Alfred Hitchcock Geek

Up in Alfred Hitchcock's Tree of Life

2012-03-20T22:03:00.002-07:00

By Elisabeth Karlin

"Somewhere in here I was born...and here I died. It was only a moment for you...you took no notice."

Belying the words of Vertigo's Madeleine Elster, this past year we did take notice. During that time, we on the Alfred Hitchcock Geek Facebook Fan Page acknowledged the birthday of just about every actor, designer, writer, cinematographer and more, who made a contribution to The Master's movies.

On the surface, the year of birthdays proved to be something of a popularity contest. Those redoubtable behind the screen contributors like Bernard Herrmann, Edith Head and John Michael Hayes certainly received loving appreciation from the fans but if we are to gauge idolatry by the Facebook comments and approving thumbs, it's the movie stars who rule. And sitting supremely and unassailably on the loftiest perch, are the Fab Four: Cary Grant, James Stewart, Grace Kelly and Ingrid Bergman.

Comfortably resting on branches beneath that mighty quartet are scads of other beloved screen stars. Kim Novak, Doris Day, Tippi Hedren, Janet Leigh, Thelma Ritter, Claude Rains, Teresa Wright, Suzanne Pleshette, Alastair Sim, Barbara Bel Geddes and Miss Torso herself, Georgine Darcy, all garnered over one hundred "Likes" each. Included in that bunch is Eva Marie Saint whose daughter's friend let us know that Ms. Saint was absolutely tickled when shown our birthday post tribute and comments. Oh, and on August 13th the man himself amassed seven hundred and three thumbs, making Alfred Hitchcock, appropriately, the most popular figure on The Alfred Hitchcock Geek Fan Page.

There is a lot to be learned about Hitchcock when we stop to look at the people who worked with him. We know that he surrounded himself with immense talent. And his great love for the theatre is evident in how he employed the majestic figures he had seen on the London and New York stages, such as Laurence Olivier, John Gielgud, Michael Redgrave, Gladys Cooper, Judith Anderson, Cedric Hardwicke, Tallulah Bankhead and Canada Lee.

At the other end of the spectrum, were "those guys," the familiar faces who had names like Malcolm Atterbury (the man who notices the crop duster dusting where there are no crops in North by Northwest) and Minerva Urecal (the telegraph operator in Shadow of a Doubt.) We even paid tribute to Bess Flowers, the queen of the Hollywood extras, who technically appeared in more Hitchcock films than anyone, even if you never noticed her. Look sharp and you can catch her in Rear Window as the composer's party guest with the poodle.

We know that when Hitchcock cottoned to a colleague he held fast to him. Cinematographer Robert Burks, editor George Tomasini and set designer Robert Boyle are just some of the names that show up repeatedly in the Hitch oeuvre. But it wasn't until we took our daily birthday stock of all the players that we saw returns we weren't even aware of, such as Leonard Carey who played balmy Ben in Rebecca and who cleaned up nicely as proper butlers in Suspicion and Strangers on a Train. Or Mort Mills, the unsettling highway cop in Psycho who was far less menacing as a farmer on a tractor in Torn Curtain.

Someone is born and a story begins. And when we investigated a little deeper into the lives of those who worked with Hitchcock, we found the stories could be surprising. After all, if there is one thing we know from Hitchcock it's that people are not always what they seem to be.

Cheerful Robert Young (Robert Marvin in Secret Agent) suffered from alcoholism and depression. 1960's pretty boy Jeremy Slate (a blink and you miss him Grand Central Station cop in North by Northwest who also appeared in four Alfred Hitchcock Presents on TV) distinguished himself in a wild variety of accomplishments from the shores of Normandy to the football field to the business world to winning a Peruvian Tony Award, all before arriving in Hollywood. John Loder (Ted, the secret agent and green grocer in Sabotage) was taken prisoner in WWII and upon release chose to stay in Germany and run a pickle factory. Prim Laraine Day (Carol Fisher in Foreign Correspondent) a devout Mormon who never swore or drank, was married to Leo "the lip" Durocher, the brashest manager in baseball. Reginald Denny (loyal Frank Crawley in Rebecca) made good on his passion for aviation as a pioneer in drone technology. Wallace Ford (Fred Saunders in Shadow of a Doubt and the hotel lobby masher in Spellbound) survived a hardscrabble youth that would have shocked Dickens. Laura Elliot (Miriam in Strangers on a Train) blazed trails when, as Kasey Rogers, she created the Women's Pro-Class Division in motorcycle racing.

And then there was Clarence Muse. Perhaps you recall him as the helpful Pullman porter who tended to Uncle Charlie in Shadow of a Doubt. Muse appeared in more films than any other African-American in history. But that's hardly the most notable aspect of his career. While he was playing porters and chauffeurs and waiters, he was also turning in startling performances of full-bodied characters in films created for black audiences. Many of these films he wrote himself. He was the first African-American to star in a Hollywood film and the first to receive a screenwriting credit. As a writer, he collaborated with Langston Hughes. As a producer, he founded the formidable Lafayette Players in Harlem. He held a law degree from Dickinson College and he composed the Louis Armstrong hit "Sleepy Time Down South." Clarence Muse is probably the apotheosis of what can be discovered when we look past what we first see. And if we have learned anything from Hitchcock, isn't it that?

A day of birth begins a story but as we who are stuck on movies know, every story has an end. And in Hitchcockland it is the finale of life that holds us in thrall. Many of the lives we celebrated ended prematurely and some rather gruesomely. Per-Axel Arosenius (Boris Kusenov in Topaz) set himself on fire in protest of Swedish tax laws. Lillian Hall-Davies, the leading lady of The Ring and The Farmer's Wife, locked herself in her kitchen, turned on the gas, stuck her head in the oven and leaving nothing to chance, cut her own throat.

But the most macabre date in Hitchcockiana falls on September 12. It was on that date in 1992 that Anthony Perkins died. On that date in 1993, Raymond Burr died. On that date in 1995, Tom Helmore died. So, on the same date in almost consecutive years, Norman Bates, Lars Thorwald and Gavin Elster, three of the most memorable of Hitchcock's murderers, left this world.
Somewhere in this tree they were born...and there they died. And we took notice.

Hitchcock in Outer Space

2012-02-02T14:59:00.000-08:00

He may not have won an Oscar for any of his 53 films, but we always knew Alfred Hitchcock was more than a star. Finally, thanks to some intrepid sky-gazing from the astronomers at Chile's La Silla observatory, Hitch's famous profile can clearly be seen in the star-forming region NGC 3324. The portrait above is actually the work of several young stars whose radiation has carved out an enormous cavity in the surrounding gases.

Well, that settles that. If you're wondering where the Master of Suspense went after he died, we now know.

Thanks to Twitter friend Onur Orhon (@onurorhon) for spotting the Universe Today article for us!

Why Alfred Hitchcock Turned Down a British Honor in 1962

2012-01-27T22:07:00.000-08:00

Hitch waits for some love from the palace.

When Alfred Hitchcock was designated a Knight of the British Realm toward the end of 1979, henceforth his formal title was Sir Alfred Hitchcock, KBE. His life was quickly winding down, but between bouts of depression and heavy drinking, the old jokester flashed forth. Parlaying the honor into a brief PR stunt for his never-to-be-completed film The Short Night, he rechristened himself The Short Knight. His longtime friend, Universal Studios heavy Lew Wasserman, quickly threw together a celebratory luncheon attended by old friends Cary Grant, Janet Leigh and others. British consul general Thomas W. Aston bestowed the medal.

When a reporter asked him why it had taken the queen so long to bestow the honor, Hitchcock dryly replied, "I guess she forgot." Sadly, he was to enjoy the title for only another four months, whereupon he passed away.

That may be the end of the story. But it isn't the beginning.

As reported in the London Daily Mail today, the Queen first awarded Hitchcock in 1962, but he turned the honor down. As disclosed in a recent release of information from the royal archives, the director declined "because, in his view, it did not do justice to his contribution to British culture."

Wow. That's ballsy. If I were to be invited into the Order of the British realm, I'd accept the offer without a second thought. Turns out, hundreds of artists, scientists and others have snubbed the queen -- usually for political reasons, or out of protest. But Hitch was different. In effect, he said, "Your highness, is this it?" That got me thinking. And Googling. Turns out that in 1962, Queen Elizabeth II offered Hitch the title "Commander of the British Empire." That title, while impressive, is of a lower rank than KBE. Most importantly, perhaps, it doesn't come with the honorific prefix "Sir."

Thus, after fronting 48 movies and a hit TV show that rank among Great Britain's most important cultural exports, Hitch was still to be addressed as "Mister." That didn't sit too well with him. So he declined. I might not have been able to do what he did. But I can understand why the man who never won an Academy Award and who thus accepted the Irving Thalberg Lifetime Achievement Oscar with a two-word acceptance speech ("Thank you") marked his CBE medal "return to sender." He was holding out for something better.

Too bad there isn't a British rank titled "Maestro."

2012 Shaping up to be Major Year for Hitchcock Fans

2012-01-20T10:48:00.000-08:00

Over the next year or so, there will be so many Alfred Hitchcock-related events, it will be hard even for die-hard fans to keep up.

For starters, researchers and scientists at the British Film Institute are working feverishly to restore Hitch's nine surviving silent films, including The Pleasure Garden (1925), The Lodger (1926), The Ring (1927), Downhill (1927), Easy Virtue (1927), The Farmers Wife (1927), Champagne (1928), The Manxman (1929) and Blackmail (1929). These frame-by-frame restorations will be released with brand new, custom-made musical scores. (If you're a fan of silent movies, you know how annoying those "canned" musical scores can be.) The release will timed to coincide with the 2012 Olympics in London.

Also, after several years of languishing in development, it looks as if Steven Rebello's fantastic book Alfred Hitchcock and the Making of Psycho has finally been green-lighted for a trip to the big screen. Anthony Hopkins has been signed to play Hitch, while Helen Mirren will play his wife, Alma. The biopic will cover the travails (and there were many) Hitch endured to bring one of cinema's most outstanding -- and profitable -- films to life.

Several Hitchcock films are also slated to be brought to Blu-Ray in 2012, most notably Dial M for Murder (1954) in 3-D! If you have a Blu-ray player and a newer TV that can handle 3-D, you'll finally be able to see this amazing film the way Hitch originally intended.

Another biopic about Hitch, called The Girl, is in production. This BBC production will star Sienna Miller as Tippi Hedren and Toby Jones as the director. With story consulting from Ms. Hedren and Hitchcock biographer Donald Spoto, the film promises to be the Hedren-authorized chronicle of this difficult chapter in her life.

I've got a book ready for press as well. Titled Notes from an Alfred Hitchcock Geek, it culls some of the best posts from this blog and adds in totally new content to demonstrate once and for all that Alfred Hitchcock is indeed the Shakespeare of the 20th century. I'm looking for a publisher and 2012 would be the perfect year to bring this fascinating study of Hitch's films to the public! If you can help, or of you'd like to review my proposal, please contact me at joel.gunz (at) gmail.com.

Dial M for Murder coming to Blu-Ray in 3D in 2012!

2011-11-20T20:24:00.001-08:00

Watch these clips in 3D. You can even choose the format you want (red/blue glasses, "cross-eyed" etc.) by clicking the 3D icon at the bottom of the frame.

As my friends know (because I have a way of worming it into, like, every third conversation), I believe Dial M for Murder (1954) to be one of Alfred Hitchcock's underrated masterpieces. How did it come to be overlooked? I think many people take their cue from Hitch himself, who described it as a light, hastily produced film whose performance he'd "phoned in." Methinks he doeth protest too much. (Plus, he couldn't resist a bad pun.)

The bigger problem is that very few people have had the opportunity to see the movie in its original format--3D--which makes about as much sense as watching North by Northwest in black and white. You're literally missing an entire dimension. Village Voice movie critic Andrew Sarris agrees. Upon seeing Dial M in 3D for the first time in the 60s, he exclaimed, "In 2D, Dial M is minor Hitchcock; in 3D, it is major Hitchcock."

And so, on my Hitchcock Geek Facebook page, I put out a call to my fellow geeks to campaign Time/Warner, which owns the film, to restore it for a Blu-Ray 3D release. Within hours, Alert Reader Charlie Fulton pointed out that "it's already happening" and drew my attention to a podcast featuring an interview with Warner Home Video Senior Vice President George Feltenstein, who announced the upcoming release of two 3D films, House of Wax (1953) and Dial M. He says:

"It looks really, really good that they're going to [be released] sometime in 2012.... Probably the end of 2012. We're working on them now. Those 3D experiences are going to be crisp and clean and sharp and vital and realistic." (Catch the entire interview with WMPG radio's Dick Dinman under the title "Inside the Walls of the Warner Archive.")

Thanks to quantum-leap improvements in 3D imaging in recent years, I think it's safe to say that, with this reissue, the Dial M in 3D experience is going to be an improvement over what audiences got in 1954. And with a Blu-Ray reissue, you'll get to see it whenever you want!

TAKE ACTION!

Want to nudge Feltenstein to speedily (and skillfully) complete the project? Drop by Warner's Classics Facebook page and tell them how eager you are to see Dial M in 3D on Blu-Ray.

Rear Window and the Case of the Swirling Snifters

2011-11-15T21:56:00.001-08:00

“One of part of [Rear Window] that always makes me giggle is when Jeff, Lisa and Doyle are all hanging around and warming their brandy throughout the entire scene. It cracks me up every time. The visual of the three of them swirling and swirling and swirling for some reason just strikes me as funny. Am I the only one who thinks this or have I watched this film one too many times?” -- Prairiegirl

Alfred Hitchcock was not one to leave a good entendre undoubled. From Rope’s campy gay undertones to Mrs. Danvers’ not-so-subtle lesbian love for Rebecca DeWinter, his movies are literally (and metaphorically!) stuffed with sexy kinks and high jinx. For instance, in this scene from Easy Virtue (1928), over-eager suitor John Whittaker (Robin Irvine) works a martini shaker a tad too vigorously, in a motion that unmistakably parodies masturbation as he watches Larita Filton (Isabel Jeans) pose for her make-up artist.

This was just a warm-up for later, when he, er, pops the question.

And so, in Rear Window,when Lisa Fremont (Grace Kelly) steps out of L. B. Jefferies’ kitchen nursing (heh heh heh) pair of brandy of brandy snifters, detective Lieutenant Doyle (Wendell Corey) can be forgiven for sniffing out (hehehe) double trouble (snerk!).

Think such theorizing is merely a product of the Hitchcock Geek's dirty mind? Well! I'll have you know that I know better people than you in Pittsboig! Matter of fact, Hitch himself envisioned the scene as an elaborate sex joke. In this interview transcript that he graciously shared with me, Hitchcock author Steven DeRosa (Writing with Hitchcock) asks Rear Window screenwriter John Michael Hayes about the loopy humor in this scene and I suspect that even Steven was surprised by the answer he got:

SLD: In that scene with Jeff, Lisa and Doyle, when they're swirling the brandy snifters. I was wondering where that came from.

JMH: That was a Hitchcock suggestion. It was to emphasize her breasts.

SLD: It's just so funny.

JMH: And it was sort of, you know, to make fun of her chest as she swirled these things around. That was, I wasn't really too taken with it at first, because I thought it was a little, what do you say? Not cheap, but a little raw, a little gross for a sophisticated woman to be suggestive like this. But that was Hitch's thing. And that's the kind of humor he had.

SLD: Yeah, I remember that shot now when she's walking out, out of the kitchen. But then throughout the rest of the whole scene, as the three of them are talking, you just have these three snifters swirling in the air.

JMH: Yeah. All swirling in that air. I don't know. That was Hitch's directorial touch. And I'm not running away from it, but that was his idea, and I'll tell you that. Because I never thought of it, as a suggestive gesture. I still don't think it does much for Grace Kelly's character. But it was amusing and it was something, and it made the scene more interesting than just, you know, just walking out and handing somebody some brandy, and they were all sort of nervous and tense and they were swirling the brandy around.

Nervous? Tense? Of course! If you ask me, there was even more to the tension than just Grace Kelly’s ta-tas (not that that wasn’t excuse enough). Those warming brandy snifters added heat to a scene already steamy enough to fog up L. B. "Jeff" Jefferies' (James Stewart’s) studio window. Lisa Fremont (Kelly) had just arrived at his apartment and announced that she would be staying overnight. While Jeff’s landlord might not have cared, censors in 1954—the same censors who insisted that married couples sleep in separate beds—would have nixed the sexual implications that would logically follow. (That's why his plaster cast reached up to his belly button, satisfying the board that all skin below his waist was derma non grata.) What followed in the dialogue amounts to a careful tango between the Hollywood code and the obvious outcome of a night with Grace Kelly.

But to fully appreciate the fun Hitch had with the brandy snifters, we need to back up a bit. Though voyeurism and murder are the overt story elements in the film, Rear Window is really the story of two people who just can't seem to get their lives in sync in the love department. Lisa’s first two piping-hot entrances into Jeff’s apartment speak volumes for their difficulties. First, there is her ravishing initial entrance, where she arrives shrouded in darkness, like an apparition or a midsummer night's dream fever, to awaken sleeping Jeff with a kiss. (See also: “Sleeping Beauty.” In fact, Rear Window is an inversion of the fairy tale, with the Princess risking life and limb to claim her knight.)

But after this hot and heavy screen moment, Jeff and Lisa get down to the real business of their relationship: arguing about his failure to commit.
In their next scene together, Lisa wears a sultry, jet black dress. Again, though she throws herself at Jeff, he barely acknowledges her as he mulls over the question of “why a man would leave his apartment three times in the middle of the night.”

Her sex appeal can’t compete with his interest in solving the mystery on the other side of the courtyard.

Still, it’s during this scene that Lisa is finally convinced that Jeff’s suspicions are founded in truth. Logically, then, in their next scene together—and though the shooting script called for “another extravagantly beautiful dress”—Lisa shows up at his home dressed in a no-nonsense green suit and with her hair tucked primly under a pill box cap. The only indulgence in her attire this time is a gaudy pearl bracelet rattling around on her forearm, a reminder of her expert taste in jewelry—a bit of knowledge on which her credibility hangs in this scene.

Without even a hello kiss and ready to prove she can live out of a suitcase just as well as Jeff can, Lisa's poised to catch a thief, er, murderer.

For the first time in the movie, they are in harmony, which at the moment involves 50 percent amateur sleuthing and 50 percent foreplay as Jeff invites her into his lap to neck a little—and discuss the case. In return, she offers to trade, not sex, but her feminine intuition, for a bed for the night.

When Lisa announces that she’s going to “slip into something comfortable,” she takes off her jacket to reveal a sleeveless, backless top that’s all business in the front and a party in the back, setting the mood for the sexual innuendo to follow. The moment is a perfectly-planned exhibit of Hitch's description of Kelly as a “snow-covered volcano.” However, the scene that made it to the final cut departs significantly from the shooting script. Here’s how the script goes:

                       JEFF
           You mean -- like [slip into] the kitchen? And
           make us some coffee?

                       LISA
           Exactly what I had in mind -- along
           with some brandy.

In the film, however, the lines are swapped. Lisa says what Jeff was supposed to say and vice versa:

                        LISA
            Why don’t I slip slip into something
            more comfortable?

                        JEFF
            By all means.

                        LISA
           I mean the kitchen to make us
           some coffee.

                        JEFF
            With some brandy too, huh?

Thus, it’s Lisa’s idea to prepare for a sober night of detective work by brewing a pot of coffee, while Jeff, feeling amorous, asks for a dollop of brandy. By changing those line readings on the set, Hitch (or, perhaps, Hayes) brought their maturing relationship into deeper relief. Their roles are now effectively reversed (Jeff even briefly waffles about whether or not Thorwald is guilty) and that situation will sharpen when Lisa puts her life on the line.

The voyeur becomes the voyee.
“What people ought to do is get outside their own house and look in for a change.” So says the insurance company nurse, Stella (Thelma Ritter), earlier in the film. That outside look into Jeff’s home is provided by Doyle, who now lets himself in. Though the movie takes place primarily from Jeff's perspective, for the moment we are brought inside Doyle’s head. Through the use of subjective action/reaction shots framed from his perspective, we join him in his voyeuristic inspection of Jeff’s apartment.

Introducing the scene, Doyle enters the apartment, only to stop short when he hears Lisa, who, almost as if prompted by him, begins humming the tune being composed across the way. Her haunting, theremin-like vocalese wafting in from the kitchen aurally parallels the sight of her ghostly shadow winding about on the ceiling. (See also: the dreamlike scenes of the flitting Merry Widow Waltzers in Shadow of a Doubt.) It echoes our first shadowy encounter with her.

Doyle's first sighting of Lisa is not with the woman herself, but, rather, with her feminine mystique.

Doyle then looks down to see her Mark Cross overnight bag lying open on the table, an explosion of pink femininity in Jeff’s platonic man-cave. A stonefaced detective lifted straight from the pages of Dashiell Hammett (except for the fact that he has settled down to what I guess to be a lackluster marriage), we're left to rely entirely on the Kuleshovian editing to tell us that he is doing the math in head.

When he lights his cigarette, it seems to cue the neighboring composer to strike up a boogie-woogie on the piano. The sound distracts him from his first train of thought, and it has the same effect on him that it does on Lisa, drawing him toward the window to find the source of the music. In Rear Window, music exerts an almost metaphysical power; even the world-weary police dick can't resist its tug.

We see (from Doyle's perspective) a raucous party at the composer’s apartment and, next, the Thorwalds’ apartment, plunged into darkness. This pair of shots works on at least three levels.

First, it shows us that he has identified where the music is coming from. Secondly, it is a reminder that the swinging, cocktail-soaked world of single life is not something that Doyle (and Jeff) can be a part of if they want to be married; the best they can do is stand outside and look in. Finally, its chaotic camaraderie serves as a neat counterpoint to the Thorwald home's morgue-like interior.

(Also, look closely at the party and you'll see one of the female partygoers snaking her way through the crowd with a pair of whiskey cocktails hoisted aloft to hand to one of the guests, a pre-echo of Lisa's brandy service. You'll also see an elderly woman nearly passed out drunk on her feet, dressed in a white suit and a lavender scarf—Hitchcockian colors of death (see, for example, the funeral wreath in Topaz) and, perhaps, a nod to dead Mrs. Thorwald.)

The camera pulls back and down, giving us a powerful low-angle view of Doyle, from Jeff’s viewpoint—that is, we watch Jeff watching Doyle. All eyes are on the Lieutenant Detective and the news he is about to share. His mysterious silence and the grave look on his face indicate that he has something portentous to reveal. Grandstanding, he relishes his moment of power by withholding his Big News.

                                   DOYLE
                      What else have you got on this guy
                      Thorwald?


                                   JEFF
                      Enough to scare me that you wouldn't
                      get here in time, and we'd lose him.

                                  DOYLE
                           (Soberly)
                      You think he's getting out of here?

                                  JEFF
                      Everything he owns is laid out on
                      the bedroom, waiting to be packed.

As we shall soon see, Doyle's conspiratorial tone is just a case of Hitchcock leading us up the garden path. First, though, Lisa emerges from the kitchen, cupping in her hands those two mammarian snifters, a hint that Jeff himself has some bedroom business of his own “waiting to be packed.” Winking double entendres like that permeate this scene, in which the dialogue counterpoints the visuals.

From here out, the scene actually has two story lines: (1) Jeff and Lisa's argument with Doyle regarding whether or not Lars Thorwald is guilty of murder and (2) Doyle’s mostly unspoken interest in Jeff and Lisa’s appearance of sexual impropriety (along with Doyle’s quite obvious excitement at seeing Lisa). The snifters tie the scene together as a visual analog to the dramatic tension while also reinforcing the impression that illicit sex is afoot. Specifically, there’s a hint of masturbation—particularly on the part of Doyle, who clearly gets off (cough cough) on the opportunity to make his old war buddy, Jeff, “look foolish.”

Those twirling cocktails thus play a role comparable to that of the ticking clockwork of the metronome in Rope that Rupert Cadell (James Stewart, six years earlier) uses to ratchet up Phillip's (Farley Granger's) anxiety during the interrogation sequence. Their circular pattern echoes Lisa's twisting shadow on the ceiling seconds earlier. It riffs on Hitch's earlier cameo, where he is glimpsed winding up the spring steel belly of the clock on the composer's mantle, an analogue to his role as this film's ringmaster of dramatic tension. It may even reference the spiral unspooling of the film itself as it relinquishes its story, one shuttering click at a time. Think I'm overdoing the associations? Go rent Hitch's silent masterpiece The Ring (1927) and make up your own mind.

The brandy is also a sexual innuendo, a libation whirling hypnotically as a prelude to sex: Doyle feels an erotic tug in Lisa’s direction, while she and Jeff, in their opposition to Doyle’s indifference, come together (relationally, that is!), their palms and fingers warming more than their brandy. It’s a masturbatory ménage à trois.

It's also a celebration. Following Lisa’s insistence that no woman would leave for a trip without taking her jewelry with her, Jeff and Lisa believe that they’ve got conclusive evidence of a murder and they toast their cleverness with Doyle, who, noncommittal, lets them talk.

Finally, in Hitchcock's world, brandy is often a symbol of sophistication (see Tony Wendice's special occasion drink in Dial M for Murder). Here, it exposes the class distinction between Doyle and Jeff and Lisa. While the latter two capably partake of their drinks and Jeff especially appears to enjoy mulling his around in the glass, Doyle drinks his straight down and shows that he can't handle his liquor as well as the other two can. This is important, as it reveals that Jeff's tastes have evolved in the years since he and Doyle served together in the war, leaving Doyle behind in that area. Their handling of the brandy is an apt metaphor for the contrast between Jeff's attunement to the subtleties of his neighbors' behavior and Doyle's social myopia.

But getting back to Lisa's hubba-hubba entrance with those two brandies! This is Doyle’s first look at Jeff’s girlfriend and, unable to take his eyes off her, his lust at first sight stops just short of a wolf-whistle. Meanwhile, Jeff stares intently at Doyle. As the script directs, “he seems to be trying to penetrate Doyle's mind.” The almost telepathic focus ostensibly has to do with the Thorwald case, but it also leads Jeff to pick up on Doyle’s worldly-wise judgment of Lisa’s sleepover. Thus, in response to Lisa's assertion, Doyle looks down at Lisa’s overnight bag billowing over with her sleepover goodies—a perfect counterpoint to Thorwald’s sinister suitcase. Though his face remains fixed, the editing tells us what he’s thinking: “Thorwald’s not the only guilty person around here.” But before he can get a word out, Jeff cuts him off with a pointed “Careful, Tom.”

We (and Jeff) have been waiting anxiously to hear about what his sleuthing has dug up on the disappearance of Mrs. Thorwald and the camera moves back, as if to courteously give him space.

After taking a phone call that further delays his Big Reveal, the next shot is a fairly long take. Clocking in at one minute and six seconds, it may not match the eight-minute marathons in Rope and Under Capricorn, but it's still a gem of stage blocking and camera work. As Doyle hangs up the phone, Lisa steps into the room, placing Doyle between her and Jeff. Doyle listens impassively, whipping his head back and forth between the two as they regale him with the details of Jeff's “research” and Lisa's intuition, those orbs of brandy going non-stop.

In one long take, with sex in the air, the three stand in almost claustrophobic proximity, swirling their brandy about in those balloonish snifters, in rhythm to the boogie-woogie drifting in from outside. Jeff and Lisa are aroused by their cleverness and sexual attraction, while Doyle is aroused because he thinks he can trump their circumstantial evidence—and, of course, he's turned on by Lisa. The three couldn't be more full of themselves and though the scene is quite masturbatory, most viewers won't allow themselves to “go there.” Unable to put their finger on it, as it were, they can't help but giggle. Here's how the long take goes, which closely followed the shooting script:

LISA
Jeff, aren't you going to tell him
about the jewelry?

Doyle looks suddenly interested. He asks tersely:

DOYLE
Jewelry?

JEFF
He has his wife's jewelry hidden in
among his clothes over there.

DOYLE
You sure it belongs to his wife?

He turns his head to Lisa, who answers.

LISA
It was in her favorite handbag --
And, Mr. Doyle, that can lead to
only one conclusion.

DOYLE
Namely?

His head snaps back to Jeff, who answers:

JEFF
That wasn't Mrs. Thorwald who left
with him yesterday morning?

DOYLE
You figured that out, huh?

His head moves back to Lisa as she answers with a touch of
pride in her voice.

LISA
It's just that women don't leave
jewelry behind when they go on a
trip.

Before Doyle can comment, Jeff asks impatiently:

JEFF
Come on, Tom -- you don't really
need any of this information, do
you?

Bringing their cozy little three-way to an abrupt halt, Doyle steps out of the circle, walks over to the desk and puts his glass down and says, “As a matter of fact, I don't.”

Again, as if perfectly timed, the boogie-woogie comes to a halt, ending the celebratory mood and creating an air of suspenseful expectation. Doyle walks into the deep foreground, his sweaty face filling the frame (just as Detective Arbogast's does when he walks into the Loomis Hardware store in Psycho) and drops his bomb. He speaks to the now-auspiciously quiet window and declares flatly:

“Lars Thorwald is no more a murderer than I am.”

As are all such lines in a Hitchcock film, Doyle's pronouncement is a huge red flag that the Director was up to some deeper tricks. Just as their suitcases suggest a "secret sharer" relationship between the Thorwalds and the Lisa and Jeff, Doyle now implicates himself in their vortex of shared guilt by equating Thorwald's innocence of the charge of murder with his own. Here's why. As a World War II air force reconnaissance pilot, he was in fact guilty—if only communally, by virtue of his uniform—of murder. Thus, the inverse of his statement will prove to be true: Thorwald is at least as much a murderer as he is! (See also: Rupert's guilt and shame in Rope.)

Using little more than their understanding of human nature, Jeff and Lisa surmised correctly that something fishy was going on in the Thorwald home, while Doyle's professional, logical methods caused him to walk right by the evidence without noticing. This, too is a recurring theme in Hitchcock. Think of Spellbound: and Constance Peterson's feminine intuition-based conviction that J.B. was innocent, while her brainiac mentor, Dr. Brulov, was no more equipped to see the truth of the situation than Doyle. The lesson Hitchcock seems to be pointing out is that logic—the supposed apex of human evolution—has its limits because our humanity resides, not in the head, but in the heart. It is with our hearts that we will solve the problem of good and evil.

Following Doyle's pronouncement, Lisa stops swirling her brandy, its cessation of movement matching the drop in her countenance. Next:

JEFF
You mean you can explain everything
that went on over there -- and is
still going on?

DOYLE
No! And neither can you.
That's a secret and private world
you're looking into out there. People
do a lot of things in private that
they couldn't explain in public.

(Italics added. Again with the masturbation innuendo!) Resentful of Doyle's condescending attitude, Jeff loses his temper and wheels himself over to Doyle. The three share the frame once again, Doyle loving every moment of his victory. The actors are blocked so that Doyle stands tall over Lisa and Jeff. For a visual philip that adds a suggestion of menace to the outburst of hostility, you can see a devil's mask in the background, along with one of Jeff's wartime photos, a picture of the explosion from an artillery shell in Korea. Lisa's glass remains mostly still, while Doyle's continue to rotate—the respective glasses continuing to express their owners’ interior mood.

Doyle moves away from them to take a seat and Jeff wheels in, still angry, cross-examining him. The camera repositions and in keeping with the explosiveness of their emotions, Jeff's photo of an atomic mushroom cloud sits in the background:

DOYLE
I found the trunk -- a half hour
after I left here.

LISA
Of course, it's normal for a man to
tie his trunk up with a heavy rope.

DOYLE
When the lock is broken -- yes.

JEFF
What was in the trunk? A surly note
to me?

DOYLE
Mrs. -- Thorwald's -- clothes. --
Clean -- carefully packed -- not too
stylish -- but presentable.

Doyle begins walking over to the chair.

LISA
Didn't you take it to the crime lab?

DOYLE
I sent it on its merry and legal
way.

Doyle sits down in the deep foreground, stretching back in Jeff's armchair, coolly swirling his drink.

JEFF
Why -- when a woman only goes on a
simple trip, does she take everything
she owns?...
If his wife wasn't coming back --
why didn't he tell his landlord? --
I'll answer it for you -- because he
had something to hide.

(Italics added.) Doyle hesitates a moment and lets his eyes wander and we see a cut-in closeup of the

overnight case with Lisa's lingerie.

DOYLE
Do -- uh -- you tell your landlord
everything?

Doyle's crack further links Jeff with Lars Thorwald and Lisa with Mrs. Thorwald, by means of the secrets they keep, their respective clothes and suitcases, and the appearance of guilt. For the moment, Doyle has vindicated Thorwald and all but accused Jeff and Lisa of a (debatable) violation of 50's-era morality. The irony is that he's wrong on both counts, and his intellectual hubris will nearly cost Jeff his life. After failing to change the subject, he stands and tries to finish off his drink as if it were a straight shot of whiskey. It shoots out of the glass, spurting onto his jacket. In other words, Doyle clumsily shoots his load.

Hitchcock Gets His Hands on Blackmail

2011-11-03T20:43:00.000-07:00

“Self-plagiarism is style.”--Alfred Hitchcock

For a full-length series of posts about Dial M for Murder, check out my mondo analysis!

One of my favorite shots in all of Hitchcock's movies appears in his 3D chamber piece Dial M for Murder (1954). Here's the setup: though Margot Wendice (Grace Kelly) killed Anthony Lesgate (Anthony Dawson) in self defense, suspicion has been aroused that she actually murdered him in cold blood. In this shot taken from her point of view, she makes a desperate plea for her innocence, holding out a key to her questioners that should exonerate her, but which, pathetically, does the opposite.

In 3D, her arm appears to float in front of the theater's front row, as if severed from her body. For my money, there are are few other moments in cinema history that telegraph such pitiful hopelessness, winning the audience's sympathy—and its dread for her future.

This shot also riffs on the film’s earlier murder where, in the 3D experience, Margot "reaches into the audience,” as if imploring it for help as she gropes for the scissors with which to defend herself:

These two shots are among many in Dial M demonstrating that Hitchcock’s innovative and expressive use of 3D effects is unmatched. Which raises an interesting question: working with a new medium, and with no other filmmaker exploring 3D’s potential with his level of sophistication, where did Hitchcock get his ideas? From himself.

As it happens, versions of those two shots appear in his final silent—and first sound—film (he made two versions), Blackmail (1929). Like Dial M, that movie also explores the guilt of a woman who has killed her attacker in self defense. Take a look at its murder scene:

With the action hidden behind a curtain, we are left to imagine Crewe’s (Cyril Richard's) sexual assault on Alice White (Anny Ondra). (The situation itself augurs Lesgate’s rape-like attack of Margot on the writing desk.) In her desperation, Alice's hand fumbles about, eventually to grasp a bread knife. After her weapon finds its target, Crewe's dead hand then flops out from behind the curtain, completing this stanza of violence, which is mercifully hidden from us. The entire scene is expressed by the movement of hands and and is no less terrifying in its refusal to show us the details of the assault and of Crewe's subsequent death.

Later in the film, in a scene that anticipates Dial M, Tracy (Donald Calthrop), the film’s would-be blackmailer, comes to see that not only will his plot fail, but that he is going to be framed for Crewe’s death. Pleading for his life, he hands the blackmail note to Detective Frank Webber (John Longden), hoping—in vain—for mercy. Note how his hand protrudes in from the side of the frame:

On a formal level, these repetitions add resonance to an otherwise tawdry story. As Sidney Gottlieb noted in his article “Hitchcock’s Silent Cinema,” which appeared in A Companion to Alfred Hitchcock, such shots in Blackmail "establish rhythmic and structural patterns by carefully placed repetitions that create constant echoing effects."

As with Margot, the framing here reinforces what the story is already bracing to tell us: Tracy hasn't got the chance of a sno-cone in a pizza oven. But there is more to this than mere technical film grammar. Gottlieb adds: "Hitchcock's cinematic ingenuity is no mere formalist exercise but a means to strengthen Blackmail as a provocative critique of the forces of order and authority in society, a disapproving dramatization of how men silence women and attempt to shape them to suit their interests, and a case study in guilt."

Much the same could be said for Dial M. For instance, in the shot of Margot's hand above, the sense is reinforced that her beauty and wealth are no match for the male-dominated world that now casts a hostile eye on her—though in the final verdict, its law enforcement sector, at least, is more benign and prone to justice than that presented in the earlier film, even if its Inspector Hubbard (John Williams) had to go rogue and commit "highly irregular" acts in the service of justice.*

Blackmail was Hitch's farewell to silent movies, and in later interviews, in describing the end of that era, he singled out this shot, whose shadows paint a silent villain's mustache on Crewe's face:

This effect casts a glooming spell on what has up til then been a light mood, wiping the smile off our face with one last joke. While I don't think Hitch did quite the same thing in Dial M, the plot follows a similar arc: for the first part of the film, Wendice's upper crust humor carries the show, rendering his murder plot an intellectual exercise. And then, similar to the shift in mood in Blackmail, the following brief (silent era) chiaroscuro scene abruptly changes everything, as Lesgate emerges from the shadows to carry out his diabolical orders:

There is, however, at least one difference between the two films that I should mention. In Blackmail, these hands extend in from the side of the frame. Not so in Dial M. In that project, Hitch exploited the depth dimension to achieve similar emotional effects, giving those scenes an added subjective boost by placing his action toward the bottom of the frame, where the 3D imagery appeared to mingle with the front rows of he audience, as in this celebrated shot:

In another shot that echoes both the murder scene and Margot's plea for mercy, Inspector Hubbard presents the key that exonerates Margot and convicts the real villain, Wendice.

In order to make Dial M for Murder, Hitchcock rummaged around in a bag of tricks devised a quarter century earlier and adapted them to a new format. Along the way, he added a phrase or two to the language of 3D film and made an enduring favorite in the Hitchcock catalog. People may not be able to explain why a movie like this gets under their skin. All they know is they can't take their eyes off of it.
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*Ever notice that Margot is the only female character to appear in Dial M? Only two other women are mentioned in passing: "poor Miss Wallace," the victim of Lesgate's murderous greed and Maureen, who's "such a filthy cook." By contrast, there are the men of Dial M, whose college breeding and club membership guarantee special privileges. Even sleazy Lesgate and daft Mark Halliday (Robert Cummings) are members of this fraternity of men. It's in this world that Margot must defend her life and honor. In the final reckoning, it takes a near-miracle to save her when Inspector Hubbard rises above class and the rules of the game to make sure justice is served.
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Haven't had enough of Dial M for Murder? Go here.

Michele Bachmann Provokes Spit-Take from the Alfred Hitchcock Geek

2011-10-10T11:53:00.000-07:00

Update: I just realized that this whole thing is a satirical joke. (Thanks to "Crispy" below for enlightening me.) Bachmann never actually said any of this. But I'm leaving the post up because I'm not sure which is funnier: Craig's faux interview, or the fact that I fell for it.

"My hero!" -- Michele Bachmann.

Not to politicize this blog or nuthin', but I had to pass this nugget on from the November, 2011 issue of Vanity Fair: In an interview with Craig Brown, Republican presidential hopeful Michele Bachmann listed her top eight heroes. In addition to the usual suspects on such a list (Jesus Christ, Gandhi, MLK), she added our favorite mama's boy:

“#7: NORMAN BATES

Here is a salt-of-the-earth guy who tends to his mom as well as single-handedly running a small family business. A proven thief books into his motel, so he humanely executes her. The guy's a hero. And what do the liberal elite call him? 'Psycho'! can you believe it?”

Make of her selection what you will. I'm sure she's just kidding around. This is, after all, the snooty-snarky Vanity Fair. (Disclosure: I vote democrat.) (Since I'm a Vanity Fair reader, you probably already knew that.) (Just don't hate me for being simultaneously smart and vapid. It's harder to pull off than it looks.) Nevertheless, if she gets elected, just to be on the safe side, we should probably keep all sharp objects out of the Oval Office!

The Re-Premier of Hitchcock's "Lost" Film The White Shadow: A Special Report

2011-10-03T20:23:00.000-07:00

Program from the re-premier of The White Shadow. Click twice on this and all subsequent images and make them instantly bigger!

By guest blogger Pat McFadden.

On Thursday, September 22, the recently discovered reels from The White Shadow (1924), a film from Alfred Hitchcock’s days as Assistant Director for Graham Cutts, were re-premiered at the Motion Picture Academy’s Samuel Goldwyn Theatre in Beverly Hills. I was fortunate enough to acquire tickets for myself and a few friends, and had the further fortune of sitting in the front row. (This was somewhat due to necessity, as the entire middle section of the theatre was reserved for VIPs with the exception of the very first row.) Front row at this particular theatre is usually too close – but for this night, with two musicians and a panel of six, I simply could not have had a better position as a non-VIP. I had full view of the stage and could turn around for perfect view of any notable who’d been asked to stand in the audience.

As usual, an extravagant and beautiful program had been printed for the evening, with a paper insert of notes on Hitchcock’s role(s) on the film, and its place in, and effect on, his career, well written by Hitchcock Author David Sterritt.

Randy Haberkamp, the Academy’s Director of Educational Programs, and always an entertaining, witty and knowledgeable Master of Ceremonies at Academy screenings, began the evening asking for a show of hands from those who identified themselves as “optimists.” He went on to correlate this to the fact that they were about to show us only the first half of a feature, and urged us optimists to look at the experience as “half full” and not “half empty.” He then asked some people in the audience to stand so we could gaze at them and applaud, among them were Norman Lloyd and Eva Marie Saint (both of whom would be on the panel later), Ed Lauter (Maloney in Family Plot), Diane Baker (Lil Mainwaring in Marnie), and Veronica Cartwright, with her hair pulled back in a pony tail, just like her younger self as Cathy Brenner in The Birds.

The screening got underway, starting off with two shorts which had also been discovered and rescued, one with Mabel Normand from 1914, the other with Monty Banks from 1923, and then the existing first half of The White Shadow. The amazing Michael D. Mortilla accompanied the entire evening on piano, with an original score that is simply magnificent. Joining him for the feature only was the excellent and lovely Nicole Garcia on violin.

The Film

The original opening credits did not survive (as we were to learn from the discussion later, the first few feet of any reel of nitrate are usually the first to decompose). Therefore the film began with a still shot of one rescued but damaged frame of the opening inter-title – this can be seen on the program cover – followed by a simple list of credits. More may be missing from the opening but it didn’t seem like it could be much, as the story seemed to be in place: Nancy Brent (Betty Compson) meets Robin Field (Clive Brook) on deck of the ship that they are both taking back to London. They get along and plan to meet after they’ve settled back at home. Nancy is welcomed home by her family: alcoholic father, doting mother, and identical twin sister Georgina, also played by Compson. A double was used for some shots, but the many scenes which utilized the splitscreen effect were quite seamless and accomplished for the period. Compson was excellent in both roles, and stunningly beautiful (she would work for Director Hitchcock some18 years later in Mr. And Mrs. Smith, as Robert Montgomery’s bombastic blind date Gertie, the smart-mouthed blonde with the sure cure for nosebleeds).

But we now learn that these identical twins are not at all identical in character, and Nancy is as selfish and wanton as a female character was allowed to be in 1924. She quickly sends her unsuspecting sister to the pre-appointed place that she herself had agreed to meet Robin, for the sole purpose of his being baffled at not being recognized by the girl he thinks is Nancy. Several more episodes at the family’s country manor prove that despite the pleading and placating of her sister and parents, Nancy is rotten to the core. Unsatisfied with her boring life at home, Nancy leaves a short note for her sister and steals away without a trace. Blaming himself, her father, already unstable from too much drink, goes out in search of her; neither are found. After her mother dies of a broken heart, Georgina is now left alone. Reluctantly abandoning the search for her sister and father, Georgina continues to see – and falls in love with - Robin, still letting him believe that she is Nancy.

Nancy, it is now revealed, has become a card playing, smart dressing drinker in Paris, spending her time winning things from men (all implications) in a place of ill-repute called the Café of the Laughing Cat (see picture on page 2 of program – this beautiful set, centered by a man-sized cat statue that brings “The Ten Commandments” to mind, could well have been the young art director’s proudest creation for this project.) In the first of several contrived coincidences, Mr. Brent, the twins’ father, is seen at the same club – now unrecognizable as a wandering tramp who has lost his mind from drink and desperation.

This scene is the most lighthearted so far. A lengthy inter-title card explains the rules of the Laughing Cat Café: As each new person enters, the wild patrons shout "GET OUT!" The persons who don’t run screaming are considered worthy to stay. This was charming British humor in an otherwise serious and engaging melodrama, and suspiciously Hitchcockian.

Back in London, Robin and “Nancy” are engaged to be married – but Robin’s good friend Louis Chadwick (Henry Victor) will soon (coincidentally!) visit the Café in Paris and see the real Nancy holding court. Henry visits Robin, tells him what he has witnessed, and that it would be a disgrace to marry this woman. Unwilling to believe it, Robin dares Henry to take him to Paris and prove it to him. Georgina, overhearing all this, realizes that Henry has unknowingly located her long-lost twin, and she rushes to France as well, hoping to find her there.

We return to the Laughing Cat Café, where all of our major characters are now gathering, and just as good-twin Georgina enters (meaning that Nancy, Robin, and Louis are about to be shocked out of their minds to see her there) -- the reel ended and the curtain closed. There was a huge collective groan from the audience. Chalk another one up for the Master of Suspense, but in a way he never intended.

Eva Marie Saint rushed to the podium on the stage, where, after cheerily muttering “Well, I don’t understand it, but I still don’t understand North By Northwest,” she read to us a synopsis of the conclusion of the drama (from the film’s U.S. Copyright Registration), humorously accompanied by more melodramatic piano and violin.

Eva Marie Saint describes the second half of the film. (Photo credit: Greg Harbaugh / ©A.M.P.A.S.)

“After seeing Nancy enter the bohemian nightclub, Robin bitterly denounces her. In the chaos of the fight, she slips away, followed by Georgina. Georgina tells Nancy of the disappearance of their father and the death of their mother. Nancy weeps but refuses to return home. Her health broken by worry, Georgina goes to Switzerland to recuperate. Robin meets her, and still assuming that she is Nancy, begs forgiveness. Georgina knows that she hasn’t long to live, and she sends for her sister. She persuades Nancy to take her place in the sanatorium and marry Robin. Georgina leaves for Paris, to await the end. After returning to England with Robin, Nancy is summoned to her dying sister in Paris. She arrives just in time to say goodbye. When Georgina dies, her “white shadow” passes to Nancy, who at last has a soul. Mr. Brent resurfaces and finds his way to England, and while walking down a London street, he is hit by a car carrying his surviving daughter. [‘I didn’t write this!’ Saint interjected at this point, stoking the laughter already emanating from the audience.] Nancy rushes him to the hospital. Mr. Brent regains his sanity and returns with Nancy to their country estate. Robin asks Nancy to marry him. Much as she yearns to accept, the white shadow of her sister’s sanity holds her back. When Robin learns the truth regarding the two sisters, Nancy begs his forgiveness. In response, he takes her in his arms. ‘Since you have been brave enough to tell me, I will be brave enough to forget it.’”

Click to enlarge fellow Hitchcock geek David Sterritt's program notes.

The Panel

The Panel (left to right): Randy Haberkamp, actress Eva Marie Saint, actor Norman Lloyd, Leslie Anne Lewis, NFPF Nitrate Consultant for New Zealand Project, Frank Stark, Chief Executive of the New Zealand Film Archive, Annette Melville, Director of the National Film Preservation Foundation, and Michael Pogorzelski, Director of the Academy Film Archive. (Photo credit: Todd Wawrychuk / ©A.M.P.A.S.)

Now the panel gathered onstage to great applause, moderated by Academy Director of Special Projects Randy Haberkamp.

Asked of Frank Stark: "Why does it happen to be New Zealand that so many of these films are being found?"

“The real question is why did they disappear everywhere else?” Frank quipped, and then explained that New Zealand was the end of one of the distribution shipping chains, and after exhibition, rather than shipping the prints back, which was costly, distributors were asked to destroy them. Many of these workers, including some projectionists, secretly stole away with prints, unable to bear with the thought of destroying them, and Frank fancies that many were enjoyed at private collector parties. Thus, a great deal of film has been re-collected over the years.

Annette Melville explained the role of the NFPF as sort of a “match-maker” – they don’t hold films, but they work on behalf of the American archival community to locate and preserve endangered works. The Mellon Foundation gave them a grant enabling them send a two-person team to New Zealand, which has succeeded in identifying over 165 titles, going through 225,000 feet of nitrate film, and that’s just the silent material.

Annette handed the mike over to Leslie Anne Lewis, who held us captive with her fascinating “detective story:” The film was in a couple of reels labeled “Twin Sisters,” but the original credits were gone, and it had been placed in the American section due to the fact that the Selznick logo was on it (every inter-title had “Selznick” at the bottom, as seen in the frame blow-up on the program.) Intrigued by the beautiful images, she concentrated her research one evening on identifying this film. Cross-checking the identified cast members with other clues, she eventually narrowed it down to two possibilities, and since one of them had the Hitchcock name attached to it, began researching what he had been doing at the time. As there is no shortage of Hitchcock-related study on the internet, this led to the happy confirmation of what had been found.

Saving questions for Saint and Lloyd for last, the evening ended with fond reminiscences from both, of working - and eating – with Hitch and Alma. Most of Lloyd’s stories are already known to Hitchcock devotees, but hearing and watching him relate them was worth separate admission: Alma catching Janet Leigh’s subtle swallow in time to cut it before shipping “Psycho;” Ben Hecht viewing the finale of “Saboteur” and telling Hitch “He should have had a better tailor.”

Eva Marie Saint and Norman Lloyd. (Photo credit: Greg Harbaugh / ©A.M.P.A.S.)

Eva Marie told of something that happened during the shooting of the auction scene in “North By Northwest.” Between shots she was drinking coffee from a styrofoam cup. Hitch saw this and took it away from her, replacing it with a china cup and saucer. It just wouldn’t do, he said, for the extras and crew to see this lady in such a beautiful dress drinking from a Styrofoam cup. She loved it – it helped her to stay in character. She also loved that Hitch had his bacon flown in from Denmark, and Dover Sole from England. “I liked all that,” she said. “I was from Albany.”

During this story, when she was about to quote Hitchcock, Saint stopped and asked Lloyd if he would imitate him. “You’re an actor, and you’re a guy,” she said. Lloyd at first waved the microphone away, then suddenly puckered up his mouth, changed his expression and sitting posture, and in pure Hitchcock dialect, slowly warbled “I’m not large enough.” This drew a great laugh, but Eva Marie topped it when she later said “I love my husband, but I have the hots for Norman!”

No questions were culled from the audience, but nobody seemed to mind, and as we filed out, one aisle was clogged by the amazing cluster of Saint, Lloyd, and Baker all chatting together. My hand instinctively reached into my pocket to take a picture, but they just don’t let you do that at the Academy. There are now, however, some pictures available for viewing on their web site: http://photos.presslist.oscars.org/listanevent.php?events=1629&pg=1

My personal assessment of the evening? Perfect. Of the film? Most people seemed to agree with me that what we saw was a first-rate production of a rather silly story. If this first half had been summarized for me, sight unseen, I doubt that I’d have anticipated being as engaged, entertained, and yes, even emotionally involved. It’s impossible to know, but not at all difficult to guess, how much of that was due to accomplished director Cutts, and how much to the hard work of a young and eager assistant director, editor, co-writer, art director, and title designer. So, despite how convoluted the second half sounds, I assume it maintained its dignity, and hope that it might be found in another mislabeled canister somewhere, someday.

Remembering Alma Reville, Born August 14, 1899

2011-08-14T14:05:00.000-07:00

Hitch and Alma's wedding day, December 2, 1926

Hardly a day goes by that I don't think about Alfred Hitchcock. I dream of meeting him, but I fear that if that were to happen in an alternate universe (or heaven, I suppose), it might be a rather awkward encounter. I might even feel a bit intimidated. And so, in my dream, I meet someone else first: Hitchcock's wife, Alma Reville. If she liked you, Alma could be relied upon to grease the wheels of friendship between her guest and the great director. Plus, I hear that she made a mean Beef Beaujolais, so if the meeting was a flop I imagine I'd still have had a wonderful dinner.

Alma's profound, yet generally unsung, contribution to Hitch's films has only recently begun to be acknowledged. As film historian Charles Champlin once wrote, “The Hitchcock touch had four hands and two of them were Alma's.”

According to IMDb.com, she is credited with writing contributions to 29 films for Hitch and other directors. She also served in a variety of other capacities, including editor and assistant director. Like her husband, she understood filmmaking from the ground up. Thanks to her first-rate intellect, coupled with fierce determination, she was a film pioneer in an era when film—not to mention women in the workplace in general—was yet silent. As screenwriter Whitfield Cook (Stage Fright, Strangers on a Train) says, “Alma was truly a filmmaker. I can sincerely say from personal experience that I don't think Hitch's films would have been as good without Alma.”

Handling continuity for The Mountain Eagle (1927), 5' 0" Alma ascends a stepladder to adjust Bernard Goetzke's hair.

To those who knew her, however, she was content to be Alma, a gracious host and a thoughtful friend. She was a superb cook whose souffles were like her friendship itself: they never failed and always rose to the occasion. If her hand in the Hitchcock touch has been overlooked, it's mainly due to her modesty, which seems to have sprung from deep place of ego-security. She simply had no need for that kind of attention.

By contrast, Hitch seems to have harbored a great deal of insecurity and fear. Yet, his public never really knew about that. For that we can also thank Alma, who was his staunchest defender and supporter and the only person to whom he revealed his vulnerable side. Because his films deal with the dark matter that resides in human nature, critics and fans alike have long assumed that Hitch himself was a bit “mogo on the gogo”—an armchair diagnosis that shows up Spellbound (1945). If you want an idea of what Alma's view of him might have been like, pop in a DVD of that movie. Gregory Peck plays “J.B.,” a man stripped of his identity and accused of being a homicidal maniac. As her name aptly implies, Constance Peterson (Ingrid Bergman) refuses to succumb to such thinking, even when the learned Dr. Brulov (Michael Chekov) pooh-poohs her defense of him, saying, “We are speaking of a schizophrenic, not a valentine.” She replies, “We are speaking of a man.” With those six words, she gathers up her interlocutor's collection of Freud's writing and hurls it back at him. I see that as Alma's rejoinder to hamfisted biographers who would conjure up demons in Hitch's psyche where there are none.

Patricia Hitchcock O'Connell, wrote a memoir about her mother, called Alma Hitchcock: The Woman Behind the Man. When you finish this post, do yourself a favor and get yourself a copy. It remains as good a view of this extraordinary woman we will likely ever get. Here are a few excerpts:

Whitfield Cook:

“I remember meeting Pat, Hitch and Alma for the first time at the exact same time. I went to [their] house and the first thing I realized was that they were all real people—no Hollywood stuff, very real and very, very nice.... I was quite crazy about Alma because she was so gentle and yet so strong. I don't think she cared that people thought she was working in the shadow of Hitch. She adored Hitch and she loved working with him.... Alma was very short but extremely attractive, and part of that attraction came through her intelligence and warmth.... One thing I did notice about her was that she never talked about herself and she never talked about the past. She had been a pioneer in the silent era, but she never made a point of mentioning it.”

Connie Erickson (wife of favored Hitchcock Production Designer) on meeting the Hitchcocks for the first time, at what the Hitchcocks referred to as “The Ranch” in Santa Cruz:

“[There were] colorful hanging baskets of begonias everywhere. Only the English can do so well with their gardens and flowers—a built-in talent. Being so young at the time, I was a bit nervous, but once we got to the Hitchcock home, I felt at ease and we spent a couple of delightful days, eating (Alma cooked the meals and Hitch chose the appropriate wine) and relaxing. Alma was the perfect hostess because she was so simple and understated.

“Years later, I flew to London with Pat for the Hitchcock hundredth birthday celebration. We took the train to Nottingham where Alma was born.... For some strange reason, Nottingham seemed familiar to me. It was then that I realized that Alma had recreated the beautiful feeling of the city where she grew up in the house in Santa Cruz. Nottingham, I found out, is known as the flower city of England. Like in the Santa Cruz home, there were flowers everywhere. And no doubt, Alma was one of them.”

Screenwriter Jay Presson Allen (Marnie):

Although she was opinionated and contributed a great deal to any conversation, Alma never talked about the past. And she never pushed herself forward. The only ego she displayed was in her presence—she was really there, she did not disappear.

Nurse Betty Losher, who cared for Hitch in his final days:

“The relationship between Mr. and Mrs. H was a respectful, collaborative, loving and protective one. For instance, after one of the drafts of The Short Night [(Hitch's final screenplay, never filmed)] was completed, Mr. H brought a bound copy to his wife. He asked if she would read it the next day and she said she would. I remember the next morning, while Mr. H was at the 'stuuuudio,' she read the entire script, stopping only for lunch. She finished it after tea and waited for him. I was with her in the main room when he came home. He walked straight through the foyer to see his wife. 'Well, what do you think?' In her soft voice but loud enough for him to hear her, she replied, 'Quite good. Quite good.' To my surprise, he completely fell apart and wept.... The next morning, I overheard Mrs. H ask, 'Whom do you see as the detective?' He immediately replied: 'Peter Lorre,' followed by, 'But we don't have him anymore.'”

Alfred Hitchcock cut a large figure in more ways than one. Yet, Alma lived in no one's shadow. She was and always will be Alma Reville. With begonias and Champagne, Happy Birthday, Alma.

A Perfect Treatment -- Excerpt from "Writing with Hitchcock"

2011-07-16T13:41:00.000-07:00

Some of Alfred Hitchcock's most beloved films were made in the 1950s, and four of them (Rear Window, To Catch a Thief, The Trouble with Harry and The Man Who Knew Too Much) were written by one man: John Michael Hayes. Though he'd earned a sterling reputation in radio, when he first met with Hitch, his screenwriting resume was rather thin. Nevertheless, the director took a gamble and contracted him to work on Rear Window. It turned out to be one of the best decisions of his career.

My friend Steven DeRosa has written a fascinating book about their extraordinarily fruitful collaboration and its sad, perhaps inevitable, demise. Called Writing with Hitchcock: The Collaboration of Alfred Hitchcock and John Michael Hayes, it's a must-have for anyone who loves good movies. You can find purchasing details -- including how to get an autographed copy for yourself -- at the end of this post. In the meantime, enjoy this fly-on-wall look at their very first meeting, excerpted from Chapter One:

A Perfect Treatment

Excerpted from Writing with Hitchcock by Steven DeRosa

On the morning of September 9, 1965, Alfred Hitchcock sat in his office at Universal Studios confounded that after a detailed treatment, three complete drafts, and one set of revisions, the screenplay he had been preparing for Torn Curtain was not up to par. Hitchcock had spent four months working on the scenario with the novelist Brian Moore, and then engaged the screenwriting team of Keith Waterhouse and Willis Hall to do a hasty rewrite, but still found the script lacking. Peggy Robertson, Hitchcock’s personal assistant, knew her employer was in trouble, especially after Marnie had flopped a year earlier. Robertson was Hitchcock’s most valued associate during his tenure at Universal and had remained part of the director’s entourage since serving as script supervisor on Vertigo during happier times at Paramount. At Hitchcock’s request, Robertson prepared a short list of writers she thought were skilled enough to retool the second-rate script. Hitchcock surely trusted Robertson’s judgment, but was adamantly opposed to calling one of the writers she had put on her list, even though a little more than a decade earlier the writer had been responsible for the scripts of some of Hitchcock’s major successes. For some reason—pride, anger, principle—Hitchcock refused to call John Michael Hayes. Hitchcock felt he became the Master of Suspense on his own and did not require assistance from someone whom he had made a star.

In the spring of 1953 Hitchcock had faced a similar career crisis. His independent production company, Transatlantic Pictures, had failed, and his years at Warner Bros. were a mixed bag of mostly box-office failures. With its track record on the stage in London and on Broadway, Hitchcock hoped that a film of Frederick Knott’s Dial M for Murder would bring the change of luck he desperately needed. Warner Bros. purchased the rights for Hitchcock, but the studio was in financial trouble. In March the studio halted production on all new projects for ninety days, and the following month they asked their executives to take a salary cut of up to 50 percent.

In a business where you’re only as good as your last film, Hitchcock could not afford to let his career come to a standstill. He instructed his agents at MCA Artists to shop around for another studio contract. In his business dealings, Hitchcock was handled personally by the agency’s president, Lew Wasserman, in addition to Arthur Park and, later, Herman Citron. In spite of the fact that Hitchcock’s performance as his own producer in Hollywood had not yet lived up to his reputation, Wasserman and company shrewdly arranged what became over the next few years a lucrative multipicture contract with the Paramount Pictures Corporation.

Eager to obtain Hitchcock’s services, Paramount offered to make a deal if he would develop a script out of a story from a collection called After Dinner Story by mystery writer Cornell Woolrich (who wrote under the pseudonym William Irish). Taking Wasserman’s advice, Hitchcock chose “Rear Window.” Eager to find the perfect writer to dramatize Woolrich’s short story, Hitchcock recalled a name he heard often on the radio in connection with comedy, suspense, and detective shows. “Do you know John Michael Hayes?” he asked his agents. The response was that they certainly did—Hayes was also an MCA client.

The Meeting

Through much of his first decade or so in Hollywood, Alfred Hitchcock worked with a number of distinguished writers, including Robert Sherwood, Thornton Wilder, Dorothy Parker, Ben Hecht, and Raymond Chandler. Impressive as this list of collaborators may be, Hitchcock still found himself in the late 1940s and early 1950s with a string of commercial failures. Hitchcock’s agents were therefore perplexed by their client’s request that they arrange a meeting with John Michael Hayes. By the spring of 1953, the thirty-three-year-old Hayes had been a popular and prolific writer of radio dramas, and although his potential as a screenwriter had been recognized, there was little evidence in his first film credits to indicate he had much to offer Hitchcock. Nevertheless, there was something about Hayes’s style that Hitchcock responded to and felt he needed.

Hayes recalled, “Hitchcock had his agents and my agent get together for lunch and they handed me this book which had the short story in it called ‘Rear Window.’ They told me, ‘You’re to meet Mr. Hitchcock on Friday night at the Beverly Hills Hotel for dinner. Read the story and be prepared to discuss it with him.’” Hayes virtually memorized the story in order to anticipate what Hitchcock would ask. What color were the eyes of the hero? How many steps up to his door? How many windows across the way? Hayes prepared for a thorough examination.

The dinner was scheduled for seven-thirty in the Polo Lounge of the Beverly Hills Hotel. Hayes dressed as well as he could, memorized his notes and ideas, and drove from the San Fernando Valley, over the Santa Monica Mountains, to Beverly Hills, arriving a few minutes early. By seven-thirty, Hitchcock hadn’t arrived. At quarter of eight, he still wasn’t there. And by eight o’clock, there was no sign of Hitchcock. The young writer thought he might have gotten the night or, worse, the hotel wrong, which only added to his feelings of anxiety about meeting the famous director. In need of something to calm his nerves, Hayes went into the hotel bar and explained his predicament to the bartender.

Unlike many of his contemporaries in Hollywood, Hayes was a neophyte when it came to liquor and wisely set his limit at two drinks. Unaware of the potency of martinis, which the bartender prescribed as a good drink to calm one’s nerves, Hayes knocked back his drink and returned to the lobby as quickly as he could, not wanting to miss Hitchcock. Having skipped lunch that day in anticipation of a big dinner, Hayes quickly felt a warm glow from the liquor as he continued to wait. By eight-thirty, Hitchcock still hadn’t arrived, prompting the writer to retreat to the bar for one more drink before returning home.

Having consumed his second martini—his limit—Hayes walked out of the hotel and down the path toward his car, when suddenly a taxi pulled up and out came Alfred Hitchcock, who started up the walk hurriedly. Hayes tried to interrupt him. “Mr. Hitchcock?”

“No. Sorry. No autographs. I have a very important meeting.”

“You have it with John Michael Hayes.”

Hitchcock stopped and said, “Are you John Hayes?”

“Yes,” the writer replied.

“Well, come on. Let’s get going,” commanded Hitchcock, who never apologized for being late. The two proceeded to the dining room, with the head waiter fussing over Hitchcock, whose reputation as a big spender and gourmand had been well established even before he arrived in America. As they sat at the booth reserved for the star moviemaker, Hayes must have been impressed, if not intimidated, by the attention he commanded, which made it all the more surprising when the first words out of Hitchcock were “Do you drink?”

Taken aback, Hayes replied, “Well, I’ve been known on occasion to take a drink.”

“Well, what do you drink?”

“I think the last drink I had was a martini.”

“Oh, wonderful, my favorite drink,” said Hitchcock, adding mischievously, “I like a man who drinks.” Hitchcock called the waiter to the table and ordered two double martinis. When the drinks arrived, the two men tipped glasses, and Hayes sipped as cautiously as he could.

Soon after, Hitchcock called for hors d’oeuvres and another double martini for each of them. Hayes had finally got the first cocktail down, and by now was bleary-eyed, praying he would not get sick. “Mr. Hitchcock, I don’t—I think one—,” protested Hayes.

“Oh, come on,” Hitchcock encouraged, “we’ve got to relax and get to know each other. As I told you, I like a man who drinks.” Along came the second round of double martinis. Hayes kept imagining he was going to get sick and that Alfred Hitchcock would never speak to him again. And to this point, the director hadn’t mentioned Rear Window at all. Pouring sweat, trying to keep sober and sound intelligent, Hayes recalled the director asking, “Have you seen any of my movies?”

“Yes, I have, Mr. Hitchcock.”

By now they’d finished the hors d’oeuvres and had started a second course of Dover sole with a rare white wine. Hitchcock extolled the virtues of the wine as he poured a big glass for the writer, who tried to sip it politely and act as if he truly appreciated it. Returning to the subject of his pictures, Hitchcock said, “For example?”

Recalling his experience as an Army theater projectionist, Hayes replied, “Well, for example, oh, Shadow of a Doubt.”

“What did you think of it?” asked Hitchcock.

Hayes began to give an analysis of Shadow of a Doubt from frame one to the end of the picture, telling Hitchcock what he thought he had done right, and what he thought he had done wrong, where it was strong, where it was weak, and that he didn’t particularly like the casting. The young writer continued his assessment of Shadow of a Doubt straight through the next course of steak with red wine. Blurred by the combination of martinis and fine wines, Hayes started going through Hitchcock’s movies, one by one, indicating some things that he could have done better in Notorious and telling the director that he thought the bullet stopped by the Bible in the hero’s pocket in The 39 Steps was kind of corny. While Hayes talked, Hitchcock said nothing, and just continued eating and drinking and munching and crunching and slurping.

At the conclusion of the meal, Hitchcock ordered dessert to be brought with a concoction of brandy and Drambuie. Amazingly, Hayes hadn’t gotten sick, but Hitchcock still had said nothing about Rear Window—not a single word. Finally, with the dinner finished, Hitchcock said, “Well, I’ve got to go home.” Hayes offered to drive him, but shrewdly Hitchcock decided to take a taxi. After a considerable amount of coffee, Hayes got into his car, put the top down, and drove slowly over the Santa Monica mountains back home. Upon his arrival, Hayes’s wife, Mel, asked, “How did it go?”

“Well, we had one of the great feasts of all time. But I am through, not only with Alfred Hitchcock, but maybe forever in this town. I’d better start thinking of a new profession. Because,” Hayes said, “I analyzed his pictures, and I analyzed them like a reviewer, critically.” Hayes spent the rest of the weekend waiting to hear how miserably it went. On Monday morning Arthur Park telephoned him and said, “You’re in. Hitchcock loved you. You start work tomorrow. Report to Warner Bros., where he’s preparing Dial M for Murder.”

In disbelief Hayes responded, “Are you sure you have the right John Michael Hayes?”

“Why?”

“We never talked about Rear Window, or anything.”

“You’re fine.”

The next day Hayes arrived at Warners, and he and Hitchcock discussed Rear Window for the first time. Baffled by the experience, Hayes needed a year before he had the temerity to ask Hitchcock about that night. “Well, let me tell you what happened,” Hitch-cock said. “I went to a cocktail party at Jules Stein’s house. That’s why I was late. You know, I was dieting and I had several drinks. I remember meeting you and going in to eat, but I don’t remember anything after that. But you talked a lot, and on the assumption that a man who talks a lot has something to say, I hired you.” Not one to leave an associate completely at ease, Hitchcock added, “But don’t forget, if I didn’t like you, two weeks later I could have let you go.”

Writing with Hitchcock: The Collaboration of Alfred Hitchcock and John Michael Hayes by Steven DeRosa is available in a new, expanded edition in print and e-book formats at Amazon.com, Barnesandnoble.com, Apple iBookstore, and Lulu.com. Signed copies are also available at WritingwithHitchcock.com You can follow updates from the author on Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube.

Alfred in Wonderland: How Hitchcock Used Sound to Create "Pure Film"

2011-07-11T16:23:00.000-07:00

“During its 400-year history, the novel has missed many of its possibilities; it has left many great opportunities unexplored, many paths forgotten, calls unheard.”—Milan Kundera, “An Introduction to a Variation”

Hitch slips on a pair of headphones to direct Anny Ondra on the set of his first sound film, Blackmail (1929). From the beginning, he exploited the audio track's Expressionistic potential.

The war hero crushes the leading lady against his chest as rain gently falls on her creamy, blemish-free cheeks. They kiss. Suddenly, from out of nowhere, a 100-piece orchestra swoops in to deliver an orgasmic crescendo. That's non-diegetic music for you. Always wandering in, squelching the realism of a movie scene. You can see, though, why film makers love it. Such music helps cue the audience how to feel about or react to a scene. It's an easy way to manipulate an audience's emotions—if that's all you want it to do. But what if you want a deeper level of engagement that moves your audience to participate in the movie more actively? In that case, non-diegetic musical underscoring could be a barrier to such intimacy. Alfred Hitchcock understood that naturally occurring sounds are more suited to putting an audience inside the film—that is, to putting them through a “pure film” experience.

Interestingly, three of Hitchcock's films whose settings were restricted to a single location—Lifeboat (1944), Rope (1948) and Rear Window (1954)—restrict the use of non-diegetic music to the opening and closing credits. The rest of the time, the only music you hear comes from within the movie.

In the 1944 movie, Joe Spencer's (Canada Lee's) penny whistle helps relieve the tedium of being lost at sea. Other characters take turns singing as well. Hitch also takes godlike control over the weather to provide a naturalistic soundtrack. These organic sounds make it easy to forget that they do double duty on behalf of both the setting and the the story. Thus, while the seeming intent of that solo music is to boost the spirits of the castaways (as well as the audience), it ironically draw attention to just how isolated the tiny crew is on that vast ocean. Likewise, the sea and wind sounds provide a textured, nuanced point and counterpoint to the travails of the castaways. For instance, the sea waves are temporarily hushed as the castaways pause in mournful silence to honor the watery burial of Mrs. Higgins' (Heather Angel's) baby. Later, though, as capitalist shipping tycoon Charles Rittenhouse (Henry Hull) prepares to beat socialist John Kovac (John Hodiak) at a round of poker, the Atlantic wind heads off this unfair monetary trickle-up with a gust that blows their makeshift cards away. The irony is so strong that “Ritt” blames Kovac for what you can really call an act of God. I take this scene to mean that, though the strong may prevail over the weak in this life, there is a greater justice at work that levels all humans. (Of course, that is the implicit theme of the entire movie: the group of characters in the lifeboat are a microcosm of society.) But it all happens so naturally that you can simultaneously laugh at the irony, wince at Ritt's loss (which he can well afford), and rejoice at Kovac's escape from financial ruin without feeling artificially forced to perceive a “moral” to the incident. Or you can just watch the movie and let the weather effects pull you deeper into the setting.

Anticipating the musicless killing of Gromek in Torn Curtain, the beating to death of Willy in Lifeboat is rendered more realistic by the absence of music. The brutality of the characters who set upon the German like a "pack of dogs," as Hitch described them, is brought into relief by the absence of music. The sea and wind are as passive as the camera itself, which stands at a discreet distance from the violence.

In this regard, part of the beauty of Hitch's films is that they let viewers choose between finding a deeper meaning or simply enjoying them for entertainment. To Hitch (and for me, as a Hitchcock Geek), both ways of looking at his movies are acceptable. Though some critics, notably Andre Bazin, call Hitch to task for the tyranny of his camera that only allows for one set of perceptions, his themes allow for a variety of conflicting interpretations. That multiplicity was misunderstood in 1944 when the supposed propaganda film Lifeboat was scorned for sympathizing with the Axis powers. Such is the two-edged nature of Hitchcockian “pure film,” which brings life in all of its rich contradiction to the screen.

Brandon and Phillip's isolation from society in Rope is accented by their swank apartment with its lofty Manhattan view displayed through a large window that resembles the framework of a gilded birdcage or hothouse.

Rope takes place inside the apartment of a gay couple who push their rarefied Ivy League intellectualism too far, committing murder as a Nietzschean experiment and following the act up with a macabre celebratory dinner served from the wooden chest that conceals their victim. Logically enough, each of the dinner guests arrive with the sound of a doorbell. Its shrill ping punctuates the scene, in effect replacing the visual stimulation of a cut. An exception is made, however, for James Stewart, who quietly lets himself in. In one of my favorite star entrances, he simply appears, like an inspecting angel, when the camera dollies out to a wide shot, as unannounced as one of Hitch's own cameos. The audience feels surprised, caught as unaware as Brandon, who scrambles, stuttering, to regain his composure. By setting up a rhythm of doorbells and then flipping it with Rupert's silent entrance, the audience feels the movie right alongside the characters. This, too, is “pure film.”

Brandon and Phillip are far above “the madding crowd” and when their apartment windows are shut, the silence emphasizes their social disconnection. Helen Cox and David Neumeyer note in their essay “The Musical Function of Sound in Three Films by Alfred Hitchcock” that noises from the street below are heard three times: following David's murder; after Brandon's obnoxious defense of murder as an art for the privileged few; and at the end of the film. Like air hissing out of an escape valve, street noise is used to release tension from these scenes. In the final case, Rupert opens the window, fires the gun into the air and for about two minutes we sit with him, Brandon and Phillip in a wordless funk as the latter plinks his final notes at the piano over the distant hum of traffic and voices and approaching sirens, which drift upward and curl about the room. For Brandon and Phillip, that cathartic burst of fresh air also carries the scent of their own impending death as murderers.

Rear Window is one of the greatest masterpieces of audio design in all film. Not only is all the sound diegetic (except for a musical overture that bookends the movie), but it all seems to waft in through L. B. Jefferies' (James Stewart's) apartment apartment window, keeping audiences rooted in his point of view. With most of Hitch's films you can turn off the sound and follow only the imagery. With Rear Window, however, you can turn off the picture and the main dialogue and still get a strong sense of mood. Yet, like the weather in Lifeboat, that ambient noise serves a further purpose.

Hitchcock wasn't just a realist. His background in German cinema made him a lifelong Expressionist. Those commonplace neighborhood sounds—distant conversations, the tinkling laughter of a house party, Greenwich Village traffic, a yapping dog—reflect off the walls of L. B. Jefferies' courtyard community, echoing his own state of mind. If the scenes he witnesses in his window are a projection of his own inner state, these noises are its soundtrack. When Jeff overhears the bitter sniping that takes place between Mr. and Mrs. Thorwald, or the wife's nagging “Ha-a-a-a-rry” from the newlyweds' apartment, it echoes his own fears about commitment and marriage.

Early in the film, the afternoon's drowsy white noise of neighborhood life aurally approximates Jeff's own slumber as he takes a break from peeping on his neighbors. Though he may feel omnipotent, with a front-row view into his neighbors' apartments, he isn't God. And so later, while sleeping, he misses seeing a crucial detail: Mr. Thorwald leaving his apartment with a mysterious woman who is not his wife. This beautiful panning shot is scored to the anodyne sound of steady rain and the ghostly call of a distant foghorn. It is as though Jeff, whose suspicions have been aroused by Thorwald's late night trips, has subconsciously willed his neighbor into the role of murderer.

Nothing could have been more natural in Greenwich Village in the 1950s than to overhear a composer laboring over a new tune. So it makes perfect sense that Jeff would overhear that. Yet, murder mystery aside, the real story of Rear Window is about Lisa Fremont (Grace Kelly), who adores Jeff, who, on the other hand, wants nothing to do with marriage. That incomplete tune (and its writer's struggle to make something worthwhile out of it) stands in for their relationship—particularly Lisa's side of the story. Every time the tune drifts in through the window, Lisa's ears perk up. Jeff, however, is constantly annoyed by it. Enchanted by its romantic melody, Lisa remarks that it's “almost as if it were being written especially for us,” while, Jeff quips: “No wonder he's having so much trouble with it.” By the end of the movie, when the composer has finished it (and Jeff and Lisa seem to have found a way to unite in something that looks like love), it's a forgone conclusion that that song should be titled “Lisa.”

The point is, in a Hitchcock film, incidental sounds aren't just part of the fabric of realism. They aren't just part of the story, they are the story, another implement in Hitch's “pure film” toolkit.

In 1888, art critic Walter Pater wrote that "all art aspires towards the condition of music" in that music unifies subject matter and form. By means of editing, camera movement, long and short takes, visual design, sound design all the rest of “the technical ingredients,” Hitch's works achieve that musical quality. In a tribute to the maestro, written in 1963, Truffaut remarked that Hitch understood cinema to be “an art of sustained impression, like music. And, like music, it is subject to laws of progression and rhythm, which, for example, have nothing to do with the laws of writing a novel. Many films resemble novels. Those of Alfred Hitchcock resemble a symphonic concert.” That is as good a definition of “pure cinema” as you will find anywhere. Hitch's films don't merely aspire, they attain the “condition of music.”

Hitch achieved that mastery by the most honorable means possible: he paid his dues. In the 1920s, he cut his directorial teeth using mostly stationary cameras to create soundless films shot in grainy, low-resolution black and white. With those basic materials, he was able to move audiences like few directors then or since.

As time went on, he accepted each technological advancement—sound, improved film stock, color, 3-D, Vistavision—with skeptical aloofness. Understanding the value of such “enhancements,” he also comprehended their limitations and often longed for those innocent days of the silent era, when you had to no choice but to work in “pure film.” Embedded in his tissues was the knowledge that the essential capability of film, its magic, lies, not in this or that technological capability, but in its very nature: that it can flow through a projector and create a sense of reality on an otherwise blank screen. As the world's foremost practitioner of pure cinema, he knew when to cut away and when to leave his audience alone in the dark. He knew there was a time to speak and time to keep quiet, passive as a camera, taking it all in.

Hitchcock Talks to Bogdanovich about Pure Film

2011-07-09T13:27:00.000-07:00

Peter Bogdanovich in 1972.

In 1963, cult movie director Peter Bogdanovich sat down with Alfred Hitchcock for a lengthy interview. At times, Hitch was more forthcoming about his artistic intentions in this talk than he was with his famous week-long interview with Francois Truffaut. Put another way, when you place the two interviews together, you can get a more well-rounded view of the inside of Hitch's head. Since we've been talking about Hitchcock's view of "pure film," I thought I'd share this revealing portion from Hitch's sit-down with the director of The Last Picture Show and other great films.

This isn't Part Three of my series, it's just an interlude.

Bogdanovich: In Psycho, aren't you really directing the audience more than the actors?
Yes. It's using pure cinema to cause the audience to emote. It was done by visual means designed in every possible way for an audience. That's why the murder in the bathroom is so violent, because as the film proceeds, there is less violence. But that scene was in the minds of the audience so strongly that one didn't have to do much more.

I think that in Psycho there is no identification with the characters. There wasn't time to develop them and there was no need to. The audience goes through the paroxysms in the film without consciousness of Vera Miles or John Gavin. They're just characters that lead the audience through the final part of the picture. I wasn't interested in them. And you know, nobody ever mentions that they were ever in the film. It's rather sad for them. Can you imagine how the people in the front office would have cast the picture? They'd say, "Well, she gets killed off in the first reel, let's put anybody in there, and give Janet Leigh the second part with the love interest." Of course, this is idiot thinking. The whole point is to kill off the star, that is what makes it so unexpected. This was the basic reason for making the audience see it from the beginning. If they came in half-way through the picture, they would say, "When's Janet Leigh coming on?" You can't have blurred thinking in suspense.

"It's using pure cinema to cause the audience to emote." Wow. In exactly ten words, that could be Hitch's mission statement.

Another tidbit, regarding character development: Hitch's statement that "we didn't have time to develop the characters" is only partly correct. While there may not have been time in the movie for more character development, the fact is that screenwriter Joseph Stefano developed his characters to a much greater extent than we see in the final cut. To the writer's chagrin, Hitchcock repeatedly excised that material from his drafts. For instance, Stefano wrote in hints of a budding romance between the Vera Miles and John Gavin, but Hitch took that material out. In his comments to Bogdanovich, we can see why.

I love Hitch's concluding statement: "You can't have blurred thinking in suspense." That explains why he famously 'directed his audience.' Like an orchestra composer and conductor, he was eliciting a very specific set of emotional responses. Such an approach took a great deal of control over all aspects of the film, including even its marketing, of which Psycho is a case study!

Through the Looking Glass Darkly: Hitchcock's Pursuit of Pure Film, Part 2

2011-07-06T18:25:00.000-07:00

Practically every film Alfred Hitchcock made was in the service of “pure cinema.” Why, then, did he occasionally eschew the established cinematic grammar of editing and montage in favor of long takes? Were these “experiments” deviations from his mission to create “pure cinema,” or were they artistic decisions made in its service? I believe the latter is the case. Here's why.

Hitchcock caught the film bug at around the same age I was when I caught the Hitchcock bug—he was just a teenager. It was 1913 and he, like everyone else of that time, had never seen anything like it. To that generation, it wasn't “only a movie.” It was a motion picture, the result of a series of scientific advancements that projected an uncannily convincing illusion of movement on a bare white wall. In those days, there was no such science as film editing, which meant there was no montage and no close up. In fact, the camera rarely moved at all. It just sat there, unblinking, devouring the action that took place before its lens. Those early cameras were as passive as the audiences they served.

You could say that it was an age of innocence for the camera, the era before that machine became aware of its power and freedom; that it could turn its attention elsewhere via editing; that it could select its viewpoint by moving in for a close-up. Eventually the camera realized that with montage it could treat actors like cattle, knocking veteran stage performers down a rung or two, even making them seem to portray emotions they never intended, turning the meekest of them into coldblooded killers. Perhaps even more miraculously, the camera could make an audience think just about anything its handlers chose.

Still, before all those techniques were discovered, the essential magic of the movies was born fully formed when Georges Méliès (1861 - 1938) first began amazing audiences with magic shows whose tricks were impossible in real life but which were all in the day's work of an inventive film maker.

Before Pee Wee's playhouse and The Wizard of Oz, there was Méliès' The Man with the Rubber Head (1902).

The reason I bring this history up is that this is the world of movies to which Hitch was introduced during the formative years of his youth. I believe he tried to create that sense of wonder, using, among other things, surreal imagery, a sense of the uncanny and, as I hope to demonstrate here, "pure film."

Hitch was once asked how he felt about the new film schools that started to pop up in the late 1960s. His answer offers up a clue as to what “pure film” meant for him. He said that it was fine—“only on condition that they teach cinema since the era of Méliès and that the students learn how to make silent films.” The era of silent film history to which Hitchcock pegged his proposed curriculum is telling. You might think he would have those undergrads start with the predecessor he most admired, D. W. Griffiths, but he went further back in time, though not to the absolute beginning. Méliès didn't invent the motion picture, but he was the first to come along and discover its magical properties. He pioneered the use of special effects to take his audiences to wonderlands of his own making, where flowers bloomed before your eyes and you could even fly to the moon and back without leaving your theater seat. For Hitchcock, that was the origin of the art of filmmaking—that age of innocence before the advent of sound and montage. That was the birth of “pure film.”

Viewed in retrospect, Georges Méliès' A Trip to the Moon is really nothing more than actors clowning in front of a camera, with some ingenious special effects thrown in. But that's the point. The joie de vivre of pre-montage silent cinema is as frothy and simple as whipped cream.

Soon enough, along came the 1920s and the theories of montage developed by Russian film directors, such as Sergei Eisenstein, Vsevolod Pudovkin and his fellow countryman Lev Kuleshov, whose famous experiments pretty much formed the basis for his editing scheme for Rear Window.

Hitchcock schools Fletcher Markle on the Kuleshov effect.

But Hitch was nothing, if not an innovator. He knew that the Russian cookbook was only one of any number of ways to shoot a movie. With its series of long takes spliced together to appear to be essentially one long take, Rope was his greatest effort to create “pure film” using other means. I believe his approach was also an attempt to return to the wonder years of early silent cinema when all movies were shot in a single take. In 1934, Hitch said in an interview, "I think cutting has definite limitations. Its best use is in violent subjects. That is why the Russians made such effective use of it, because they were dealing with violence, and they could pile shock on shock by means of editing."

The long takes of Rope (1948) and Under Capricorn (1949), as well as his other films to a lesser extent, comprise a qualitatively different and new way of 'writing with the camera.' They are a breed apart from the long takes of other directors, such as those of Orson Welles, who employed the technique for theatrical, not purely cinematic purposes.

Those two movies are remarkable artistic and technical achievements, but thanks to their critical and financial failure, they resulted in the dissolution of Hitchcock's production company, Transatlantic Pictures. After an up-and-down stretch (critically and financially, but not creatively) in the early fifties, in 1954 Hitch ran for cover to direct Dial M for Murder -- a surefire hit in 3-D. That bumpy ride proved to be prelude to an extraordinary string of a triumphs never matched by another director, beginning with Rear Window (1954) and ending with Psycho (1960).

And then came the early 1960s: The Birds (1963) and Marnie (1964) were as self-consciously "arty" as Rope and Under Capricorn, and they also flopped -- though, not as spectacularly. Much has been written about Hitch's supposed directorial hubris on these films and that the failure of Marnie, in particular, was a Waterloo-like defeat for him. The current thinking is that high praise from the critics at Cahiers du Cinema, along with François Truffaut's almost sycophantic bond to Hitchcock, went to the director's head. (This, despite having endured decades of cycles of praise and dismissal.) He has been criticized for losing his perspective, believing the he didn't need stars in his films, because the Hitchcock name alone was enough to draw audiences into the theater. Let's address that.

While he obviously relished the attention from the French critics, I doubt that he allowed it to inflate his already secure ego to the degree that it greatly affected his artistic choices: there's no doubt that he was always humble before his muse. Further, after decades of unrelenting self-publicity, along with the success of recent films and his TV show, he had, indeed, become a star in his own right. He had worked for years to get to a point where he no longer needed expensive, spotlight-grabbing A-list stars in his films. With Psycho, he proved that he didn't need his legendary team of brilliant technicians and that a TV production crew could do just fine. That's not an ego trip: it's what he had been working toward for decades.

Putting the full weight of his creative energy into those movies, he'd hoped that they would be regarded as his greatest achievements. So you can imagine how crushing it was for him to see them fail. It was Transatlantic Pictures all over again. Still Hitchcock was a survivor.

The more "conventional" films of his that followed -- Torn Curtain (1966) and Topaz (1969) -- have been devalued, alternatively as the work of a chastened creative genius; a lion in winter shackled by his fiscal obligations to Universal Studios, in which he held a substantial equity position. Most damningly, biographer Donald Spoto wrote that they were the work of a man who had “lost all interest in his women, his actors, his stories – indeed, in movies.” Um, yeah.... With all due respect to these astute writers, I have to politely disagree. True, Hitch's age and the loss of some of his longtime collaborators in the mid-sixties were real setbacks. Studio bosses cramped his style and killed a pet project or two, but none of that was new to him. That's Hollywood. With Torn Curtain and Topaz he was simply repeating the pattern of the fifties (and, early, the thirties, which I haven't yet mentioned): after a pair of failures, he returned to a tried-and-true formula, the spy thriller. Those two movies have so much to offer that I fear they are unfairly overlooked -- particularly as gems of "pure film."

To be honest, Torn Curtain suffers from wooden performances by Julie Andrews and Paul Newman -- she looks like she'd rather be dodging Nazis with the Von Trapps and he looks like he forgot to bring a roll of Tums antacid to the set. Some of the expository dialogue makes me wonder if Hitch even showed up to work on those days. The music is awful and Bernard Herrmann's unused score could well have saved the film. But, even for those flaws, the film still carries more heft than most anything else you might find coming out of Hollywood. For starters, fellow Hitchcock geek Ken Mogg interprets the "fire and ice" imagery of the opening credits, in which a red flame is set against apparition-like images of some of the characters to represent, respectively, Schopenhauerian Will and Representation. Who knows whether or not Hitch was literally thinking of the German philosopher (though the film's title could refer to the veil that separates Will from Representation), Ken's observation is spot on!

Torn Curtain still offers up profound moments of "pure film." The famed murder of Gromek is Hitch's most harrowing death scene up until that time, and I never tire of watching it. But check out the perversely beautiful chase scene below. It might be the oddest chase you'll ever see on film. It's also one of the most compelling. Set in the exquisite Greco-Roman beauty of the East Berlin Museum, the scene reprises Scottie's visits to the Palace of the Legion of Honor in Vertigo -- but this time on a hit of crack. The narrative is underscored, not by lush orchestration, but by the minimalist tap-tapping of two pairs of shoes. You wish Paul Newman could stop and enjoy those masterpieces on its walls, but he is as unstoppable as the movie itself. Boom. "Pure film."

But getting back to the long take. Midcentury audiences weren't as gullible as those in Méliès' day. They knew that editing can conceal as well as reveal. Montage can deceive. Thus, although Hitch found (the hard way?) that long takes can't be employed exclusively, he recognized that they served his quest for “pure film” very well and he never fully abandoned the practice. The uninterrupted gaze of the long take confers a sense of unfiddled-with truth. That's why Hitch encouraged its use in the production of documentaries that depicted the horrors of the Nazi concentration camps, knowing that audiences might not otherwise believe their very eyes.

That's also why he employed a long take in this murder scene from Frenzy in which we, alongside the camera, balefully excuse ourselves from the scene of the crime:

Skipping Topaz for now (with regrets -- it's one of my favorite Hitchcock movies), Frenzy (1972) was a return to form for Hitch -- his last masterpiece. But time was running out for the old man. Following Family Plot (1976), he died with his boots on, devising new situations and plot twists to the last. I believe that if he'd lived another 10 years, he would have recovered from the missteps of the 1960s. That was his creative cycle.

Long takes have a conviction, a presence, a specific gravity that a heavily edited sequence might lack. They keep the audience rooted in the story, not just as an observer, but as a participant in the drama, inexorably drawn along with the unfolding story, with the film itself. For instance, in Lady Henrietta Flusky's (Ingrid Bergman's) nine-minute confession in Under Capricorn, the audience hears the truth about her past at the same time as her confessor and friend, Charles Adair (Michael Wilding). This intimate scene is a direct counterpoint to their first meeting, in which the long take makes us feel the gulf between the drug-addled, hallucination-prone Hattie and the rest of the world. (When you see the scene for the first time, her alienation seems to stem from her weakness; when you see it the second time, her isolation is made more poignant because we are aware of the her essential nobility and of the shameful secret she carries.) The long take in the confession scene allows us to feel Charles' feelings as he felt them—shock and, ultimately, compassion as her story comes out.ⁱ That effect—making the audience experience its feelings in tandem with the rest of the characters, a trait Hitchcock called "putting the audience through it"—is a hallmark of Hitchcockian “pure film.”

Okay, so much for editing and montage as “indispensable” aspects of pure film. (As if you haven't yet had enough, for more of my thoughts on the long take, read my post about Hitch as the compleat film maker.) How did Hitch use sound to pull his audience into the pure film experience? Come on back and read the exciting conclusion to my thoughts on Hitchcock and “pure film.”

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i When Bergman, who disliked performing long takes, saw the finished product she recognized that it added power to her show-stopping performance.

ii Hitch later admitted that it was a mistake to reject montage editing, though he also defended himself, explaining to Truffaut that “the mobility of the camera and the movement of the players closely followed my usual cutting practice. In other words, I maintained the rule of varying the size of the image in relation to its emotional importance within a given episode.”

Following Hitchcock Down the Pure Film Rabbit Hole

2011-07-02T17:49:00.000-07:00

Like many film geeks, I fell down the Hitchcock rabbit hole at the impressionable age of 12 or so. I was initially attracted to his reputation as the master of the macabre, a genre custom-tailored to pubescent boys. But if those thrills were all I had been looking for, I would have been disappointed and to be honest, I was—at first. What grabbed me then and still hasn't let me go, was his mastery as a film maker. In interviews and articles, he often spoke of his work in “pure film,” a phrase he occasionally alternated with the more majestic phrase “pure cinema.” 30 years after first hearing those words, I'm still exploring what he meant by that. My next two posts will explore some of the filmmaking techniques Hitch employed in his pursuit of the grail of “pure cinema.”

At first glance, Hitch seemed to have been talking only about the unique visual power of film, as when he told Peter Bogdanovich in 1962: “'Pure cinema' is complementary pieces of film put together, like notes of music make a melody.” He even once claimed that Rear Window was the finest example of "pure film," because the camera adhered to a rigorous scheme that insisted on telling the story from the viewpoint of a single individual—photographer L. B. Jefferies (James Stewart)—thus placing the audience inside his head and keeping it there throughout the entire film.ⁱ From this, it might be easy to conclude that, for Hitch, the idea of “pure film” has to do only with what happens in the cutting room. But I would say that he had much more in mind and that his use of Rear Window as an example might have made for a good sound bite, but it sidestepped his deeper intentions.

As I see it, for Hitchcock, “pure cinema” was the art of using cinematic techniques—both visual and aural—to create an experience for audiences that would take them out of their daily lives to inhabit a dreamscape constructed by the director. Of course, even the most basic entertainment does that: I don't know about you, but three minutes into the most banal soap opera and I'm hooked. The quantum difference is that Hitchcock's films take cinema's innate quality and create a heightened reality that's the result of deliberate, masterful and intentional control over all aspects of their creation.

In Hitch's comments to Bogdanovich above, he drew a comparison between individual pieces of film that make up a scene and individual music notes that make up a melody. This wasn't the only time he used a musical analogy to describe film making as an art form. For instance, he often compared bright colors and extreme close-ups to the loud notes in a symphonic passage. He compared himself to an orchestra conductor. I'm going to come back to that, but first notice how, a year later, he expanded on his idea of "pure film" in his interview with Francois Truffaut. This time he tipped his hand regarding his grander ambitions to use film to engage his audience in profound ways:

“I don't care about the subject matter; I don't care about the acting; but I do care about the pieces of film and the photography and the sound track and all of the technical ingredients that make the audience scream.... [In the case of Psycho,] it wasn't a message that stirred audiences, nor was it a great performance or the enjoyment of the novel. They were aroused by pure film.”

Hitch's aim was to bring his audience into the world of his movies, to feel emotions alongside his characters; better yet, to feel what Hitch himself felt. Using the camera as an audience surrogate, you could say that he wanted the audience to actually be a character in the film—not just as a silent observer, but as an active participant, asking questions that the film would go on to either answer or deflect. Last night I was watching Lifeboat with Amanda. At one point she turned to me and said, “Am I supposed to like Willi” the Nazi U-Boat captain? My answer was, “Yes. And you're supposed to feel guilty about it.” She did.

With Psycho, the film's drama and terror derived as much from Bernard Herrmann's musical score as it did from Hitch's vaunted montage techniques. While Hitch himself privately acknowledged that Herrmann's score contributed to 30 percent of the film's emotional impact, the composer himself claimed it accounted for 70 percent. (I say we find the mean between their two egos and call it 50-50.) Whatever the case, music was a large part of that movie's “pure film” impact. As Hitch indicated in his Truffaut interview, pure film is the sum of all its parts, including editing, camera movement, background noise and, of course, music—both diegetic and non.ⁱⁱ

Dialogue held a special place in Hitch's "pure film" aesthetic, because, for him, it wasn't so much the words that mattered, but the sound they make: recall that Rope's Brandon accused Rupert of choosing “choose words more for their sound than their meaning.” Also recall that Hitch told Truffaut, “Dialogue should simply be a sound among other sounds, just something that comes out of the mouths of people whose eyes tell the story in visual terms.”

Thus, pure cinema is a combination of all the individual elements that go into a movie, working together to serve this single purpose: to draw the audience mentally, psychologically and emotionally into the world of the film.

Like Hitchcock, Richard Wagner (1813 - 1883) had a lot on his mind.

The way I see it, film in the 20^th century was the summit of achievement toward which all art had been aspiring for the previous three centuries. By the end of the 16^th century, composers were writing works that marshaled the talents of a variety of performance artists. By calling it opera—plural of the Latin opus—meaning “works” or “labors”— they thus declared their intention to offer audiences a combination of many art forms, including solo and choral singing, acting and dance. Later, elaborate sets and costumes were added to the spectacle, offering up a total art experience. By the middle of the 19^th century, Richard Wagner had taken this holistic notion of opera to a new level, referring to his operas as Gesamtkunstwerks, or, “total works of art.” His aim was not merely to combine music, lyrics, vocals, theater and dance into one performance, but to actually unify them into a single, synthesized whole. In 1849, he wrote about his objective to create a “consummate artwork of the future” that would result in “the integrated drama” that would liberate popular stories from their nationalist moorings to become a universal humanist fable.ⁱⁱⁱ

By then, opera had become quite an elaborate production, supported by ticket sales priced for the wealthy. Viewed in that light, it seems almost like a destiny of zeitgeist that film came along right on time, to offer up an operatic experience, available at a price the masses could afford.^iv

As a pure cinema practitioner, Hitchcock was the leader of that charge.

I think it's entirely possible, if not probable, that Hitch, who was keenly aware of his genius as a film maker, saw himself as a modern-day Wagner. Though he never publicly articulated it as such—he was shrewd enough to avoid such grandiosity—his practice of pure cinema is analogous to Wagner's idea of Gesamtkunstwerk.

In an online discussion, Hitchcock author Dan Auiler observed that Bernard Herrmann's work makes the films he worked on “operatic.”(He cited the composer's work on Orson Welles' Citizen Kane and Hitchcock's Vertigo specifically, though many more titles could be added.)^v Dan feels that Herrmann's film music can be said to be “operatic in the sense of the music speaking for the character. But even that falls short of what Herrmann does, as the music speaks for the character and the director in ways that respond to the image we are seeing.” (Italics added.) As Hitch told Truffaut above, he practiced "pure cinema" in the service of eliciting a profound audience reaction. In Herrmann, he found a talent as great as his own for bringing that about.

Bernard Herrmann's star turn in The Man Who Knew Too Much (1956).

While Vertigo might be the most profound collaboration between composer and director of any film ever undertaken, the Hitchcock/Herrmann alliance in The Man Who Knew Too Much is the most transparent example of the heights they could achieve working in concert (pun fully, shamelessly, intended). By showing him conducting the London Symphony Orchestra during the Royal Albert Hall sequence, Hitchcock awarded a cameo appearance to Herrmann—the only time he shared the screen with a member of his non-actor team. And what an exquisite example of "pure film" that scene is! Arthur Benjamin's Storm Cloud Cantata provides the perfect underscore for dramatic tension as Jo McKenna (Doris Day) agonizes over her choice between saving her son from his kidnappers and averting an assassination. It's 10 minutes of wordless suspense, in which the audience shares subjectively in Jo's predicament. A tour de force of editing that serves the music, the story and a maternally ferocious performance by Day, it's a textbook example of "pure film" in which the audience is literally put through the same feelings as the characters on screen.^vi

Hitchcock pursued the art of "pure film" as a Platonic ideal. The notion took hold during his silent years and it was a grail that he pursued all of his life. I believe that every single choice he made was in service to that ideal, for, in his mind, only pure film could arouse audiences sufficiently to 'wake them as from a nightmare.' Sometimes music served that purpose, but at other times, it could be an obstacle. Initially, Hitch envisioned Psycho's murder in the shower without music, but he was persuaded to change his mind when he heard Herrmann's iconic musical accompaniment. The entire length of The Birds contains not a single note of non-diegetic music—though Herrmann was brought in to help orchestrate the squawks and screeches of that film's star chorus. Still, As William Rothman wrote in his essay "The Universal Hitchcock," "pure cinema"

"was not the art to which Herrmann was dedicated. Herrmann swore allegiance to the art he called "melodram,"... which restored to music what he felt was its rightful primacy. In the case of [the shower scene in] Psycho, Hitchcock allowed Herrmann to prevail, but the incident must have opened his eyes to the fact that he and his friend, whose genius was as undeniable as his own, did not ultimately share the same artistic vision."

Music was a useful tool in Hitch's pursuit of "pure film," but it was only a tool. Some of his most sublime and impactful scenes contain no music whatsoever. In fact, he even dispensed with editing at times, delivering his "pure film" experience in a single, seemingly endless, take. Check back and I'll tell you how.

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i That point is slightly overstated, as there are moments when the camera continues to roll while Jefferies sleeps.

ii Diegetic music is what you hear from a source within the story, as when Vertigo's Midge plays Mozart records for Scottie. Non-diegetic music is the musical score that is overlayed on top of the movie, such as the orchestral music that accompanies Scottie's wandering around San Francisco.

iii Similarly, Hitchcock reveled in his films' ability to reach across all cultures, bragging that Psycho shocked audiences in Japan in the same way they did America.

iv In another fascinating burp of destiny, just as realistic painting reached its zenith in the 19^th century, photography came along to put those realist painters out of work, especially in the portrait business.

v Herrmann's contributions to Hitchcock's films include The Trouble with Harry (1955), The Man Who Knew Too Much (1956), The Wrong Man (1956), Vertigo (1958), North by Northwest (1959), Psycho (1960), The Birds (1963), Marnie (1964) and Torn Curtain (regrettably unused, 1966).

vi Herrmann was given the choice of composing new music for the sequence—Hitch used the same material in his 1934 version of the film—but declined when he saw that Benjamin's music was still an ideal fit 22 years after the first film had come out.

Hitchcock and Herrmann: A Tale of Two Maestros

2011-06-27T08:02:00.000-07:00

By Elisabeth Karlin

They couldn't have been more different and they couldn't have been more alike. Alfred Hitchcock, the reserved Englishman with the Jesuit upbringing who worked his way up the ranks in film production, and Bernard Herrmann, the excitable, Juilliard-trained, Jewish New Yorker. In common, they were stubborn and impatient and prone to depression. Apart, they were monumentally successful. Together, they established one of the most brilliant creative partnerships ever seen between two artists.

Theirs is the story of two masters and it's a narrative alive with suspense and complete with a subtext full of the signs, symbols and recurring motifs that Hitchcock geeks (or scholars, if you prefer) compulsively sift through and savorhat both their names beging with "H" suggests a deep identification, should we assume that Bernard with a "B" was the beta to Alfred's alpha?

They were two exacting perfectionists whose individual work informed and heightened each other's and came to a thrilling climax in a masterpiece of operatic dimension. Neither man was easy. They were two famously difficult fellows who managed not only to get along but, like inspired Siamese twins in an intellectual and emotional symbiosis, managed to thrive. Until they didn't. When the curtain came down on their final act together, it came down in shreds, slashed beyond repair.

Bernard Herrmann, a composer of ballets and operas had mainly supported himself by conducting for radio, most notably Mercury Theatre on the Air (where he provided the music for the infamous "War of the Worlds" hoax.) He arrived in Hollywood with Orson Welles and right out of the gate garnered two Academy Award nominations, one for Citizen Kane and one for The Devil and Daniel Webster, which actually went on to snap up a an Oscar trophy. Obsessive and meticulous, he insisted on orchestrating his own compositions and quickly became one of the most influential composers in movies.

Meanwhile, Hitch enjoyed the luxury of working with a steady crew of professionals but he had not found a composer who stuck. When he met Benny, an artist who was as controlling as he, they discovered, as Herrmann put it, "A great unanimity of ideas."

Beginning with the playfully macabre score Herrmann created for The Trouble with Harry, a dedicated association was hatched. Not that they necessarily saw their estimable output as the result of teamwork. Hitchcock was never one to share a spotlight and Herrmann put it out there that "Hitchcock had the great sensitivity to leave me alone when I was composing," adding, "he left it completely to me."

However they viewed the collaboration in their own minds, they worked together in mutual respect and forged a friendship. Hitchcock had an unusual trust in his composer. One can speculate on the depth of their affiliation from The Man Who Knew Too Much, where Herrmann shows up in the film's socko climax, conducting the London Symphony Orchestra to his own orchestration of Arthur Benjamin's "Storm Cloud Cantata." Earlier, a large poster heralding Herrmann's appearance plants the inkling of the maestro as the director's alter-ego. Sweetening this cameo even more is the knowledge that conducting was Herrmann's first love.

Continuing to convey the aural expression of Hitchcock's vision, Herrmann wrote an appropriately stark and jazz inflected score for The Wrong Man. Their stimulating simpatico in full flourish, the two were propelled into their next project that would widely be considered the crescendo of their careers.

Vertigo was like something borne of a fever dream shared between director and composer. Everyone employed on the film was at the top of their game and Hitchcock and Herrmann plunged into its strange waters holding hands. The sight and sound of Vertigo hit one as if the two were that fatefully entwined. Whether it is the scent of Wagner wafting through the impossible romance or Carlotta's disturbing habanera, there are few films that are so beautifully and powerfully wrapped up in music. It was Herrmann's most rapturous score since Joseph L. Mankiewicz's The Ghost and Mrs. Muir (curiously, another film that had overtones of necrophilia). Vertigo was certainly Hitchcock's most intimate film but it seems that Herrmann too, knew something about its ache of obsession, loss and longing. In Vertigo the profound connection between Hitchcock and Herrmann is at once evident and unutterable.

Relieving us from the tragic death throes of Vertigo, the rousing, full of life fandango that breezes through the opening titles of North By Northwest, bursts in like an exhale of exhilaration, clearing away the cobwebs.

And just when we thought we were on a safe train to happily ever after, came a little low-budget black and white affair to knock us right out of our complacency. Hitchcock originally envisioned the shower scene of Psycho with no music -- simply splashes and screams. Herrmann piped up with the idea of screeching violins and, wisely, Hitchcock listened. With terrifying images played out against the most iconic musical cue in movie history, the two left an unerasable smudge of shock on popular culture.

The unearthly eeriness of The Birds comes precisely from its lack of music, but Herrmann was still on hand to direct and orchestrate the mingling of the natural and electronic bird effects. Too fittingly, it was at this time that relations between the two masters got a little peckish. Herrmann's lingering irritation over his pay cut on Psycho didn't amount to much but it does give us a bit of foreshadowing of what was to come.

When Marnie went into production the sixties were in full swing. Youth ruled and lush, symphonic movie scores were out. For Marnie, Herrmann wrote a lush, symphonic score. And for that, the Universal studios front office lay much of the blame of its critical and financial failure. Decades later, Marnie stands up as far from a failure, and its melody sets the film's autumnal, timeless romanticism, something that a pop score would have oafishly obliterated.

Hitchcock was stressed out and insecure. In the wake of tectonic changes in the movie business, one of the world's greatest directors was now a cog in a conglomerate. His un-Hitchcocklike response was to bend to executives. At the same time, Bernard Herrmann, as vituperative as ever, was ready to tell them all to screw themselves. Still, Hitchcock went against the studio's urging and stuck with Herrmann going into Torn Curtain. To placate his bosses however, Hitchcock instructed Herrmann to write a pop song for Julie Andrews to sing in the film.

"Just write a hit song that would appeal to teenagers." Hitchcock told him.

"Since when do you make movies for children?" Herrmann answered.

Under the oppressive studio influence, Hitchcock worried that Herrmann was predictable and behind the times but he still wanted him. Sort of. Only now he wanted a Herrmann who would do what he was told.

After hearing Hitchcock out, Herrmann went ahead and wrote the score that he felt would best serve the movie and perhaps even improve a project that was looking all wrong, from script to casting. Accustomed to his old powers of persuasion with Hitch, he wrote music for scenes that Hitchcock wanted without music and most defiantly, he neglected to come up with a song for Julie Andrews to warble.

When Herrmann began recording the score, Hitchcock showed up, unannounced, at the recording session. Upon hearing the music, he flew into a rage -- a rarity for a man who avoided conflict whenever possible -- bellowing that this was exactly the music he didn't want. According to some accounts, he dismissed the musicians and canceled future recording sessions, effectively firing Herrmann, dramatically accusing him of stabbing him in the back. Herrmann shouted back that Hitch had abandoned his integrity and sold out. Though there is some disagreement over who said what to whom and when, apparently their final dialogue went something like this:

Hitchcock: "I'm entitled to a pop tune if I want one!"

Herrmann: "What's the use of my doing more with you? I had a career before you and I'll have one afterwards."

And he did. Herrmann left the United States for London and enjoyed further success scoring for the less commercially driven Europeans.

June 29th marks Bernard Herrmann's centenary. In a career spanning from 1941's Citizen Kane to 1976's Taxi Driver (that he was working on at the time of his death) Herrmann scored many of the world's most prestigious pictures. And right, smack in the middle of that career was a mystical marriage of two maestros that, for ten years, cut a mighty swath through the history of music in film.

There is a coda. A couple of years after the Torn Curtain debacle, Herrmann and Hitchcock had still not spoken. Herrmann was in Los Angeles and, wanting to finally break the ice and restore a meaningful friendship, he and his new wife drove out to Hitchcock's office and asked to see him. Only a door stood between the two estranged geniuses. According to Hitchcock biographer Patrick McGilligan, that door never opened. But according to Herrmann's widow, Norma, Hitch did meet with the composer, for a brief, cool conversation.

Excerpt: Alfred Hitchcock and the Making of Psycho by Stephen Rebello

2011-06-19T16:20:00.000-07:00

June 16th marked the 51st anniversary of the release of Psycho. In celebration of the occasion, the folks at Open Road Media sent me a chapter from the book. Check out this terrifying excerpt, which tells the true-life story of the real Norman Bates. Enjoy!

THE AWFUL TRUTH

Excerpted from Stephen Rebello's Alfred Hitchcock and the Making of Psycho

There was a young man named Ed Who would not take a woman to bed

When he wanted to diddle, He cut out the middle

And hung the rest in a shed.

—ANONYMOUS, 1957

In late November 1957, no one would have marked Plainfield as unlike any other hardscrabble, rawboned Wisconsin farm hamlet. That winter was especially raw. Ask any of the friendly townies of third- and fourth-generation German and French stock. In flat, laconic tones, they recite litanies of burst water mains and permafrost; of nights spent hunkering down against slashing winds and rains that blew east along Canada’s border. But that November also saw Plainfield mentioned in newspapers across the country. Remind these dairyland types about that little bit of business and their open faces wall up. They begin to study their shoes or make excuses before they beg off. That month, in 1957, Plainfield police smoked out an oafish fifty-one-year-old, odd-job-and-errands-man named Ed Gein (rhymes with mean) as one of the grisliest mass murderers America ever spawned.

Long before the headlines were to brand Gein as a bogeyman, his rural, God-fearing community of seven hundred had chalked him off as a crank. A perpetually grinning, unmarried recluse, Gein rambled over 160 ruined acres once farmed by his parents and brother. Even locals who never gave a second thought to hiring Gein for errands or baby-sitting had wearied of his harebrained theories. He liked to rag on the whys and wherefores of criminals who fouled up, or yammer endlessly, and pitifully, about women. Plainfield-ers recall his clinical obsession with anatomy and with the sex-change operation of Christine Jorgensen. But there was more to Gein than loony talk. That came home with a vengeance with the discovery of bloodstains on the floor of Bernice Worden’s general store on November 16.

Customers had marked it as odd that Worden’s store had been closed since before noon that Saturday, her busiest day. No one had seen the steady, well-liked storekeeper since the previous day. Her pickup truck was missing from its usual spot. Concerned, Worden’s deputy sheriff son, Frank, let himself into the store. A late entry in Worden’s sales book (“1/2 gall, antifreeze”) triggered Frank’s recollection of Ed Gein’s loafing about the store the previous week. Gein had asked whether Frank would be out deer hunting on Saturday. When Frank answered that he would, Gein casually mentioned he might be back for a can of antifreeze.

On Frank Worden’s tip, Sheriff Art Schley and Captain Lloyd Schoephoerster made tracks for Gein’s lonesome, decaying hermitage. The hand of death had first passed over the stark farmland when Gein’s father succumbed to a stroke in 1940. Four years later, a fire claimed the life of Ed’s older brother, Henry, and, the following year, Gein’s hellfire-and-brimstone-spouting mother met her maker, too. Now, Gein lived alone—or so it had seemed.

Gein was elsewhere when the law came to call. Schley and his officers lighted the way with kerosene lamps and flashlights; the old house was only partly jerry-wired for electricity. The lawmen picked their way through a rat’s nest of browning newspapers, pulp magazines, anatomy books, embalming supplies, food cartons, tin cans, and random debris. Upstairs, five empty, unused rooms slept under blankets of dust; by contrast, the bedroom of Gein’s late mother and a living room, both nailed shut, were kept pristine.

Raking the rubble of Gein’s kitchen and bedroom, the officers uncovered sights for which no highway wreck or Saturday night special shoot-’em-up had prepared them. Grinning, loose-toothed Ed Gein did not live alone, after all. Sharing his abode were two shin bones. Two pairs of human lips on a string. A cupful of human noses that sat on the kitchen table. A human skin purse and bracelets. Four flesh-upholstered chairs. A tidy row of ten grimacing human skulls. A tom-tom rigged from a quart can with skin stretched across the top and bottom. A soup bowl fashioned from an inverted human half-skull. The eviscerated skins of four women’s faces, rouged, made-up, and thumbtacked to the wall at eye level. Five “re-placement” faces secured in plastic bags. Ten female heads, hacked off at the eyebrow. A rolled-up pair of leggings and skin “vest,” including the mammaries, severed from another unfortunate.

In the adjacent smokehouse shed, police found what they would later identify as having once been Bernice Worden. Nude, headless, dangling by the heels, she had been disemboweled like a steer. Sitting atop a pot-bellied stove in the adjacent kitchen was a pan of water in which floated a human heart. The freezer compartment of the refrigerator was stocked with carefully wrapped human organs.

“I didn’t have anything to do with it. I just heard about it while I was eating supper,” mumbled Gein when Frank Worden located and confronted him about the discovery of Bernice’s corpse. Worden arrested Gein on the spot. In no time flat, Plainfield’s Caspar Milquetoast underwent a lie detector test, a murder charge, and psychiatric examinations at Central State Hospital for the Criminally Insane. Until then, no one had credited the mutterings of a shiftless crank about his “collection of shrunken heads.” No one paid any mind to his inside knowledge of the area’s many unsolved disappearances of women. The Gein farmhouse offered testimony not only to man’s fathomless capacity for the barbaric, but also to the ability of an entire community to deny its very existence. “It can’t happen here,” insists the satiric lyric of a Frank Zappa song, “Help I’m a Rock.” The “here” in question is the human heart and mind.

Gein met the probing of his examiners with barely audible, monotone ramblings. His memory was murky. He admitted to only two murders, claiming he was “in a daze” during both. No law officer, psychiatrist, or court examiner could penetrate Gein’s motivations. Yes, he admitted to dismantling Bernice Worden’s cash register and removing $41. Yes, he had also exhumed his first cadaver with a farmer crony, Gus. Yet his rationale for both was identical: He liked “taking things apart” to see “how things work.”

Deep in the night, while his hard-working neighbors made love, snored, studied the Good Book, and fretted over bills, bland, simple Ed Gein delved into the mystery of “how things worked” by traipsing around the farm with the skin, hair, and face mask of newly exhumed corpses strapped to his naked body. Authorities discovered that Gein’s first graveyard visit led to forty-odd other digs—always graves of females—often just a stone’s throw from the final resting place of his mother. He told his examiners that he and Gus (who had died several years earlier of natural causes) buried the bones and incinerated less-interesting body parts in the Gein stove. When newspapers reported that Gein claimed “I never shot a deer,” how many locals shuddered at the memory of plastic bags packed with tasty “venison” given them by Gein?

Gein made his first kill in 1955 when, late one bitter winter night, his .32 rifle drew a bead on a bosomy, fifty-one-year-old, divorced tavern owner. Using a sled, Gein dragged the body of Mary Hogan to his “summer kitchen” shed. Police suspected Gein of torturing and murdering at least ten other victims between Mary Hogan and Bernice Worden. He never owned up to them before being judged criminally insane and sentenced to life at Central State Hospital.

Local newspapers, some of which dubbed Gein “the mad butcher,” reported only his murders and alleged cannibalism. Transvestism, grave robbing, and, as some speculated, an incestuous relationship with Mom apparently went beyond the limits of even big-city reportage of the 1950s. For “America’s dairyland,” such topics were literally unspeakable. But what the newspapers suppressed, back-fence rumors and sick jokes spelled out. The press and the ambulance chasers attached themselves to Plainfield like piranha on a drowning sumo wrestler. Cars packed with the curious drove miles to aim Brownie cameras and to stone Gein’s “murder house.” Outraged locals circled the wagons and closed their minds. Yet many natives were known to drive miles out of their way to bypass the Gein farm. Inevitably, there were cracks in the wall of denial. Physicians throughout the state found their offices packed with patients complaining of gastrointestinal symptoms. Local psychiatrists treated many ids scrambled by Gein’s penchant for “spare parts.”

Sick jokes, “Gein-ers” the locals called them, ran rampant. Setup: “How were Ed Gein’s folks?” Payoff: “Delicious,” Or “What’s Ed Gein’s phone number?,” which drew the response: “O-I-C-U-8-1-2.” And this to defuse another unspoken terror: “Why could no one ever keep Gein in jail?” Punchline: “Because he’d just draw a picture of a woman on the wall and eat his way out” Bar hounds roused boozy yuks by ordering Gein Beer (“Lots of body, but no head”), and corn-fed tykes with faces like Campbell’s Soup can kids jumped rope, chanting:

’Twas the night before Christmas

And all through the school,

Not a creature was stirring

Not even a mule.

The teachers were hung

From the ceiling with care

In hope that Ed Gein

Soon would be there.

To the day of Gein’s quiet, uneventful death on July 26, 1984 in the asylum, hospital workers described him as “tractable,” “harmless.” His awareness of the outside world was minimal. Of his crimes he was virtually an amnesiac. Perhaps hoping to purge Plainfield of the Gein legacy, unknown persons torched the farm over two decades ago. To this day, the morbid, the crime buffs, the thrill seekers, and the marginals make pilgrimages to the ruins. And locals admit a Yuletide never passes without some child’s warbling, “Deck the halls with limbs of Mollie.”

No one can measure the shock waves unleashed by Ed Gein’s monstrous acts or the anguish he inflicted upon his victims or their survivors. In 1957, most Americans preferred to perceive themselves as God-fearing, clean-living men in gray flannel suits, or perfectly perfect Doris Day wives, or wholesome kids next door like Shirley Jones and Pat Boone in April Love. We elected a president named Eisenhower, twirled hula hoops, and watched “Ozzie and Harriet.” But in a town less than forty miles from Plainfield, at least one man stared hard into the bathroom mirror while shaving. He brooded over Gein, thought of himself, and shuddered.

---

Alfred Hitchcock and the Making of Psycho by Stephen Rebello is available from Amazon.com, the Apple iBookstore, Barnesandnoble.com, Kobo Books, OverDrive, and the Sony Reader Store. It is currently in development as a feature film, and you can follow updates from the author on Facebook and Twitter.

Dear Amanda: I Need You to be Madeleine One More Time

2011-06-04T16:28:00.000-07:00

Click to enlarge photos

When I first saw Amanda, she reminded me of someone I had once known and loved. It was the end of winter. A long, bitter season, grey as the hull of an aircraft carrier. Especially for me, handed over to the care of the sisters at Green Manors who fed me spoonfuls of watery soup and sponged me down in their tepid baths. I will never forget the laughter and the tears and the cruel eyes studying me.

After I lost Madeleine, it was as if I'd fallen down a bottomless well. My old friend Midge did what she could for me until there was nothing left to do. So she put me “someplace.” Someplace. The bleakest euphemism in the English language.

After that winter, I knew I had to get out, away from the flowers and the Mozart and the ever-present odors of urine and laundry lye. Even if I had nowhere to go.

So I took to the streets, wandering, pausing only to stop at a food cart or a diner or to fall into my bed at night, and then picking up again the next day to search the eyes of the people I encountered as if for an omen, a face I could recognize amid the cacophony of the traffic and the distant lowing of the foghorns.

And always searching for Madeleine, who, like Poe's Lenore, was “doubly dead in that she died so young.”

That's when I first saw Amanda. Sure, the hair was wrong. And the makeup. And those awful clothes! But there was something about her I couldn't ignore. I had to meet her. I knew it was wrong. Maybe even a little crazy. She had gotten my blood up. We all go a little crazy sometimes, don't we?

And so I followed her home, trailing her to her room in Chinatown, which, like Shanghai itself, has seen better days.

“Is this some kind of Gallup Poll?” she asked, her voice flat and barren.

She was nothing but a shopgirl, she insisted. She even showed me her driver's license. Salina, Kansas. But I couldn't shake the feeling I had about her. The look in her eye that told me that maybe, if you're in the right place at the right time and you get a lucky break, the present can bend back to touch the past. Standing in her flyspeck hotel room, amid her forlorn tchotchkes, I asked her to dinner.

“Why?” she said. “Because I remind you of someone?”

“Yes.”

“I've heard that one before,” she said. “Let's see, I remind you of someone you were madly in love with. But then she ditched you for another guy and you've been carrying a torch ever since. Then you saw me and something clicked.”

“You're not far wrong,” I said and my face clouded over.

“She's dead, isn't she?”

I nodded.

Exactly one hour later, I picked her up for dinner.

Before I go any farther, you should know that I was always honest with Amanda. Regardless of how you judge what I'm about to tell you, she always knew exactly what I wanted from her—and she went along with it. Strange to say, I felt somehow responsible for her. As if she were someone whose life I'd once saved. With that came a sense of ownership.

At first, I just wanted to see more of her. As time went by, however, the dinners at Beaker and Flask, the dancing, the walks in Washington Park weren't enough. I'd be the first to admit that things got a little out of hand.

At times I might have been more intrusive than I should have been.

But when I looked in her eyes, I saw, not Amanda, but Madeleine. Or rather, I saw Amanda's face lingering where Madeleine's should have been, like an uninvited visitor who has overstayed his welcome. Something wasn't right. Something had to change.

Starting with her wardrobe.

She should have been grateful—but she fought me the whole way. Each step was bringing me one step closer to... I wasn't sure what. But I had to see this through.

“Why are you doing this?” she said. “What good will it do?”

“I don't know. No good, I guess. I don't know,” I said, turning to the window, frustrated and angry, but most of all, confused. So there we were. Locked in our deranged embrace. Me, unable to let go. Amanda, unable to break free. Still, those past few days were the first happy days I'd had in a year.

The clothes were certainly an improvement. But they weren't enough. Her hair was all wrong. For one thing, Madeleine was blonde.

The next day, I went with her to the salon. I met her stylist and described the exact shade of blonde that I wanted to see. And then I explained the makeover, selecting the precise shade of lipstick, eye shadow and eyebrow pencil. Her skin tone was already perfect and needed only a light brushing of rouge. I explained how her nails ought to be trimmed and manicured, stipulating the nail color that they should apply. I was the director of a movie in my head, creating a character for an audience of one.

I returned to her squalid apartment to wait.

One hour went by.

And then two.

And then three.

It was getting toward evening when I heard the elevator down the hall clatter to a stop. She was in the suit and blouse I'd bought her. She wore the shoes. Her makeup and hair checked out too. But....

“Well?” she said.

“Your hair should be back from your face and pinned at the neck. I told her that. I told you that.”

“We tried it. It just didn't seem to suit me.”

“Please, Amanda.” I sent her into the restroom to finish what I started.

When she came out, I knew.

I had her at last.

Back from the dead and in my arms once more.

She was a very apt pupil. I owned her fully and completely. One doesn't often get a second chance. She was mine and I determined then and there to never let her go. Amanda was my second chance.

Death itself couldn't part us.

Farley Granger: Hitchcock's Man Who Loved Men

2011-03-31T14:07:00.000-07:00

By Elisabeth Karlin

Beautiful Farley Granger died on March 27 in New York City. He was 85. As his obituaries have noted, Granger is best known for the two films he made with Alfred Hitchcock. Often dismissed as a kind of Montgomery Clift-Lite, Farley Granger was much more than a pretty face in the way he approached his work and how he lived his life.

Years before Granger proclaimed his own bi-sexuality, Hitchcock cast him in two roles that boldly crossed the lines of conventional sexuality. In 1948's Rope, Granger plays Phillip, the jumpier one of the murderous Leopold and Loeb-like couple. There is no doubt that Phillip and his partner in crime Brandon (John Dall) are homosexual. Along with, as screenwriter Arthur Laurents has confirmed, their mentor Ruper Cadell (James Stewart.)

Seemingly dominated by the glib and guilt-free Brandon, it is Phillip who bears the weight of their deadly deed. Granger's Phillip is haunted and high strung. Rope, told in long takes and real time, has Granger start off at a pitch of high anxiety that he deftly portrays without sending the character over the scenery-chewing top. He even manages to inject the story with welcome humor as he unravels.

The homosexuality in Rope is never commented on, it just is. The characters are matter-of-factly gay. They happen to be gay just as they happen to be white New Yorkers. So even though Rope is populated with gay characters, it is actually Granger's second film with Hitchcock that digs down deep into Hitchcock's fascination with homosexuality.

1951's Strangers on a Train is veiled where Rope is clear, but it is drenched in the heady brew of magnetic attraction and passion that can bubble between two of the same sex. Rope's got homosexuals in it but Strangers' has homosexuality oozing out of it. Again Granger, as tennis player Guy Haines, is dominated by a more knowing and dangerous associate. This time it is in the formidable figure of Robert Walker's Bruno Anthony. And again, Granger is a vulnerable but worthy match.

As Guy is pulled into Bruno's subversive world, he not only finds himself to be the love object of a madman but he discovers that this devil is capable of bringing fantasies to life. One fantasy, the death of his wife Miriam, is apparent. The other fantasy is never stated but it shadows every scene between the two men.

Guy's ostensible romance with Ann Morton fades to an afterthought as his link to Bruno has them bewitching, bothering and bewildering each other all the way to the climax on a crazy carousel. The depth of Guy's conflicted feelings comes to full light in the scene of Senator Morton's party. After Bruno has nearly strangled one of the guests, he is seen prostrate on a settee--most scenes seem to find Bruno in a state of post-coital languor. Guy tells him to leave him alone and in the next moment he pulls Bruno to his feet, then he punches him back down off his feet and then he pulls him back up again and straightens Bruno's shirt and tie like a good wife. The push-pull, I love you-I hate you actions of Guy tell us that the attachment of these two is until death do them part. And Farley Granger plays it with unstinting conviction.

At the height of his career, Farley Granger turned his back on Hollywood and headed to New York for theatre. "Hollywood was never a place for me. The stage was magic." Farley knew what was for him and didn't care what anybody thought about it. After years of relationships with illustrious men and women (Ava Gardner, Leonard Bernstein and Arthur Laurents among them) he eventually came right out and said "I've lived the greater part of my life with a man so obviously that is the most satisfying."

Together, Farley Granger and Alfred Hitchcock got a different kind of love up on the screen and into the public consciousness. Long may they live there.

Alfred Hitchcock's Sex and Sensibility

2011-02-25T11:30:00.000-08:00

I can't think of a single measure by which Alfred Hitchcock could be described as “average.” A man of huge appetites for food, wine, humor and art, he seemed repressed in only one way: sexually. Even that was inordinate. A self-proclaimed celibate, he insisted that he'd had sex exactly once. Given such monk-like sexual proclivities, how was he able to direct some of classic Hollywood's hottest sex scenes?

Most theories suggest that he simply acted out his sexual fantasies on the set. No doubt there's a lot of truth in that. But I think that conclusion greatly oversimplifies the impulses behind Hitchcock's genius. Say whatever you want about Hitchcock, there is no question that few people understood human nature like Hitch. He knew what makes us tick—and his sex scenes, often among the most carefully planned parts of his films—delivered on that.

As I've shown elsewhere, Hitch drew heavily on fine art when designing his films. When developing his love scenes, he looked to romantic and erotic art to deliver an especially charged sexual wallop.

Hitch was a big fan of Auguste Rodin— and his sculpture The Kiss , based on Dante's story of Paolo and Francesca, likely influenced his love scenes. Other Rodin sculptures might also have wormed their way into Hitch's psyche too.

Fugit Amor (Fugitive Love) a part of Rodin's The Gates of Hell, which can be seen at Stanford University—a two-hour drive from Hitch's Santa Cruz home. The director surely would have visited it.

Like The Kiss, Fugit Amor depicts the tragic affair of Paolo Malatesta and Francesca da Rimini that led to their murder and damnation to the second level of hell. Fugit Amor shows us their fate in hell, eternally tossed about by a fiery whirlwind that keeps them forever out of each other's grasp.

Their story was a popular theme in the 18th and 19th centuries, inspiring countless paintings and sculptures.

The Ghosts of Paolo and Francesca Appear to Dante and Virgil by Ary Scheffer (1835). The whirlwind that whips them about expresses their unfulfilled desire and emotional turmoil. Hitchcock furthered the tradition, modernizing it and incorporating it into his films.

In Torn Curtain (1966), Hitchcock recreated Tchaikovsky's ballet Francesca da Rimini. This wasn't a random or gratuitous use of the well-known ballet. From its opening credits to Gromek's murder in a gas oven to Paul Newman's crying "Fire!" in the middle of the ballet in order to escape his enemies, the film is filled with images of fire and hell. The implication is that even Cold Wars are hell. The turmoil that the protagonist and his wife (Paul Newman and Julie Andrews) are caught up in bears comparison to Dante's poem. (I'm going to save that bit for another post.)

Hitchcock's Notorious replays the story to the letter—with the uplifting difference that Alicia and Devlin get a happy ending. But I imagine that Hitch's penchant for staging his love scenes at windswept beaches also hearkens back to the story of Dante's lovers. Such placement speaks to the elusiveness of love, that it is both a consummation and a complication. Hitch's sex scenes are often undercut by a foreboding mood, perhaps fear, that the lovers will be caught; or of a desperate sense that the spell of their romance hangs by a mere thread. Dante-esque stuff.

Scottie and Madeleine (James Stewart and Kim Novak) desperately embrace in Vertigo.

The troubled marriage of Maxim and Mrs. DeWinter (Laurence Olivier and Joan Fontaine) boils over at a cliff overlooking the beach in Rebecca.

In one of that film's most poignant scenes, Mr. and Mrs. DeWinter have a testy exchange while watching home movies. It is just as Francesca speaking from the maelstrom, told Dante in his poem: “There is no greater sorrow than thinking back upon a happy time in misery.”

In Hitchcock's films, turbulent scenes often take place on windy hilltops, as this scene between Paul Newman and Julie Andrews in Torn Curtain.

For Hitchcock, who received a proper Jesuit education and would have been familiar with Dante's Inferno, translating these stories to the screen wasn't just an episode of Schoolhouse Rock. Their themes have stuck around through the centuries because they speak to universal human feelings. They spoke to Hitch himself, who so often fell for his leading ladies, only to realize that his love would go unrequited.

But the erotic power of Hitch's love scenes go way beyond their narrative content.

From his 1926 directorial debut, The Pleasure Garden, a backstage drama about the lives of a pair of showgirls, Hitch showed a fondness for spicing up his films with more than a little titillation.

The Pleasure Garden abounds with sexy showgirls...

...and the men who watch them. (1926 audiences would have known that such music halls were often thinly disguised brothels.)

We're even given a privileged view of the backstage area and dressing room. Though today we might be inured to relatively tame images like these, these scenes were rather sensational in 1926. Hitch's camera took the audience into previously forbidden areas, the voyeurism intensifying the erotic power of such scenes.

This may be the first example of that tried-and-true teen flick trope: the close-up-on-the-ankles underwear drop. The implied nudity in is almost as hot as if he'd actually shown the girl's naughtier bits.

For starters, Hitch understood that sexual tension can increase in direct proportion to the withholding of its satisfaction. The blondes in his early films are first-rate teases.

Über-tease Kate (Anny Ondra) refuses to give her lover a direct answer to his proposal of marriage.

One particular area where Hitchcock's kisses stand out is their placement in the story. While most films put the dramatic love scene at the end, Hitch usually placed his roughly halfway through. As a result, his kisses aren't climaxes, they're preludes. Sure, they consummate desire—but they also drive the plot forward, usually to doom or redemption or, more often, both.

In Rear Window (1954), Grace Kelly's superheated stop-motion smooch with James Stewart leads to more canoodling, but also to an argument about his failure to commit. Eventually, it leads her to risk her life by snooping around murder suspect's apartment.

In one of the Hitchcock's most iconic kisses, when psychoanalyst Constance Petersen (Ingrid Bergman) surrenders to J. B.'s seduction (played by Gregory Peck) in Spellbound, the 'doors of her mind' fly open, signifying release and sexual awakening. The scene points back to the film's prologue, which promises that through the logic of psychoanalysis, the 'locked doors of one's mind' can be opened, leading to a cure from neurosis. For Constance, however, her (f)rigidity is cured by that most illogical of devices—a kiss—and it leads to her entanglement in J.B's efforts to run from the law and from the past.

And what about To Catch a Thief? This movie is one long come-on, this time perpetrated by Grace Kelly on a coolly cooperative Grant. Everything goes along swimmingly until they spend a fateful night together, after which she wakes up to find the he has **cough cough** robbed her of her jewels. With that, the plot picks up speed (even as it loses a measure of romantic steam).

Camille Paglia has said that

"Hitchcock's vision is so extensive, so broad, that it takes in everything, from architecture to politics to sexuality -- but sexuality in particular, with its weird mixture of beauty and desire and horror and the macabre. There's an emotional depth to Hitchcock's films that I find almost completely lacking in some of the European art films that I once so adored and now regard as rather affected and very partial statements about human life."

I'm going to explore what she meant by that in my next post.

Alfred Hitchcock's Tunnel of Love - Part II

2011-02-16T05:48:00.001-08:00

By Elisabeth Karlin

Who is Hitchcock's most erotic creation? People tend to answer this in couplings: Cary Grant and Grace Kelly; Cary Grant and Ingrid Bergman; Cary Grant and Eva Marie Saint. But what character stands on his, or her, own as the apotheosis of straight-up animal lust? Based on the above list, one might assume Cary Grant. Grant was a rare breed--a male love object--but do we really think of him as prowling the carnal jungle? Besides, let's be real--when we're talking Hitchcock sex we're talking women.

Among the array of cool blondes, available brunettes and the smattering of exotic types, who is the most lickerishly libidinous? She should be someone who actually has sex. We know North by Northwest's Eve Kendall is sexually active but it's a job. And for all the dizzying pheromones Kim Novak seems to shoot off, Vertigo's Judy Barton is driven by needs beyond sex.

It's really not enough for the personification of eroticism to have sex, she must be hungry for it. Psycho's Marion Crane comes to us straight from Sam's sweaty sheets but she longs for marriage and respectability. Marion is not a woman dictated by her appetite (she eats like a bird.) Constance Porter in Lifeboat is experienced and willing (and God knows she's hungry) but her function is as brainy leader--more Athena than Aphrodite. The pan-sexual title character of Rebecca would fill the bill, were she alive and Rear Window's Miss Torso puts on a good show but she is all tease.To find the woman in Hitchcock who combines lust, hunger and just enough coarseness to wear it proudly, one must get on board the train to Metcalfe and look up Miriam Haines. Strangers on a Train's Miriam is far from the Grace Kelly mold of fine bones and subtlety. Teetering on the brink of frumpiness, she is the antithesis of a Hitchcock siren and yet he has assigned a stunning amount of allure to her. In the hours of one day, Miriam has loaded interactions with four different men--she has a heated argument with husband Guy, dates two young swains at once and flirts with a mysterious stranger. And that's not even including the man who impregnated her. She is voracious.

Somehow we are led to believe that by throwing over Miriam for Senator Morton's daughter Ann that Guy is trading up. Even Bruno chides "A slight improvement over Miriam, eh Guy?" But is she? In her limited amount of screen time, we see Miriam vamp, threaten, yell, laugh, sing and eat an ice cream cone with deep-throated devilishness. By contrast, we see Ann fret. Underscoring all this, actress Laura Elliot incarnates Miriam with her whole earthly body while Ruth Roman plays Ann hardly moving her tiny teeth.

Miriam might not be an easy person to like but Hitchcock manages to tenderize her along the way as she transforms from Guy's bully to Bruno's guileless and vulnerable victim. We see her ride her carousel horse, shyly eyeing the man who will put an end to her. To hear her sing the eerily prophetic lines of "Casey and the Strawberry Blonde"--His head was so loaded it nearly exploded, the poor girl she shaked with alarm--is to realize that we're all frail victims of our fate. And Miriam, was sadly, just too sexy to live.

Alfred Hitchcock's Tunnel of Love - Part I

2011-02-13T08:16:00.000-08:00

By Elisabeth Karlin

"It's more interesting to discover sex in a woman than to have it thrown at you." And so, Alfred Hitchcock branded the blonde for his own iconography in 1935 with Madeleine Carroll in The Thirty-Nine Steps. "Anything could happen with a woman like that in the back of a taxi" Hitch marveled, as he rejected more blatant sex objects as "vulgar and obvious. "

But there is more to Hitchcock's amorous interests than a string of unforgettable blondes. From 1925's The Pleasure Garden with its frenzied chorus girls on, Hitchcock has not skimped on purveying his own particular and most vivid eroticism.

That goes for eroticism in all its variations. Intrigued with homosexual love, Hitchcock portrayed it outwardly with Rope's Philip and Brandon; suggestively with Strangers on a Train's Bruno and Guy; and whimsically as in the sweet devotion of The Lady Vanishes' Caldicott and Charters. Lesbians came not just in the pathological shape of Rebecca's Mrs. "Danny" Danvers but also matter-of-factly with Suspicion's very out and proud mystery writer Isobel Sedbusk.

Censorship was no impediment for an artist as practiced in the veiled and sly as Hitchcock. His kisses, the conventional stand-ins for sexual consummation, were weighty with drama and character revelation. He gave us the loaded long take of Notorious, the crashing crescendo kiss of Vertigo and, my favorite--the open-mouthed, let's go down together lip-lock of Lifeboat.

In 1960 Hitch teased the censors and his audience with flashes of nudity in Psycho, yet when nudity was sanctioned in the Seventies, Hitchcock responded by making Frenzy, the least sexy of his movies. Frenzy had nudes but they were dead nudes. Sex in Frenzy is death-dealing and not much fun. There had always been an explicit sex-death connection in his films but in Frenzy Hitchcock did away with the heightened romantic aspect of that connection.

Frenzy is actually more concerned with that other great sensual pleasure--food. But despite the film's cornucopia of gastronomic metaphors, the food in Frenzy is inedible or downright disgusting. When a decent meal is served, it is frustratingly interrupted. In Frenzy, a film made by an old man back in a country he had left long ago, food and sex are pointedly unappetizing.

It was in 1964 that Hitchcock made his movie that was purely about sex--Marnie. The movie announces its intentions right from its audacious opening shot of a woman's purse. Filling the screen is a view of the purse, that with its folds and inner slit, bears a striking resemblance to a human vulva--labia majora, minora, pubic thatch and all. Then we see the back of the woman clutching the purse as she walks a deserted railroad platform between two standing trains.

The story of Marnie concerns one man rising to the challenge of penetrating that purse. And though the movie ends on a hopeful note, the consensual act is never realized. Instead, Hitchcock finds his most sublimely sexual moment in the film when frigid Marnie, in a cocktail dress, kicks off her high heels and throws herself astride her glorious horse Forio. Holding on with handfuls of his mane, she gallops bareback into ecstasy.

In Part II I will look at Hitchcock's most erotic characters.

Check Out My New Blog: A Year of Sundays

2011-02-11T14:42:00.000-08:00

Visit my new blog!

In partnership with Amanda P. Westmont, we've started a new blog, and you really should check it out! You can find it at yearofsundays.com. Each Sunday for the next year, Amanda and I will visit a different church. One week it may be a variety of Christianity, while the next it might be Buddhist, Mormon, Muslim, Unitarian or Church of the Subgenius. After our visit, we will write about our experience as if it were a restaurant or movie review. The point isn't to evaluate theology or doctrine—frankly, we couldn't care less about that. We'll be writing about the experience itself.

Since we're both the kind of atheists who get our thrills pissing people off, this blog won't be for the religiously faint of heart. If you're a believer, you might want to slip on a pair of steel toed boots before visiting our page. As a former longtime member of the Jehovah's Witnesses, I admit that I may have issues with religion in general. So accept my apologies in advance for any snark, sarcasm, cynicism or otherwise bitter remarks. Hey, if you were forbidden to masturbate for 30 years, you'd get a little edgy too.

But that's not to say we don't have serious intent.

We write our reviews with one criterion in mind. Regarding humankind's amazing variety of music, Duke Ellington famously said, “if it sounds good, it is good.” That's the benchmark we will use to evaluate every religious services we attend. You're invited to agree, to disagree, or, if you really don't like what we write, to start your own blog. Better yet, if you have a church in mind that we should visit, drop me a line in the comments section here or at A Year of Sundays and we'll try to work it into the schedule.

Just to show you how serious we are, we even wrote a manifesto:

WHY?

Because it’s fun.

Because Margarita Monday was already taken.

Because Joel thinks Amanda looks cute in her Sunday Go To Church dress.

Because we think it might be good for the kids.

Because everybody says they’re going to do it but nobody ever does.

Because there are worse ways to nurse a hangover.

Because, for Joel, it feels oddly naughty.

But for Amanda, it feels oddly nice.

Because, though we suspect that God is dead, we still like to hedge our bets.

Because we thought that if we could actually get through 50 posts, we could write a book.

Because sometimes you need a break from sex and happy hour.

Because we made a pact that if we break up, we’ll still write this damn thing.

Because Amanda needs a reason to buy old lady hats.

Because, frankly, we’re a little jealous of the people who believe.

Because Baptists can’t have all the fun, Buddhists can’t have all the peace, Jews can’t have all the guilt, Jehovah’s Witnesses can’t all the apocalypse fantasies and Catholics can’t have all the cute altar boys.

Cary Grant: The Man Who Hitchcock Would Be

2011-01-16T07:49:00.001-08:00

By Elisabeth Karlin

It has been said that while Jimmy Stewart was the actor with whom Alfred Hitchcock most identified, it was Cary Grant who he wanted to be. Well, who wouldn't? In Rear Window, when Lisa Fremont purrs to L.B. Jeffries "I could see you looking very handsome and successful in a dark blue flannel suit" she might be envisioning Roger Thornhill (imagine how those two could take Manhattan!) It's as if she's saying to Stewart "Why can't you be Cary Grant?"

January 18th marks Cary Grant's 107th birthday. When the question "Does Cary Grant ever get old?" was posed to Facebook's Alfred Hitchcock Geek crowd, the response was an immediate and resounding "Never!" While other romantic heroes of celluloid yore fade into arcane antiquity, today's actors are still compared to Cary Grant. He remains a movie star.

In her comprehensive examination of Grant, "The Man From Dream City," critic Pauline Kael suggests that were it not for Alfred Hitchcock, Cary Grant too might have languished in obscurity. It was Hitchcock who rescued Grant from the sentimental forties glop like Penny Serenade where he was mired after his thirties screwball heyday. Kael cites Notorious, To Catch a Thief, North By Northwest along with the heavily Hitchcock-scented Charade (directed by Stanley Donen) as the movies that cemented the glamorous figure that Cary Grant so deftly embodied.

Cary Grant was something rare and treasured -- a male love object. He could be hard to get -- cynical and wary of emotional involvement -- but as Mae West pointed out, he could also be had. Of course it would take a woman of uncommon stuff to land this dreamboat. Hitchcock's mighty blondes Alicia Huberman, Frances Stevens and Eve Kendall were three up to the challenge. Each possessed the requisite strength and aggression in her deceptively fine-boned demeanor.

Sitting a little apart from those films is Grant's first hook-up with Hitchcock, 1941's Suspicion. Many find this film and Grant's character, Johnny Aysgarth, problematic. There is that pesky ending dictated by a studio refusal to see Cary Grant as a murderer (cheating, lying and stealing being acceptable to execs.) The tacked on ending is jarring but it doesn't compromise Grant's performance as much as some would suggest. Whichever way it ends, the significant part of the story is that Lina thinks he is going to kill her -- the drama, whether real or imagined, is played in her mind. What other actor could make her resistance to flee in the face of her fears so believable?

Aysgarth is one of the few Grant characters who actively goes after a woman. But never, in his pursuit of mousy Lina MacKinlaw, do we see him as a victim of love. Even as the hunter, he is still the love object. Grant's Aysgarth is a festival of the irresponsible and the irresistable. Exuberantly bearing mink coats and puppies while continuing to indulge in his more nefarious habits. He smoothly plays the darkness beneath the light.

The world would be a dimmer place without Cary Grant. But Cary Grant would not have shined so brightly without Alfred Hitchcock. Hitch brought out in Grant that thing he himself so coveted--the ability to effortlessly light up the passion in the world's most desirable women.

Hitchcock's Cary Grant is the flip side of Hitchcock's Jimmy Stewart. There would be no messy obsessions from from this man. 107 years old and he still sails through our yearning gaze. In Notorious Ingrid Bergman laments on behalf of the smitten as she coos into Cary Grant's ear, "I'm only fishing for a little bird call from my dream man."

Rodin's The Kiss Seen Through Alfred Hitchcock's Lens

2011-01-11T17:34:00.000-08:00

Forget his talent or technical virtuosity. The first thing most people think about when seeing Auguste Rodin's The Kiss in a museum is, “Is anybody watching me?” You can't help feeling like a voyeur around the erotically raw sculpture. Alfred Hitchcock would have understood. He probably would have glanced over his own shoulder.

As it turns out, Hitch's favorite sculptor was Rodin and he was proud to own one of his works. In fact, if Hitch had gone into fine arts instead of film, according to biographer Charlotte Chandler, "ideally, he would have liked to be a sculptor, like Rodin." He especially admired The Kiss.

It's easy to see why. Hitchcock and Rodin loved the sensuality of the human form – both genders included. They had a healthy sense of the ambivalence of the human condition: that we are no better than animals, yet can approach the nobility of gods; that while happiness can be pursued, it cannot be attained; that when it comes to human passions, comedy and tragedy are one and the same.

Hitchcock's love scenes have often been compared to Rodin's The Kiss. The voyeurism I mentioned above was deliberately implied in many of Hitch's kissing scenes. Speaking of his famous 2 ½- minute kiss in Notorious (1946), he said it was “it was a kind of temporary menage a trois.” Similarly, the erotic power of The Kiss was such that when Rodin loaned it out to the World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago in 1893, it was hidden away in a separate chamber, viewable only upon special application. You'd have thought it was radioactive.

Much has been made of the The Kiss's in-the-round design as well, that viewers can walk around it, viewing the lovers from all angles. That aspect of the work has been compared with Hitch's kissing scenes that likewise create intimacy by moving the camera around the actors in a 360-degree arc – most famously in the final love scene in Vertigo, but also in the long smooches of Notorious, I Confess, North by Northwest, Marnie, Topaz and many others. When you stop and think about it, some of the steamiest love scenes to come out of Hollywood during its highly censored classic period got their start in front of Hitchcock's camera.

The first love scene in Notorious draws the audience in as voyeurs, ala The Kiss.

But there's more to the story of The Kiss. Based on a common theme in 19th century art, the sculpture was originally named Francesca da Rimini, after a character from Dante's Inferno who had fallen in love with her husband's younger brother. In Rodin's work, she is kissing him at the moment before her husband discovers them and puts them both to death. Their lips haven't touched, suggesting that they never will – that, like the Liebestod (Love-Death) of Tristan and Isolde (see Vertigo), their love will only be consummated in death. As French director François Truffaut once observed, “In Hitchcock's cinema... to make love and to die are one and the same."

In Hitch's universe, kisses are like bombs. Like his memories of World War II mortar attacks, they fall into two categories:* the surprise kiss (as when Grace Kelly plants a wet one on shocked Cary Grant in To Catch a Thief) and the suspense kiss. Rodin's sculpture falls into the second category. It's a murderously suspenseful scene in which Hitchcock's famous 'bomb under the table' is replaced by the ominous approach of Francesca's husband – a tableaux that Hitch explicitly revisited in Torn Curtain's ballet sequence in 1966, which was performed to Tchaikovsky's Francesca da Rimini. The timeless story, so often retold in art, most certainly would have crossed his mind when staging the second love scene between Alicia and Devlin (Bergman and Grant) in Notorious.

Risking exposure and death, Alicia Huberman first resists – then clings to – T. R. Devlin as her husband, Alex Sebastian, looks on from the shadows.

The Tragic Love of Francesca da Rimini by Marie-Philippe Coupin de la Couperie (1812). A chaste peck on the cheek like this leads to murder? Rodin would have laughed. Still, this scene depicts the precariousness of their position, as her husband, Giovanni Malatesta, watches from. For Hitchcock, in film after film, the sensual moment of intimacy is undercut by a sword-of-Damocles threat that reality will intrude to break the spell, destroying their carefully crafted artifice of love.

Like Hitchcock, Rodin had what Hemingway called a finely developed “bullshit detector.” The story of Paolo and Francesca had been a popular source of material in 19th century art. All too often, however, those artworks had strayed into an idealized, sentimental interpretation of Dante's story. Rodin would have none of that. His Kiss is impetuous, loaded with carnal voraciousness. The monumentality of the bronze (or, in other authorized versions, marble) and the pair's dignified pose are commensurate with the fatefulness of the lovers' decision to succumb to their desire. Synthesizing form and function, the sculpture is a hallmark of Rodin's contribution to modern art. His works don't merely portray a story – they are the story. You can see why Hitchcock identified so closely with Rodin. He saw film exactly the same way, grasping that the medium was the message long before Marshall McLuhan came along to coin the phrase. Hitch's meticulous preplanning method also compares to that of Rodin, who first made an exact model of his bronze work in clay or plaster, which was then transferred into bronze via the “lost wax” method.

“Each time they kissed there was the thrill of love … the threat of murder!” Is there a love scene in a Hitchcock movie that doesn't evoke The Kiss?

In the final kissing scene in Vertigo, Hitch put James Stewart and Kim Novak on a turntable and slowly rotated them in front of the camera, emulating the 360 degree aspect of The Kiss. Like Rodin's sculpture, this scene is haunted by sense of both eternal hope and inevitable doom.

Next up: Get ready for my sexiest post ever! Other directors employed euphemism and innuendo to achieve what is rarely more interesting than dry humping. Hitch, meanwhile, took the exact opposite approach. Stay tuned.

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*Hitchcock used the same language when identifying two kinds of fear: "terror, [which] is induced by surprise; suspense, by forewarning." To illustrate, he pointed to the two kinds of explosives used during World War II -- the suspense-provoking buzz bomb and the terror-inducing V-2. "The moments between the time the [buzz bomb's] motor was first heard and the final explosion were moments of suspense. The V-2, on the other hand, was noiseless until its moment of explosion. Anyone who heard a V-2 explode, and lived, experienced terror."