RIP Barbara Harris
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/21/obituaries/barbara-harris-dies.html
shareOh no. So good for Hitch in Family Plot (and granted the final shot of Hitch's career) and for Altman in Nashville, Harris is a movie buff's favorite, even if she considered herself more of a stage person. RIP.
shareI also thought of that final wink to the camera. I also liked her as Kathleen Turner's mother in 'Peggy Sue Got Married'. She knew how to play it quirky and definitely had her own style.
shareI think the post was too long for a link, but I have bumped my old post on the Family Plot page (Barbara Harris: The Last Hitchcock Blonde) in honor of her passing. Its over on the Family Plot page, if anyone would like to read it. It has some good data I collected on her over the years, forget about my comments.
"Oh no," indeed. Barbara Harris radiated all sorts of charm in Family Plot and elsewhere. Her comic timing was the best. Hitchcock recreated her as a real beauty in Family Plot...one year after Altman rather "sexed her up" in Nashville, where she owns the ending. Both directors seemed to see past her comic persona to the beauty within.
As I note in that other post, Harris said she almost turned down "Family Plot" because "I didn't want to be that famous." She knew appearing in a Hitchcock film -- of whatever quality -- would mark her as among his players.
But as it turns out, I've only found one RIP headline with Family Plot in it. In the others, Nashville made it. And above all..."Freaky Friday," beloved by a generation of 70's "girls"(including some adult ones I know today.) Trivia: Harris' role in the remake was played by Jamie Lee Curtis, daughter of You Know Who.
And speaking of Psycho, two things:
Harris said she never saw Psycho because she was too scared to. So an actress in a Hitchcock movie never saw one of his most famous films.
In some movie -- I think it IS Freaky Friday -- Harris ends up water-skiiing in a dress and her hair is a wig and I swear...it looks like Mrs. Bates water-skiing. I remember that.
Barbara Harris gets the final shot in Hitchcock MOVIES-- a wonderful wink - and she gets the FIRST shot in Family Plot, too.
She was third-billed(after Karen Black and Bruce Dern), but I say she was the lead. With fourth-billed William Devane next in line for best performance. Which is why its a great scene When Good Gal Barbara Harris meets Bad Guy William Devane. ("Oh, no...hardly THAT. I'm here to do nothing more than give you Julia Rainbird's fortune! All the lovely millions and milliions of it!") A woman excited to come and make a man as happy as he should ever be -- finds herself facing death FROM that man. Pure Hitchcock.
I think I'll look at that scene again...soon.
And oh, she was in A Thousand Clowns (looking workaday, brunette and cherubic) with a fellah named Martin Balsam, who won the Oscar(supporting) for THAT one.
RIP Barbara Harris. The Last Hitchcock Blonde.
Karen Black wore a wig.
And I believe Harris cadged her own Oscar nomination for the lengthily named "Who is Harry Kellerman and Why is he Saying Those Things About Me," an odd sleeper amidst Dustin Hoffman's big ones.
Family Plot is running on MoviePlex if you happen to have that premium channel.
shareI think I do! I'll go looking. Thanks.
It's really a charming performance.
I should have put my post in the Family Plot thread. Duh.
shareOh, well. No harm, no foul.
shareI wanted to add these tidbits on Barbara Harris:
She had two smallish but good appearances as a mother in the 80's and the 90s:
1986: "When Peggy Sue Got Married." Its 10 years after Family Plot and Kathleen Turner has the lead in this, as a 40-something woman who time travels from her high school reunion to her 1960 high school class(no Psycho references in the entire movie) and finds the young mother she had waiting for her, along with her young dad. Dad is Don Murray and mom is Barbara Harris, sweet and scolding and just about right. (She had some outta nowhere admonition to her daughter about sex that I recall taking the audience by storm with laughs.)
1997: "Grosse Pointe Blank." Its 21 years after Family Plot. One of my favorite movies and from the great movie year of 1997(LA Confdential, Jackie Brown, Face Off, As Good As it Gets...that boat movie.) John Cusack plays a hit man invited to HIS high school reunion , and part of the gag is that when people ask him what he does and he says "I kill people for money," either nobody believes him or nobody cares. Here's the one movie where Dan Ackroyd was actually funny -- as a motormouth psycho rival hit man who wants to form a "hit person union." Cusack admonishes him: "LONE gunman." And Minnie Driver is the girl he left behind and might win back, if he doesn't get killed.
Anyway, on his return home for the reunion, Cusack elects to visit his dad and his mom. Dad's in his grave, and Cusack pours a bottle of whiskey onto it. Mom is Barbara Harris -- still pretty 21 years after Family Plot -- and it turns out that Mom is Crazy. Institutionalized, doesn't recognize her son, at all. Thus do we realize that this "well adjusted hit man" has some bad family roots.
This was Barbara Harris' final role -- 21 years ago. 42 years after Family Plot.
She gave an interview some years ago after she moved to Scottsdale Arizona and became an acting teacher at a college there. And that is where she passed away this week.
This was Barbara Harris' final role -- 21 years ago. 42 years after Family Plot.Grosse PB was *22* years after FP. share
1997 -
1976
21?
Oh yeah... I just misremembered Grosse PB as 1996...
shareThe funny thing is...I blow my "year math" around here all the time, but I actually did the math to check the distance from Family Plot to Peggy Sue Got Married to Grosse Pointe Blank. Because I wanted to be sure this time (three movies in the timeframe.)
Barbara Harris certainly had a storied career starting in 1959 as a co-founder of Second City, and then becoming a Broadway stage star. A lot of great work there.
She never found true movie stardom, but she hung in there and got some of her most memorable roles -- in the final Hitchcock film, in a Disney movie(back when they were kinda cheap) that became a pop classic -- in later years.
Bruce Dern, her Family Plot boyfriend, sent out his condolence Twitter. Nice he was quoted.
Interesting: Bruce has been in the public eye in his eighties a lot, and in movies of all manner of import ...or not...in recent years. I swear he's the biggest star he's ever been RIGHT NOW. I expect part of it is his longevity and the other part is people like his pal Jack Nicholson and Gene Hackman are out of sight, retired(Hackman) or maybe retired (Nicholson). Both of those guys were offered "Nebraska" first, turned it down. Dern got it.
Dern is in his eighties and Harris was, when she passed. Him, we've seen a lot of in recent years. Her -- in gracious seclusion.
Oh yeah... I just misremembered Grosse PB as 1996...
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You are too kind to me, swanstep.
Its only on a "re-view" of my post I realize i screwed it up. Here it is:
Anyway, on his return home for the reunion, Cusack elects to visit his dad and his mom. Dad's in his grave, and Cusack pours a bottle of whiskey onto it. Mom is Barbara Harris -- still pretty 21 years after Family Plot -- and it turns out that Mom is Crazy. Institutionalized, doesn't recognize her son, at all. Thus do we realize that this "well adjusted hit man" has some bad family roots.
This was Barbara Harris' final role -- 21 years ago. 42 years after Family Plot.
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Barbara Harris' final role WAS 21 years ago(Grosse Pointe Blank of 1997.)
But clearly that was NOT 42 years after Famiily Plot.
Somehow I mushed up or lost part of the sentence which should have read:
That was Barbara Harris' final role. 21 years ago. AND IT IS NOW 42 years since Family Plot.
Oops.
Well, I come here for fun. I type too fast and the math mind is going, I really must remember not to do posts with bad math.
Again, very kind of you to let me off the hook swanstep. Kindness and civility are not hallmarks of ...well, not much anywhere anymore.
I mentioned that I really liked Barbara Harris in 'Peggy Sue Got Married'.
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(She had some outta nowhere admonition to her daughter about sex that I recall taking the audience by storm with laughs.)
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As I recall, they were on the stairs discussing Peggy's boyfriend. Barbara said, shaking her fists and imploring:
'Peggy, you know what a penis is...STAY AWAY FROM IT!'
That's it! Thanks.
And..ha.
I should have put my post in the Family Plot thread. Duh.
@MizhuB. Then yours would have been the first post on that board for 7 months! On the other hand, *Everyone* who regularly posts here is interested in FP, whereas at a completely general film board most regulars won't have heard of FP. E.g., the 'Classic Film' Board currently hasn't had a post for 2 months, and 'Film General' has a few more posts but no lively classic film threads (let alone anything active about Harris).
Conclusion: Psycho Board for the win. share
Then yours would have been the first post on that board for 7 months!
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And I think the Frenzy board is just as bad. Folks just don't remember these films unless they are Hitchcock buffs or ...were alive then.
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On the other hand, *Everyone* who regularly posts here is interested in FP, whereas at a completely general film board most regulars won't have heard of FP.
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Yep -- as I've noted, FP "remakes" the plot structure of Psycho(so I guess its "Hitchocck's Van Sant's Psycho"?)
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E.g., the 'Classic Film' Board currently hasn't had a post for 2 months, and 'Film General' has a few more posts but no lively classic film threads (let alone anything active about Harris).
Conclusion: Psycho Board for the win.
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The Psycho Board seems to have taken on a "Classic Film Board" status, I think, because its hard to just 'pick a film, any film" to discuss "in general." The Psycho board gives us the structure of one seminal movie that works both backwards from its 1960 release(to all its fifties forbears and on back to everything from Lang to "Cat People" to Hitchcock's earlier thrillers to the Universal horror classics, with which Psycho has some things in common, like soundstages) and forwards to many films after it(slasher movies, Bonnie and Clyde, The Wild Bunch, The Exorcist, Jaws, Silence of the Lambs.)
So its a pretty good board for general film discussion...OT or in conjunction with Psycho.
Ha ha.
shareNot to make fun. RIP Barbara Harris.
Will have to watch Family Plot again.
I have too many DVD's. Cabinets, shelves, drawers. I just looked through them and saw I have Family Plot. I'd forgotten that. And it's the Blu-Ray. Of course I watched it.
Karen Black was listed first (in the END credits) but Barbara Harris stole the picture.
The thing I wanted to comment about is the special effects. Specifically, the rear projection. Of course it looked terrible, but it reminded me of something.
When movies were released to theaters, on film, the effects weren't so obvious. I saw it in the theater. The scene where their car is careening down the hill, brake line cut, wasn't nearly as fake looking and I remember had the audience in hysterical laughter. Mostly because of Harris' physical comedy.
Likewise, for example, the scene in The Birds where the children are chased from the school, it looks so fake. You can actually see THROUGH some of the crows. I remember watching it once with a couple friends and they laughed about it.
I was barely born when The Birds was released, but I grew up seeing it occasionally on TV. Back before DVD, Hi-Def, when regular televisions had standard definition.
It looked real.
I used to be in the advertising business when clients would give us the worst photos possible to print and expect us to turn them into works of art. Sure, we could improve upon them, but the more resolution added, all it did was sharpen the imperfections.
We had a saying. 'You can't shine shi!t'
After all this speechifying, what I'm getting at is...what looks unrealistic now, looked perfectly fine then.
I saw there's a 48 minute 'Making Of' Family Plot after the film. Not up to watching it now, but I will. If there's anything interesting, I'll post it for those who are interested.
I was discussing AH's love of using rear projection and while it's okay for older movies, it's terribly outdated in modern movies. I suppose he makes it interesting with the Bernard Herrmann soundtrack, good acting, interesting angles and shots and doing interesting rear projection. I actually re-watched a few movies that I thought had interesting driving scenes. I remembered one of the great rear projection he did was in The Wrong Man where Henry Fonda is taken for a ride to different places in New York at night. Next, I watched Taxi Driver which I remembered had memorable night driving sequences. Martin Scorcese uses similar style of shooting in The Taxi Driver from inside the car in the New York at night scenes. Afterward, I found out Scorcese said one of the films that influenced Taxi Driver was the Wrong Man. What a coincidence!
Another movie that came to mind was the opening scene in Nicolas Winding Refn in Drive. These are practical effects and driving scenes. Finally, I looked at Black Panther for its CGI car scenes. It is well done even though it's not reality, but still looks real for CBM based action. Not only do all these driving at night scenes move the picture forward, they set a tone and atmosphere for the film. So while the rear projection technique is badly outdated today, Hitchcock still made it interesting enough to influence today's directors in understanding how to shoot the scenes.
https://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/1416/8662/products/wrong_man_1957_linen_original_film_art_spo_2000x.jpg?v=1534839901
I was discussing AH's love of using rear projection and while it's okay for older movies, it's terribly outdated in modern movies.
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Well, its all they had for older movies. I recall one of the makers of Bonnie and Clyde saying, in a recent interview, that for all the "modernity" of that 1967 picture, they simply couldn't avoid process in the car scenes, couldn't rig up real cars so the actors could talk and drive fast. Not in 1967.
But I think, this, too: the "process" shot drives of James Stewart in Vertigo and Janet Leigh in Psycho capture in certain ways the REALITY of being in the car AS THE DRIVER. You feel cocooned within the car; its your own private world. Had Stewart or Leigh been filmed in real cars on the road from a camera mount -- you would have lost the idea that these characters are "obsessed, hypnotized, in a daze."
I actually re-watched a few movies that I thought had interesting driving scenes. I remembered one of the great rear projection he did was in The Wrong Man where Henry Fonda is taken for a ride to different places in New York at night.
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One of the best of Hitchcock's movies, IMHO, and that night driving sequence is just terrifying. . Fonda being dragged from place to place by the cops and paraded in front of storeowners who get to look him up and down with suspicion and dislike.
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Next, I watched Taxi Driver which I remembered had memorable night driving sequences. Martin Scorcese uses similar style of shooting in The Taxi Driver from inside the car in the New York at night scenes. Afterward, I found out Scorcese said one of the films that influenced Taxi Driver was the Wrong Man. What a coincidence!
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Oh, likely not that much of a coincidence. Scorsese is a great director with a great knowledge of earlier movies. And of course Scorsese had Bernard Herrmann doing the score for Taxi Driver(Herrmann's last recorded score before dying, though the movie Obsession had an earlier score, but was released after TD.)
Interesting: a night drive in New York City circa 1956(The Wrong Man) was rather gritty, urban stuff -- but with "normal" people at "normal" workplaces.
A night drive in New York City circa 1976(Taxi Driver), a mere 20 years later, is like a drive through a human hell of hardscrabble people, junkies, hookers, etc.
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Finally, I looked at Black Panther for its CGI car scenes.
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In the "gritty" 70s, Hitchcock really got criticized for his use of process shots and matte paintings. Accordingly, there are very few process shots(car drives mainly) and matte paintings in Frenzy (except one really moody matte painting of London at night as Rusk delivers a body to a potato truck.) Family Plot has a lot of car process, but no matte paintings at all, as I recall.
Well, Hitchcock died, Lucas and Spielberg took over -- and process and matte paintings took over again in a BIG way (Especially in Raiders of the Lost Ark and ET.) Its as if Hitchcock had only lived a few more productive years, his kind of filmmaking would be right back. And now CGI is "process for the 21st Century." It looks pretty fake too, sometimes.
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. Not only do all these driving at night scenes move the picture forward, they set a tone and atmosphere for the film. So while the rear projection technique is badly outdated today, Hitchcock still made it interesting enough to influence today's directors in understanding how to shoot the scenes.
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Yes, I think so. The "ultra-realism" of seventies movie making sometimes gave us less exciting movies than we would have otherwise had, I think. "Deliverance" is filled with shots in the outdoors where cliffs and great heights are "cheated" so as not to use matte paintings. And the river run action -- while dangerous to the actors -- didn't always LOOK that dangerous.
Karen Black was listed first (in the END credits)
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Yep, no credits up front for the actors. Only for Hitchcock and screenwriter Ernest Lehman -- who, since writing North by Northwest, had written AND produced such biggies as West Side Story, The Sound of Music, and Virginia Woolf. Hitchcock was honoring Lehman's track record since NXNW, and making sure that Lehman's return to "mere" screenwriting didn't look like a demotion.
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but Barbara Harris stole the picture.
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Yes, this is the cast as billed:
Karen Black
Bruce Dern
Barbara Harris
William Devane
This is the cast as it SHOULD have been billed:
Barbara Harris
William Devane
Bruce Dern
Karen Black(the least interesting character; the least interesting acting)
...though I always felt that Dern got saddled with the least interesting scenes: that flurry of expositional investigational scenes up front where he goes from place to place and asks questions and gets long answers to give us the background on the Rainbird family and Eddie Shoebridge. (Arbogast, he is not.) At least Black gets that interesting opener for her, where she picks up the diamond ransom and leads the cops to the victim -- without ever saying a word. Its like a children's game: can they make her speak? No, they can't.
The thing I wanted to comment about is the special effects. Specifically, the rear projection. Of course it looked terrible,
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Particularly terrible in Family Plot versus other Hitchcock films, because Hitch let Universal talk him into letting them "process the process in the lab " rather than using process screens.
The result in that first cab ride scene is "the sky that ate Bruce Dern's head" -- his head keeps merging INTO the background.
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but it reminded me of something.
When movies were released to theaters, on film, the effects weren't so obvious. I saw it in the theater. The scene where their car is careening down the hill, brake line cut, wasn't nearly as fake looking and I remember had the audience in hysterical laughter. Mostly because of Harris' physical comedy.
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That's true. "Process" on the big screen looks better. My example is Arbogast falling down the stairs. On the big screen his falling body is rather three-dimensional but "real," you get a bit dizzy falling with him. On TV, though I still think the process works pretty good, it looks more fake.
Which reminds me. In 1998, Van Sant reshot Arbogast doing the fall down the stairs(William H. Macy does the honors), with the best state-of-the art CGI/Green Screen technical resources available and it STILL looked fake. That's when I realized: what may be "fake" is how Arbogast's head and upper body are positioned to take the fall; out of proportion to the background screen, unrealistic in terms of how the faller falls.
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Likewise, for example, the scene in The Birds where the children are chased from the school, it looks so fake. You can actually see THROUGH some of the crows.
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Yes those crows are rather "see through shadows."
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I remember watching it once with a couple friends and they laughed about it. (The Birds).
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Well, special effects have come a long way since The Birds, but I still rank it alongside King Kong as the greatest "special effects classic movie" until Star Wars came along and CGI followed(with Terminator 2 over a decade later.) (I'd like to include Harryhausen's great 7th Voyage of Sinbad and Jason and the Argonauts, but those movies barely have any plots at all.)
So many shots in The Birds DO work. Up in the sky over Bodega Bay as the seagulls float and dive; the row of crows on the fence of the Brenner porch , watching the family drive away; the spectacular final shot of birds as far as the eye can see; and the attack on Melanie(which takes the shower murder and increases the difficulty by an exponent of ten.)
But they work better in the old, slightly blurry, visual sense of 1963 filmmaking, not seen on HD today.
Also keep in mind that a lot of the great work in The Birds was done with REAL , trained birds(those crows on the fence.) Or wlth puppets(hard to spot for me.)
I've always said Hitchcock's direction on The Birds was his greatest: he wanted birds to sit, float, fly, nod, peck and attack "on his command." He needed birds to take EXACT direction. Damned if they didn't do it , every time, whether effect, real, or puppet!
I saw there's a 48 minute 'Making Of' Family Plot after the film. Not up to watching it now, but I will. If there's anything interesting, I'll post it for those who are interested.
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Please do. Its pretty good -- as are many of the "Making Ofs" in the Hitchcock Universal DVD collection(all produced by a man named Laurent Bozereau or some such.)
What I recall about the Family Plot Making of documentary that is a bit frustrating for us at this particular time is:
Present day interviews are done with: Karen Black, Bruce Dern, and William Devane.
Only Barbara Harris of the four leads did not participate. But I guess she was that way: reclusive, private.
Devane comes off as one macho, cool dude in that documentary, BTW. I love his anecdote about that moment in the movie where he picks the lint off of an FBI man's lapel -- a gentle needle of the man's pomposity. Hitchcock didn't like that("It isn't clear"), told Devane not to do that and re-shoot the scene, but Devane snuck it into ANOTHER reshoot of the scene weeks later when Hitch forgot his initial objections.
I watched the Making Of and honestly I don't have much to add. ecarle, you covered it all.
I did like the story Devane told about picking that piece of lint off the man's lapel. I'm glad HE decided to keep that in. I often find it's little pieces of acting that add to a performance. Although I love Hitch, I feel many of his earlier films were too 'stage-y.' Then again, those were the times.
One thing I did appreciate was the discussion of one of my favorite shots from the film.
It's the tracking high shot of Bruce Dern following Mrs. Maloney through the cemetery. One take, with Maloney trying to avoid him while he cuts through the paths to trap her. It looks sort of like a human Pac-Man.
I'd love to know where that cemetery is, even though I'm sure it's changed.
Something I'll tell you about myself: I'm very interested in researching locations of where scenes from movies were filmed. Of course we all know what can be accomplished with different lenses, camera angles, etc. but sometimes it's very surprising.
For example, the cemetery next to the church at Mission Delores in Vertigo. True, it doesn't look huge in the film, but in reality it's very small. With a very narrow street behind it, barely more than an alley, with apartments on the other side.
And a good one: I've only seen Mulholland Drive once, but I loved the Hitchcock-ish scene of Naomi Watts and the other woman walking through what seemed like a maze of walkways through a kind of funky apartment complex. I thought it was very 'Vertigo'. They went in this direction, then that, etc.
That apartment complex exists, but it's TINY. With very few walkways and buildings. The scene was accomplished by having the actresses walk around the same corners over and over again from different angles, but changing the background with different fake trees, flowers and shrubs.
The church which seemed to be high on the hill of a sleepy northern California town in The Fog was actually a small church on the corner of a heavily populated neighborhood.
Aaah. The magic of movie making.
I did like the story Devane told about picking that piece of lint off the man's lapel. I'm glad HE decided to keep that in. I often find it's little pieces of acting that add to a performance. Although I love Hitch, I feel many of his earlier films were too 'stage-y.' Then again, those were the times.
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Its been said of Hitchcock when he made Family Plot that he allowed more improvisation among his actors -- and put them in more medium group shots -- partically because he was "tired." And yet, here he is dictating "schtick" to Devane(NOT to do it), and word is he could become quite attentive on this final film.
Dern told a good story -- not on this DVD piece, elsewhere -- about Hitchcock wanting a shadow to slowly cross a character's face. The grip (I think) was instructed to pull a cover down over a light slowly to create the shadow. But it was too fast for Hitch. So he said "are you right handed? Yes? Then please try to pull the cover with your LEFT hand." Bingo.
And as Devane DOES say on this DVD doc, he got his second(successful) chance to pluck the lint because Hitchcock reshot the scene weeks later because he didn't like the original plates in the glass case in the background!
One thing I did appreciate was the discussion of one of my favorite shots from the film.
It's the tracking high shot of Bruce Dern following Mrs. Maloney through the cemetery. One take, with Maloney trying to avoid him while he cuts through the paths to trap her. It looks sort of like a human Pac-Man.
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Human Pac-Man. I love it! Never thought of that before. Maybe that's where they got the idea for Pac-Man.
Its a fun, very stylized shot.
You know, some of the "snootier" critics out there disparaged Hitchcock(and his fans) for getting too excited over things like this graveyard sequence. "OK, its cute and its creative, but really, what does it bring to the story being told?" Well, in the case of Family Plot -- a movie ABOUT characters tracking and criss-crossing and finally colliding -- EVERYTHING. (Madame Blanche will eventually collide with Adamson...in his garage.)
But that aside, these little "Hitchcock moments" WERE cool, I don't care what anyone says. And to some extent -- they died with him.
Indeed, I believe he got MORE playful in his final three films (Topaz, Frenzy, Family Plot) where, with no big stars to take over the movie, he could contently play his tricks all over the place -- Juanita's flowery death in Topaz; the "Farewell to Babs" staircase shot in Frenzy -- this cemetary pursuit in FP.
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You know,
I'd love to know where that cemetery is, even though I'm sure it's changed.
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I believe it is/was in the Southern California town of Sierra Madre, in the foothills above Pasadena(where other scenes were filmed.) Near Los Angeles. Some of the original Invasion of the Body Snatchers was filmed there, too.
Hitchcock famously -- and cheekily -- mixed Los Angeles area locations(the cemetary, Blanche's bungalow) with San Francisco locations(Grace Cathedral, Adamson's house) without naming a particular city. One critic said "this movie is either set in San Angeles, or Los Francisco." I think Hitchcock didn't want comparisons to Vertigo with SF, and he didn't want to do a movie in LA.
That said, you can see a bit of Grace Cathedral, I think, over James Stewart's head when he first looks at Madeline's apartment building in Vertigo.
You know what location drives ME nuts in Family Plot -- the area where Joe Maloney's gas station is. SoCal? SF Bay Area? I have no idea and I can't identify it.
Something I'll tell you about myself: I'm very interested in researching locations of where scenes from movies were filmed.
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Me, too.
I've been to a few key Hitchcock locales:
The schoolhouse from The Birds(its real, not a set like the Bates house; though Annie's house was built for the movie.)
In NYC: the UN building and the Oak Bar where Grant is kidnapped(except that re-built that bar in Hollywood for the movie.)
From Psycho, pretty much the only places they DID film on location:
Gorman, California where Marion meets the cop.
California Charlie's car lot(right next to Universal Studios.)
The intersecton in Phoenix where Marion's boss crosses, and the street beyond(of course, that was filmed by second unit.)
And Mount Rushmore.
Of course we all know what can be accomplished with different lenses, camera angles, etc. but sometimes it's very surprising.
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Oh yeah. How about Mission San Juan Bautista...the bell tower with no bell tower(it was a painting.) I"ve been there too.
I have to tell you though -- and I trust you feel the same way -- to visit these locales where "fictional" stories were filmed is to feel a certain
Oh yeah. How about Mission San Juan Bautista...the bell tower with no bell tower(it was a painting.) I"ve been there too.
I have to tell you though -- and I trust you feel the same way -- to visit these locales where "fictional" stories were filmed is to feel a certain "real" connection to the movie. At the Mission San Juan Bautista on the lawn near the church for instance: "James Stewart and Kim Novak embraced and fought HERE. And Hitchcock probably directed them from over THERE." THEY were here, and they were real.
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For example, the cemetery next to the church at Mission Delores in Vertigo. True, it doesn't look huge in the film, but in reality it's very small. With a very narrow street behind it, barely more than an alley, with apartments on the other side.
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You know, I've been to some Hitchcock SF locations but not that one. I don't think I could get a parking place!
One thing I hear about ANY movie location. Its smaller in real life. Lenses can boos it up.
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And a good one: I've only seen Mulholland Drive once, but I loved the Hitchcock-ish scene of Naomi Watts and the other woman walking through what seemed like a maze of walkways through a kind of funky apartment complex. I thought it was very 'Vertigo'. They went in this direction, then that, etc.
That apartment complex exists, but it's TINY. With very few walkways and buildings. The scene was accomplished by having the actresses walk around the same corners over and over again from different angles, but changing the background with different fake trees, flowers and shrubs.
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Magic! I watched commentary on Season One of Mad Men, and there's a climactic episode where Don Draper and Pete Campbell stalk each other all over the ad firm office, threatening each other as a showdown looms.
The actor playing Pete Campbell said that they, too, simply kept walking back and forth in the same hall and the same corners, and it cut together as a much bigger suite!
Magic!
Ironic that the female star of Hitchcock's last film is gone but seven remain:
Shirley McLaine
Doris Day
Vera Miles
Kim Novak
Eva Marie Saint
TIppi Hedren
Julie Andrews
Of the males who played opposite, only Sean Connery remains.
Ironic that the female star of Hitchcock's last film is gone but seven remain:
Shirley McLaine
Doris Day
Vera Miles
Kim Novak
Eva Marie Saint
TIppi Hedren
Julie Andrews
Of the males who played opposite, only Sean Connery remains.
Well, generally women are said to outlive men by considerable years. On the other hand -- as did everyone else in Hollywood -- Hitchcock paired some young women(Kim Novak, Eva Marie Saint, Vera Miles) with some older men0s(Stewart, Grant, Fonda.) Grant and Fonda passed in the 80s; they're a long time gone. Stewart passed in 1997, but hadn't worked in years.
Ah, but with Family Plot BOTH female stars are now gone(Black and Harris), but the two main men remain(Dern and Devane.) Both Dern and Devane have records as very fit athletes, however.
When movies were released to theaters, on film, the effects weren't so obvious. I saw it in the theater. The scene where their car is careening down the hill, brake line cut, wasn't nearly as fake looking and I remember had the audience in hysterical laughter. Mostly because of Harris' physical comedy.
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I really love the runaway car scene in Family Plot. Its in his final movie, and I think it made the case for what Hitchcock can really do with a set-piece. I also liked that whereas one film earlier in Frenzy, the big set-piece was a horrific rape-murder; here the big set-piece was an almost-family friendly(the cussing) roller coaster ride that played with equal parts laughter and whoops of fear with the audience I saw it with.
Yes, it has process behind Dern and Harris..but I don't see how the scene could have been filmed in real movie car going THAT fast on a steep, curving mountain road.
Ernest Lehman, the screenwriter of both NXNW and Family Plot, said the car scene in Family Plot was meant to "fix flaws" in the drunken drive scene in NXNW. Key: removing the shot of the hood of the car(as was seen in NXNW.) By removing that shot, the road rushed directly to meet the viewer, so the effect was more dizzying. Hitchcock also did the FP car scene WITHOUT music. As good as Herrmann's fandango was for NXNW, here, we find that if there is no music, just the sound of screeching tires and metallic collisions with the guardrail, COUPLED with the POV shots -- much more involving.
Two parts of the runaway car scene work splendidly: (1) The POV shots of the road ahead and (2) the hilarious reactions of Harris and Dern TO those POVs. It becomes a recipe for scary hilarity.
The third part(the process work) doesn't work so splendidly, but it don't bother me. It still felt like a roller coaster ride.
Note the incredible "technical precision" of the shots in this scene as Hitchocck laid out and edited them. For instance, we never go outside the car while its out of control except once -- when it leaves the highway and spins in the dirt of the cliff road -- we feel this shot is telling us: here comes the crash over the cliff. Nope. But our stomach drops anyway.
Or how the car tilts "diagonal left" and then "diagonal right" as it goes up the side of two hills and back down onto the road, with Dern and Harris hilariously tilted with the car(ala the tilting lovebirds in The Birds' car ride.)
And then the final fusillade of the "motorcyclist slalom," which climaxes the scene(the audience roared) and leads to a quick cut to Dern matter-of-factly saying: "We've got to get off this road." Ha.
I love the scene.
In honor of Barbara Harris, I watched Family Plot all the way through. I must say it played a bit better for me than it did years ago -- even though I've always liked it very much.
For instance, I used to think it was a movie in which the first hour was fairly dull , and in the second hour (starting with the kidnapping of the bishop) everything kicked in and interlocked.
But actually the first hour was pretty good, once one got past the overlong opening scene with Harris and Julia Rainbird; and the over-arch cab scene with Harris and Dern...and bad process work.
All the scenes with Devane and Harris were suave and a bit spooky: what is the DEAL with this criminal couple? Why have they decided to kidnap dignitaries?
And for some reason I love that scene where the Greek millionaire grudgingly fills in the cops and the FBI about his kidnapping. The room and his desk look pretty plush -- the "Universal soundstage" effect is almost overcome, and this looks like a MOVIE. Hitchcock makes one "style decision" here, and one only: the millionaire will walk back and forth as he talks to the cops and the camera follows him back and forth. And back and forth. And back and forth. And back and forth. Once you realize this is the "forced rhythm" of the scene...its cool. (And the millionaire would be "coach" the bartender on Cheers years later.)
Later, Hitchcock makes the "style decision" to have Dern and Harris do an entire scene while eating hamburgers --with the food in their mouths at all times, so they sound FUNNY at all times(and uncouth.) And when Harris says to Dern: "Fix me another one" , you realize: she RUNS this guy.
Most later Hitchcock movies seemed to have "three set-pieces." Psycho: the two murders, the fruit cellar. Torn Curtain: the murder of Gromek, the chalkboard duel, the bus chase. Frenzy: the graphic murder, the unseen murder(staircase scene), the potato truck.
And Family Plot?
Well, these three: the kidnapping of the bishop , the runaway car and Dern pursues Mrs. Maloney across the cemetary.
But I continue to believe that the entire SEQUENCE of Madame Blanche arriving at Adamson's House is a final lesson in Hitchcockian storytelling and precision. "Snap your fingers" to each of these moments:
Doorbell rings just as they give the bishop his knock-out shot. SNAP.
Black looks through peephole. "It's HER!" Devane freaks out "I can't BELIEVE this is happening!" SNAP.
Black looks through peephole again. "She's gone." SNAP.
From their car in the garage, Adamson pushes button to open automatic garage door -- and Blanche is right there. Blocking his car with hers. Adamson is quietly enraged. SNAP.
After much suspenseful dialogue in which Blanche tells Adamson he's gonna be rich, Black opens the door to reveal the bishop. Blanche turns to run, Adamson "uses the means available" to close the door on her. She's doomed. SNAP.
THAT's a Hitchocck sequence. Delightful from start to finish, and boy had he set up that garage door opener earlier in the film...
I've mentioned before that Psycho and Family Plot pretty much have the same plot: investigators following one story walk into a far more dangerous(and deadly) story, but I was thinking this when I watched Family Plot this time.
It has been noted that because Hitchcock shot Psycho with his TV crew in black and white...it looks like "just another one of his TV shows." Well, it may LOOK like one of his TV shows, but the content and style of the film is well beyond that. Still, yeah, it LOOKS like one of his TV shows.
Family Plot came out in 1976, when Hitchocck's TV show was off the air. But many critics felt that the movie looked like...a TV show. Specifically like a TV show off of Universal's Assembly line: Columbo, MacMillan and Wife, McCloud. Well, I think the film is more richly appointed than that, but it sure smacks of Universal soundstage sets. Hitch's previous picture, Frenzy, had been made for Universal at Pinewood studios in London so the sets didn't look like Universal soundstage sets.
But how about this leap...if "Family Plot" looks like a 70's Universal TV series, well I guess now we know what "The Alfred Hitchcock Hour" would have looked like in color in 1976.
Here is a Psycho/Family Plot connection that is not a good one. I recently remembered it and figured I'd put it on this thread rather than in an OP.
In 1973, a young film critic named Richard Corliss contributed his article to a book about "My Favorite Movie" from many critics. He picked Psycho. Said when he saw it as a pre-teen, "it scared the s--t out of me. And it still does." I believe he saw it at a New Jersey theater "six times in three days." And he laid out all the greatness of the film, suggesting that SOME of that greatness may have been beyond Hitchcock's authorship(Bloch's story, Perkins' performance, Herrmann's music.) But still, his favorite film.
In 1976, Corliss wrote a scatching review of new release Family Plot entitled: "Let Us Not Praise Famous Men." (Get it?) I have it in a box somewhere, but some of Corliss's insults seared into my brain:
"Alfred Hitchocck is not a great filmmaker. He is a filmmaker who made some great films."
"(The runaway car scene in Family Plot): Steven Spielberg could have directed this with one eye behind his back." (Old man versus young man? Come on. Plus Hitchocck's scene is more...Hitchocckian..than anything in Duel.)
"To honor Hitchocck at his worst , in Family Plot, is to dishonor Hitchocck at his best, in Psycho."
"The cast of Young Hollywood actors is as anachronistic to this movie as Clark Gable would be in the lead of Dog Day Afternoon."
You get the drift. It was pretty mean and seemed to miss a lot of the point of Family Plot. Like: how it had the same structure as Psycho, the same basic story. Or how Hitchcock PURPOSELY made an easier, lighter on the nerves film than Psycho here -- something an old man could pull off and still be entertaining...and fulfilling. Or: how wonderful it was to even HAVE a Hitchocck film this late in his life(and it would be his last.)
Anyway, Corliss went on to be the critic for Time and died a few years ago(but not before reviewing Van Sant's Psycho for Time -- noting his famous 1973 article -- "It was my favorite film in 1973" and finding Van Sant's remake not that bad -- except for William Macy's really lousy hat.(I agree.)
Still, I will always value Corliss' vote for Psycho as his favorite film(though his essay isn't one of the best) and I will always devalue Corliss for the needless cruelty and unthinking brain freeze of that review of Family Plot.
He didn't even see they were the same story! The montage of Arbogast canvassing hotels compared to the montage of Madame Blanche canvassing AA Adamsons....proves it.