bu his view of the world in general is mad. Bruno's madness IS his mission -- killing Guy's wife is a "task," but Bruno doesn't see the wrong in it; HE's crazy. And he sees a bargain(Guy must kill Bruno's father) where there is none.

Against all this, Lars Thorwald is...a guy who's really tired of his wife, and kills her. The world sadly has a LOT of those . As does Hitchcock. See: Dial M, Vertigo..maybe Suspicion. And his TV show, which entertained American marrieds every week by showing wives killing husbands(with a frozen leg of lamb one time) and husbands killing wives.

Its the dismemberment angle that suggests Thorwald has mental issues...you'd have to be insane to be able to do that. The "blade to naked body" aspects of this very much anticipate Psycho and I would suppose that Rear Window as the "PSYCHO of 1954" in its reliance on gore as a "hook"(except: all in our minds, this time.) Similarly, the rape-like strangling attack on Grace Kelly in Dial M the same year would play out about 20 years later in Frenzy.

[–] ecarle (14979) 4 years ago

There is also this about Lars Thorwald: he is played by Raymond Burr.

And within just a few years after Rear Window -- in 1957 -- the villainous Lars Thorwald would become the heroic Perry Mason -- saving Hitchcockian Wrong Men and Wrong Women in the courtroom every week.

When Rear Window was re-released(evidently to big box office) in 1962, along with the "see it if your nerves can take it after Psycho" tag line had something else in the poster: a photo of a smiling Raymond Burr -- dark-haired as Perry Mason and the tag: "Co-starring RAYMOND BURR -- TV's Perry Mason!" By 1962, Rear Window had another star in it...and a star villain.

But irony stretched on farther: after Perry Mason ended in 1966, Raymond Burr immediately found ANOTHER classic TV hero to play: Ironside.

And Ironside, famously...was in a wheelchair.

Ain't it great how life has patterns and foreshadowings? I love that about life.

And this: The Perry Mason show was always in black and white(OK, there was one special color episode) and gave us a look at the 50s/60s cusp ; Ironside was in color and gave us the 60s/70's counterculture (as the hair grew long on Burr and his young team -- the Black Man got a really big afro.)

Rear Window, Perry Mason, Ironside...Raymond Burr made himself a helluva career. Throw in A Place in the Sun(where defense attorney Perry Mason is here a prosecutor) and some Martin/Lewis hit right after Rear Window where Burr had some fun as the heavy...not a bad career at all.

But his Hitchcock role mattered.

[–] ecarle (14979) 4 years ago

PS. I picked up these tidbits along the way. Burr once said of Lars Thorwald: "That man wasn't really a killer." Meaning...he was pushed to it? And Burr promoted the idea of Rear Window II, and John Michael Hayes actually wrote a script(not for Hitchcock): Jeff and Lisa marry and move to the Maine coast. Lars breaks prison and starts peeping in windows -- including that of Jeff and Lisa. "The peeper becomes the peeped-upon." Big cliffhanger fight on a seaside cliff, twixt Jeff and Thorwald. Never made.

[–] ecarle (14979) 4 years ago

NUMBER NINE: Dame Judith Anderson as Mrs. Danvers, in Rebecca(1940.)

Just as there aren't too many female Columbo killers(Janet Leigh and Vera Miles were two), or two many female Batman villains(Catwoman uber alles, but Poison Ivy later)....nor could Hitchcock really rev up too many female villains in his 53 movies.

You have to look to the mothers, first. And Mrs. Bates among them all. As a KILLER, one of the most terrifying monsters ever to command the silver screen. As a CHARACTER(with that old crone's cackling heckling of her poor son)...weird and funny at the same time. It turns out that Mrs. Bates is Norman...but that doesn't mean she doesn't exist. She's a skeleton with skin in that chair. THAT's real. She's the real "driver of Norman from his childhood." But was she really BAD in his childhood? Maybe..maybe not. He killed HER.

Next up on the "bad mothers" list is Mrs. Sebastian, the widowed Mother of Alex Sebastian(Claude Rains) in Notorious. She's Ingrid Bergman's mother in law, and that's always a tense relationship. But here it is REALLY tense -- because Mother and son TOGETHER slowly poison Ingrid, hopefully unto her death(til Cary intervenes.) For all of that, its "nothing personal, just business" -- Mother and son are postwar Nazis out to kill the Spy Who Married Me.

I believe that all the Hitchcock mothers save one are not married -- and that one is Mrs. Anthony -- the crazy mother of crazy Bruno Anthony("The mother is just as mad as the son," Truffaut remarked to Hitch.) There is a MR. Anthony -- one of the few Hitchcock fathers -- and that poor guy is rich but besieged with nutters in his household. Mrs. Anthony is harmless as Hitchcock crazies go; her worse crime is refusing to believe that her son could kill anybody ("Oh," she tells Ruth Roman "he's irresponsible.")

[–] ecarle (14979) 4 years ago

Jessie Royce Landis is a hoot as the widowed mothers of Grace Kelly in To Catch a Thief and Cary Grant in North by Northwest -- she's cool, she's hip, she's funny -- and to these 21st Century eyes, I daresay she's attractive. An older man could do a lot worse.

I guess that leaves "Marnie's mother" as a baddie -- is she Mrs. Edgar? Or was Marnie born out of wedlock? Louise Latham plays the woman as mean, unloving, and hating of young men coming after her daughter as Mrs. Bates was as hating of young women coming after her son. But there's a twist at the end: Marnie's mother who doesn't want men to touch her daughter let all SORTS of men touch HER -- as a young woman, she was a hooker. And as a younger woman, she let a young man have sex with her "so he would give me his letter sweater." And Marnie was the result. Marnie's mother is mean at first, but ultimately no villain -- and she loves her daughter.

Aside from the mothers -- who? In Hitchcock's final film, Family Plot, Arthur Adamson and Fran(William Devane and Karen Black) are a team of kidnappers , and Fran(no last name given) does the dangerous work of picking up the ransom in person. Karen Black got top billing so I'll grant her villain status -- but Devane simply has the better part, and the better "tools" for villainy -- that great, syrupy voice, those big teeth, that "Werewolf in a suit" look. And Adamson at the end proves more murderous than Fran.

Precursors to Adamson and Fran are the "married"(really?) Draytons in The Man Who Knew Too Much '56, but Mrs. Drayton switches sides at the end...she's more victim than villain.

Which brings us to: THE female villain in Hitchcock. Pretty much in ALL of Hitchcock. The one who is famous in Hitchcock history AND movie history.

[–] ecarle (14979) 4 years ago

Mrs. Danvers. If Rebecca is a great "pulp novel classic" and the story is a great pulp novel classic, and the character are great pulp novel characters well, Mrs. D is a great pulp Gothic novel villainess.

Mrs. Danvers is such a great villain in novel/film history that Judith Anderson is only one of the actresses who got to play her. Later: Diana Rigg, Anna Massey(from Frenzy), and just this year, Kirsten Scott-Thomas. That's like all those guys who have played Norman Bates...except with Mrs. D the part is the thing, not necessarily the actor.

For me personally, Rebecca is a bit too "chick flicky" for my tastes and hence Mrs. Danvers is a "chick flick" villain. She doesn't get down and dirty with her knife like Mrs. Bates did. She doesn't "parely directly with the cops" like Fran did. Mrs. Danvers is very formalistic, very stylized (she rarely moves; simply APPEARS behind the heroine), very well...very 1940. (Which was really reflecting the end of the 30s.)

And her villainy is of the "insinuating" type. Mrs. D isn't out to murder the second Mrs. Danvers (called "I" in literature I've read.) Not at first, at least. She wants to "do a psychological number" on "I," wants to belittle her, wants her to feel "less than" -- less than her rich husband, less than the rich environs of Manderley, less than...especially less than...the grand and glorious First Mrs. DeWinter -- "Rebecca."

But "I" stands her ground. Even as Mrs. D tricks her into wearing Rebecca's gown at a big dinner. Even as Mrs. D flat out tries to coo and coax Rebecca into suicide (by jumping out a window and off a cliff.) And even as Mrs. D finally burns down Manderley and...

..hey, I can't remember all of Rebecca. Was "I" in the house when Mrs. D set fire to it(for Mrs. D suicidally goes down with the house -- her face in shadow in a clear foreshadowing of Mrs. Bates in the shower.)

[–] ecarle (14979) 4 years ago

And who was Mrs. D trying to screw up with that public tribunal over Rebecca's death. The husband?

I can't remember.

I DO remember this. I saw Rebecca in 1977 in Los Angeles at the Motion Picture Academy as part of a series of "Best Picture" screenings. It was a full, appreciative house. There was none of the wall-to-wall screaming that Psycho could get; none of the continual laughter and cheering that North by Northwest got.

But...at this key moment:

Mrs. Danvers: Mrs. DeWinter always wanted --
"I" : I....AM Mrs. DeWinter!!

The audience applauded and cheered for long, long time, and in that moment, I "got" Rebecca.

Now there are a lot of Hitchcock films I like better than Rebecca. And I think Hitchcock felt the same way. But for history's sake, it is his ONLY Best Picture. And it IS a classic. And not only does it reflect the Hays Code era of 1940, it reflects how Hitchcock was also pushing that envelope even IN 1940(the implied lesbianism of Mrs. Danvers and Rebecca for instance.)

Judith Anderson got an Oscar nomination for playing Mrs. Danvers. (As did another Hitchcock heavy, Claude Rains, for playing Alex Sebastian...the Hitchcock villains did better at the Oscars in the forties.)

And Mrs. Danvers got something perhaps equally prestigious: spoofed on The Carol Burnett Show.

Thus does "Mrs. Danvers" merit her spot as the only female villain(short of Mrs. Bates herself) on the Top Ten list.

[–] ecarle (14979) 4 years ago

NUMBER TEN: "The Floating Tenth"

As with my Top Ten list of Hitchcock movies, my Top Ten list of Hitchcock villains has to go with "Nine and a floating Tenth."

These nine are pretty solid to me:

The Top Five: Include the Four Great Hitchcock psychos(one a decade) AND the best and most influential of HItchocck spymasters(Phillilp Vandamm.)

5-10

The Birds
Tony Wendice
Lars Thorwald
Mrs. Danvers

...yep, all solid. And note this: The AFI twice named these four as the best Hitchcock movies: Rear Window, Vertigo, North by Northwest, Psycho. Three of those have great villains --its among the reasons that they are so great. And those three were HUGELY popular with the public.

The one that wasn't so popular with the public -- Vertigo -- didn't have much of a villain. Whereas James Mason is above the title in NXNW and Anthony Perkins is top-billed in Psycho...Tom Helmore (Gavin Elster) is well in the "supporting players" list, only has three scenes, doesn't LEAVE the movie as the villain(though we may suspect) and...is never caught for his crimes in the run of the movie. In a "traditional" thriller, Gavin Elster as the villain would be exposed and fighting James Stewart up there in that bell tower, perhaps falling to HIS death. But Vertigo wasn't THAT kind of thriller, and that's why its a very special classic. The villain just doesn't matter. (Of course, as some have said, unless the villain by the climax is..James Stewart.)

(Note in passing: Raymond Burr, like Tom Helmore, isn't above the title in Rear Window, but he's clearly a villain and the actor himself became a very big star..on TV.)

[–] ecarle (14979) 4 years ago

And thus, "the floating Tenth": any ONE of these villains could conceivably go on the list with the other nine; its just a matter of how I(or you) might feel at the time.

I'll do them chronologically:

THE VILLAINS OF THE 30S: There's that guy who famously shows up at the end of The 39 Steps and reveals he is missing part of his finger in a great Hitchcock frisson(Hannay is seeking a spymaster who is missing part of a finger.) But...who was that guy? He figures in the famous "what are the 39 steps?" climax. Well, he can be a floating tenth. Perhaps Peter Lorre belongs there instead though -- he was "Peter Lorre" in his two Hitchcocks. Or I'll go with Paul Lucas the most -- he's cultured, elegant polite..and not revealed as the head villain for quite some time in The Lady Vanishes. I go with Lucas as the best. (And then there is Oscar Homolka, a classic sympathetic villain in Sabotage who "gets his.")

OTTO KRUGER AS CHARLES TOBIN IN SABOTEUR(1942). He's been praised elsewhere, here, by another. I'll join in. OK so Kruger wasn't a "big name" and Hitchcock wanted Harry Carey, Sr. But how well he is written -- a pro-Nazi American business man who sees the Nazis as good business -- and how EVIL he is with that condescending skeleton-face grin. I saw "Saboteur" on TV when I was very young, and Tobin actually scared me as he revealed his villainy even in the company of his little toddler granddaughter. And...like Gavin Elster...he gets away. (Norman Lloyd famously 106 years old this year! famously falls off the Statue of Liberty but he is a henchman -- still, put HIM on the floating tenth list, too.)

[–] ecarle (14979) 4 years ago

CLAUDE RAINS AS ALEXANDER SEBASTIAN IN NOTORIOUS(1946) Rains got a Best Supporting Actor nomination for playing, essentially, a bad guy you just had to feel sorry for. Yes, he gets to bed AND wed Ingrid Bergman, but she's doing it for her country (though I think she doesn't mind the rich wife perks and Rains IS loveable.)

Meanwhile, tall and handsome Cary Grant is always lurking about and reminding Alex of his inadequacy -- never moreso than when Rains "catches" Ingrid and Cary in a big kiss at HIS party. The whole thing feels like Cary and Ingrid as the Big Man on Campus and the Homecoming Queen pulling down the pants of the campus nerd(Rains.)
And when Rains(egged on by his evil mama) DOES become a villain(poisoning Ingrid) his final fate is a nasty bit of egotism on the part of Cary Grant. Poor Alex is a loser.

JOHN DALL AND FARLEY GRANGER AS BRANDON AND PHILIP IN ROPE (1948). Possibly...psychos. The both of them. Its called a "dyad" (two people tied up for murder) in which one is dominant and the other follows. If they AREN'T psychos, do we let them off the hook for being...political?(Super-race types; Nazis); philosophical in the Nietzche tradition("Some people are meant to be superior.") The film opens with the two men finishing the strangling of a poor fellow who was just their "guinia pig;" the two-on-one unfairness of the attack makes us hate them from frame one. Its up to James Stewart(unfortunately as smug as the killers) to unmask them.

[–] ecarle (14979) 4 years ago

Rope is famously an experiment(one movie in a single take) but it is also daring for 1948 in the grim themes it explores(the Nazi hangover of supremacy) and the one theme it "hides in plain sight": Brandon and Philip as a gay couple. Hitchcock operated in an era when gay characters were forbidden, but they got snuck in(it was daring to do so). Unfortunately for Hitchcock, he usually snuck gay people in as villains(the Rope guys, Bruno, Leonard in NXNW.) I'll counter by suggesting that a few Hitchcock HEROES just might have been gay, too.

Interesting: is Farley Granger the only actor to have played BOTH a hero AND a villain for Hitchcock? In two films with gay themes?(And Granger was openly gay.) Embarrassing: Dall and Granger rather overact too much to rank with the best Hitchcock heavies --I attribute it to the tough shooting conditions(trying to remember lines during the "single takes.") Dall comes off as a snooty type like Dan Acrkroyd in "Trading Places"; Granger simply overacts hysteria.

MORE

[–] ecarle (14979) 4 years ago

WALTER SLEZAK AS WILLIE IN LIFEBOAT(1944)

Before Lars Thorwald, Hitchcock experimented with an overweight heavy in Lifeboat...and of a particular type. Walter Slezak had a kindly, little boy's face and a roly poly body and projected "niceness." All the better to play a Hitchcock villain.

And...as with so many of Hitchcock's villains of the late 30s and 40's...Willie was a Nazi. (Hitchcock's "luck" in history was to be active during WWII...Nazis provided him with a wealth of evil types.) Evidently at least one 1944 critic was outraged at the portrayal of Willie as the most competent man on the lifeboat, the true sailor(acting at first like a "mere" sailor, he turned out to be a U-Boat captain), the true leader. But as the story goes on, Willie reveals level after level after level of betrayal to his "allies." He lies about not knowing English. He lies about where he is steering the boat(to a Nazi ship.) He lies about his hoarding of water, just for himself.

And he lies about murdering "Gus," his roly-poly American doppelganger(William Bendix -- and I am so GLAD that William Bendix is in a Hitchcock movie; Bendix is a key marker of 40's motion pictures and a "type" to me.)

Willie's killing of Gus(whose life he saved by amputating his leg, which renders Gus "inferior" in the Nazi's eyes, unworthy of water and life) is what triggers the animalistic revenge killing of Willie by the others -- not to mention the realization that he has steered them to imprisonment and death(which is averted only at the last minute.) In short, a very bad guy -- but likely a very good commander on his own team.

[–] ecarle (14979) 4 years ago

THE DRAYTONS IN 'THE MAN WHO KNEW TOO MUCH" (1956)

Bernard Miles and Brenda De Banzie, who played the married couple "The Draytons" were not over-the-title movie people in 1956, nor were they American players. They were better known in British films. Still they were distinctive and Hitchcock cast them well, and MR. Drayton in particular ends up being just about the slimiest Hitchocck baddie out there.

Here's why: they kidnap a child. And as the story moves on, Mr. Drayton makes the decision to have the child killed(strangled; we see the henchman testing the rope) and to contemptuously disregard the parental feelings of James Stewart(dad) and Doris Day(mom.)
That's evil.

As with Paul Lucas in The Lady Vanishes, Hitchcock misdirects us for a time by introducing the Draytons -- in mysterious Morocco -- as a nice, pleasant English couple who befriend Jimmy and Doris and help them out as friends who speak the same language.

At a crucial point in the drama, James Stewart becomes the man who knew too much(the dying Louis Bernard reveals an assassination plot in London) and Jimmy and Doris let the Draytons take their little boy Hank back to the hotel while "the McKennas"(Jimmy and Doris) talk to the cops.

Big mistake. Shortly thereafter, the McKennas learn that Louis Bernard was tracking the wrong couple (them) when the real villains were the Draytons. And they learn that the Draytons have kidnapped Hank.

In London , they meet the Draytons in new guises: as the Minister and his assistant in a backwater London church. Here, the "nice" Mr. Drayton of Morrocco reveals himself as the mean, uncaring, contemptuous Mr. Drayton that he really is.

[–] ecarle (14979) 4 years ago

At the film's climax(AFTER the bigger foiled assassination scene at Albert Hall), Mrs. Drayton switches sides to save Hank, and Mr. Drayton points a gun at Hank's head and takes a long walk with father(Stewart, in his raging Anthony Mann Western mode) and son down a long staircase. Stewart's frustrated rage in this scene -- and Drayton's child-endangering evil(which also has an element of fear; his plan is falling apart he needs to escape) -- is, to me, a direct precursor Dirty Harry and Scorpio 15 years later: heroism and villainy boiled down to pure, mutual hatred.

...and Arbogast isn't the only Hitchcock character who dies on a staircase.

[–] ecarle (14979) 4 years ago

JOHN VERNON AS RICO PARRA IN TOPAZ (1969)

After the comparative failure of the melodramatic Marnie, Hitchcock under the pressure of Lew Wasserman at Universal set out to make spy movies again. The Nazis were long gone, so he had to shift to the Communists. In the fifties, this had been verboten. The Man Who Knew Too Much '56 was based on the Soviet Union wanting to assinate the prime minister of Hungary; this was changed to something more like, uh, Freedonia.
Vandamm and Company in NXNW were never identified (except in Time magazine's review) as "Reds." (Said Time: "It will take more than a ring of Red spies to kill Cary Grant.")

But the 60s brought Bond and LeCarre and The Ipcress File and a hot Cold War and...commies could be identified as such.

The problem was making them interesting. Torn Curtain has no actor on the scale of James Mason as the head villain. Hitchcock dutifully cast real, semi-unknown European actors as the officials in East Germany to whom Paul Newman defects. The head guy looked like Chevy Chase, but wasn't very menacing. Wolfgang Kieling as "Gromek the bodyguard" was a great Hitchcock henchman, but he gets killed early and you're left with Chevy. (I DID like that the goofy Gromek is replaced on Newman's security detail by a middle-aged man built like a bull -- THIS time Newman can be subdued.)

And on to the next Cold War movie, in which the lead (Frederick Stafford) is a cold fish surrounded by interesting character actors. And the villains "bifurcate."

In the opening defection sequence, we get well-cast unknowns playing a trio of Russian agents following -- and losing -- a top defector (the woman in particular is middle-aged, ugly and REAL.)

[–] ecarle (14979) 4 years ago

In the third act, the tale moves to Paris where Michael Piccoli and Phillipe Noiret are commie turncoats in the French government -- but not particularly menacing, either of them.

Thus it falls to one particular player -- John Vernon as Castro lietenant Rico Parra -- to hold up the villainy in Topaz. He's gone by the end of the second act, but he's the best villain IN Topaz.

Or is he a villain? It was 1969 and there was a strong left wing element internationally and in the US who dug on Castro. Che Guevera got a movie starring Omar Sharif around this time.

Hitch plays it rather down the middle. He asks us to decide. Rico Parra is a powerful government leader. He wears the beard and fatigues of a Castroite as do all those who report to him -- the sight of a Harlem hotel filled with Castro guys is a witty summation of politics in 1961 -- I grew up with these guys on the news.

There is this about Rico Parra: I think he is just about the most MACHO villain Hitchcock ever gave us. John Vernon was a big, burly man with a barrel chest and a deep manly baritone. He had blazing blue eyes that cut right through the mist. Parra strides through Topaz with a certain arrogance and a definite fearsomeness.

When Rico Parra catches his aide Uribe photographing "state secrets" -- its a look that kills.

And that's what makes Parra a villain, ultimately. He orders executions. He orders torture(we see one couple after torture; its not a pretty sight.) In the one moment where Hitchcock demands decision, the heroic freedom fighter Juanita de Cordoba(a traitor to the Communists in Cuba) tells him: "You have made our island a prison." And Parra replies "you have no cause to judge."

Before murdering her. Rico shoots Juanita(who blossoms like a flower in famous Hitchcock death) to spare her the agony of torture. But also because...she's been having sex with that handsome French spy and, well...Hitchcock understood from love and war.

[–] ecarle (14979) 4 years ago

Some years later, Alfred Hitchcock became a big fan of the 1978 campus comedy "Animal House." It must have further amused Hitch to see HIS guy(Rico Parra/John Vernon) as the villainous Dean Wormer: "Someone's got to put his foot down with these punks...and that foot is me."

WILLIAM DEVANE AS ARTHUR ADAMSON IN FAMILY PLOT. (1976.)

One critic wrote that Hitchocck "after a decline in the sixties, seems to have found a second wind in the seventies." The critic was writing of Frenzy(1972) and Family Plot (1976.) Frenzy is better made, better written, and better looking than Family Plot, but Family Plot is "nicer" than the sexually violent Frenzy.

Still, one reason that the 70's were good for Hitchcock is that his two final films had two of his best villains. Bob Rusk of Frenzy I award with the fourth highest spot of Hitchcock villains; he "saved the decade for Hitch." But Arthur Adamson in Family Plot is a great villain, too, much better than many of the ones in the decades before him...if not quite Top Nine...he can be one of the Floating Tenth.

Thanks to his 60's decline, Hitch had lost casting clout in the 70's. He wanted Michael Caine for rape-killer Rusk; he got Barry Foster. For the dapper professional kidnapper Arthur Adamson in Family Plot, Hitchcock first sought Burt Reynolds, then went after Roy Scheider(hot from Jaws; he picked Marathon Man instead) and then settled for Roy Thinnes, a rather bland TV guy who had just impressed as a Nazi in "The Hindenburg" on the big screen.

[–] ecarle (14979) 4 years ago

But Thinnes never "clicked" for Hitch and he literally fired the poor guy a few weeks into filming. The replacement -- William Devane -- wasn't much more of a star than Thinnes was, but he had what Hitchcock loved: a great VOICE. And a great, toothy smile.. And Devane seemed "about to go places." He had just played JFK on TV in "The Missiles of October" a movie about the Cuban Missile Crisis(also the subject of Topaz.) He was cast (with Roy Scheider, and Dustin Hoffman, and Laurence Olivier) in Marathon Man to follow Family Plot.

What's interesting, i think, is that in the final analsyis, Barry Foster and William Devane strike me as much BETTER choices for the villains they played than the less-perfect bigger stars who were also offered the roles.

Devane isn't a savage rape-killer, but he's a professional kidnapper with a dark side that comes out when poor, nice Madame Blanche stumbles into his lair -- he slaps her around, knocks her out with a shot, intends to kill her. He's a villain.

And rather like Norman Bates before him, Arthur Adamson has a split personality -- of his own making. In his youth he was a mean kid named Eddie Shoebridge. Eddie is like the "key" to Arthur's real personality, and always lurking(in his uncouth tough-talking ways) beneath Adamson's more slick presentation.

Ernest Lehman wrote both North by Northwest and Family Plot; so he wrote both Philip Vandamm and Arthur Adamson. Devane said he took James Mason's Vandamm as his inspiration for Adamson; but Lehman said elsewhere "Adamson isn't in Vandamm's class." Interesting tension. But this: Vandamm (Number Three on my villain list) not only influenced Goldfinger and Hans Gruber...he influenced a GENUINE Hitchcock villain.

[–] ecarle (14979) 4 years ago

Hitchcock himself recommended two things to Devane for his performance: (1) "Play the clothes" -- a GREAT suggestion; Adamson favors stylish three-piece suits and (2) think of William Powell - Powell was long forgetten in 1976 but his performances were there to see in The Thin Man and elsewhere, and this: William Powell was Hitchcock's first choice to play Uncle Charlie in Shadow of a Doubt.

I'd be remiss in not noting that Adamson is "paired' with a woman -- Karen Black -- as his unmarried girlfriend and partner in crime. And Black has top billing in the movie. And Black has a GREAT first scene in which -- without ever saying a word -- she picks up the ransom and leads the cops to the victim.

Still, Karen Black in Family Plot lacks the charisma and style of her three co-stars(Devane, Barbara Harris, Bruce Dern)...she doesn't fully hold up her end of the bargain, villainy wise.

That said, Black DOES have that ransom pick-up scene and she IS a rather sexy and cool compliment to Adamson's oily villainy so:

WILLIAM DEVANE AND KAREN BLACK AS ADAMSON AND FRAN IN FAMLIY PLOT (1976)

...can be considred, as a team, as the "floating tenth."

---

That completes my "exercise." There is a meaning to it for me: Anthony Perkins as Norman Bates may be THE Hitchcock villain(if he is a villain) but he was preceded and followed by a great number of very memorable Hitchcock villains -- "the better the villain, the better the picture" and Hitchcock's villains sure made a lot of those movies.

And we must consider the number of Hitchcock movies where the villain was really the LEAD: SOAD, Strangers on a Train, Dial M, NXNW(co-lead with Grant and Saint), Psycho, The Birds, Frenzy, Family Plot.

[–] ecarle (14979) 4 years ago

And this: it is not just the characters that make these great villains. It is the ACTING. Consider:

Perkins in the cell; and by the swamp listening to Gavin call; and talking to Marion; and talking to Arbogast; and cleaning up the first murder.

Robert Walker in his first scene in Strangers: Hitchcock frames him in dynamic angles, but HE is dynamic in what he says and how he says it...insinuating, arrogant, fey.

Barry Foster in the rape-murder scene in Frenzy. Foster plays the rest of the movie(even the potato truck scene) in a normal mode, but here -- with very little in the script for guidance -- he steers Rusk into madness with a mix of self-pity, childlike petulance, melancholy, misplaced romantic fervor...and murderous rage. To see Rusk shift from "lover"(rapist) to killer -- equally repellent both times -- is pretty unforgettable work.

James Mason in NXNW: Every line delivered with over-articulate calm and arrogance but he DOES have feelings: romantic(for Eve), murderous(for Roger.) vengeful(to Eve when he finds out about Roger.)

Raymond Burr in Rear Window: Almost a silent movie lead, a pantomime. But equal parts pathos and menace.

Ray Milland in Dial M: So charming, so evil and..on the fatal phone call with the face of James Stewart emoting...humane?

Otto Kruger: He of the cadaverous smile and the rich man's contempt for the "moron masses."

And on and on....so many great, unique villains...it will be too bad if Norman Bates ends up the only one remembered.

[–] christomacin (4655) 4 years ago

Wow, that was quite an epic undertaking. They need to give awards out at this site.

[–] ecarle (14979) 4 years ago

Ha. Thank you, but your kind words are enough.

I know it won't be widely read, and I will "move" each villain to his (dead) board but...

...I feel like leaving a few thoughts behind these days.

It seems that in today's throwaway culture, we will be lucky if people even remember Norman Bates and the birds as Hitchcock heavies.

But he had all those OTHER ones. The performance of Robert Walker is something powerful and unique and "fed" by the tragedy of his death so shortly after making the film. (Bruno is his legacy.)

Who knows from Otto Kruger? And yet HIS villain is one for the ages -- a businessman with a pragmatists view of evil.

And a comparative "nobody" named Barry Foster gave us perhaps one of the best REAL looks at a sexual psychopath ever filmed.

Also, and so characteristically for Hitchcock: he found sympathy for many of these villains: for Norman, for Thorwald, for Alex Sebastian. (Maybe for Uncle Charlie -- a brain injury made him bad.)

Speaking of Uncle Charlie, I'm reminded that Hitchcock told Truffaut that those greedy rich widows may well have DESERVED their deaths. And when Otto Kruger speaks of "the moron masses' in Saboteur..he was using a phrase that HITCHCOCK used, sometimes about movie audiences.

In short, Hitchcock somewhat identified with some of his own villains!

[–] christomacin (4655) 4 years ago

A few interesting tidbits about Otto Kruger:
(1) He played the judge in "High Noon", amongst other roles.
(2) He died at the age of 89 (on his birthday, in 1974)
(3) He played Nazis in his next two roles after Hitch, "Friendly Enemies" (1942) and "Hitler's Chldren"(1943)
(4) He was the grandnephew of South African president Paul Kruger.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Otto_Kruger

[–] christomacin (4655) 4 years ago

Paul Kruger, the last Boer President of South Africa, is a controversial figure, who could be seen as either a hero or a villain, "from a certain point of view" (as Sir Alec would say), much like Mr. Tobin:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Kruger

Stephanus Johannes Paulus "Paul" Kruger (Afrikaans pronunciation: [ˈkryjər]; 10 October 1825 – 14 July 1904) was a South African politician. He was one of the dominant political and military figures in 19th-century South Africa, and President of the South African Republic (or Transvaal) from 1883 to 1900. Nicknamed Oom Paul ("Uncle Paul"), he came to international prominence as the face of the Boer cause—that of the Transvaal and its neighbour the Orange Free State—against Britain during the Second Boer War of 1899–1902. He has been called a personification of Afrikanerdom, and remains a controversial and divisive figure; admirers venerate him as a tragic folk hero, and critics view him as the obstinate guardian of an unjust cause.

Born near the eastern edge of the Cape Colony, Kruger took part in the Great Trek as a child during the late 1830s. He had almost no education apart from the Bible, and through his interpretation believed the Earth was flat. A protégé of the Voortrekker leader Andries Pretorius, he witnessed the signing of the Sand River Convention with Britain in 1852 and over the next decade played a prominent role in the forging of the South African Republic, leading its commandos and resolving disputes between the rival Boer leaders and factions. In 1863 he was elected Commandant-General, a post he held for a decade before he resigned soon after the election of President Thomas François Burgers.

Kruger was appointed Vice-President in March 1877, shortly before the South African Republic was annexed by Britain as the Transvaal. Over the next three years he headed two deputations to London to try to have this overturned. He became the leading figure in the movement to restore the South African Republic's independence, culminating in the Boers' victory in the First Boer War of 1880–81. Kruger served until 1883 as a member of an executive triumvirate, then was elected President. In 1884 he headed a third deputation that brokered the London Convention, under which Britain recognised the South African Republic as a fully independent state.

Following the influx of thousands of predominantly British settlers with the Witwatersrand Gold Rush of 1886, "uitlanders" (out-landers) provided almost all of the South African Republic's tax revenues but lacked civic representation; Boer burghers retained control of the government. The uitlander problem and the associated tensions with Britain dominated Kruger's attention for the rest of his presidency, to which he was re-elected in 1888, 1893 and 1898, and led to the Jameson Raid of 1895–96 and ultimately the Second Boer War. Kruger left for Europe as the war turned against the Boers in 1900 and spent the rest of his life in exile, refusing to return home following the British victory. After he died in Switzerland at the age of 78 in 1904, his body was returned to South Africa for a state funeral, and buried in the Heroes' Acre in Pretoria.

[–] Horrorlover656 (36) a year ago

Interesting. Can you tell me more about the proposed "Rear Window II"? Where did you get the info?

Btw, hope you get your account back soon. Good luck!

[–] jasonbourne (1027) 4 years ago

Rear Window is one of those movies you wonder how it got made. I think Raymond Burr was over 300 lbs in the movie. The story is based on a short story called "It Had to Be Murder" and takes place mostly in an apartment. It seems more like one ready for an Alfred Hitchcock Presents episode. Yet, James Stewart, Grace Kelly, and Raymond Burr pull it off. Oh yeah, the was a guy name Hitchcock, too.

[–] ecarle (14979) 4 years ago

Rear Window is one of those movies you wonder how it got made. I think Raymond Burr was over 300 lbs in the movie.

---

Burr was pretty big in those days. He force-dieted himself into shape for Perry Mason, held off the pounds for over a decade, and then slowly gained weight again on Ironside (all that sitting in a wheelchair.) But I don't think he ever returned to his Rear Window bigness.

I met Burr in the 80's at a business event and actually gave him a superfast shout out for Rear Window. (I swear I forget these things over time.) He said thank you. That was it. I recall finding him to be a shorter man than I thought(he is so HULKING in Rear Window; angles?) And not all THAT overweight, his clothes were cut well.

---

The story is based on a short story called "It Had to Be Murder" and takes place mostly in an apartment. It seems more like one ready for an Alfred Hitchcock Presents episode. Yet, James Stewart, Grace Kelly, and Raymond Burr pull it off. Oh yeah, the was a guy name Hitchcock, too

---

I've never read "It Had to Be Murder" but I have read that it was pretty short. (Its like Joe Stefano said about the short story "The Birds" when he declined to write the screenplay: "It was short, but not a story." I don't think the man in the Woolrich story had a girlfriend for instance. I wonder if the murderous neighbor was heavyset(I do know, from Hitchcock/Truffaut, that in the story, the villain fires a short back across the courtyard and the hero holds up a statue of Beethoven or somebody to get the bullet.)

[–] ecarle (14979) 4 years ago

Rather as with "The Birds," Hitchock was in love with the premise: voyeurism and the "one-two-three" motif: (1) Man looks at something (2) POV of what he sees and (3) man reacts to what he sees. Rear Window does this for almost two hours, SCORES of 1-2-3 combinations. I once read the screenplay at the Academy library and its like reading a blueprint(sentence after sentence after sentence, with numbers at the front of each sentence. ), not a movie. A hard read -- dialogue was a wonderful thing to see.

Also this: Hitchcock decided on Rear Window as his first project at Paramount -- a studio that was going to pay him more than Warner Brothers (where he had been) , give him bigger budgets, and pay for bigger stars (James Stewart and Cary Grant instead of Farley Granger and Ray Milland -- though Monty Clift had been a major payout.)

Whereas soon Hitchcock would use Paramount budgets to make movies on location at the French Riviera, Morocco, London, Vermont...all the "Rear Window" money went into that big giant set on the Paramount lot. But THAT was a spectacular gimmick.

And thus -- "on purpose" -- Hitchcock wanted his first Paramount movie to be a "big event" -- a truly creative enterprise with a truly big star(Stewart). And a gorgeous new star leading lady....and a great villain.

Note in passing: Cary Grant and James Stewart were such big stars that they rarely drew a "big star" as their Hitchcock villain.

Stewart ended up against Raymond Burr, Bernard Miles, and Tom Helmore (after somewhat starrier John Dall and Farley Granger in Rope.) Grant WAS the villain(or not) in Suspicion; and was against character man Claude Rains in Notorious and "nobodies" in To Catch a Thief. Only with North by Northwest did Grant finally draw an above-the-marquee opponent: James Mason. Which is one reason THAT movie is so great.

[–] jasonbourne (1027) 4 years ago

>>I've never read "It Had to Be Murder" but I have read that it was pretty short. (Its like Joe Stefano said about the short story "The Birds" when he declined to write the screenplay: "It was short, but not a story." I don't think the man in the Woolrich story had a girlfriend for instance. I wonder if the murderous neighbor was heavyset(I do know, from Hitchcock/Truffaut, that in the story, the villain fires a short back across the courtyard and the hero holds up a statue of Beethoven or somebody to get the bullet.)<<

I didn't know The Birds was a short story, too. Hitchcock must have some kind of vision to pull it off and turn it into a major film. He does look at things as a play.

Here's a link to Cornell Woolrich's story which Rear Window is based on 13 pgs -- https://www.miettecast.com/woolrich.pdf

It's not bad. More than some books I've started reading.

[–] ecarle (14979) 4 years ago

The story is based on a short story called "It Had to Be Murder" and takes place mostly in an apartment. It seems more like one ready for an Alfred Hitchcock Presents episode.

--

It is interesting to think about the sheer volume of story material that flowed into Hitchcock's office and how he -- often all by himself, but also with wife Alma's help -- decided "what might make a Hitchocck movie."

Or a Hitchcock TV show. The TV show didn't start until September of 1955 (likely the spring/summer before then), and suddenly...Hitchcock had the need not only to make one to two movies a year(in the 50s) but to oversee over 30 TV episodes.

A lot of those TV episodes were from short stories -- perfect for a 30 minute (less with commercials) episode. Perfect.

Hitchcock didn't have the TV show when he read "It Must Have Been Murder" -- its spooky to realize that if he had the TV show, he might have done that "short" version of the story on TV, skipped the movie.

As it was, Hitchcock's TV show did VARIANTS on Rear Window -- suspicious-behaving neighbors, disappearing spouses, crimes viewed through windows, etc. Just without James Stewart and the big budget grandeur and complexity of Rear Window.

[–] ecarle (14979) 4 years ago

I didn't know The Birds was a short story, too.

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Yep. By Daphne DuMaurier, who also wrote Rebecca (a novel.) Thus we had a 1963 horror movie advertised as "based on the story by Daphne DuMaurier" -- a weird connection of Psycho-era horror to 40's feminen melodrama.

The short story of The Birds has just about nothing to do with the movie -- other than the premise of attacking birds. No Melanie, no Mitch, No Lydia, No Kathy, No Annie -- no Bodega Bay. It is set in gray coastal England and the protagonist is a poor farmer trying to protect his family. As I recall, some of the set-pieces in the movie are in the story ..and the story had one great idea that the movie skipped: the birds stampede cattle and the cattle kill a person or two stomping on them. Could have been a GREAT Hitchcock set-piece but -- I guess he didn't want "The Cows" trying to upstage "The Birds."

----
Hitchcock must have some kind of vision to pull it off and turn it into a major film.

---

Critics snipe at the special effects in The Birds today(and enemy critics of Hitchcock sniped at them in 1963), but for the most part, I think they are spectacular. HOW Hitchcock got those shots of gulls in the sky over Bodega Bay, and all the birds at the end -- its the stuff of movie legend. Hitchcock was out to "top Psycho" and though he could NOT top it in horror or depth of character, he easily topped it in "difficulty of technique."

I enjoyed Hitchcock's quote to the press: "The Birds was such a challenging and difficult movie to make that I shall never make another movie called The Birds again!"

--

[–] ecarle (14979) 4 years ago

Here's a link to Cornell Woolrich's story which Rear Window is based on 13 pgs -- https://www.miettecast.com/woolrich.pdf

It's not bad. More than some books I've started reading.

---

WOW. There it is for the taking. Thank you!

I skimmed it and I'm going to read it. Though it reminds me -- I've always found novels -- with chapters -- easier to read that short stories. Chapters are rather like scenes in a movie -- they allow you to break down the story into "bites" and to enjoy the climax of each chapter.

A short story to me is a big mass of words over a lot of pages -- no chapter breaks -- and a harder read.

And here was Hitchcock -- as part of his job -- having to skim HUNDREDS of short stories. And books. And plays. He had staff to provide "coverage"(one page memo summaries of the works) but still...reading all that stuff looks like a grind.

PS. I own the novel Psycho(which is its own very different and creepy read from the movie) and the novel from which Frenzy was adapted. And I have an old "Hitchcock children's short story book" into which Hitchocck's team put The Birds. (I think the book is called "Alfred Hitchcock's Spellbinders in Suspense.")

I don't have the anymore, but I owned and read the paperbacks of Topaz and Family Plot(The Rainbird Pattern) before the movies came out. So I SORT of knew what to expect WHEN those movies came out. Same with the Frenzy novel("Goodbye Picadilly, Farewell Leiceister Square.")

And that's it.

Other than this Rear Window short story, the Hitchcock novels I would like to track down and read some day, some how are : Strangers on a Train, To Catch a Thief, the novel from which Vertigo was made, and
Marnie.

[–] ecarle (14979) 4 years ago

Here's a link to Cornell Woolrich's story which Rear Window is based on 13 pgs -- https://www.miettecast.com/woolrich.pdf

---

OK...I read it.

I recall that Hitchcock once said "Movies are more like short stories than like novels...they can't cover the time involved in a novel, they follow the rising curve of a short story."

I never quite agreed with that. As I say above, I prefer books because "chapters are like scenes." Indeed, with Psycho(granted, based on a SHORT novel) each chapter in the book -- except Chapter One -- has a matching scene in the movie.

That said, I was surprised at how much of the detail in the 13 pages of "It Had to Be Murder" DID make it into the movie. From short story to movie, the story "flows" rather the same.

And I was surprised: I think Truffaut misremembered the story. Its not a statue of Beethoven, and the killer doesn't shoot from across the courtyard -- he comes over to the apartment just like in the movie, with all the build-up in the movie (including that great moment when Jeffries picks up the phone and starts blabbing and -- its Thorwald silently on the other end, now KNOWING where his tormentor lives and who he is.)

Subtle changes to two names: Hal Jeffries( in the short story) becomes "LB Jeff Jeffries" (what a rather clunky name) in the movie("Jeff" for short works fine.) Boyne the Cop(in the short story) becomes Boyle the cop(rather like Richard Blamey became Richard Blaney -- its more smooth "the movie way.")

But Lars Thorwald is still Lars Thorwald -- that great Htichcock villain name "took" (wife Anna, too.)One description of him is "black hair...clearly of Scandinavian descent...runs to sinew but no bulk." Hm...how'd that become Raymond Burr with white hair and glasses? The Selznick influence?

[–] ecarle (14979) 4 years ago

There is no Lisa Fremont -- no girlfriend at all. I think Hal Jeffries is an older man in this tale. There is no Thelma Ritter nurse character, either.

There IS a faithful servant(not live in) named Sam, and very unfortunately for today, he is a Black character whose dialogue is written in a derisive manner. Also, he is treated with brusque meanness by Jeffries throughout the story -- the mean, ornery nature of Jeffries survived to the James Stewart version but pitted(perversely) against his girlfriend rather than against a servant. (In the short story, it is Sam who is purposely ordered -- nastily -- by Jeffries -- to go across the courtyard and up into Thorwald's flat -- to move things around, that's all. No wedding ring business.)

Indeed -- if one can remove any and all material pertaining to the Black servant -- "It Had to Be Murder" has a whole lot in it that made it into the movie --- the mystery plot, the POV , the characters other than Lisa and the Nurse.

You can see how Hitchcock got hooked.

Thanks for posting it!

[–] jasonbourne (1027) 4 years ago

You're welcome. I was happy to find and read it since it's short. I'll have to look up The Birds and Rebecca or buy the kindle. After reading your takes on RW, I really appreciate Hitchcock getting the studio to build the set. I've lived in apartments in Nob Hill while growing up in San Francisco and know one doesn't really see all that if they actually lived there. But Hitch made it enjoyable, suspense filled, and getting us into the characters and what they are experiencing. He made it believable.

If anything, the beginning of Dirty Harry is what one sees from some of the high rise apartments in San Francisco besides the gorgeous views. (I think DH and the Eastwood movies did the reverse in that the films spawned a book series.)

>>"Movies are more like short stories than like novels...they can't cover the time involved in a novel, they follow the rising curve of a short story."<<

That's interesting. Maybe too many scenes which makes it difficult to tell the story one wants to. Usually, I can accept the book as a framework and then go from there. The characters could be the same or different. Hitchcock seemed to want to tell his version, so the framework or idea of the story gave him motivation. Usually, I'll read the book after the movie as reading the book usually spoils the movie. The opposite doesn't usually hold true unless it gives away the ending of a mystery. Even then a well written book or story is still interesting on its own.

[–] jasonbourne (1027) 4 years ago

I found The Birds from Mr. Smith's English class. It is suspenseful, so can see why Hitchcock was sucked in. If you've read it already, then go to the last page where he asks questions as homework lol. Have to watch The Birds again as well as Rebecca (and read the novel afterward). She's a pretty good writer.

https://mrnsmith.files.wordpress.com/2016/10/the-birds-by-daphne-du-maurier.pdf

[–] ecarle (14979) 4 years ago

You're welcome. I was happy to find and read it since it's short.

--

Yes, it is an interesting read. I will follow up to note that the movie added quite a few more characters other than just Lisa the girlfriend and Stella the nurse, as I suggested before. The songwriter and Miss Torso for two. Though the sad Miss Lonelyhearts is in the short story.

Also the short story only reveals that the "hero" is in a wheelchair at the very end -- as he is about to be set free. Odd -- one wonders why he sent his servant over there to Thorwalds, the explanation is sent to the end?

---

I'll have to look up The Birds and Rebecca or buy the kindle.

---

I have read both The Birds and Rebecca...decades ago. It was fun to skim "The Birds" as you posted it here. I can't say that I will ever need to read Rebecca again. Not really my type of tale. No, I need to find Strangers on a Train in the main, maybe To Catch a Thief and Marnie. I suppose they are out of print...

As I have noted, I am old enough now to have been "cognizant" and a young Hitchcock fan when each of his final three films was announced, so I found the source novel each time and read it about a year before the film came out. I read Topaz. I read "Goodbye Picadilly, Farewell Leiceister Square"(which became Frenzy.) I read ""The Rainbird Pattern" (which became Family Plot.) I thereby missed out on some of the plot twists (With Frenzy, I knew Rusk was the killer the second he appeared on screen; I knew Brenda AND Babs would die) when the movies came out.

But the movies played tricks, too. In The Rainbird Pattern, the kidnappers killed Madame Blanche. She lives in the movie Family Plot. And the kidnappers are a married couple with a child.

[–] ecarle (14979) 4 years ago

The books gave us different characters to imagine, too. In the Frenzy book, Richard Blamey is a middle-aged World War II vet. In the movie, Richard Blaney(name change) is a 30-something Suez battle veteran. In the book, Bob Rusk is..Rod Taylor(as described.) In the movie , he is Michael Caine double Barry Foster. The male kidnapper in The Rainbird Pattern is tough Robert Shaw type, and British. In the movie Family Plot: American William Devane. And Madame Blanche is middle-aged and blowsy in the book -- pert young Barbara Harris in the movie. Same with George Lumley -- he's Bruce Dern and young in the movie; another middle-aged man in the book.

Anyway, that was an interesting time in my young life. Reading the source novels of Hitchcock movies BEFORE I could see them as new films the next year...now Hitchcock's movies are all "relics of the past."

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[–] ecarle (14979) 4 years ago

After reading your takes on RW, I really appreciate Hitchcock getting the studio to build the set.

--

Hitchcock knew he was moving from the rather financially tight Warner Brothers to the more well-off Paramount. He wanted to do something "big" for his Paramount debut. Ironically, soon Paramount would send him all over the world to make To Catch a Thief and The Man Who Knew Too Much, but for Rear Window, he never left Los Angeles. He made Paramount's Hollywood largest sound stage into a "giant dollhouse" or perhaps a human ant farm.

--

I've lived in apartments in Nob Hill while growing up in San Francisco and know one doesn't really see all that if they actually lived there.

---

Though elsewhere around here In oted that on a nighttimbe stroll through an SF apartment district, I saw the same basketball game playing on every TV on the block...through their windows!

--
But Hitch made it enjoyable, suspense filled, and getting us into the characters and what they are experiencing. He made it believable.

--
Part of the "magic" of Rear Window is that the "window world" is very artificial...but the people seem very REAL. We care about all of them...and us guys lust after Miss Torso..who ends up having a real nerdly little boyfriend(that's perhaps too much of a broad gag -- though he was in the Army, so maybe his military status impressed her.)

[–] ecarle (14979) 4 years ago

If anything, the beginning of Dirty Harry is what one sees from some of the high rise apartments in San Francisco besides the gorgeous views.

--

That is a great opening sequence in Dirty Harry. High above the skyscrapers of San Francisco from the vantage point of a TALLER skyscraper as Scorpio aims his high powered rifle at a beautiful young woman taking a swim in a penthouse pool and we wait...wait...WAIT for him to pull the trigger. She takes the hit to her white bathing suit and the pool fills with blood. Its a bit "Psycho like," really, though the cityscape is at once reminiscent of the night scapes of SF in Vertigo AND the Phoenix skyline in Psycho.

Then Harry arrives to investigate (to huge APPLAUSE when I saw the movie, on his credit "CLINT EASTWOOD") and finds his way to the other building and takes a walk on its roof that takes in roughly the same terrain as the opening chase in Vertigo.

In San Francisco a few years back -- maybe a decade -- the city elected to put various posters all over town with the theme "San Francisco at the movies." Each poster played up a different movie: Vertigo, Bullitt, Dirty Harry, What's Up Doc..quite a city for the movies in its day. The city has a different reputation today -- at once too ultra-rich for most people to live there (like Judy in Vertigo did), but plagued with poverty and homelessness. It is no longer the mysterious and romantic city of the past. Still a nice place to visit, though.

[–] ecarle (14979) 4 years ago

(I think DH and the Eastwood movies did the reverse in that the films spawned a book series.)

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Yes, well most movies in those years got a "novelization" written from the film script (script direction: "HARRY sees:" became "Harry saw..") But Dirty Harry went further; an actual series of pulp novels was written. I saw them around, didn't read them.

Talk about a "lost era": when I grew up, bestselling novels were extensively promoted (entire tables with stacks in bookstores) and movies were a SUBSET of novels. "Soon to be a major motion picture" was the selling point of Airport, The Godfather, The Exorcist, and Jaws. Even Hitchcock's Topaz got that treatment(the novel was by Leon Uris, author of Exodus.)

That promotion seems to have fallen away in the 21st Century, LESS the "youth novels" like Twilight and The Hunger Games. Or 50 Shades of Gray.

[–] ecarle (14979) 4 years ago

>>"Movies are more like short stories than like novels...they can't cover the time involved in a novel, they follow the rising curve of a short story."<<

That's interesting.
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Well, I could never really "buy" Hitchcock's short story analogy -- because I find short stories VERY hard to read...they don't divide up into chapters OR scenes, usually.

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Maybe too many scenes which makes it difficult to tell the story one wants to.

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I think that's what Hitchcock was getting at. He worked before the advent of the "mini-series" so often had to cut a lot of material out for the movie to get it within two hours. For instance, the book of Frenzy has a multi-chapter trial of Richard Blamey(Blaney). The movie removes the ENTIRE trial and goes straight to Blaney's sentencing.

That said, again -- Psycho the book and Psycho the movie are almost a total match of scenes, start to finish, with the removal of Chapter One(at the house with Norman and Mom to start.)

In that era where audiences "waited to see the movie of the book" -- Gone with the Wind is a big example -- there was this consideration: should the movie be EXACTLY like the book? In which case, there were no surprises for a reader of the book. Which was the point. I think the movie was meant to reach more PEOPLE than readers of the book. Same story, larger audience.

Topaz the book was a best seller. Topaz the movie was a flop. Hitchcock noted: "A movie to be a bestseller must draw more people than a book."

But this: I read The Godfather before I saw the movie. Wow. Coppola took out all of the story of "Young Vito Corleone"(that was saved for DeNiro in II). But he ALSO took out a whole sequence in which Sonny's mistress goes to Las Vegas and gets some "very special surgery." (Shrinks her vagina; only the now-dead Big Sonny could satisfy her before then.) THAT was "sex book stuff" and NEEDED to go. The "serious stuff" was left in the movie and a good movie resulted.

[–] ecarle (14979) 4 years ago

Jaws. The Mafia runs the coastal village. Hooper is a stud who has an affair with Chief Brody's wife. Brody and Hooper fistfight on the boat; Quint breaks it up. Hooper DOES die in that shark cage.

Spielberg said: OUT. And we got a sympathetic Hooper, no affair, no Mafia.

So again, exactly how much is kept or left out when a book becomes a movie is an interesting thing.

Robert Bloch was proud that Hitchcock's Psycho had almost all of the book in it, right down to the last line.

[–] ecarle (14979) 4 years ago

Usually, I'll read the book after the movie as reading the book usually spoils the movie. The opposite doesn't usually hold true unless it gives away the ending of a mystery.

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Probably a good plan. You want to experience the twists in one place or the other. In the movie...it is perhaps more "fun" -- more visceral.

Then you can read the book for more details.

Hitchcock noted somewhere "novels are always more attenuated than films." Example: the book Psycho, where Arbogast tells Sam and Lila about tracing Marion(Mary in the book) to TWO different car lots and finding out about TWO separate car buys. The detective gets into m ore detail about his investigating. In the movie, three lines cover it:

Arbogast: Where is she, Miss Crane?
Lila: I don't know you.
Arbogast: I know you don't. If you did, I wouldn't have been able to follow you.

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Even then a well written book or story is still interesting on its own.

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Oh, yeah. The Godfather book was too heavy on the Harold Robbins sex scenes, but the characters were drawn with more detail than the movie, as was some of the back story(Luca Brasi is MUCH more horrifying in the book, the background on the things he does -- killing two guys with an axe and in another scene, throwing his own illegitimate newborn into a furnace!.)
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[–] ecarle (14979) 4 years ago

I found The Birds from Mr. Smith's English class. It is suspenseful, so can see why Hitchcock was sucked in.

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I read that years ago -- as I noted, Hitchcock had it put into one of his "pre-teen" anthologies -- but the revisit was instructional. The mood of the story is right there -- Hitchcock moved it from England to California and created all these new characters with his writer, but the mood was sustained from the story.

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If you've read it already, then go to the last page where he asks questions as homework lol.

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I didn't pass!

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Have to watch The Birds again as well as Rebecca (and read the novel afterward). She's a pretty good writer.

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It remains "funny" to me that the movie of The Birds was sold at once as "sheer stabbing shock"(homage to Psycho) but also "from the novel by Daphne DuMaurier(homage to Rebecca.) Its like the two types of movie shouldn't "mix."

[–] jasonbourne (1027) 4 years ago

>>I didn't pass!<<

C'mon. I didn't think it was p/f. You could've put some of the things you write here lol. I'd give you an 'A.'

Anyway, I got into a discussion about who the top actors and their films are. It seems Leonardo DiCaprio leads the list with Brad Pitt following for the Gen Xers. Tom Cruise and John Travolta, while they had "one or two" good movies are vaginas. Actually, they had more but who's counting. It's the perception. The era has changed. I didn't even know about one movie called Boiler Room they were so keen on. LDP also explains why we see so many -- https://www.tvovermind.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/gastsby-whatgatsby.jpg.gif.

[–] ecarle (14979) 4 years ago

Thanks on my "grade"!

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Anyway, I got into a discussion about who the top actors and their films are. It seems Leonardo DiCaprio leads the list with Brad Pitt following for the Gen Xers.

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And there they were, a year ago. sharing the screen in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood.

I recall that film's writer-director, Quentin Tarantino, saying he had in Leo and Brad "the Paul Newman and Robert Redford of today." As a matter of top stardom and pay -- QT was right. And yet, there was a certain A-list handsome man perfection to Newman and Redford together(especially in The Sting, a film where Redford had acheived star parity with Newman) that...I just don't see in Leo and Brad. Especially Leo.

Back in the days of Ocean's Eleven, Brad Pitt and George Clooney were seen as better "fits" for "Newman and Redford redux." Pitt was already getting "Robert Redford" lookalike analysis(but he isn't, really). And you could see the older, Clooney in Newman parts. (But wait: maybe Clooney is YOUNGER than Brad Pitt?)

Simply put, George Clooney was more manly than Leo DiCaprio but -- and this is the weird part -- Clooney never really made it as big as Leo in the movie-star department. Leo had the megahit Titanic to launch him -- back when he was as cute as cute could be -- but his features changed for the worse over time and he never really ended up as handsome as Clooney...or Redford ...or Newman..or for that matter Burt Reynolds. Leo DiCaprio(along with Matt Damon) is a "fifty something boy star."

[–] ecarle (14979) 4 years ago

Tom Cruise and John Travolta, while they had "one or two" good movies are vaginas. Actually, they had more but who's counting. Its the perception.

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Travolta had a career launching one-two punch in 1977 and 1978 (only about 7 months apart) first Saturday Night Fever and then Grease. Kaboom. He milked those huge hits for less than ten years before bottoming right out. Then began a long arduous climb back to stardom (with some "talking baby movies" en route) via Pulp Fiction. After Pulp Fiction, Travolta came roaring back bigger than ever as a top-priced star...but THAT only lasted about 20 years. Travolta is still here, but about out of comebacks.

As for Mr. Cruise...he gets my vote as the Weirdest Superstar of all time. On screen he comes across as short, slight, eternally boyish -- the ORIGINAL boy star. And yet, he's still here and still major, albeit in one franchise only: Mission Impossible. Cruise himself figured that out. M:I is his career as Iron Man was for RDJ (and Cruise TURNED DOWN Iron Man. D'oh.) (Well, actually, Cruise does have a Top Gun sequel good to go but delayed by COVID.)

As I post this, Cruise is "in the news" for someone's recording of his near five minute screaming rant at the crew of his newest M:I movie(which has been filming FOREVER thanks to delays.) Supposedly Cruise is ranting for the right reasons(he doesn't want the movie shut down and jobs lost from COVID protocol blunders on his set) but...he's also quite clearly one of those overprivileged and insane movie stars here. They usually hide it better.