A Movie With Many Titles

Alfred Hitchcock usually knew exactly what he wanted to call one of his movies.

Sometimes, the title of the original novel dictated it: "Rebecca" for instance. Or "Psycho." Or "Marnie." Or "Topaz."

Sometimes, Hitch just thought a word was "cool." He had a couple of scripts written with the title "Frenzy" in the sixties. He never made those movies, but when he bought a book about a psycho killer called "Goodbye Picadilly, Farewell Leiceister Square" in 1970, he gave it the title "Frenzy" because finally a movie fit it again.

The original screenplay "Torn Curtain" got its title right away; it was meant as a visual AND verbal play on "Iron Curtain."

When Hitchcock decided to make a movie out of Victor Canning's novel, "The Rainbird Pattern" in 1973 (for what would end up being a 1976 release), getting a Hitchcock title on that movie proved most difficult and endless.

Alfred Hitchcock's "The Rainbird Pattern" actually sounds OK (rather like "The Da Vinci Code.") But Hitchcock wanted more style and meaning, I guess.

First, the film was called "One Plus One Equals One", because that's what the story is ABOUT: two separate stories come together as one.

Next: "Missing Heir" (because that's what one of the two stories is about.)

Someone (Hitch?) decided that a classic Hitchcockian "one-word title" would be the best bet, so the movie was next titled "Deception."

But there was already a movie with that name, years ago. By 1975, when the movie went into production, Time Magazine announced the film as "Alfred Hitchcock's Deceit." Hitch was evidently bound and determined to give this movie a one-word title.

A week or so into filming, "Deceit" was dumped. Studio polling found that people didn't much understand the title, or thought it was about spouse-cheating.

For a few weeks, Variety listed this movie merely as "Alfred Hitchcock's 53rd Movie," a nice way of reminding us how long he'd been working.

And then somebody, somewhere, somehow, came up with "Family Plot."

I like it.

Its rather closest to "Torn Curtain" in that it is a title that rather double-plays the meaning of the movie itself. There's no body in the family plot, said the ads. Yet the story itself is about a plot involving a family (the giving up of a bastard child, the aunt's guilt over forcing her sister to give up the child; the murder of foster parents, a missing heir, etc.) Moreover, "Family Plot," unlike "Frenzy," suggested a tale of a certain jauntiness and wit.

The titles, summarized:

The Rainbird Pattern
One Plus One Equals One
Missing Heir
Deception
Deceit

Family Plot.