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Hitchcock an idol for 20 years at the time of Psycho

posted 7 years ago by swanstep (2637)
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Part of what made Psycho a sensation in 1960 and what makes it the apex of Hitchcock's career is it merged Hitchcock's film and TV Careers. After hundreds of hours in people's living-rooms throughout the 1950s, Hitchcock had taken over from De Mille as the most famous director in the world, and in 1960 he took the grubby tales of intra-family murder that were the bread and butter of his TV shows to the big screen and to the cinematic limits78 setups for 55 seconds of film (or whatever it is that they're saying the shower scene is these days), a truly nerve-shredding score, and so on. By 1960, then, Hitch was an idol, a director-star, and now, with the biggest hit if his career from which he retained 60% of the profits, a very rich man.

Not as well appreciated perhaps is how beloved Hitchcock was even near the beginning of his time in Hollywood. To wit, The Hollywood Reporter recently put up on its website its 1941 review of Hitch's relatively unsuccessful comedy, Mr and Mrs Smith w/ Carole Lombard:
http://tinyurl.com/juvvcxs
Their capsule summary is:
"The Hitchcock fans, and there must be hundreds of thousands as a result of his Hollywood work the past two years, will vote to keep comedy away from their idol and continue him in the groove in which he excels — the mystery plots and the beautiful romantic yarns."
Now, presumably THR is reflecting the knowledge of industry insiders here, i.e., not just of Rebecca and Foreign Correspondent (both splendid, both hits) but also of Hitch's British films. Still the use of the word 'idol' together with the claim that Hitch already probably has 100s of thousands of fans of him in particular strongly suggest that THR is registering that Hitch is no ordinary director, that a cult has already formed around him and his output. This is right around the time when Preston Sturges is firing on all cylinders and Welles and Wilder are waiting in the wings so the idea of a new sort of director/writer/star is being born. At any rate, it's interesting to see Hitchcock be one of the first beneficiaries of the embrace by the press and the public of a slightly more solicitous, auteurist attitude toward directors after about 1940. Hitchcock would then ride that wave of increasing auteurist appreciation all the way through Psycho and into the '70s.

[–] ecarle (14979) 7 years ago

One of the counterintuitive aspects of Hitchcock's career is how what many consider his "Big Three"(Vertigo, North by Northwest, and Psycho) came rather late in what was already a very solid career of three decades worth. And trouble began almost immediately after Psycho...it was almost three years to The Birds(after one film a year) and then a "downhill slide based on age and health and relevance" began.

On the other hand, Hitch came to America with all those British thrillers and a reputation, immediately "checked in" with a Best Picture, in the same year gave audiences the really big thrills of Foreign Correspondent(that assassination and chase! that PLANE CRASH!.) And became almost immediately a cult director whose name went over the title. In short, Hitchcock was perhaps a greater success in the 30's and 40's than in the 60's.

Though his forties stuff is generally not as slam-bang as his fifties/early sixties stuff, Hitchcock DID establish two things once he hit America: (1) an affinity for thrillers(which made him a brand name for entertainment) and (2) a great talent for visual and sound ideas literally outside the abilities of pretty much every other director working.

I can see Hitchcock's cult forming around the shots of Mrs. Danvers in Rebecca, the assassination and plane crash scenes in FC, Cary Grant coming up the stairs with the milk in Suspicion, the dream sequences (and brutal flashback death of a boy) in Spellbound; the spinning POV of Cary Grant from Ingrid's position in Notorious, etc.

Came the fifties, as other directors started losing studio contracts(Michael Curtiz at Warners) and some directors didn't work much(Capra and Hawks), Hitchocck just kept plugging away.

And in 1955, added the TV show for megastardom.

And from 1951(Strangers on a Train) through 1963(The Birds), more often than not treated his audience to several exciting or terrifying set pieces PER FILM. Not to mention the unique "Rear Window," in which the ENTIRE MOVIE feels like a set piece.

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One irony about the Vertigo-NBNW-Psycho grand slam:

A New Republic critic named Stanley Kauffmann wrote scathing reviews of all three films in which his contention was that they were nowhere near Hitchcock's work of the 30s and 40's. He wrote of NXNW "surely the real Hitchcock has died and been replaced by this hack"(in so many words.)

These reviews were "wacky" but perhaps understandable: Vertigo and Psycho certainly didn't match the sedate content of Hitchcock's earlier films, and even NXNW seemed to have fun with old Hitchcock tropes.

Kauffman's reviews came back to haunt him as Psycho became a blockbuster, Vertigo became "one of the greatest films ever made"(even in 1965 it was given that cachet by critic Robin Wood) and North by Northwest was always and forever beloved. Kauffman found himself Truffaut's punching bag in print: "Surely Stanley Kauffmann has resoundingly failed," wrote Truffaut.

[–] swanstep (2637) 7 years ago

I recently came across another sign of Hitchcock's exceptional treatment by critics and possibly by movie fans more gererally in the very early '40s. I was wondering whether to watch a somewhat unheralded Bogart movie w/ a no-name director from early 1942 called 'All Through The Night'. The movie's wikipedia page paraphrases several contemporary reviews including a damning one from The New Yorker as follows: "Hitchcock himself couldn't have asked for a better plot," but its brought down by "the feebleness of invention, the wordiness of the dialogue, [and] the sluggishly paced direction."
It's remarkable to me that two films into his US film career, Hitchcock is already a talismanic figure who bestrides how smart people are thinking about their movie experience. Hitch is *synonymous* with tight-plottedness and *strongly associated* with essentially every other filmic virtue (superior inventiveness, dialogue, pacing). Amazing.