Alfred Hitchcock

[Beloved Aunt]

There's a kind of joylessness in the last four films (except the seeming cold and evil enjoyment of murder in Frenzy), I mean, that is very different from anything else I've seen from Hitch.

[Finch]

FWIW, Frenzy didn't feel joyless to me and I found it very darkly funny at times. I was actually more disturbed by Mark's rape of Marnie in the cabin than anything in Frenzy. Admittedly been a while since I've seen both films but I remember Frenzy conditioning us not to expect any good from the killer while Mark in his better moments does want to help Marnie so I found that scene really shocking. Maybe I am misremembering both films but I definitely saw Frenzy as a very dark comedy.

[Big Ben]

To quote the man himself (From a sourced quote on Frenzy's Wikipedia page) in relation to the direction to he gave to Anthony Shaffer who wrote Frenzy:

"It will be done comedically"

It's not a realistic proposition to me to even begin to discuss Hitchcock's filmography without acknowledging his blatant sardonicism. The humor that his films employ is readily apparent and it was something that I even grasped as a small child when my parents showed me some of his earlier films. I don't think it's really possible to not acknowledge that Hitchcock was at, some fundamental level taking the piss at every available opportunity. I am however deeply sympathetic to the idea that people may not be receptive to his type of humor which is absolutely not to everyone's taste because Frenzy is on a whole other level of nasty. There's a reason why it's not mentioned in the same league to the significantly more restrained (And overall better film in my opinion) Psycho.

[Beloved Aunt]

Hitchcock was at, some fundamental level taking the piss at every available opportunity

Frenzy is on a whole other level of nasty

(+misogynistic)
he can definitely be doing both at the same time, at least in Frenzy. Although I still don't actually think any humor in Frenzy really works.

The humor that his films employ is readily apparent and it was something that I even grasped as a small child

Same, his unique and delightful blending of humor and perversity and romance is why I loved his films as a kid and still do. I saw The Birds when I was four (and on vacation with my 'rents in a hotel) and to say it completely scared the shit out of me would be a considerable understatement (although I didn't poop myself ), it was an absolutely incredible experience, of a kind one can have with art only at a very young age. Although I didn't really appreciate that at the time! My regret is that my parents didn't show me Vertigo when I was little, because they think it's stupid.

[Beloved Aunt]

Although come to think of it, I can, sort of, relate to them thinking Vertigo is stupid. Its script is a bit schlocky and schlurpy and perhaps a bit inelegant, _at least in some aspects_ and compared to the material of, well, a number of his other big-ticket, most famous, yummiest films, like North by Northwest, Rebecca, or Strangers on a Train.

[hearthesilence]

This could go in the New York City Repertory Cinema thread but I'll put it here since it's also streaming:

The Paris Theater is proud to present HITCH! The Original Cinema Influencer ("influencer," why saddle Hitchcock with that shit?), a six-week series running from May 16 through June 29, featuring nearly 60 films—36 directed by the Master of Suspense himself, along with many that trace the stylistic influences behind Hitchcock’s filmmaking, and more than a dozen others that stand as homages to his legacy...

Thirty-five films in this series will have showings in 35mm, including Hitchcock classics like Rear Window, Vertigo, North by Northwest, and The Lady Vanishes, as well as enduring masterpieces like Francois Truffaut’s The Bride Wore Black, Fritz Lang’s M, and Henri-Georges Clouzot’s Diabolique, screening on an imported 35mm print courtesy of Institut Français. We’ll also have special treats like two episodes of Alfred Hitchcock Presents, featuring memorable small screen roles for stars like Steve McQueen and Peter Lorre and the directing prowess of multi-hypenate Ida Lupino. And those curious to learn more about the filmmaker’s history can take in two featured documentaries: Kent Jones’ Hitchcock/Truffaut, and My Name is Alfred Hitchcock by Mark Cousins...

Plus, a collection of classic Hitchcock films will be available to stream on Netflix in the US featuring some of his most iconic works starting June 1.

[colinr0380]

FWIW, Frenzy didn't feel joyless to me and I found it very darkly funny at times. I was actually more disturbed by Mark's rape of Marnie in the cabin than anything in Frenzy. Admittedly been a while since I've seen both films but I remember Frenzy conditioning us not to expect any good from the killer while Mark in his better moments does want to help Marnie so I found that scene really shocking. Maybe I am misremembering both films but I definitely saw Frenzy as a very dark comedy.

I also seem to remember that in the late 90s during retrospective Hitchcock documentaries there was talk that Frenzy was the kind of direction that Hitchcock was actively wanting to go into now that there were more explicit serial killer thrillers coming out, with the ideas for Kaleidoscope. So arguably he was potentially raring to grasp the opportunity to be more explicit.

[Beloved Aunt]

Well, thank God that didn't happen! It's funny to think that Hitchcock unleashed would actually much more objectionable than any Brian De Palma film, which are with an exception of a scene or two here and there are all basically fine AFAIC.

I really don't like the horror movie thing where they intentionally set up an audience rapport with a kind or well-meaning character and then have that character later be gratuitously killed, often in a sort of derisive or insulting manner. De Palma actually did that once,

Spoiler

with the gym teacher in Carrie,

but I feel he just made that decision out of perceived peer pressure or something, it doesn't really seem like him. Well maybe he also does that in Body Double, but that was just intended as a middle finger to his critics.

[The Curious Sofa]

In Psycho much of the point for Hitchcock was to establish a likeable (if flawed) protagonist to unexpectedly kill her off nearly half way in.

Kaleidoscope was supposed to be more explicit, but that was inspired by Hitchcock's admiration for Antonioni, who for him represented the future of cinema. And he may have been more engaged when allowed to artistically stretch himself rather than by Topaz and Family Plot, where by all accounts he had mostly lost interest by the time the shoot began and don't the films show it.

[Beloved Aunt]

i guess I just dislike it when talentless or sleazy filmmakers do it. There sure do seem to be a fair number of horror filmmaking figures who substitute being brutal, or just disgusting, for their almost total lack of imagination..!

[The Curious Sofa]

Sleazy movies can have their charms, I suppose having been a fan of John Waters since my mid-teens has taught me that good taste is overrated.

[MichaelB]

It’s worth noting that Hitchcock adored working with Anthony Shaffer (whose sense of humour fully chimed with his) in a way that he hadn’t done with a screenwriter since John Michael Hayes, and he very much hoped that Frenzy would be the first of many collaborations. But although Shaffer was first choice for Family Plot, it didn’t fit his independently busy schedule… and then that was that.

[Lowry_Sam]

Dick Cavett interviews Alfred Hitchcock

complete episode, newly remastered & uploaded to the Dick Cavett Youtube channel

[Noiretirc]

I've always hated Frenzy so what the heck, I think I'll just dump my negative thoughts on it here. Frenzy is, along with The Last of Sheila (a film that if anything I revile even more than the Hitchcock) and maybe a film or two more, one of the few genuinely morally offensive films from the 1970s that I've had the displeasure of watching. Hitchcock being kind of a bad guy just makes his films (except this one) more fun when you're a kid, but as an adult I've found these aspects of his films a bit more off-putting and chilling, although never fatally so except with Frenzy (and there's only a couple of his other films that I've watched which I think are at least largely failures, namely Spellbound and sorry, I Confess, which is the mostly powerfully and unbearably boring film I've ever seen, but I digress). There is something even about the manner in which the film's plot itself slowly, viscously and smugly uncoils and displays itself, with a cold, repulsive self-satisfaction, like an obese, ancient, smugly smiling housecat with big, sagging nipples (okay, maybe the housecat is turning into Hitchcock himself with this metaphor) who has just eaten a baby, that I find gloatingly evil and genuinely revolting. The murder scenes are unusually cruel and unpleasant, not so much because of any gratuitous cruelty (I don't remember any) but because of the feeling they are imbued with. You don't reprehend the murderer while you're watching these murders, you reprehend the director. The enormously and ludicrously deck-stacked misogynistic depictions of almost all of the film's women (there is something about the infantile misogyny of Hitchcock and at least one other relatively old-timey British artist, Rudyard Kipling, that I find kind of hilarious and laughable as well as objectionable), combine with the laughably out-of-date and hokey tone of most if not all of the characterizations, and the resulting lousy performances from pretty much every cast member IIRC, with the exception of Barry Foster as the murderer, who is not far short of superb and whose perf was the only thing I enjoyed about this, to create a tone that is at once morally objectionable, aesthetically laughable and preposterous, and not actually entertaining at all. I suppose I'm a bit of a hypocrite as I write this; I greatly and mostly unabashedly enjoy some sick items, like Killer Joe for example; but even there I think there are considerable aesthetic and even moral distinctions to be made, between something like that, which is basically just good sick fun and not thoroughly imbued and soaked in evil and harmful beliefs, and something like Frenzy, and I still can't help wondering if there must be something a bit wrong with someone who just gobbles up this viscous, gloating film. There is a gloating, no-holds-barred hideousness to the film's tone and outlook, as well as its evil, yellowed cinematography, that is just not my idea of a good time. It's certainly not my idea of escapism, except maybe of escaping into a world that is (much) worse, as well as stupider, than reality. Some somewhat-better-than-decent nippy dialogue by whichever Shaffer brother wrote this crap film as well as some i suppose kind of impressive camera movements here and there make this a more eye-catching late Hitchcock than, I don't know, Family Plot or something, but blech.

You wrote a wall.

[domino harvey]

HD Scans of the components of the Hitchcock-branded Milton Bradley board game Why

[domino harvey]

Are there any books devoted to the projects which Hitchcock tried and failed to make?

[beamish14]

Are there any books devoted to the projects which Hitchcock tried and failed to make?

I thought the writer of The Short Night published his work with some extensive backstory. You can find production illustrations on the AMPAS’ catalog, too

Edit: oh, and The Lost Hitchcocks by John Law

[yoloswegmaster]

Edit: oh, and The Lost Hitchcocks by John Law

And I just got the last copy on Amazon for $10. Hopefully I will get to it soon once I'm done with reading A Life in Darkness and Light

[Stefan Andersson]

Interview with author Steven C. Smith on his book Hitchcock & Herrmann:
https://variety.com/2025/music/news/alf ... 236605274/

[Stefan Andersson]

Article about Hitchcock´s 30s films, their boxoffice in the U.S. and the Selznick contract:
https://themagnificent60s.com/2026/05/2 ... fice-myth/

[Tom Amolad]

I'm not super-knowledgeable about the history here, but I wonder if this take is somewhat missing the point. My sense is that for a British film to make it at all in the US in that period was a significant success. So yes, it would be an overstatement to say that his 30s films were hits in the United States, but it's not so surprising that Hollywood would take notice significant notice of someone who was getting good notices and respectable box-office despite working with actors, contexts, accents, etc that were not so familiar to American audiences.