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Is Chalmers really necessary in the movie? He's not the bad guy, but why is he the bad guy Part III
OT: Samuel Taylor Directs!
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Here are my ideas on the "uncast" roles. I'd incorporate some irony into the casting of California Charlie: quintessential New Yawk fast-talker, Sam Levene. The avuncularity he displayed in Crossfire and Sweet Smell of Success was every bit as ingratiating as John Anderson's comfortingly rustic version. As Lt. Abrams in two Thin Man movies, he could convey suspicion with nothing more than a narrowed eye. And as gentlemanly con-man Horsethief in The Big Street, swindle-with-a-smile was a specialty.
As Sheriff Chambers, I envision Harry Shannon, who played more cops of varying types than you could shake a nightstick at: straight-arrow, big-city smart cookies; corrupt rubber-hose-wielders; rural deputies; kindly, small-town beat-walkers; befuddled blusterers.
Shadow of a Doubt's Patricia Collinge would have fit well as Mrs. Chambers. But a passing thought: with the right makeup, hair and properly dowdy costuming, Lurene Tuttle might have pulled it off just as easily in '46 as she did 14 years later. In fact, now I think of it, so could John McIntire have done.
For Dr. Richman, any number of authoritative types would do (with the professorial, Viennese-accented stereotype to be avoided at all costs), but there was an endlessly versatile, prolific but unsung character actor of the era named Stanley Ridges. From rigid military officers to studious chemists, understanding judges or underworld hoods, lawyers sincere or sleazy, doctors of all types and temperaments (including psychiatrists), he unerringly filled the bill wherever he was cast, and could dominate or downplay as the scenes required.
Who does that leave: Caroline? Maybe Jeff Donnell (she played Frank Lovejoy's wife in In a Lonely Place, and Tony Curtis's frumpy secretary in Sweet Smell of Success). But anyone who'd look just ordinary enough next to Lana Turner would do (leaving a wide field).
As you say, that's the easy part. If my thoughts on the rest jell, I'll chime in again.
Hi, Roger. Back again with a few random thoughts (as are most of mine these days).
I like your casting choices, but have a couple alternatives to propose. Robinson would be good (he always was), but I wonder if his star-power gravitas might have been a bit overwhelming, throwing Arbogast's section of the story out of balance.
Lloyd Nolan had played his share of investigators, both private and on the public payroll, and an affable manner combined with a subtle undercurrent of insinuation was the sort that would draw out someone he was questioning, inducing them to offer just a bit more information than they might otherwise to allay any perceived suspicions. A number of other roles as hoods had furnished him with sufficient "tough guy" screen cred.
I do like Hodiak as Sam, although his screen persona seemed to lean more in the direction of urban smoothie. Come to that, Gavin himself looked more like he belonged in a lawyer's office than a hardware store. How 'bout our Detour protagonist, Tom Neal? Young and physically robust enough to have been Marion's object of lust as well as Lila's last-minute save-the-day hero, he was also good at the beaten-down quality of a man with possibilities now mired in circumstances that had stalled his momentum.
My only reservation about Lane as Lowery is an inherently comic persona of the unsympathetic variety. Chronically dour, his nasal monotone had, by the mid-'40s, begun to take up the slack from Ned Sparks, whose film career was only a couple of pictures from its end. In his place, I imagine Porter Hall (the train witness, Jackson, in Double Indemnity), who was physically not unlike Vaughn Taylor: slight; balding; mustached. Nervous and concerned businessmen were among the many guises he could furnish as easily as pulling a handkerchief from his pocket.
CONT
O'Donnell has another line that's rather the flip-side of Martin's and speaks to swanstep's admonition, "Simplifications, approximations, idealizations, modeling x as a better-understood y... all these steps *can* be useful, but have to taken very carefully if what you are running up against, as you almost always are, is a complex world."
She tells Ryan, "That's your problem. You don't want to be in love, you want to be in love in a movie." It's funny at face value and even funnier when drilling down to the irony of it being uttered in a rom-com. A movie.
That's the spirit in which I took Martin's line: self-referential; self-aware; self-mocking. But "truthy."
And yeah, a lot like life (and its reflections in literature, theater, music, movies or whatever), leaving lessons lying all over the place for us to pick up and apply as we will, or reject or even walk past without notice.
There probably isn't a single source from which all answers can be found, but movies can come as close as any other art form - or even any personal experience - and we all take whatever wisdom we can where we find it.
""Well, you know, we are always quickets to doubt those who have a record for being honest."
A record. Not a reputation. I like "reputation" better. I checked Joe Stefano's 1960 screenplay -- it was written with...TA DA..."a record."
So Martin Balsam changed the line.
But Martin Balsam changed a LOT of his lines in Psycho. He was Method-trained and seemed to want to personalize everything Arbogast said."
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Hi, roger. Jumping back in from out of nowhere.
It's yet another indication of Balsam's dead-on instincts as an actor. I recall we had an exchange about his altering the line, "I'll just have to pick up the scent from here" to, "I'll just have to pick up the pieces from here" and how it suited his apparent interpretation of Arbogast not as a bloodhound but as an analytical assembler of puzzles, fitting pieces together to form a complete picture (as well as being more attuned to Hitchcock's morbidly corny sense of humor).
A "record" is empirical: verifiable facts about a person. A "reputation" is really only subjective opinion: what others think about a person ("For heaven's sake, a girl works for you for ten years, you trust her"). The difference here is attuned to the film's theme of duality, and people not necessarily being what they seem: a trusted employee who yearns for respectability giving in to larcenous compulsion; a genial and mild-mannered young motel manager masking a psychotic killer...masked even to the killer himself.
Taking a step back for a philosophical overview of the topic as well as swanstep's pushback on it, I'm reminded of Rosie O'Donnell's line in Sleepless In Seattle: "It's not true...but it feels true." What Stephen Colbert called "truthiness."
CONT
"I've run afield of Doghouse's OP here but it is meant to respond as to how and why Psycho CAN have that grip on people, even now."
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By all means, run afield. Turnoffs, tangents, detours and diversions are parts of what make boards like this so lively and fun.
"...a female critic in the past couple of years who wrote: 'Psycho doesn't scare me anymore...it makes me feel quite warm about it. Comforting.'"
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On yet another thread on another board was a solicitation of lists of "films that cheer you up." Some of mine must have seemed positively perverse to some participants: from Double Indemnity and Sunset Blvd to Sweet Smell of Success and Chinatown. So much base human motivation and behavior. So many downer endings. But what cheers me are things like their dazzling craft and execution.
Of course, Psycho was among them. Along with the foregoing attributes, it's become a dependable old friend. We know it so well...and it knows us. It entertains and fascinates, never letting us down, no matter when it drops in.
"Warm" and "comforting" are apropos descriptors. I called my list on that board "comfort films."
"You also offered an interesting testament to the power of Herrmann (and yeah, Hitchcock too) in their Psycho mode and how you were drawn to Herrmann's 'urgent, staccato strains and the film they heralded like a hypnotist's subject.'
It is indeed "hypnotic' and in a most mysterious way, principally: how did Hitchcock GET that effect? Pretty much over he course of the entire movie?
ONE: Hitchocck's expert sense of timing.
TWO: Hitchcock's sense of movement.
THREE: Hitchcock's sense of silence"
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I believe the subtitle of F.W. Murnau's 1922 Nosferatu was "A Symphony of Terror." And I've no doubt you recall Hitchcock's remarks about "playing" audiences' emotions like the keys of an organ. Very interesting and telling about the metronome. Director King Vidor spoke of doing the same thing on 1925's The Big Parade.
These musical allusions are so appropriate. I remember a convo on another board about "what's missing in films today" from which something emerged about senses of rhythm and tempo. Hitchcock's approach - and indeed those of other great directors - was virtually symphonic, wasn't it: andante here, allegro there; from crescendo to decrescendo and so forth.
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"Funny: we have Herrmann's ever-more-urgent music driving her drive -- what if, in real life, Marion was playing Frank Sinatra and Bobby Darin OR...Chubby Checker and Chuck Berry and Little Richard on that 1960 car radio?"
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There you go again, disarming with the agility and creativity of your thoughts. Funny indeed, certainly in this context. Yet, I remember John Carpenter doing something very much along those lines in Christine with recordings of Bad to the Bone or Little Richard's Keep A-Knockin' emanating from the possessed Plymouth's radio, rendering them scary.
CONT
"Reading your response above, I again wish to fight any accidental "glibness" about a subject of great seriousness and, I am sure, emotion to you. I'll stick my neck out a bit and say that 41 years is a significant part of anyone's life and I trust you value those years, very much."
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No need for concern about any glibness. Those are lovely thoughts, sensitively expressed, and I value them. As well with your generous remarks about things I've written here and elsewhere (which are returned festooned with all possible bells and whistles).
Who doesn't like learning they've left an impression* here or there? That can make one's day.
*EDIT for a further thought: on one of the other boards to which I've made passing reference, I've quoted you at least a half dozen times over the years as an illustration of given films' differing impacts upon individual viewers: "My Psycho is not your Psycho." It's been very useful.
Apologies for the unpardonable lateness of acknowledging and thanking you for your replies. I find I lose track of time and just don't have much to say these days. I'm sure I've exhausted my thoughts on mirror image films and clips.
And thanks also for your condolences on hubby David's passing. After 41 years, it's an adjustment, but I'm finding my way through it.
A Psycho-related story about him: nigh unto 30 years ago, I had fallen into a deep and extended depression and, try as he might, nothing he could do or say could pull me from it, until one afternoon when I was curled up on a sofa in the den in pretty much a fetal position, well on my way to becoming something like Scotty midway through Vertigo. David went into the living room and put on our LaserDisc of Psycho, and when Bernard Herrmann's urgent, staccato strains reached me in the other room, I was drawn to them and the film they heralded like a hypnotist's subject. For the first time in a week, I was able to emerge from within myself and begin to reengage with the world.
To paraphrase Carl Denham at the end of King Kong, it wasn't Mozart that swept away the cobwebs, 'twas Herrmann and Hitchcock who killed the ennui.
Smart cookie, David was.
Hi. Haven't posted here in some time, and long before the username change. So, roger, wilco: "roger" it is.
What you describe is something I've encountered numerous times on YouTube and other video platforms. What I deduce is that it's intended to avoid copyright crackdowns by "authoring" a new work by altering the original. How sound that is as a legal strategy, I have no idea. But I've come across many films that have been posted that way in their entirety. Another gambit I've seen employed on films or TV shows is to zoom the original image so only about 70% of it visible. Of course, I won't watch anything under conditions like those (I'm so fussy that I refuse to watch something if it's in the wrong aspect ratio).
There was one bizarre instance in which an entire reel of a 20th-Fox film of the early '60s - shown on the Fox movie channel if you please - was printed in mirror image: breast pocket handkerchiefs and steering wheels on the right; signs in reverse and so forth. How an error that glaring slips past professionals is mystifying.
What you say about an interesting experiment in brain function quite resonates with me. My recently-deceased hubby (who designed software) had an astounding ability to analytically conceptualize intricate connections and functions, rather like a chess master who thinks many moves ahead. But he found it very difficult to retain - much less describe from memory - visual imagery. I'm just the opposite, and he was flummoxed by my ability to do so.
Something I've always admired about you is your very well-balanced senses of both.
Even if I haven't posted, I've checked in regularly to keep abreast of what you, swanstep and others have been up to.
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