Hitchcock

Hack-job
or 
Making Everyone a little Psycho

Making a movie is a boring enterprise.  Boring and thrilling at the same time.  Lots of sitting around, wasting time, waiting for the crew to be ready for that moment when you can't waste any time, the adrenaline is pumping, and things have to go right...over and over and over again until they do.

For Alfred Hitchcock, the thrill of movies wasn't in the filming (which lots of directors like because it's so social and a "rush"), or in the editing (where so many directors "find" their films), it was in the planning, the story-writing and the story-boarding—making the blueprint for the film that could be followed easily and by-the-numbers.  The best parts of his movies were not in performances (although they could be great*), but in the ideas that shape the film and make it worth watching...and worth watching again.  Watching that process, however, would probably not make a very compelling movie.

The trials and tribulations of the making of his landmark horror film Psycho was detailed in Steven Rebello's fun little read "Alfred Hitchcock and the Making of Psycho," and are now derailed in Hitchcock, a fictional adaptation of the book, which has as much to do with the events of making Psycho, as the film Psycho has to do with the book it was based on, which, truth to tell, Hitchcock never read.**

Well, few people have read Rebello's book, either (which is a shame, really) and so the chief "scenarist" James McLaughlin (who wrote Man of the House and co-wrote Black Swan...hmmm) and director Sacha Gervasi (who co-wrote The Terminal for Spielberg and whose only previous film was the documentary Anvil! The Story of Anvil!) have "written to silence"—as so may of the actual participants are dead—relying on "conventional wisdom" rather than facts to make their odd little combination of docu-fantasy.  Partially, this is because when it comes to movie-making (as opposed to life) truth is duller than fiction, but it is also more complicated and takes longer to explain and so we depend on a futzy short-hand to get to the point faster.  "Conventional Wisdom" in Hollywood is the same as "Based on a True Story."

Oh, don't get me wrong.  There are instances where the facts are there: Hitchcock's wife and collaborator Alma Reville did spot the "blink" (actually it was a throat swallow) in the pull-out from Janet Leigh's face after the murder (requiring a cut to the shower-head) and the "nudity" (which was solved with a black bar at the bottom of the screen); resistance was high to Psycho which Hitchcock chose to fulfill his contract for Paramount Studios—they did want something like North By Northwest, which made a lot of money for M-G-M—but not so much when Hitchcock revealed he was going to do it "for cheap" with his television crew—it's always about return for investment; he did come up with the brilliant advertising campaign for the film (like he'd previously done with his other films); much is made of the financial failure of Vertigo*** (ironic as it's—this year—considered "the greatest film ever made") as well as Hitchcock's insecurities and frailties (which were legion and they're all up there on the screen in his movies) and there are dribs and drabs of trivia sprinkled throughout the film.  But, they are far out-weighed by what is wrong.

What's wrong with this picture?  Oh, where to start?

What it gets wrong would fill another book by Rebello.  The film's obsession with Ed Gein—that is more attributable to author Robert Bloch than Hitchcock—feels wrong and wrong-headed, more to do with the screenwriter's issues than the subject's (I doubt that Hitchcock had the elaborate Gein fantasies that are imagined here).  The emphasis of Alma's collaboration with writer Whitfield Cook (Danny Huston)—who contributed to one good Hitchcock adaptation, Strangers on a Train, and one bad one, Stage Fright—is blown completely out of proportion from a mere consulting gig.  And the twist of the knife is the Hitchcock pathology, especially his treatment of women (the "Hitchcock Blondes," the grey suits, the make-overs, the favorites—Kelly and Bergman) despite the fact that Hitchcock always gave the more interesting parts and special attention to his actresses ("Hitch always threw the picture towards the girls" was Cary Grant's summation), not only for himself...but also his audience.

But what Hitchcock valued was loyalty. So he'd work with the same craftsmen over and over again out of loyalty, out of trust, out of convenience—past collaborators were one less complication to worry about.  And if they failed to deliver, he wouldn't work with them again, without a word of explanation as he hated confrontation.  "He was a coward," as Suzanne Pleshette opined.  Of course, he was.  His movies are naked displays of his phobias, foibles and fantasies.

And the films endure, because his frailties are just like ours.

Hitch is no longer alive to defend himself, but quite a few collaborators are. One wonders why Pat Hitchcock, Alfred and Alma's daughter, who usually runs defense for the Hitchcock Family Legacy, is silent while so many the current gaggle of films—this one and HBO's "The Girl"—are starting to piss on his grave.  But, then, the evil that men do lives after them, the good is oft interred with their bones.  So, let it be with Hitchcock.  His films are a testament to both good and evil, and our ability to rise above.  The films have lived on, decades after the man, and show no signs of falling out of fashion.  That's his lasting legacy.
 
For fans of the director, there is no such thing as bad news, but this movie truly is.  The performances are winning, though, as Scarlett Johansson occasionally convinces you she's studied up on Janet Leigh's mannerisms, although James D'Arcy plays Anthony Perkins as if he was playing Norman Bates and there was more to the man than that (reflecting the film's focus on rumor and gossip, rather than facts), we don't know what Alma Reville was like, as she stayed mostly behind the camera, but Helen Mirren's performance is fun and winning.  Anthony Hopkins' Hitchcock, however, is problematic—although it's not entirely his fault.  Hopkins is a brilliant mimic, and his own rich voice disappears in the deliberate cadence and sibilance of Hitchcock's own.  But (like much of the film), the portrayal is a bit too dependent on Hitchcock's public persona as a droll dead-pan.  This Hitchcock never smiles—perhaps it would have cracked the elaborate make-up Hopkins must wear to even resemble the director—and is entirely too mordant and lines up with "conventional wisdom" about the man, a view that, as Hitchcock himself cultivated it, he's a little responsible for.  As such, the portrayal comes across as a bit one dimensional, and one-sided.

One could get exercised about these things (and I obviously have), but as Hitchcock himself would say, "...it's only a mooo-vie."

Just not a very good one.  The best that can be said about Hitchcock (the movie) is that Alma's influence and great work is now a part of conventional wisdom, instead of the director's best-kept secret.

Hitchcock is a Cable-Watcher.

Yeah, that Hitchcock could be a tyrant on the set, alright...

Hitchcock's Best-Kept Secret: the incomparable Alma Reville

 * Hitchcock was often misquoted as saying "Actors were cattle" as if they were just a commodity to be "herded," when what he SAYS he said was that actors "should be treated like cattle."  Friend and Hollywood cut-up Carole Lombard responded by setting up two bovine pens on the set of Mr. and Mrs. Smith (1941), one for her and another for her co-star Robert Montgomery.

** In his near-definitive interview book "Hitchcock/Truffaut," Francois Truffaut spends a lot of time—too much time, really—going on about how lousy Robert Bloch's novel, "Psycho," is, and Hitchcock dismisses his comments by saying "I never read it.  I read the studio synopsis (the plot summary by studio "readers"), and the only thing I was interested in was the shower sequence and killing off the star half-way through the movie..."  

*** Funny thing.  Tippi Hedren has made what my father used to call "a big stink" about Hitchcock destroying her career after the financial failure of Marnie—never working with her again—and supposedly bad-mouthing her to other directors, producers, and all of Hollywood.  But, after Vertigo "tanked" at the box-office, Hitchcock never worked with James Stewart again, feeling like it was partially Stewart's presence in the film that caused the poor turn-out.  Stewart very much wanted to work on North By Northwest, but Hitchcock made every effort to lure his old collaborator Cary Grant out of his on again/off-again retirement to star in the film.  It was all part of Hitchcock's own ambivalence about hiring "name" actors for "his" projects, as often the dictates of producers and studios did not match the needs of the part.  But, again, that takes a long time to explain...and so we get stuck with "conventional wisdom."

Psycho (1998)

Psycho (Gus Van Sant — after Alfred Hitchcock, 1998) What is good about Gus Van Sant's color version of the original can be laid at the feet of that film's creator, Alfred Hitchcock: the relentless pace, the choreography of the camera (matched by Van Sant and his cinematographer—the great Christopher Doyle), the various set-pieces that alternately tease and deepen the mystery manipulating the audience's needs and tensions "like an orchestra," and that the film maker breaks the director-audience "trust" by the film's mid-point.  Danny Elfman, Bernard Herrmann's No. 1 fan, lovingly recreates his score in stereo. And modern film techniques allow Van Sant to make that opening pan across Phoenix, Arizona (2:48 pm), seamlessly locate the apartment where Marion Crane (Anne Heche) and Sam Loomis (Viggo Mortensen) play out their melancholy nooner and then crawl (with no cuts) through the window.

*

Van Sant's semi-scrupulous recreation (right) of Hitchcock's original shot-plan (left).

Everything that's wrong with Psycho '98 can be blamed on Van Sant: the kitschy color schemes, the bizarre inserts (see below) and the casting. Vince Vaughn had his hands full having to follow in Anthony Perkins' sashaying foot-steps as Norman Bates, so kudos to him for even showing up on-set, although he's lousy. What's surprising is how poorly Anne Heche and Julianne Moore step in for Janet Leigh and Vera Miles, even though both seem to be working harder. And it's that way down the line, including—startlingly, Viggo Mortenson's poor standing next to John Gavin (??!) and Robert Forster's shrink monologue next to...Simon Oakland? Where there is parity (or is it parody, it's hard to say how much Van Sant is taking this seriously...did Hitchcock?) is William H. Macy's Detective Arbogast compared to Martin Balsam's original, and Philip Baker Hall for John McIntire.

So, why even do it? Van Sant, in his commentary, cites several reasons: today's generation of movie-goers don't know from Psycho...or Hitchcock, making this a sort of a remedial version—Hitchcock for Dummies; some movie-goers don't like black and white films, hence the move to color; changes in movie technology allow the sorts of things that Hitchcock wanted to achieve technically with Psycho but could not (and the ratings system allows for a post-censor version—lines cut by Hitchcock are re-inserted, and there is a bit more blood-and-gore); and, the most compelling reason for Van Sant—nobody'd ever done it before—at least as scrupulously.  He basically follows Hitchcock's story-boards (and carried a portable DVD player with the film for reference while shooting on-set), so it is mostly a matter of interpretation, which is not that radical a concept.  After all, how many different interpretations of "Hamlet" have there been?  And as Hollywood seems to be running out of ideas (or continues its policy of playing it safe) we've seen remakes, re-boots and re-imaginings of Planet of the Apes, True Grit, Solaris, The Taking of Pelham 1-2-3, any book by Jane Austen or the Brontë sisters, and we've seen movie versions of teleplays, such as Traffic, State of Play, Edge of Darkness, and we'll see one of The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo and Tinker, Tailor, Soldier Spy in December.  Is this necessarily a bad thing?  No. The Maltese Falcon had been filmed twice before when John Huston made his classic version in 1941.  It is interesting that Van Sant not only remade Psycho, but also made it in Hitchcock's style using his shooting plan, acknowledging that the movie and the man who made it are inseparable.

What's different?  Van Sant follows Hitchcock's ideas pretty well...but does a sort of skewed version of them in terms of color, angle and performance. Some scenes have a more modern spin on then—for example, Lila and Sam wait for word from Arbogast (Martin Balsam in Hitchcock's version, William Macy in Van Sant's) at Sam's business, a hardware store in the 1960 version, but a flea-market in 1998, notice Sam reading the liner notes on a Judy Garland record.

In 1960, while investigating the Bates house, Lila finds children's books in Norman's room, but in 1998, it's porn.

And Mrs. Bates is found sitting in the dull basement, but in 1998, she's seen sitting in front of a diorama with live birds.

The biggest difference has a more feminist slant: rather than sitting back and watching the final fight, 1998's Lila takes part kicking her assailant.

But, Van Sant's entirely new additions are, frankly, unnecessary.  Sure, the first shot of the fly might have suggestions of bringing things full-circle, but the other shots—quick cut-aways (no pun intended—??) during the murders are merely distractions taking us out of "the moment" of the victims' deaths, and seem pretty frivolous.  Hitchcock does establish a "mind's eye" kind of cinema with his "voices in my head" sound overlays, and his "see that I look"/"see what I look at"/"see my reaction to it" style of silent story-telling might allow it, but it seems superfluous, and more than that, confusing, especially when we're having a shocking thing happening on-screen.

During the opening scene in the hotel room, an image of a fly on a half-eaten sandwich is inserted, paralleling the lucky fly who won't be killed in the prison cell at the end of the film.

During the first murder, a shot of a dilating pupil (presumably in the victim's eye) and a quickly moving storm-scape which presumably was witnessed previously.  

The second murder victim's flash-frames are (given that person's profession) a sleazy vice scene...

...As well as a stray cow in the middle of a road (A memory?  A potential victim?)



As well as a quick, obfuscating shot of the murderer approaching.

So...the Van Sant version of Psycho is an interesting experiment, Hitchock through the sensibilities of Van Sant, respectful but different.  Does it do harm to the original? 

Well, no.  Interesting story: the pulp novelist James M. Cain was told once by a person "too bad what Hollywood has done to your books," and Cain took them into his library and pointed to his own novels. "Hollywood hasn't done anything to my books. They're right there on the shelf." 

The original—Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho—will always be there.

Cameo's: Hitchcock on the left (1960) and a portly Hitchcock stand-in points at Gus Van Sant (1998).

The final card of Van Sant's Psycho—taking us beyond Hitchcock's raising of a car from the bog for a bit of perspective: all that horror has gone on just off the highway.  The distant traffic sails by, indifferent and unsuspecting of what lies out of their attention.  There's an element of that in all of Van Sant's movies—horror and secret lives occur just out of sight of normalcy.

*  In-joke (there are lots) here: The sign on The Bates Motel says "newly renovated" (a cutting remark)

My Favorite: Hitchcock

A recent Facebook Note request asked me to pick my fifteen favorite films.   The usual "Anytime movies" were there, and a few others that have crossed my path since starting LNTAM.  But as with any list, what was most fascinating to me was...the ones that were missing.  I've noticed this before when I did the "Anytime Movie" series; there were so many things not there—it's always the frustration I feel when making lists (and thus, why I refrain from doing them).  This led me to considering the film-artists who did not make the cut, and highlighting those films that have had such an impact on me—that I've fallen in love with, that have stayed with me, burrowing into my brain, and eliciting thoughts and emotions unique to those films.  The observations are purely personal (aren't they all?), and why I call this new series of neglected films "My Favorites."

Due to the nature of this particular movie, this article will contain SPOILERS that will actually destroy your enjoyment of the first-time viewing experience.  If you haven't seen Vertigo (and, really... what is keeping you?), you should not proceed further.  And to paraphrase Hitchcock's favorite tease: "No one will be seated after the article has begun." This is your last warning.


"What Is This Thing Called Love" asks the old song (a favorite of mine).  And I especially love the inclusion of the word "thing" to describe it.  What IS Love?  Why is it so powerful?  Why is it an obsession for film-makers, and their audiences, ...and for that matter, the scribes of centuries past...to the point where when we think about Love, it's the kind "like in the movies," (which should set off alarm bells to anyone doubting film's veracity—ever seen an accurate movie on a true story you love?).  And Love in the movies is all-good, an all-consuming passion, "the bestest thing in the world," that makes us better people (better-looking, too), sweetens our coffee, shines our shoes, puts a spring in our step, and makes us orgasm simultaneously, while the metaphorical ocean-waves crash over us.  Orchestral swell and fade to black (before the complications happen).

'Kay...  But it's become SUCH a movie-cliché (and aren't cliché's supposed to be such because they're true?) that movie-makers now "cut to the chase"...almost literally.  In the weaker efforts, people in movies fall in love willy-nilly, without doubt, without resistance, and without staring at the phone for hours at a time—wondering "why aren't they calling?"  It is effortless love, like falling off a love-log, with no pain, no pangs, no problems. 

As Randy Newman (or Joe Cocker) warbles "They don't know what love is."

I like movies that question love.  I like movies that question anything, but questioning love makes me sit up and take notice...which happens rarely.  I generally just slump in my movie-seat, ticking off the "meet-cute," the "song-montage," "the-rough-road," and the "happily-ever-after," so rare is the occurrence.

Alfred Hitchcock made movies in an era where cinematic love was that kind of easy, but he usually liked to sprinkle some salt in with the sugar.  There was no easy path for love in his films, in fact he liked to set up complications for the lovers to overcome—be they heterosexual or homosexual—and his least "typical" film, Mr. & Mrs. Smith, is all about a married couple divorcing and trying to find the path back together, as much as they don't want to.So, here's Vertigo, which is as pure a love story as Hitchcock ever made despite its deceptively fantastical thriller plot, and it finds the director adapting a novel by the authors of Diabolique (which Hitchcock wanted to film), who might have been writing it precisely for this director, so emblematic of his work are their themes.  Hitchcock took a story of a man hampered with weakness (in this case, acrophobia, fear of heights and thus, fear of falling), and combined it with his own penchant for re-shaping actresses in his own singular fetishistic way to make one of the most personal films.  He'd hoped to lure his favorite actress, Grace Kelly back from Monaco to star in it, but she was dedicated to her fairy-tale marriage to a handsome prince, and declined.  Hitchcock never liked fairy-tales, but this is as close as his sensibilities would go.  But, it is more than that.  It is a mystery.  It is a thriller.  It is a psychological study.  It is a ghost story.  But, most of all, it is a love story...with a bottomless void at its heart.



The first shot of the story—a straight line bi-sects the screen...

A hand comes up in mid-frame and breaks that line—a man climbs a ladder.



Vertigo-proper—aside from the hallucinogenic Title sequence—begins with an undefined image; a murky sky bisected horizontally by a line.  In the first movement of the shot, a hand comes up and grabs it; it is the rung of a ladder, the hand belonging to a criminal making an escape from the police and the protagonist, police detective "Scottie" Ferguson (James Stewart).  A straight-lined pursuit across roof-tops is only temporarily interrupted by the chase-participants' leap across a void—over an open alley-way between buildings.  Everybody makes it with some difficulty, except Scottie.

He is caught suspended, on the brink of a bending gutter on a crumbling cornice, and we experience what he experiences—a change of perception.  It is "the vertigo shot"—an ingenious combination of optics and camera movement, that bends the image creating a telescoping tunnel-image.  Foreground and background separate and stretch, taking a rudimentary shot down, and making it collapse downward—a suspended fall that increases the distance between Scottie and his death.  The shot represents fear and the character's frailty, vertigo, in which heights cause a disorienting dizziness.  Scottie watches in horror as a police officer, who offers a helping hand, loses his footing and falls to his death. 

The sequence ends with Scottie, still hanging, the situation unresolved.  We never see how he gets out of it.

It is some time later, and Scottie's vertigo has forced his retirement from the San Francisco police force.  Out of friendship, curiosity, and a detectives love of a mystery, he takes on a freelance job for an old school chum he's lost track of, Gavin Elster (Tom Helmore). Elster thinks his wife Madeleine (Kim Novak) is going insane; she's become obsessed, maybe even possessed, by an ancestor, Carlotta Valdez, who committed suicide.  The job is simple: follow the wife, find out what he can and report back to Elster.  One look at Madeleine is all Scottie needs.  He follows her obsessive path seeking Carlotta, and follows her, and follows her...

...seemingly to the ends of the Earth, or, in this case, Golden Gate Park.  he is horrified to find Elster's worst fears confirmed: Madeleine jumps into the bay.

Scottie plunges in to save her, and like so much of his path in Vertigo, it's a straight line right to his heart, as his occupational obsession turns into identification and romantic obsession—the curse of so many movie detectives.  He falls in love with Madeleine.  Falls...in love.  And along the way, the straight lines and lateral paths that Scottie travels then become supplanted by something else throughout his investigation—a spiral.

We see that emblematic glyph within the very first moments of the movie (and Bernard Herrmann's cyclical music suggests it, as well), but it shows up throughout the movie in many forms.  Here are some of them:



Madeleine's hair ends in a spiral...

...inspired as it is by the dead Carlotta Valdez's portrait.

The embrace of Scottie and Madeleine suggests a spiral

And, of course, Hitchcock's "vertigo" shot in the steeple is a spiral.



What is a spiral?  A spinning form, its spinnakers flowing out from implied centrifugal force, but at its center...is nothing.  A void...a negative space usually placed by Hitchcock near the center of the screen, unavoidable to the eye.  And as the love between Scottie and Madeleine deepens, their embraces take on a spiral of their own, Hitchcock placing them in the center of the screen, linking the vertiginous "falling" and the lovers' dance.

(This is your last chance to leave before a major spoiler)

It all comes to naught, though.  Madeleine breaks their embrace and, compelled, runs up a Mission tower, which Scottie, in his acrophobia cannot climb.  He watches, horrified, as his love plunges to her death—a reflection of his own horror made real.  He could not stop it, and his life consists of a void.  He's walking down the avenues of grief and depression, at the corners of lust and need, and so much of his self-worth is wrapped up in it, the strong man he wants to be, the weakling he despairs over.  As Carlotta haunted Madeleine, her death haunts him. 

Scottie's nightmares after the death of Madeleine are of such voids...that he could fall into.

He is plunged into a crippling depression, institutionalized, broken.  We can "gussy" it up with hearts and flowers, but Love is chemistry, not the the man/woman variety (and its variations), but specifically, brain chemistry.  Anyone who's had depression or other mental schism, like impulse control or attention deficit disorder, knows that it boils down to chemicals—something's deficient in the attic, some missing ingredient that needs to be augmented.  Our brains are sparking stews of meat and chemicals, serotonin, hormones, pheremones, endorphins, testosterones and oxytocins.  Love lights them up, decreasing and increasing with attraction, pursuit and mating.

So, is Love a mental illness?  Like Scottie's fear?  His depression?  His vertigo?  Is his fear of falling tied to his fear of falling...in love?

Released from the sanitarium, Scottie sees a woman one day, Judy Barton (played, as with Madeleine, by Kim Novak).  He is compelled to pursue her, seeking his lost love.  But, what he does not know, what Judy never wants him to know, is that Judy was Madeleine, duped by Gavin Elster as an accomplice to murder his real wife.  Her love for Scottie is real, so, against her better judgement, she allows Scottie to re-make her—once again—in the image of Madeleine, the clothes, the hair, the make-up (as Hitchcock cast his actresses and made them coiffed blondes in tight grey suits).  Only when the transformation is complete, and Scottie and Judy embrace, does the camera begin to spin around them, creating its own spiral, this time the background changing between the hotel room and the site—a horse-barn—where the earlier love-scene happened.  For Scottie the illusion is complete.  He has found his lost love.

Or, has he?  The fascinating thing about Vertigo to me, aside from the association of Love to mental illness—is that Scottie's love is very real, but attached to, essentially, nothing.  Judy was Madeleine—a role she played for Gavin Elster.  Madeleine, vulnerable, suicidal, in need of rescuing, never existed.  Scottie is in love with an illusion, a figment, a zephyr.  He can re-capture—cruelly to Judy—the love.  But, Judy can never completely be Madeleine to him (despite that she actually is).  He is in love with an idea, a dream of perfection, that actually never existed—a ghost.

This is why I love Vertigo—it is a love story that questions the very nature of what love is, rather than just accepts it.  If you can love an illusion...what is this thing called love?

Whatever it is, Fate steps in.  Scottie is forced, and forces Judy, to relive the fateful steps up the Mission steeple, a move that cures him of his vertigo.  But does it cure his love, as well?  Scottie becomes truly unhinged in this scene, cruelly forcing Judy up the stairs and it is the apex of Stewart's acting career, challenging the beloved image of the "aw shucks" mid-westerner that marked so much of his interesting work in the 1950's.  At the end, we, and Scottie have come full-circle.  He is left on the edge, vertigo cured, but the situation, like his hanging from the gutter at the beginning of the film, is editorially unresolved.  He is left, his arms, like his image in the falling silhouette in his nightmare, slightly apart from his body, not reaching per se, but only slightly outstretched.

And empty.

What is this "thing" called love?  Is it part and parcel of the stew that makes up Scottie's mind, the confluent forces of worth and doubt, hope and despair, pleasure and pain, lust and heart-ache?  Is it part of the depression he feels, or the cause?  What is love, really?

We don't know.  We cannot know.  But the question is raised.  And, like the character of Scottie, we are left—every one of us—on the brink.

Again. And again.