Marian Keane commentary

Anyone else find Marian Keane’s obsession with phallic imagery and sexual connotations of almost every other scene distracting? I mean, sometimes a cigar is just a cigar and I’d like to hear some analysis from a different angle other than supposed sexual imagery. I just found it a little distracting.

Yes, it is an unbearably old fashioned 70s-era take on the film. You can imagine how equally bad her commentary for Spellbound is.

I was half expecting to hear her comment on Grant and Bergman driving in the phallic shaped car or her description of the final scene where Claude Rains disappears behind the door—flanked by two giant phallic pillars! I’m glad at least there’s the option to listen to Rudy Behlmer. Thanks for the heads-up on Spellbound. Is there another alternative to Keane’s commentary there as well?

I watched this last night and yes, I switched to Rudy’s commentary right away.

I feel kind of bad for harping on her. I’m sure Marian Keane must be a fine film scholar, but I’m relatively new to Hitchcock and found her to be too much, not only with the annoyingly excessive sexual references, but just generally obscuring the film and complicating it rather than explaining or helping the viewer along. Rudy Behlmer’s commentary was easier to follow and more enlightening in my humble opinion. It seems they were meant to be from different approaches, but Rudy seemed to do Marian’s commentary better than Marian did. Like I said, I’m kind of new to appreciating Hitchcock, in depth at any rate. If all of Hitchcock’s films are as replete with sexual metaphors as Keane alludes to I’d be kind of put off from watching any more. I’m going to forge ahead, though. I’ve already watched the 39 Steps and The Lady Vanishes. After this one, I’m moving on to Rebecca, Suspicion, Jamaica Inn and as many others as I can get my hands on. No particular order obviously. At some point I’ll get to the later films like Psycho, Marnie, etc. So far I haven’t seen quite the pattern of innuendo or metaphors that Keane sees. I don’t consider myself a prude; I would expect some references, but Jeez—Keane with the key phallus and the sink vagina and the bottle phallus and the doorway vagina and Alex having a sexual relationship with his mother—I didn’t get all that! Maybe I’m not looking hard enough. Perhaps Keane’s comments were meant for more sophisticated viewers. :-) Okay, end of rant.

Sean, I would suggest watching them without any commentary first and develop your own feel for them before listening to too many people nattering on in a commentary. Appreciate them for what they do for you before worrying about what others say they are supposed to be doing, there’ll be time enough for that later, after you’re familiar and comfortable with them.

Perhaps Keane’s comments were meant for more sophisticated viewers.

That kind of analysis is primitive, not sophisticated.

Rudy’s commentary had fascinating insights into the background of the making of the film from letters between the poeple involved.

Oh, I definitely watch them without commentary first. Then I feel a little simple for not catching so much that apparently went over my head. I see what you mean, though. I’ll be taking the commentaries with much more of a grain of salt. I’m glad to see I’m not alone. Frankly, I find the Hitchcock I’ve seen so far much more enjoyable at face value. From what I can gather from what I’ve read and heard that’s probably the way he would want it. I’m watching Rebecca as we speak (played hooky so I could have a movie marathon ;-), The opening is very gothic and gorgeous.

If you want an entertaining take on all of Hitchcock’s films, David Cairns, who writes articles for the Notebook page here, went through all of Hitch’s films last year on his blog. He posted articles every Wednesday covering the films in order and I found the conversation there to be a most pleasant way to revisit the films. He definitely isn’t too highbrow or boringly academic, but not obvious or dull witted either which keeps the articles interesting and fun to read. His site is Here and I’m sure you could just search by title for the film you’re interested in.

Of course there are a lot of great books on Hitchcock as well, Robin Wood has an excellent one, Truffaut has interviews with him, and on and on. Or after watching the films, you could just ask questions or make comments here since I’m sure you’ll find plenty of people who’d welcome a chance to talk about him or argue.

Thanks Greg, I’ll definitely check it out! I definitely dig Hitchcock. And if there’s anything I like more than watching good films it’s talking about them (unacademically, I guess you could say). Enjoying the hell out of Rebecca. Joan Fontaine is so adorable. I am noticing that Hitch’s men have a certain way of treating women that is, um, complex? Hope nothing bad happens to her. :-) Anyway, back to the film!

>>but Jeez—Keane with the key phallus and the sink vagina and the bottle phallus and the doorway vagina and Alex having a sexual relationship with his mother—I didn’t get all that! Maybe I’m not looking hard enough<<
HARD!?
Ahem.
Keane’s reading of the film seems perfectly acceptable. Also obsessive. And revealing more about her than about the film or Hitchcock.
Hitchcock certainly inserted some sexual symbolism into his films (the fireworks in TO CATCH A THIEF and the train going into the tunnel in NORTH BY NOTHWEST, for instance) but one can’t exactl make a film without doors, for instance. And they can’t _all_be vaginas…
… or can they?

@Harry: LOL.

Just finished watching Rebecca. On to the extras.
Frau Blucher got what was coming to her. Felled by a mass of burning phallic timbers. Hurray!
Seriously, though, best one yet. Sexual imagery aside, Hitchcock certainly knows how to ratchet up the tension—it’s amazing how well he does it, even compared to modern films.

Just think of that lesbian housekeeper in a house with all those doorways!!!!!
And she has the key to every goddam one of them!!!!

I liked the Keane commentary, if that’s the one I listened to. The comparison of Notorious to Bluebeard struck me as apt. The whole movie is intensely erotic.

@Harry:
Ha. I wasn’t going to say anything. I didn’t need Keane for any expounding on that one.
I had to chuckle a bit when the maid takes out Rebecca’s nightie to show her then proceeds to tell her how she still hears Rebecca’s footsteps. I don’t think Joan Fontaine could press herself back against the wall any more—“…um, yeah, that’s great…”

@Petrocephalon:
I found the movie erotic as well, until I listened to Keane’s commentary.

I don’t have the Criterion version of Notorious (just the MGM version) so I haven’t heard that particular commentary, but it’s the same story with Keane’s track on The 39 Steps. Sometimes a coat hook is just a coat hook.

There’s plenty of sexual subtext in Hitchcock (with a name like that, how could their not be?), but Keane takes the analysis to humorous extremes.

Love Rudy, though. His commentaries are always enlightening. Typically I’m more into analysis than history, but his tracks do a wonderful job of describing the historical context of the production.

@Napoleon Blownapart (LOL)
I was listening to Richard Schickel’s casual and meandering, yet somehow informative commentary on the MGM (Premiere collection) version of Rebecca and, as with Behlmer on Criterion’s Notorious, found the background info regarding Selznick and the censors’ involvement and changes much more enlightening.
Like Harry said, Keane only tells me more about Keane through her commentary than about the film. Nothing against her personally, it’s just, like you said, overkill.

BTW, I have to say this….how awesome is George Sanders? I know he’s supposed to be the cad in Rebecca, but the dude is just so smooth. Did he play in any other Hitchcock films? I noticed Nigel Bruce again too.

Speaking of Schickel, he made a comment during Rebecca that might speak to what I mentioned earlier about how Hitchcock himself may have felt about a certain kind of overanalysis. Perhaps, perhaps not. At any rate, behold my mad transcription skills:

“Hitchcock was morally a very objective man. i remember one time when I was interviewing him for a television show I did, he said, he was talking about Cezanne the painter, he said ‘Who cares if the apples he’s painting are sweet or sour, the point of the exercise is the composition, you’re supposed to get the emotion of the way the thing looks without any moralizing about it,’ so, I think that’s pretty much true of most of Hitch’s practices in movies, he didn’t care about sweet or sour, he cared about the way it looked, and the feeling that you might take away from the way it looked.”

@Sean: If you are interested in the Selznick/Hitchcock dynamic check out “The Dark Side of Genius” by Donald Spoto. It’s a Hitch biography that goes fairly in depth into their collaboration.

And if you’re a George Sanders fan, he’s also great in “Foreign Correspondent”, an early American picture of Hitchcock’s in the vein of The 39 Steps, Saboteur, and North by Northwest. It’s available as part of the Hitchcock Signature Collection from WB.

I have “Foreign Correspondent” on my list, guess I’ll have to move it up in the queue. I was almost embarrassed to say, although I know I’ve seen him before (Sundown, I think?), I could only think of Sheer Kahn while he’s eating Laurence Olivier’s chicken lunch and drinking his brandy. Wasn’t he in “Laura” also or am I imagining that?

I’ll look for the Spoto book also. Thanks for that.

I haven’t listened to the Marian Keane commentary tracks so I obviously can’t comment on them directly. However, I do not think it inappropriate to impute Freudian imagery and dream symbols to Alfred Hitchcock.

He often discussed psychoanalysis in interviews, featuresd characters who have abnormal psychological states, was a bit of a “nut case” himself (the Spoto biography documents some of that), commissioned the famous Dali dream sequence in SPELLBOUND, and had to work under the Puritanical restrictions of the Production Code for decades. He used indirection and subtlety (as did Lubitsch in a different way) to comment on human sexuality and psychology.

It’s no wonder that a train will occasionally go through a tunnel when a couple is about to make love, or that spectacular fireworks go off when another couple starts necking. And that there’s a Peeping Tom spying on his neighbors with a l-o-n-g camera lens, and that that photographer has a cast on one leg (Oedipus means “swollen foot” in Greek). And just because he shot VERTIGO in San Francisco doesn’t mean that he had to show (and mention) COIT Tower so often or depict Jimmy Stewart trying to balance a cane while talking about brassieres and corsets. :-)

Yes, some scholars can go to extremes in symbol-mongering but let’s not throw the parent out with the bathwater. Sometimes a cigar IS a phallic symbol.

if its used in a phallic way, yes. otherwise its maybe a case of reaching too far.

I haven’t listened to the Marian Keane commentary tracks so I obviously can’t comment on them directly. However, I do not think it inappropriate to impute Freudian imagery and dream symbols to Alfred Hitchcock.

It’s more a matter of her style rather than content. You have to hear it to understand: it plays like parody of Freudian interpretation.

@Dr. Tomasulo:
Right, I agree with you. I don’t have a problem with sexual imagery per se (as long as its, as you say, appropriate), it’s just that I thought Keane’s interpretation was a little excessive in this particular case. While we’re on the topic though, I think sometimes symbols might be slipped in so that you the viewer can either take it or leave it (or it may go right over the viewers head, as in my case :-). I think that’s what Hitchcock was maybe saying in that Schickel quote I mentioned earlier. I don’t know. He may mean something totally different than the way I’m hearing it. That wouldn’t be beyond the realm of possibility. :-)

I’m actually kind of glad I don’t really see all the references or symbols because, frankly, they sometimes kind of distract from the actual story on the screen. I mean, I guess the housekeeper in Rebecca, and Hitchcock’s showing us the possible nature of her and Rebecca’s relationship, has something directly to do with the story because it shows who the character is and why she acts the way she does. But the length of someone’s camera lens (I assume you’re talking Rear Window?) might be something to chuckle at, if you get the reference, but does it really have anything to do with the story or is it just a reference to a deeper layer of meaning (which, granted, can sometimes make the film more enjoyable, but I don’t want to have to work so hard spotting references that I miss what’s going on in the actual story). I still have to see Rear Window—I saw it as a kid, but don’t remember much of anything from it except Stewart in a wheelchair looking through his binoculars or camera.

@Sean: I hope this doesn’t ruin REAR WINDOW for you but I think that in that film in particular (and in Hitch’s work in general) there’s a Theme of male identity crisis, often linked to the question of masculinity. Thus, the phallic symbols and other sexual references are there not only as in-jokes or to provide a slightly deeper meaning to the film (for those who notice them); they reveal character and theme in a subtle way.

I certainly don’t want to sound like a “parody of Freudian interpretation” but here’s some [excerpted] stuff I wrote on REAR WINDOW that might be pertinent:

Jeffries (Jimmy Stewart) suffers from an “identity crises,” especially with regard to his masculinity and his relationships with women. In Rear Window, Jeff’s broken leg (or “swollen foot,” the English translation of the name “Oedipus”) confines him to a wheelchair, but it also causes him to interrogate his long-time “engagement” to fashion model Lisa Carol Fremont (Grace Kelly). He often treats women with the same sexist disdain and negativity displayed in the framed photographic “negative” of a female model for the cover of a Life-like magazine seen on a table at the very beginning of the film.

The male crisis is sometimes figured through the use of phallic icons and objects. In Rear Window, for instance, Jeffries is unable to pop the cork on a bottle of wine (erectile dysfunction?), and his repeated attempts to scratch under his leg cast with a back scratcher can be likened to masturbation. Jeff’s long 400mm. telephoto lens is another instance of a phallic substitute, especially when it is seen resting in his lap.

Jeffries has “issues” with women. Stella the nurse (Thelma Ritter) explicitly states that Jeff must have “a hormone deficiency” because “those bathing beauties you’ve been watching haven’t raised your temperature in a month.” Even when his girlfriend. Lisa, plans to stay overnight, the photographer is forced to say “I won’t be able to give you any…pajamas.” When Lisa becomes the sexual aggressor and kisses Jeff repeatedly, he virtually ignores her and talks incessantly about the Thorvald case. There are so many verbal and nonverbal clues in Rear Window about Jeff’s “abnormal” aversion to marriage (Stella’s phrase) or his “problem” (Lisa’s phrase) that Robert Samuels contends that “Jeffries looks at women but he doesn’t get turned on by them”. Whether or not Rear Window is a repressed homosexual text, L. B. Jeffries is no 1950s John Wayne icon of masculinity.

Hitchcock is often accused of exhibiting misogynistic tendencies. The evidence on screen suggests a more complex attitude toward women. Tania Modleski argues in The Women Who Knew Too Much, that Hitchcock’s depictions of women also reveal their oppression under patriarchy, as well as their wisdom and tolerance; furthermore, his portrayals of men are hardly paeans to the male psyche but, rather, sharp and incisive critiques of male voyeurism, fetishism, and sexual insecurity. Modleski argues that in Rear Window, Lisa is the stronger and more dominant figure: “It is the man who is motionless and the woman active and animate….She towers over Jeff in nearly every shot” (76-77). Stella is also a very strong character; she lectures Jeff and even participates in the potentially dangerous investigation of Thorvald.

In Rear Window, Jeffries frequently ogles a neighbor across the courtyard who he has nicknamed “Miss Torso,” based primarily on her shapely physical attributes and her scanty attire. Hitchcock treats the photographer’s peeping ambiguously. On the one hand, there are sexy views of Miss Torso and, for that matter, of Lisa. On the other hand, this indulgent voyeurism on the part of the protagonist, as well as the heterosexual male viewer, is punished repeatedly. Jeff wins the verbal scorn of Stella (who tells him that “We’ve become a race of Peeping Toms” and that “In the old days, they used to put your eyes out with a red hot poker” — the fate of Oedipus) and Lisa for his prurient peccadilloes and ends up with two broken legs for his sins.

Needless to say, most films depict more than the trials and tribulations of one or two main characters; as social documents, movies tend to address cultural issues by personifying those larger themes in the stories of a few individuals. Thus, L. B. Jeffries stands in for and represents a much larger subset of men—those of the postwar generation who had yet to adjust adequately to the changing gender dynamics of their era. As such, the protagonist of Rear Window personifies an age-old conundrum—the eternal crisis of masculinity—yet he also signifies variations on that universal dilemma in the specificity of the 1950s.

Well, you certainly explain better than Keane did. Different films of course, but reading what you explain about “Rear Window” sparks my interest and makes me feel more confident in anticipation of viewing it. I was simply confused by Keane, with her commentary it seemed it was just all “here a phallus, there a phallus.” Maybe she explained it better than I give her credit for, but that’s the way I remember it.

“Hitchcock is often accused of exhibiting misogynistic tendencies. The evidence on screen suggests a more complex attitude toward women.” —I noticed that earlier in the films I’ve seen so far. I guess its pretty evident or obvious to most already familiar with Hitchcock, but I have noticed a kind of pattern in the way men are portrayed and the way they treat women. Couldn’t quite put my finger on it, though.

I don’t know…it’s interesting the way you present it, and part of me wants to enjoy the film on that level, but also part of me wants to just enjoy the film for the suspense and the story without bringing pee-pees and wee-wees into it. Maybe I’ll just continue watching them straight through first, then go back and deal with the analysis for repeat viewings. I’ll rely on people who know more about Hitchcock and film than I do (like yourself) to help me along in that process. In the meantime I’ll just glean what I can, but focus on enjoying the show.

Right now I’m just kind of watching at random, but what would you suggest as a viewing order (if you don’t mind me asking)? Chronologically? —or are they all the themes similar enough that random is okay?

Sean: Just a suggestion but I might recommend getting Robin Wood’s book HITCHCOCK’S FILMS and watching the ones he analyzes. That way, after watching each of those major films you can go to Wood for that after-film analysis that may help you get more meaning (and enjoyment) out of repeat viewings.

If you want a thorough chronicle, there are three books that do that pretty well:

Francois Truffaut, HITCHCOCK (lengthy interview that covers all Hitch’s films)
Donald Spoto, THE ART OF ALFRED HITCHCOCK
Eric Rohmer & Claude Chabrol, HITCHCOCK: THE FIRST 54 FILMS (analyzes the director, film by film, as a Catholic artist with recurring themes of Original Sin, exchange of guilt, the innocent accused, etc.)

Sometimes it’s good to enjoy a movie on first viewing with an innocent eye (and ear), but I tend to think that you can enjoy something even more if you know a lot about it. For instance, if you know how to read musical notation or have studied Italian culture, won’t you enjoy opera more? If you understand rhyme and meter and imagery, won’t you enjoy poetry more? If you know something about the history of comic strips, won’t that improve your appreciation of graphic novels?

I see what you mean, but I don’t think it’s true in all cases. Some films get better with more knowledge and repeat viewings, but there are some for which I wish I could get that innocent eye back and see for the first time all over again. Sometimes it warrants a further look and sometimes it doesn’t. Hitchcock is great because he works at a basic level of enjoyment and also stands up to further analysis (BTW, I will definitely check out some your suggestions—appreciate it). I’ve also recently been watching Krzysztof Kieslowski’s films and enjoy them immensely (my favorite director other than Kurosawa), watch them over and over and learn everything I can about them.

On the other hand, though they aren’t really I guess what one would call deep films, I’d give anything to go back in time to when I was a kid and see Raiders of the Lost Ark or Star Wars for the first time. I thought maybe I’m mistaking nostalgia for good filmaking. But, no, I do consider certain films (among other things) enjoyable at a certain level that gets spoiled with too much analysis. Hitch not being the case in that regard.

I guess it depends on a person’s personality and tastes also. If I tried to learn musical notation I think my head would explode and I’d stress out over not comprehending everything fully, but i take comfort in knowing that I can enjoy Bach, for example, simply at the aural level. Something that is transcendant enough to be able to condescend and not lose anything.

I think that greater understanding will come naturally. The more Hitchcock you see, the more refined your observations will become. You obviously seem interested in his films so you will likely seek out further reading, anyway.

The more you like it, the more you’ll watch it. The more you watch it, the more you’ll read about it. The more you read about it, the more you’ll understand. The more you understand, the more you’ll like it. Lather, rinse, repeat.