i haven’t read the second biography you mentioned, so i can’t comment on it.
for me, hitch’s films speak about universal themes, the universal condition of man. at the same time, no one knows how to tell a story like hitch. i dont know of any other filmmaker who has made as many “perfect” films in his career.
Interesting point, Walt! Do you think that extends to his psychological thrillers too? It seems to me that movies like Marnie or Psycho are more ambiguous; less divine justice, more complexity of the human mind.
To a degree, to be certain. Hitchcock’s choice of POV shots (which I could only see analogous to a Powell film such as Peeping Tom or Black Narcissus) in Psycho clearly made me more uncomfortable in my first experiences than any other film. To see the detective fall awkwardly down the stairs from Norman(‘s mother’s) point of view made me wonder if I’d ever exhale again. I wouldn’t go so far as to say that Hitch’s psychological thrillers are ambiguous in their approach of moral judgment, however far behind the lens it is. Anything under his eye seems to be a universe, or at least a world unto itself. From his sweeping deep focus distance shots to his ability to go from a mile in the sky to a key in a nervous pocket at the bottom of a staircase show that, although he was first and foremost a master of suspense, he was his own divine presence and thus in total control. I think this is what truly makes him the quintessential auteur. If you’ve ever seen his storyboards, you’ll know that his films in their near entirety exist in his mind before they’re ever put to stock. Everything from his actors to his miniature sets were pawns in his game, but he obviously knew he was a pawn in a much bigger game himself. (Also, he was notably Catholic, however big a critic of the church he was. His most common friends and guests at parties were often priests).
To a degree, to be certain. Hitchcock’s choice of POV shots (which I could only see analogous to a Powell film such as Peeping Tom or Black Narcissus) in Psycho clearly made me more uncomfortable in my first experiences than any other film. To see the detective fall awkwardly down the stairs from Norman(‘s mother’s) point of view made me wonder if I’d ever exhale again. I wouldn’t go so far as to say that Hitch’s psychological thrillers are ambiguous in their approach of moral judgment, however far behind the lens it is. Anything under his eye seems to be a universe, or at least a world unto itself. From his sweeping deep focus distance shots to his ability to go from a mile in the sky to a key in a nervous pocket at the bottom of a staircase show that, although he was first and foremost a master of suspense, he was his own divine presence and thus in total control. I think this is what truly makes him the quintessential auteur. If you’ve ever seen his storyboards, you’ll know that his films in their near entirety exist in his mind before they’re ever put to stock. Everything from his actors to his miniature sets were pawns in his game, but he obviously knew he was a pawn in a much bigger game himself. (Also, he was notably Catholic, however big a critic of the church he was. His most common friends and guests at parties were often priests).
WO: I am not sure I can really follow the points you have made re Hitchcock’s Catholicism (was he a Catholic or does it matter?) and how this contributed to his own film vision – relative to guilt and innocence. However, just a general observation: Hithcock was the type of director who was ALWAYS aware of the perceptions and expectations of his audience. No director was more prescient than he was as to exactly how every scene would play out – in the audience’s mind. He had an uncanny ability to toy with this sense of expectation and delay the denoument until the end. Yet, he purposefully stacks things so that the bad guys always end up facing justice – in one form or another. He liked to construct his films in such a way that evil is always defeated by good. You are right that this justice is often not meted out by the police or courts – this would have been too tedious or obvious to Hitch’s intentions. He tighly controls EVERYTHING in his films, more obsessivley than anyone else except perhaps Kubrick. Where this obsessiveness comes from, I can’t say- not being familiar enough with the bios. His genius for innovation and playing against expectation can never be underestimated, but where his driving vision came from, I really don’t know.
I agree with you completely: “If you’ve ever seen his storyboards, you’ll know that his films in their near entirety exist in his mind before they’re ever put to stock. Everything from his actors to his miniature sets were pawns in his game”
I was just pointing out an interesting point/counterpoint from two different biographies. I really enjoyed your post!
As Hitchcock fans know, the discussion of Hitchcock films and the influence of his Catholic education at the hands of the Jesuits was raised in the 1950s in the now famous Cahiers du cinéma article written by the film directors Éric Rohmer and Claude Chabrol. In a September 5, 2008 article “Hitchcock: monster or Moralist” in Timesonline that discusses the issue raised by this thread quotes Hitchcock as saying, “A claim to be religious rests entirely on your own conscience, whether you believe or not. A Catholic attitude was indoctrinated into me. After all I was born a Catholic. I went to a Catholic School and I now have a conscience with lots of trials over belief.” The article continues by stating that Hitchcock claimed that while his Jesuit schooling had developed his “reasoning powers” it also developed his "a sense of fear.” Having seen most of his films, I think that his Catholicism provided the reference point for his view of morality and corresponding guilt feelings, but that his sense of fear about the chaos that exists in each of our lives right around the next corner was the motivating factor that drove him in creating the films that he had control over. I think that his ability to express how this fear and chaos affects the motives and actions of his characters is not so much inspired by his Catholicism as by his craftsman-like understanding of how to implicate his audience into the turmoil of the story.
While many of the “villains” in his films are killed or commit suicide, others will be brought to court or are simply allowed to go free. I don’t think that divine justice was in his mind in making these decisions as much as what fit well with the main elements of the plot. I believe this is true in The Lodger, The Skin Game, Young and Innocent, The Lady Vanishes, Rear Window, To Catch a Thief, North by Northwest, Psycho, Marnie, Frenzy, Dial M for Murder, The Wrong Man, Vertigo, Rope, Under Capricorn, The Paradine Case, and Family Plot.
hitchcock makes a pretty strong statement on religion in the film “frenzy”. when blaney’s wife is raped, she prays while holding on to a crucifix around her neck. what’s the result? she’s strangled to death. God is silent.
I’ve always considered Frenzy to be a… well, to be separate from Hitchcock’s formidable body of work. I separate things into the silent period, the british period, the David O. Selznik period, the post-David O. Selznik period, and, in the case of Frenzy, his return to Britain and a complete turn-over of his cinematic world. I really do not think Hitch was saying “God is silent,” or even making that bold of a moral statement. I think he was just putting the absolute “frenzy” of late 1960’s Britain to the pallet of his brand of suspense.
You do have a point though, to be certain, in the case of this scene. I think Hitch is making a statement here about the capability of evil being an extension of the darkness of the (psychotically perverted) human being. Keep in mind that the abrupt ending of the film leaves the audience to understand that Blaney will be released, Rusk will be arrested, and eventually sent to prison for life. In Hitchcock’s universe, this is consistent with his past judgement.
oh, my friend. let me tell you. “frenzy” is a MASTERPIECE. the last one the maestro made.
this film is underrated. you can’t separate it from hitch’s formidable body of work. it’s one of the reasons its formidable!
Yeah, I was impressed with Frenzy when I watched it, though I had low expectations for it somehow.
The Wrong Man is maybe Hitchcock’s quintessential study of the Christ-figure as everyday guy. And the film becomes overtly religious when Fonda’s mother tells him to pray for a solution, and there’s this striking dissolve where Fonda’s face turns into the face of the “right man,” the criminal who is about to give himself away and thereby set Fonda free.
The Wrong Man was Hitchcock’s stab at neorealism, without a doubt. It was the only film of his that was completely centered on a true story, with Hitch himself breaking the fourth wall before the presentation declaring so. He even stated with fervor in a later interview that the scene (though well worth its place in the film) in which the real thief’s face is superimposed upon Fonda’s was his biggest regret, in that it cinematically took away from the realism he was hoping to achieve.
Walt, that’s interesting. I think that shot is brilliant, but it is really the only “show-offy” moment in the film, stylistically.
Exactly.
actually, “the wrong man” was hitch’s stab at the semi-documentary crime film, which itself was influenced partly by neorealism.
Walt Ostrander
Two familiar biographies take two wildly differing opinions of Hitch; Donald Spoto’s The Dark Side of Genius: the Life of Alfred Hitchcock presents an insatiable leech whose method of respite comes from the obsessive manipulation of his leading ladies, while Patrick McGilligan’s later and much weightier tome Alfred Hitchcock: a Life in Darkness and Light shows Hitchcock as an iconoclastic auteur whose films are wrought with profound Catholic undertones. It would be false to claim that Alfred Hitchcock invented the theme of guilt and confession in film, but the Hitchcockian brand of it all is obviously his own, and is almost uniformly comprised of a transference of guilt on a bed of vintage Roman-Catholicism. On the surface, Hitch’s Catholicism is conscious. His films constantly work off the “wrong man” theme, in which the wrong person is caught by the police and convicted. Though the police in his films are nearly always imbeciles (a nod to the director’s youth in England), he was never prepared to let his villains go to court, but to somehow bring about their own demise. His films always put a sort of divine justice over the limitations of earthly justice. (See the film “I Confess”)