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Quentin Tarantino Dumps On Alfred Hitchcock -- Four Times

posted a year ago by ecarle (14979)
9 replies | jump to latest

Quentin Tarantino may be a lot of things, but one thing he is, now in 2023 as I post this, is:

A famous auteur filmmaker, and not a 'cult" filmmaker, either. His movies are big hits all over the world. His movies are nominated in the big Oscar categories, and sometimes win: Best Supporting Actor for Christoph Waltz twice and Brad Pitt once. Two Best Original Screenplay Oscars.

QT rather shares his fame, I think, with that grand old master of the 1920s through the 1970s: Alfred Hitchcock.

Both men worked in "thrillers" or genre pieces; people die violently in almost all of their films. QT branched out into Westerns and a WWII movie but maintained Hitchcock's sense of style and violence and perversity.

Both men have followings -- Hitchcock had more then, but QT has plenty now.

And I think this: both Hitchcock and QT were strange looking, strange talking men whose personalities "in person" don't really fit the grand cinematic style and power and sophistication of their movies. In short, two weird guys who excited the world with their movies, not their personalities(though QT landed a supermodel wife and plenty of chicks before her, looks didn't much matter.)

QT rather sidestepped talking about Hitchcock in the beginning. Sometimes he could be a bit snarky ("I don't get why Hitchcock is like God, OK?") sometimes he would be more conciliatory. QT's biggest "bad quote" on Hitchocck is that he preferred the cheapjack 1983 sequel "Psycho II"(directed by the little-known, little-active Richard Franklin) to the original. Balderdash.

But I've gone looking recently and found QT to be a bit more over-all insulting about Hitchcock, and I think its worth some rebuttal.

Here are the QT quotes I have found so far:

ONE: "People discover North by Northwest at 22 and think its wonderful when actually it is a very mediocre movie."

TWO: "I've always felt that Hitchcock's acolytes took his cinematic and story ideas further. I love Brian De Palma's Hitchcock movies. I love Richard Franklin's and Curtis Hanson's Hitchcock meditations. I prefer those to actual Hitchcock."

THREE: "The 50s held him down, Hitchcock couldn't do what he, left to his own devices, would've wanted to do. By the time he could do it in the late 60s and early 70s, he was a little too old. If he could have gone where he wanted to go in the early 60s and through the 50's, he would have been a different filmmaker."

FOUR: "While DePalma liked making thrillers(for a little while at least), I doubt he loved watching them. Hitchcockian thrillers were, for him, a means to an end. That's why when he was forced to return to the genre the mid-eighties, they were so lacklustre. Ultimately , he resented having to make them Hitchcock's Frenzy might be a piece of crap, but I doubt Alfred was bored making it."

Hmm.

CONT

[–] ecarle (14979) a year ago

ONE: "People discover North by Northwest at 22 and think its wonderful when actually it is a very mediocre movie."

--

OK. Here, QT is nsulting an IMAGINARY (to him) audience who discover NXNW at 22 and think its wonderful. (Such, silly, naive young people.) Hey I discovered NXNW a lot younger than 22 and it excited me for LIFE. And no WAY it is a very mediocre movie. It has landed on the Top 100 films of all time list of the AFI and Number 4 greatest thriller (AFI) and all sorts of critical lists and the reviews were even great in 1959 (not so Psycho and Vertigo, as much.)

Forget about the Rushmore climax and the classic crop duster scene(mediocre? my ass)...try the intricate camera movements and angles and great dialogue and acting of the early , tense "Glen Cove library scene."

Methinks that QT is a "content over style" guy, or something and while he's certainly entitled to his opinion, it just strikes me as so wrong on North by Northwest that he has lowered my opinion of him for CRITICAL thinking( it has not lowered my love of HIS movies.) (I know, like I matter -- he's world famous, and I'm not famous at all; he's superrich, and I'm not rich at all...but I get to have an opinion!)

CONT

[–] ecarle (14979) a year ago

TWO: "I've always felt that Hitchcock's acolytes took his cinematic and story ideas further. I love Brian De Palma's Hitchcock movies. I love Richard Franklin's and Curtis Hanson's Hitchcock meditations. I prefer those to actual Hitchcock."

---
Well with Richard Franklin, that would be Psycho II, of which, QT's idol Brian DePalma told an interviewer, "Its not worth talking about" and which includes among its murder scenes a boyfriend/girlfriend episode lifted directly from...Jaws 2. I hear that Franklin's "Road Games' is pretty good, but the guy simply didn't have the longevity or following of the Main Man.

DePalma DID, almost, and I know that ALL of his movies were allowed to be gorier than Hitchcock's (the first thriller, Sisters, came a year after Hitchcock's brutal but not bloody Frenzy), but many of them are severely flawed in the script department -- plot, dialogue -- and DePalma always seemed to fumble his set-pieces. DePalma also never really got the Oscar respect that his peers Coppola,Spielberg, and Scorsese got. DePalma directed some of MY favorite movies(The Untouchables is my favorite of the 80's) but Hitchcock has a more lasting imprint.

QT cites Curtis Hanson as a Hitchcock copycat better than Hitchcock. Well, Hanson wrote and directed my favorite of the 90s -- LA Confidential -- but that's not terrribly Hitchcockian (well, a particular surprise murder was rather Psycho like.) I guess QT is talking of Hanson movies like The Bedroom Window(with Steve Gutenberg!) Bad Influence, The Hand That Rocks the Cradle, and The River Wild -- all of which were rather OK but no preparation for the greatenss of LAC. Oh, wait, The Silent Partner with Elliott Could and villain Chris Plummer. Pretty damn good but...no Rear Window or Psycho.

CONT

[–] ecarle (14979) a year ago

THREE: "The 50s held him down, Hitchcock couldn't do what he, left to his own devices, would've wanted to do. By the time he could do it in the late 60s and early 70s, he was a little too old. If he could have gone where he wanted to go in the early 60s and through the 50's, he would have been a different filmmaker."

---

Well, isn't that TRUE of ALL filmmakers from the censored era(30s, 40s, 50s?) Maybe not Frank Capra, but Wilder's movies and Preminger's movies would have had more blatant sex and Hitchocck would have upped the sex AND the violence but...that's not when they worked so QT can hardly blame the directors in question, Hitch included.

I've noted that Hitchcock actually got away with a LOT of sex and violence in the 40's and 50s.

Violence: the opening (sexual) gay strangling in Rope; the raw brutality of the killing of Walter Slezak in Lifeboat(and the implied amputation scene); the diplomat shot in the face in Foreign Correspondent; the young boy impaled on an iron-spiked fence in Spellbound, the rape-like attack on Grace Kelly in Dial M(and the scissors in the back close-up as her assailant dies); the lingering knife in the back death of Louis Bernard in The Man Who Knew Too Much.

Sex: Ingrid Bergman's trampy ways in Notorious(and pretty direct references to sex with both Cary Grant and Claude Rains on her part); Miss Torso's gyrations in Rear Window; the sexual banter twixt Grace Kelly and Cary Grant in To Catch a Thief; James Stewart having see Kim Novak nude in Vertigo; Eva Marie Saint's blatant come-on to Cary Grant on the train in NXNW...EVERYBODY's sexual banter in The Trouble With Harry(plus "I'd like to paint you in the nude" on first meeting.)

CONT

[–] ecarle (14979) a year ago

QT knows what we all know: eventually the movies could show more violence and more sex(though QT has recently given an interview about why he does NOT film sex scenes in his movies, on balance -- less DeNiro and Bridget Fonda in Jackie Brown, a seconds-long sex joke.) Eventually, Hitchcock's movies could NOT compete with modern films for blood and horror and action and sexuality -- but they sure DID run the table in their time, and Psycho, The Birds, Marnie, Torn Curtain and Frenzy were damn shocking in their violence with Psycho, Marnie and Frenzy taking on sex.

QT in suggesting that by the 70's Hitchcock was too old to do what he wanted to do reminds us: Hitchcock DID manage to get that sexual and horrific rape-strangling scene into Frenzy-- that's Hitchcock at his WORST(sexual violence-wise, not as a movie), and QT sort of built his career from that kind of content for the WHOLE career(except for jackie Brown.)

QT re-staged at least the strangling part of Frenzy in Inglorious Basterds; and staged some dismemberment murders of young women in Death Proof, and gave us wall to wall samarai sword carnage in Kill Bill (complete with spurting blood and flying limbs) much of it girl-on-girl killings; and had Sam Jackson narrate a particularly lurid sexual torture of a white man by a black man in "The Hateful Eight" and showed Sam Jackson entering a scene of a white man torturing a black man in Django Unchained...

...is there where QT regrets that Hitchcock could not go?

CONT

[–] ecarle (14979) a year ago

FOUR: "While DePalma liked making thrillers(for a little while at least), I doubt he loved watching them. Hitchcockian thrillers were, for him, a means to an end. That's why when he was forced to return to the genre the mid-eighties, they were so lacklustre. Ultimately , he resented having to make them Hitchcock's Frenzy might be a piece of crap, but I doubt Alfred was bored making it."

---

Before reaching the main point of contention (Frenzy might be a piece of crap), consider QT's take on DePalma (this entire passage is from his new book).

QT is basically saying that after DePalma flopped with a comedy("Get to Know Your Rabbit") he started making HItchcock homages to survive(and if QT thinks that DePalma's Obsession is better than Vertigo...ay ay ay.) QT contends that DePalma actually switched to action in the 80's(Scarface, The Untouchables) but that's not entirely true; he kept making his Hitchocck copycat stuff in the 80's and 90's and then added more action in the 90's(Carlito's Way, Mission Impossible.)

In any event, it begs the question: DePalma seems to have gotten STUCK with his Hitchcock copycat label even as his peers Coppola and Spielberg and Scorsese "branched out" and were taken more seriously.

CONT

[–] ecarle (14979) a year ago

Ultimately , (DePalma) resented having to make them(Hitchcock copycats.)

---

Does QT KNOW that? Did DePalma personally TELL him that? Or is that just QT's guess?

---

Hitchcock's Frenzy might be a piece of crap, but I doubt Alfred was bored making it."

-- So QT is saying that whereas DePalma's heart wasn't in making Hitchcock movies, Hitchcock's WAS. Makes sense, doesn't it? Gives Hitchcock the edge, doesn't it?

"Hitchcock's Frenzy might be a piece of crap" suggests to me that QT THINKS that. It would be nice to know WHY. My guess is that even though the movie had one ultra-violent sex strangling to "forecast the QT era," a lot of it was probably too staid and tamped down and expository for QT's taste: any of the scenes with Blaney and Babs together, probably even the twee British comedy of the Oxford dinners.

No matter. I think by the time we get through with all of QTs quotes, a guy who thinks North by Northwest is mediocre, a guy who likes Psycho II better than Psycho, and a guy who has no use for HItchcock's 50's films ...is never going to be brought over to Hitchcock fanhood.

His loss. But I still like his movies pretty much as much as I liked Hitchcocks. They are both genre auteurs, whose movies have great scripts AND great cinematic style.

PS. QT is some years younger than me and was raised in a pretty turbulent hardscrabble household and saw his movies in some tough places and perhaps just never had reason to connect to Hitchcock's omnipresence on network TV in the 60's. Maybe QT never experienced "the hype of Hitchcock" like I did in my more settled childhood.

[–] Lucia2016 (525) a year ago

I've been on a bit of a Hitch binge recently. I actually slightly prefer the pre Hollywood English based ones, they are better on the ear and the humour is fantastic and subtle.

Most of the reasons that are being used to put them down a little are the excact reasons why i was drawn to them recently and why i rate them even more. Because of the limitations of what could be shown everything is suggested or just off camera and i think it makes them better films.

Certain comedians think it's cheating by cursing all the time for easy laughs it reminds me of the Dogme approach where it's against manipulating your audience using cheap easy methods, by restricting themselves it forces them to communicate on a higher level

I will concede that maybe the third acts don't always live up to the promise but i will let that slide because the dialog is so easy on the ear.

QT is a bit perverted and was watching violent films at a very young age so it's no surprise his tastes and desires have gotten harder. Of all the films he 'critiques' very few are slow burning thinkers he would rather pontificate about Cannon Ball Run or something.

He is similar to De Palma in a way technically great very cinematic and entertaining but little under the bonnet

He also prefers Rocky 2 to Rocky i mean take that in

[–] SandyR (7467) 8 months ago

I like three or four of QT's movies, but he should never be allowed to give interviews about anything. He's arrogant and pretentious beyond redemption. He loves to shit on directors who do or did have a better resume as far as consistency goes. He once referred to Kubrick as his "peer." Astonishing nonsense. He'd be lucky to be a PA on a Kubrick set.

[–] BillySlater (4114) 8 months ago

QT doesn't hold a candle to Hitchcock. He is easily one of the most overrated directors in the world.