Minty’s Monthly Movie Masterclass - Alfred Hitchcock
The master of suspense and possibly the most influential film director ever, in my humble opinion he is the only cinematic genius we have ever produced in the UK. OK, Michael Powell and David Lean are immense talents - although I really struggle with Lean’s overblown epics - but no UK director has ever had such a masterful control of every element of film-making and produced a half dozen movies that are consistently ranked as among the greatest ever made. I recently picked up this terrific boxed set - OK so it’s missing ‘Notorious‘ and ‘North by Northwest‘, but those two aside this pretty much collects all the essential American Hitchcock pictures under one roof. I thought I’d concentrate on some of the lesser known movies rather than the classics for a change, if only to make my research a bit more challenging - encyclopaedias have been written on the likes of ‘Vertigo’ and ‘Psycho’ so it would be too easy to regurgitate common knowledge of these productions.
‘Rope‘ - One of Hitchcock’s more experimental projects and his first foray into colour, it’s a little hamstrung by feeling a little stagebound, but some of the innovations produced here are worth noting. Like ‘Lifeboat‘, Hitchcock restrains himself to one set, where two socialites execute the ‘perfect’ murder, apparently inspired by their charismatic teacher played by Jimmy Stewart. As the film opens, they strangle and kill their former classmate, then hide his body in a chest in a disillusioned attempt to achieve some form of Nietzschean superiority. A dinner party then ensues, with much suspense generated from the fact that the corpse is concealed in a case that serves as the guests table - nice.
This was shot in a series of 8 minute takes, the longest length of film reel available at the time. The effect is that you have a prowling camera, focusing in on details of costume and set design, swirling from character, from dialogue to reaction, in a quite mesmerising fashion. Stagehands would be constantly pulling out and replacing scenery and props and the Manhattan skyline backdrop also warrants a mention - as dusk falls the lights grow brighter in the backdrop and the lighting intensifies on the set, affecting a plausible passing of time. I like movies that fuck about with the medium, and this delivers - some of the sequences where you are teased that the body will be discovered are very effective, and naturally make you explicit in the crime. James Stewart is superb as always as the stoic and slightly eccentric professor who reads between the lines of the murderers jokes and begins to suspect foul play….
‘The Trouble With Harry‘ - I’ll tell you what the trouble with Harry is - when you punch this phrase into Google all you get is a few hundred links criticising Harry Potter mania - Not that I have a problem with that, but some links to the movie would be a bit more practical. Anyway, this is the closest Hitchcock got to making a full comedy picture, although of course the title refers to the dead body - Harry - and the attempts of a group of new England villagers to farcically prevent their peers and the local enforcement authorities of discovering his death in which they are implicated.
This is notable as it was Hitchcock’s first association with the great Bernard Herrman - a collaborator who like Robert Burks (Cinematographer), George Tomasini (Editor), Edith Head (Costume Designer and the inspiration for this character) would go on to help forge the masterpieces ‘Rear Window’, ‘North by Northwest’, ‘ Vertigo’, ‘Psycho’ and ‘The Birds’ - that’s quite a winning streak. The comedy has of course dated, but I found the bumbling British gentleman Captain Wiles to be funny, and Shirley MacLaine in one of her first roles plays it flippantly nonchalant about the death of Harry, an approach which adds to the macabre atmosphere.
‘Torn Curtain‘ - This is late period Hitchcock, when his regular collaborators had started to drift away. Paul Newman stars as a scientist apparently defecting to East Germany during the peak of the cold war. Newman is followed into the clutches of the communist swine by his doting fiancée Julie Andrews as she struggles to understand the treason he has committed. The film is remembered due to the notorious murder scene of the East German agent, played out in its uncomfortable and almost silent excruciating glory. This is Hitch utilising his ‘pure’ cinema, with point-of-view editing presenting the action and raising the levels of suspense and anxiety. Hitch pretty much dismissed the picture (it was a flop at the box office) labelling it a failure but I think it has it’s moments - some early scenes between Newman and Andrews work to communicate the gulf between them once he has seemingly betrayed his country, and it has a signature conclusion centred around a visit to the Ballet for which Hitch hired the same Art Director as Powell used for ‘The Red Shoes‘. Worth a look.
‘Shadow of a Doubt‘ - Hitch’s favourite of all the 70 odd pictures he directed, the motto of this movie is to be careful what you wish for. In another sleepy New Hampshire town we are introduced to Charlie Junior, a bored teenager who craves more excitement and intrigue in her life. Unexpectedly, Uncle Charlie (played with subtle menace by Joseph Cotten) comes to visit, a popular member of the family whom Charley adores. The only slight problem is that Uncle Charlie is actually a psychopath who preys on elderly widows, and as our heroine’s suspicions grow she finds herself in mortal danger
The Electra complex is evident in this film, with the uncle substituting the father figure (probably for censorship reasons) and it was roughly around this time that psychoanalytic themes started to enter the cultural lexicon of mainstream films directed by the likes of Hitchcock, Nicholas Ray and John Huston to name but a few, although this wouldn’t emerge as a model of film criticism until the 1970’s, along with Feminist and Marxist theory. I think these models can sometimes read too much into certain films, but with filmmakers as complex and erudite as Hitch these themes are apparent and he would have certainly intended to inject these concepts into his projects. It’s a compelling little noir, and probably overall the best of the four.
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