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"Hitchcock's Big Three"

posted 21 days ago by roger1 (3615)
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I think I've opined on what I call "Hitchcock's Big Three" before -- maybe years before -- and it is a concept that I have to revisit from time to time to make sure I still believe in it.

This time around -- trying to leave a small collection of opinions behind in one general place -- I've REFINED the idea, and my reasons why, and here goes.

As far as I'm concerned, "Hitchcock's Big Three" -- his three best movies as a matter of several elements -- came three-in-a-row to finish up the fifties and begin the sixties. They are:

Vertigo (1958)
North by Northwest(1959)
Psycho (1960)

and...for me...no other Hitchcock movie -- however highly ranked in critical lists, however much a box office hit, or a Best Picture winner(of which there is only one for Hitchcock: Rebecca) , however "great on its own"...gets to sit alongside The Big Three with any equality.

I've "led up" to this statement with a few other posts of other months and weeks. Honestly, I can't remember all of them, but here are some of them:

ONE: Post on "The Three Superthrillers": Psycho, The Exorcist, Jaws.

What interests me here is that I can see those three films as "the three superthrillers" and -- two of Hitchcock's Big Three don't make the grade. Only Psycho.

Interesting though: The American Film Institute's 2001 list "100 Years, 100 Thrillers" listed Psycho, Jaws, and The Exorcist 1, 2, 3 at the top of the list -- and then put North by Northwest at Number 4. So Hitchocck's Big Three ALMOST broke into the three superthrillers further.

TWO: Post on "un-Hitching the cars on the Hitchocck train." This post was very personal to MY tastes, in which I reflected on how a young lifetime of seeing -- and re-seeing -- ALL of Hitchcocks films had given way, over the decades -- to NOT re-seeing most of them at all. I think I wrote that I last saw Rebecca on the big screen in 1977, for instance. And though I kept up AT THEATERS with all theatrical re-releases of Rear Window, Vertigo, The Man Who Knew Too Much, The Trouble with Harry and Rope back when they came back in the 80's -- I rarely re-watch the ones other than Rear Window and Vertigo.

(That said, I love The Trouble With Harry for its beautiful music, its beautiful images, its so very twee and kind story, and The Man Who Knew Too Much as in its Albert Hall scene something as technically adroit as ALL of , say Frenzy.)

The 30s Hitchcock films are readily available on Max -- the two big ones(The 39 Steps for the wrong man template, The Lady Vanishes for the "they won't believe me" template) and the rest and...just not big re-watches to me. Too old. Too tinny in the music. Too action free.

As for what's left, I do believe that these right here still command my attention and get re-watches from time to time(in chronological order): Saboteur(NXNW early; the Statue of Liberty), Shadow of a Doubt(Psycho early, without the violence); Lifeboat(a female sig other's favorite Hitchcock, now A favorite of mine too), Notorious (Grant and Bergman: perfect; Claude Rains: perfect; even Louis Calhern perfect. Rope(I like not only the gimmick, but the IDEAS in the play turned into a movie -- the superiority of the killers, their linkage to Nazi themes, and their linkage to Stewart's mentor.)

Strangers on a Train(HUGE in my early life; I recall organizing a watching party at someone's home all the way back in ...1970. Robert Walker's Bruno, the overall visual organization of the film, and the climax were MAJOR)

Rear Window: always a watch. To Catch a Thief: always a watch. The Wrong Man -- a masterpiece and yet....no Bass credits.

The Birds. Comes right after The Big Three(though almost three years after Psycho -- a big gap at the time.) So how come not The Big Four? We shall see.

Torn Curtain and Topaz. Great theater-going memories. Not great movies.

Frenzy. As I've said: at the time, I think I was more excited by the reviews ("The Return of the Master"; "One of Hitchcock's Very Best") than maybe by the small scale movie itself. But with each passing year, the disturbing intimacy of the central rape-murder seems more and more adult and profound to me, and the Covent Garden setting is classic.

Family Plot: Minor? Perhaps. Final? Indubitably and that's history. (And its better than Rio Lobo or Buddy Buddy, the final films of Hawks and Wilder, respectively.) And I saw it WITH HITCHCOCK. At the premiere at the now-defunct FILMEX in Los Angeles.

CONT

[–] roger1 (3615) 21 days ago

THREE: The post about "the Hitchocck scores of Dimitri Tiomkin." I wrote that post to set the stage for the centrality of Bernard Herrmann and his scores to the Hitchcock legend -- even as Herrmann didn't even ENTER Hitchcock's career until The Trouble With Harry in 1955. Which means that these Hitchcock movies DON'T have Herrman scores: The 39 Steps, The Lady Vanishes, Rebecca, Spellbound(which perhaps ended up with the most famous score to a Hitchcock movie -- and a very romantic score at that - and was Oscar nommed; though I'm neither a fan of the movie or the score): Notorious...the list of Hitchcock movies WITHOUT Herrmann scores goes on and on and the GREATEST outrage is that Herrmann got fired before he could score the final four Hitchcock films.

FOUR: Well, I think that's about it: The Three Superthrillers; Unhitching cars off the Hitchcock train; the Hitchcock scores of Dimitri Tiomkin...I'm good to go.

CONT

[–] roger1 (3615) 21 days ago

Why THESE three as The Big Three:

Vertigo: 1958
North by Northwest: 1959
Psycho: 1960

The MAIN reason is perhaps the most ridiculous reason on its face, but I think not:

ONE: These are the ONLY three Hitchcock films to open with both a Bernard Herrmann opening overture AND an animated Saul Bass credits sequence. Herrmann for the ear; Bass for the eye- and Hitchcock hasn't even shown up yet with his movie.

One thing I've noticed about film critics over time: they largely IGNORE credit sequences and opening overtures. They start reviewing the movie "when the story proper begins." Indeed, I also posted recently about how in the 60s and 70's KABC-TV in Los Angeles CHOPPED OFF the opening credits and music and moved them to the end of the movie. KABC "wanted to start with the story" --not with the "packaging," not with the establishment of MOOD.

To me, one reason taht Vertigo, NXNW,and Psycho are better than ALL the Hitchocck movies before and after them is that packaging.

Take Notorious. Sometimes listed as Number One among Hitchcocks, certainly very stylish(though pretty much action-free and murder-free). Two major stars(Bergman fits with suave Grant better than with callow Peck the year before; Grant here is his 40's perfect much as in To Catch a Thief and NXNW he is his 50s perfect.

But the opening credits and music of Notorious are "basic 1940s." We feel NONE of the emotional power and uplift of Herrmann launching Vertigo, launching NXNW, launching Psycho. (And note: with Vertigo and NXNW -- though not with Psycho...the music starts OVER the logo -- Paramount Mountain/Leo the Lion roars and makes those logos PART of the excitement.)

But wait: since Saul Bass only contributed three credit sequences to Hitchcock and they are for the Big Three...is that to say that the Big Three ARE the big three SOLELY because Bass did their credit sequences?

Not exactly.

But kind of:

CONT

[–] roger1 (3615) 21 days ago

Herrmann did three credits sequences WITHOUT Bass BEFORE the Big Three:

The Trouble With Harry: music over a moving camera tour of a child-like drawing leading up to Harry's body as drawn by a child. Cute and twee -- but NOT a Bass creation.

The Man Who Knew Too Much: music over generic titles and a single shot of an orchestra playing Herrmann's admittedly exciting thunderous music. Its leading up to a dramatic point as the camera dollies down to a single cymbal player and the title "A clash of cymbals and how it affected the lives of an American family."

The Wrong Man: Again, not over animated, but over actual photography of the NYC night club "The Stork Club" as its full-tilt Saturday night dance band(staffed by Henry Fonda on bass) plays the evening down to an ever dwindling number of dancers and to full closure and silence for the night. Herrmann mixes his "trademark suspense anxiety music" in countepoint to the dance band Latin beat of the Stork Clube musicisans.

Those are three perfectly serviceable opening credit sequences, and Herrmann's music is good.

But getta load of the next one: Vertigo. Herrmann's music soars to a NEW level of emotional acheivement; Bass is now in place not only for animation, but to make spectacular things happen with a REAL woman's eyes and lips (in giant close-up) and with these names: "JAMES STEWART".....(long pause) "KIM NOVAK"...(long pause) "in ALFRED HITCHCOCKS"....VERTIGO.

And getta load of the NEXT one: North by Northwest. A rising, rousing opening "synched" to the roars of Leo the Lion(for the only movie Hitchocck made at MGM ...and its a lulu -- they gave him all the money in the world to make it.)
again with the giant names, but MORE of them: "CARY GRANT" ...(long pause)..."EVA MARIE SAINT"....(long pause)...JAMES MASON...in ALFRED HITCHCOCK's....NORTH BY NORTHWEST.

CONT

[–] roger1 (3615) 21 days ago

And getta load of the NEXT one: Psycho. Its Herrmann and Bass again, but with some twists this time;

No names go above the title EXCEPT the main guy. The first words we see are "ALFRED HITCHCOCKS"..then ...PSYCHO. Perkins, Miles, Gavin and Leigh go on AFTER the main credit. Hitchcock evidently didn't see them as truly big stars...and felt that HE was the star of this one.

Herrmann's music is "stripped down" from the full orchestra of North by Northwest and Vertigo, but just as "wall to wall." Jittery, jagged strings...a capture of madness designed to unsettle US, -- "black and white scorefor a black and white movie."

Bass' black and white titles shift words back and forth and split them like the characters in the movie we are about to see.

CONT

[–] roger1 (3615) 21 days ago

So that's the "basics." The Big Three being so "packaged" with three credit sequences as to "stand out" in a way. But those big three credit sequences are indicative of other qualities:

The role of Bernard Herrmann -- at his best -- being connected as a key reason WHY each of the Big Three is one of the greatest Hitchcock movies ever made:

Because without a Bernard Herrmann score on each one...they wouldn't be.

I feel as strongly about this as I do to the absolute necessity that John Williams be in place on the key Spielberg films(almost all of them, as it turns out, but certainly the key ones.)

For all the praise to his directorial style, his command of the visual -- his showman's instinct for the big hit(that was, in Spielberg's 70s-80s heyday and briefly in the 90s), Spielberg isn't Spielberg without Williams music as not simply PART of, but more like an EQUAL part of...the movie itself.

Jaws most certainly, with its locomotive shark motif just this side of the Psycho screaming violins in screen history. And definitely ET the Extraterrestial, especially in the final ten minutes. Tears flowed and the audience was raised to a majestic place.

And Close Encounters final minutes had the same effect, not to mention the "five notes" used to communicate with the UFOs ("De-dad-dee--dah--DAH.")

As Williams to Spielberg (EQUAL, not subsidiary) so was Herrman to Hitchcock -- and evidently this eventually bugged Hitchcock and it bugged Universal brass around the time of Torn Curtain (Herrmann's scores were seen as 'too old fashioned) and so Hitchcock fired Herrmann and Hitchocck stopped being Hitchcock, because his movies no longer had the EQUAL collaborator. Four composers replaced Herrmann for four films in a row -- and even when the last of them was...ta da...JOHN WILLIAMS...it seemed like Hitchcock was "borrowing" the SPIELBERG sound.

CONT

[–] roger1 (3615) 21 days ago

Additionally, the big and powerful scores of Vertigo and North by Northwest would be perfectly at home in the 60s and 70s and 80s of John Williams, Jerry Goldsmith(in his scores for Capricorn One and The Boys From Brazil and NOT in his score for Psycho II) and Danny Elfman (his Batman theme and score are well in the Herrmann tradition, while at the same time "Elfmanseque" and Elfman was joined unto Tim Burton.

---

So the Big Three have credits on their side, and great (near modern) Herrman scores on their side.

What else?

How about the actors and their presence "at the end of the fifties and the beginning of the sixties." Here we find a pattern that seemed crystal clear in retrospect even though it was entirely arbitrary at the time.

Simply put: James Stewart and Cary Grant ended up the "two definitive Hitchocck heroes" because each man made four movies for him, and no other leading man matched that.

Each man was in "two of the best" for Hitchcock:

Stewart: Rear Window (1954)
Vertigo (1958)

Grant: Notorious (1946)
North by Northwest (1959)

Each man made two other movies for Hitchcock that were "good but not great":

Stewart: Rope (1948)
The Man Who Knew Too Much (1956)

Grant: Suspicion (1941)
To Catch a Thief (1955)

and in 1958, of his four for Hitchcock, Stewart delivered his greatest performance and his deepest character: Scottie Ferguson in Vertigo. After Vertigo, there was nowhere left to go for Stewart with Hitchcock. Not only was Stewart "aging away" from romantic leads, but Scottie Ferguson was meant to be "the final resting place" for Stewart...at the edge of that mission church facing his destiny.

CONT

[–] roger1 (3615) 21 days ago

and in 1959...just a year after James Stewart climaxed his tour with Hitchcock, Cary Grant did exactly the same with North by Northwest. Cary Grant never won the Best Actor Oscar, and was only nominated twice(for very bleak and serious roles) but he woulda/coulda/shoulda won the Best Actor Oscar for North by Northwest. I would akin the win(had he been nominated and it occurred) to John Wayne's win for True Grit: an ENTERTAINMENT performance that also served to wrap up an entire career(even though both Wayne and Grant made other movies after these.

As Roger Thornhill, the rich Madison Avenue mad man - -er, ad man -- who is twice divorced, still a ladies man and without a care in the world -- suddenly on the run for his life and into the arms of the love of his life -- this was the "compleat Cary Grant performance":

Handsome
Tan
Still at great body at 55 (he does a shirtless scene to prove it.)
Great voice(as always)
Suave
Adept at verbal one-liner humor
Adept at physical humor (how he moves after the UN diplomat is killed; how he shaves in the train station bathroom)
Expert at kissing
Expert at "wounded love"
An action hero(RUNS great at age 55, fights pretty good at the end)
And -- as always -- possessed of something deeper, darker, more nuanced that most leading men of the time.

It was very timely -- in a "Big Three way" -- that Stewart in one film and then Grant in the very next film "closed out" the fifties (and an entire Golden Age of Old Hollywood) for Alfred Hitchcock as a director.

And then in the next film -- opening in 1960 with an eye FIRMLY on the youthfulness of a new decade -- Hitchcock replaced those "old men" with new, younger ones, but of a different type: John Gavin(hero) and Anthony Perkins(the REAL lead, and sympathetic for most of the movie) , even as the women were not "classic" and the entire movie was "new in intention and impact." Psycho.

CONT

[–] roger1 (3615) 21 days ago

NEXT:

The Big Three happened when Hitchcock was at the absolute peak of his power in Hollywood. Since 1955, he had had a hit TV series that had made him BOTH a TV star(like James Arness, Jackie Gleason and Lucille Ball) and a "movie star" in the trailers he made for his movies (he started appearing in them as a "host" soon after his TV show started) and the cameos he had ALWAYS made -- but now as a star.

Hitchcock's clout here was at its highest and demonstrated itself in these three ways with the Big Three:

Vertigo: On location photography in the streets of San Francisco, the redwoods to the north, and the pennisula and Monterey-Carmel coast to the South. (The similarly-themed Marnie of 6 years later would drop location work for second unit process screens of Philadelphia and Maryland.) Two major stars(Stewart and Kim Novak replacing the lesser Vera Miles. ) And --ultimately -- the freedom to make a strange film, a personal film, an art film -- with a tragic ending and a sense of uncertainty: what happened to the murderer? What would happen to Scottie. Vertigo also gave us a warm up for a Hitchcock movie with an insane man as protagonist.

North by Northwest: MGM only bought Hitchcock's services once and practically gave him a "budgetary blank check." If NXNW was a remake of Saboteur in some ways, look at the casting upgrade: Cary Grant(not Bob Cummings) as the hero; James Mason(not Otto Kruger) as the villain, and Academy Award Winner Eva Marie Saint(not Priscilla Lane) as the heroine. Plus a supporting cast of ...scores? Huge cast for Hitchcock -- Psycho had about 18 players, I think. The money that bought those top rank stars and that huge supporting cast also bought Hitchocck location work all over a huge swath of America: NYC, Long Island, Chicago, Indiana("played" by Central California for the crop duster scene) and Mount Rushmore(on location and an expensive indoor set.)

CONT

[–] roger1 (3615) 21 days ago

North by Northwest could afford THREE big action sequences, each bigger than the one before it(drunken car cliff drive; crop duster attack; Mount Rushmore climax.) And the great, Oscar nominated script was jammed full of incident and set-pieces BETWEEN the action: the UN murder, the auction scene...the sexy seduction on the train(I picture men of a certain age boarding trains all over America in hopes of meeting a sexy seducer.) That North by Northwest "set the template for James Bond and beyond" furthers its position in the Big Three.

and then Psycho.

As the lore tells us, Hollywood was feting Hitchcock for the box office hit of North by Northwest - produced as a matter of big action on a big budget -- and he surprised everybody by getting a BIGGER hit with a SMALLER budget but a new angle on thrills: shocking bloody slasher murders. YES, a template was borne just as NXNW had borne Bond, but THIS time, Hitchocck had to blast past the censors to do it and -- because he had that CLOUT that got him the MGM budget for NXNW, he was able to make a new kind of screen history in Psycho -- with a younger cast of leads(in the main) and no particular need for a top-paid star(HITCHCOCK was the star as the trailer in which he and only he appeared proved -- he was "that guy on TV" and books and records by now.)

Hitchcock's inability to "best the Big Three" was for a variety of factors. He sure came close with the movie after Psycho -- The Birds - its probably the second most famous movie in his canon after Psycho even as the REST of his canon has disappeared from common knowledge among the public.

CONT

[–] roger1 (3615) 21 days ago

The Birds doesn't have a Saul Bass credit sequence. Interesting: Bass did credit scenes and poster logos for director Otto Preminger both BEFORE Hitchock hired him, and long AFTER Hitchocck hired him. Bass was still doing Preminger posters well into the 70s. And HItchocck had given Saul Bass a special "Visual Consultant" on screen credit for Psycho and took photographs of Bass on the Cabin One set during the "Norman cleans up the murder" filming.

Bass's contribution beyond the credits seems to have been storyboards for the two murder scenes -- the shower storyboard was published, the staircase storyboard has disappeared -- as Hitchocck didn' use it. On Hitchcock's recommendation, Bass also "did something" to the sky behind the house in the first night sequence(Marion dies, Norman cleans up.) What he did was to "matte in" some high speed clouds(to signal "after the storm") and he rather provided the most MUDDY shots of the house exterior in the whole movie. The crystal clear sequence of shots of the house in the Arbogast sequence are far better.

So...why did Bass quit Hitchocck after Psycho? Perhaps he felt that Hitchcock just couldn't top that blockbuster(and he couldn't.) Perhaps they clashed quietly. Perhaps he didn't like Hitchcock using the NOVEL's logo over a Bass design. We don't know.

The Birds actually has a pretty good credit sequence -- it FEELS like Bass, but without the animation. Bright blue letters are torn apart by the black birds flying across teh screen and squawking with terrifying loudness as their wings flutter in madness.

CONT

[–] roger1 (3615) 21 days ago

But there is no Bernard Herrmann music. Hitchcock kept Herrmann on for The Birds, but it HAS no music. It might have been better WITH music. Was HItchcock just a bit JEALOUS of how much Psycho owed to Herrmann? In any event, Herrmann got a "Sound Consultant" credit(did he help organize those bird sounds like music?) but had to share his screen credit with the guys who ran the sound machine. One senses The Big Three being further left behind with the departure of Saul Bass from credits for The Birds, and the "downgrade" of Herrman to Sound Consultant.

The Birds was then, and is now, historic for its incredible mix of effects and real birds to create the biggest number of set-pieces in any Hitchocck movie. But the script and the performances weren't up to par with The Big Three and it ran way too long before starting the action.

By the time we reach Marnie, things are really bad. The stunning and exciting Saul Bass credits -- and the "copycat Bass" Birds credits -- are replaced by a 1944-style "turning pages" credit sequence -- on purpose, I suppose, but announcing Hitchcock as "old fashioned" right when he couldn't afford it -- 1964, as "the New Guard" was showing up: Kubrick, Frankenheimer, Penn and the foreign New Wave.

Herrmann's score for Marnie is his final score for Hitchocck. He was fired off of Torn Curtain and the hopes for Hitchocck's ever matching The Big Three were over. The 1972 comeback Frenzy WAS a great film, but its credits were banal (superimposed over a great helicopter of shot of the Thames) and the score of composer Ron Goodwin (replacing FIRED composer Henry Mancini) was pedestrian too.

---

Various factors (age and health for Hitchcock, the coming of the New Wave and New Hollywood) prevented Hitchocck from ever matching The Big Three again -- but what of the Hitchcock "great movies" that preceded them? Why are the Big Three better than them?

CONT

[–] roger1 (3615) 21 days ago

Well, critics when The Big Three were RELEASED didn't think they were. I've read reviews of Vertigo("an asinine bore") North by Northwest("Hitchocck has died and been replaced by an imposter") and Psycho ("Not as good as The 39 Steps and The Lady Vanishes") that pretty much hated those "new" movies. But those were reviews by only a handful of snobbish critics who weren't really with the times. The new guys saw what Hitchcock was doing, and why.

Though I'd say some of the criticism at Vertigo was perhaps justified at the time. The film simply doesn't have a dialogue script as good as NXNW and Psycho after it, and it is rather odl-fashioned melodrama with a (yes) Old Guy love lead (Stewart fit the story for OTHER reasons -- his madness, his rage, the sadness of an old man trying to find young love.) Still, New Wave critics have elevated it over time and it remains part of The Big Three.

I found this opening sentence to the chapter in Donald Spoto's 1977 book "The Films of Alfred Hitchcock" on North by Northwest:

"Between the mesmerizing beauty of Vertigo and the dark genius of Psycho came Hitchcock's great comic thriller North by Northwest."

I think that Spoto "got" the Big Three concept and who knows, maybe he inspired it in me.

One more:

The American Film Institute in its two -- and only two -- one decade apart list of the 100 Greatest Films of All Time(20th Century edition) listed the same FOUR Hitchocck films both times: The Big Three plus Rear Window.

Am I saying that "The Big Three" are BETTER than Rear Window?

CONT

[–] roger1 (3615) 21 days ago

A little bit, yes. Its not simply that there is no Bernard Herrmann score -- it is that Hitchockc without Herrmann wasn't really Hitchcock "compleat." There's actually barely a score at all in Rear Window--- its use of ambient sound and diagetic music is a strength -- and Franz Waxman is listed as the composer and the movie DOES have an opening theme which is distintive but...not Herrmann. And the visual credits (less the great "curtain up" first shot on the apartment tableau) are pretty basic. Hell, Grace Kelly doesn't even get to be above the title with Stewart.

But this: Rear Window, crucially, came out the year BEFORE Hitchcock started his TV show and attained a new level of international superstardom, BEFORE the books and the mystery magazine and the records...before Hitchcock attained the Peak Clout that yielded The Big Three.

The Big Three effectively close out en entire era in movies(with Vertigo and North by Northwest) while starting a new one (with Psycho and the Bondian aspects of North by Northwest) that continues to this day.

The Big Three are the essence of Hitchcock-- joined as one with Herrmann, powerful enough to get top stars(that stopped after Torn Curtain) and big budgets(that stopped after Topaz), powerful enough to attract Saul Bass as a collaborator, and powerful enough to entice several generations worldwide to become Hitchocck fans for life.

[–] roger1 (3615) 15 days ago

Seeing as I'm sort of leaving this thread for posterity..I mean, I do think that "The Big Three" rather define Hitchcock as we move farther and farther away from his period of relevance -- I decided to be completist on two other aspects to "The Big Three:

ONE:

Each of the big three rather "climaxed and perfected" three disparate TYPES of thrillers templates in which Hitchcock worked over his 50 years or so of career:

VERTIGO: Climaxes "the "twisted love" stories which were rather his specialty -- let others do action and horror, too -- but "twisted love" was a Hitchcock focus. So leading to Vertigo are:

Rebecca, Suspicion, Mr. and Mrs. Smith, Spellbound, Notorious(perhaps closest TO Vertigo in themes, even though it is ostensibly a spy picture), Under Capricorn(very much so) and I Confess.

NORTH BY NORTHWEST Climaxes the spy chase thrillers that were his 30's bread and butter and his WWII political spy thrillers. So leading to North by Northwest are:

Sabotage, The Man Who Knew Too Much 34, The 39 Steps, Secret Agent, The Lady Vanishes (the train sequence in NXNW), Foreign Correspondent, Saboteur(ESPECIALLY..a wrong man and a climax on a national monument), Lifeboat(Nazi issues), Notorious(which does double duty as a "twisted love" story -- the Grant-Bergman-Rains triangle in Notorious transfers to Grant-Saint-Mason in NXNW) and The Man Who Knew Too Much '56 (note: after WWII and the Nazi defeat, Hitchcock backed off on the spy stories for most of the 50s -- the Commies were too sensitive an issue in Hollywood)..

CONT

[–] roger1 (3615) 15 days ago

PSYCHO: Climaxes the "psychopath" stories which were among Hitchcock's greatest hits --- psychopaths are the true monsters among us, very real and utterly unfathomable -- how does one's BRAIN go so horrifyingly haywire? So leading to Psycho are:

The Lodger, Shadow of a Doubt, Rope, Strangers on a Train, Rear Window(Thorward DI
SMEMBERS his wife -- in the shower bath) and...that was about it.

I think Hitchcock felt that a psychopath was a villain to be used sparingly . I like to say that he did "one major psycho a decade" -- each more violent than from the decade before, right up unto the R rating:

The 40s: Uncle Charlie in Shadow of a Doubt. We never see him strangle anyone. His killings(all of rich widows) are before the movie begins -- and offscreen.

The 50s: Bruno Anthony in Strangers on a Train. A new decade begins and Hitchcock "goes wild a bit." Bruno's one strangulation (of the slutty estranged wife Miriam) begins quite brutally (and SADLY, the "slut" is suddenly a terrified GIRL as Bruno strangles her) and morphs into symbolic style(in the distorted eyeglass lens.)

The 60s: Norman Bates in Psycho. A NEW decade begins and Hitchcock goes...psycho. Movie history is made with the two most graphic and shocking and bloody and scream-inducing stabbings in movie history to that date. (If they ain't too bloody today -- the 1960 reviews of the time say otherwise.)

The 70's(AFTER the Big Three.) Bob Rusk in Frenzy. Still yet a NEW decade begins and Hitchcock again elects to use a psychopath as his avatar. A British, London-based Cockney psychopath (a return to roots.) The R rating is in place, so Rusk can strip(partally) and rape(without true success; he's impotent) his female victim in graphic terms(nudity) and then strangle his victim in lingering, long close-up. The end of the line.

CONT

[–] roger1 (3615) 15 days ago

My stating that the Big Three climaxes Hitchcock's MAIN three templates(Twisted Love, Spy Chase Thriller, Psychopaths) can't say that these are Hitchcock's ONLY three templates. But it seems that MOST of his films can be placed within those realms.

Still -- what of?

To Catch a Thief? I suppose it is ALMOST a spy chase thriller given that Grant was a WWII commando-killer -- WWII in the 40s cast a long shadow over the 50s. But really we have here Hitchcock's version of the caper film. In any event, To Catch a Thief sounds in The Big Three as a mix of Vertigo(twisted love) and NXNW(Cary Grant, action star.)

Stage Fright? The film is rather a chick-flick British murder mystery with a musical-theater backdrop - but without a mystery. The proven killer at the end DOES have psychopath tendencies, so maybe this fits that category.

The Trouble With Harry? No spies. Maybe a psycho or two -- these are eccentric people, though harmless. And perhaps the "lighter side" of twisted love what with the Forsythe-Maclaine coupling. But overall, yet another example that while Hitchcock may have had "fall back subgenres"(twisted love, spies, psychos)...sometimes he just engaged his fancies(here, British-style black comedy on American soil.)

Family Plot?(AFTER the Big Three, so we will see how it does and does not fit here.)

CONT

[–] roger1 (3615) 15 days ago

The SECOND "follow up" on the Big Three:

If the Big Three mainly climaxed three subgenres(twisted love, spy chase thrillers, psychos) -- what of the SIX Hitchcock films that FOLLOWED the Big Three?

Well, for the most part, the six movies each fit into one of the three subgenres(with one possible exception) and -- for the most part, simply failed to live up to the greatness of The Big Three.

I mean, Saul Bass and his credits were gone after Psycho. Bernard Herrmann and his unparalleled Hitchcock scores were gone after Marnie(even as he had turned in a full, rejected score for Torn Curtain.)

Two other key Hitchcock collaborators died in the 60s: Film editor George Tomasini died(on a camping trip, of a heart attack) after Marnie. Cinematographer Robert Burks (who shot every Hitchcock movie from Strangers on a Train through Marnie LESS Psycho -- which still LOOKS like Burks filmed it) died with his wife in a house fire. "Ugly way to die." But Hitchcock had DUMPED Burks(just as with Herrmann) after Marnie and before Burks died.

And so, the "lesser" six movies after The Big Three and where they fit:

TWISTED LOVE

Marnie

Hitchcock only attempted one more time to film a "twisted love" story without action, spies, psychopaths -- though there is mental illness in the film, and a gory murder in flashback at its heart.

Coming after the action of NXNW, the shocks of Psycho, and the special effects horror action of The Birds, Hitchcock's attempt to go back to the "old fashioned" ways of Spellbound(which Marnie resembles in the amnesia and childhood trauma aspects) no longer fit the times. His newfound teenage fans(courtesy of Psycho and The Birds) balked, and Universal chief Lew Wasserman came down hard: (1) Make another spy film (2) use big stars(Connery wasn't big yet, Hedren was never big.)

Hitchocck never tried a "twisted love" story again after Marnie.

CONT

[–] roger1 (3615) 15 days ago

SPY CHASE THRILLER

Torn Curtain
Topaz

The Communists were not named as the villains in The Man Who Knew Too Much '56, or in North by Northwest(which nonetheless made the point that champions of the oppressed masses could live pretty high on the hog as master spies).

But by the 60s, the Cold War had heated up and "Communist-West Cold War stories" were all the rage. Movies like The Manchurian Candidate, Dr. Strangelove(for humor) the Bond movies(with SMERSH), The Spy Who Came in From the Cold(LeCarre) and Michael Caine's Harry Palmer movies("Funeral in Berlin") made Commies hot again, and Hitchcock jumped right in: Torn Curtain(about the Iron Curtain) and Topaz( about the Cuban Missile Crisis) could not have been more trendy, no matter how dull and dated they look today.

And that was their problem versus North by Northwest. These "serious," grim, realistic (and yet NOT realistic) spy dramas couldn't compete with what had been "a total fantasy" in North by Northwest. They didn't end on Mount Rushmore...Torn Curtain ended in a "nothing" way and Topaz barely ended at all.

Oh, one more thing about Topaz: It was about FRENCH spies and its third act took place in Paris. Remember that "the French loved Hitchcock" -- led by Francois Truffaut, so Topaz was Hitchcock's "French movie" as much as Psycho was Hitchocck's "William Castle movie." "Hitchcock Internationale."

PSYCHOPATHS

You'd think after Psycho hit big, Hitchcock would want to "do it again" and though he was foiled once, he scored twice:

CONT

[–] roger1 (3615) 15 days ago

The Birds was advertised with "nothing can prepare you for the sheer stabbing shock of The Birds" so obviously Psycho comparisons were invited by the studio(Universal, now.) Somehow The Birds wasn't as scary as Psycho -- birds didn't scare us as a mystery human monster did -- but Psycho is superimposed ALL OVER The Birds:

The fatal shower attack on Janet Leigh in Psycho becomes a climactic bird attack on Tippi Hedren in The Birds -- they are cut the same, though The Birds attack is much more spectacular as a matter of effects and ...birds.

You can superimpose the long talk between Annie(Suzanne Pleshette) and Melanie(Tippi) at Annie's home over the talk between Marion and Norman in the parlor in Psycho(same camera angles, same pacing) but..alas..what Suzanne and Tippi have to discuss is much less compelling than what Janet and Tony talked about.

And: Arbogast interrogating and catching Norman in lies becomes jerk lawyer Rod Taylor interrogating Tippi and catching HER lies. Hitchocck must have really dug the Arbogast/Norman duel -- it reappears here(Taylor catches Tippi in lies), and in Marnie(Connery catches Tippi in lies) and in Torn Curtain(Gromek the Commie bodyguard catches Paul Newman in lies) and in Topaz(young French reporter catches Phillipe Noiret in lies.) Hitch just liked the "verbal action dynamics" of it all.

Still, and for all its technical and "stunt birds" epic heavy lift for Hitch, The Birds made less than half of Psycho and thus did not match up , Big Three wise(Vertigo made less, too -- but won its stripes on other grounds.)

CONT

[–] roger1 (3615) 15 days ago

Frenzy

For those of us who wondered why Hitchcock did NOT make another psycho movie in the 60s after Psycho, the answer proved: he tried , but Universal boss Lew Wasserman would not hlm. Lew had HELPED Hitchcock make Psycho(to break loose from his Paramount contract and come to Universal) but suddenly got all prim and proper. The stated reason: Wasserman was big in President Lyndon Johnson's circles and did not want Universal(and HItchcock) making a sick psycho thriller.

But Nixon came in the 70s and Lew greenlit the British-based Frenzy and...lo and behold...Hitchcock got his best reviews SINCE Psycho(some said it was his best since NXNW) and decent box office. Psychos SELL.

And yet, Frenzy wasn't nearly the hit or the "event" that Psycho was. Times had changed, the R rating had come, MANY movies had ultra-violence.

Still, Hitchcock now had a "shock strangling" montage to go with the "shock stabbing" shower montage and the "shock bird attack" montage in The Birds. A trilogy of murder and mayhem.

So for the final "Failed assaults on the Big Three" count:

TWISTED LOVE

Marnie

SPY CHASE THRILLER

Torn Curtain
Topaz

PSYCHOPATHS

The Birds(Psycho birds)
Frenzy

but...what of Hitchcock's final film, Family Plot?

Well, Family Plot WAS wrtten by the screenwriter of NXNW - Ernest Lehman -- from a novel this time(NXNW was an original.) And while there are no spies in Family Plot, it WAS a "comedy thriller" as NXNW was in certain ways(though there are serious things afoot.)

I'd say that Family Plot is -- mainly -- one of the Hitchcock movies that did NOT fit his "Big Three" template -- it rests alongside To Catch a Thief and The Trouble With Harry(and joins them in light humor).

CONT

[–] roger1 (3615) 15 days ago

Family Plot also references a NUMBER of the Big Three movies:

Psycho: Same structurel plot: investigators following one person(Marion, the missing heir) head straight on into the path of a very dangerous person(Mrs. Bates, kidnapper Arthur Adamson.)

NXNW: The drunken drive of Cary Grant in NXNW (written by Ernest Lehman) becomes the brakeless drive of Bruce Dern and Barbara Harris in Family Plot. And the Family Plot one is BETTER: no music, no shots of the hood blocking our dizzying POV.

Vertigo: Are perhaps BOTH the love relationships of "heroes" Dern and Harris and villains Devane and Black -- rather twisted?

Bonus "no Big Three" element: Family Plot, like The Man Who Knew Too Much is about...kidnapper villains.

At the end of the day, though, I'll put Family Plot in with the PSYCHOPATHS because...I think Arthur Adamson(who, as Eddie Shoebridge, orchestrated the murder-by-fire of his foster parents -- is one.

CONT

[–] roger1 (3615) 15 days ago

So summarized:

The films after the Big Three:

TWISTED LOVE

Marnie

SPY CHASE THRILLERS

Torn Curtain
Topaz

PSYCHOPATHS

The Birds
Frenzy
Family Plot

...none of them REALLY "films of decline," ONE of them VERY FAMOUS (The Birds), and one of them "the best of the bunch"(Frenzy, with a better script than The Birds, and a historic place as Hitchocck's cussing-sex-nudity-ultraviolence stand alone R-rated film._

But NONE of those matched The Big Three which remains central

All the Hitchcock movies before the Big Three
The Big Trhee
All the Hitchocck movies AFTER the Big Three.

[–] letess (1513) 9 days ago

Alfred Hitchcock movies Quentin Tarantino hates:

Frenzy (1972)
North by Northwest (1959)
Vertigo (1958)

[–] roger1 (3615) 8 days ago

Frenzy (1972)
North by Northwest (1959)
Vertigo (1958)

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Yeah...I think with Vertigo, QT joined that not-insubstantial group of people who feel that Vertigo, chosen by Sight and Sound critics for one decade as "the greatest movie ever made" simply didn't have the box office record with the public or the cultural impact at time (unlike Psycho) to merit its inclusion. QT simply doesn't dig Vertigo.

Once upon a time, neither did I. But frankly, my willingness to include Vertigo in the Big Three(and Rear Window just a tad below those three) is the incredible contribuition of Bernard Herrmann to the score -- both the opening overture and the great love theme when Judy emerges from the bathroom as Madeleine. And also the Saul Bass credits, which for Vertigo were enhanced by other artistic contributors who created the various "geometric spirals and other shapes" for the sequence.

And Vertigo just digs deeper into the emotions of love and loss than the more "surface" Rear Window.

Meanwhile QT calling North by Northwest "mediocre" is simply dunderheaded and he went the extra distance to insult everybody who loves it. (I'm reminded that near the end of his life, Cary Grant said: "My favorite movie of mine is North by Northwest. It wasn't always , but it is everybody else's , so now it is mine.")

It would seem that even as QT refuses to go into old age directing movies, he is willing to go there as a crabby naysayer of great works, who exposes himself as lacking.

Frenzy? We only have QT's glancing comment in his book "Cinema Speculation" that it is "piece of crap," end of story. (He was comparing his idol Brian DePalma to Hitchcock, saying that Brian DePalma lost his passion for MAKING thrillers, while Hitchcock never did: "Frenzy may be a piece of crap, but I'm sure Hitchcock wasn't bored making it." (That is a memorized paraphrase, not exact. Except the piece of crap part.)

CONT

[–] roger1 (3615) 8 days ago

What's interesting there is that Frenzy stands as Hitchcock's only "real" R-rated film(Psycho was given R belatedly after having no rating in 1960 and an "M"(PG) in a 1969 re-release.)

There is an ultra-violent rape murder of a woman in Frenzy -- it is as outrageous and taboo-splitting as much of the violence in QT's work (the woman in Frenzy is slowly strangled to death in close-up -- QT "copied this" when Christoph Walz strangled Diane Kruger in Inglorious Basterds.) Also as with QT, Frenzy mixes comedy with the horror -- both in comedy scenes around the murders and in the comic-sick "potato truck" scene where the psycho killer strugggles with the nude female corpse.

Frenzy is a bit too flat in some scenes and flawed in plot to sit with The Big Three, but is was MAJOR in Hitchocck's career -- saving him from a verdict of senility and irrelevance with great reviews, good box office and a comeback hit after some flops. I akin the film to Eastwood's 1992 comeback hit "Unforgiven." Both "Frenzy" and "Unforgiven" came back on the terms of their makers: sick, ultra-violent and without a star cast(Frenzy); bleak, slow and with an "old star" cast(Unforgiven.) Neither Hitch nor Clint pandered to anybody and they were rewarded.

But of course, Mr. Tarantino is entitled to his opinion.

[–] Megan254 (303) 8 days ago

For me, his top 3 are 1. Psycho 2. The Birds 3. Rear Window

I didn't care much for Vertigo. Rope was an okay movie. I think those are the only Alfred Hitchcock movies I've seen, so my top 3 might change in future.

[–] roger1 (3615) 8 days ago

For me, his top 3 are 1. Psycho 2. The Birds 3. Rear Window

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I suppose my rather "in depth" lingering on what I call "The Big Three" is, in the end, just another list of favorite Hitchocck movies. If one goes to the Alfred Hitchocck page here, or other places on the internet, folks will offer all sorts of different choices. I've seen Dial M for Murder offered up as a "top of the list" movie. And Rebecca(his only Best Picture winner, and from 1940.)

Surfing the internet, I've even seen a preference for what the critics pretty much rejected: Torn Curtain, Topaz(not much, that one), Frenzy(which WAS a well-reviewed hit) and his final, lightweight, flawed but actually well structured and intricate Family Plot.

Your choices:

Psycho
The Birds
Rear Window

are certainly "biggies." Its starting to go away now, but in the 60s, 70s, 80s...the 2000s?you would get TV news reports about "harmless" bird attacks where the announcer would say "Just like a scene out of Alfred Hitchcock's The Birds.." but I'm not sure either the title or the director are much remembrered by the general public today.

Still, I say Psycho and The Birds are the two "modern" Hitchcock classics. They anticipate the horror and fantasy films from the 60s to today. North by Northwest is, said one moder critic, "Ground zero for the action film" (from Bond to Indy to Die Hard) but only has three action sequences.

I have a "little backing" for the Big Three in that the American Film Institute, twice in a ten-year span, named only FOUR Hitchocck movies -- the same four each time -- on their list of the greatest movies ever made: The Big Three plus Rear Window. So THOSE voters( a mix of critics, studio personnel and public figures) saw the Big Three for what they are.

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CONT

[–] roger1 (3615) 8 days ago

I didn't care much for Vertigo.

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I've liked it in recent decades, but it TOOK decades TO like it.
I've always found it fascinating to my "Hitchocck fanship": he got all these raves for Psycho(and I loved it), North by Northwest(and I loved it) and Rear Window(and I loved it) but...Vertigo? It was as if film history itself was challenging me to love a movie that...I didn't much love(beyond the credits and music, and the spectacular opening "thriller scene" -- after which the movie gets quite quiet and action-free for a LONG time).

I still don't much like "the middle" of Vertigo -- when Kim Novak does her "I'm haunted by Carlotta" routine. Its just unbelievable to me. But the opening scenes (rootop cliffhang, Meeting Midge, Meeting Gavin Elster) launch the movie well and I find the film (now) both enthralling and very moving from Madeline's fall to the finale.

And it stays in The Big Three: the James Stewart climax; Herrmann, Bass and the great, great BEAUTY of the film(the similar "Marnie" of 6 years later doesn't come close in gorgeous cinematography, though the Oscsr-winning cinematography of To Catch a Thief 3 years earlier is very beautiful too. Hitchocck had more power in the 50s than in 1964, and more youth.

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Rope was an okay movie. I think those are the only Alfred Hitchcock movies I've seen, so my top 3 might change in future.

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You've got a lot more Hitchocck movies to see. That was one of his gifts to us all: 53 films, maybe 40 or so "big ones." All sorts of lists to make and favorites to pick. Enjoy!

[–] Megan254 (303) 7 days ago

Yeah, I'm a fan of older movies, so I definitely have to get crackin'. LOL