AMERICAN HITCHCOCK PART II (1954-1959)

HIT AFTER HIT
FROM THE MOUNTAIN

HITCHCOCK & PARAMOUNT PICTURES


“There is nothing to winning, really. That is, if you happen to be blessed with a keen eye, an agile mind, and no scruples whatsoever.”
-Alfred Hitchcock

Arguably, Hitchcock’s golden renaissance as a filmmaker began with another change of venue from Warner Bros. to Paramount in 1954 and the release of Rear Window later that same year. In many respects, Rear Window is a watershed film for its director. First, it was Hitchcock’s initial foray into the studio’s patented VistaVision widescreen process that Hitchcock would use for the rest of his movies. The film was also a reunion of sorts, bringing together Hitchcock’s favorite blonde Grace Kelly with James Stewart whom Hitch’ had already collaborated with on Rope (1948). While Rope had not been an ideal experience for either director or star on Rear Window Hitchcock and Stewart struck a chord of symbiotic harmony that would result in their collaborating on two more films later in the decade.

In Rear Window James Stewart is L.B Jeffries, a somewhat sexually repressed magazine photographer who is laid up with a leg he broke while on one of his assignments. To pass the time, Jeffries spies on his neighbors: the voluptuous Miss Torso (Georgine Darcy), forlorn Miss Lonely Heart (Judith Evelyn), frustrated composer (Ross Bagdasarian) and frisky newlyweds (Rand Harper, Havis Davenport). However, Jeffries attentions shift to the spurious comings and goings of one Lars Thorwald (Raymond Burr) after Thorwald’s wife, Anna (Irene Winston) suddenly vanishes from their apartment without a trace.
At first Jeffries girlfriend Lisa Fremont (Grace Kelly) and his physical therapist; straight shooter Stella (Thelma Ritter) believe Jeffries’ cabin fever is getting the better of him. But then there are the unexplainable bits of business observed through Jeffries rear window that draw attention toward a more sinister conclusion. Did Thorwald murder his wife? It isn’t long before Lisa has decided to play amateur sleuth – nearly getting herself killed in the process.

The level of tense economy Hitchcock achieves by confining his action to one set is not merely equitable, to his similar experimentations on Lifeboat and Dial M for Murder but, herein borders on some cinematic genius. Every pivotal moment in the plot takes place from roughly the same limited vantage of L.B. Jeffries’ rear window view, yet the action itself never seems redundant or straining for some new revelation. Part of the reason for the film’s perceivable freshness lies with Hitchcock’s clever maneuvering of the camera within these confined apartment spaces. The limited movement provides the audience with a view, primarily, of only what the characters see, hence the audience – like the characters – is in a constant state of wanting to learn and see more than they can or have been allowed to.

Jeffries apartment, courtyard and facing apartment facades are built as one gigantic three sided indoor set inside Paramount’s Stage 11, removing the false floor at ground level to create a greater sense of depth and height; allowing for total control of lighting and sound. Hitchcock further instructed composer Franz Waxman to underscore the film using recycled musical cues from previous efforts at the studio or popular music of the day to give the action a sort of benign musical familiarity. All of this attention to detail works to the film’s advantage; the neighborhood appearing as any neighborhood within a confined cityscape; the sounds readily accepted by the audience with authentic verisimilitude.

For the film’s climactic showdown Hitchcock restricts his camera movement to basics; the audience is as confined as Jeffries is in his wheelchair and forced to sit and wait for Thurwald’s inevitable arrival.

Hitchcock’s next film for Paramount, To Catch a Thief (1955) proved a bittersweet occasion, for it presented him with the dilemma of working with his favorite ‘cool’ blonde, Grace Kelly for the last time before she departed Hollywood’s high society for even higher society as Princess Grace of Monaco. Commencing his shoot in the south of France, Hitchcock was also hampered by the studio’s insistence on extensive location work to take full advantage of VistaVision’s claim in ‘motion picture high fidelity’, though only Hitchcock would have considered the lushness of Monaco a deterrent rather than a plus.
To Hitchcock’s testament, the matching of real life locations in France with photographic work done back on soundstages in Hollywood was invisible to the naked eye. John Michael Hayes began his lucrative association with Hitchcock on this project, providing a slick and stylish script with plenty of smart repartee and engaging situations to divert attention away from the fact that the film’s focal point was not the apprehension of a jewel thief – as the title suggested - but rather the cleverness with which Grace Kelly’s protagonist snared herself an attractive, though decidedly confirmed middle aged bachelor.
To Catch a Thief begins with a round of perilous jewel robberies inside the posh hotel suites of some very ritzy guests. The police suspect that the crimes are being perpetrated by John Robie (Cary Grant) a one time jewel thief who fought for the resistance in France during the war and was pardoned for his crimes. Danielle (Brigitte Auber), the daughter of Foussard (Jean Martinelli) one of Robie’s former accomplices during the war years, but currently reduced to the menial tasks of a restaurant wine steward, also believes that John has come out of retirement.
From here the story shifts its focus to headstrong wealthy girl-about-town Francie Van Allen (Kelly) and her sustained infatuation with John. Francie’s mother, Jessie (Jessie Royce Landis) is a flirtatious matchmaker. With her eye on John, Jessie goads her daughter into developing a relationship in order to get closer to the truth. But when Foussard (Jean Martinelli) is accidentally murdered, the police conclude that he was the man they were looking for all along. Unfortunately, that’s just the moment when John begins to have second thoughts about Foussard’s daughter, Danielle.

Critics of the day were quick to regard To Catch A Thief as lightweight, though nevertheless pleasurable entertainment. In truth, the film represents Hitchcock at his most elegant and edgy sex fantasy, but with a decided twist. Still, with its focus more on romance rather than suspense, the movie does tend to illustrate a fundamental truth about audience expectations and in subsequent screen outings Hitchcock would never again so readily divorce the romantic elements of his stories from the tautness of his thrillers.

The most readily recalled sequence from To Catch A Thief today is Robie’s seduction by Francie while fireworks explode wildly outside her Riviera hotel window. Taunting and testing Robie’s desire to possess either her or her diamond necklace, Robie’s keen eye for legitimate ice leads him to deduce, “these are fakes.” “But I’m not,” Francie coos, allowing John to lean her into the couch.

That ‘lean’ was cause for the censors to demand that Hitchcock eliminate the sequence entirely as it obviously suggested the beginnings of a sexual encounter. Hitchcock refused. The censors next made suggestions where to cut the sequence so that no ‘lean’ was implied. Hitchcock quietly took the censor’s concerns under advisement then, backed by Paramount released the film with the sequence virtually in tact.
Given the flourish of success Hitchcock sustained during the early fifties within the realm of dark and suspense-laden melodrama his next choice of project – the decidedly light black comedy The Trouble With Harry (1955) seemed an unlikely candidate for his celebrated directorial prowess.
The trouble with Harry is that he is dead – assassinated in the pastoral woods of Vermont within the first few minutes of on screen time and shortly thereafter encountered by nearly every small town kook within twenty miles who attempt to bury, then dig up, then re-bury his slowly decomposing remains somewhere in the forest. The irony of the piece revolves around the town’s folk ability to internalize the murder as preventable and, more to the point, something that even those who only knew the deceased in passing suspect they are now somehow remotely responsible for.

Shirley MacLaine was top cast as Jennifer Rogers, Harry’s wife. She is not very upset to learn her husband’s dead – though it is unlikely that she killed him. Capt. Albert Wiles (Edmund Gwenn) discovers the body first. Together with amateur criminologist Miss Ivy Gravely (Mildred Natwick) the two contemplate the recourse of burying Harry in the glen. Enter local artist Sam Marlowe (John Forsythe) who is intrigued, but not terribly upset by the prospect of having a human cadaver stored in Jennifer’s bathtub.
Given Hitchcock’s aversion toward location shooting, he must have been put off by delays brought on by a sudden frost and winter storm midway through his shoot. The snow and ice effectively reduced all the lush fall colors to leaf piles blowing in the wind. The net result: Hitchcock and company returned to Paramount mid-way through production with bags of leaves that were meticulously glued onto fake trees inside a Paramount soundstage.

Hitchcock returned to form with an anomaly in his American tenure; a remake of his own The Man Who Knew Too Much (1956), a thriller Hitch’ chose to relocate to Marrakech. The 1934 original had been set in Europe. Regardless of this change in locale, the narrative structure of the original was faithfully retained. Years later, Hitchcock would muse that his original had been made by an amateur while the remake was crafted by a master.
In the remake medical doctor, Ben McKenna (James Stewart) his wife, Jo (Doris Day) and their son Hank (Christopher Olsen) are on holiday in Marrakech where Ben is attending a conference. Jo is a retired star of the London stage and easily recognizable to her fans. While at a restaurant the McKennas are introduced to Lucy and Edward Drayton (Brenda de Banzie and Bernard Miles) – presumably fans of Jo.

The McKennas also meet mysterious Frenchman, Louie Bernard (Daniel Gelin) who offers to act as their cultural liaise while on holiday. However, when Bernard, disguised as a native, is stabbed before Jo and Ben’s eyes in the marketplace he manages to confide an ominous secret to Ben before dying; that a high ranking political official is to be assassinated somewhere in London, England. The plot thickens as Ben learns that the Draytons have kidnapped Hank and are holding him hostage to buy Ben’s silence until the assassination can take place.

Hitchcock reportedly did not want to work with Doris Day at the start of production – assuming that her talents lay in the delivery of a song rather than solid acting. However, Day proved her worth to Hitchcock as a serious actress in the sequence where Jo - having learned that her son has been kidnapped and furthermore, that her husband has drugged her to calm her down prior to divulging this information - suffers and emotional breakdown.

Nevertheless, to appease fans of Doris Day musicals and the front offices at Paramount, Hitchcock reluctantly agreed to allow Day to warble a song in the film – but only if the song could be incorporated as a pivotal plot element within the story. That song – Que Sera Sera became a number one best selling single and an Oscar-winning hit.

For the scene where the McKennas are approached by the mortally wounded Bernard, Hitchcock had wanted the actor’s dark facial make-up used to disguise him to come off as he collapses in Ben’s arms, thereby revealing his true identity. Unfortunately, after several failed takes it was discovered that the thick make-up application simply would not smudge. Eventually, Hitchcock came up with his own clever solution – applying flesh-colored make-up to James Stewart’s hands instead. As Ben catches Bernard’s face between his fingers, the flesh tone in the palms of his hands wipes off on the actor, implying that the opposite has occurred.

Hitchcock also indulged in another brilliant bit of ‘pure cinema’ during the climactic Albert Hall sequence where the assassination is supposed to take place. In the twelve minute reveal, uninterrupted by dialogue and accompanied by the suspenseful Storm Cloud Cantata conducted by Bernard Herrmann, Hitchcock recreated the memorable sequence of his 1934 original almost shot-for-shot. The sequence begins as Jo enters the concert hall and the London Orchestra begins to play. She spots the balcony boxes at opposite ends of the venue where assassin, Rien (Reggie Nalder) and his chosen victim, the Foreign Prime Minister (Alexi Bobrimskoy) are seated. Unable to intervene, Jo is powerless and driven to panicked frustration while Ben frantically combs the upper balconies in search of the assassin and some answers to their son’s whereabouts.

At a pivotal break in the music, Jo lets loose with a blood-curdling scream – distracting the crowd and causing the Foreign Prime Minister to lurch in his seat just as the assassin fires his bullet. Initially aimed as a kill shot to the heart, the bullet instead takes the Foreign Prime Minister in the shoulder. Ben bursts into the balcony box where the assassin has been hiding and after a brief struggle the assassin plummets to his death without revealing Hank’s whereabouts.

Perhaps more than any other Hitchcock film of the decade, The Man Who Knew Too Much reveals how far Hitch’ had come in his mastery of the cinematic medium. His handling of all the elements is both swift and assured and he manages to invest the characters with a sense of immediacy that escalates almost from the moment Hank vanishes from Marrakech. Upon its original theatrical release, The Man Who Knew Too Much was hailed by critics and audiences alike.
Perhaps as a rebuttal to all the high profile ultra-gloss entertainment he had been indulging in, Hitchcock next film The Wrong Man (1956 and for Warner Bros.) was a relatively low budget, dark and brooding story shot in black and white and based on a real life case of mistaken identity surrounding one Manny Balestrero (Henry Fonda). Manny is a trumpet player at the Stork Club who is wrongfully accused of holding up a local insurance agency after his wife, Rose (Vera Miles) is denied coverage for some much needed dental surgery. Everyone in the burgled insurance office who testifies against Manny is convinced that he is the man who held them at gunpoint and made off with a considerable bankroll. The problem is that Manny is actually innocent.

An unusual departure for Hitchcock, who also briefly narrated the prologue, the film was based on Maxwell Anderson’s novelized account of the real Christopher Balestrero’s struggle to clear his name. Though remaining faithful to the book (the screenplay was also penned by Anderson and Angus McPhail) Hitch’ deliberately omitted textual references that in the novel cleared Balestero of the crime beforehand and thus would have defused the tensions in the film.

Nevertheless, Anderson’s wordy prose seems to have inadvertently hampered Hitchcock’s agility as a cinematic storyteller. His lack of engagement with the material is evident from the moment the awkward narration opens the story. For the first time in his career, Hitch’ is relying more on ‘telling’ rather than ‘showing’ the audience what they need to know – his sense of ‘pure cinema’ relegated to a rather straight forward faux noir crime story that simply fails to maintain its level of suspense throughout. If Hitchcock’s 50s tenure does have a weak spot, it is The Wrong Man.
The decade would be rounded out by two of the best movies Hitchcock ever made; Vertigo (1958) and North By Northwest (1959). It is one of Hollywood’s great ironies that only the latter film was a critical and box office success at the time of its theatrical release. However, time has proven the artistic merit of both efforts; each clearly belonging in a league of their own.

For years Hitchcock had wanted to make a film set in San Francisco – a city he regarded as one of the most cosmopolitan metropolises in the world. Bad timing and other pending projects for the movies and his weekly commitment to his own television series Alfred Hitchcock Presents… precluded Hitch’ from realizing his dream project until 1956 when the novel d’Entre les Morts by Pierre Boileau and Thomas Narcejac was brought to his attention. The book was a critical examination of the all consuming aspects of obsessive love tinged on this occasion with elements of the supernatural and an intriguing crime story besides.
In realizing the story for the screen, Hitchcock turned to famed author, Samuel Taylor and Alex Coppel; the former a master at creating romantic melodrama, the latter an expert constructionist in penning mystery/thrillers. For the re-titled film, Vertigo, Hitchcock once again turned to everyman, James Stewart as his central protagonist; this time cast as retired police detective turned private investigator, Scottie Ferguson. Suffering from bouts of dizziness in high places (hence, the title of the film) after witnessing the death of a fellow officer off the side of a Frisco high rise, Ferguson’s career seems at an end. He is brought out of retirement by former college acquaintance, Gavin Elstor (Tom Helmore).
It seems that Elstor’s wife, the cool Madeleine (Kim Novak) is plagued by mysterious blackouts. Elstor confides to Scottie that he believes in the very real possibility that Madeleine is being possessed by the spirit of Carlotta Vance – a well known tragic historical figure who will not rest until she has driven Madeleine to suicide. At first, Ferguson refuses to believe this far fetched tale. Gradually, however, he begins to piece together a premise that does indeed suggest some other worldly explanation for Madeleine’s frequent disappearances. After rescuing Madeleine from a failed suicide attempt at Golden Gate Park, Ferguson discovers that he has begun to fall in love with her himself, much to the chagrin of his friend, brazier designer Midge Wood (Barbara Bel Geddes).
Actually, the whole premise is a rouse concocted by Elstor and Judy – the woman impersonating his wife, Madeleine whom Elstor has already murdered. Luring Ferguson to the mission bell tower at Old San Juan Batista – and knowing that Scottie’s vertigo will prevent him from catching up to her in time - Judy/Madeleine appears to commit suicide by throwing herself off the tower’s belfry right before Ferguson’s eyes. Driven into a catatonic state, Ferguson is gradually nursed back to health by Midge, only to accidentally run into Judy on a street in San Francisco in her original brunette hair and make-up. After an awkward meeting, Judy agrees to go out with Ferguson. Shortly thereafter, he becomes obsessed with remaking her into the image of his dead love interest.
In many ways Vertigo shows off the combined essences of Hitchcock’s cinematic prowess to their very best advantage: from the film’s inventive spiraling main title sequence designed by Saul Bass, to Hitchcock’s extraordinary usage of color to evoke mood, to his memorable montage illustrating Scottie’s dizzy spells (a forward zoom/reverse track camera trickery devised by Irmin Roberts), the film is a cinematic feast for those clever enough to appreciate that exposition in film storytelling is not everything.

After the disappointing box office performance of Vertigo, Hitchcock’s last film of the decade, North By Northwest (1959 for MGM) returned to a more reliable blend of dark sadism and light humor to ensure its returns and audience popularity. Determined to write the ‘wrong man’ movie to top all the rest, screenwriter Ernest Lehman devised a stylish thriller incorporating nearly every Hitchcockian film devise from the director’s illustrious tenure into one seamless roller coaster ride of masterful thrills and humorous suspense.

Over the years, rumors have circulated that Hitchcock unintentionally mentioned the idea for the project to James Stewart while production was wrapping on Vertigo. When Stewart became eager to play the part of Roger Thornhill, Hitchcock was forced to admit that he had Cary Grant in mind all along. However, there are problems with this theory.

First, Hitchcock seldom worked far in advance in planning his subsequent projects. In general, but specifically at this point in his career, Hitch’ took his time deciding what film would come next. Also, once he was involved on a movie, he committed himself wholly to that project until it was completed. Since North By Northwest was not a pre-sold play or movie property already waiting in the wings, but one commissioned from Lehman by Hitchcock, it seems unlikely that the idea came to him well in advance of wrapping production on Vertigo.

Second, given the solid working relationship between Hitchcock and Stewart, it does not make much sense that Hitch’ would have merely mentioned a movie idea to his star without having Stewart in mind for the lead. More than likely, MGM did not want Stewart cast – either because he seemed too old for the part, was not one of their stars under contract or was inadvertently being blamed for Vertigo’s poor performance at the box office.

Whatever the reason, North By Northwest stars Cary Grant as harried ad man, Roger O. Thornhill. After being mistaken for a secret agent by Phillip Van Damme (James Mason), Roger quickly discovers that he is a sitting duck, rift for multiple assassination attempts by Van Damme’s men unless he can get to the bottom of things.

Unfortunately, Roger’s attempts at contacting UN political analyst, Lester Townsend (Philip Ober) goes horribly awry when one of Van Damme’s assassins kills Townsend in the middle of the United Nations lobby while making it appear as though Roger is the killer. Considered a fugitive from justice, Roger next stumbles onto Eve Kendell (Eva Marie Saint), a mysterious flirt traveling by train and oddly intent on helping Roger elude the authorities.
Slowly Roger comes to trust Eve and eventually the two have an affair. However, when Eve appears to be working for Van Damme, Roger confronts the motley crew in the open, thereby exposing Eve to terrible danger. Eve is the double agent that Van Damme has mistaken Roger for.

Hitchcock relied heavily on matte paintings and process photography in North By Northwest to sustain a level of purely escapist make-believe. The film’s two most memorable set pieces – a bi-plane assault on Roger along a lonely stretch of North Dakota road – and the scaling of Presidential faces carved into Mount Rushmore were both elaborately staged at MGM rather than shot on location. In the former instance, Grant was placed on a treadmill in the foreground, running for his life while reacting to a process screen of rear projection with the bi-plane photographed separately.

In the latter sequence, MGM’s scenic art department crafted an elaborate replica of Rushmore’s faces, relying on equally elaborate matte paintings to capture the steep downward perspective as Eve and Roger appear to be dangling from the jagged precipices for the film’s climactic showdown. Some surviving studio memos indicate that this final race across Rushmore was recreated out of necessity rather than from Hitchcock’s innate dislike of location shooting. It was only after the State Park denied MGM access and even permission to use the real location for the film that the decision was made to recreate Rushmore on the back lot.

MGM licensed Paramount’s patented VistaVision process for North By Northwest after Hitchcock refused to photograph the film in Cinemascope. Although the making of the film proved an enjoyable experience for all concerned, the film also marked the last time Cary Grant worked for Hitchcock.
Today, rumors abound as to why these two alumni never reunited for another try – especially since North By Northwest was one of Hitchcock’s most profitable thrillers. One plausible reason is that Grant had begun to feel as though his days as a leading man were numbered. While the actresses Grant was frequently being paired with were increasingly getting younger, Grant himself was already well into his middle age at the time North By Northwest went before the cameras. Following the success of the film, Grant would reluctantly agree to make only one more thriller: Stanley Donen’s faux Hitchcockian spy movie: Charade (1963).

@Nick Zegarac 2008 (all rights reserved).

AMERICAN HITCHCOCK - PART III (1960-1976)

THE BEGINNING OF THE END
PECKING OUT A LASTING LEGACY IN THE SIXTIES

“Blondes make the best victims. They're like virgin snow that shows up the bloody footprints.”
- Alfred Hitchcock

By 1960, Alfred Hitchcock was an international celebrity – instantly recognizable around the world. Only part of this notoriety was due to his films. Hitchcock’s more palpable form of celebrity came from his weekly appearances, introducing segments of his own television series Alfred Hitchcock Presents on NBC. Budgetary restrictions and the fast pace of shooting television would come to serve as a template for Hitchcock’s next, and arguably his most popular, cinematic endeavor.

Often sited as the film that matured American cinema into its present state of sublime cynicism, Psycho (1960) is based on a novel by Robert Bloch that has its roots in the real life criminal activity of a deranged farmer who quietly butchered his neighbors. In the book, Norman Bates is a rather pudgy middle aged recluse – easily identifiable as someone with a darker side to his character. By transplanting the attributes of a serial killer onto the seemingly normal and youthfully handsome Anthony Perkins, Hitchcock plays upon our erroneous misperception that evil is immediately identifiable or, as Shakespeare most astutely observed, “he that smiles may smile and be a villain.”

Budgeted at a remarkably modest $800,000, Psycho went on to earn forty million in its first release – a telling sign of the more cost-cutting that would come to exemplify film making in the sixties. Joseph Stephano’s screenplay carried an immersive under layer of psychoanalysis, perhaps because the writer was also in therapy at the time he wrote the script.

The story begins with Marion Crane (Janet Leigh); a hot and bothered secretary whose lover, Sam Loomis’ (John Gavin) is unable to commit to marriage because he is struggling to pay for his ex-wife’s alimony. To expedite her way to the altar, Marion decides to steal fifty thousand dollars from her employer as a runaway down payment for the fantasy life she misperceives can be hers.

Unfortunately, en route from Phoenix to Fairfax the weather turns ugly, forcing Marion to take a night’s refuge at the Bates Motel from which she will never return. The motel’s proprietor, Norman Bates (Anthony Perkins) a congenial mama’s boy on the surface quickly develops a paralytic sexual frustration toward Marion that manifests itself as murderous psychosis while pretending to be his mother. After stabbing Marion to death inside one of the motel showers, Norman disposes of her body in a nearby swamp. Enter private investigator, Milton Arbogast (Martin Balsam). Assigned by Marion’s employer to track her down, Arbogast eventually traces Marion’s route to the Bates Motel and shortly thereafter suffers the same fate as our heroine. Forced to take matters into their own hands, Marion’s sister Lila (Vera Miles) and Sam journey to the motel and that now infamous old gothic house on the hill – actually a free standing set built on Universal’s back lot.

Lila hides herself in the cellar, the last place she thinks anyone will look for her. Unfortunately, the basement is home to the real truth behind Norman Bates; that his mother, who earlier figured prominently as a possible suspect in Marion’s disappearance is actually a mummified corpse, dressed in a shawl and wig, but rotted nonetheless. Hitchcock frames Lila’s terrifying moment of realization in extreme close up, with mother’s back to the camera, then slowly spins her chair around to reveal a shriveled corpse, its cavernous sockets blankly staring into the camera.

For its time, Psycho was a disturbing revelation in American cinema signifying the weakening of the Production Code of Censorship that would never have allowed such a grotesque moment to be seen on the screen. The shower sequence in Psycho remains one of the most effective and masterful bit of editing ever put on film.

Involving ninety cuts, a partially nude stand in for Janet Leigh, and a melon being slashed to simulate the sound of steel cutting into flesh – the sequence unravels as an assault on the audience’s collective expectation of what murder should be – providing quick horizontal and vertical cuts whereupon our collective imaginations reassemble those bits and flashes into a brutal homicide that, in truth, is never entirely realized on screen.

When the film debuted it was readily denounced by the Catholic League of Decency as well as by a select few film critics who condemned the movie and Hitchcock as going too far. The backlash, coupled with Universal’s clever marketing of the movie only served to further fuel the public’s rabid fascination to see it. In the final analysis, Psycho became Hitchcock’s most successful movie to date.

Immediately following the film’s triumphant premiere, Hitchcock took a three year hiatus from making movies. However, he was far from idle – investing a considerable amount of effort in continuing his television series and returning to the screen with what would be his last great cinematic triumph; The Birds in 1963. Working from a short story by his favorite author Daphne du Maurier, Hitchcock commissioned screenwriter Evan Hunter to flesh out the story and provide cohesion to du Maruier’s episodic series of bird attacks.

The plot eventually concocted concerns the quaint hamlet of Bodega Bay: weekend getaway for hotshot defense attorney Mitchell Brenner (Rod Taylor). While in San Francisco, Mitch tweaks the nose of Melanie Daniels (Tippi Hedren), a spoiled wealthy socialite and practical joker whose wild past has been expounded in the tabloids.

Mitch and Melanie quickly escalate their mutual interest in one another from tempestuous rivalry to smoldering romance; a move quietly abhorred by Lydia (Jessica Tandy), Mitch’s mother and even more quietly observed by old flame, Annie Haywood (Suzanne Pleshette). But then, there are the birds – those fine feathery fowl who run amuck in the town, smashing into buildings, attacking school children, pecking out a farm neighbor’s eyes and blowing up the town gas station.

From a technical vantage, The Birds remains Hitchcock’s most ambitiously mounted film, relying heavily on matte photography that only occasionally belies its origins under today’s closer scrutiny of special effects. The sodium screen employed in the film’s matte photography was largely the invention of Disney SFX specialist Ub Iwerks after Hitchcock became dissatisfied with the less than stellar results reproduced by the more traditional ‘blue screen’ process. While ‘blue screen’ tended to produce blue halos around hair and other fine details, the sodium screen process generated a virtually flawless matte with no discernable traces of separation between the various photographed elements.

Hitchcock’s second unit spent days at the city dump photographing thousands of sea gulls circling the skies and then matting them into the foreground action shot on location and on the Universal studio back lot.

Admired from a Seago shampoo commercial, but with no prior acting experience to her credit, Tippi Hedren was Hitchcock’s first and only choice to play the film’s central protagonist, Melanie Daniels. Groomed in the manner of a Grace Kelly, Hedren received a lavish wardrobe designed for her by Edith Head prior to principle photography commencing on the film. In retrospect, Hedren is the last of the memorable Hitchcock blondes; statuesque, cool and strangely removed from her surroundings.

Initially, filming began with high spirits; the chemistry between Hedren and Rod Taylor, palpably engaging. However, after being told by Hitchcock that a pivotal scene involving Melanie attacked in the upstairs bedroom of the Brenner family home after the birds have pecked through the roof would be shot using matte photography and reaction shots, Hedren arrived on set to discover that the entire bedroom set had instead been enclosed in a cage, and, that real life birds – hurled at her by a wrangler – would be used instead.

Reluctantly, the actress submitted to an afternoon of being assaulted by live animals after which she quietly slipped into a catatonic state from that she failed to recover from by the following Monday morning. Hedren’s failure to report back to work necessitated the use of her double for a subsequent sequence where Melanie’s badly pecked at and bloody head is bandaged by Lydia in the living room.

The overwhelming box office success of The Birds was encouraging to Hitchcock. Perhaps, in Tippi Hedren he had at last found a replacement for the blonde ideal that Grace Kelly had once represented so clearly for him. His faith in Hedren secure, Hitchcock cast her in Marnie (1964) – a Freudian psychological sex mystery where she played a manipulative and compulsive thief, but with a sinister underlying current of sexual frigidity.

Hitchcock had wanted to make Marnie immediately following Psycho and, from the start, he had envisioned the story as Grace Kelly’s triumphant return to the screen. Although Kelly had initially agreed to do the film she eventually reneged on her acceptance and at the last minute – after Hitchcock had already commissioned a screenplay from John Michael Hayes. Reports on Hitchcock’s reaction to Kelly’s final decision vary from utter rage to sad disappointment. What is true enough is that after learning Kelly would not be able to do the film Hitchcock issued a polite letter of regret to the Princess; then chose to shelve the project rather than recast her part.

By the time Hitchcock had convinced himself that Tippi Hedren would be ideal to play the lead in Marnie he was readily clashing with screenwriter Evan Hunter over the handling of a scene in which Marnie – having been forced to marry Mark Rutland (Sean Connery) or face imprisonment for stealing from his publishing company is then forced to have sex with her husband after launching her own strenuous objections.

The ‘rape’ scene – as it came to be known – generated a creative impasse between Hitch’ and Hunter; the latter arguing that if any sympathy was to remain for the character of Mark he could not be seen forcing himself on his own wife. Hitchcock readily disagreed and promptly fired Hunter in favor of Jay Presson Allen (a novice in the medium of film, and with only two professional stage writing credits to her name).

In rewriting the story, Allen altered key sequences that were part of Winston Graham’s original novel and Haye’s original treatment; changing the office lover’s triangle between two men, Mark and his rival for Marnie’s affections – Terry – to the more subversive pseudo-lesbian fascination finally embodied by Lil,’ Mainwaring (Diane Baker). She also removed a key sequence where Marnie seeks professional treatment in the office of a psychoanalyst. Henceforth, the responsibility of getting at the crux of Marnie’s sexual repressions fell to the character of Mark – possibly as a way of redeeming him in the public’s eyes after he had already raped his wife.

Clearly an attempt on Hitchcock’s part to revisit themes and issues he had more readily and to better effect rounded out in Spellbound, upon its release, Marnie received almost unanimously negative and scathing reviews from the critics. Its failure at the box office effectively ended Tippi Hedren’s brief career and arguably wounded Hitchcock’s reputation as the purveyor of solid chills. That reputation would be further dismantled with Hitch’s next project.

In hindsight, Hitchcock’s shortcomings on Marnie seem at once more pronounced, yet more easily forgivable. Tippi Hedren is wooden next to Sean Connery who, despite his enviable charm, still comes off as something of a sexual sadist and a cold-hearted brute while trying to deconstruct his wife’s troubling sexual past. By promoting Marnie as a ‘sex mystery’ Hitchcock creates a false audience expectation that perhaps damaged the film’s box office potency.
Marnie is not about sex but rather the absence of any intimacy in the sexual act itself. The linkage between Marnie’s frigidity and the convoluted logic behind her kleptomania is fundamentally flawed and not readily apparent on a first viewing of the film. Allen’s screenplay takes far too much time unraveling the bizarre relationship between Marnie and her mother, Bernice (Louise Latham) while seeming wholly disinterested in the more weirdly sexual obsession that lures Mark into marrying Marnie in the first place.
Liberal changes in the cultural climate toward a more perverse and voyeuristic standard, the erosion of the studio system, and, the removal of the Production Code that precluded explicitness of any kind on screen: these were perhaps disquieting developments that an old master like Hitchcock found out of step with his star-driven slickly packaged movies from the 1950s. In that vein, Marnie is very much a throwback attempt by Hitchcock to revisit his atypical ‘50s glamour. The film is not a ‘sex mystery’ except if one chooses to entertain the screenplay’s very loose interpretation of Freudian psychoanalysis.

In hindsight, Marnie is the real finale to Hitchcock’s American career. Though Hitchcock continued to make movies well into the decade, he had arguably and irreversibly lost his toe-hold in cinema as its undisputed master of suspense.


THE FAREWELL YEARS

Torn Curtain (1966) is probably Hitch’s most awkwardly miscast thriller. It improbably stars fresh-faced pert and plucky Julie Andrews miscast as Dr. Sarah Louise Sherman; fiancée to a brilliant lecturer, Professor Michael Armstrong (Paul Newman). The two are in Copenhagen for a conference where Sarah begins to suspect that Mike is becoming a communist defector. Like Lina’s contemplation over her husband’s innocence in Hitchcock’s Suspicion, made nearly two decades before it, Sarah’s assumptions about Michael in Torn Curtain turns out to be false and misleading – the screenplay by Brian Moore incessantly toying with her ‘what if’ scenarios and generally blowing them out of proportion with ironically timed unhappy accidents.

From its conception, Torn Curtain struck a decidedly sour note for all concerned. After penning a score for the film, a personal disagreement effectively ended Hitchcock’s association with long-time musical collaborator Bernard Herrmann. His score would eventually be replaced by Hitchcock. Paul Newman, a method actor out of sync with Hitchcock’s way of working, frequently clashed with his director over his part. Worse, the chemistry between Newman and Andrews failed to materialize as principle photography commenced. Hitchcock, who acknowledged that Julie Andrews had been thrust upon him by studio executives who found her enchanting in Mary Poppins and The Sound of Music, readily tired of making any attempt to mold a plausible dramatic performance from his star, choosing instead to grumble over the fact audiences would expect Andrews to break into song.

What is perhaps even more troubling about the film is that in hindsight it seems desperately struggling for something intelligent to say. More often the screenplay comes up with preposterous bits of dialogue that string the story along to its inevitable and contrived conclusion. The humorous bits are not funny and the dramatic moments are not nearly as suspenseful as they ought to be.

The film’s one memorable moment is the awkward murder of Hermann Gromek (Wolfgang Kieling) a double agent working for the Russians who too late realizes Michael’s defection is a fraud. Here, Hitchcock illustrates for his audience just how difficult it is to kill a man – particularly when the adversaries are evenly matched. Michael attempts to strangle, stab, strike down with a metal skillet, then gas his assailant in a small cottage in the middle of nowhere. He is successful only in the last of these methods.

“When was the last time Hitchcock went to the movies?” one reviewer proposed upon Torn Curtain’s release; an understandable inquiry, given the film’s unnatural blend of matte shots and largely indoor set pieces shot at Universal that seem pronouncedly obvious in their poor recreations of European country sides and utterly one dimensional. Hence, of all of Hitchcock’s later endeavors, Torn Curtain is the one that has worn the least well.

Dated in its fixed cold war premise, its awkward acting and bizarre amalgam of stylistic elements, Torn Curtain today appear as a forgotten relic from some archaic and strangely disembodied decade in cinema history that never existed. The film is neither a product of vintage 60s film fare nor is it an attempt at knocking off the stylish post-war elegance of slickly packaged entertainments like To Catch a Thief or The Man Who Knew Too Much. For all concerned then, Torn Curtain proved to be a forgettable footnote.

Following the Torn Curtain’s disastrous premiere, Hitchcock departed making movies for nearly three years before bringing Topaz (1969) to the screen. He could just as easily have taken another year to convalesce. Based on the sprawling best-seller by Leon Uris, Topaz is the story of a highly ranked Russian official, Boris Kusenov (Per-Axel Arosenius) who defects to America. After a lengthy prologue in which Kusenov and his family narrowly escape Russian agents in Denmark, the film settles into a rather standard and plodding narrative written by Samuel Taylor; the crux being that Kusenov’s defection might actually have been a rouse.

Enter Agent Michael Nordstrom (John Forsythe); a rather benign sort who enlists the aid of his more flamboyant French spy and personal contact, Andre Devereaux (Frederick Stafford) to do a bit of homegrown subversion involving Castro and the Cuban communist resistance. André accepts the assignment, though his wife Nicole (Dany Robin) suspects that part of the allure has to do with sultry Cuban communist, Juanita de Cordoba (Karin Dor) the wife of a dead freedom fighter who is actually a double agent. The plot is further complicated with the introduction of Andre’s son-in-law, Michèle Picard (Claude Jade) who inadvertently uncovers a murder plot - then nearly becomes part of the body count himself.

With the success of the James Bond film franchise in the back of his mind, Hitchcock delves into espionage more deeply than in any of his other films, coming up with his own brand of cloak and dagger that never gets beyond the drawing board stage. In terms of box office appeal, Topaz has the insurmountable task of overcoming an inherent lack of star power. Though each is competent in his/her performance, none of the actors in the film particularly stands out with the sort of ‘star quality’ so vital and necessary for the overall marketability of the film.

Hitchcock’s first sneak preview of Topaz with an ending that had André in a duel inside a vacant soccer stadium was an absolute disaster, universally receiving the worst reviews of any Hitchcock picture to date. In planning another ending for the film, Hitchcock made two compromises, arguably neither completely satisfying – the latter with André and Nicole departing on a plane for France with their seemingly shattered marriage brought back into perspective; the other involving the off camera suicide of Claude Martin (John Van Dreelan) – the suspected head of the international cartel who had had an affair with Nicole.

To suggest that Hitchcock’s sensibilities as a director were hopelessly out of touch with audience tastes of the 1960s is perhaps a tad too sharp a condemnation. However, film critic Leonard Maltin’s suggestion that Hitchcock was making more personal films – not in tune with immediate public tastes perhaps, though solid entertainment nevertheless – is far too liberal a critique than any screening of Topaz should allow for. The film is sluggishly paced and confusing to follow, particularly during its final reels. At best and in retrospect, Topaz remains an unusual error in Hitchcock’s craftsmanship.

If there were those who thought Hitchcock was finished as a director upon Topaz’s release, his next film Frenzy (1972) provided a considerable reprieve, if not completely, then mostly to reinstating his status as the master of suspense. Based on Arthur La Bern’s novel, Farewell Piccadilly, So Long Lester Square, Frenzy represents Hitchcock at his most uncharacteristic and undeniably gruesome. In many ways the film is a throwback to the kind of entertainment Hitch’ was making in Britain prior to leaving England for Hollywood in the mid-1930s.

Shot on a modest budget and on location in the UK, Frenzy opens with the discovery of a naked female corpse floating face down in the Thames; the latest victim of The Necktie Killer. After Hitchcock’s prerequisite cameo, as a passerby who observes the recovery of the body, the narrative constructed by Anthony Shaffer moves to the firing of bartender Richard Blaney (Jon Finch), after being caught by his employer attempting to steal a drink from the pub. Blaney’s girlfriend, barmaid Babs (Anna Massey) encourages Richard to keep a stiff upper lip. Richard is next scene strolling through the marketplace at Covent Garden by friend, Bob Rusk (Barry Foster) – the actual serial killer.

Rusk suggests that Richard move on to greener pastures, but all Richard can think of is to revisit his past; his estranged wife; employment councilor, Brenda (Barbara Leigh-Hunt). Shortly thereafter, Rusk also pays Brenda a call – one that ends with her becoming the next victim of the Necktie Killer.

The killings in Frenzy are not only amongst the most brutal ever created for a Hitchcock film, but they tend to take on a distinct note of pandering to the times. Hitchcock ups the ante he first established in Psycho by inserting gratuitous nudity into several key sequences – titillating his audience with the prospect of exploitative erotica turned upside down; lust escalating into violent crime and death.

Although the inclusion of violent rape represents something new for a Hitchcock film, the staging of the strangulations in quick cuts is pure homage to the shower sequence from Psycho. Already in declining health, Hitchcock clearly relished the opportunity to revisit some of the familiar locations he had known as a boy. Hence, Frenzy was, in its own way, the return of Hitchcock as England’s prodigal son, come home. A financial success, Frenzy also introduced scores of younger filmgoers to Hitchcock in the movies even though it had become quite apparent to his most ardent fans that his best works were now truly behind him.

Family Plot (1976) effectively brought down the curtain on Hitchcock’s career with a preposterously lumbering bit of inane nonsense. The story concerns a fake medium, Madam Blanche (Barbara Harris) and her taxi driver boyfriend George (Bruce Dern) who cleverly scams naïve rich people out of their life savings. At present, their sitting duck is Julia Rainbird (Cathleen Nesbit), a widower who is certain that the ghost of her dead sister has come back to haunt her.

George and Blanche accidentally cross paths with a pair of spurious diamond merchants Arthur Adamson (William Devine) and his attractive girlfriend Fran (Karen Black). The two are behind a series of VIP kidnappings in the San Francisco Bay area. When Blanche is asked by Julia to channel her nephew, whom she had given away for adoption many years earlier, this improbable greedy foursome concoct a scheme in which to lighten the dowager of her considerable bank load.

Based on Victor Canning’s novel, the plot as reconstituted by Ernest Lehman’s screenplay for the film remains inconsequential, tired and meandering. Everyone seems to be going through the motions – particularly Barbara Harris, who plays up the camp elements of the story more than the suspense, as though the entire production were a sort of Freak Friday Part Two instead of a Hitchcock thriller.

In point of fact, Hitchcock had long admired Harris as an actress. However, his usual indiscriminant zeal for strict adherence to his scripts was, on this occasion, relaxed, allowing Harris to improvise the final scene, whereupon she addresses the camera – and therefore the audience – with a wink.

Hitchcock was also rather lax about re-shooting scenes with actor Roy Thinnes, whom Hitchcock fired after his first choice for the role of Arthur Adamson - William Devanes - suddenly became available. Although Hitchcock was forced to re-shoot close-ups and medium shots already made with Thinnes in the role, for continuity sake, the long shots of Arthur walking away from the camera are not Devanes but Thinnes.

In hindsight, and with his health in steep decline, one wonders why Hitchcock chose to shoot Family Plot at all. In point of fact, he relied heavily on his second unit to lens the more strenuous action sequences. Clearly, Hitchcock was a man of means. He did not have to continue working and yet he did – mostly to the detriment of his otherwise sterling reputation within the industry. Throughout his career, Hitchcock was most readily proud of his MacGuffins - objects or devices seemingly integral to his narrative, yet otherwise inconsequential to the story once their purpose had been served. However, in his last few outings the MacGuffin which had proved so malleable and easily identified within his personal style suddenly becomes strangely absent. The proof is in his body of work. Hitchcock’s last three movies (Topaz, Frenzy, Family Plot) barely resemble the rest of his canon, both from a stylistic and narrative perspective. Instead, and particularly with the advent of home video that has made entire bodies of work viewable in chronological order, these last few Hitchcock films exist today as strange anomalies apart from what was then referred to as Hitchcock’s auteur style.

In recent years Hitchcock’s daughter, Patricia who sometimes costarred in his movies, has defended against the rumors that have circulated about her father: that his humor lent itself more to cruelty than in fun; that he rarely socialized with people outside of the making of his movies; that he derived a sick fascination by playing on actors phobias, and, that he firmly believed all actors were cattle. The Hitchcock family legacy in private reveals a man unlike the persona of the macabre gentleman glimpsed in his features or adroitly providing glib sarcasm on the set as introductions to his weekly television series.

No, Hitchcock in private is arguably not the Hitchcock the public knew and came to love. True enough that as a showman, Hitchcock was ever concerned with cultivating his reputation as a loveably brooding ham and even more meticulous about the films he produced than in the public’s misperceptions about who he was in the roles of man, husband and father. Yet, in the final analysis Alfred Hitchcock lives primarily in the public’s estimation through that on screen persona and with the sort of product he produced during one of the most successful and lucrative tenures in Hollywood.

That the resulting body of work should lean more toward darker tastes and themes was in servitude to giving the public what Hitchcock perceived they wanted and what he knew they had come to expect from him – rather than revealing any sort of deep inner aversion or dower glimpses into the heart of the man behind the curtain. That Hitchcock himself chose work over a quiet retirement is also admirable from the perspective that he remained an aspiring artist to the very end – even if his last few ventures were ‘less than’ what he might have provided his audiences during his golden period.

Today, Alfred Hitchcock is widely regarded, revered and respected both for his public persona and for that body of work. The two remain indivisible in the eyes of his adoring fans. However, the truth about Hitchcock is less nefarious than his plot lines: that he was ever the kindly understanding and devoted husband to Alma Reville: a tenure made more precious to Hitchcock as a man than any piece of celluloid that emerged from his ever creative closet of terror.

@Nick Zegarac 2008 (all rights reserved.)