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Hitchcock, Psycho, and "Fakeness"

posted 4 years ago by ecarle (14979)
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Over the years I've met people with varying knowledge of Hitchcock and his films. But I'll always remember a fairly good friend, who had seen Vertigo and NXNW and Psycho and The Birds, who said to me in passing:

"Yeah, his movies are pretty good, but can you tell me why they always look so fake? Its like he used fake shots even when he didn't have to?"

And the discussion continued, as it has with other people, usually to a draw but usually from my end centering on three points: (1) Hitchcock used the fakery that ALL movie directors used in his time(rear screen projection, process, matte paintings) but BETTER technically than the rest; (2) Hitchcock used the fakery more creatively than most; and (3) One of the reasons that I, personally, loved Hitchcock's films was BECAUSE of the fakery. I saw Hitchcock as "the dark side of Disney," where the special effects and process and matte paintings were used for adult thrills more than childhood fantasy.

Take the drunken car drive of Cary Grant early in North by Northwest. Folks may remember the careening drive itself, on a curving road with Grant's "double vision" POV. But I rather loved -- from the very first time I saw NXNW -- how this action sequence began: with a long shot of the cliff-filled coastline of Long Island, waves crashing on the rocks below as Grant was dragged behind the wheel by the bad guys and then managed to drive away from them -- to the edge of a cliff(more special effects) with Grant looking down and seeing the car tire spinning in mid-air and the waves and rocks below. Grant reacts with drunken comedy panic -- "Hmm?" -- gets the car back on the road, and the exciting chase is underway.

Discriminating New York critics said that Glen Cove, Long Island HAS no cliffs or waves crashing on the rocks. Well, most of us didn't know that and...so what? The imagery(matted in from shots of the Big Sur area near Hitchcock's northern California home in Santa Cruz) CREATED an exiting arena for this fantasy-action sequence...and foreshadowed the REALLY big cliffs of Mount Rushmore at the climax at the end.

Flash forward to 1972 and Frenzy. Hitchcock -- as ever trying to match the cinematic times -- pretty much stuck to realism in that movie, so that it would "fit" with the other gritty, semi-documentary look of other early 70's films. But about 2/3 of the way through, Hitchcock cut to a high shot at night of Covent Garden and entire London skyline beyond it as psycho Bob Rusk pushed a wheelbarrow with a body towards a potato truck in which he wished to hide it. I brightened: THERE it is! A classic Hitchcock matte painting that FINALLY gave "Frenzy" some of that "Hitchcock fantasy look" (rather a matched for the skylines in Mary Poppins from Disney.)

That shot of Rusk making his way as a small figure across a big night landscape had two matte shot forbears in Hitchcock: Cary Grant walking up to James Mason's Rushmore House in NXNW, and Detective Arbogast walking up the stone steps to the Bates Mansion in Psycho. As I watched Frenzy in 1972 and that moment came on screen, I "flashed" back to the same shots in North by Northwest and Psycho and...I felt good. Hitchcock was truly "back again."

There is one more matte shot in Frenzy, but it is so invisible that I didn't know it WAS, until I read a Hitchcock interview where he described it. Wormword Scrubs prison...long shot of its upper decks and rows of cells and a big staircase that Wrong Man Richard Blaney will throw himself down. Well, the staircase was real, but the prison cells were a matte painting(by Albert Whitlock, who had done The Birds and Marnie and Torn Curtain with far more "fakery.")

Frenzy boils down to two matte shots -- Rusk with his wheelbarrow and Blaney falling down the stairs -- and the rest is realistic except for "the usual": dialogues in cars are done with rear screen projection. Even in 1972, Hitchcock felt no need to put his actors in a real car with a camera mount attached.

Indeed for Hitchcock and for so many directors of his era, car shots with rear screen projection was a way of life. AND meaningful and creative. Nowhere moreso than in Psycho, with the long stretch of shots of Marion Crane first in one car, and then in another, driving 800 miles from Arizona to Northern California to meet her lover.

Thanks to rear screen projection, Janet Leigh in Psycho seems to be "trapped in a world all her own" in those cars. A psychologist one time wrote a whole piece on "Marion in the car" and pointed out something that maybe all of us know -- if you drive in a car for long enough(say, a 400 mile journey with brief stops) -- you become HYPNOTIZED by the experience, the car "surrounds you" and your mind rather melds with the experience. You don't necessarily feel the real speed you are driving, and you enter a "waking dream experience."

[–] ecarle (14979) 4 years ago

Janet Leigh's driving scenes in Psycho capture this beautifully --- and I'm not sure that putting Janet Leigh in a REAL car, on REAL highway, with a camera mount stuck to the outside of the car would capture the same "waking dream" that the rear projection gives us.

I will note here that Leigh is really the only person we see driving a car IN Psycho where process is needed, except for Sam and Lila driving to the Bates Motel at the end -- the rear projection is of a two-lane rural road, not a freeway like Marion drove. We never see Arbogast driving. Norman drives the now-dead Marion's car over to the swamp, but no rear projection is needed(personally, I always found it surprising that Norman knew HOW to drive.)

So in Psycho...the driving of a car becomes the theme of ONE character(Marion) and becomes a hypnotic part of her story.

Psycho, rather like Frenzy, is NOT a movie of a lot of matte work and effects. The film stock of 1960 doesn't lend the semi-documentary feel of Frenzy, but it does make for a lot of simple, basic shots, often in close-up. Psycho is rather SURROUNDED with bigger-budgeted movies with a LOT of "fake" matte work: the bell tower in Vertigo(the mission existed in real life, but not the tower ; and one high shot of the tower as Scottie emerges is clearly just a painting with a little bit of real coverage of Scottie down below.) Mount Rushmore looks pretty darn good in NXNW, but it doesn't quite look "real." What DOES look fake are shots of the UN and its interior spaces (the classic shot from high above the UN looking down at the speck of Grant running away -- clearly a matte shot.)

[–] ecarle (14979) 4 years ago

The Birds was pretty much nothing BUT matte shots i order to capture the effects of the bird attacks themselves, but I think when things get REALLY fake in Hitchcock are in the next two movies: Marnie and Torn Curtain, in which cityscapes(Philadelphia, East Berlin) are rendered so much AS paintings that it looks like the actors are acting IN paintings. Consider Paul Newman arriving by cab at the museum in Torn Curtain -- he first looks at a drawing in a book of the museum, then is TRANSFERRED into that drawing as matte work.

Marnie famously has a big ship near the harbor home of Marnie's mother, and the ship is "clearly fake." Well, sort of. But no more fake than the bell tower in Vertigo or Vandamm's House in NXNW or the museum in Torn Curtain. I see these effects as being akin to the green screen-only settings of Sin City(2005) or today's "CGI universe" in general. (See: Gladiator, Titanic, Poseidon...in which long shots of crowds of people are clearly only of pixels, not people.)

Still, I'd say that the matte work in the movies after Psycho(save Frenzy and Family Plot) is pretty overpowering (shall we blame Universal's production qualities.)

But in Psycho ITSELF...the use of "fakery" hits a high level of meaning, atmosphere and excitement.

[–] ecarle (14979) 4 years ago

You can separate the "fake" elements out in Psycho, they are few:

ONE: The rear projection car driving shots. Standard operating procedure. In this film, given over almost entirely to Janet Leigh's character and her very intense drive (into night and rain and fate.) But even Sam and Lila's driving rear projection has MEANING. We are seeing the old highway to the Bates Motel, and the car is moving fast to fate: these characters are going to solve the mystery..or they are going to die.

TWO: The house. That glorious, looming, menacing, frightening old two-story American Gothic House -- easily I'd say, the most famous house in movie history (Gone with the Wind and Rebecca and Giant have fallen by the wayside.) Interesting: unlike the Vandamm house (which was mostly a painting from the outside), the Psycho house was a REAL structure -- if not a real house. Only two sides needed to be built for Psycho -- the front and the left side -- both of which we usually see looming up above us , on a hill(its crucial that this house is on a haunted hill) to the left.

The house in Psycho was a real structure, but the matte work SURROUNDED it . Saul Bass matted in storm clouds scudding behind the house for "Marion's night" (the storm has ended; the clouds are moving); and then for "Arbogast's night" a week later(Saturday again), the house seems to have matte work all around it: a sky that is alternatively clear and cloudy, the weed and bush-cluttered hill itself -- even the motel in the foreground.

[–] ecarle (14979) 4 years ago

THREE: "Arbogast's fall." This is THE biggest bit of fakery in all of "Psycho" and it has been targeted as a weakness in the film rather than a strength. So often in reviews and critical pieces on Psycho , one reaches a sentence like this: "Then Arbogast falls backwards down the staircase...it is clear that he is standing in front of a rear projection screen and the effect is fake." That's the tone -- as if all the great "realistic" imagery on all sides of the fall (Arbogast's climb up the stairs, the shot of the door slowly opening..the spectacular overhead shot of Mother running out to attack him and...at the end...the scary-brutal "finishing off" of the detective)...is all RUINED by the fakery of the fall. One internet poster wrote: "all that great suspenseful build-up and it is ruined by that stupid fake shot." Hmm. Well.

David Thomson wrote of Arbogast's murder: "It is Hitchcock at his best and at his worst, in the same scene." I assume he meant the fall...though Thomson had a dislike of the "cheat" of the overhead attack, too. But lets assume he didn't like the fall and that's what he meant.

A pause: I've always found that the "classic" Psycho invariably draws three complaints: (1) The psychiatrist scene at the end is terrible, overlong, unnecessary exposition; (2) John Gavin is a bad actor as Sam Loomis and (3) Arbogast's fall looks too fake.

I've always found it quite easy to defend against all three complaints. The psychiatrist scene is absolutely necessary to explain three key things the audience never knew. Sam Loomis is not a role that was written for Marlon Brando to play; its a supporting role. Gavin works for the story and looks good(he's a lot better than Viggo Mortenson in the remake, too.)

[–] ecarle (14979) 4 years ago

But as for Arbogast's fall? Well, its something that makes Psycho...Psycho. Its Pure Hitchcock, and a great illustration of how Hitchcock's creative mind worked and why he gave audience's more of a visceral cinematic experience than the average filmmaker..when his fakery was at its best.

I'll work up to it:

ONE: Psycho premiered on LA television in 1967 as a "big deal." I didn't get to see it, but many pre-teen friends did. And ALL of them recounted the Arbogast murder as the scariest thing in the movie. And NONE of them said "when he falls down the stairs, it looks fake like he's in front of a screen." I realize we are talking about the pre-teen mind here, but these fellows entirely BOUGHT the fall. Indeed I recall that they disagreed a bit. One said that Arbogast "walks backwards down the stairs as fast as he can trying to get back down." (I pictured that.)
Another said, "No, he falls, but he doesn't fully fall, its like he's standing up."(I pictured THAT.) Bottom line: unsophisticated viewers of a certain age didn't even SEE the process work.

TWO: I finally got to see the Arbogast murder(and the shower murder) as still frames in a book: Hitchcock/Truffaut. I thumbed through the book in a bookstore -- past the 30's, past Rebecca, past Strangers on a Train, past NXNW -- and suddenly, I was THERE. Psycho. Viewing the "forbidden" material that my parents had kept from me. And quite frankly, I felt they were right in keeping it from me. To see Arbogast's slashed, horrified face staring out of the pages was to feel a true "jolt of horror" -- as if I was looking at something I shouldn't see, that took place in an "evil horrifying world" I would NEVER want to visit.

[–] ecarle (14979) 4 years ago

And yet, I remember thinking: "He's in front of a screen. THAT's how this was done." I guess I was a bit more sophisticated about process shots than my friends. But still, somehow I simultaneously held two thoughts: (1) Its fake, he's in front of a screen and (3) Its REAL, I feel terror just looking at this man's bloody death, the look in his eyes, I FEEL like I'm there. Fake or not, seeing that shot on the page -- gave me a sleepless night.

THREE: A few years later, I got to see Psycho myself and I noticed the process fall and -- mainly because everything happened so fast -- I wasn't particularly scared as I had been seeing Arbogast's face "frozen" in the pages of a book, but rather only on screen for maybe five seconds before he hits the floor. Also, I felt -as Hitchcock had intended -- the "clash" of the overhead shot of Mother running out WITH the following fall shot: one leads to another, they are to be taken together as a "big cinematic splash" that excites the viewer(and ends, even more horrifically with the "base reality" of Mother finishing the man off).

FOUR: Over the years, I learned more about how that "falling shot" came to be. First of all, in the novel Psycho, Arbogast is killed before he can even walk TO the staircase. Mother slashes his throat with a strait razor as he walks through the door into the foyer (scary enough on its own literary terms.) But Hitchcock(and screenwriter Joe Stefano?) moved the action to the more "cinematic" stage of a tall ornate staircase and the landing at the top and....

[–] ecarle (14979) 4 years ago

FIVE: Well, the script as printed doesn't HAVE the falling shot, either. The overhead shot of Mother coming at Arbogast was to end with him falling backwards out of the frame -- rejoined, I guess when he hit the bottom.
But Hitchcock WROTE ON THE SCRIPT...in ink, in his own handwriting -- that falling shot(without discussing a process shot at all.)

So the evidence is there that, the idea that rose in Hitchcock's own mind was to "make the audience take the fall with Arbogast." To make the experience PERSONALLY experience the sensation of falling down those stairs.

Two points about that : (1) By placing Martin Balsam in front of a screen in close-up, Hitchcock allowed his skilled actor to ACT the horror of the scene, in his wide open eyes , mouth -- nostrils. Arbogast has been the coolest calmest character in Psycho and suddenly he is converted into a study in wild-eyed panic. As he continues to fall(the footage expertly covering the distance down), the actor gulps, stares blankly(he's in shock) struggles to survive and fails. Martin Balsam got snubbed by Oscar that year -- but who does NOT remember that man's expressions during his death scene.

[–] ecarle (14979) 4 years ago

(2) This is the big one for me, frankly what this entire multi-post is about: yes, Martin Balsam "sat in front of a screen" to fake the fall, but the precision of the process work here is "process at its best." The deal with Hitchcock is this: lots of people used rear projecton and process shots in this period, but NOBODY used them with the expert technical precision of Hitchcock.

I've been watching various movies in the past pandemic year, movies of the fifties and sixties, and it is rather instructional to see how LAZY their process shots are. The human figures are not proportional to the process backgrounds. "Falls through the air" put the actors in hanging harnesses and you can tell they are hanging and not really moving. And of course the dreaded "blue screen halo" effect. Hitchcock couldn't avoid it sometimes(the halo is a bit around Tippi Hedren in The Birds) but it isn't there with Arbogast's fall.

To see how good Arbogast's fall is, one only has to look at director Anthony Perkins re-do of the shot (with a new character) in Psycho III(1986.) The "faller" is out of proportion to the screen, she doesn't move, and the halo effect is there.

Van Sant's re-do of Arbogast falling in his 1998 remake is rather flawless technically(new green screen techiques are used), but one realizes that it wasn't so much the screen as the INTENTIONAL placement of the actor to create "a fall without falling." In short, the Van Sant version (starring William H. Macy as Arbogast) is pretty good, too -- the "fakery" is unavoidable, but still very cinematic and involving.

[–] ecarle (14979) 4 years ago

Also: I've always seen the sudden movement of Arbogast falling backwards down the stairs to be a "match" for Cary Grant's main run from the crop duster in North by Northwest. Suddenly, this movie MOVES..and the audience is excited, exhilarated. The killing of Arbogast is a "murder scene shot like an action scene."

And that's why I love it. And that's one of the reasons I love Psycho. And certainly one of the reasons that the charge of "fakery" has never mattered to me about Hitchcock. I LOVE it when his movies look fake. Because its really good fake. Its cinema.

Some proof in the pudding:

When Martin Balsam died in 1996(of a heart attack, not a knife)..even though he had won an Oscar for "A Thousand Clowns," several obituaries said things like this:

"Hitchcock's Detective Who Fell Down the Stairs Has Passed."

"Hitchcock's Staircase Fall Guy : RIP."

Balsam's fall was unforgettable.

[–] liscarkat (18388) 4 years ago

Some viewers are put off by artificiality in movies, and want everything to be real. I accept rear projection and other discernible effects as part of the style of the medium, and part of its charm. When I go to see "Swan Lake" at Lincoln Center I don't expect real water, a real castle, a real moon, or actual bird/woman mutants. Enjoyment of any art form is enhanced by acceptance and enjoyment of the stylistic conventions of the medium.

[–] ecarle (14979) 4 years ago

When I go to see "Swan Lake" at Lincoln Center I don't expect real water, a real castle, a real moon, or actual bird/woman mutants. Enjoyment of any art form is enhanced by acceptance and enjoyment of the stylistic conventions of the medium.

---

I agree, and I've been in rather a lifelong debate with those who find things "fake" in the movies. Its not so much that they are fake...it is that they are creatively fake.

I will note that, in the 70's, the Motion Picture Academy removed the "Best Special Effects" Award because a politicized Academy -- fully influenced by the documentary-style Eurofilms they worshiped -- believed that movies should not HAVE special effects. Or at least, special effects shouldn't be honored except with special awards.

Disaster movies like Earthquake and The Towering Inferno immediately challenged this idea and when Star Wars and Close Enounters showed up, the Academy eventually threw in the towel. The Spielberg/Lucas era blew everything up "reality-wise."

And it plays the other way: "Deliverance" is famous for its male rape scene, but it is ALSO famous for a relentless belief in "reality based action and effects." So some of the stuff on REAL, dangerous rapids...didn't look that dangerous. And the cliff climbing so important to the third act looked like it was staged on lower "safe" cliffs from trick angles. Sometimes effects can HEIGHTEN reality.

CONT

[–] ecarle (14979) 4 years ago

Hitchcock's very last film, Family Plot, has a great "runaway car scene" that vastly improved on a similar scene in North by Northwest by (a) removing the hood of the car from the POV shots(you got dizzy as you took in the view ahead) and (b) using no music(the sound of the car careening and bouncing along was more exciting without music. But critics complained: the car was fake , the process shots behind Bruce Dern and Barbara Harris of the mountain road were fake. To me, "fake" didn't matter. The excitement of the scene mattered -- and Dern and Harris would not have been able act as effectively(and as funnily) in a REAL car with a camera mount(not on a real mountain road , for sure) and the scene got down to brass tacks: the stomach-dropping roller coaster ride of looking ahead with nothing to stop the ride, and the comedy of Dern and Harris("Its not me woman, its the brakes don't work!," and a plaintative "I've got to get off this road" from Dern -- big laugh there.)

Only the reviewer for Newsweek, Katrine Ames, "got it". She called the runaway car scene in "Family Plot" a scene "that makes the car chases in Bullitt and The French Connection look mechanical." Fighting words. But she was right. Those Bullitt and French Connection scenes had lots of long shots of stunt drivers. Family Plot stayed "in your face." Personally, I like the Family Plot car scene less well than the Bullitt car chase, but more than the French Connection car chase.

I daresay that the Family Plot runaway car scene is my favorite "fake Hitchcock scene" after Arbogast's fall....

PS. Frenzy and Family Plot got their biggest raves in Newsweek, from different critics(Paul Zimmerman for Frenzy; Katrine Ames for Family Plot.) Frenzy got a lot of other raves, but Family Plot did not. Newsweek really helped Family Plot.)