An excellent description of the realities of the ritual (I can only assume; I don't know, myself.)
The kidnapping of the bishop in "Family Plot" is among the charming "final Hitchcock ideas" in Hitchcock's slight but charming final film.
In the source novel, "The Rainbird Pattern," the bishop is kidnapped on a country road, in his "street clothes," while talking his usual exercise walk.
Hitchcock and scenarist Ernest Lehman re-thought the concept: why kidnap a bishop when he isn't BEING a bishop? Why not kidnap him in church, dressed in his full colorful regalia, in front of his worshipers.
The politeness of the worshipers is the realistic/humorous key to the scene as Hitchcock directed it. They are all too religiously polite to realize what is happening right before them -- they just watch and (in a nicely brisk Hitchcockian series of too-fast quick cuts) the bishop is doped up and carried out and driven off, just like that.
My one regret is that Hitchcock, evidently a bit too worried about audience's "getting it" in his old age, then actually has William Devane TELL us (by telling Karen Black) what happened: the parishioners were too religiously polite to interfere.
Well, we GOT that.
The kidnapping of the bishop in "Family Plot" isn't quite up there with the big Hitchcock set-pieces (Devane and Black seem a bit amateur and cheesy in their disguises and make-up), but it plays pretty well, particularly in the long shots down the beautiful main aisle leading to the altar of Grace Cathedral in San Francisco.
And there is a bit more payoff later:
The bishop was kidnapped in his ceremonial bright red robe, and part of that robe accidentally sticks out of the closed car door when the kidnappers put his unconscious body in the back seat of the car, in their garage, for his ransom-paid return trip. Heroine Madame Blanche Tyler SEES that bit of protruding red robe...and the jig is up. For the kidnappers, and for Madame Blanche...
Thank you, Mr. Hitchcock. You went out well.
P.S. An aged, tired and cranky Hitchcock travelled to San Francisco to direct the extras in Grace Cathedral for this scene, and found himself arguing with some of them about how to play their reactions. ("You can't see anything, so you can't react to anything.") Finished, he turned to his assistants and said: "That's what you would call directing a bunch of idiots." Feisty to the end.
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mizhu
17 years ago
Hi ecarle, again.
Regarding the amateurish and cheesy disguises of Devane and Black in that scene--I always thought that was OK.
They were in the front of the church, near the alter, and the disguises wouldn't be so obvious to those in the pews. As you said, the scene is cut very quickly. They were in and out of there (which I agree is unrealistic, but that's movies).
I think Hitchcock knew what he was doing in his response to the extras' complaints. If they said 'You can't see anything...' that was precisely the point. No real reaction was necessary from the extras because the deed was done before any churchgoers realized that something might be amiss, other than the fact that the Bishop apparently passed out. I didn't find the scene confusing to watch, but I definitely had the feeling that the patrons were confused when I first saw it.
I think I said this elsewhere, but even though the audience laughed their butts off during the driving scene, were completely quiet during the Cathedral kidnapping and seemed genuinely interested in the mystery of the plot, they were disappointed in the end. As I was leaving the theater, I heard one woman say, 'It was ok...but I was expecting at least ONE gory murder...'
That seemed to be all people were waiting for, and when they didn't get it, they were disappointed in the film as a whole.
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ecarle
17 years ago
The lack of "goriness" in "Family Plot" seems to have been very intentional on Hitchcock's part. And rather poignant.
One film before, in 1972, Hitchcock had had a comeback hit with "Frenzy," an R-rated movie featuring probably the most lingering and graphic murder in all of Hitchcock, and yet entirely without blood: the rape and strangling of a woman.
But in the near-four years between "Frenzy" and "Family Plot," Hitchcock witnessed a real upturn in gory violent thrillers, with films like Brian DePalma's "Sisters", "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre" and the blockbusters "The Exorcist" and "Jaws" (in which a key character is graphically eaten at film's end.)
Hitchcock seems to have made the very specific decision that "Family Plot" would be a thriller WITHOUT gore or graphic violence, in which the suspense would arise in other ways,and the big thrill sequence would be a literal roller-coaster ride of terror and laughs (the runaway car sequence.)
Hiring "North by Northwest" screenwriter Ernest Lehman to bring back the lighter touch of comedy-thrills, Hitchcock delivered in "Family Plot" a true throwback: a thriller without blood. (Or MUCH blood; Madame Blanche bleeds red through her pure-white blouse sleeve when she is injected with a knock-out solution.)
The results were mild at the box office, but true Hitchcock buffs appreciated Hitchcock's attempt to make a non-bloody thriller. He said he would make another movie after "Family Plot," but he didn't, and I think he knew this might be the last movie. Better to go out, thought he, with a fanciful non-violent thriller and a wink, than with the grotty sexual horrors of "Frenzy."
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slokes
17 years ago
<<The bishop was kidnapped in his ceremonial bright red robe, and part of that robe accidentally sticks out of the closed car door when the kidnappers put his unconscious body in the back seat of the car, in their garage, for his ransom-paid return trip. Heroine Madame Blanche Tyler SEES that bit of protruding red robe...and the jig is up. For the kidnappers, and for Madame Blanche... >>
Actually, like the telltale heart in Poe's story, it's a guilty conscience and not a sharp-eyed observer that does the kidnappers in. Barbara Harris's Blanche does not spot the piece of the bishop's robe as it protrudes from the crack of the car door. It's the Karen Black character who sees it, and worried Blanche will, too, though it's hard to know what Blanche would make of it even if she did notice it, opens the door slightly to tuck the robe back in. Whereupon the bishop falls out of the car entirely, which Blanche can't help but see.
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