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The Absolutely Awful First Ten Minutes of This Movie

posted 16 years ago by ecarle
12 replies | jump to latest

I spend a lot of time traversing imdb singing the praises of Alfred Hitchcock, director.

I'm generally not into going to boards to attack movies or stars. Its not my thing. Praise is more constructive.

But I think it is also constructive sometimes to note when something has gone terribly wrong with a movie...particularly if it leads to wondering: why?

Especially with Alfred Hitchcock.

After Hitchcock got his comeback hit with "Frenzy" in 1972, it took longer than ever for the next one to appear: "Family Plot" in 1976. Hitch had many illnesses in the intervening years, and spent forever developing "Family Plot"'s script. It was if he kept dawdling to try to avoid making the movie, and finally figured: I've got to make this thing. My Universal offices overhead needs payment.

I didn't realize how ill Hitchcock had been until, in 1976, I watched the first ten minutes (roughly) of the movie.

It starts most promisingly, with a crystal ball filling the screen to John Williams' heavenly choir humming with excitement. The credits are brief: Alfred Hitchcock's Family Plot. Screenplay by Ernest Lehman. Directed by Alfred Hitchcock. That's it. No cast. Then Barbara Harris' face fills the crystal ball, which fades away to the scene: Harris in a study conducting a seance with old Julia Rainbird (Cathleen Nesbitt.)

The cinematography is rather gorgeous here, not quite "Vertigo"-level, but close enough, with rich reds filling the screen offset a bit by some greens. Harris sits in a chair across from Nesbitt and talks in the deep voice of the "man" ("Henry") who guides her "psychic powers." Mesmerizingly beautiful, this sequence is.

And then: it starts happening. To cover it quickly here is to miss the effect of how SLOWLY it all happens there:

Plot exposition pours forward, pages and pages of it. Too much of it, during the seance, as Harris talks in her manly "trance voice" and Nesbitt tosses out exposition. This goes on and on and on and on (we get it: Julia forced her sister to give up a child and wants to find him and give him her fortune; he's now about 40.) This goes SO on and on and on and on that John Williams music stops for a moment...and then starts up again, as if Williams tried to stop the scene but couldn't. (In a key moment, we see Harris "peek" out of her trance; she's faking. How cute.)

Now Harris comes out of her trance, and asks "what happened?" And Julia Rainbird proceeds AGAIN to tell the exposition about her sister and the kid and the money and he's forty now. And THIS goes on and on and on and on and on.

Finally, the two characters leave this pretty red room and go out into the hall, where more exposition ensues. It goes merely...on and on.

The effect of all this is MOST demoralizing. Why didn't Hitchcock take an editing pencil to the script here? Or editing scissors to the scene? Way too long, way too redundant and -- worst of all -- not dramatic or comedic enough to truly entertain us.

Harris leaves the house, and, in a nice nighttime outdoor shot, gets into the cab of her goofy lover, Bruce Dern. The cab drives off.

Inside the cab: more demoralization: the process work is horrendous, even for Hitchcock. I call it "the matte shot that ate Bruce Dern's head." Universal evidently suckered Hitchcock into accepting a new-fangled "in the lab" process that was, this movie proved, just horrible.

So Dern asks Harris what Nesbitt told her and -- Oh no! Oh no! -- Harris proceeds to tell Dern the whole damn exposition about the missing male heir AGAIN. On and on and on and on. This time, admittedly, there are more one-liners, and Harris is very good here at playing a cutesie-pie sharpster. Unfortunately, some of the one-liners are well below par for Ernest "North by Northwest" Lehman ("Without my investigations," Dern says, "you'd be about as psychic as a salami" "I'm tired of you having me by the crystal balls.")

One good Hitchcockian touch: Dern in the front seat keeps turning his head back to talk at Harris in the back seat, and after awhile he keeps it turned so much that some suspense sets in: hey, look in FRONT of you, buddy, you might hit --

-- and he almost DOES hit the mysterious Karen Black, and in a wonderful moment, ("criss-cross," the theme of "Family Plot") the story now takes up Black's kidnapping ransom mission...and gets better.

Still: those first ten minutes. Really bad. The mark of a director too old to know or care about what he was doing. One critic wrote of the redundant exposition: "Does Hitchcock think we weren't smart enough to understand it the first time?" Maybe so. I had a very old grandfather who would pull out a map and draw directions for you to drive four blocks. Sometimes older people obsess on details.

The slow and overdone opening of "Family Plot" was particularly demoralizing given how tight and crisp the first few scenes of "Frenzy" had been one film (and four years) earlier. Hitchcock lost something in those four years.

One more thing: nothing made me sadder in watching those ten minutes than knowing that HITCHCOCK WAS IN THE ROOM WITH ME. And 498 people. You see, we were all at the world premiere of "Family Plot" at the 1976 FILMEX film festival in Los Angeles, and "Family Plot" was the opening movie.

We all "made nice" as an audience for "Family Plot," given that Hitch was there. We laughed at every joke, and applauded the good moments (of which there are many in the second hour especially -- the cemetary criss-cross and Harris's fateful ringing of a doorbell, for instance.)

Still, those first ten minutes prove the "auteur theory." When your auteur is old and ill and not focussed, the movie looks pretty much the same way.

At least Hitchcock got better as "Family Plot" moved along. Maybe he got a "second wind."

[–] electrictroy 16 years ago

I would have been honest and said that the boring scene with the old woman blab-blab-blabbing should be cut.

If Hitch's feelings get hurt, too bad.

[–] 16 years ago

[deleted]

[–] ecarle 16 years ago

Well, I walked over to tell him exactly that...and the old SOB ran away from me! Must have been that look in my eyes.

[–] dir_by_ade 16 years ago

I'll go against all on this one. Yes the woman is a bit of con and so is her hapless lover. But they are merely small time. And when they stumble or fall upon this great plan or great opportunity that falls in their lap they are jazzed about it. And in realityand onolks are excited about something they go on and on about it, it just seemed real. First it was the man voice giving it, then the old woman speaking to the gal about it, she had to sit through that to make it actually seem pure. If she merely jumped and said, "yeah i know all that." It would kill the would deal. The con required to sit and wait for the patience of it all.
The cab driver had not heard it just yet, and she had to tell him, in part because he was a bit of a ditz. But this is a big score for them, and it would make all better, so they were building to express the need for it.
It was to set up the contrast to the more professional crew that didn't go on and on or into much detail about it all. They set up and went forth. It was great, the film was perfectly done, and felt it surpassed FRENZY, by far.

Other forgotten overlooked classics: Young & Innocent and Stage Fright.

[–] smokeyheinz 16 years ago

I love Family Plot but I agree with you. The car scene with Bruce Dern's invisible head and the green screen in Harris' hair is particularly saddening. But, as soon as that brilliant shot of Karen Black crossing the road starts, so does the movie.

Zack Gregson
"I think you're the cause of all this! I think you're evil! Evil!

[–] VinnieRattolle 16 years ago

Hey, now! I love the "crystal balls" line (and the whole first scene in the car, as a matter of fact -- despite the terrible rear matting during all of the car scenes).

It escapes me who said it, but I remember somebody talking about the way the networks want people to write for television. They said something like, "First you tell the audience, then you show the audience, then you tell the audience again because by this point, they've already forgotten." That's basically how the opening of FAMILY PLOT is. It's never particularly bothered me -- most Hitch movies seem to open slowly -- but it doubtlessly would've played better with some heavy editing on the opening Julia Rainbird scene.

[–] c7c7c7r 12 years ago

It's interesting that Couple One (Dern & Harris) do all that talking--then Karen Black appears and she doesn't talk at all. It's the contrast of the 2 couples that is good here.

[–] clore_2 16 years ago

I think the duplication was deliberate, although it may have been a case of some degree of overkill.

I think that because we have the film suddenly turnover to a new set of characters - in a scene that is purely cinematic, try doing that on the printed page - Hitch wanted to make sure that the backstory was drilled into our heads. It may be too insistent, and perhaps Hitchcock was a bit condescending, but I think it was a case of good intentions gone awry. I don't believe that he didn't think we wouldn't get it - I think he was concerned that we might forget it as we would be suddenly tossed into a completely different "plot" line.

It ain't easy being green, or anything else, other than to be me

[–] Doghouse-6 15 years ago

I was another of those 498 people (Is that all that theater held? In my memory, it's much larger). After the somewhat disappointing TORN CURTAIN, and the even more (and dismally) disappointing TOPAZ, FRENZY was such a lively rebirth, and I hoped for something similar from FAMILY PLOT.

I'm afraid I never quite got over the leaden opening scene that night. On subsequent viewings over the years, I've since come to more appreciation of the good things FAMILY PLOT has to offer.

NOTE: I just checked a site called Cinema Treasures (link below), which lists the seats in the Plitt #1 as 1400 (800 in #2). Sounds more like it. At any rate, it had the most comfortable seating of any theater in Los Angeles (particularly important for those 50-hour marathons), and was an excellent venue for Filmex. I have very fond memories of it all.

http://cinematreasures.org/theater/1215/

Poe! You are...avenged!

[–] Jason_Radley 14 years ago

My problem with the opening started with the garish titles and music and then the camerawork and colours felt so 1970s TV series-ish. And then there was all the wailing of Madame Fontana - I'm not sure if this was plain bad acting or good acting of bad acting.

[–] cookiela2001 13 years ago

I don't mind the opening, because Barrie and Nesbitt are both captivating actresses, and it's enjoyable to watch them.

What bugged me was when the women speak later, and Mrs. Rainbird says something like, "Speaking with you reminded me that there was a chauffer who went away one night..." or some big development like that. And I was thinking, Okay, so this whole matter has been supposedly obsessing you for months and only NOW you're remembering there was a shady employee incident involved??

Maybe it's because the character's getting old...

[–] mrnocal 12 years ago

I absolutely love and respect Hitchcock's work, including this movie...but I do have to agree about the redundancy of this plot disclosure. No blame at all for the actresses (always thought Barbara Harris is a brilliant comedic actress who can have very fine dramatic moments). But yes...we get it! We don't need it drilled into our heads repeatedly for a half hour.
The matte shots in the car scenes throughout the movie were very amateurish and distracting. Superior stuff in mediocre TV shows.
Despite the flaws, I still gave the movie an 8...low for me on a Hitchock movie, but kept me captivated and had enough redeeming qualities to overlook the flaws.
Please do not attack me for my opinions...we're all entitled to them.