Alfred Hitchcock

[Svevan]

The potato truck scene is too funny for me to get the skeevs - its the rape/murder scene in the office that was joyless and, while expert, totally gross. Hitch has made us accomplices in many crimes, but Frenzy is the first time that crime is rape, and to me it's a bridge too far. The potato truck scene's playful sexuality (corpse or not) is mild in comparison.

[colinr0380]

But the sequence seems to suggest that the audience can still be made complicit in rooting for the bad guy so long as Hitchcock's running the show and you can feel his gleeful delight in getting the audience to root for a murdering rapist. It's a masterful moment in a masterful film, and I'm surprised it left you ambivalent.

I guess I'd have to go back to the point I was making earlier that I think Hitchcock in this film is commenting as much on his audience as he is on his killer. He's done this before (as in Rope) but there's a greater sense of bitter condemnation in this one. The killer is pathetically driven by their compulsions but in this film the society surrounding him as portrayed in the film, and the viewing audience themselves, are even more pathetic and reprehensible because they provide the context in which he can operate (as in the scene where we get introduced to Rusk's charming, very much alive, mother), and on a meta-level in which Hitchcock can build a career and reputation for himself. We can enjoy being complicit with Hitch in rooting for the bad guy, but not really when Hitch is withdrawing from victim, murderer and audience seemingly in a form of disgust at what he has created, as if in an attempt to try and wash his hands of the action occurrring, which I think he (over)does in the truck scene. At least in the rape scene the focus is mostly on the victim's plight.

But I think this ambivalence, along with the explict nastiness that brutally cuts through all that, is part of what makes this such a fascinating, and I agree masterful, film.

[dx23]

Hitchcock's forgotten silent films restored

By Arifa Akbar, Arts Correspondent

Friday, 30 April 2010


A nationwide Alfred Hitchcock retrospective featuring nine of the celebrated director's rare silent films, made at the start of his career, will be staged in 2012 in a series of public screenings.

The often forgotten collection of silent features made by the young Hitchcock and seen by almost nobody for decades, are said to display the stylistic features, camera work and suspense-filled plots developed in his later Hollywood works.

In 2012, the public will be able to see the footage for themselves. The surviving silent films are expected to be aired as part of the Cultural Olympiad – the arts programme running alongside the Olympic Games – although this is yet to be officially confirmed.

Some will be screened at the British Film Institute (BFI), while others may be set to live music by experimental modern bands on temporary stages and at musical festivals. Objects relating to the films will also go on display.

Eddie Berg, artistic director of the BFI, said it was appropriate to stage a Hitchcock retrospective in the Olympic year, not least because the film-maker was born in Leytonstone, near the Olympic Park in east London.

"One of the things we are trying to get off the ground is to restore the silent films. Most of the visual tropes in these titles appear in his later works. We want to look at his influence on the contemporary world. The season will look at his huge body of work and his influence in different ways," said Mr Berg.

The silent titles will form the heart of the retrospective, but the exhibition may also include the music of the American composer Bernard Herrmann, who collaborated with Hitchcock on the scores for Psycho, North by Northwest, The Man Who Knew Too Much and Vertigo. A staging of Douglas Gordon's 24-Hour Psycho, a 1993 artwork featuring a slowed-down version of the horror film, will also feature.

Amanda Neville, director of the BFI, said the initiative would "resurrect the [Hitchcock] films that are not on the tips of everybody's tongues".

Some of the films need critical restoration work, she said, and "three of them cannot go through a film projector – the level of damage to them is phenomenal."

Robin Baker, the BFI's head curator, said he was keen to discover the whereabouts of Hitchcock's silent movie The Mountain Eagle, which he called the "holy grail" of lost British films.

"It was made in 1926 and was his last silent film featuring a sexually vulnerable young woman and a case of miscarriage of justice," he said.

Hitchcock began his career in Britain as a designer of film title cards before directing a dozen silent films, including The Lodger, in 1926 and which the BFI hopes to restore and screen.

His first "talkie" film Blackmail, released in 1929, was shot as a silent feature and later converted to sound.

Early Signs: His Silent Gems

The Pleasure Garden (1925)

Hitchcock's debut as a director features elements that characterise his later work. The plot focuses on the lives of two dancers, one who ascends to great heights and another who ends up in a marriage with a dangerous womaniser. It also features Hitchcock's handwritten signature in the opening credits.

The Lodger (1926)

His third silent feature and first suspense thriller is about a mysterious lodger who might be a serial killer. Visually, it was deemed highly imaginative for its time, most notably in a scene in which Hitchcock installed a glass floor so he could show the lodger pacing up and down his room from below.

The Farmer's Wife (1927)

From a play by Eden Philpott, this semi-comic story of a widow trying to find a new wife was shot like a thriller. The director was cameraman in some scenes.

[knives]

While the Farmer's Wife is god awful and The Lodger, I believe, has a nice disc out I'm glad silent Hitch is getting its proper treatment. Would love to see The Pleasure Garden.

[Jonathan S]

I don't know if the prints in question contain additional footage but the article suggests the three specified films - like most of Hitchcock's other silents - are much rarer than they really are. Both The Lodger and The Farmer's Wife (which I find very enjoyable if not Hitchcockian) have nice editions on DVD (isn't the MGM disc of The Lodger from a BFI restoration?) I have two versions of The Pleasure Garden - one from German TV - each of which contain footage missing from the other. I think the only other one of the extant nine silents with a sub-standard DVD version is Easy Virtue.

Ironically, the extant Hitchcock film that is perhaps hardest to see in its longest available version is one of his most popular - Psycho (the European cut with shots censored for the US release used for the DVDs). Maybe that's the version being presented at Cannes?

[domino harvey]

Someone isn't familiar with Wood's Marnie quote!

[Yojimbo]

Someone isn't familiar with Wood's Marnie quote!

include me in!

[Yojimbo]

Something like "If you don't like Marnie, not only do you not like Hitchcock, you don't like cinema"

which side of the 'Marnie' fence do you inhabit?
(it leaves me totally cold!)

[domino harvey]

I like it a lot. It was actually one of the first (maybe the first?) Hitchcock films I ever saw

[Yojimbo]

I like it a lot. It was actually one of the first (maybe the first?) Hitchcock films I ever saw

In contrast 'Vertigo', which was my first Hitch, and still my No. 1 Hitch, leaves many viewers totally cold

[domino harvey]

To be fair, my Hitchcock tastes are pretty esoteric to begin with... and this discussion should really be moved to the Hitch thread at this point

[Yojimbo]

Oh I guess I'll play (American films only):

(BEST)
To Catch a Thief
Rebecca
Saboteur
Dial M for Murder
North by Northwest
Frenzy
Stage Fright
Rope
Lifeboat
Mr. & Mrs. Smith
Foreign Correspondent
Notorious
Suspicion
Strangers on a Train
Rear Window
Vertigo
Shadow of a Doubt
The Birds
I Confess
Family Plot
Marnie
The Wrong Man
Torn Curtain
Psycho
Under Capricorn
Spellbound
The Trouble with Harry
The Man Who Knew Too Much
The Paradine Case
Topaz
(WORST)

have you re-evaluated Marnie upwards, then?
And it sounds like you need to check out 'Young and Innocent', which, I think, is still available on YouTube

[domino harvey]

I didn't rank any of his pre-Rebecca films. I like Young and Innocent a great deal, and my positions on the Hitch films quoted above remain mostly the same

[Yojimbo]

I'm ambivalent about the potato truck scene, in which Hitchcock seems to be trying to play Rusk's attempts to get a piece of incriminating evidence back from his latest corpse (though I like the totally abstracted snippets of murderous activity in his flashback realisation of where his pin must have gone). It seems fun scene about the corpse getting its own back on the murderer by kicking him in the face at one point, but at the same time it feels quite upsetting to see Rusk pulling the potato sack over his head as if he were pulling a skirt over his head instead to perform a sex act. The scene still has a queasy way of making the viewer root for Rusk to find his evidence and escape, as well as never letting us forget how hideous and violating his actions are. Even when we are asked to laugh about them.

Well, yeah. Hitchcock has a long history of charismatic villains-- Hell, sometimes it seems like he's rooting for them over the supposed heroes (Notorious comes to mind)-- and this certainly isn't the first time the audience has been made to root for the bad guy. Think of the sewer grate in Strangers on a Train, or the unease every time someone approached the trunk in Rope. The villain's misdeeds in Frenzy only seem worse in retrospect here because we've seen his misdeeds in greater detail than prior baddies. But the sequence seems to suggest that the audience can still be made complicit in rooting for the bad guy so long as Hitchcock's running the show and you can feel his gleeful delight in getting the audience to root for a murdering rapist. It's a masterful moment in a masterful film, and I'm surprised it left you ambivalent.

I'm not sure will I be checking out the current remake of 'The Killer Inside Me', but I wonder was its brutal, graphic violence influenced by the shocking murder in 'Frenzy'?

[colinr0380]

Something like "If you don't like Marnie, not only do you not like Hitchcock, you don't like cinema"

which side of the 'Marnie' fence do you inhabit?
(it leaves me totally cold!)

It's Sean Connery's most convincing, and human, performance!

Afraid that I haven't seen The Killer Inside Me yet, but will most likely try to pick it up on DVD.

[Yojimbo]

Something like "If you don't like Marnie, not only do you not like Hitchcock, you don't like cinema"

which side of the 'Marnie' fence do you inhabit?
(it leaves me totally cold!)

It's Sean Connery's most convincing, and human, performance!

Afraid that I haven't seen The Killer Inside Me yet, but will most likely try to pick it up on DVD.

I thought Connery's performance in 'The Man Who Would Be King' was his finest; and put co-star Michael Caine, generally considered the better actor, firmly in the shade.

[Cash Flagg]

It's Sean Connery's most convincing, and human, performance!

It's certainly his most complicated performance.

[domino harvey]

That's not what 'Tippi' Hedren said

[antnield]

FilmFirst, MovieMail's own label, have just put out Juno and the Paycock in the UK. No extras and a single-layered disc, but this release is sourced from the BFI Film Archive's print and marks a massive improvement over the budget discs we've seen previously in the UK. There's a bit of hiss on the soundtrack and minor damage to the print - as should be expected perhaps - but a quick flick through the disc demonstrates a pleasing level of clarity to the image and no major flaws. If I can remember how to, I'll post some screen caps in the relevant thread later. Here's a link to MovieMail where the disc is currently an exlusive.

[zedz]

I noticed that and assumed it was yet another PD shelf-filler. Glad to hear it's a good print (even if it's not a good film!)

[Person]

Something like "If you don't like Marnie, not only do you not like Hitchcock, you don't like cinema"

which side of the 'Marnie' fence do you inhabit?
(it leaves me totally cold!)

It's Sean Connery's most convincing, and human, performance!

Oooh, I don't know about that, myself! Have you not seen The Offence (1972, Sidney Lumet) also starring Trevor Howard?

[colinr0380]

Alright - The Offence and Man Who Would Be King are just as good as Marnie in fully rounded Sean Connery characterisation terms!

[Napier]

What, no love for Zardoz?

[zedz]

What, no love for Zardoz?

Are we talking fully-rounded characterisations or fully-rounded codpieces?

[colinr0380]

Yes, lots of love for Zardoz (and Charlotte Rampling!) but like most of Connery's films I end up liking them despite his performance rather than for it.