back to the bates motel

A windy October night screening at Film Forum of Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho revived my feelings about the movie. Even if they have never seen the film most people are aware of Norman Bates, the “shower scene,” or the reputation of the Bates Motel. Sometimes a movie can become so famous it can lose its original power. Yet watching this wonderful print on the big screen made me respect and treasure Psycho more than ever.

Janet Leigh is perfectly cast—those eyes, her raspy voice, and her steely ways in which she expresses guilt and fear. We follow her through the fascinating first half, as her Marion Crane thieves $40,000 from work and leaves town. A novice, she is a terrible thief, interacting awkwardly with a police officer, and car salesman. The film emphasizes material possessions: her car, her money. It makes the fate of Leigh's Crane all the more shocking once she turns into Bates Motel and meets its tortured owner Norman (Anthony Perkins).


Leigh and Perkins play characters who are different yet similar in many ways: stuck in a rut, haunted by wrongdoing, lonely. Perkins' performance is akin to fire: a fidgety mess with intense flickers of menace. He was typecast forever for this role, and he’s so good and memorable, it’s hard to shake Norman off from his other works. It’s not a typical performance of the times, nor of a Hitchcock picture. Perkins interrupts and his dialogue sometimes runs over other people’s lines. His scene with the prodding detective Arborgast (Martin Baslam) is one of the great pieces of acting. Bates feels human, entirely authentic, and Hitchcock enriches him even further by giving the audience glimpses of his material surroundings and biography via other characters. In the haunting ending, Perkins, wrapped in a blanket, gives a great, unsettling performance of reaction (a recall of Leigh’s driving scenes).

On this viewing, having recently watched some other Hitchcock films, I was struck just how stark Psycho is compared to his other works. I feel Psycho is one of the most economical and claustrophobic of his films (we are constantly in confined spaces). Shot on a low-budget and featuring a female protagonist who is killed off quickly, Psycho, one of Hitch’s defining pictures, is still one of his most unusual. The grimness of it, its rich black and white photography and bleak subject matter make it a departure from the glossy color films he was making during the 1950s (North By Northwest, Vertigo, Rear Window).


Psycho also has that incredible, unrelenting score by Bernard Herrmann. Herrmann shed the sweeping orchestral pomp of other scores of that era and relied solely on strings. The music makes a tremendous impact in a movie theater. His cue “The Murder,” remains chilling today. I can’t imagine how frightening it must have been in 1960.

On this viewing, the infamous and dated “psychiatrist scene” played better than it ever has. Not only is it a perfect transition into the closer, but it’s another farce of higher societal figures who try to explain and reason out impossible things. In Psycho, the people of authority in the picture are uncaring and worthless: the creepy, robotic cop following Crane, the doddering town sheriff. This is a common cinematic trope but the fact that we can laugh at the psychiatrist is a testament to Hitchcock and the power of Perkins’ performance. The film has the ability to manipulate us to have some empathy for Bates, even if he’s a deplorable murderer.

Anthony Perkins on Norman Bates: "I do have affection for Norman as a person. He does the best he can out of the diminished circumstances with which his personality stranded him, and Norman's childhood was difficult and traumatic. Norman is, at heart, a benevolent soul, with a dark side, but Norman's conscious mind is always on the positive things in life."

Psycho is playing at Film Forum until November 4th.

the paradine case

All this month, I've been watching Hitchcock films that I've never seen in preparation for Lamb's Directors Chair series. Some have been very good (Saboteur) others flawed (Topaz and Torn Curtain). Yet even the flawed ones have something grand to offer, especially in today's context, and in viewing Hitchcock's overall oeuvre.

1947's The Paradine Case is another one of Hitchcock's lesser-regarded features. A mostly static courtroom drama, the picture lacks the electricity and urgency of his masterpieces (Psycho, Notorious, or North By Northwest). Yet, in retrospect, the film seems to be a victim of the code, re-shoots and producer David O. Selznick's cutting (it was pared down from 132 minutes). Gregory Peck, in a precursor role to his noble Atticus Finch, plays Anthony Keane, a barrister defending murderess Mrs. Paradine (a ravishing Alida Valli). Paradine is on trial for poisoining her blind war hero husband (introduced, memorably, by painted portrait). After becoming quite smitten with her, Keane decides to shift suspicion to Paradine's shadowy servant Andre Latour (Louis Jourdan). Meanwhile the case begins to strain the relationship between Keane and his loving wife Gay (Ann Todd, a dead ringer for columnist Peggy Noonan!).

The story is somewhat thin and predictable, it's also become quite familiar (on TV drama and in B-courtroom movies like Body of Evidence). However it should be noted that Hitchcock's visualizations of the courtroom scenes were revolutionary at the time with his use of four different cameras. This would become commonplace with television shows. As in any Hitchcock film, the camera carries psychological weight (Paradine's and Latour's point of view shots)--an emotional understanding of the "villains" which still remains unusual for most filmmakers. To show their caged-in psychological states, characters are often depicted behind bars. Rumored to be nearly expensive as Gone With the Wind, a ludicrous notion considering how contained and stodgy this story is, The Paradine Case boasts huge, elaborately detailed sets (vaulted ceilings in the courtroom and grandiose Keane household). Unless filmed in extreme closeup (for emotional effect), the sets shrink our characters as much as their scheming and duplicitous acts do. It definitely has the handsome, elegant look and feel of a Selznick / Hitchcock collaboration (this would be their last), but no sweep. Thanks to Selznick, there is a terrific supporting cast (Charles Laughton as the somewhat sadistic judge, Leo G. Carroll as the prosecutor, Ethel Barrymore as the judge's wife: Oscar-nominated for a short but piercing scene in which she defends herself, and what feels like, many post-War women of that time period). Had the tension between Keane and Paradine had been developed more, Valli could have emerged as very memorable femme fatale. There is some promise of this in the her riveting final act where she is undone and defenseless.

the death of a nobody

Alfred Hitchcock's grandly entertaining Saboteur features one of his most exceptional showcases: a man hanging from the hand of the Statue of Liberty. Besides this scene, still great-looking today, there are many wonderful, offbeat moments in this film. Robert Cummings plays Barry Kane, an ordinary military aircraft worker, wrongly suspected of setting fire and killing a co-worker in his factory. On the run from authorities, Kane tries to solve the mystery of what happened, meeting up with some eccentric characters along the way. He finally finds himself embroiled with anti-American, fascist saboteurs, leading him all the way to a duel on top of the Statue of Liberty with his nemesis "Fry" (Norman Lloyd).

Saboteur was in production two weeks after Pearl Harbor and is one of the few, if not only, Hitchcock films to have so much political shading. The script was written by Peter Viertel, Joan Harrison, and Dorothy Parker. It can be assumed that Parker supplied much of the wit in the film. Especially in the dialogue-rich scene, which recalls Bride of Frankenstein, where Kane stumbles unto an old blind man's (Vaughan Glaser) house. Like many Hitchcock works, marginalized characters (here: the unmarried old blind man, a group of circus performers, a truck driver) end up being the most intelligent and compassionate in the picture. In Saboteur, it seems to be a statement on the value of the individual in America--something that separates the country from fascist ideology. The seemingly ordinary people--a matronly woman throwing a lavish party, a man with a small child and a swimming pool--end up being the most dangerous and deceiving. Most of this social commentary is quite obvious in the film. "The Death of a Nobody" becomes an ironic trope. And the movie moves very fast, up until the Statue of Liberty sequence, which effectively cuts between small scale (a stitch coming apart) to the grandiose (studio shots of the statue; the late Robert Boyle was associate art director). This is a slickly enjoyable film, very similar to The 39 Steps, and one of Hitchcock's most economical.

Here are some memorable shots.

topaz

Truth and fiction collide in Alfred Hitchcock's Topaz based upon a Leon Uris (Exodus) novel. A complicated tale of intrigue, the story (scripted by Vertigo's Samuel A. Taylor, after Hitchcock complained Uris's treatment was "unshootable") is loosely based on real-life "Sapphire" gang, a ring of Russian spies involved with Cuba at the height of the Cold War. The spy tale jets from Copenhagen where a Russian and his family are plucked, to D.C. where they are flown to live in anonymity and to supply the U.S. with information. In D.C., French intelligence agent, Andre Devereaux (Frederick Stafford), becomes embroiled with the intrigue. He follows leads in New York and Cuba and comes back to the states again. Cameras are traded, pictures taken and hidden, sometimes, at great human cost, film is sealed behind notebooks. The movie traces its labyrinth narrative by moving maze-like through rooms and small spaces (houses, flats, hotels, a greenhouse, an airplane lavatory, a secret room behind a pantry). Emphasizing the film's themes of displacement and betrayal, the movie never settles in one place for too long and the lengthy lineup of supporting characters, notably Devereaux's wife Nicole (Dany Robin), and his mistress Juanita (Karin Dor), are rarely who they seem to be to those around them. Once the ringleader of Topaz is revealed, his fate is further complicated by Hitchcock's three different endings (including a stylish though somewhat anticlimactic "duel" scene reviled by test audiences).

With Topaz, Hitchcock does something I can't recall him doing in any of his other films: meshing real-life footage (a grainy Castro rally and Soviet March) with his own work. Hitchcock is such a stylish, meticulous filmmaker that his films often lack the authenticity that this particular subject matter seems to warrant.

It's also a curious period piece, taking place in 1962. Movie audiences in 1969, confronted less with the Cold War and more with American social unrest and the war in Vietnam, were shunning many studio pictures, seeking out grittier pieces filmed on-location (Midnight Cowboy and Easy Rider among them). The picture, riddled with its stodgy '62 plot, its process shots and Hitch's studio gloss, is almost like a winsome goodbye letter to the decade.


For these reasons, Topaz is a bit of a Hitchcock oddity, and another marker in the decline at the end of his incredible oeuvre. Topaz often lags, primarily in the oddly unmoving third act. Devereaux is cooly distant: not a unique character nor a strong cinematic presence to be intimate with (as were the protagonists of most of Hitchcock's great works). Yet there is so much in Topaz that is fascinating. There is one magnificent overhead shot and an arresting use of color (a purple 'Rest in Peace' ribbon becomes symbolic when the color is worn by a fated character). The meticulous planning and thematic undercurrents of his scenes are often evident (the "china shop" opening and its suggestion of the film's fragile relationships). Common Hitchcock visual motifs of blood, the body, stairs, birds, and food are used to great effect. The music by Maurice Jarre is an interesting mix of the film's different cultural tones. I wonder, though, if the film would have had a bit more punch and thrill if scored by Bernard Herrmann. Edith Head's costumes are brilliantly alive throughout, and employ great use of Hitchcock's color symbolism.

Topaz was a box office disappointment and not one of Hitchcock's favorite directorial experiences. In retrospect, the source material--masculine, runaway bestseller spy intrigue populated with what he deemed as "cardboard characters"--was not conducive to Hitchcock's strengths. But even Hitchcock misfires are better than most any films out there.

-Jeffery Berg

one year

Thanks to all the readers. To celebrate the one year anniversary of jdbrecords, please leave a comment below with your favorite Hitchcock film and a random winner will be picked to receive a jdbrecords mix CD of hip new tunes. U.S. peeps only, sorry. Peace!

tippi collage

Tippi Hedren.

spellbound

Alfred Hitchcock's Spellbound is dated but still a fascinating picture. Made in 1945, in the midst of WWII, the film is one of the first to explicitly deal with the psychological effects of trauma. Gregory Peck, not yet a big star at the time, enters an institute under the guise of a famous therapist, Dr. Anthony Edwardes. Dr. Constance Petersen (another remarkable performance from Ingrid Bergman) takes Edwardes under her wing and unlocks the mysteries of his past and the seed of his psychological torment. What ensues is a theme classic to Hitchcock: the chase.

Unlike the electric pairing of Grant and Bergman in Notorious, the sexual and romantic chemistry between Bergman and Peck intentionally lacks fire. This is a rare instance in a film from the 40s, where our two romantic leads don't quite seem in love with one another at all. Peck is weak and withered, passing out on numerous occasions, while Bergman dominates. I kept wondering, does Bergman's character really love Peck's? Or is Peck's character just another case, another project. It's this ambiguity that adds to Spellbound's strangeness.

This is the second of three pictures Hitchcock and revolutionary producer David O. Selznick would collaborate on. Their two most memorable works together, Rebecca and Spellbound, remain curious oddities to me in Hitchcock's cannon. Unlike other Hitch films from the 40s, such as the stark and understated Lifeboat and Rope, they are lush, noticeably overproduced, and as experimental as Hollywood (under the code) could allow them to be.

Adding to the Selznick atmosphere is the spooky, romantic score (with its moody use of theremin) by Hungarian composer Mikolos Rozsa, which provided the film its sole Academy Award. Hitchcock complained Rozsa's score was too intrusive on his direction. Nevertheless, the music remains a beauty.

Having had successful experience in therapy, Selznick was attracted to the material in Spellbound. The script by the brilliant Ben Hecht has unfortunately lost a lot of luster through the years. The psychoanalysis mumbo jumbo--similar the coda in Psycho--is sprinkled throughout. I couldn't help but notice the similarity in storyline to another but very different psyche drama: Robert Redford's Ordinary People. Both are about freeing the mind from guilt and psychological torment and the irrational malaise society once held (here in the 40s and in Redford's picture, early 80s suburbia) against therapy.

What lures me back to the film, despite the heavy, outmoded dialogue, are the many arresting visuals and rich compositions. There is a fascinating (and fun!) dream sequence, specifically designed by Salvador Dali. A quick, unforgettable image of memory and accidental death (see image above). And a memorable conclusion that involves a gun being pointed directly at the audience--one of my favorite moments in all of Hitchcock's work.

-Jeffery Berg

This billboard in Times Square and these promotional materials seems to speak of Selznick's gifts as a producer and a revolutionary producer at the time.