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It occurs to me I probably shouldn't have included William Holden in my lineup, as his death came as the result of accident (which would constitute a whole other collection). He may already have been on the way to burnout, but who knows?
One day in Nov of '81, a coworker mentioned that he'd been behind Holden in the checkout line at a West Los Angeles Liquor Barn the night before, and described the cart full of bottles he had. When the news came of his death after the weekend, and the details of his drunken accident were revealed, my friend observed ruefully, "I must have watched him buying the fatal bottle."
"(Funny sidebar: Marlene Dietrich, in some interview, said she could never tell Stage Fright apart from Wilder's Witness for the Prosecution. She was in both films, and felt they had the same plot and she played the same character and she simply forgot which was which.)"
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Sidebars to your sidebar:
Dietrich's always been difficult for me to assess as an actress. She was just...Dietrich. In the first half of the '30s, Paramount had five "properties" whose popularity was based entirely on personality: Mae West, W.C. Fields, The Marx Brothers, Burns & Allen and Dietrich (and following closely after was Bob Hope). They were who they were (onscreen) and audiences knew exactly what they were going to get, regardless of story or setting. Their success depended on image and schtick rather than acting chops. Not meant to demean, as they all proved remarkably durable.
Reminiscent of Dietrich's remarks are these from Bill Maher in a recent podcast interview, describing the Stewart/Day The Man Who Knew Too Much:
"The innocent guy who's being chased by somebody and he doesn't know why they're chasing him, and the police are after him but he's gotta find the bad guy before the police find him."
That very loosely describes a dozen Hitchcock films, but not that one. Maher went on to say he prefers more recent fare like the Salt and Bourne thrillers, which he says "Took what Hitchcock was doing and...revved it up, and I'm glad they did. Hitchcock's hard to get through."
Well, yeah, anything would be when paying such scant attention. But regardless of how vague and offhand he was being, it does speak to those patterns you mention. Stage Fright. like Frenzy, was a "run for cover" project with the comfortable "wrong man" premise.
But your comparisons of SOAT/I Confess/Frenzy - and Psycho/Frenzy, Psycho/Family Plot, - point up how he always kept it fresh by shaking up the ingredients, along with some mixing and matching. Indeed, Stage Fright provides a Psycho antecedent in its final-reel revelation of the man we were led to believe was only an accessory as the actual killer.
"Personal note: 60 is behind me , now. I remember it well. I feel SOME of the fatigue that Hitch may have felt, but certainly not all. I won't be as rich as them, but I think I'll use Scorsese and Scott (and Clint Eastwood at 90) as role models. Remember: "old" is always 15 years older than you are now.
PERKINS: If 60 seemed "old" for Hitchcock to be making movies, 60 seemed "too young" for Anthony Perkins to pass away. Back in 1992 when it happened, I remember thinking "well, 60 is pretty old," but now that I'm THIS age...no, 60 isn't very old at all."
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I've seen so many people in their 60s, 70s or beyond tap their noggins with an index finger and say, "In here, I'm still 25." Well, more power to 'em. And my remarks on another thread about never fully growing up notwithstanding, I can't quite get there. The things that interested my 25-year-old brain still do, but most now seem not worth the trouble. Closest I can get is to say my inner 25-year-old is weighed down by dragging around an additional 40-odd years of physical and mental baggage.
To paraphrase Dudley Moore, are the 60s a dangerous age, Cynthia? Moore himself made it to only 66; his erstwhile partner Peter Cook, 57. There were a number of notables who got only as far as 60 (give or take 1 - 3 years): directors Victor Fleming, Preston Sturges, Greg LaCava & Bob Fosse; producer and thorn in Hitch's side David Selznick; John Barrymore; Bogart; Gable; two-time Hitchcock player Peter Lorre; Perkins costar Audrey Hepburn; Gary Cooper; Lee Marvin; Anne Baxter; Williams Holden & Bendix; Peter Finch; Carrie Fisher, for instance.
But safe to say about most if not all is that they packed a whole lotta livin' into those give-or-take 60 years.
"And then there is Frenzy, made when Hitch was 72...and a critical success and a small hit. But alas, it looks like an old man's movie...a lot of talk, set-pieces "indoors" (an office, a stairwell, a truck bed). Still, several critics called it "the work of a YOUNG man" so...maybe 60 wasn't that final for Hitch after all."
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I'm probably repeating myself from some long-ago post on this or, y'know, that other board, but Frenzy and the period leading up to it have always seemed to me to have a parallel in Stage Fright: after three disappointments, a return to native territory at the start of a new decade for a modest little murder story featuring a surly protagonist, colorful secondary characters and eccentric domestic scenes; to be followed by a thriller emphasizing duality and the accidental convergence of separate lives.
'Course, at his age and state of health, another golden era was too much to hope for. But it's hard for me to get a fix on Hitchcock's work relative to his age. Notorious, one of his very best of the '40s (and his 40s) is a largely interior and internalized affair concentrating seriously on minute details of perverse psychology, avoiding bravura visual set pieces and devoid of the impish (if gallows) humor that permeates Frenzy.
The other night, purely by chance, I watched The Yakuza for the first time, which Sidney Pollack directed at the age of 39. With the exceptions of a couple instances of sword-and-gun play, it's a thoughtful, stately and elegiac examination of codes of honor, cultural traditions, old debts and regrets. If I'd known nothing about either director, I'd have guessed Frenzy to have been the work of a younger one, and The Yakuza that of an elder. Go figure.
Released in '60. Now 60 itself. Hitchcock 60 when he made it. And Perkins 60 when he died. And I wouldn't be surprised if 60 may be the number of times ecarle, you or I have seen it.
But who's counting?
Time to cut the cake. C'mon into the kitchen. It's awful homey, and it's where we keep the knives (even if they don't always stay there).
"I have an anecdote about the funeral of a friend's father. About five solemn young men sat side by side to honor our friend's father, suited up, "serious." The priest blew out a candle and it exploded and left his face blackened and his hair on end -- and it looked just like a Bugs Bunny cartoon when something blows up in Elmer Fudd's face. Miraculously the priest wasn't hurt, just "stained" with black powder on his face.(NOT blackface.) And we...could...not...stop laughing. Five guys, each one triggering the next."
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I'm still laughing two days later at the image it conjures.
And I learned something too: I never knew candles could explode! (I sometimes wonder if I've led a sheltered life.) But my curiosity led me to an article that goes quite extensively into all the chemically reactive whys and wherefores, so thanks for some new knowledge along with the laughs (not to mention the embarrassment empathy).
"A lotta Hitchcocks. The sheer number of innocent people killed in a lot of his films make them downers...even though justice prevails. But they -- like Sunset Boulevard and Chinatown -- have a melancholy and rueful feeling about how life is...that is quite comforting in its own perverse way. We are TOUCHED by these films."
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Not to mention dazzled by the cinematic craft with which they're presented. For me, more than anything, that's what makes them so endlessly re-watchable. I can't for example, say I feel touched by any of the characters in Laura or Sweet Smell Of Success, or their stories, but the incisive, intelligent and elegant writing are among the attributes that make people I wouldn't want to know in real life so fascinating to spend time with just the same.
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"Just this past week, I watched a "lesser" movie with this kind of feeling: "Cutter's Way" from 1981(as the gritty 70's headed into Lucas/Spieberg territory.) ... Its a small scale movie, mainly tragic(though something rousing and tragically heroic happens at the end)...and I love it. Always have. Its a "warm downer," too. Maybe something about all that coastal SoCal sunshine."
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That's one that's due for a revisit. I saw it at a pre-release screening under the title Cutter and Bone, and again after its release as Cutter's Way. Both times, it was one of those films I just couldn't find my way into. Yet it seemed apparent that the problem was mine, and that there was something worthwhile there that I was missing.
That's happened with a handful of films that took several tries to "get," but finally clicked upon the third or fourth viewing. John Huston's Beat the Devil, for instance, which I now find thoroughly charming since catching its hook.
Oddly, someone else recently mentioned Cutter's Way, so the time's probably right for another try.
"...gone from something utterly sick and horrifying to something...comforting? Its from a much more innocent era, and its creepiness is oddly warm and inviting now; yes the murders are shocking and cruel, but the film has LIKEABLE characters in Norman, Marion, and Arbogast(I think)...and the house IS homey. I think it is the time travel back to 1960 that now bathes the movie in warm nostalgia."
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Yuh, although I'd add that it's also familiarity, which may breed contempt (as that old cynic Chaucer said), but that ain't near all. I'll bet that, even with the recalled blow-by-blow descriptions by friends (and the Truffaut book) in your mind, there was still that element of the unexpected providing thrills. It's one thing to be told what it's like to skydive, for instance, but another to do it: "How will it look through MY eyes?" What will it sound like? How will it feel?"
And now, we've been in that house dozens of times over decades, know what's going to happen where, when and to whom, and perhaps just as significantly, how it was all done. It IS ironic, but completely logical as well. Being home has always been a source of comfort to me, wherever and whenever any of them happened to be. Their familiarity still comforts in memory, even though I'll never set foot in any of them again (and if I did, they'd no longer be comforting, because they're somebody else's, not mine). But you and I can and will re-enter that house again and again, and it'll be just as familiar (as will all the stuff that's not as homey).
"Well, we know that I was not allowed to see that broadcast...but it affected me anyway. The story scarily told to me by other kids..and told MORE bloody."
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When I remember that viewing, can't help but retroactively feel bad for you, now knowing there was some poor guy 'bout my age - whom I wouldn't encounter for like another 40-odd years - who was being denied what I was allowed...I imagine you had a lot of equally anonymous-at-the-time company. Still: only another 3 years until you caught up with it; another 5 and you were gazing upon a current Hitchcock set; one more and you were standing next to Pat while Dad himself arrived for the premiere of that set's film.
A message through time to adolescent ecarle: don't fret; your day's a-comin!
"Heh. Doghouse. Always with a welcome post -- if more intermittant these days, alas. It is our loss."
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Hi, ol' buddy! That's awfully nice of you to say, and apologies for being so remote lately (and for the lateness of these replies). Just going through a period in which I haven't had much to contribute even while checking in regularly to keep tabs on you, "co-anchor" swanstep and "the regulars." But like Blaney's proverbial bad penny, I'll always turn up sooner or later.
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"I'm not sure, but I still think Psycho has enough great lines and great structure(Hitch and Stefano IMPROVING upon Bloch)...that the screenplay DID get snubbed."
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Hitchcock gave "shockers" respectability, no? I've always had a mental block where Oscar knowledge is concerned. Even when following them every year from nomination to b'cast, I forgot who did/didn't get what by the day after. For instance: The Haunting; Rosemary's Baby?" Nominated? Snubbed? (Okay, I do remember Ruth Gordon; that's unforgettable. "I can't tell ya how encouragin' a thing like this is...").
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"Eh...we've all heard those people ..and we've all BEEN those people. Its fun sometimes."
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And sometimes we can't blame it on booze or weed. In the mid-'80s, a coworker and I went to an AMPAS tribute to Judy Garland, at which people like Mickey Rooney and Gene Kelly offered their reminiscences, and when Kelly said, "Judy was a performer who gave something to everyone she worked with, but she knew how to take something from them, too," Kevin and I whispered the same thought to each other: "Benzedrine, Seconal..." and then could not get hold of ourselves until the intermission. And when the lights came up, we were mortified to see that Sid Luft was sitting directly behind us (he growled his disapproval as we walked past: "Sons of bitches!").
I still cringe at the memory, but still laugh too. Maybe some have a part of us that never grows up.
Drunk? Not that I can recall. But stoned? I'm afraid so.
When I was 18 or 19, a couple friends and I got toked up and went to see it at Santa Monica's Mayfair Theater (you've seen its interior in Young Frankenstein). In that condition, every instance of Joe Stefano's "doublespeak" sent us into giggles.
"Meeting in secret...so we can be secretive."
"You make respectability sound disrespectful."
"I refuse to think of disgusting things because they disgust me."
"Eating in an office is just too officious."
And so on. With some good weed, it doesn't take much to bring on the giggles, admittedly, but I doubt we were very popular with the other audience members. Still, if anyone complained, we were too wasted to notice.
Strange how the same movie can have completely different effects at different times of life. First time I saw it, on ABC's initial 1967 broadcast, my fourteen-year-old heart thumped wildly at all the appropriate moments. By twenty or so years later, it had become one of my "comfort" movies. Happy or depressed, watching it was like stepping into well-worn slippers, wrapping up in a warm robe and sinking into overstuffed couch cushions. Or like a dependable old friend that never lets you down and is welcome anytime they drop in, telling the same stories over and over, yet always capable of revealing some unexpected little characteristic that had escaped notice before.
I've got at least a dozen films like that: watch-anytime "old reliables," and for whatever odd reason, most of them are "downer" films that present the darker sides of life rather than comedies or other so-called uplifting fare; Double Indemnity and Sunset Blvd; The Sweet Smell Of Success; Chinatown; Laura; Crossfire and other postwar "noirs;" the 1954 A Star Is Born; Cabaret; Network (although that one's pretty funny in its bitterly cynical way); any one of Val Lewton's economical, what-you-don't-see-is-scarier-than-what-you-do thrillers.
And a lotta Hitchcocks.
Hi, Gubb!
In that scene, I think Eve is counting chickens before they're hatched. And we know that she's not at all shy about stretching the truth, as she does when telling Addison that Lloyd "woke me up at three o'clock in the morning, banging on my door. He couldn't sleep, he said. He'd left Karen. Couldn't go on with the play or anything else until I promised to marry him."
But we know from the prior scene that Eve had dragged Lloyd out of bed by having her rooming house friend call him to say she "isn't well."
All Addison says about Karen in New Haven is that "She knows enough not to be here," which we saw for ourselves in that prior scene: "It seemed to me I had known always that it would happen. And here it was. I felt helpless. That helplessness you feel when you have no talent to offer, outside of loving your husband. How could I compete? Everything Lloyd loved about me, he'd gotten used to long ago."
Incidentally, that scene continues in the shooting script with dialogue that isn't included in the film, wherein Karen harangues Lloyd about his attraction to Eve as he wordlessly dresses to go to her and walks out.
Earlier in the film, we'd seen how, one by one, Birdie, Margo, Bill and Karen had wised up to the kind of person Eve was, and how the rift between Margo and Bill was eventually patched up. We can simply assume that, somewhere between the play's opening and the award night, the scales had finally fallen from Lloyd's eyes, and that he and Karen reconciled, so there's really no need for the film to bog down its momentum by covering similar ground again.
The little remark Lloyd makes to Karen as he gives his award to her - "For services rendered beyond the whatever-it-is of duty" - hints adequately at the rough ground they've traveled and managed to put behind them.
Absolutely no disagreement here, ecarle, with any point in either of your posts. It's a scene in which Jeff is displayed at something considerably less than his most noble self. I'll add that it's also at odds with the picture he paints to Lisa while dissuading her from the idea of accompanying him on his job:
"Did you ever get shot at? Run over? Did you ever get sandbagged because somebody got unfavorable publicity from your camera?"
When Lisa is first in Thorwald's clutches and does what Jeff won't - yells across the courtyard - his reflexive reaction is panic at being exposed.
But I'll say this as well: the entire scene is one of the two most authentic portrayals of paralyzing fear and helplessness I've ever seen on the screen. I've had a couple moments in my life (not quite life-threatening ones) when something causing shock and alarm was taking place before my eyes, I felt I needed to do something, but was paralyzed by uncertainty, confusion and the helpless sensation they brought about. Weak and cowardly or not, Stewart's enacting of that sensation comes across as completely real.
It so happens that the other authentic portrayal is from the same actor in the same film, when Thorwald has Jeff in his grip and his maneuvering him toward the open window, and all Jeff can do is whimper in terror.
Those moments may not be Jeff at his best or bravest, but they're certainly Stewart at his best. And as you suggest, his bravest as an actor.
I'm just now catching this reply seven months late (sorry!). And it may well be another seven or who knows how many months before you catch this one. These threads are rather like the monster himself, going dormant and then periodically coming back to animate life.
"In second gear" is a fair description of the entire production and the work of most appearing in it. This film and The Invisible Man Returns were my only exposure as a tyke cutting my classic film teeth to Cedric Hardwicke until years later, when others such as On Borrowed Time, Stanley and Livingston or A Connecticut Yankee revealed what a colorful performer he could be. Evelyn Ankers does her standard damsel-in-distress, and stoic Ralph Bellamy gives no hint of the dynamic delights of The Awful Truth, His Girl Friday, Sunrise At Campobello and Rosemary's Baby. Even Barton Yarbrough, in the tiny, thankless role of Kettering, cuts loose effectively elsewhere, as in the I Love A Mystery programmers as Doc Long, the drawling and acerbic Texan sidekick to rigid detective Jim Bannon.
Only Lionel Atwill really seems up to putting the most into his characterization, given the relatively little he has to work with. But overall, the enterprise is efficient and polished - if perfunctory - film making that gets the job done in the limited amount of time allotted.
"Hitch began in silent films and learned how to "compress" information into visuals."
- I like that you chose the word "compress;" it's something I had in mind when replying earlier. Hitchcock talked about playing audiences like an organ, but the pacing of his films is rather like the playing of a concertina: compression here (the Arbogast/Lila exchange; the swamp shot); expansion there (Norman and Marion in the parlor; the cleanup sequence; Arbogast's "last ascent").
A scene I like to cite to others to illustrate the power of editing is Scotty's first encounter with "Madeline" that's also an example of both compression and expansion at the same time.
What's the action? A woman walks past a man at the bar, pauses behind him momentarily, then exits. Nuthin' to it, right? Compression. Yet, with ten wordless crosscutting closeups across about 30 seconds depicting that simple action, the dramatic impact has occurred: he's begun to fall under her spell, and is a goner from then on. Expansion.
In Laura, there's action of nearly equal simplicity: a detective in the apartment of a murdered woman has been reading her private letters. Clutching a bundle of them, he walks into her bedroom, wanders to the dresser, fondles her handkerchief, sniffs her perfume, moves to the wardrobe and looks at her clothes, then leaves the room.
He's falling in love with the dead woman. But Otto Preminger stages the whole thing in one uninterrupted longshot lasting nearly a minute, and it falls onto the shoulders of actor Dana Andrews, through his alternating body language of wistfulness and impatient anxiety, to carry the dramatic weight, as though he were a stage player within the proscenium.
Two men hopelessly captivated by a woman they don't know. Two directors visually depicting it. Two entirely different approaches. But Preminger needs a scene minutes later with Clifton Webb telling Andrews (and the audience) he's falling in love. And Hitchcock doesn't.
"It all boils down to this exchange:
Arbogast: Where is she, Miss Crane?
Lila: I don't know you.
Arbogast: Oh, I know you don't...if you did, I wouldn't have been able to follow you.
Bing. Bang. Boom."
- You've been eminently kind and gentle, but it hit me with a bing, a bang and a boom just the same as when, for instance, I realize I've walked past my own car while looking for it in a parking lot, forgotten my own phone number or failed to recognize the neighbor I've known for 12 years when seeing her in the supermarket.
They have a name for that. Moments, some kind of moments...oh, what do they call them? They happen to seniors...it's right on the tip of my tongue. Well, whatever they're called, I guess I had one. I know those lines of dialogue perfectly well but, for the moment - Poof! - they and what they mean were just...gone.
And I so admire that kind of economy, in both dialogue and visuals; saying so much by saying so little, as with the shot of Perkins you described in the next reply.
I just took a look at it again, and noticed how seamlessly the "dolly in" is integrated with a "zoom." It's often difficult to make a "zoom" look anything but lazy (or maybe that's just my own prejudice from so much overuse in the late '60s - early '70s), but this was quite elegantly done.
"BTW, has Arbogast's car been so precisely identified? If not, that's a real good guessed estimate of make, model, and year."
- I was pretty sure about the make and year, but verified it with the Internet Movie Car Database. It's been at least 20 years since I could tell one make from another (smaller ones today are so bizarrely sculpted that they look like athletic shoes on wheels, and the big ones look like the boxes they came in), but as a youngster, I could identify the make, model and year of every car I saw (but neither knew nor cared anything about how they worked, and still don't).
"The Psycho screenplay has a brief scene in which Arbogast RENTS that car, in Fairvale. A little pain for THAT company."
- It may seem an insignificant deletion, but it's one that shapes the narrative, or at least a viewer's inferences about unstated events taking place during the week between Marion's theft and Arbogast's arrival. Until I first read the screenplay a few years back, I'd simply assumed the car to be his own, driven from Phoenix as he tracked Marion over what he'd deduced was her route.
Either way, it raises another question: how did he find out about Sam and his hardware store in Fairvale? He'd never met Lila. Was Lowery aware of Sam and about his relationship with Marion? Or was Caroline? Although it's never stopped me, it probably doesn't do to give these little things too much thought. Enough to surmise that someone who throws cash around the way Cassidy does hires the best.
"And this: I expect that Norman was banking on that swamp to STAY a swamp, and never to dry out revealing a mini-car lot(don't forget his other female victims) there in the mud. How embarrassing if it had dried out..."
- And another thing it's probably best not to think about: it's occurred to me along the way that, at some point, Norman had to start keeping track of just where he pushed each one into that swamp, lest they begin piling up on one another.
When Marion's Ford stopped sinking, could Norman have been thinking, "Uh oh, is it sitting on top of that girl's Studebaker?"
Possible ad in the Fairvale Register, early 1961:
SHASTA COUNTY AUCTION
Autos:
1957 Ford Custom 300 Sedan
1959 Mercury Montclair
Cheap, no reserve. Some water damage to both.
Except you didn't "overlook" them, did you? They were singled out for explicit mention.
But if it's truly the case rather than a coy way of introducing the very elements claimed to be "overlook[ed]", it only deepens the mystery.
Why the "sarcasm" about "social justice" where it concerns Hispanics playing Hispanics while choosing to "overlook" Anglo actors playing them (or "an almost entirely American cast portraying rural Frenchmen talking English in an American accent"), but earnest objection to an older actor playing a younger, fitter character when ethnicity is not involved? There's the contradiction.
My original question still stands.
You're rather hard to please, Dalton. The very day you posted this, you also posted on the board for The Mountain, complaining about "an almost entirely American cast portraying rural Frenchmen talking English in an American accent," and about Spencer Tracy in particular, wishing instead for "someone slightly younger and much more fit to play this older brother."
Are you arguing in favor of authenticity or against it? Difficult to tell with two so apparently opposing viewpoints.
With such a contradiction on display, the reason for invoking "social justice" in this context is unclear, unless your point is that authenticity in casting should apply only to Aryan characters and performers. It's otherwise a mystery to me.