My parents took my sister and me to see Psycho when it first opened in 1960. I was seven, Terry was two. "Scarred for life" is probably an overstatement, though we did both sleep with the lights on until late 1975.
Alfred Hitchcock has always been my favorite film director. I could spend a month writing every day about the impression his movies have made on me and why, but instead I think I'll get excited about some favorite individual moments, those few seconds that have made me gasp, go slack-jawed, or need to change my clothes.
We all remember the shower scene in Psycho and Janet Leigh getting chopped up just for standing under the shower head before turning on the water (something no sane person would do). But what about the moment just before, when the bathroom door opens and an unknown figure moves silently toward the curtain? I'm telling you, that could be a candygram instead of a knife and it wouldn't matter. Just the sheer dread of that idea, someone opening your bathroom door when you're at your most helpless and vulnerable, is enough to do me in. That one moment, when we know something Leigh's character doesn't and it's about to cost her her life -- for me, that's the single scariest moment in Hitchcock's entire filmography. Heck, the murder itself is just icing on the cake.
Cary Grant trying to outrun a crop duster in North by Northwest is another iconic sequence. So much has already been written about the scene's entire setup and execution that I'll mention only three moments within the scene itself that made me giddy with a moviegoer's delight. One: "That plane is dustin' crops where there ain't no crops." When the stranger says that to Grant right before boarding the bus, it's like that bathroom door opening, right? Something unexpected has presented itself and changed the situation from one of ennui to one of fear. But at least Grant's advantage over Leigh is that his character is being shown where the trouble will come from, and he has a chance to save himself. Two: This is my favorite camera shot in the whole movie. It's the third time the plane circles around and heads directly toward him. I love how Grant begin running as fast as he can toward us as we (the camera) keep retreating as the plane flies closer. This also reminds me of the shower scene because we're helpless to do anything. In Psycho, we know she's about to be killed, but we can't use that knowledge to save her. Likewise here, Grant is running straight at us, and it's like we're on a caboose moving farther away down the track. We can't reach out to him. Hitchcock drove me nuts when he implicated us like that. I just want to be a passive moviegoer and enjoy myself for a couple of hours. Don't make me feel guilty or responsible for your characters, too! (But who am I kidding? I always go back for more.) Three: Remember when Grant hides in the corn and thinks he's safe, only to have the duster make a low pass and gag him with pesticide? North by Northwest is full of such jokes, and this is one of my favorites.
Rear Window is the supreme example of a director implicating the viewer. In fact, it's my all-time favorite movie, and if I get started on it now, it'll be Labor Day before I finish. I really hope you've seen it, and that's another reason for my brevity -- I don't want to ruin it for you. I won't even summarize the plot, except just a tiny bit. But know that Hitchcock puts you right inside James Stewart's apartment so that you see only what he sees and know only what he knows. I once showed this in a writing class because I couldn't think of any better way to illustrate point of view. It's probably no secret to you by now that Stewart's character suspects his neighbor of murder. Through his binoculars, he begins to accumulate visual clues that could add up to evidence. We know everything he does -- and one thing more. One night while Stewart sleeps, we see something suspicious beyond his window, so that now, darn it, Hitchcock has implicated us once again. We want to get to the truth as much as he does because now we have our own piece of circumstantial evidence (if in fact we saw what we thought we did). Damn you, Master of Suspense!
What are your favorite moments? Here are a few more of mine. You might already remember them, but indulge me just a little longer.
In The Birds, when Jessica Tandy sees that her friend's eyes have been pecked out, she opens her mouth to scream, and I expect her to, but she doesn't. She's mute with fear, which is a whole mess of fear, and so much creepier. (I can remember seeing it for the first time on TV. Remember the last scene, how open-ended and inconclusive it is? Well, after the movie, the local news anchors asked viewers to stop calling in -- people wanted to know where the rest of the movie was.)
Likewise, in Topaz, some passengers (including John Forsythe) duck down in the back seat of a car that's speeding away from trouble. In the road behind them, a gunman takes a stance and aims his weapon to fire at them (and us). They're waiting for it, we're waiting for it, but the shot never happens. Again, it's like the shower scene and what the stranger says to Cary Grant. We find out something bad is about to happen, but, in these last two examples, Hitchcock proves that it doesn't even have to happen to be effective. (I remember watching Stand By Me -- Rob Reiner, not Hitchcock -- and reaching the part where those boys are on the railroad bridge and, if I remember correctly, one of them teases the others about what would happen if a train suddenly appeared. Anyway, the subject does comes up. I'd watched too much Hitchcock, I guess, because as soon as the statement was made, I felt fear, and I knew the train wouldn't appear. It didn't have to. Also, it would be way too movie-convenient if it did. But no, this wasn't Hitchcock, so of course the boys end up running in terror from a speeding train. I can forgive Reiner for that, but only because he gave us Spinal Tap.)
Saboteur is older than the others I've mentioned. I watch scenes like the climax of Saboteur and wonder why on earth contemporary filmmakers can't learn from him. Robert Cummings is the good guy, and he's on top of the Statue of Liberty (naturally) trying to save bad guy Norman Lloyd, who's hanging on for dear life. This is so great -- all you hear is the wind, as Cummings clings to Lloyd's coat sleeve to pull him up, and then you get a closeup of the shoulder seam starting to come apart. If this were remade today, why all the frantic music? Why the three-second camera shots? Why have the bad guy screaming obscenities? OK, I've tipped my geezer hand here, but still, you have to admit, less is definitely more when it comes to suspense.
I'll stop here, reluctantly. I haven't even touched on Notorious (!!!), Vertigo, Shadow of a Doubt, Strangers on a Train, The Thirty-Nine Steps -- all right, all right, I'm stopping.
(The Lady Vanishes . . . .)
I have to agree, the last scene in The Birds was masterful. It was mysterious that the birds attacked and equally mysterious why they stopped...
ReplyDeleteCoincidentally, The Birds was on TCM last night. It dawned on me that Tippi Hedrin must have named her daughter Melanie Griffith after Melanie Daniels in that movie. But that's weird, because she hated the whole experience.
DeleteI don’t think Tippi hated the whole experience of The Birds. In the interview for the All About The Birds feature on the DVD, she speaks glowingly about her thrill of getting chosen for the role, her co-stars and about Hitchcock himself. The only part she said she hated was filming the scene where she’s attacked by birds in the upstairs bedroom. It took five days to shoot, with live birds, and she took quite a beating. Be that as it may, that scene as it appears in the film rivals Psycho’s shower scene for editing technique.
ReplyDeleteI think I’ve mentioned this to you before, but there’s a particular moment in Rear Window that stands out for me. And oddly, it isn’t a visual. It’s a sound. The sound of the murder itself. It’s nighttime, it’s quiet, and then suddenly there’s a woman’s shriek, a muffled scream, and the sound of breaking glass, all in the span of about half-a-second. And then…silence. It’s a profoundly disturbing sound (or succession of sounds). I often think about how that effect must have been meticulously created (under Hitch’s supervision, of course). The actress who screamed, the sound engineers doing the recording, the foley artist breaking the glass. How many takes did they do? And when they finally got it right, I can imagine Hitchcock, mouth turning up in a wry smile, eyes twinkling, saying, “That’s it. That’s the one.”
Roger
So you're Mr. Anonymous! I might have known.You're right, Hedrin was mainly upset about doing that scene; it's her daughter who resents him for it. Good point about those sounds in Rear Window. I was going to write something about seeing at the Egyptian, but there were two other memorable viewings I remember, so they all cancelled one another out.
DeleteI have never seen Psycho, nor any of these except The Birds, Rear Window and Stand By Me (read the book and loved it). Will you still be my friend?
ReplyDeleteOf course! As long as you've seen Rear Window, we're still buds. : ) I also *strongly* recommend Notorious -- Cary Grant and Ingrid Bergman -- I'm actually torn between Rear Window and that one as my favorite.
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