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The "Hitchcock Building That Changed Cinema Forever" -- And It Is NOT the Psycho House

posted 2 years ago by ecarle (14979)
4 replies | jump to latest

Its 2022, and Alfred Hitchcock continues to merit a new non-fiction book.

It is called "Alfred Hitchcock and the Architecture of Suspense," and even though I have not seen, let alone read, the book, it leaves me smacking my forehead: OF COURSE somebody needed to write a book about the architecture of Hitchcock.

The Psycho House. The Vertigo Bell Tower. The Rear Window Apartment Complex.

And....says one chapter (now excerpted in September Vanity Fair):

The Vandamm House on Mount Rushmore in North by Northwest.

I can't link , but there are links to the article, entitled:

"How One Modernist Building in Alfred Hitchcock's 'North by Northwest' Changed Cinema Forever.

Hey, now. I guess that ol' Psycho house has some competish in Hitchcock history.

I've noted that, by accident of the year of my birth and my young age at the time of seeing them, North by Northwest and Psycho are "forever paired" as the formative movies of my life. There have been bigger action movies and more bloody horror pictures, but something about how NXNW and Psycho came out less than a year apart and "covered all the bases of the thriller in two movies" made me happy then and nostalgic now.

And indeed, if the movies "share a shot," it is this one:

NXNW: Nighttime. Roger Thornhill (Cary Grant in bright white shirt and black slacks) walking up a hillside towards the Vandamm house.

Psycho: Nighttime. Arbogast (Martin Balsam in well-tailored suit-and-tie and natty hat) walking up the outdoor stone steps up to the Bates mansion.

Each shot "lingers" so that we can drink in the majesty of the building that the protagonist is approaching. Each shot builds a certain amount of suspense(much more in Arbogast's case) as the hero approaches a house with murderous characters inside(Thornhill KNOWS this, and is careful; Arbogast, alas, does not.)

These shots convey the fantastical place that was "Hitchcock's world" at once OF our world and yet somehow beyond it, a place where movies take place.

The Arbogast climb is more powerful to me not only because the suspense is far scarier(the man is en route to a very horrible and terrifying death) but because the atmosphere is off the charts -- "Psycho in a nutshell." An old, creepy, American Gothic house on a hill (Dracula would be at home there) VS...a very modern man in a 1960 suit-and-tie. One world(Gothic) shall entirely devour another(modern.) That plus the side of the motel screen right (for framing) the creepy overgrowth of the bushy hill, the clarity of the sky here. Its macabre to the max.

But the Thornhill climb has its own quality. Whereas Arbogast climbs in black and white, Roger climbs in Technicolor. The night sky is deep blue. The light emanating from the Vandamm house shoots mild but noticeable beams of white and yellow. And because we know that the house is practically right on top of Mount Rushmore(yet ANOTHER great "Hitchcock fantasy")...we sense the epic space of North by Northwest (much as we did in the earlier major set piece in bright hot sunlight across the wide open spaces of the Indiana plains.) Indeed, both of the NXNW set-pieces are about "man as a tiny figure against a gigantic landscape."

Whereas the Psycho house was a "real" building -- albeit only the front and left side were built -- the NXNW Vandamm house is largely a matte painting. Sometimes that painting is a good one(when Roger approaches) , sometimes not so good (when Vandamm, Leonard and Eve walk away from it on the other side of the house.) Some of the house WAS built on a soundstage(the diagonal beam that Roger climbs to rescue Eve); it all combines into a satisfying whole.

INSIDE: the house is at once very 50's modern and yet somewhat "woodsy" -- there is a "cabin" feel to the place even with its modernity.

The best shot of the entire Vandamm house sequence is INSIDE, when the heavyset maid holds a gun on Roger in a room full of lamps reflected into infinity. Unfortunagely, this "best" shot is immediately followed by a BAD shot -- Vandamm, Leonard and Eve walking away from a painting not only of the house...but of a car parked nearby(it looks like a "Roger Rabbit cartoon car.")

No matter. The overall effect of the Vandamm house is most striking and unforgettable and very "1959."

The article in Vanity Fair notes that "the Vandamm house doesn't appear in North by Northwest until two hours into the movie, and is only on screen for 14 minutes." Fair enough -- but these are the climactic 14 minutes of one of the greatest entertainment movies ever made.

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CONT

[–] ecarle (14979) 2 years ago

At this point, I will yield to the article itself, if you wish to read it. The main point seems to be that "the Vandamm House moved movies villains inside the sleek spaces of modern architecture."

And I would suppose that the article means "Bond villains." Dr. No's lair. Goldfinger's Kentucky estate. Blofeld's various hangouts (particularly the mountaintop house -- NOT a castle -- in On Her Majesty's Secret Service. Very modern, and that was 1969, 10 years after NXNW.)

I myself haven't read the article in full, so I'm not sure what OTHER villains lived in such modernistic houses (and of course, what was "modern" changed with the times -- the 50s, the 60s, the 70's, the 80s.

---

Back to that book. I would surely like to read it. The cover is visible in the Vanity Fair article. It looks like the Rear Window set gets the cover (that ol' Psycho house is, I suppose, a bit overexposed.)

But think of all those Hitchcock houses:

Manderley.
The Oceanside home in Suspicion.
The villain's California desert house in Saboteur.
The house where Young Charlie and family live in Shadow of a Doubt.
The Rio mansion in Notorious.
Bruno Anthony's Virginia mansion in Strangers on a Train.
John Robie's villa on a French Riviera mountaintop in To Catch a Thief.
The McKittrick Hotel in Vertigo
The Vandamm House
The Psycho house
The Schoolhouse in The Birds (a REAL building that looked a lot like the Psycho house.)
The isolated Brenner home(by the sea) in The Birds.
Connery's Maryland mansion in Marnie.
The Virginia safe house in Topaz.
Juanita's Cuban villa in Topaz.
The Covent Garden apartment building(only one apartment?) in Frenzy(Rusk's room is creepy; his staircase, deadly.)

..and I'm sure I've missed some.

CONT

[–] ecarle (14979) 2 years ago

Back to the Psycho house: it remains a real mystery exactly how that house was built in 1960 , and another mystery as to how long the 1960 house stayed intact in the decades to follow(rumor is that the entire house was re-built for the sequels, and two sides added -- the right side and the rear).

The house seems to have been "cannibalized" from existing old house sets on the Universal lot(for a Paramount film.)

The only house given credit as a "feed" to the Psycho house was the house in "Harvey" (1950) -- the cupola in particular -- which is fitting, because Harvey has various scenes on the Universal back lot(particularly the Fairvale sets from Psycho) and conjures a small town atmosphere not UNLIKE Psycho.

Of course, only the front and left side of the Psycho house were built, along with the rooftops to cover them. But how much of the Psycho house WAS built from scratch? We'll never know.

As a "dramatic matter," I've always like the idea (unfortunately given too much graphic life in the flashbacks of Psycho IV) that once upon a time, the Bates house was a VERY nice house....a home, perhaps built by MR. Bates when he was still alive and placed on a hilltop so as to have a view of the valley beyond. It took a couple of decades(Norman's young life), Mr. Bates' death, SOMEBODY's madness(Norma's? Norman's?) and matricide to turn the place into the forboding "haunted house" of history.

Anyway, I'm looking forward to that book...

[–] swanstep (2715) 2 years ago

I must say that I'm detecting echoes of Psycho's house all over the place these days. E.g., the main house in Nope (2022) isn't a million miles removed:
https://www.thefilmik.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/07/Nope-Movie-2022-.webp
Stranger Things' Season 4 'creepy house' is even closer:
https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/c55c11be-88ac-472a-aa2d-15ac48ab255e/scale-to-width/755
And one of the rock band Muse's recent videos features a 'creepy house' that kind of starts off as the Psycho Bates home but then turns into the Overlook Hotel en route to complete phantasmagoria that apprently references all maner of video games with which I'm not familiar:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oyu1WO0hRB0
The song itself seems to sample a mostly forgotten side project for Michael Jackson in the '80s, Rockwell's 'Somebody's Watching Me?" which was full of Psycho references even before all the Psycho images in the vid:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7YvAYIJSSZY

[–] ecarle (14979) 2 years ago

I certainly remember Somebody's Watching Me as an MTV staple of the 80s. Even the lyric about the shower reminding the singer (a bit of a Michael Jackson clone, yes?) "of Psycho too much."

The 80s was roughly when some 60's nostalgia kicked in. We got the Psycho sequels and a new Alfred Hitchcock Presents show. The Monkees did a comeback tour. Its funny, I do remember the 80's, but they were very long ago. All the way back to 1960 FROM the 80's? Longer still.

And one of the rock band Muse's recent videos features a 'creepy house' that kind of starts off as the Psycho Bates home but then turns into the Overlook Hotel en route to complete phantasmagoria that apprently references all manner of video games with which I'm not familiar:

---

As I have noted before the Overlook Hotel is, to me , the SECOND best setting for a horror story behind Psycho. Psycho posited an isolated MOTEL (with but 12 cabins) and then threw in the creepy mansion to "double the atmosphere and the terror.) The Shining posited a -- what? 1000 room? -- HOTEL entirely empty and TOTALLY isolated up in the snowy Colorado mountains in winter. Alas the Overlook( a mix of real hotels and a soundstage exterior in some shots) seemed rather impressive and "normal" -- it was the STORY and winter setting that brought in the terror.

The one movie house that I think predicted the Psycho house is the much bigger Gothic mansion on the wide Texax plains in "Giant" (1956). Promotional mileage was made photographing James Dean (in one shot) and Liz Taylor (in another) with that house in the distance. All alone in the middle of nowhere and yet -- speaking of the great wealth of the Texas family that owned it.

But as your post proves, swanstep, the overall idea of a "Gothic two story house" has pretty much been the template for thrills ever since Psycho.

Which, I suppose, is as it should be.

There is only one Mount Rushmore.

There is only one Psycho house.

Both are monuments.