Olde Review: Closely Watched Trains

This was part of a series of reviews of the ASUW Film series back in the '70's. Except for some punctuation, I haven't changed anything from the way it was presented, giving the snarky, clueless kid I was back in the '70's a break. Any stray thoughts and updates I've included with the inevitable asterisked post-scripts.

This Friday's films in 130 Kane Hall at 7:30pm are "Closely Watched Trains" and "Lacombe, Lucien."

"Closely Watched Trains" aka "Ostre sledované vlaky" (Jirí Menzel, 1966) "Closely Watched Trains" is a wry, sometimes hysterical Czech film by Jiri Menzel, a person you've probably never heard of and have already forgotten.* It tells the story of Miloš Hrma, an insignificant young man in the scope of WWII, whose father was retired at 48 and now spends his day lying around and keeping track of the comings and goings of the train. Another relative was a hypnotist and a couple years back, he tried his skills on an advancing Nazi tanke-gruppe and was promptly crushed to a pulp (I am telling you this because there is no way in Hell that you'll be able to read the sub-titles in the opening minutes).** These are only two examples of Menzel's comedy-of-errors style of telling his story.

Menzel takes little incidents of the story of Miloš's work-a-day situation standing at the train platform—a job he wanted "just so he could strut on the platform." And his stories are sometimes hilariously satirical (for an example, there is an hysterical look at a town Nazi explaining the war situation and in a blase manner explaining that withdrawals from the American forces are such wonderful tactical maneuvers). Sometimes (most of the time), the stories are very ribald; one of the sub-plots is Miloš's constant failure with women, which, in context with the habits of a fellow platform-strutter, makes him turn to a suicide attempt in a dilapidated hotel. The hotel is being worked over by a fellow with a pile-driver. In this scene what is going to happen—how the two will intersect—is very apparent, but the sequence's effect is that it displaces the humor of the situation (which passed with the audience's first realization of what, inevitably, will happen) with suspense. Will it happen before Miloš is dead? It's an effective sequence because it anticipates viewer reaction and changes it to the further effect of the film.

In the last half-hour, Miloš is used like a pawn in a chess game in an attempt to head off a Nazi munitions train. It's outcome is consistent with the rest of the film, but there is no sense of real tragedy at the end, more an explosion of fulfillment. You may find "Closely Watched Trains" a very entertaining film.

Just a reminder (he said, slapping his forehead with his palm) I wrote this back in February 1977, and, although sorely tempted, I didn't change anything besides punctuation (and had to get fairly creative with that!). "Closely Watched Trains" won the Oscar for Best Foreign Film in 1968, and is one of three films I remember most fondly from the Winter ASUW series—the other two being "Hari-Kiri" and "Il Posto"—"Trains" probably because it's crack comic timing reminded me of my beloved Warner Brothers cartoons, with a dash (a mad dash!) of Buster Keaton thrown in for good measure. And the comedy came from character, not from out of the blue.

This review is more than thirty years old, but it's heartening—in fact, a bit miraculous—that Jiri Menzel is still making movies, his last being "I Served the King of England," which was also about young professionals learning their craft to uproarious results.

* This was near the end of the series and I was getting a bit punchy by this time, but that's no excuse for insulting the audience that one is trying to "encourage" to go see a film.

** As I recall they were "white-on-white" and virtually indecipherable. Criterion has put out the DVD of "Closely Watched Trains" and they're more scrupulous in their translations and making sure that they're legible. Criterion is a great DVD publisher.

Surrogates

"Cloudy with a Chance of Meat-Bags"

To sell a science fiction concept for a mass audience, you can never stray too far from the norms of established genres. Or else it won't pass the audience's "laugh test." Hit them with too many crazy concepts, like melting ice-caps or human civilization replaced with robots (as in the case of "A.I."), and the audience giggles because it's so far beyond their ken.

Give them the concept in little nano-drips and drabs and couch it in, say, a detective movie, or a western (as in "Outland" or "Serenity") and there's enough comfort with the familiar to cushion the "out-there."

So, here's "Surrogates," a comic book movie with no spandex,* set in a world where nobody is whom they seem: the populace is plugged into synth-robots, who go about their daily lives—their hosts' daily lives, mind you—and hit the pavements, their actions controlled by the drones from home. Fully 98% of the world's population is represented in this phenomenon, which was created to able the disabled, then as cannon-fodder in the country's war-games (there's a chilling shot of surrogates going into combat, controlled by Army hosts, who, when their boy-toy gets whacked, they inhabit another one--there are rooms full of computers waiting for The Big One), then as "the latest thing"—you don't have to be "present" to be present, just lay around the house all day with your thoughts and your surrogate's actions.

Okay. That 98% spread number is probably unrealistic, but the concept is pretty brilliant, evoking the present day's capacity to relegate their lives to "social networks" hiding behind screen-names and false personalities, and the human capacity to take a good idea and over-do it...to death. And the film-makers (writers Michael Ferris and John D. Brancato** and director Jonathan Mostow—not the best of directors, but actually displays some swatches of style here) do some ingenious work with a film that could have turned into merely a recycled "I, Robot" but emerged from the factory a great deal better than that mis-fire. For instance, the robots are all super-modeled with controllable hair, perfect skin, the healthiest blue in their corneas, small waists and big bouncy boobs. At home in their "stim-chambers" everybody schlumps around in their underwear, unshaven and unshowered. Their wax-works stride down the street, with arms only perfunctorily swinging and no hesitation of step, no paralyzing self-doubt. GPS is their co-pilot.

The niftiest idea is employing a digital effect that has rarely worked in movies before—digital de-aging, that staple of prequels that takes an aging star's face and makes it gratuitously waxy (they're very fond of it in the "X-men" movies), but it never convinces. Here, that same technique erases five o'clock shadows, pores and wrinkles, making the stars look, quite properly, like wax-museumed versions of themselves. FBI Detective Greer (Bruce Willis) even has an oddly out-of-place mop of blond hair. His partner (Radha Mitchell) is a spiffy blond and their captain (Boris Kodjoe) looks like Taye Diggs' better-looking brother(!). It's a giggly jape at the perfect appearance of corporate culture.

But in that perfect veneer a couple of dents show up. Greer and Peters are assigned to a case of two surrogates zapped and de-activated in a back-alley. Although it looks like one for the "Recycling" boys, upon investigation they discover that the hosts, too, have been killed (the police call the human puppet-masters "meat-bags"), their brains fried down the link-line. Looks like it's homicide.

And someone's responsible.

The investigation is the weakest part of the movie, because it involves the filthy rich, the military-industrial complex, a missing scientist, and an anti-surrogate cult that likes to "ava-tar and feather" any "robo-pigs" that enter their "surrogate-free-zone"—I'll bet there's a John D. MacDonald novel out there with that exact same premise, minus the robots. Ving Rhames (one of my fave actors) plays the leader of the cult, "The Prophet." You can bet he's in it up to his dread-locks. Indeed, the mystery is almost second-nature, its genre gears openly exposed, taking a back-seat to the societal aspects of the story.

It's been getting drubbed in the reviews, but I found it competent—even a bit inspired—especially in its good sci-fi way of holding a mirror up to society. And Willis, who doesn't shy from a good sci-fi concept—"Twelve Monkeys," "The Fifth Element"—manages to engage both elements of his persona, the good dramatic actor and (in his robot guise) the smart-ass, one gear-shift from winking at the audience. Much to admire, even if one occasionally hears the machinations grinding.

"Surrogates" is a Matinee.


* Based on the 2007 comic series by Robert Venditti and Brett Weldele

** They wrote "The Game" and "Catwoman," as well as such paranoid thrillers as "The Net," and know their robots as they wrote the last two "Terminator" movies. They fit the mold of the classic answer of directors asked their favorite movie of theirs: "The next one."

Don't Make a Scene: Apocalypse Now

The Story: Marlon Brando was fat. That was the problem.

You look at the planned shooting script of "Apocalypse Now," and that ending just blows you away. It would have been a battle extravaganza, tinged with LSD and morphine, and protagonists warring against both sides. That's what John Milius was looking for—a big, beautiful blow-out of a night fighting scene, not unlike the big cavalry charge at the end of a Western—"The Alamo" with a happier ending. Day-glo carnage.

But Marlon Brando arrived in the Phillipines overweight—his mass had ballooned since his recent relatively svelte appearances in "The Missouri Breaks," and "Superman." Brando had shaved his head, and was extremely shy about being photographed heavy. And his character, Colonel Kurtz, was supposed to be in shape, frail but, with a long scraggly head of blonde hair. Nor had Brando read the script, or its source, Joseph Conrad's "Heart of Darkness." For his several million dollar salary (in exchange for his presence to acquire investors), Brando merely showed up, completely unready to play his part.

And Francis Ford Coppola, already hip-deep in a big muddy of an out-of-control movie shoot, only had him—his star attraction—for one week. Brando ultimately didn't like the script—Coppola was also having doubts about it—and so director and star hunkered down to try and re-shape the part of Kurtz to Brando's satisfaction and the ending of the film to Coppola's. With so much money at stake, it was a wild gamble with bad odds, but Coppola was never afraid of taking chances.

He devised a way of shooting Brando that was mostly in the shadows, hiding his body, while he and Martin Sheen—who'd already suffered a heart attack shooting the movie—discussed matters philosophical. After the intense journey, it was a disappointment to sit through a series of disjointed chats where you barely saw Brando. But even a shadow-Brando can do some interesting things—the tightening fist after Willard calls him insane, the way he pushes through the shadows like parting a curtain to finally reveal his face, the soft-pallette voice belying the threat of the man. It's an eerie, unsettling scene that pushes the bounds of absurdism at times.

But, it holds your gaze, challenging it. As Brando always did.

The Set-Up: After a long trip up the Nung River aboard a PBR with a slowly disintegrating crew (Laurence Fishburne, Frederic Forrest, Albert Hall and Sam Bottoms), Captain Willard (Martin Sheen) has finally reached his destination—the Montagnard village in North Vietnam that is the base for Col. Kurtz (Marlon Brando), who's been waging his own unauthorized war. Willard's mission: "terminate the Colonel's command...with extreme prejudice." At this point, he hasn't even had a chance to see the Colonel. He's just been a dossier, some blurred photographs, a whisper on a hissing tape recording. A ghost in the dark.

A legend.

Action!

INT. KURTZ HEADQUARTERS - DAY

Willard, hands tied behind his back, is guided down a long corridor, followed by two Montagnards, both armed.

WILLARD (V.O.)It smelled like slow death in there.

WILLARD (V.O.) Malaria and nightmares. This was the end of the river, all right.

They turn into the main room. The natives indicate for Willard to kneel down on the floor. The CAMERA MOVES, REVEALING KURTZ lying in shadow on a bed. We will SEE him only in darkness and shadow throughout the scene.

KURTZ: Where you from, Willard?
WILLARD: I'm from Ohio, sir.
KURTZ: Were you born there?
WILLARD: Yes, sir.

KURTZ: Whereabouts?
WILLARD: Toledo, sir.

KURTZ: How far are you from the river?
WILLARD: The Ohio River, sir?
KURTZ: Uh-huh.
WILLARD: About two hundred miles.

KURTZ: I went down that river once when I was a kid. There's a place in the river, I can't remember...must have been a gardenia plantation, or a flower plantation at one time. It's all wild and overgrown now. But for...

KURTZ: ...about five miles, you'd think that heaven just fell on the earth, in the form of gardenias.

Kurtz reaches down and picks up a bowl full of water. He splashes water on his face and head.

KURTZ: Have you ever considered, any real freedoms?

KURTZ: Freedoms from the opinions of others.

KURTZ: Even the opinions of yourself.

KURTZ: Did they say why, Willard?

KURTZ: Why they wanted to terminate my command?

WILLARD: I was sent on a classified mission, sir.

KURTZ: Well, it's no longer classified, is it? What did they tell you?

WILLARD: They told me, that you had gone...totally insane.

WILLARD: And that your methods were unsound.

KURTZ: Are my methods unsound?

WILLARD: I don't see any method...at all, sir.

KURTZ: I expected someone like you. What did you expect?

KURTZ: Are you an assassin?

WILLARD: I'm a soldier.

We finally SEE KURTZ'S FACE.

KURTZ: You're neither. You're an errand boy, sent by grocery clerks...

KURTZ:...to collect a bill.


"Apocalypse Now"

Words by John Milius, Francis Ford Coppola, Marlon Brando and Michael Herr

Pictures by Vittorio Storaro and Francis Ford Coppola

"Apocalypse Now" is available (with "Apocalypse Now Redux" on Miramax Home Video.

Jennifer's Body

"Cluster-Fox"

The critical drubbing that horror film/High School satire "Jennifer's Body" has endured belies its talent behind the camera. After all, it was critics who first pointed out the particular tenor of Diablo Cody's writing in "Juno" and championed it through its short Film Festival run into theaters (Jason Reitman's previous film "Thank You for Smoking," although a nice piece of film-making with a brain in its head, didn't do well at the box office.) Director Karyn Kusama isn't too shabby a director, although "Æon Flux" was an MTV-ginzu'd nightmare. I was surprised that 2oth Century Fox advertised it as a straight horror movie starring Megan Fox (aiming at—and only at—teenage boys), rather than including girls in the mix. As a result the film "opened soft" (as they say), and the film received decidedly mixed reviews depending on how serious they took it....even serial contrarian Armond White sided with the majority.

But horror films aren't just horror films—they say something about our fears, and more broadly, the "Holy Shite"-geist of society. The proverbially "good" horror movie touches our souls with a chilly finger and reminds us we're all mortal, but whether it's our relationship with God (in "Frankenstein") or our relationship with sex and guilt ("Halloween"), horror films find our soft underbellies and either tickle us or stab up to the third knuckle.

"Jennifer's Body" tells the story of Jennifer (Megan Fox) and Needy (Amanda Seyfried), girl-hood friends in the small town of Devil's Kettle who've stayed close depite a Mutt and Jeff relationship in high school. Jennifer is a cheerleader, drop-dead gorgeous and just as likely to tell you...to drop-dead, that is. Needy, by contrast is blond, bespectacled, and Jennifer's beard, of sorts, her "Biff" in "Diablo-Code," able to rein her in if she gets too out of control in their adventures. Unfortunately, one night when the pair go off to a local dive to see an up-and-coming indie band, the place goes up in flames and Jennifer's entranced enough with the lead singer (Adam Brody) to go off in the band's van, leaving Needy behind, in a state of shock.

When Needy gets home, she finds Jennifer waiting for her, pale, crazy-eyed, smiling through bleeding gums, and vomiting a noxious black bile: she's turned into a succubus from Hell, and where in the past she used to merely chew out aggressive boys, now she chews them out and consumes them, leaving behind what one schoolmate describes as "lasagna with teeth." It's up to Needy to keep her Best Friend Forever from being discovered for the fiend she is, while simultaneously protecting her class-mates—a task if she was any good at would effectively kill the movie.

It sounds like very rich material to go over the societal strata of High School with, if the territory didn't have so many skid-marks running through it already.* One could see it as a revenge flick for all those sosh's who've terrorized the commoners, but Jennifer is as much a victim as anyone, and is an equal opportunity disembowler. And Needy's loyalties are so divided that you begin to wonder just whose side she's on. And the "males as victims of the woman" angle would seem fresh...if it was done 20 years ago.** Ultimately, the message aspect to it is weak and anemic, so ham-strung is the script by its own cross-messages. Good direction would divert your attention from them, but even there, everything comes up short. However cob-webbed the old cliche's, Kusama's rhythm for them is off, with loud bumps in the night that land with a dull thud. Opportunities lurk around every steadi-cammed corner and go unsprung. Then when something happens, Kusama won't cut away until the carnage becomes so much spewing corn-syrup. In trying to do something different and avoid the standard horror tropes, Kusama can't even deliver any chills.

And, despite what you've heard, Megan Fox isn't half-bad, showing far more depth and humor than, say, other sex-bomb's like Raquel Welch, have in the past. Fox isn't afraid to not look beautiful, and does so frequently, even if it's just with an "I'm Sooo-C'ra-zy" glint in her eyes, but she has the easier part. Seyfried has to play the "normal" girl, who can be both the ugly duckling and beautiful swan when the circumstances call for it. It shows how weak the material is when J.K. Simmons and Amy Sedaris can't find much inspiration in their parts. There was potential here, but it isn't satirical enough, funny enough, or scary enough to provoke any reaction other indifference. And that's the worst death in a horror film.

"Jennifer's Body" is a Cable-Watcher.

* "Carrie," "Scream," "Species," "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" have all staked out the same territory and potential that "Jennifer's Body" squanders, usually more pointedly and more entertainingly.

** 50 years if you want to cross-categorize with "film noir."

Now I've Seen Everything Dept.: Alfred Hitchcock Part IV

Alfred Hitchcock and Bernard Herrmann-Masters of Suspense

It is a period of extraordinary freedom and creativity for Hitchcock. Despite having never won an Oscar, he is one of the few film directors known to the American public by name, along with Walt Disney and Cecil B. DeMille. In fact, the "Hitchcock" name could well be considered a brand, for it appears on pulp mystery magazines and a new television anthology series.* Hitchcock enjoys a contract deal that allows him to retain the rights to several of his best films, as well as working for M-G-M and Paramount Studios, not as an employee but a commodity. It is also the period where Sir Alfred finds one of his most effective collaborators in composer Bernard Herrmann. Together, they would create a string of films that would define both of their careers. And this period ends with his greatest success and biggest reach in subject matter and a bravura display of technique.


WARNING! SPOILERS ABOUND IN THESE CAPSULE SUMMARIES!! WHATEVER YOU DO, IF YOU HAVEN'T SEEN THESE HITCHCOCK FILMS, THEN DO NOT READ ANY FURTHER (By all means, go to the attic OR the basement, take a shower OR a ride on a carousel, wait in a corn-field OR the schoolyard, visit Mt. Rushmore, the Statue of Liberty, the Bates Motel, OR the beach at Monte Carlo, or for that matter, just sit in your room and watch your neighbors, but for the love of an omnipotent uncaring God...) I REPEAT, DO NOT READ ANY FURTHER!!!
(Thank you and have a nice day)


Alfred Hitchcock's "Psycho" (1960) Hitchcock liked to shake things up a bit when he made movies, pushing boundaries wherever he could. But "Psycho" is unique. It is a straight up horror film. It pushes accepted levels of taste and subjects anathema to the Legion of Decency. Long after he'd experimented with and mastered color, this one's filmed in black and white. The last film of Hitchcock's Paramount contract (though rights were eventually bought by Universal), it was made on-the-cheap using his production crew from television because he was unsure of its box-office potential. In fact, he wasn't sure of the film at all. Yet, it is Hitchcock at his most strategic in its blueprint--it is a series of film feints and manipulations designed to keep its audience on the edge of their seats, questioning everything. In his landmark book-length interview with Francois Truffaut, Hitchcock was particularly pleased with "Psycho," because he made it so cheaply and yet it generated the biggest box-office of his career. He also enjoyed the effect it had on audiences as, more than any other film, he was deliberately "playing the audience like an orchestra." The story is simple, though its strategies are not. We follow Marion Crane, a Phoenix career girl who has just embezzled $40,000 from her boss to help set up her and her boyfriend. She suffers a crisis of conscience and before she can act on it, she is brutally murdered in the shower of the motel she is staying at. The young proprietor of the Bates Motel, Norman Bates, discovers the body and hides all evidence of the killing to protect his mother, then must ward off detectives, police and Marion's sister and beau from discovering the truth.

Yeah. Right. Hitchcock's first big gotcha is to kill off his star forty five minutes into the picture. The audience is left in a state of shock... what do we do now? Who do we follow? And "johnny-on-the-spot" here comes Norman! The fact is, "Psycho" is a cold little exercise in toying with people. Our loyalties to Marion as an audience are divided, and when she's killed we glom onto the young Mr. Bates, because a) we don''t want him to get caught, but b) we want to know his secret. And as clues mount (with the body-count) the director takes us further and further into territories of dread as sweet as molasses candy...and just as sticky. So commanding is Hitchcock's grip on the audience that he even feels free to explore that age-old question "Why don't they just go to the police?" Hitchcock's stock answer: "Because it's bo-ring!" In "Psycho," they do. And...it is. But its a relief to get away from the Bates Motel by this time. Any excuse will do.
Along the way are some technical marvels of camera and editing work that have been studied and copied but never topped by lesser lights. The snaking shot up the stairs that shinnies up to the ceiling to cast a "God's eye-view" as Norman moves his mother down to the basement is one of the great sleight of hands by any director. Hitchcock's scrupulously maintained "Look/ Object Observed/ Reaction" editing strategy for Vera Miles' search of the Bates house is a nerve-jangling tour-de-force. Then there's the justifiably classic murder sequence made up of snippets of film that flash and slash across the screen, showing us nothing but suggesting everything. And Bernard Herrmann's strings-only score--Black and white music for a black and white film--shoves and kicks us along the scary maze. So confident of Herrmann was Hitchcock that on his score suggestions when he reached the point of Marion's drive from Phoenix he merely wrote "Reel 4 is yours." Hitchcock originally planned the shower murder to be unscored, but Herrmann scored it with its now iconic shrieking strings. When the composer reminded the director of his original plan, he replied "Improper suggestion..."

From Hitchcock, that's a compliment.

Mention has to be made of the cast. Everybody's terrific, but Anthony Perkins is so good he never played another normal human being again. Towards the end of his life when asked if, knowing the effect it would have on his career he would do it again, his reply was "In a heart-beat." His fidgeting, shimmying Norman is one of The Great Performances. Only one of the great failings of Gus Van Sant's shot-for-shot color remake was Vince Vaughn's inability to evoke anything nearly as good--but then all the actors failed at that. You remake masterpieces at your peril...even if you do have the blue-print at hand.
Hitchcock appears outside the office wearing a cowboy hat four minutes into the film.



Alfred Hitchcock's "North By Northwest" (1958) The wit begins immediately as the opening bars of Bernard Herrmann's manic fandango get out of the way for the MGM lion's roar. Then, life goes crazy for a very bad couple of days in the life of blithely selfish Madison Avenue ad-man Roger O.Thornhill ("What does the 'O' stand for?" "Nothing...") as he is mistaken for a government agent, kidnapped, nearly assassinated and then is accused of murdering a U.N. official. He then falls under the wing of the very government service his phantom doppelganger belongs to, evading the police and the spies on a cross-country getaway from New York to North Dakota.

What does it all stand for? Nothing. Thornhill is a nowhere man, mistaken for a person who doesn't exist and nothing is what it seems. Even the MacGuffin everyone is after is dismissed as "goverment secrets, perhaps?" -- secrets wrapped in an enigma. For the lead Hitchcock goes with his "better-than-everyman" Cary Grant, his blonde is the slyly coy Eva Marie Saint (never better), and the villains are James Mason (one would think the perfect Hitchcock actor) and his aide-de-camp the very young, very reptilian Martin Landau. It's a trifle--a bouncing nightmare made of cotton-candy whisps, with wild Hitchcock set-pieces held together by Ernest Lehman's yeoman-work trying to keep everything light-hearted and semi-plausible. It's hard to find a better entertainment, from that opening roar to the final salacious joke.
Hitchcock appears at the final climax of the opening music as a bus door shuts in his face.



Alfred Hitchcock's "Vertigo" (1957) Everybody has their favorite "Hitchcock." ** This one is mine. "Scottie" Ferguson is a desk-bound police detective on disability following a traumatizing incident that involved a dead policeman and revealed a susceptibility to vertigo--a dizzying sensation in situations dealing with heights. An old friend hires him to follow his wife whom he suspects of falling under the spell of a dead woman who committed suicide. "Scottie" takes the job, and in following the woman, learns of her obsession, rescues her from an attempt to take her life...and falls hopelessly in love with her. But in an attempt to jog her memory she makes a second attempt which he is unable to prevent due to his infirmity. The guilt and grief (plus an embarrassing investigation) lands "Scottie" in a sanitarium, a broken man. When he is released, vulnerable and impressionable, he obsesses on a woman who resembles the dead woman and finds himself unable to shake the grip of his lost love.

When the authors of "Les Diabolique" heard that Hitchcock had tried to obtain the rights to it, they wrote "D'Entre les Morts" ("From Among the Dead") with him in mind. He snapped it up immediately. One can see why. It had all the elements--a mystery, a passionate love story, a blonde damsel, an obsessive man, a wounded psyche, a manipulative make-over, and something else that might have driven Hitchcock. When we reach the end of the film and are left at the precipice, it's only then that we're aware that, yes, it's a love story, but it's a love for a woman who doesn't exist--who never existed...ever. "Scottie's" obsession is for an ideal, a figment of his imagination, just as Hitchcock's obsession with blondes (over and over again they appear in his films) is an ideal. So, then, what is love? If "Scottie's" love doesn't exist, what is he in love with? Do we love the people we love, or the ideal of that person? Is love real? For any of us?

Not the most romantic of questions to ask in a love story, but the story suggests that love is an affliction, like "Scottie"s" vertigo--like his depression. It's all in his mind, whether he has the heart or not. And Bernard Herrmann's turgid, swirling score suggests, as does Saul Bass' moire-pattern titles sequence, a whirlpool, forever trapping us.***

As usual during this period, when he was casting the part of an interior, complex man, Hitchcock cast James Stewart in the lead--the '50's saw Stewart in a great many of his most neurotic performances but this one tops them all. Stewart's Ferguson starts the movie hanging from a gutter, and he's on the edge throughouta falling man who never reaches bottom, but is broken nonetheless. Stewart comes as close as he ever does to losing the audience's sympathy--by the end, he's an obsessive caring not for the woman he supposedly loves, and jabbering in semi-hysterics. Hitchcock wanted his new favorite, Vera Miles for the lead, but pregnancy forced her to give it up, and the director cast Kim Novak, not an actress of great depth, but you'd never know it from this performance--there's a luminousness and other-worldliness to Novak that Miles would have been hard-pressed to achieve. Barbara Bel Geddes got her first movie role in "Vertigo," and she took to Hitchcock's direction immediately (she, like Miles would work in some of the director's impressive TV work*). Her sorrowfully loyal Midge is a vital third wheel, a reflective choice, in a story about loss...of love, of self, of control.
Hitchcock is seen walking ouside the Elster shipbuilding business 11:00 into the film.



Alfred Hitchcock's "The Wrong Man" (1956) One is tempted to say this one's surprising, but Hitchcock was never one to do something that wasn't unique. In this "kitchen-sink" neo-noir adapted by playwright Maxwell Anderson, Hitchcock tells the true story (the court case number is even displayed on the poster for the doubters to research) of "Manny" Ballestrero, a musician at New York's "Stork Club," who was falsley accused of assault and robbery and his years-long struggle to clear his name. Because the story is itself "stranger than fiction," Hitchcock films it in an almost documentary fashion in many of the actual locations (and with some of the people involved in the story!) **** It's a realistic version of the standard Hitchcock story elements of false accusation and imprisonment, and the guilt associated with those events. A highlight of the film (and bear in mind when you see it, that it actually happened the way it was depicted) is the trial as Ballestrero furtively glances about the court-room at the casual indifference of the participants and spectators, while he is fighting for his life. Henry Fonda is such an "every-man" actor that any star-persona is completely submerged, and Vera Miles gives an incredible performance as his long-suffering wife (this, and "Vertigo" are good, unhysterical depictions of depression) Anthony Quayle plays their defense attorney.

Hitchcock was still very much the Catholic boy making this movie--the hallucinatory camera-rotation when Ballestrero is alone in his cell no doubt reflected Hitchcock's feelings when he was briefly incarcerated as a boy (Dad wanted to teach him a lesson), and the story doesn't resolve itself until the moment his character begins to fervently murmur a prayer to a portrait of Jesus. Fonda's words to the cause of his problems still haunt to this day.
Hitchcock appears as a silhouette with long shadow to introduce the film, so as not to spoil the verisimilitude.




Alfred Hitchcock's "The Man Who Knew Too Much" (1956) A remake of Hitchcock's 1934 film with Peter Lorre, this one stars James Stewart and Doris Day (tight blonde hair, grey suit) as American vacationers in Morocco who stumble on to a plot to kill an ambassador at a concert in Albert Hall. To ensure their silence their son is kidnapped. The two go their separate ways to find the son and foil the plot, which culminates at London's famous hall in a sequence that lasts 12 minutes without a single line of dialogue. Day's character as a singer comes in handy for a high-pitched scream and two renditions of "Que Sera Sera" that you have to suffer through twice, though its in service of the story. Herrmann's second score for Hitchcock is a bumptuous affair emphasizing thrills over atmosphere and Herrmann even appears on-screen as the conductor of Arthur Benjamin's cantata "The Storm Clouds" (which was written for the 1934 film). It's a fine Hitchcock thrill ride, one of the five Hitchcock films that were wholly owned by Hitch (the others were "Rope," "Rear Window," "The Trouble with Harry," and "Vertigo") and held as a legacy for his daughter, Pat.

One moment has always stood out for me, and it's Doris Day's. Stewart must tell his wife that their son has been taken, but before he'll say anything he insists that she take a powerful tranquilizer. She reluctantly does so, and he waits for it to start taking effect before he tells her. What follows is a heart-breaking scene as Day starts to go into hysterics, as she begins to lapse into unconsciousness. Say what you will about Doris Day--this is one of the great acting scenes in film.
Hitchcock is in the Moroccan crowd (back to the camera) watching a street performance.



Alfred Hitchcock's "The Trouble with Harry" (1955) No matter how quaint a Vermont town can be, no matter how picturesque the autumn surroundings, and no matter how charming its people, a corpse can do a lot to upset things. While out playing "spaceman," young Arnie Rogers (played by a pre-"Beaver" Jerry Mathers) comes across something totally out of his orbit--a dead body. Gunshots had been heard, and maybe "Harry" was felled by one by accident. Or something else happened. Harry's former wife, Jennifer, certainly had a motive. And then there's the little matter of the body always turning up, inconveniently. Pretty soon, people are feeling guilty about Harry, even if they had nothing to do with it. And it's up to the most un-bohemian of bohemian artists--Sam Marlowe to get to the bottom of the mystery...or at least keep it buried for awhile. Call it a black comedy of manners or call it an Agatha Christie novel, but moved out the dark drawing room into the bright sunshine and fall-colors of the outside, it's Hitchcock in a whimsical mood by way of Charles Addams. His cast includes veterans Midred Natwick and Edmund Gwenn and representing romance on the other side of the age scale John Forsythe and Shirley MacLaine (in her film debut). Hitchcock and Robert Burks do an incredible job photographing the New England autumn capturing the golden light filtering through the trees, showing just how beautiful things can look when they're dying.

In their first collaboration, composer Bernard Herrmann (Citizen Kane, The Ghost and Mrs. Muir, The Devil and Daniel Webster) gives Hitchcock a wistful score full of sad melody, offset by a bouncy little tuba theme that he reworked as a concert piece "A Portrait of Hitch." Together they would achieve the heights of their respective careers and lead the pack of other great director/composer teams as Lean/Jarre, Edwards/Mancini, Truffaut/Delerue, Spielberg/Williams and Burton/Elfman.
Hitchcock is seen walking along the street as the millionaire examines the paintings about twenty minutes in.

"The Master of Suspense" can't keep his own composer awake...
Hitchcock and Herrmann in happier times

* "Of Marginal Interest" are two very important video's: one, the first episode of "Alfred Hitchcock Presents," a truly creepy tale unmistakably directed by the Master himself; the other an excellent documentary on Hitchcock's musical muse, Bernard Herrmann. Herrmann doesn't come off very well in this (and he rather deserves it), but Hitchcock's treatment of him is treated with contempt--"Hitchcock had the loyalty of an eel," sneers the usually very gentlemanly David Raksin.

** The director's was the lovely and very creepy "Shadow of a Doubt" written with Thornton Wilder. We'll get there, eventually.

*** And the director makes the point with the "Vertigo" shot, which he'd been trying to perfect since "Rebecca," a simultaneous zoom-in, and track-back that prismatically warps space--it has been used endlessly by directors trying to convey disorientation or shock. Hitchcock never used it again--he kept coming up with new innovations.

**** Herrmann's score is similarly muted, more textural--to be felt rather heard--not unlike his final score, "Taxi Driver," twenty years later--and only "breaks out" as source music at the Club.

Next: The Master's Grace Period