Auteur List: Alfred Hitchcock - Discussion and Defenses

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Shrew
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Re: Auteur List: Alfred Hitchcock - Discussion and Defenses

#151 Post by Shrew » Sun Nov 06, 2016 11:11 pm

Thank you.

1) Vertigo
2) Rear Window
3) The Lady Vanishes
4) Rebecca
5) Notorious
6) Psycho
7) The Lodger
8) Under Capricorn (Also Ran)--Well, it's me, the French, and my also-ran friend(s?). But seriously, if Cohen can put together a big restoration of Jamaica Inn, surely someone can save this poor film?
9) The Wrong Man
10) The 39 Steps
11) Marnie
12) Strangers on a Train
13) Frenzy
14) North by Northwest
15) Suspicion
16) Rope
17) Blackmail
18) Saboteur
19) Young and Innocent
20) The Manxman (Also-ran)

Notable Absences: On rewatch I dropped Lifeboat and Foreign Correspondent (only the windmill and coda had stuck with me, not the length) and promoted Saboteur and Young and Innocent. And as evidenced by yet another rewatch, I see Shadow of a Doubt like how a lot of others seem to see Vertigo. There's I lot I respect and scenes I really enjoy (the bar), but the film just never connects. I think my problem's with young Charlie.

Our Stillborn look like a pretty traditional run-down of Hitchcock's worst: Topaz, Jamaica Inn, Waltzes from Vienna, Number Seventeen, The Skin Game, Juno and the Paycock, Champagne, The Farmer's Wife, Downhill, Pleasure Garden. I've argued for Waltzes, Downhill isn't a good movie but could be a camp classic with the right score, No. 17 might belong on the top of the heap for being so gleefully stupid, and The Farmer's Wife is just bland, but otherwise these are probably fair.

Out of curiosity, were there more 20-entry lists or 10 (or odd duck in-betweens)?

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domino harvey
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Re: Auteur List: Alfred Hitchcock - Discussion and Defenses

#152 Post by domino harvey » Mon Nov 07, 2016 12:04 am

There were more Top 20s than Top 10s and there were more Top 10s than lists that ran in-between the two poles

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Re: Auteur List: Alfred Hitchcock - Discussion and Defenses

#153 Post by knives » Mon Nov 07, 2016 12:51 am

zedz wrote: 17. Rich and Strange - I didn't get around to rewatching this, but from the last time I saw it I thought it was an overlooked gem and another one of those films that approached core Hitchcock material (the uneasy marriage) from an unexpected angle.
Glad to see some love for this. I have a rather out sized love for it despite not voting for it. It was one of the first Hitchcock's I saw and some things that are a lot less impressive in context like the retaining of title cards shocked me at the time and probably influenced my taste too much.

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Re: Auteur List: Alfred Hitchcock - Discussion and Defenses

#154 Post by Rayon Vert » Mon Nov 07, 2016 1:05 am

I also like that one and look forward to revisiting it when it eventually gets a blu-ray release. Same with Stage Fright.

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Re: Auteur List: Alfred Hitchcock - Discussion and Defenses

#155 Post by Rayon Vert » Mon Nov 07, 2016 1:19 am

The results confirm how 1954 to 60 (or 63, or 64) is arguably Hitchcock's peak classic period, and there's the classic British mini-era from 1934 to 38 (The Man Who Knew to Much to The Lady Vanishes) but my rewatches made me appreciate again how 1940 to 46 (also well represented in the results) was an extremely solid streak: leaving aside Mr. and Mrs. Smith as an oddity that Hitchcock supposedly did as a favour to Carole Lombard, you've got the masterpieces Rebecca, Foreign Correspondent, Suspicion, Saboteur, Shadow of a Doubt and Notorious - plus Lifeboat and Spellbound that didn't make the cut but that both are generally well appreciated and have their legions of fans.

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Re: Auteur List: Alfred Hitchcock - Discussion and Defenses

#156 Post by knives » Mon Nov 07, 2016 1:46 am

No need to leave it aside. Mr and Mrs Smith highlights what a master Hitchcock was of the whole of cinema being able to balance something so outside his comfort zone.

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Re: Auteur List: Alfred Hitchcock - Discussion and Defenses

#157 Post by domino harvey » Mon Nov 07, 2016 1:52 am

I didn't vote for it but it would probably be 21 on my list. If you were at any academic conference ~10 years ago and heard someone presenting a lengthy defense of Mr and Mrs Smith, it was probably me. I've said it before and I'll say it again: the easiest way to get booked is to pick a film no one ever talks about! More than happy to never appear at a conference ever again though

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Re: Auteur List: Alfred Hitchcock - Discussion and Defenses

#158 Post by Lemmy Caution » Mon Nov 07, 2016 2:50 am

domino harvey wrote:There were more Top 20s than Top 10s and there were more Top 10s than lists that ran in-between the two poles
Didn't realize this. Thought it was just a Top 10.
Would have dropped a list of 17 or so.
But doesn't matter much.

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Auteur List: Alfred Hitchcock - Discussion and Defenses

#159 Post by movielocke » Mon Nov 07, 2016 4:40 am

I realize now I overlooked suspicion, should have slotted it one ahead of vertigo.

Glad I'm not the only one that appreciates the curveballs of rich and strange and mr and mrs smith, though neither made my list.

Shadow of a doubt was one that dropped for me on my most recent rewatch, dropping out of the top five. psycho also dropped after my latest rewatch, my fourth or fifth viewing of it, kind of falling out of my top hitch spot for the first time ever.

I did rearrange my top four a lot before submitting and did try psycho as number one, but it didn't feel right anymore.

Vertigo has steadily dropped for me over the years with every new viewing and rereading of the mulvey essay. What sort of tipped me into freely abandoning critical consensus on the film was three consecutive girlfriends having total, unprompted disgust of the film (never saw it with any of them, came up in discussions of repertory options) it was just so hated by women I checked into my own opinions and realized I didn't really want to defend it because it wasn't a favorite like my top five.

Saboteur and lady vanishes have gotten better every viewing, remarkably great films.

39 steps has remained remarkably even for me, neither rising nor falling in my estimation, staying just ruthlessly average.

I adore the trouble with harry, and wish it had charted, oh well.

I'm disappointed I didn't cross off any of my unseen hitch films this time, manxman, paradise case, stage fright, under Capricorn and marnie. Eventually, I will complete his filmography.

I've seen all his tv directed episodes but I don't remember them with any clarity and didn't rewatch, and so didn't do a list.

1 North by Northwest
2 Lady Vanishes, The
3 Rear Window
4 Psycho
5 Saboteur
6 Notorious
7 Sabotage
8 Vertigo
9 Strangers on a Train
10 Trouble with Harry, The
11 Shadow of a Doubt
12 Rebecca
13 Foreign Correspondent
14 To Catch a Thief
15 Wrong Man, The
16 Man Who Knew Too Much, The (1934)
17 Lodger, The
18 Frenzy
19 Blackmail
20 39 Steps, The

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Satori
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Re: Auteur List: Alfred Hitchcock - Discussion and Defenses

#160 Post by Satori » Mon Nov 07, 2016 8:35 am

zedz wrote:The twentieth would have been Vertigo, but it's a film I'm so ambivalent about (I love some of sequences, but overall it leaves me cold) that I decided to leave it off my list of favourites, and it just so happens that I found nineteen Hitchcock films I liked more than it.
movielocke wrote:Vertigo has steadily dropped for me over the years with every new viewing and rereading of the mulvey essay. What sort of tipped me into freely abandoning critical consensus on the film was three consecutive girlfriends having total, unprompted disgust of the film (never saw it with any of them, came up in discussions of repertory options) it was just so hated by women I checked into my own opinions and realized I didn't really want to defend it because it wasn't a favorite like my top five.
Vertigo ended up high on my list, but I can relate to some of this ambivalence. It's not a film that I actually enjoy watching that much but I find it tremendously generative to think about later. Chris Marker's essay on it is one of my favorite pieces of film writing and I think his work (written and filmed) is a large part of why I continue to like the film so much.

As for the important gender-related aspects of the film movielocke brings up, I find Tania Modleski's argument pretty convincing: instead of Scottie possessing Judy/"Madeline" with his gaze, the film is about how this control is always slipping away and turning into a masochistic identification with her. (So re: Mulvey, the film slips between the sadistic "Hitchcock" pole and the masochistic "Sternberg" pole). Since both Gavin and Scottie literally construct "Madeline" as a kind of phantasmatic supplement to Judy, the film is all about how how the image of woman fixed by the gaze is itself an illusion always slipping away.

I didn't get to rewatch nearly as much as I wanted to for the project, but I did manage to see most of my favorites again. I also hoped to watch more of the silents (I've only seen The Lodger and Blackmail ) but I guess that will have to wait for the 20s list.

My List:
1. Shadow of a Doubt
2. Psycho
3. Vertigo
4. Rear Window
5. The Lady Vanishes
6. Notorious
7. Dial M for Murder
8. The Man Who Knew Too Much (1934)
9. Strangers on a Train
10. Rope
11. Sabotage
12. The 39 Steps
13. Stage Fright (Also Ran)
14. Rebecca
15. The Wrong Man
16. Suspicion
17. I Confess (Also Ran)
18. Saboteur
19. Lifeboat (Also Ran)
20. The Foreign Correspondent

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Feego
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Re: Auteur List: Alfred Hitchcock - Discussion and Defenses

#161 Post by Feego » Mon Nov 07, 2016 10:58 am

Great work Dom! Here's my top 10 list:

1. The Birds (1963)
2. Vertigo (1958)
3. Strangers on a Train (1951)
4. The 39 Steps (1935)
5. Psycho (1960)
6. Rear Window (1954)
7. The Lady Vanishes (1938)
8. Notorious (1946)
9. The Lodger: A Story of the London Fog (1927)
10. Stage Fright (1950)


To address something Shrew brought up the other day:
Shrew wrote:Lodger—Not much to add here except that it’s great and Novello hits exactly the right level of camp/creepiness/elfin handsomeness to make both a believable love interest and murderer. I’m kind of surprised the “kiss” sequence doesn’t come up more often in discussions of “the gaze” #notallhitchcocks

And quick discussion question: does the imposed ending improve or lessen the film? I’m in the former camp, as you get a nice demonstration of how similar romantic and murderous obsessions can look.
What I find interesting about the "kiss" is the way Hitchcock re-purposed it three decades later for Grace Kelly's intro in Rear Window. It is fascinating how what was dark and menacing when a male actor was shot in extreme close-up becomes highly erotic and desirable once the genders are switched.

As for the imposed ending, I like it because it does turn out to be one of Hitchcock's earliest explorations of his beloved "wrong man" theme as well as having an understanding love interest complicit in protecting him. It also establishes a running motif of a couple-on-the-run trying to hide handcuffs, which would be used again in The 39 Steps and Saboteur. The climax of Novello cuffed to the railings with the angry mob calling for his death always reminds me of the ending to Lon Chaney's Phantom of the Opera. I think the revelation of his innocence works better here than it did in Suspicion because it's less abrupt than the later film and adds complexity to a character we knew precious little about.

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Re: Auteur List: Alfred Hitchcock - Discussion and Defenses

#162 Post by domino harvey » Mon Nov 07, 2016 11:41 am

movielocke wrote:Vertigo has steadily dropped for me over the years with every new viewing and rereading of the mulvey essay. What sort of tipped me into freely abandoning critical consensus on the film was three consecutive girlfriends having total, unprompted disgust of the film (never saw it with any of them, came up in discussions of repertory options) it was just so hated by women I checked into my own opinions and realized I didn't really want to defend it because it wasn't a favorite like my top five.
Ascribing the reactions of three women in your life to women at-large is dangerous. It sounds like these women reacted strongly to Scottie's behavior but transferred their disgust to the film, which by no rational leap of the imagination could be seen to defend his actions. I'm sure they were wonderful people in their own way but a reaction like the above that almost willfully misses the point would be a red flag for me of future misery in a relationship!

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Re: Auteur List: Alfred Hitchcock - Discussion and Defenses

#163 Post by colinr0380 » Mon Nov 07, 2016 1:45 pm

domino harvey wrote:There were more Top 20s than Top 10s and there were more Top 10s than lists that ran in-between the two poles
domino harvey wrote:EDIT: Oh, I almost forgot to mention: Thank you to every single contributor for not trying to "reclaim" Topaz by voting for it
One reason for my only submitting a top 10 (aside from not getting a chance to review many of the early Hitchcock titles to be satisfied enough to place them) is that Topaz would have been my 11th place entry! :P

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Re: Auteur List: Alfred Hitchcock - Discussion and Defenses

#164 Post by bottled spider » Mon Nov 07, 2016 3:21 pm

I didn't vote, but followed discussions a bit, watching a few that were new to me (Spellbound, To Catch a Thief, North by Northwest) and revisiting a couple (Dial 'M' for Murder, The 39 Steps). The latter two I'd seen as a kid, and were a joy to revisit. Indeed this project has reminded me that I saw a lot more Hitchcock as a kid than I initially remembered: Rope, Vertigo, Rear Window, Psycho, Strangers on a Train, Dial 'M' for Murder, Sabotage, The Man Who Knew Too Much (1959), The 39 Steps, The Trouble with Harry, and The Lady Vanishes. These were seen en famille at a cosy and pretty decent art house/repertory cinema in my hometown, so Hitchcock has a lot of nostalgic value for me, even if I haven't pursued him much as an adult. Had I compiled a list, Dial M and Notorious would be at the top.

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Re: Auteur List: Alfred Hitchcock - Discussion and Defenses

#165 Post by bottled spider » Mon Nov 14, 2016 12:06 am

bottled spider wrote:What are some of the better Hitchcock commentaries? I remember listening to a good one for Saboteur, but don't remember the label, or the name of the commentator (British).
Turns out I had Saboteur and the original Man Who Knew Too Much entangled in my memory (I know, they're not even similar). And it wasn't the Kemp commentary I liked, but the video appreciation by Guillermo del Toro. The commentary spends too much time talking about things outside the film itself and might just as well have been a written piece, but the Toro is one of the best appreciations I've seen. (I also enjoyed his short introduction to Watership Down; Kemp I think has done better elsewhere).

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Re: Auteur List: Alfred Hitchcock - Discussion and Defenses

#166 Post by bottled spider » Wed Dec 14, 2016 9:36 pm

Foreign Correspondent. What everybody else said, plus: the business with the notes McCrea sends Laraine Day before her speech is one of the funniest things I've seen in a non-comedy movie.

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Re: Auteur List: Alfred Hitchcock - Discussion and Defenses

#167 Post by therewillbeblus » Mon Apr 06, 2020 5:21 pm

I’ve been watching various TV Hitchcock eps here and there, and I had no idea he could get away with such twisted material on the small medium! Incident at a Corner is a timely story about false molestation accusations being taken as fact based on a game of ‘telephone’ with everyone taking the dehumanizing offensive model of communication to expectedly poor results. Arthur is a hysterical precursor to all the weaker black comedies with jolly psychopaths who rationalize their behavior that would become popular years later when content in general became more perverse. The ending was expected given the setup but it’s still unbelievable to be on TV so watching Hitchcock drive his idea home without any room to guess or avoid the conclusion is a delight. Harvey’s nonchalant attitude and warped sense of justice is what sells the whole idea though, and makes me wish more of the films inspired by this took a cue from the master’s playbook.

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Re: Auteur List: Alfred Hitchcock - Discussion and Defenses

#168 Post by therewillbeblus » Sat Aug 15, 2020 8:43 pm

I've been revisiting the last act of Hitchock's career (by which I mean post-The Birds), and in opposition to many of my adult revisits from childhood impressions, these landed just about the same. Marnie still feels like a strong, exciting pitch that fizzles out as it coasts toward a lame finish. I still thoroughly enjoy the setup and slippery games played between the two leads, but all the moral ambiguity and mucky actions (that glaringly, and perhaps admirably, avoid either approval or chastisement from Hitchcock) don't really arrive at a place of value. I can't help but feel that Hitchcock (who apparently was invested in this film for the fucked-up ride) uses that rocky (im)moral journey carelessly. I don't want a didactic resolve, but all the buildup of smarmy deceit and aggression is undeservedly distracted and we are left without the pit in the stomach of uncertainty or discomfort for the future that would have been earned from an otherwise bold experiment.

I still don't get the appreciation of Torn Curtain, though I think it's fine. The bus tension and the murder scene are terrific, but everything else is missing the core Hitchcock skill of involving narrative, even in his mediocre pictures. So the story itself works fine, though I was surprised by how passive I felt the energy was from scene to scene. I don't know if I hate Topaz, Hitchcock's worst film, more than most people, but I struggled to find a shred of merit that even its critics seem to be able to produce. This makes Torn Curtain look like prime Hitchcock thrill mode.

Frenzy is still a sick beast and engaging wrong-man pic, with the potato-truck scene upping the ante on Hitchcock's already branded amusement in forcing the audience to align with an antagonist under pressure. The graphic sexual aggressions, open discussions of perverted thoughts, and displays of alarming rationalizations of toxic masculinity (the one-liner about how some women deserve the empathy they get is chilling in how muted and unfocused it is, causing me to do a double take as Hitchcock plants it without emphasis) are all exactly how I remembered. What I forgot though is how weird the police chief's conversations with his wife are- she acts as a pre-Lynchian character, totally bizarre and removed from 'reality' with an ambivalent expression of either fake social niceties or, maybe worse, an honest blending of personality with such imposed behaviors and stereotyped roles. Her inclinations, especially towards the end in discussing dinner dishes to have with the protagonist once he gets out, are arguably the most twisted and uncomfortable aspect of the film... I loved it.

Family Plot is still my favorite of the bunch though. Ever since I was little I've thought this to be one of Hitchcock's most fun films (of course kid-me is gonna eat up the secret rooms especially) and revisiting it affirmed that memory. The intersecting conning couples, with one set more dangerous than the other, are detailed with creative idiosyncrasies and the narrative bridging each separate and eventually connective storylines is the best ride he's constructed in over a decade. I appreciate how there isn't really a strong character that earns subjectivization at any point, and instead we can flourish in sustained objectivity as our own character watching these sets of immoral people trying to use their cunning skills for selfish gain.

The end brings such an unexpected pleasure by wedging in a revelation that, instead of undoing any clarity of events from the film, hysterically pronounces authenticity and insincere manipulations to coexist. The disclosure means nothing to the nature of characters other than allowing them to win bigger, and the cue to credits rolling happens so fast (this is where the Chabrol comparisons are more apt than ever) that I can't help but laugh as I'm trying to process the perversity of the combined facts into Hitchcock's attitude here. What a strong sendoff.

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Re: Auteur List: Alfred Hitchcock - Discussion and Defenses

#169 Post by therewillbeblus » Mon Aug 28, 2023 2:20 am

Doing some revisits of the unremembered, some favorites, and polishing off what's left in the kevyip. A few thoughts:

Number Seventeen: Not sure why anyone would actively dislike this. The narrative is certainly unoriginal in taking the chamber crime meet-up structure and going exactly where you'd think with it.. but there's a lot of visual flair, inspired shot choices, and especially jagged editing that makes it come alive at the most unexpected moments. The 'set-up' opening alone -as two men come across the body- is cut in a manner that evokes an unsettling disorientation, aggressively shaking off the hand of the viewer - and the images superimposed onto the aftermath are almost spiritually-provocative in their abstract horror expressionism. I was 'wow'd on several occasions by Hitchcock's impulses, extremely corrosive for him - it played as if he entered into the editing room on amphetamines half the time, and lethargic on little sleep the other half.

Secret Agent: I don't remember liking this at all when I first saw it (probably half a lifetime ago), but I fell in love with this weird headscratcher of a movie, yet would not be surprised if it had few defenders elsewhere. Almost everything about this thing is 'wrong' - down to the Wrong Man narrative being forced upon someone who is considered the Right Man for no apparent reason after no formal introduction, and just goes with it - thereby deflating, and inverting that construct as soon as it's introduced... And things just move along from there - a motiveless, vapid Yes Man who is also a Free Thinker and Personal Moralist (How? The contradiction can work with a 'character', but where is he?) gets hooked up with Peter Lorre's inept amoral assassin, who goes by a few different aliases that make zero sense to his personality or physical appearance or stature, qualities that they all refer to.. (is this the new spy tactic to throw people off a trail: Give them a code name nobody knows about except the bureau dishing it out, to fool... who exactly? Themselves?) The two get into some messy shenanigans that are pretty fun, culminating in a cool white-on-white mountain set piece that yields an immoral casualty, ruining a lot of the fun of this 'game' for the romantic principals (including the love interest, who just signed up for some adventures, after all. Why so serious?) yet sends Lorre into sidesplitting laughter. Not even out of irony - the guy is out of his mind, without being an accentuated, consistently 'over the top character'.

Nobody really behaves consistently in this film, not even Hitchcock with his tone, so when the film's vehicles (literally) goes off the rails into flames in the end, as we watch all the characters collect themselves clumsily (with Hitchcock taking ample time to focus on that repetitive clumsiness), it all clicks as a work of self-reflexive greatness. Lorre's final act alone undoes all his ostensible merit as a character up to this point - it's the single dumbest thing I've seen a character do in a movie that's shot and played unironically, or without an implicit indicator of traumatic ineptitude.. It may be those things, but the precedent of folly supersedes these factors. It doesn't have to be more than that, and hasn't earned the right to pretend it has, which is a relief since it works under the banner of established WTF-ery.

I feel like Hitchcock either took a tediously-straight source and beefed it up into something insane in order to stay sane on the job, or he decided to shoot a mad, nonsensical play like a schizophrenic spy spoof that likely heightened both the lampooning and the self-serious portions in either direction. And yet... because there's no vibe really set with confidence or care, it all just kinda flows without ever feeling at-odds with itself. I don't really know how to describe this movie. It's at once an absurdly bonkers meshing of ideas, and also a numbed version of the extravagance to come, delivering a simmering B-Wrong Man movie without a first act or believable story, clearly not believed or committed to be the filmmakers themselves.

Saboteur: I fell back in love with this film, seen many times by me in a like-love relationship. Mizo's writeup from another list project is a fantastic read, and this latest viewing responded enough to it where I should quote the bulk:
mizo wrote:
Thu Dec 10, 2015 1:17 am
Saboteur
I can't get over how strange this movie is. Some scenes seem to come straight out of nightmares (the early scene in the truck when the driver's eerily familiar talk sets Cummings way the hell on edge, followed by the billboard warning which alerts him to the presence of the motorcycle cop), others are light comedy (Robert Cummings plays with a baby in this movie; he ends up using her as a human shield, but before that, he takes time out of his whole "running from the police, gotta find me a secret Nazi" business to get a baby to throw balls at him). Some are unexpectedly poignant (Cummings and Lane practically saying their goodbyes while dancing mournfully in front of a screen on which are projected the other oblivious partygoers) and others genuinely stunning, in the sense that there's no appropriate reaction but to stare at the screen in wonder (the finale). And that's not even the half of it! There's an anti-authoritarian blind man who I'm almost convinced was the inspiration for that scene in Slacker where the small-time burglar finds out his elderly victim is a small-time anarchist. There's a group of sideshow freaks (societal outsiders, who I swear are the most sympathetic and interesting characters in the film; I was genuinely sad to see them go after just one scene) who represent a kind of cross-section of the American public and enact, among themselves, a miniature version of the democratic process.

And that begins to get at what's so bizarrely fascinating about this movie. Maybe I'm crazy for seeing this (and a quick search hasn't turned up any other readings of the film remotely sympathetic to mine) but I can't help but feel that this whole movie is driven by a massive, very troubling antipathy towards just about every major social institution it touches, including the law, the culture of spectatorship, and that shocking ending even strikes me as a slap in the face to political parties, ideologies, or absolutely anything originating from the outside of oneself that turns one person against another.

This being a Hitchcock "man on the run" film, there's a more-than-healthy amount of distrust of the police. In this film, though, it gets almost cartoonish – particularly in how it makes sure every sympathetic character (excepting Priscilla Lane, whose trust in Cummings is much harder to win) anti-cop through and through, often for no apparent reason. Why on earth would the truck driver help Cummings escape the police? He knows nothing about him, save what he told him, which was mostly fabricated anyway. What feasible reason does he have to, upon seeing the man running towards him with handcuffs, help him run from the law? He’s less of a psychologically readable character than a Hitchcock archetype – the helpful, trusting guy who helps the hero out of a tough scrape. But there’s an odd digression (one among many) in his speech while Cummings is preoccupied with worrying about his own predicament. He describes a disastrous fire, in which the friend of a driver was nearly killed, and he quickly follows this with something like, “I wish I coulda seen that. I always miss stuff like that.” Of course, this – like everything else he says for some time – has a direct correlative with the first scene, in Cummings watching his friend burn to death in the fire. But it also speaks to a morbid obsession with viewing and spectatorship. That moment is quickly followed by the also disturbingly relevant message on the billboard they pass (something to the effect of “You’re Being Followed”), which linked them in my mind (although in hindsight, that link seems a lot more dubious than I took it for at the time). The motif of spectatorship, particularly in rather morbid contexts, is constantly reiterated throughout the film, culminating in that very darkly comical scene where Norman Lloyd drags his police chase into a movie theater and the patrons initially take it for part of the show, even for some time after one gets shot. Perhaps even more startling is the juxtaposition, in the finale, of Lloyd’s body dangling from the Statue of Liberty while tourists look in wonder toward the city. (To this intellectually overzealous undergrad, it sounds a bit like Debord, but I think I might be showing too much of my hand there.)

Off on another tangent, as I indicated before, Hitchcock seems to have a lot more sympathy for social outcasts than those who fit easily in. The fantastically adjusted Otto Kruger character (family man, has the respect of all his neighbors) and the much esteemed high-society woman (with all her charitable causes) are the two most despicable characters, while the most likable are the blind man and the sideshow freaks. Fascinatingly, however, there is still one other character who’s hesitant or unable to conform: the fifth columnist (I’d actually never heard that term before) that Cummings meets in Soda City, the ghost town. In one of the most memorable exchanges in the film, he describes the beautiful locks of long blond hair he had as a boy, and wonders if he should let his youngest grow his out too. This is the same man who’ll be (not wrongly) blamed for allowing Cummings to breach their secret organization and thoroughly humiliated for it, and will consequently be decommissioned from the rest of the film. Going back to that particular exchange, also very revealing, I think, is Cummings’ response: something along the lines of “Get his hair cut. These days it’ll save him a lot of trouble.” Even though he’s been forced out of society, Cummings still favors submitting to its pressures at the expense of individuality. He’s not an entirely likable protagonist, particularly in moments like this.
The surreal simpatico between Cummings and the truck driver seems to go beyond psychological hypervigilance (which Hitchcock can cultivate using tools most filmmakers would never think of using, including actively recontextualizing scripts he didn't write with film grammar to fit his vision) and into a spiritual realm of ESP between those breaking from conformity. Only once Lane submits to the possibility that Cummings isn't bad because the law says so -thereby gaining an ounce of space between herself and an institution's ideological hold- can she access not only her spacious personal morality and empathy, but embracing basic bodily functions and id impulses by recognizing a physical attraction towards him! Her transformation honestly doesn't even make any sense beyond that explanation - gaining distance from her heightened emotions and rigid logos while outside of the busy cityscape brainwashing her, allows her to see a real human being across from her through simple acclimation. Her grandfather obviously operates on both self-actualized moral principles and intuition of Cummings' energy, but he can only access the latter if he commits to the former, and can only commit to the former if he unblends from the power of societal influence. It really is one of Hitchcock's greatest Fuck the Police movies, where conformity to them is triggered more as a fear than a moral truism, even by the carnies. But I also think the spectatorship might be the pendulum-swinging alternative many come up with to cope with that disengagement from ideological homogeny - it's harder to delve into self, and a lot easier to just escape and watch and feel stimulated and relish that high of freedom and power, even if just in observance.

I also think the film is a lot funnier and less self-serious than I did on my last few watches, and Cummings does a fine job acclimating to his various contexts in fun ways. I like how he starts amping up an aggressive traits of lunacy to sell his false identity to his enemies. It seems like a desperate attempt of a simple logic to just 'go the opposite of what a normal person would do' - as if this strategy will equal behavior that will satisfy the opposing side.. it's such a silly good v. evil application of humans v. alien behaviorist inference, and yet it works! I wonder if this helped inform that similar infiltration logic in The Parallax View, though that film built upon that as a theme weaponizing the ploy back against the unwitting actor by the smarter Powers That Be. Still, it's funny to me that the evil organization is apparently a) recruiting like-minded psychopaths... but also normal family men (?!); omnisciently resourceful... but stupid in leaving obvious clues everywhere; calmly logical and ostensibly going against the grain of everything America believes in... but then violating their whole manifesto with the same old 'Actually, Capitalism' reasoning in the same breath. Perhaps they are spectators too, just slightly more 'active' spectators. But the men like Tobin -who are mostly outsourcing men to do the hard labor- are revealed to basically be attempting to gain even more power by voyeuristically watching the systems plummet before them, before they scoop up the earnings and engage in the same old system again. It's so pointless, other than maybe serving that kind of faux-individuality stimulation by spectating with a sense of differentiation that's inherent in the voyeuristic act. The reason the Wrong Man narrative works at all is that characters are forced to engage and participate in such an active way that they are allowed to be magically elevated from that spectatorship for a brief period, and perhaps only in movies. Is this how Hitchcock sees all of us and himself outside of one or two characters in a very specific kind of movie? Is that the only way to truly 'live'?

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therewillbeblus
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Re: Auteur List: Alfred Hitchcock - Discussion and Defenses

#170 Post by therewillbeblus » Sun Sep 03, 2023 8:17 pm

Continuing on with my viewings - As always I'm happy to walk back disappointments even with turn towards faint praise, and I've finally come around a bit on Suspicion. I don't really agree with most of my last writeup: First, Grant isn't that charming here - he's aloof and alienating, and that subversion of his persona isn't what's magnetic about the picture, nor do I believe it's designed to be built around that. The reveal works a lot better when unambiguous - Grant has felt alienating to us because he's been alienated by Fontaine's subjective anxieties, which have tainted our own ability to judge his behavior objectively. This is the inverse of Spellbound's externalized psychological chaos, and it's both a better and more challenging film for it. Fontaine's anxieties are obvious, but they have no cinematic space to purge - neither in the social relationships within the narrative, nor the pronounced aesthetics of Hitchcock's restrained approach this outing. So she and he resorts to subtler skews. I love Kehr's observation that we never see Grant walk into a shot, he's just 'there', an otherworldly presence who triggers Fontaine's insecure, prudish maiden; a cipher for her projections.

In the end when she emerges from her fear-driven solipsistic myopia to consider Grant as another sensitive human being in need, who has reacted with avoidance when experiencing rejection, or reminded of his own shortcomings at fulfilling societal expectations for his financial masculine 'duties'. I think we must assume Fontaine's formulation of Grant's elided psychology to be true, or close enough to it where he finally feels 'seen'. He never puts together that she assumed he was the killer when she voices her "Oohhhhh"s around his sketchy behaviors around the murders, which doesn't automatically mean anything, but it would be the easiest opportunity for him to manipulate her back to his side with moralizing condescension if he were evil. The turnaround is him choosing to take the leap of faith with her, and try for a secure attachment - and her her ability to diagnose him once sobered demonstrates skill and care as qualities she possessed and can actualize when not in a state of acute self-centeredness. It's a brilliant ending when looked at unambiguously, and I have a feeling I'll come around to appreciating the windup a lot better the next time I see it. For now, it's still a film I respect more than enjoy, but at least I can finally respect it.

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Re: Auteur List: Alfred Hitchcock - Discussion and Defenses

#171 Post by therewillbeblus » Mon Sep 04, 2023 1:17 pm

Marnie (almost wrote out "Marnia" - appropriate Freudian slip?) is another film I've compulsively watched throughout the years and am only now starting to truly appreciate on its own terms. Like Suspicion, it's a rather difficult film due to the elisions that are key to understanding the film's complex value, and which are at-odds with the pronounced, ironically-romanticized style overwhelming the picture. This style seems to be Hitchcock turning the dials up to 11 as he hides his own raw insecurities with his identity and sexual cravings evoked by such dialed-up personalized content. So the intervention is to craft defense mechanisms in the tonal aesthetics, which -intentionally or not- protect the director, and also mirror Mark and Marnie's own defenses.

Mark feels like a Hitch-surrogate in many respects - he is a successful man with a spiritual vacancy itching to be filled; who seeks to both fill this hole and fulfill an ideologically-supported role as caretaker at once by testing the limits of his control through 'taming' the animal of Marnie. Lil wants him, but she's too easy, willing, simple. Mark chases the complex, the unknown, the mystery of life, God in human form. But this alien target must be attractive as prey, and it’s of course a vital question to ask (that the film never truly gives us space to do while watching, with its tactic of elisions- more on that later): what do these psychologically complex drives matter if weaponized as a rationale for rape, manipulation, and overall exertion of a power differential, to inflate his ego and keep himself focused on another's psychology rather than his own?

And yet, does Marnie need this? Not him exactly, and certainly not sexual assault, but a forced containment - to be helped against her will, because her dominant psychological protective parts tell her to run, hide, avoid, and remain isolated into safe delusions. I never really appreciated how great Tippi Hedren's performance is before, but she resembles an extremely accurate behavioral profile of many people who’ve had early-childhood traumas and attachment issues that have affected social relationships later in life (given the troubled production history between her and her director, I don’t wonder why - sometimes life imitates Art, not justifiably, but because it just ‘is’). Yes, Marnie needed her mother, but now the waters are gray, and the sick reality is that maybe Mark actually does serve as the compromise that can 'help' in some ways, as well as hurt. Not justifiably either, just because it is where they’re at. It’s enough to make part of you shudder even as part of you supports the progress.

This is a messy movie about messy psyches that never really invites us in until the contrived ending, but does explode the characters' inner emotional responses with a cinematic passion matching the dysregulation they feel inside. In between these moments, though, elisions are everywhere - we don't get to see how the characters transition from their more emphasized expressions during acute traumatic and anxious interactions back into day-to-day life. The connective tissue is dissolved by film grammar, and I assume these are the spots where characters are 'coping', in a fog of evasion, of disengagement. Take the honeymoon, shot across multiple scenes: We don't witness how either Marnie or Mark recover from the initial conversation, as the film bleeds into the third-or-so day of the trip when Mark finally breaks from his calm demeanor to resort to rape (and our inability to mark a progression of his own internal escalation must resemble his own inability to notice it himself - an observable 0-60 reaction for everyone, yet one that’s been accumulating below the iceberg in murky waters, and could’ve been prevented if only there were more tools available to discern warning signs). We also don't see the lead-up to the suicide attempt, or the recovery process from there to being smiley back at Mark's family home. Though we know this is a ruse, since she slams the door on his face. And the film is full of these moments - maladaptive coping mechanisms existing in the margins. The truth is that none of these characters can truly cope with their issues in conscious ways (same with the mother, and even Lil or the father, who focus on some external meaningless conversation about money and diamonds carats instead of the traumas of losing a daughter in Mark's ex-wife, barely mentioned) so we're resigned to a film that feels slight and uneven: Pure Cinema via the loudest discharges of emotion mimicking dysphoria nobody is capable of regulating with consciously, and then aphasic repression and rote engagement banished offscreen for us, and out of mind or body for the characters.*

It's fucked up that Marnie can't get better without a Mark in the world to help her stabilize herself, and that Mark needs a Marnie to feel whole, but that's where we are in this fucked-up movie. Today, Marnie may have had more female allies or at least been institutionalized in a society populated with mental-health consciousness, and been able to engage with safe objective supports in experienced inpatient psychotherapists to help herself stabilize a bit, but not in 1964. Mark's armchair psychologist is the best she's got, and, sadly, the only person who cares - because of carnal selfish motives disguised and even believed by himself as empathetic.. but in a vacuum, he's still the only one who cares, and actually does care. It's a great movie in how it portrays the functional aspects of a dysfunctional relationship that are just as relevant today as they were half a century ago, but also as a time capsule back to an era when there were limited resources to support people living with trauma, women's health, and even men struggling to satisfy id impulses against the friction of ideologically-sewn roles of loyal moral providers - a time with skewed definitions and no space held for multiple parts to exist. I like that Marnie and Mark have similar names, as if their problems are both distinct but stemming from the same problem of isolated culture, and enmeshed as the only perceptible coping mechanism to make progress, given what assets they had.

*I don't have the time nor the energy to compare them thoroughly right now, but the film succeeds in that merger of intelligence and camp in a similar way as Basic Instinct, where elisions of inner complexity are detectible precisely because of their strange contrast with the conspicuous sleaze being shown.

[Edit: 9/8/23 - I've just read Robin Wood's chapter on Marnie from his Hitchcock's Films Revisited and it's the most brilliant defense I've come across yet, far more than Brody's essay]

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