MovieChat Forums > Psycho (1960) Discussion > "Psycho at 60, Love Story at 50"

"Psycho at 60, Love Story at 50"

posted 4 years ago by ecarle (14979)
21 replies | jump to latest

They have more in common than you'd think , to "compare and contrast" hits a decade apart.

But first I will note: there are only a few more days left in 2020 and therefore only a few days left to celebrate "Psycho at 60." Though heck, if I find some good old 2020 article in 2021, I'll let y'all know.

Meanwhile: I have personally avoided EVER seeing Love Story (1970) for 50 years (I was a young teenager when it came out.) But i decided to break the dry spell this week. It was on HBO Max(a veritable FOUNT of old movies) and I decided: "Yeah, OK, now."

Then I found some "Love Story at 50" articles on the net.

And here I am.

To the Psycho comparisons, first.

Psycho was a blockbuster hit for Paramount in 1960. Love Story was a blockbuster hit for Paramount in 1970. Both some Psycho posters in 1960 and a Time magazine cover story for Love Story in 1970 used the same motif into their runs: a drawing of "lines around the block" to get in. These weren't just movies, they were events -- phenoenons.

None other that Alfred Hitchcock himself weighed in on Love Story during an interview that year: "Love Story --that rich boy/poor girl story is practically Victorian. Its a good cry. People like a good cry...not a bad cry." (Hitchcock announced in that interview that he would soon be filming Frenzy - which for Brenda and Babs, would be a bad cry.)

I went into this first-ever viewing of Love Story with somewhat of a chip on my shoulder. Somehow I had always thought it was a BAD MOVIE. But I never saw it. But I did see how awful an actress Ali MacGraw was in The Getaway(one film after Love Story - -she was a bad actress in superhot films.) And something was always too posed and prissy about Ryan O'Neal(which actually worked for his Cary Grant, Jr. in What's Up Doc, he's funny in that, but nowhere else, really -- he didn't LAST.) Moreover, Mr. O'Neal had a rotten reputation behind the scenes as a womanizing tyrant and possible abuser.

That said, I found Roger Ebert's 1970 review of Love Story -- four stars. And then Vincent Canby of the New York Times: a rave. (But then, Canby a year before had called "Topaz -- Alfred Hitchcock at his best."

Then I found a cache of attacks on Love Story as awful, a joke, pathetic and...I felt better.

Except, wait. It was Paramount's biggest hit of 1970. A blockbuster. Doesn't that entitle Love Story to the same kind of respect that Psycho gets?

Eh, no. But try this on for size; Ali MacGraw was nominated for Best Actress for Love Story. Ryan O'Neal was nominated for Best Actor for Love Story. And yet Anthony Perkins was NOT nominated for Best Actor for Psycho. And Janet Leigh -- in an iconic if odd leading role -- was only nominated for Best Supporting Actress for Psycho.

But no, really -- Ali MacGraw nominated for BEST ACTRESS. That somehow makes the snubbing of Perkins for Psycho seem that much WORSE. And it reflects that came 1970, Paramount knew how to milk a fairly poor movie for Oscar noms. (John Marley as Ali's dad, was actually pretty good and desered his Supporting Nom -- but Martin Balsam did a lot more, and better, in Psycho.)

Speaking of Oscar, the musical score for "Love Story"(by Francis Lai) won the Oscar for Best Original Score. Fair enough...it was all over the radio at the end of 1970(Love Story was a CHRISTMAS release -- this is its 50th Anniversary Month) and into 1971. It is just a matter of personal taste, but I think that score -- and its signature instrumental tune -- was awful. Un-moving. At the end, when the music comes up loud and powerful to underline Ryan's deep grief...nada for me.

But something...for millions of others. A matter of personal taste. Me, my emotional taste goes to the Oscar winning "love scores" for Breakfast at Tiffany's(run by Moon River) and The Way We Were(run by its title tune.) The scores AND the songs won for those movies, and they DO move me in a way that Lai's "Love Story" overkill never could (and couldn't all the way back in 1970 when I was a teen...I think that instrumental helped keep me out of the theater, and then Andy Williams put it to words and ...well, it wasn't Moon River.)

So I went into Love Story ALREADY not liking the song, or the score, or Ali MacGraw and -- no, I didn't like it. 50 years later, I didn't like it. 50 years later, my suspicions about the film 50 years ago -- maybe also driven by film clips of the time? -- came true.

And I thought about this: Psycho has proven to be a masterpiece of art and of narrative. But it was also...a blockbuster. And one reason it WAS a blockbuster(over Vertigo) was...it was super-SCARY. Blockbusters often happen for "lowest common denominator" reasons, but some of them have more going for them.

[–] ecarle (14979) 4 years ago

Put another way: the same audience that drove the box office for Psycho drove the box office for...Friday the 13th. The same audience that drove the box office for American Graffiti drove the box office for ..Grease(which I find MUCH worse than American Graffiti). Slasher shocks. 50's nostalgia. Brought in audiences for movies good(Psycho, American Graffiti) and bad (Friday the 13th, Grease.)

Love Story strikes me as in that Friday the 13th/Grease "bad blockbuster" category. In 1970, "Airport" joined "Love Story" as "old fashioned" blockbusters in the same year that brought MASH and Five Easy Pieces. Indeed at the Oscars, the Best Picture nominees WERE Love Story and Airport(on the "old" side) and MASH and Five Easy Pieces(on the hip side) and one more -- Patton(somewhere in between -- Old AND Hip) and, of course, Patton won.

I would like to add that GOOD blockbusters like Jaws, The Towering Inferno, and Raiders of the Lost Ark all got Best Picture noms, but not wins. The Godfather -- which had "that little something extra in narrative"(like Psycho) won the big award.

Indeed, Love Story like fellow Paramount blockbuster The Godfather, began with a novel written pretty much to promote the movie. The BOOK of Love Story was the screenplay re-written by its loved/hated author, Erich Segal. I hear Love Story the book is exactly like Love Story the movie except -- the movie is better(because: live people in it.) The Godfather the book is worse than The Godfather movie BUT...that novel sure delivered on the hard-core sex for teenage boy "sneak readers"(ahem.) And the novel also had a good deal of the business and family plotting of the movie, "the good stuff."

[–] ecarle (14979) 4 years ago

Since it is the first line of the movie, it is no spoiler to say that the young wife in Love Story dies. So it was sold as a "tearjerker" love story and evidently its GIANT success was due to tears shed. Hey , tearjerkers can be BIG blockbusters. See: ET and Terms of Endearment, which are both better than Love Story in the tearjerking department(to me) and just better as movies. I say that even as I rather hate some of the characters and some of their lines in Terms of Endearment; somehow it all comes together tragically at the end(the dying young woman has LITTLE KIDS) and Jack Nicholson is there to make it all better. I cried hard at that one.

Not at tear at Love Story. But that's OK...millions cried when I didn't and I say more power to them. Paramount chief Robert Evans(Mr. Ali MacGraw at the time) said that Love Story was a great movie for "couples sex" -- they'd see the movie, watch the girl die and decide they HAD to make love because life is too short. Lotta sex. Lotta 'Love Story" babies. Also: applications to Harvard went up.

Speaking of Harvard: a rugged looking young actor named "Tom Lee Jones" is one of Ryan's frat boy roomies. Turns out that "Tom Lee Jones"(aka Tommy Lee Jones) actually went to Harvard. With Al Gore. One or both of them -- or none of them -- may have inspired the Ryan O'Neal character in Love Story(or, said Segal, some other guy he went to Harvard with.)

Speaking of Hitchcock: one of his great villains is in Love Story: Ray Milland. Was this the first time he went without his hairpiece? It makes for a scary superrich father for Ryan O'Neal and scary superrich father in law for Ali MacGraw( Milland disowns his son for marrying MacGraw -- like Hitchcock said -- Victorian.)

[–] ecarle (14979) 4 years ago

Hitchcock saw Love Story a few months before filming Frenzy and I see a little of Love Story IN Frenzy. Technically, Hitchcock "went for" the same kind of 1970s cinematography, and the zoom shots in Frenzy(like that focus pull on Rusk behind Babs "Got a place to stay?") feel like what you see in Love Story.

Also, the couple in Love Story sure do cuss up a storm at each other -- it rather sticks out even with these young people in Love Story and sticks out in roughly the same way that it does in Frenzy -- it feels like "forced profanity."

I understand that Carol Burnett spoofed Love Story on her show and I figure it was easy to do -- the death in Love Story just doesn't feel all that real -- you can make fun of it. Not so, the young mother with kids in Terms of Endearment.

Simply put, as the iconoclast screenwriter Harlan Ellison wrote of her performance in The Getaway: "Ali MacGraw can't act for shit."

Its not quite "bad acting" I should suggest. It is simply that MacGraw's flat, irritating voice and overdone line readings(here as in The Getaway) just don't sound RIGHT. And Mr. O'Neal is not getting off the hook -- as one critic wrote "he h as the same expression for all emotions."

Indeed, just three years later with The Way We Were, Robert Redford demonstrated how a handsome blond actor can find a lot more nuance, and humor, and heart, in a sad love story. OK, Streisand doesn't die...but more of us could relate to a sad break-up.

Uh, that's it for now, but at least I've finally seen Love Story. 50 full and glorious years after it came out. 60 for Psycho. 50 for Love Story.

I'm glad I saw Psycho first.

[–] swanstep (2715) 4 years ago

I read the Love Story novel well before seeing the film. It's not quite as short as Bloch's Psycho (65K words as opposed to 47K) but it's still only a couple of hours reading at most. I guess it did feel to me more like a screenplay or an audition for film rights rather than a true novel. Thus, even in the book Jenny (Ali McGraw's character) is mostly a charming cipher, largely marked by series of verbal ticks such as always a little snidely calling Oliver (Ryan O'Neal's) "Preppie". The movie reproduced large chunks of the book's dialogue wholesale precisely because the dialogue *was* the character. I seem to remember too that the book too was completely uninterested in the nature of Jenny's disease. I knew already that the film had been criticised for its vagueness on this point & was surprised to find that the book skimmed over things in the same way notwithstanding that in a novel you have myriad ways to relate background information. The book and the movie alike were almost like the *idea* of or an outline for a love story rather than an actual, concrete love story.

Anyhow, LS (1970) definitely strikes me as one of those blockbusters that is pretty bad, but that hit the zeitgeist *just* right. The whole 'Love is never saying your sorry' line that is repeated a couple times and again at the end of book and movie from Oliver to his father really did fit in wth a trend in the early '70s towards pseudo-profundities on posters, t-shirts, advertising, you name it: Keep on Truckin', The Real Thing, Peace.

Obviously modern Hollywood has perfected the franchise picture blockbuster that almost everyone hates but that makes a billion dollars nonetheless (Matrix sequels, Pirates sequels, Transformer Sequels, Minions Sequels, even lots of Star Wars and Juraasic Park sequels, and so on). LS is probably a little better than those at least.

[–] swanstep (2715) 4 years ago

[–] ecarle (14979) 4 years ago

I read the Love Story novel well before seeing the film. It's not quite as short as Bloch's Psycho (65K words as opposed to 47K) but it's still only a couple of hours reading at most. I guess it did feel to me more like a screenplay or an audition for film rights rather than a true novel.

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That's interesting, that the Love Story novel (a re-written screenplay) is actually SHORTER than Psycho the novel(which certainly reads like a novel to me, with its interesting turns of phrase and sometimes semi-obscene creepiness.) But then I've also seen Psycho described as a "novella." Which I guess means...short novel?

Still, this: both Psycho and Love Story were filmed from such short source novels that the movies could match them pretty well , chapter by chapter. Nothing had to be cut out(as with The Godfather.)

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Thus, even in the book Jenny (Ali McGraw's character) is mostly a charming cipher, largely marked by series of verbal ticks such as always a little snidely calling Oliver (Ryan O'Neal's) "Preppie".

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Yeah, "Preppie" appears on MacGraw's lips early and often in the movie...and never particularly well said. Look, I'm one of those people for whom the screenplay pretty much "settles' the case" -- is the dialogue good? Is the structure good?Psycho: yes.. Love Story: no. Definitely the dialogue, and even the structure feels wrong; MacGraw's death famously comes out of nowhere and her illness is extremely brief.

[–] ecarle (14979) 4 years ago

I will note that in Terms of Endearment, Debra Winger's cancer also comes out of nowhere -- you feel the entire story being derailed with her life suddenly at stake. but THAT movie rather carefully moves on to take in Winger's last weeks of life with care and consideration -- the scene where she flies to NYC to visit her friend, the wrenching scene of MacLaine(alone) screaming for pain-killing meds for her daughter("You told her to wait...she waited!") Nicholson's return to the story(this is the first of several returns -- every time he seems to have had his final scene in the movie...he comes back later, much welcome.) The farewell to her children. I mean, Terms of Endearment really GETS INTO the death of its protagonist and the effect on her dysfunctional family (that's what's sad at the end, those kids have a basically uncaring father and a somewhat psychotic grandmother as their 'only' home -- that's why Jack's return is so welcome.)

I suppose you could say, using my 'lowest common denominator" analysis, that just as the box office for Psycho was driven by the same factors as the box office for Friday the 13th, the box office for Terms of Endearment was driven by the same factors as the box office for Love Story. But in each case, from the same factors, a much better movie was made with Psycho and TOE.

[–] ecarle (14979) 4 years ago

The movie reproduced large chunks of the book's dialogue wholesale precisely because the dialogue *was* the character.

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Too bad the dialogue wasn't too good.

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I seem to remember too that the book too was completely uninterested in the nature of Jenny's disease. I knew already that the film had been criticised for its vagueness on this point & was surprised to find that the book skimmed over things in the same way notwithstanding that in a novel you have myriad ways to relate background information.

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Well, up above I get into the comparative detail on the cancer in "Terms of Endearment" (and how bad Debra Winger looks at the end of her illness); I suppose the "Love Story" writer and makers just felt like the prospect of death alone was enough. I don't think it was.

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The book and the movie alike were almost like the *idea* of or an outline for a love story rather than an actual, concrete love story.

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Well, its kind of a given that great novels have great depth and perception and characterization, movie screenplays are pretty tight and don't get "room to roam." Hitchcock said he avoided adapting "great novels" to the screen and preferred minor works(like, frankly, Psycho -- which is actually quite a great concept and quite an affecting read.)

I will note that Ryan O'Neal certainly had what it takes to be a movie star, and was for awhile -- What's Up Doc(with Streisand lifting him up as she would with Redford) Paper Moon, Barry Lyndon(for Kubrick), Walter Hills The Driver. But Love Story doesn't use him well, and his blankness of expression ultimately sank him.

[–] ecarle (14979) 4 years ago

In a book on superagent Sue Mengers, I read that O'Neal was her client and she rather screwed up his career, but one movie she wanted him to take was my little 1980 favorite, Used Cars. O'Neal was a bigger star than Kurt Russell, but it turned out that Russell had a screen personality -- funny, caustic, macho -- that ended up lasting a lot longer than Ryan O'Neal's. I try picturing O'Neal in Russell's part and...no can do. (Also, I can't see Ryan O'Neal in Escape from New York or The Thing.)

Sidebar: in "A Bridge Too Far" the multi-star war movie of 1977, whereas Sean Connery got to play a scene with Gene Hackman(no real looks competition there), Ryan O'Neal had to play a scene with..Robert Redford. And there they were, side by side, acting style to acting style and....Redford just came out way ahead. It was a study in star power.

[–] ecarle (14979) 4 years ago

Anyhow, LS (1970) definitely strikes me as one of those blockbusters that is pretty bad, but that hit the zeitgeist *just* right.

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Agreed on both points. I lived through that period at the movies and the critics seemed to use the phrase "Vietnam/Watergate" as a catch-all for a depressing half-decade. (Watergate came along in 1972-1974, Love Story had only Vietnam casting the requisite pall. Personally, I found that to be too "easy" a hook for the movies of the decade -- it was meant to describe downers like Chinatown and uppers like Rocky as issuing forth from it.

Still, Love Story was a love story about death and set in the 60's/70s cusp, and likely a young generation whose men were still worried about a draft clung to it.

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[–] ecarle (14979) 4 years ago

The whole 'Love is never saying your sorry' line that is repeated a couple times and again at the end of book and movie from Oliver to his father really did fit in wth a trend in the early '70s towards pseudo-profundities on posters, t-shirts, advertising, you name it: Keep on Truckin', The Real Thing, Peace.

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Two years later, at the end of "What's Up, Doc," Barbra Striesand says to Ryan O'Neal " "Love means never having to say you're sorry." Ryan takes a beat and replies "That's the stupidest thing I've ever heard." 1972 audiences roared(well, mine -- Ive heard others.) I think that the badness of that line -- however it might SEEM to link to The Real Thing, Peace etc -- rather summed up the badness of the movie. People could joke about it "I'm married, all I DO is say I'm sorry" or refute it "Why wouldn't I say I'm sorry?" Ali MacGraw tries to explain the line in an interview I found(2016, maybe?) and...she can't make any sense out of it.

Meanwhile, The Godfather: "I'll make him an offer he can't refuse." "Its nothing personal, just business." "Leave the gun, take the cannoli." And Godfather II: "Keep your friends close, and your enemies closer." "I knew it was you, Fredo." Even Godfather III: "I try to get out, but they keep pulling me back in!" GREAT lines. Meaningful.

That said, I agree with you, swasnstep, there were all sorts of "touchy feely hippie dippie" catch phrases around that time (and book titles, like "I'm OK, You're OK") and I guess this line from Love Story fit right in.

[–] ecarle (14979) 4 years ago

Obviously modern Hollywood has perfected the franchise picture blockbuster that almost everyone hates but that makes a billion dollars nonetheless (Matrix sequels, Pirates sequels, Transformer Sequels, Minions Sequels, even lots of Star Wars and Juraasic Park sequels, and so on).

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They are depressing because they aren't very good and they make billions. There's a catch: they make billions because they play worldwide and people go to them as if REQUIRED, not interested. I recall liking (but not loving) the first Pirates of the Caribbean, mainly because I liked Johnny Depp and I liked him getting a franchise,but the second and especially the third were like "anti-entertainment" -- a screen filled with CGI, Depp trying his best to diminishing returns and a storyline that refused to engender any interest at all. But I went anyway. To the bad second one and to the worse third. Same with the Matrix(and a fourth is coming).

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LS is probably a little better than those at least.

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Yes it is, because it is unique and unto itself...a blockbuster, as you say, of its time, and one that certainly moved some people in a way that these mega-produced "nothing" movies simply can't.

"Love Story" is resolutely a "little movie that made big money." So is Psycho, except that Psycho was filled to the gills with cinematic ploys and thematic meaning.

[–] ecarle (14979) 4 years ago

As for the Love Story theme: There were a lot of slightly maddening 'love themes' around in the late '60s that hung around through the early '70s, e.g.,
Love is Blue: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rjsNNcsUNzE
Lara's Theme: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Yd2PzoF1y8
Not to mention Francis Lai's other big movie theme hit:
A Man and A Woman: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5vg2LbwQYkI

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I remember them all, and I liked none of them. I suppose my "American studio picture" ways edged me to reject these Euro-influenced themes. But that's the way it goes.

Mancini really got it done, emotionally. Think of the instrumental of Moon River over the first five minutes of Breakfast at Tiffany's -- as sad and wistful as Hepburn's early morning "breakfast" -- and then how it comes soaring up at the end -- with full chorus -- at the bittersweet kissing in the rain. Tears. And nobody dies.

Days of Wine and Roses. Dear Heart. The Sweetheart Tree from The Great Race. Darling Lili(a bad movie) had a great song (Whistling in the Dark); Victor/Victoria(a good movie) had a sweet one to open and close it. (I can't remember the name.)

[–] ecarle (14979) 4 years ago

But Mancini wasn't the only one. I like Johnny Mandel's jazzy but emotional score for Hotel.

And -- later on -- James Horner's work on "The Perfect Storm."

In between...The Untouchables. Perhaps Morricone's most MOVING score. I am thinking of the sad tune first used for the discovery of the body of the "nerd Untouchable," Charles Martin Smith, hanging dead on a hook. I remember hearing the music and liking it more and more(for the growing sadness) until it started to hit certain notes that I felt "This is PERFECT...I had no idea that this action movie would have such sad music." And then the music returned for the death of another sympathetic character. Add those themes to the stirring "Ride of the Untouchables" anthm and that's how that movie ended up my favorite of the 80's over equally exciting action epics like Die Hard and Batman.

[–] ecarle (14979) 4 years ago

So again this is something about the zeitgeist that made LS so on-trend and such a big hit at the time, perhaps also freezing most of its appeal in that time.

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Yes, I think that is right when you bring up all those other "Euro-instrumental" pieces that were hits. My schmaltz is my schmaltz so...I can hardly complain.

The influence of European films on the American market in that 60's/70's cusp cannot be overstated. Folks were coming in the mid-seventies who would use Hitchcock, Hawks, and 50's Sci Fi as their muses, but it was the European film that drove the late 60's and early 70's American films -- Bonnie and Clyde, The Graduate, Five Easy Pieces, Topaz(Old Man Hitch adjusts), even The Godfather. And...certainly...Love Story.

[–] ecarle (14979) 4 years ago

Anyhow, LS (1970) definitely strikes me as one of those blockbusters that is pretty bad, but that hit the zeitgeist *just* right.

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I wanted to add this: there's film on Walter Matthau saying this(and a biography that quotes him in print):

"In Hollywood, there are two kinds of movies. There are good movies...and there are movies that make money. Sometimes...very rarely...a good movie makes money. But not usually."

This is the kind of over-simplified remark that a movie star gets to make, but applied to our discussion, it fits.

Matthau was referring to one of his "good" movies ("Lonely are the Brave") that didn't make money. Fair enough. " A movie that makes money" (but isn't good under Matthau's definition) would be "Love Story."

But that rare "good movie that makes money"? That's where you find Psycho and The Godfather, to name two. And from Matthau's personal list of films, I'd add Charade, The Odd Couple and The Bad News Bears. (The Fortune Cookie, for which Matthau won the Oscar and from which he became a star, did NOT make money, and really wasn't that good.)

[–] swanstep (2715) 4 years ago

I just came across (tho' not yet seen) a movie from 1973 called 'So Sad About Gloria' whose director Harry Thomason was a friend of the Clintons in Arkansas (and worked on their presidential campaigns IIRC) and who later co-created a hit tv show of the '90s, 'Designing Women'. The lead line on the main poster for the film was: 'The romance of LOVE STORY - the terror of PSYCHO!' Here's its IMDb page:

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0122722/
and here's a direct link to the poster:
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0122722/mediaviewer/rm2807253504/

We've occasionally had threads on 'Movies advertized via a comparison with Psycho'. I don't remember this one turning up back then. This is one for future lists of this kind.

[–] swanstep (2715) 4 years ago

BTW, there was a great line recently in a cynical, for-adults, superhero show that's on Amazon Prime: The Boys. The superheroes on the show are employees of an entertainment corporation/defence contractor - the heroes do lots of crime-prevention and anti-terrorism work but they mostly make movies fictionalizing their exploits, sell toys and t-shirts, make personal appearances, and so on. Anyhow, their latest recruit is a female hero called Stormfront whose schtick is that she's blunter and more authentic than the other heroes (she's also a real-live Nazi, she was there first!). Stormfront doesn't like most of the scripts the corporation assigns and lets them know it. In particular, she tells the screenwriter of the latest that he reduces all the female roles to “unknowable Hitchcock bitches or Michael Bay fuck-dolls”. (The Nazi superhero gets the best lines!)

I bailed on The Boys around this time.... its relentless cynicism became too depressing and predictable for me. The first season was enough for me.

[–] ecarle (14979) 4 years ago

The lead line on the main poster for the film was: 'The romance of LOVE STORY - the terror of PSYCHO!'
We've occasionally had threads on 'Movies advertized via a comparison with Psycho'. I don't remember this one turning up back then. This is one for future lists of this kind.

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Wow! I gotta hand it to you, swanstep...how do you FIND these great connections?

I would here like to point out that part of my "personal journey" with Psycho was noticing, over many years, how often it would be raised in advertising and as a point of comparison to a new movie.

Wait Until Dark: "The biggest screams in the theater since PSYCHO!"

Night of the Living Dead: "The scariest movie since PSYCHO!"

The Bird With the Crystal Plumage: "Did you like PSYCHO? This is your movie!"

Carrie(1976): "Its American Graffiti meets PSYCHO!"

and so forth and so on.

All the way to 1991 and Silence of the Lambs. Though various different ads played up different rave review pull quotes, one of them was this:

"Silence of the Lambs...is the greatest psychological thriller since Psycho."

It was as if The Exorcist and Jaws and Alien and Halloween had never been made. Though I suppose none of those qualified as a "psychological thriller" -- whatever that is.

[–] ecarle (14979) 4 years ago

she tells the screenwriter of the latest that he reduces all the female roles to “unknowable Hitchcock bitches or Michael Bay fuck-dolls”. (The Nazi superhero gets the best lines!)

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Bizarre. We've got like 500 broadcast/cable/streaming series now. Its hard for any of them to break through to "must see" status.

Hmmm.."unknowable Hitchocck bitches"? I always thought he did pretty well by his female characters. As Cary Grant said of Notorious: "Hitch threw that one to Ingrid, you know." And Ingrid clearly overcomes Greg Peck in Spellbound and her TWO male co-stars in Under Capricorn.

Grace Kelly is interestingly "available" to both husband and lover in Dial M, a fine match for Cary Grant in To Catch a Thief...and has driven new generations crazy trying to figure out why she cares so much for ornery old James Stewart in Rear Window.

Doris Day is incredibly moving...and smarter than Jimmy...in The Man Who Knew Too Much.

Etc. etc...etc.

Indeed..zipping to "near the end," I think one of the reasons that Frenzy is such a truly disturbing movie is that Hitchcock allows both Brenda Blaney and Babs Mulligan to be the most caring and empathetic characters in the movie...and then has that evil psycho misogynist Bob Rusk brutally rape and kill them.

In Psycho, Janet Leigh's Marion gets at once the most "study" of any Hitchocck heroine and yet indeed, is somewhat unknowable. Her sister, Lila is no fun -- but Lila is in panic mode from the moment we meet her.

[–] swanstep (2715) 4 years ago

Hmmm.."unknowable Hitchcock bitches"? I always thought he did pretty well by his female characters.

You make a good case, ecarle, that plenty of Hitchcock's leading ladies and even his famous blondes aren't especially mysterious or icy or 'unknowable'.

The Boys' Nazi/white nationalist superhero, Stormfront, however, thinks like a propagandist, 'hot take' meme-maker etc., and from *that* sort of exaggerated/condensed perspective Hitchcock's women just *are* retrospectively typified by Novak/Leigh/Hedren's characters from 1958-1964 (the icy/mysterious stuff doesn't fit Marie-Saint in NbNW either).

My sense is that the 'hot take' on Hitch's blondes as icy/cool and at bottom mysterious that Stromfront spouts as a gag-line only really works if you have a *very specific theory* of the quite traditional, '40s/'50s model-like, highly groomed and poised physical perfection that Kelly, Bergman, Marie Saint, Novak (as Madeline), Leigh, Hedren all exemplify. The theory about that specific kind of beauty then is probably something like, "that it's so fetishisable & powerful that everybody (every man especially) is kind of dazzled by it (especially if it's paired with obvious warmth underneath - you are one lucky SOB if that's so), can't trust it or completely understand it, can easily end up resenting it, hence 'bitches'." Or something.