From what I've seen from Hitchcock (I have not finished his filmography yet) I find this film his most artistically shot film. My favorite(s) so far are "Spellbound" and "Psycho", but does anyone else think so?
shareIt is artistically shot. Location shooting helps but there is still too much blue screen.
Its that man again!!
I'm picking nits here, but for the record, there's no blue screen (aka: traveling matte) photography in TCaT. There is a fair amount of rear-screen projection, primarily in scenes involving conveyances (in this case, auto and boat), which Hitchcock characteristically preferred to do under the controlled conditions within a sound stage.
There do happen to be some through-the-windshield moving shots of the policemen following Kelly and Grant that were shot on the road on location, which was quite unusual for Hitchcock.
Process photography, either rear-projection or traveling matte, was still pretty standard in the mid-50s, but Hitch was still clinging to it 20 years later (at a time when audiences were less accepting of it) in Family Plot, which unfortunately contains some of the most glaringly inept blue screen work to be found. Similar shots by the same process in The Birds over a decade earlier were accomplished with much more care.
It's only my guess, but the reason for the difference may have been in The Birds' heavy dependence on such lab-based optical effects, for which a larger proportion of post production costs would have been budgeted.
Poe! You are...avenged!
Process photography, either rear-projection or traveling matte, was still pretty standard in the mid-50s, but Hitch was still clinging to it 20 years later (at a time when audiences were less accepting of it) in Family Plot, which unfortunately contains some of the most glaringly inept blue screen work to be found. Similar shots by the same process in The Birds over a decade earlier were accomplished with much more care.
It's only my guess, but the reason for the difference may have been in The Birds' heavy dependence on such lab-based optical effects, for which a larger proportion of post production costs would have been budgeted.
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That's probably a large part of it...inflation-wise, The Birds had a much bigger budget than Family Plot.
But also, I have read, on "Family Plot," Universal management "tricked" Hitchcock into expermenting with a new kind of blue screen effect that "did it in the lab" -- resulting in the early scene of Dern and Harris in a taxicab that I call "The blue screen that ate Bruce Dern's head." Hitchcock was reportedly demoralized because he didn't see how bad it looked until AFTER he got film back from the lab; he couldn't fix it.
Worse, Universal later distributed a production photo of Dern and Harris in the runaway car on the mountain road in which the background behind Dern and Harris was...total blackness. The background process work of the sky and mountain road behind Dern and Harris wasn't in the shot yet(hadn't been processed in the lab), so Universal simply released a photo that had nothing to do with what's in the movie.
Compounding the issue for "Family Plot" is that the bad blue screen work mainly shows up in scenes where the characters are in cars -- and there are MANY scenes where the characters(Dern/Harris; Devane/Black) are in cars.
All that said, I still very much love the "Family Plot" runaway car scene. The POV stuff of the road ahead is great and extremely precise in its Hitchcock montage; Dern and Harris are hilarious in their interaction(without blue screen, I doubt they could concentrate on their acting so well) and the overall effect of the scene is a "roller coaster ride." The blue screen blue sky behind them? I'm OK with it. It makes the scene feel more like fantasy.
Screenwriter Ernest Lehman wrote both "North by Northwest" and "Family Plot" for Hitchcock. The "Family Plot" car sequence "fixed" a problem that Lehman and Hitchcock felt was there in the "North by Northwest" drunken drive: that in the Grant sequence, the shots of the car hood and Mercedes hood ornament "got in the way of feeling the rush." In "Family Plot," there is nothing blocking the view, we just hurtle forward. Also in "Family Plot" no music over the car ride. Just screeching brakes and screeching actors...
But also, I have read, on "Family Plot," Universal management "tricked" Hitchcock into expermenting with a new kind of blue screen effect that "did it in the lab" -- resulting in the early scene of Dern and Harris in a taxicab that I call "The blue screen that ate Bruce Dern's head." Hitchcock was reportedly demoralized because he didn't see how bad it looked until AFTER he got film back from the lab; he couldn't fix it.That makes me feel better in one way (that being that it wasn't really due to any laxity on Hitchcock's part) and worse in another (that he was effectively, however unintentionally, sabotaged).
But also, I have read, on "Family Plot," Universal management "tricked" Hitchcock into expermenting with a new kind of blue screen effect that "did it in the lab" -- resulting in the early scene of Dern and Harris in a taxicab that I call "The blue screen that ate Bruce Dern's head." Hitchcock was reportedly demoralized because he didn't see how bad it looked until AFTER he got film back from the lab; he couldn't fix it.
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That makes me feel better in one way (that being that it wasn't really due to any laxity on Hitchcock's part) and worse in another (that he was effectively, however unintentionally, sabotaged).
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I remember thinking when I first saw Family Plot that the process work in the cars was particularly bad, "even for Hitchcock."(Sadly, hah.) The Bruce Dern head eating shot for instance. Really jarring. Not one film before, in "Frenzy," the comparatively few "car process shots"(of Blaney and Babs; of Inspector Oxford and his assistant), had been pretty unobtrusive.
But "Frenzy" had been shot at Pinewood Studios near London. Its as if when Hitchcock returned to the "clutches" of Universal City Studios in North Hollywood -- his technical resources became suddenly cheapjack(even TV shows of the time didn't use such bad process work as in Family Plot.)
I might add that with "Frenzy," one of the things I like about it -- and that contributed to its comeback status at the time -- is how polished and professional it LOOKS. After the credits helicopter shot, the first scene in the movie -- the Politician making his Thames-side speech -- opens with a long shot of him speaking to the crowd that delights me every time I see it: there is a crystal clarity to the image, the sense of shadowed-grey morning sunlight, that just looks great. I attribute a lot of this to the "Frenzy" cinematographer, Gil Taylor, who had shot Dr. Strangelove and would shoot Star Wars.
Family Plot had Robert Burks old camera operator, Leonard South, at the DP slot and just didn't look so good. Most of the time. Great exceptions: the opening red-and-green plushness of Julia Rainbird's sitting room AND a violet and blue motif to the scene where Dern questions a department store saleswoman.
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All traveling matte processes, of which there are a number of versions and generations, are "in the lab" ones. Perhaps this was one meant to reduce costs through some streamlining of the laborious and exacting optical printing process involving multiple "plates." Just a guess.
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Possible. We know I'm not too technical, but as I understand it, actual film footage -- process plates projected on the soundstage while the actors sit in fake cars -- are used in some car scenes (the ones in Vertigo, North by Northwest and Psycho, for instance) whereas travelling matte is "don in the lab)
Evidently, Dern and Harris in their car scenes acted in a fake car with no process footage being projected behind them?
Side-bar: no less an "expert" than Hitchcock's assistant director Hilton Green got mixed up, I think, when he compared Arbogast's staircase fall in Psycho to the fall from the Statue of Liberty by Fry in Saboteur. He thought they were shot the same way. But as I understand it, Arbogast(Martin Balsam) flailed while sitting in front of process footage projected on a screen behind him and Fry(Norman Lloyd) fell by being "double printed" onto footage of the POV below the Statue of Liberty (Lloyd had been separately filmed on a soundstage by a camera that ROSE above him to create the image of him FALLING away below us.)
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I remember "the blue screen that ate Bruce Dern's head" (both the onscreen effect and your phrase),
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My phrase? Well, I do repeat myself on these various boards...knowingly. I figure some of the readers are new. I'm a little sheepish when I realize the reader has read it before.
Oh, well, I'm older. Its like repeating stories, isn't it?
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and it's happened to the best of 'em. 40 years earlier in Swing Time, parts of Fred Astaire's body become transparent at times during his "Bojangles Of Harlem" number that placed three silhouette "shadows" behind him with a similar optical printing process. There are several such glitches in some Gone With the Wind scenes as well.
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Some of the worst process work I've seen is in the otherwise-classic "The African Queen." Bogie and Hepburn run some rapids and THEIR heads get eaten...by garish green halos.
But...the thing of it is...Hollywood has always been forced to submit to the technical of the time. Even many of today's state of the art CGI shots look "fake" at times.
Reality is...reality.
And: HITCHCOCK'S process work and travelling mattes were often better than other filmmakers. The Mount Rushmore sequence in NXNW; Arbogast's fall; the high shot of the birds gathering to dive down on Bodega Bay below...pretty good stuff, I'd say.
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On some level, the artificiality of the Dern/Harris interior shots during the runaway Mustang sequence works in its favor. Had they been able to do it realistically on location (camera car with tow bar on the actual road or whatever), I'm guessing it would have counteracted its comedic aspects.
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I agree. And I don't think "camera car with tow bar on the actual road" is that much more realistic than process. Suddenly we are OUTSIDE of the car, as if we were lying on the hood looking in. Process actually puts us in there WITH the driver.
Nowhere better is this illustrated than in Marion Crane's drive in Psycho. Hitchcock captures what it is like to be "hermetically sealed" in your own world when you drive for a long time(I read an essay on the driving scenes in Psycho that said Hitch captured an actual psychological effect of "self-hypnosis" that happens when you are in a car.)
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It's really their reactions (Dern's in particular) that make it work.
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Its the final expression of Hitchcock's "great cinematic idea":
A person looks (Dern)
What they see(the road rushing up to meet them)
The person reacts (Dern's freaked out face.)
See: Rear Window.
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As this is the "To Catch a Thief" board, I would note that the central Cliffside drive of Grace Kelly and Cary Grant was perhaps the big "action set piece" IN To Catch a Thief, and its quite good,and quite precise. But Hitchcock kept improving that scene -- first in North by Northwest(with Grant again, and Herrmann's great fandango) and then in Family Plot(well nigh perfectly, I'd say.)
And(of course?) To Catch a Thief didn't have the first such car drive. That would be in the climactic Cliffside car drive with Cary Grant and Joan Fontaine of "Suspcion." Plus, drunk Ingrid Bergman gives Cary Grant a harrowing Miami beach car ride near the opening of "Notorous."
Cary Grant: King of the Hitchcock Car Chase Scene! Until Bruce Dern.
Family Plot had Robert Burks old camera operator, Leonard South, at the DP slot and just didn't look so good. Most of the time.And as a DP up to that point (and thereafter), South's work had been almost exclusively in television. And it shows. I agree about the look of Frenzy, which indicates great care taken.
Evidently, Dern and Harris in their car scenes acted in a fake car with no process footage being projected behind them?Yup, which accounts for that production still you mentioned that shows only a void behind them. But of course, actors in a soundstage mock-up are the last ones to whom it makes any difference whether it's rear screen projection - or nothing - back there. In a way, all this latter day CG work in which actors frequently have nothing or no one with which to interact brings their craft back to its roots. Whether in a play rehearsal, improvisational workshop or class, it's often just the actor, the text (or context) and his imagination in an empty space; acting in its most basic form.
Side-bar: no less an "expert" than Hitchcock's assistant director Hilton Green got mixed up, I think, when he compared Arbogast's staircase fall in Psycho to the fall from the Statue of Liberty by Fry in Saboteur. He thought they were shot the same way.You're right, of course, but I'm willing to cut him some slack in this instance. I think I've seen that or a similar interview and I imagine he was engaging in some broad verbal shorthand, avoiding the technical vagaries, to explain nothing more than a stationary actor gesticulating or gyrating to suggest a fall.
My phrase? Well, I do repeat myself on these various boards...knowingly. I figure some of the readers are new. I'm a little sheepish when I realize the reader has read it before.I hope my remark wasn't taken as any kind of criticism; it was meant as an appreciation. And I have such a horror of being misunderstood or giving offense that I'm sure to be second-guessing even that remark momentarily. I do so enjoy these exchanges, I'd hate to put you off them.
Some of the worst process work I've seen is in the otherwise-classic "The African Queen." Bogie and Hepburn run some rapids and THEIR heads get eaten...by garish green halos.Great example. And the hell of it, where the film maker is concerned, is that they find out how bad it is only after it's too late to do anything about it. And the next time, the DP or lab techs will give them the same assurances - "It'll work great" - and they'll be faced with the same choice: to trust or not to trust their "experts."
Cary Grant: King of the Hitchcock Car Chase Scene! Until Bruce Dern.And as you note, Hitchcock brought something different to it in each instance (Grant's at-first-threatening reach towards Fontaine...and the camera; his knee-gripping and palm-rubbing juxtaposed with the casualness of Kelly's gloved hands; his comically desperate attempts to focus on the road in NBNW). And as an honorable mention, he went one better than the lean left/lean right intercutting in TCAT with Melanie's leaning lovebirds.
Family Plot had Robert Burks old camera operator, Leonard South, at the DP slot and just didn't look so good. Most of the time.
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And as a DP up to that point (and thereafter), South's work had been almost exclusively in television. And it shows.
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I recall watching a TV series in the 80's, the one with Delta Burke and others. Designing Women? And the show listed Leonard South as the DP. And I chuckled. From Hitchcock to this. Well, its a living
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I agree about the look of Frenzy, which indicates great care taken.
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Its a very good looking film. The opening shot of the Thames speech just screams out "this is a professional, polished film." And this occurred in 1972, when so many films had a gritty, flat look.
Peversely, the colors in the potato truck scene -- blue night sky, Rusks' butterscotch red-blond hair, the brown potatoes, a certain "To Catch a Thief" green lighting -- are crystal clear and pretty, too.
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Evidently, Dern and Harris in their car scenes acted in a fake car with no process footage being projected behind them?
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Yup, which accounts for that production still you mentioned that shows only a void behind them. But of course, actors in a soundstage mock-up are the last ones to whom it makes any difference whether it's rear screen projection - or nothing - back there. In a way, all this latter day CG work in which actors frequently have nothing or no one with which to interact brings their craft back to its roots. Whether in a play rehearsal, improvisational workshop or class, it's often just the actor, the text (or context) and his imagination in an empty space; acting in its most basic form.
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That's pretty true, isn't it. They are told to IMAGINE "whatever" -- a dinosaur in front of them, the high seas around them, that they are in a car hurtling down a mountain road...and ACT it.
Speaking of acting in process. In Psycho, Martin Balsam takes a fall down a staircase which was really filmed by putting him in a chair. But it is his EXPRESSIONS that sell the terror of the fall -- his eyes and mouth wide open at first, and then gulping and looking a bit dazed as the fall nears its painful end.
I've always wondered: did Martin Balsam spend a day or a night at home practicing those expressions, in front of a mirror? Did Hitchcock direct them on set(maybe with vocal cues -- "Open your eyes and mouth wide at the beginning, Marty?") Did Balsam SHOW those expressions to Hitchcock on set?
Because..the results on film are unforgettable.
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Side-bar: no less an "expert" than Hitchcock's assistant director Hilton Green got mixed up, I think, when he compared Arbogast's staircase fall in Psycho to the fall from the Statue of Liberty by Fry in Saboteur. He thought they were shot the same way.
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You're right, of course, but I'm willing to cut him some slack in this instance. I think I've seen that or a similar interview and I imagine he was engaging in some broad verbal shorthand, avoiding the technical vagaries, to explain nothing more than a stationary actor gesticulating or gyrating to suggest a fall.
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That's true. I suppose the issue is...Hitchcock used DIFFERENT film processes to get roughly the SAME result: a man falls, and we FEEL the fall.
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My phrase? Well, I do repeat myself on these various boards...knowingly. I figure some of the readers are new. I'm a little sheepish when I realize the reader has read it before.
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I hope my remark wasn't taken as any kind of criticism; it was meant as an appreciation. And I have such a horror of being misunderstood or giving offense that I'm sure to be second-guessing even that remark momentarily. I do so enjoy these exchanges, I'd hate to put you off them.
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No, no, no. Actually, my response was inartful as if to say "I KNOW I repeat phrases." Sometimes I do, sometimes I don't. Its nice to be noticed on them sometimes. I enjoy these exchanges immensely.
As for my phrases, with some of them, I've just "locked concepts into my mind" over the years. They're almost like my own small set of rules.
Two examples:
"The Big Three" of Hitchcock: Vertigo(1958), North by Northwest (1959), Psycho (1960.) They are the three best and biggest to me, and amazingly, all in a row. Yes, Rear Window joins them on the AFI lists as Hitchcock's best -- but the Big Three are climactic, and have Herrmann on music and Saul Bass on credits. "The Big Three" are my controlling set of Hitchcock at his best.
"Van Sant's Psycho: The Experiment that Succeeded by Failing." I've committed that phrase (of my own) to memory because: I believe it. Van Sant's Psycho is not just another "bad remake." So much of it IS exactly like the original(lines, shot composition, actors movements) that it remains fascinating that it failed. It is a Xerox of a very good movie(no, wait, a GREAT movie) but it ISN'T great. The key problems were miscasting and being released in 1998, when the story of Psycho was just not that shocking anymore. But as an experiment -- it succeeded. In proving those things.
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Some of the worst process work I've seen is in the otherwise-classic "The African Queen." Bogie and Hepburn run some rapids and THEIR heads get eaten...by garish green halos.
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Great example. And the hell of it, where the film maker is concerned, is that they find out how bad it is only after it's too late to do anything about it. And the next time, the DP or lab techs will give them the same assurances - "It'll work great" - and they'll be faced with the same choice: to trust or not to trust their "experts."
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Sadly merciful for Hitchocck: when he was given those false assurances about Family Plot...he would never get them again. He would never make another movie.
Hitch got the CORRECT assurance on many shots in The Birds, however. What an achievement. Especially for 1963. That shot of the birds floating into the air below us and above Bodega Bay is flawless -- I feel like we are up in the air with those birds as they mass and dive on the humans below. The birds are also flawless in the attack on Tippi Hedren in the upstairs room, and pretty damn good filling the sky behind the schoolhouse when they attack the kids.
I'd say its too bad that the script and story(and some of the acting) in The Birds is subpar...except the technical achievement and set-pieces send it soaring right to the top of the canon.
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Cary Grant: King of the Hitchcock Car Chase Scene! Until Bruce Dern.
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And as you note, Hitchcock brought something different to it in each instance (Grant's at-first-threatening reach towards Fontaine...and the camera; his knee-gripping and palm-rubbing juxtaposed with the casualness of Kelly's gloved hands; his comically desperate attempts to focus on the road in NBNW).
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Indeed. I suppose it as if Hitchcock saw each car chase (or fast single car drive) as a "canvas upon which to work new wonders."
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And as an honorable mention, he went one better than the lean left/lean right intercutting in TCAT with Melanie's leaning lovebirds.
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A great bit. Puckish comedy up front in a horror thriller. People comment to me about that bit all the time when we are talking Hitchcock "out here" -- it seems to be a favorite, remembered shot(because remember, practically EVERYBODY has seen at least The Birds and Psycho.)
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I especially enjoy the little double-exposure trick Hitchcock does in NBNW, where one section of the road dissolves to an entirely different one.
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Now that you mention that...I DO remember that.
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It's complete cinematic sleight-of-hand, but so perfectly evokes the experience of a three-sheets-to-the-wind late night drive
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That and the "double-printing" of POV shots of the road on top of each other -- plus the near miss of a tree. These elements are NOT in the Family Plot car scene or the earlier Grant car scenes.
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(more than one of which, I'm ashamed to say, I've had).
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Oh well...
I've always wondered: did Martin Balsam spend a day or a night at home practicing those expressions, in front of a mirror? Did Hitchcock direct them on set(maybe with vocal cues -- "Open your eyes and mouth wide at the beginning, Marty?") Did Balsam SHOW those expressions to Hitchcock on set?Oh, me too. Or perhaps Grant did similar mirror practice with his "drunk driving" expressions. I'm sure some actors must do things like that, and perhaps shut themselves away for hours in solitary rehearsal of line readings, actions, levels of emotional intensity and so forth. Or maybe try things out on the spouse at home? Quite mysterious.
I'd say its too bad that the script and story(and some of the acting) in The Birds is subpar...except the technical achievement and set-pieces send it soaring right to the top of the canon.I assume you're referring to Miss H. I've never found any fault with Tandy, Pleshette or, especially, Taylor, and have come to adopt allowances for Hedren: the character itself is one of little depth, which perhaps befits a similar performance; its sometimes mannered and stylized nature dovetails with her from-a-different-world presence among the locals as well as its unexplained seeming connection with the attacks ("Who are you? "WHAT are you?") with which Hitchcock flirts.
Puckish comedy up front in a horror thriller. People comment to me about that bit all the time when we are talking Hitchcock "out here" -- it seems to be a favorite, remembered shot(because remember, practically EVERYBODY has seen at least The Birds and Psycho.)I always take those leaning birds as another of Hitchcock's characteristic "winks" to the audience, as if to remind them at the outset that, for all the apprehension, angst and alarm they're expected to experience, this is still, just like a roller coaster, all for good, clean, jump-out-of-your-socks fun.
The Trouble with Harry would be my choice for most artistically shot. Gorgeous scenery.
share"To Catch a Thief," was, I believe, the only Hitchcock picture to win a Best Cinematography Oscar(for color when there was also a black and white award.) The award went to Robert Burks, Hitchcock's longtime cinematographer from Strangers on a Train through Marnie(less Psycho, which was photographed by TV guy John Russell.)
"To Catch a Thief," "The Trouble with Harry" and "Vertigo" strike me as near matches in gorgeous color look. Remember, Hitchcock was competing with black and white TV and thus tried in the fifties to often give movie viewers a colorful, eye candy experience. Note that all three pictures were set in very gorgeous locations.
Compared to "To Catch a Thief," "North by Northwest" seems a little more gray and subdued in the color...but it is a much bigger and more exciting adventure.
Robert Burks color work on "The Birds" and "Marnie" for Universal doesn't seem quite as rich as his work for Paramount on the movies above (less North by Northwest, which was done for MGM.)
All this said, perhaps for the combination of French Riviera scenery, the flower market scene, the fireworks scene, the costume ball scene, and the wonderfully "green night" shots for the rooftop finale -- "To Catch a Thief" IS the most artistically photographed of Hitchcock's films.
At least, Oscar thought so...
"To Catch a Thief," "The Trouble with Harry" and "Vertigo" strike me as near matches in gorgeous color look.Some measure of credit must also go to the wonderful VistaVision process - exposing a large-format frame encompassing eight perfs on 35mm film by running it through the camera horizontally, doubling the size of the standard four-perf image captured by vertical exposure - in which these films were shot. The increased clarity was apparent even when printed down onto a standard 35mm release print, delivering what we'd now call a high-res or high-def image (in the terminology of the time, Paramount called it "motion picture high fidelity").
Very helpful technical description of VistaVision, doghouse.
I might add that while VistaVision was a Paramount process, Hitchcock got to take it to MGM for North by Northwest, which is, I believe, Hitchcock's final VistaVision film. And yet NBNW just doesn't seem as rich in the colors as the Paramount films(except perhaps in the great blue night skies of the final Rushmore sequence). Maybe different lab processing of the prints?
It's my understanding that Paramount employed Technicolor's dye transfer process for all its VistaVision films, even though Technicolor labs themselves had, by the '50s, quietly begun employing standard developing and printing using Eastman "monopack" negative. By '59, the name "Technicolor" appearing in main titles indicated, more often than not, merely the lab facility rather than the classic "3 strip" negative and dye transfer printing process that became so revered in the '30s and '40s. This may well be the case with NBNW.
Do you know anyone else who can use so many words to say, "Yes?"
I don't know if it's one of Hitchcock's streamlined revisions of actual events, but I've read that, happy with the autonomy that his Paramount agreement guaranteed him, he insisted that the one with MGM simply duplicate its terms, one of which happened to be Paramount's stipulation - as it was with all its contract heavy hitters of the era such as Crosby, De Mille and Martin & Lewis - that all his films be produced in the process (which hadn't yet been introduced as of Rear Window). If this is so, it could explain why the only MGM films for which it was ever used were NBNW and Crosby's High Society (assuming he did something similar in his negotiations with them).
Ironically, by '59, corporate bean counters had already begun urging abandonment of the process (Paramount's final VV film was One-Eyed Jacks, released in early '61). There's a March 1959 memo (before "No Bail For the Judge" was shelved) to production manager Frank Caffey (with cc to Herb Coleman) that begins, "Below is the estimated savings if PROD 10344--VERTIGO--had been shot in Standard Color instead of Technicolor VistaVision."
But films like TCAT, We're No Angels, The Court Jester, The Rainmaker and other '50s Paramount films exhibited a vividness and presence that was apparent to me even as a child, watching them on an early-'60s color TV.
Poe! You are...avenged!
It's my understanding that Paramount employed Technicolor's dye transfer process for all its VistaVision films, even though Technicolor labs themselves had, by the '50s, quietly begun employing standard developing and printing using Eastman "monopack" negative. By '59, the name "Technicolor" appearing in main titles indicated, more often than not, merely the lab facility rather than the classic "3 strip" negative and dye transfer printing process that became so revered in the '30s and '40s. This may well be the case with NBNW.
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I knew I was drifting out of my league on technical when I raised the question, but I think the simple thing I HAVE noticed (sometimes watching them back to back) is how much more richly colorful To Catch a Thief is than NBNW. But Hitchcock had other fish to fry with NBNW, he had a lot of ground to cover, a lot of locations to film, and probably felt that he didn't NEED color as he had needed it in the far less exciting To Catch a Thief.)
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Do you know anyone else who can use so many words to say, "Yes?"
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Yes. Me. Hah.
But I like reading details. I try to learn as I can.
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I don't know if it's one of Hitchcock's streamlined revisions of actual events, but I've read that, happy with the autonomy that his Paramount agreement guaranteed him, he insisted that the one with MGM simply duplicate its terms, one of which happened to be Paramount's stipulation - as it was with all its contract heavy hitters of the era such as Crosby, De Mille and Martin & Lewis - that all his films be produced in the process (which hadn't yet been introduced as of Rear Window). If this is so, it could explain why the only MGM films for which it was ever used were NBNW and Crosby's High Society (assuming he did something similar in his negotiations with them).
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Interesting. Possible. Its a measure of Hitchcock's clout in the late fifties, I think, that MGM seems to have ALMOST given him a blank check to make North by Northwest. The money to hire Cary Grant AND Eva Marie Saint AND James Mason. The money to hire a supporting cast of scores (compare it to the small supporting cast in Psycho and To Catch a Thief.) The money to film in NYC, Chicago, Mount Rushmore area, and Bakersfield, California(subbing for the Indiana prarie.)
I say ALMOST a blank check because evidently MGM said no to extra shooting time for a credits sequence showing Cary Grant at work on Madison Avenue. Oh, well, we simply got one of the greatest credit sequences ever made (by Mssrs Bass and Herrmann) instead.
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Ironically, by '59, corporate bean counters had already begun urging abandonment of the process (Paramount's final VV film was One-Eyed Jacks, released in early '61). There's a March 1959 memo (before "No Bail For the Judge" was shelved) to production manager Frank Caffey (with cc to Herb Coleman) that begins, "Below is the estimated savings if PROD 10344--VERTIGO--had been shot in Standard Color instead of Technicolor VistaVision."
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The bean counters. Damn.
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But films like TCAT, We're No Angels, The Court Jester, The Rainmaker and other '50s Paramount films exhibited a vividness and presence that was apparent to me even as a child, watching them on an early-'60s color TV.
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Early 60's color TV? Lucky you! Our family had a black-and-white through 1968..we kept it til it broke down.
And thus(as I've remarked before), my first viewings of To Catch a Thief, Rear Window, Vertigo and NXNW (all on network TV) were in black and white. But I IMAGINED them in color.
Three memories of those "black and white years":
1. Every year when we watched The Wizard of Oz, when Dorothy opened the door to Oz, the parents would say "Now imagine this black and white movie just changed to color."
2. After awhile, we started trooping down to the neighbors who had a color set to watch Wizard of Oz as a "block party." In color.
3. I made very good friends with a boy whose family had a color TV, and I'd slip over to watch Batman and The Wild Wild West with him...in color. His mother said, "Sometimes I think you like my son for our color TV."
Of course not!
But Hitchcock had other fish to fry with NBNW, he had a lot of ground to cover, a lot of locations to film, and probably felt that he didn't NEED color as he had needed it in the far less exciting To Catch a Thief.)Indeed. And that "gray and subdued" look to which you earlier referred is down even more to the production design than anything in the film lab: the urban settings of Manhattan and Chicago; the colorless interiors of the 20th Century Limited; the muted, yellowish earth tones of "Prairie Stop;" the extensive, modernist use of stone in Van Damm's house; the granite faces of Mt. Rushmore. Even the limo in which Roger is abducted is gray rather than the usual sinister black. And Roger himself is the quintessential "man in a gray flannel suit."
Every year when we watched The Wizard of Oz, when Dorothy opened the door to Oz, the parents would say "Now imagine this black and white movie just changed to color."Well, at least they were trying to help!
But Hitchcock had other fish to fry with NBNW, he had a lot of ground to cover, a lot of locations to film, and probably felt that he didn't NEED color as he had needed it in the far less exciting To Catch a Thief.)
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Indeed. And that "gray and subdued" look to which you earlier referred is down even more to the production design than anything in the film lab: the urban settings of Manhattan and Chicago; the colorless interiors of the 20th Century Limited; the muted, yellowish earth tones of "Prairie Stop;" the extensive, modernist use of stone in Van Damm's house; the granite faces of Mt. Rushmore. Even the limo in which Roger is abducted is gray rather than the usual sinister black. And Roger himself is the quintessential "man in a gray flannel suit."
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Agreed. There are two movies in the late Hitchocck canon that really seem to match up the color scheme of the character with the color scheme of the movie:
North by Northwest: Grant's silver gray suit(and silver gray hair)seem to set the pace for all that gray and silver in the background shots...and the gray and silver of the 20th Century Limited, inside and out.
The Birds: Tippi Hedren's pale green dress suit seems matched by a color design in which EVERYTHING -- the carpets in the hall of Rod Taylor's apartment building, a truck, background wallpaper...the ocean...is an aquamarine, blue-green.
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As you hint, the color is in the action, upon which Van Damm can't resist commenting, "I want to compliment you on your colorful exit from the auction gallery," only seconds before he sarcastically refers to the somewhat sterile cafeteria as "these gay surroundings."
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What a great scene, so well-written ("And now, what little drama are we here for today?" -- and THERE IS ONE: the shooting of Thornhill.) And I love how Mason puts the squelch on Grant's over-macho spy line:
Grant: Suppose I told you that I know the longitude and latitude of your take-off point? And the destination of your ultimate rendevous?
Mason: (Beat) I don't suppose you'd care to carry my bags, would you?
OUCH.
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And when Hitchcock does give us the occasional punch of color, it's as an accent that's in counterpoint to the environment: Eve's blood-red floral dress (when Roger is at his most mistrusting of her) against her gray-on-beige-on-gray hotel room; her orange traveling suit as she scurries through the woods and over the monument.
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Interesting to me: Hitchcock chose that orange dress for the Rushmore chase so we could make out Saint's figure at all times, especially in long shots of the Presidential faces.
13 years later, Hitchcock would give the Anna Massey character (Babs) an orange suit to wear for her murder scene(unseen)...so that the suit dress itself would become a memorable clue in later scenes(Rusk keeps it in his drawers, moves it to Blaney's bag, it falls out in front of the police, Blaney's goose is cooked.)
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Every year when we watched The Wizard of Oz, when Dorothy opened the door to Oz, the parents would say "Now imagine this black and white movie just changed to color."
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Well, at least they were trying to help!
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Yes, they were. It was nice of them and as noted...if I knew something was in color, I imagined it that way.
Conversely if the TV Guide said "black and white" regarding a movie (Saboteur, Abbott and Costello meet Frankenstein...even Psycho when I did NOT get to watch it)...I saw the film as broadcast.
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By the time we got the color set, my parents had tired of the annual ritual, so we kids had been stuck with a circa 1950 round-screen RCA hand-me-down in the den. But because of the new color one, I prevailed upon them for a "just this once" viewing. I had wondered exactly how the transition was accomplished visually: did the color slowly fade in; was it a straight cut from b&w to color; did it appear in splashes like those from Tinkerbell's wand at the opening of Disney's weekly show? Yes, at ten, I very much had a sense of such "movie stuff" and thought about these things.
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Me, too. If I've given one thing away (to myself) with my postings over the years, it is that for the true movie fan, the interest kicks in early and precisely. 10 years old may be a kid to the adult world watching you, but your curiosity about "how movies work" is going to enter in from an early age.
More props to my parents: we watched "Singin in the Rain" on NBC I think in the early sixties and they kept alerting us to watch for all the scenes about "how movies are made." That was one of my earliest experiences with movies as BEING made.
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Because so much of programming was still b&w, someone was always fiddling with the "color" dial on a b&w show "just to make sure," and having cranked it all the way up, would then crank it back down "blind," as it were.
So when Dorothy opened the door onto the Land Of Oz that first time...it remained b&w! "What's wrong? There's no color!"
"Just wait," I was told. Maybe 15 seconds into the scene, I couldn't take it anymore and defied my parents, rushing to crank up the "color" dial (while thinking to myself, "These people don't know what they're talking about"). And sure enough, someone had left the color dial cranked down, and because it was "just this once," I had to wait years to finally see how the transition was supposed to look.
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Ha, ha.
Inversely: When "colorization" came to the showing of movies on TV like Its a Wonderful Life -- in the 80's -- we were told "if you don't like it, just tune your color set down to black and white." Well, I DID that and found...there was STILL a trace of color in the image. You could NOT tune it all the way down to black and white.
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And one more:
The opening credits of North by Northwest play against a bright green background.
Well, when I watched it in black and white, I for some reason though that was a BLUE background.
Some years later , we got a color TV, and I would shift the dial so the green screen went to blue: "There that's better" -- I thought our color set was set wrong.
Some years later, I saw North by Northwest on the big screen at a revival house and -- uh oh -- it DID open against a green screen.
The mental tricks our mind plays. Evidently, I WANTED the opening credits of NBNW to be in blue. But they are in green.
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And then it was more years after that when home video releases restored the sepia of the opening scenes,
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Interesting. I guess I just forgot that the old broadcasts were missing the sepia.
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and we all got to finally see how it was really supposed to look (with the sepia-painted house interior against the colors just outside, a Garland double in a sepia-toned gingham dress with her back to the camera, past whom it tracked through the door so the real Garland could then walk into the color scene in her blue one, all in one shot without a cut).
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I did not KNOW that! A Garland double.
I'm learning new things all the time.
P.S. For all my talk of how North by Northwest has a "silver and gray" look, there was a time from the 80's through the early 00's where the movie had a BLUE look, an overall blue tint to the picture on both VHS prints and cable. I know this print lasted into the 00's because some imdb writer posted: "Is this Hitchcock in his blue period?"
Somewhere along the line -- perhaps for BluRay? -- a new print or copy of North by Northwest was struck and the movie now has that silver-gray base to it.
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What a great scene, so well-written ("And now, what little drama are we here for today?" -- and THERE IS ONE: the shooting of Thornhill.)Your quotation of that line brings to mind the script's repeated emphasis on role-playing in the dialogue:
More props to my parents: we watched "Singin in the Rain" on NBC I think in the early sixties and they kept alerting us to watch for all the scenes about "how movies are made." That was one of my earliest experiences with movies as BEING made.And props to Singin' In the Rain, too: for all its satire, it's one of the more accurate movies-about-making-movies where it concerns the nuts and bolts, especially of the period it depicts.
Inversely: When "colorization" came to the showing of movies on TV like Its a Wonderful Life -- in the 80's -- we were told "if you don't like it, just tune your color set down to black and white." Well, I DID that and found...there was STILL a trace of color in the image. You could NOT tune it all the way down to black and white.On that circa '63 set with its rotary dials, you actually could bleed all the color out, but we've had later-model sets that performed as you describe.
All this said, perhaps for the combination of French Riviera scenery, the flower market scene, the fireworks scene, the costume ball scene, and the wonderfully "green night" shots for the rooftop finale -- "To Catch a Thief" IS the most artistically photographed of Hitchcock's films.
At least, Oscar thought so...
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IMO all it proves is that the older, more conservative Academy membership of the 50s was improssed with the postcard pretty look of the film. Great cinematography depends on other things like the choice of using vivid or subdued hes and shot composition. No way Vertigo isn't superior in this department.
Whenever the subject of the minor OScar categories comes up, I think of a postmortem column on the 1971 Oscars by Bosley Crtowther, then film critic for the NY Times, who cited the Mary Livingston effect. Mary was the real life wife (and TV girlfriend) of Jack Benny, and based on a very small output of screen performances many years earlier, was a member of the Academy. In the column, Crowther contemplated how someone like Mary would have voted in the Best Sound category, in which Fiddler on the Roof had very unjustly beaten out The French Connection. Was Mary going to vote for a sound which consisted of a lot of city noise with policesirens and gunshots when you had a musical with lovely songs and violin solos? Of course not!
IMO all it proves is that the older, more conservative Academy membership of the 50s was improssed with the postcard pretty look of the film. Great cinematography depends on other things like the choice of using vivid or subdued hes and shot compositionIn all fairness, however, it should be noted that only cinematographers submit the nominations for the category (as is true for all of them: editors nominate editors; costume designers nominate costume designers and so forth). Presumably, their professional eyes would be evaluating aspects beyond only a "postcard pretty look."
IMO all it proves is that the older, more conservative Academy membership of the 50s was improssed with the postcard pretty look of the film. Great cinematography depends on other things like the choice of using vivid or subdued hes and shot composition. No way Vertigo isn't superior in this department.
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Hard call for me. Every time I view To Catch a Thief, particularly in its cleaned up DVD form(I think Paramount paid for some restoration) the colors are so incredibly vivid and crystal clear that they almost overpower the movie for me. I am thinking of the fireworks scene(in which, artistically, the room is darkened considerably so the night sky of fireworks dominates outside the window -- in process) and above all, the costume ball.
Vertigo has that great shot of Novak next to the Golden Gate bridge and all of glorious San Francisco and the peninsula to feast upon. But I'm not sure its colors play so brightly on the eye.
But, if the issue is NOT "vivid crystal clear color," perhaps Vertigo is the superior of To Catch A Thief.
Also: Vertigo has that marvelously shadowy-near-darkness of the final scene of Stewart dragging Novak up the stairs. Its so dark, sometimes you can't even see them. Its as if Clint Eastwood directed it(snark.)
But: During To Catch a Thief I go absolutely ga-ga crazy for the greenish tint of the night for the final rooftop chase and cliffhang -- and for the absolute precision of the overhead process shot of the real thief hanging from Grant's hand.
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Whenever the subject of the minor OScar categories comes up, I think of a postmortem column on the 1971 Oscars by Bosley Crtowther, then film critic for the NY Times, who cited the Mary Livingston effect. Mary was the real life wife (and TV girlfriend) of Jack Benny, and based on a very small output of screen performances many years earlier, was a member of the Academy. In the column, Crowther contemplated how someone like Mary would have voted in the Best Sound category, in which Fiddler on the Roof had very unjustly beaten out The French Connection. Was Mary going to vote for a sound which consisted of a lot of city noise with policesirens and gunshots when you had a musical with lovely songs and violin solos? Of course not!
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I'm sorry that Mary Livingston has to be the example here -- I LOVED Jack Benny, his show and Livingston's acting on it -- but its true: the Academy in some crucial sixties and seventies years simply had too many old people who barely worked on it.
Gregory Peck was the Academy President for some of this time, and he worked to "cull out the deadwood" -- demanding that Academy members had to have worked in the last ten years in order to vote. I dunno, for years AFTER the deadwood was culled, the voters were still pretty bland -- its why The English Patient beat Fargo and Forrest Gump beat Pulp Fiction.
Speaking of old Academy members, I went to see a few movies at the Academy theater thanks to knowing a librarian there. And one time, I recall a very small, very old, very MEAN old man sitting behind me. He kept kicking the back of my chair, jolting me, throughout the movie, with these admonitions:
Old Man: Stop moving in your seat!(Kick) Stop fidgeting! (Kick) I TOLD YOU, stop squirming around!(Kick)
It was a full house, I couldn't move to another seat, I DID try to stop "moving." And no, I wasn't going to hit such an old man.
The film ended, we faced each other, he insulted me, I left. I told my companion, "And just think: that old ogre probably gets to vote for Best Picture each year."
The scenery is great. And I have to admit it is artistically good. But I would have preferred a better story. Hitchcock films that I think are artistically good are 'The Trouble With Harry' and 'I Confess.' But these again are not among my favorites. I think Hitchcock is at his best when he delivers a great story.
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