Random Notes On Hitchcock

[poliphilo]

I used to think Hitchcock was heartless, but I've been watching a lot of his movies recently and now I think different.

When Babs is murdered in Frenzy it happens behind closed doors with the camera gliding back down the stairs and out into the street. Pure cinema. Very restrained. Very moving.

Actors loved him. And he loved them. But he expected them to know their job. So long as they hit their marks and stayed in frame he'd let them improvise business and change their lines. Anna Massey says, "he hired actors like he hired carpenters."

He gets compared to Dickens, but he's utterly without Dickens's sentimentality.

His heroes are frequently unpleasant. Thornhill in North By North West is a shallow, arrogant advertising exec. Scotty in Vertigo is a bullying obsessive. The unpleasantness is disguised because they're being played by the supernaturally charming Cary Grant and Jimmy Stewart.

These films are about guilt. OK, the hero's innocent of murder/theft/treason but he is guilty of being a jerk. Hitchcock doesn't wear it on his sleeve, but he's essentially a Catholic artist.

Someone said his films should be experienced as if they were dreams. I find this helpful.

All the films are one film.

It's received dogma that he lost the plot in old age. Not at all. Frenzy is easily as good as Strangers On A Train and Family Plot is a lovely, low-key, little movie with great suspense and winning performances.

I even like Topaz. Actually I like it a lot. Apart from a weak ending (there are three weak endings- pick the one you dislike least) it's a work of sustained brilliance- an elegant dance of death- and a whole lot better than any of the Bond movies with which it gets compared.

Things to look out for: trains, stairs, gays.

Comments

[sorenr.livejournal.com]

I have a thing for the Rope... So few cuts, such an advanced set (walls would be sliding around to allow the cammera to move freely from one setting to another...) and such an almost classic structure; it could be a play, and yet it is enirely filmic in its expression.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

It's a while now since I saw Rope, but we've got the DVD and I expect to watch it in the next few days.

Hitch was always experimenting. Truffaut said that Frenzy (the penultimate movie) was a young man's film- because it took so many risks.

[butterscotch711.livejournal.com]

Things to look out for: trains, stairs, gays.

ROFL, you just condensed my honours thesis into 8 words. It's on Rope and Strangers on a Train.

Increasingly I have developed a thing for The Hitchcock Blonde. I mean intellectually of course. I like how you say 'all the films are one film'. The Blonde is like a series of aspects of the same idea, like a series of paintings that look almost the same, with subtle differences to be found. I think 'Marnie' is one of his least appreciated movies, coming at the end of the blonde cycle it feels like he was doing as *the* mmovie about "the blonde thing". But the painted back-drops and so on had gone out of fashion, they didn't look 'real' to people any more, audiences didn't enjoy the expressionist qualities.

Psycho was one of the movies that got me interested in movies, and I think Vertigo is one of the top few of my favourite movies ever.

I love staircases in Hitchcock, I was going to comment on your other recent post. The ultimate transgression in a Hitchcock movie is climbing up or down the stairs. One of my favourite scenes in all his movies is in Strangers on a Train when Guy is sneaking into Bruno's father's house, and he has that little map and everything, and the house is dark and forboding and the tension builds and builds, and you know he's committing some kind of momumental psychological, Oedipal crime, and something's going to go terribly wrong, and he climbs the stairs, and a growling dog appears ... and licks his hand, and then when he finally makes it to the father's bedroom Bruno switches the light on and grins like it's a big joke.

This movie he was wanting to make in the years before he died but which fell to pieces, about kids who get sent (sexually) crazy by the sight of the ocean ... I would have liked to see that. The incredibly lovely old-fashioned rear-projection shots of Scottie and Madeleine arguing then kissing with the ocean behind them always make me feel like that unmade movie would have made some wicked kind of sense. I love Hitchcock on sexual desire.

*could ramble on forever...*

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

Vertigo seems to me to be the most personal of the films. It's as if Hitch's self-control slipped a little and the demons came rollicking through. Yeah, it's one of the greatest movies of all time.

I'd forgotten about the staircase sequence in Strangers On A Train until I saw the movie again yesterday. It's fabulous. There's something very archetypal and spooky about that huge dog at the head of the stairs.

I need to watch Marnie again. It's been years- decades even.

I bitterly regret the unmade projects. Is that Kaleidoscope where the guy is driven mad by the sight of the sea? Some of that got into Frenzy I think. Frenzy is abso-bloody-lutely marvellous!

[karenkay.livejournal.com]

I'm going to have to do a lot of re-viewing before I can comment--I'm looking forward to it!

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

You're in for a good time. :)