Extended Edition 01 by Diane Zeise

Extended is a quarterly magazine developed from my love for all facets of cinema. Not only does Extended discuss and interview the actors and directors of films we have all come to love, but it continues to search and analyze and discover the parts that have made the movie greats. When I fall in love with a film, old or new, I spend the next month finding all that I can about the process, production and creative decisions made by the director, screen writers, composer and the actors themselves. To me, cinema is so much more then the final product we pay $10.50 to see on the silver screen. Cinema is a product of the world we are immersed in that has the potential to catapult us in to a different time, world, environment or universe. Because I see film as an art form, I find it only fitting to create a magazine dedicated solely to the behind the scenes aspect of the pivotal moments in cinema history, a written extended edition, if you will. Each edition is a dedication to a director, screenwriter, actor or composer who changed the industry in some major way. So, without further ado, for those of you who watch your movies with the commentary on, I give you Extended Edition 01. Editor-in-chief Diane zeise

Ta b le of Con ten ts the hitchcock edition

Spotlights:

PG 03 film review: the raven PG 15 costume spotlight: edith williams

feature: Alfred Hitchcock

PG 05 spotting the classic hitchcock motifs PG 17 hitchcockâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s most memorable women & the revenge of the muse PG 29 charade: the greatest hitchock film that hitchcock never made PG 41 the legend of hitchcock PG 57 vertigo: the number one film in the world

PG 27 lucas and spielberg take over the 80â&#x20AC;&#x2122;s PG 39 touring the bates motel PG 55 composer spotlight: john williams PG 65 movie countdown: top ten thrillers

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A M urd erer Tappin g a t H is Chamber D oor ThE RAVEN FILM REVIEW WITH A. O. SCOTT John Cusack in “The Raven,” set in the 19th century, is a sort of “Jeopardy!” for Poe’s writing. Edgar Allan Poe died in Baltimore in October 1849, by most accounts in a state of dissipation and despair. “The Raven,” a new movie directed by James McTeigue (“V for Vendetta”; “Ninja Assassin”), differs from most accounts by imagining Poe in his final days as a heroic crime fighter, tracking down a diabolical serial killer with the tenacious ingenuity of the special agents on “Criminal Minds.” Since Poe is widely credited with inventing the detective genre, it seems only fair that he should have a chance to do a little sleuthing of his own. That seems to be the intention of a sadistic murderer whose grisly and ingenious methods are drawn directly from some of Poe’s tales. This homage is horrifying to Poe (who is played by a wild-eyed, wildmaned and furiously energetic John Cusack) but also perversely flattering. Someone has read the work of this notoriously vain, ambitious and competitive writer closely and has been inspired to imitation. That “someone” can equally refer to Mr. McTeigue and the screenwriters, Ben Livingston and Hannah Shakespeare. The fannish obsessiveness that animates “The Raven” is its most appealing attribute, and even Poe scholars can forgive it for discarding the biographical record in favor of playful, gruesome fantasy. There is a geeky pleasure in matching the on-screen murders to the tales they replicate, as in a Gothic version of “Jeopardy!” “What is ‘The Cask of Amontillado’?” “Who is ‘Marie Roget’?” “What is ‘The Masque of the Red Death’?” And “The Raven” might have worked best as the pilot for a creepy, old-style television series, featuring the writer embroiled in a different one of his own narratives each week. In addition to Poe himself Mr. McTeigue also pays tribute to Roger Corman’s Poe adaptations from the early ’60s, the best of which stand as perverse masterpieces of low-budget, overthe-top Grand Guignol. There is abundant blood, feverish overacting, and an atmosphere of hysterical Victorian Americana. Baltimore is envisioned as a city of mist and wet stone, dark wood, rotted gentility and ambient corruption, a place that seems to know that, in 150 years or so, it will be the setting for “The Wire.” (The Jimmy McNulty of 1849 is a dogged, handsome cop played by Luke Evans.) The film’s heart is in the right place (which is to say beating insistently under the floorboards). Its literary bona fides are certainly in order, and the filmmakers’

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affection for the boozy, wanton world of mid19th-century print culture — for the inky swamp of sensationalistic newspapers and scurrilous magazines from which American literature sprouted — is very much in evidence. But if Poe was the drunken, tragic bad boy of American letters, he was also a meticulous and disciplined craftsman. And it is on this score, rather than in matters of biographical detail, that “The Raven” lets him down. “The Raven,” unfortunately, does not settle on just one, preferring the usual moviemaking practice of multiplying effects until they pile up into a welter of breathless incident and preposterous exposition. Poe’s motive in seeking the killer is not just wounded literary pride, but also love, for his sensible fiancée, Emily (Alice Eve). (Her grouchy, wealthy father is played by Brendan Gleeson.) The couple’s devotion does not quite square with Poe’s louche, alcoholic temperament, and Mr. Cusack works himself into a lather trying to reconcile the contradictory parts of an incoherent character. In, I am sorry to say, an incoherent movie. Poe wrote love poetry, literary criticism, humorous sketches and science fiction as well as “tales of mystery and horror.” “The Raven” tries to blend all of these motley genres together, and though the effort is valiant, the result is a mess. I suspect Poe’s review of it would have been much more savage than mine. “The Raven” is rated R (Under 17 requires accompanying parent or adult guardian). Graphic, gory violence.

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16 c l ass i c mot i fs in hi tc h co c k f i l ms Alfred Hitchcock’s films show an interesting tendency towards recurring themes and devices, such that one can almost feel that he was in some way making the same movie, or at least telling the same story, over and over again throughout his life as a director. Here are some of the themes that show up repeatedly in his films. Suspense Hitchcock preferred the use of suspense over the use of surprise in his films. In surprise, the director assaults the viewer with frightening things. In suspense, the director tells or shows things to the audience which the characters in the film do not know, and then artfully builds tension around what will happen when the characters finally learn the truth. Hitchcock was fond of illustrating this point with a short aphorism – “There’s two people having breakfast and there’s a bomb under the table. If it explodes, that’s a surprise. But if it doesn’t...” Audience as voyeur Further blurring the moral distinction between the innocent and the guilty, occasionally making this indictment inescapably clear to viewers one and all, Hitchcock also makes voyeurs of his “respectable” audience. In Rear Window (1954), after L. B. Jeffries (played by James Stewart)

has been staring across the courtyard at him for most of the film, Lars Thorwald (played by Raymond Burr) confronts Jeffries by saying, “What do you want of me?” Burr might as well have been addressing the audience. In fact, shortly before asking this, Thorwald turns to face the camera directly for the first time. Similarly, Psycho begins with the camera moving toward a hotel-room window, through which the audience is introduced to Marion Crane (Janet Leigh) and her divorced boyfriend Sam Loomis, played by John Gavin. They are partially undressed, having apparently had sex though they are not married and Marion is on her lunch “hour”. Later, along with Norman Bates (portrayed by Anthony Perkins), the audience watches Marion undress through a peephole. MacGuffin One of Hitchcock’s favorite devices for driving the plots of his stories and creating suspense was what he called the “MacGuffin”. The Oxford English Dictionary, however, credits Hitchcock’s friend, the Scottish screenwriter Angus MacPhail, as being the true inventor of the term. Hitchcock defined this term in a 1964 interview conducted by François Truffaut, published as Hitchcock/Truffaut (Simon and Schuster, 1967). Hitchcock would use this plot device extensively. Many of his suspense films revolve around this device: a detail which, by inciting curiosity and desire, drives the plot and motivates the actions of characters within the story, but whose specific identity and nature is unimportant to the spectator of the film. In Vertigo, for instance, “Carlotta Valdes” is a MacGuffin; she never appears and the details of her death are unimportant to the viewer, but the story about her ghost’s

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haunting of Madeleine Elster is the spur for Scottie’s investigation of her, and hence the film’s entire plot. In Notorious, the uranium that the main characters must recover before it reaches Nazi hands serves as a similarly arbitrary motivation: any dangerous object would suffice. And state secrets of various kinds serve as MacGuffins in several of the spy films, especially his earlier British films The Man Who Knew Too Much, The 39 Steps, and The Lady Vanishes. Hitchcock has stated that the best MacGuffin, or as he put it, “the emptiest,” was the one used in North By Northwest, which was referred to as “Government secrets” The ordinary person Placing an ordinary person in extraordinary circumstances is a common element of Hitchcock’s films. In The 39 Steps, the protagonist Richard Hannay is drawn into a web of espionage, after a female spy he meets in a theatre is killed in his apartment. In The Man Who Knew Too Much (1956), James Stewart plays an ordinary man from Indianapolis vacationing in Morocco when his son is kidnapped. In The Wrong Man, Manny Balestrero (Henry Fonda) is arrested for a crime he didn’t commit. In Psycho, Janet Leigh plays an unremarkable secretary whose personal story is violently interrupted by a furious psychopath. Other clear examples are Strangers on a Train, I Confess, Vertigo, and North By Northwest. The focus on an ordinary character enables the audience to relate to the action in the movie. The wrong man or wrong woman Mistaken identity is a common plot device in his films. North By Northwest - Roger Thornhill (Cary Grant) is mistaken for George Kaplan, a non-existent CIA agent. The Wrong Man - Henry Fonda is mistaken for a criminal. Vertigo - The film revolves around Scottie Ferguson’s investigation of the false Madeleine Elster’s real identity. The 39 Steps - Richard Hannay, the main character, is unjustly accused of murdering a woman, a spy by the name of Annabella, AKA Ms Smith. Frenzy - The protagonist is thought to be the notorious Necktie Killer due the circumstances he finds himself in. Saboteur Barry Cane is framed by a saboteur named Frank Fry for an aircraft fire. Shadow of a Doubt - Uncle Charlie (Joseph Cotten) is the real killer of the Merry Widow murders, but the police accuse a dead man from a different state. Only he and his niece (Teresa Wright) know the real murderer. The double Hitchcock often used “the double” in his films as a way to represent the relationship between characters. One representation of “the double” has both characters sharing the same desire however only one of them takes action. In “Strangers On A Train”, Bruno carries out the plot of murdering Guy’s wife, just the way Guy would like to do it. Also in “Rope”, Brandon Shaw and Philip Morgan kill an inferior human being just the way their teacher Rupert Cadell would like to do it. In “Psycho”, Marion Crane

steals $40,000 and plans on running away just the way Norman Bates would like to run away from his mother. These characters are in the same situation but are completely different personalities. The likeable criminal, aka the charming sociopath The villain in many of Hitchcock’s films appears charming and refined rather than oafish and vulgar. Especially clear examples of this tendency are Godfrey Tearle in The 39 Steps, Paul Lukas in The Lady Vanishes, Claude Rains in Notorious, Barry Foster in Frenzy, Joseph Cotten in Shadow of a Doubt, Robert Walker in Strangers on a Train, Ray Milland in Dial M For Murder, William Devane in Family Plot, and James Mason in North by Northwest. Villains such as Thorwald (Rear Window) and Norman Bates (Psycho) are portrayed as emotionally vulnerable and sympathetic characters. In Psycho, Marion Crane (Janet Leigh) steals from her employer and runs away to be with her boyfriend, thus making her a criminal for her theft, and immoral for having pre-marital sex. However, the filmgoers are sympathetic to her; she has just decided to return the money when she is then brutally murdered. In Marnie, the title character (Tippi Hedren) is a cunning serial thief.

Staircases Images of staircases often play a central role in Hitchcock’s films. The Lodger tracks a suspected serial killer’s movement on a staircase. Years later, a similar shot appears in the final sequence of Notorious. In Vertigo, the staircase in the church bell tower plays a crucial role in the plot. In Psycho, several staircases are featured prominently: as part of the path up to the Bates mansion, as the entrance to the fruit cellar, and as the site of Detective Arbogast’s murder. In Rear Window, an entirely nonfunctional staircase adorns James Stewart’s apartment, in addition to the numerous fire escape staircases seen each time we follow Stewart’s gaze out of his window. In Shadow of a Doubt, Charlie Oakley (Joseph Cotten) attempts to murder his niece by rigging a staircase to collapse. In Dial M for Murder, a key kept under the stair carpet plays a pivotal role in booking the murderer. Frenzy features an unusual shot which tracks the killer and his victim first up the stairs, then retreats backwards down the stairs alone while the audience is left to imagine the killing which is taking place. One other iconic stairwell shot comes from the movie Suspicion as Cary Grant slowly walks up the stairs to deliver what would have been the poisonous warmed milk to his wife. Hitchcock, the studios and Cary Grant decided his character could not end up as a murderer and that scene becomes a red herring with a new ending added. In “The Birds”, the camera follows Tippi Hedren up the stairs to the attic where (suspensefully) the birds wait silently to attack her. This stylistic interest in staircases is attributed to the influence of German Expressionism, which often featured

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ia er l n l i l c” V i u t e v e h y l “T th l a a P n m io sy t o d n m e a

(Paris: Éditions Universitaires, 1957) -- Hitchcock often sets up a villain/antagonist who has a dark secret. In the course of the film, Hitchcock, through the screenplay and the filming, makes it clear that the hero/protagonist somehow shares in this secret or guilt. Examples include: Suspicion (1941): Lina (Joan Fontaine) suspects her husband (Cary Grant) as a murderer, and allows this suspicion to ruin their life, even when he is revealed to be innocent. Shadow of a Doubt (1943): after Uncle Charlie (Joseph Cotten) is revealed as a murderer, his niece, Young Charlie (Teresa Wright) says she will kill him if he doesn’t leave the household. Lifeboat (1944): the Allied shipwreck victims attack the German captain (Walter Slezak) after several days, in what amounts to a lynching. Strangers on a Train (1951): Guy (Farley Granger) goes along with Bruno (Robert Walker) because Guy does want to kill his wife. Rear Window (1954): Jeffries (James Stewart) spies on his neighbors, hoping to catch a murderer (Raymond Burr), leading to dubious tactics to catch the criminal

heavily stylized and menacing staircases, for example in The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari. Trains

Vertigo (1958): Scottie (James Stewart) follows Madeleine (Kim Novak) and unwittingly accepts the story of Madeleine’s life from her husband, indirectly causing her death.

Number Seventeen

Psycho (1960): in a reversal of the usual pattern, a character who appears to be the heroine, Marion Crane (Janet Leigh), commits a crime, is murdered, and the audience’s sympathy is transferred to an ambiguous character Norman Bates (Anthony Perkins).

Shadow of a Doubt

Mothers

The 39 Steps

Strangers on a Train

Mothers are frequently depicted as intrusive and domineering, or at the very least, batty, as seen in Rope, Notorious, Strangers on a Train, North by Northwest, Psycho, Shadow of a Doubt, and The Birds.

North by Northwest

Brandy

In The 39 Steps and North by Northwest, the limitations imposed by train travel on characters’ movements enhances the suspense as the lead character is pursued for a crime he did not commit.

Hitchcock includes the consumption of brandy in many of his films. “I’ll get you some brandy. Drink this down. Just like medicine ...” says Scottie Ferguson to “Madeleine Elster” in Vertigo. In a real-life incident, Hitchcock dared Montgomery Clift at a dinner party around the filming of I Confess (1953) to swallow a carafe of brandy, which caused the actor to pass out almost immediately. In Torn Curtain and Topaz, brandy is defined more closely as cognac. Melanie Daniels (Tippi Hedren) is offered a brandy by Annie Hayworth (Suzanne Pleshette), and after being attacked by the birds, drinks the brandy offered by Mitch (Rod Taylor). In Rear Window, Lisa Fremont (Grace Kelly) is “just warming some brandy”. In Frenzy, Richard Blaney is sacked for supposedly stealing brandy, and can be seen in several sequences to be drinking brandy. In Saboteur, Harry Kane offers Mrs. Mason some brandy to calm her nerves. In Murder! the main evidence in the murder case is a bottle of brandy. The identity of the

In Hitchcock’s films, trains are often used as a sexual euphemism. Extended sequences on trains feature in a number of Hitchcock films, including

The Lady Vanishes

Hitchcock’s most-extended train sequence is in The Lady Vanishes, where the inability to exit the train except at stations forces the two lead characters to accept that the lady for whom they are searching must still be aboard. The vertiginous excitement of moving around the outside of a moving train is exploited in Number Seventeen and The Lady Vanishes. Transference of guilt As related in articles by Francois Truffaut, Claude Chabrol, Eric Rohmer and others in the French film magazine Cahiers du Cinema -- and in Chabrol and Rohmer’s book Hitchcock

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“there are countless images of birds in nearly all o f hitchcock’s films” killer is later confirmed by a bottle of brandy seen in his dressing room. Sexuality For their time, Hitchcock’s films were regarded as rather sexualized, often dealing with perverse and taboo behaviors. Sometimes, the prudish conventions of his era caused him to convey sexuality in an emblematic fashion, such as in North by Northwest, when the film cuts abruptly from two aroused but visually chaste lovers to a train entering a tunnel. Hitchcock found a number of ways to convey sexuality without depicting graphic behaviors, such as the substitution of explicit sexual passion with the passionate consumption of food. In a particularly amusing scene in Psycho, Norman Bates (Anthony Perkins) carries on a conversation with Marion Crane (Janet Leigh) while one of his hands strokes a dead animal and the other hand lingers on his crotch. Sexual feelings are often strongly associated with violent behavior. In The Lodger and Psycho, this association is the whole basis of the film. Biographers have noted how Hitchcock continued to challenge film censorship throughout his career, until he was allowed to show nudity in Frenzy. Blonde women Hitchcock had a dramatic preference for blonde women, stating that the audience would be more suspicious of a brunette. Many of these blondes were of the Grace Kelly variety: perfect, aloof ice goddesses, who also have a hidden red-hot inner fire. In Vertigo James Stewart forces a woman to dye her hair blonde. One of Hitchcock’s earliest films, The Lodger (1927), features a serial killer who stalks blonde women. Blonde actress Anny Ondra famously starred in Hitchcock’s first sound film Blackmail (1929). Hitchcock said he used blonde actresses in his films, not because of an attraction to them, but because of a

tradition that began with silent star Mary Pickford. The director said that blondes were “a symbol of the heroine”. He also thought they photographed better in black and white, which was the predominant film for most dramas for many years. In Family Plot, Karen Black plays a kidnapper who wears a blonde wig and sunglasses as a disguise. Other notable blonde women include Tippi Hendren in The Birds, Dany Robin in Topaz, Barbara Leigh-Hunt in Frenzy, Janet Leigh in Psycho, Grace Kelly in Rear Window, and Kim Novak in ‘Vertigo. Silent scenes As a former silent film director, Hitchcock strongly preferred to convey narrative with images rather than dialogue. Hitchcock viewed film as a primarily visual medium in which the director’s assemblage of images must convey the narrative. Examples of imagery over dialogue are in the lengthy sequence in Vertigo in which Scottie silently follows Madeleine, or the Albert Hall sequence in the 1956 version of The Man Who Knew Too Much. Birds There are countless images of birds in nearly all of Hitchcock’s films. Some of the most prominent are listed below. Psycho: The film begins in Phoenix, Arizona and a Phoenix is also a mythological bird. Marion’s last name is “Crane.” Norman practices taxidermy as a hobby and his favorites are birds. Norman describes Marion’s eating behavior as “eats like a bird”.  Vertigo: Gavin’s last name is Elster, which is German for Magpie.  The Birds: The film’s plot revolves around birds attacking Bodega Bay.  To Catch a Thief:Hitchcock’s cameo is that of a man on a bus holding a bird cage with a bird inside it.

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C o stu me Spotlight The Academy Award for Best Costume Design is given out annually by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences for the best achievement of film costume design of the previous year. Films that are eligible for the award must meet a series of criteria, including the requirement that the costumes must have been “conceived” by a costume designer. For this particular criteria, each submission is reviewed by the costume designer members of the Art Directors Branch prior to the ballot process. Further rules include that the nominee(s) be only the principal costume designer(s), that the five films that receive the highest amount of votes will become the ceremony’s nominations for final voting, and that the final voting will only be undertaken by active and life members of the Academy.

Edith Head (October 28, 1897 – October 24, 1981) was an American costume designer who won eight Academy Awards, more than any other woman.

In 1924, despite lacking art, design, and costume design experience, Head was hired as a costume sketch artist at Paramount Pictures in the costume department. Later she admitted to borrowing another student’s sketches for her job interview. She began designing costumes for silent films, commencing with The Wanderer in 1925 and, by the 1930s, had established herself as one of Hollywood’s leading costume designers. She worked at Paramount for 43 years until she went to Universal Pictures on March 27, 1967, possibly prompted by her extensive work for director Alfred Hitchcock, who had also moved to Universal, in 1960. Head was known for her low-key working style and, unlike many of her male contemporaries, usually consulted extensively with the female stars with whom she worked. As a result she was a favorite among many of the leading female stars of the 1940s and ‘50s such as Ginger Rogers, Bette Davis, Barbara Stanwyck, Shirley MacLaine, Anne Baxter, Grace Kelly, Audrey Hepburn, Elizabeth Taylor, and Natalie Wood. In fact, Head was frequently “lent out” by Paramount to other studios at the request of their female stars.

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Hitchcock had a dramatic preference for blonde women, stating that the audience would be more suspicious of a brunette. Many of these blondes were of the Grace Kelly variety: perfect, aloof ice goddesses, who also have a hidden red-hot inner fire. In Vertigo James Stewart forces a woman to dye her hair blonde. One of Hitchcock’s earliest films, The Lodger (1927), features a serial killer who stalks blonde women. Blonde actress Anny Ondra famously starred in Hitchcock’s first sound film Blackmail (1929). Hitchcock said he used blonde actresses in his films, not because of an attraction to them, but because of a tradition that began with silent star Mary Pickford. The director said that blondes were “a symbol of the heroine”. He also thought they photographed better in black and white, which was the predominant film for most dramas for many years. In Family Plot, Karen Black plays a kidnapper who wears a blonde wig and sunglasses as a disguise. Other notable blonde women include Tippi Hendren in The Birds, Dany Robin in Topaz, Barbara Leigh-Hunt in Frenzy, Janet Leigh in Psycho, Grace Kelly in Rear Window, and Kim Novak in ‘Vertigo.

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hitchcockâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s most memorable women with Michaela Pluskovich

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ER S O CL OK LO

Alfred Hitchcock has been called many names: Hitch, the master of suspense, a technical pioneer, and last but not least, a voyeur and misogynist. The latter is what feminist film theorist have devoted their studies to since the second wave of feminism, with Laura Mulvey and her essay “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema” leading the way. In this influential essay, the British feminist film theorist criticizes the classical Hollywood portrayal of women with a “strong visual and erotic impact,” resulting in female characters who merely embody men’s sexual desire while having no essential importance to the plot themselves (Mulvey 346). Subsequently, this puts the spectator in the position of the patriarchal “male gaze,” experiencing only a passive, and powerless female character. Having been part of this Hollywood structure most of his career, Hitchcock and his films were often made into a target of this theory, accusing him of repetitive violent exertion on his female characters with such a schematic routine that only sadistically dispositional women could be able to enjoy. While all of this might be true for classical and even contemporary Hollywood, which in fact have been greatly influenced by Hitchcock, his later films, such as Vertigo (1958), Rear Window (1954), and The Birds (1963) exhibit a complexity of the female lead characters that make it impossible for the film analyst to discount them as mere misogynistic portrayals of women. Indeed, even Robert Phillip Kolker, author of “Women as Genre,” has to admit that even though Hitchcock is “a misogynist at his core, … [this] was part of a greater misanthropy,” and the director is aware of, and also questions, his characters’ mistakes; an elaboration which reviewers often misinterpret (Kolker 140). This misinterpretation can be traced back to the complexity and diversity of the representation of women in Hitchcock’s films, which leaves us to assume that the director’s intentions lie in a deeper critic of gender roles in general. The examination of the mentioned films gives reason to believe that the male gaze and its related gender identification is one that the female characters are not only aware of, but the camera movement suggests that the films should not just be stigmatized as mere misogynistic portrayal of women, but rather a critic on these gender defined roles. The diversity of women’s representation in Hitchcock’s films is evident in his most reviewed and criticized films Vertigo, Rear Window and The Birds. Vertigo and Rear Window have both been scrutinized by feminist theorist, and justifiably so. At first sight, there might be a clear structure and definition of female representation that contrasts the usual dangerous and mysterious femme-fatale, the embodiment of men’s sexual desire, with the independent and intellectually superior woman, whose intelligence is not recognized by the men. Such a contrast of characters can be exemplified with those in Vertigo, for example Scott’s ex-fiancée Midge (Barbara Geddes), whose motherly advice is belittled and exploited by Scott (James Stewart), and Madeleine (Kim Novak), the lead male’s embodied desire. However, while these portrayals look like misogynistic stereotypes, their context show that Hitchcock must have been completely aware of this, which suggests the need for a critique on the interpretation of these expected gender roles. The scenes with Midge, for example, indicate that she is not only intelligent as a woman, but the use of various close-ups suggest a superiority even to the male lead Scott. Some theorists as Slavoj Zizek suggest that Hitchcock’s decision to portray female characters like Midge only fulfill “characteristic details which persist and and repeat themselves without a common meaning” (126). However, when

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the classical Hollywood portrayal of women with a strong visual and erotic

impact” looking at these details more closely, they also are a device to further disempower the male character, in this case Scott, who already is emasculated by his acrophobia. In the second scene of Vertigo, the viewer is introduced to Midge, a nickname for Marjorie that almost sounds manly, as well as Scott’s current situation after his detective related accident on San Francisco’s roofs. While the dialogue in the scene conveys a certain degradation of Midge by Scottie’s belittling remarks, such as “Oh, no, … Midge, don’t be so motherly,”, the camera movement gives way to Midge’s mind. Although Scottie presumptuously does not expect any reaction to his comment, the next shot is a close-up of Midge looking up from the sketches she is working on and glaring towards Scott. This quick moment gives the audience the chance to identify with Midge’s feelings and with the subsequent shot showing Scottie from Midge’s perspective, mindlessly fiddling with his cane and not noticing Midge’s reaction, with Scott looking fairly unillumined and ignorant to the viewer. Although this moment is rather unimportant to the plot, as it is to the male protagonist, we can find it several times throughout the scene, which emphasizes its importance to Hitchcock in order to give the viewer a chance to empathize with the female’s perspective and at the same time shift to a “woman gaze.”

The other woman, Madeleine, is actually composed of different characters and multiple identities, who are all defined through different representations of women. However, the overall concept of their characters is their sexual attractiveness, which leads Scottie into a nightmare. This desire of the man, which is portrayed as the fascinating beautiful Madeleine, is mainly conveyed through POV-shots from Scottie’s perspective. Except for the later flashback, which resolves the murder of Elster’s wife, and the scenes that we see from Midge’s perspective (which again shows the importance she has of questioning Scottie’s perspective), the viewer experiences the events exclusively from Scottie’s point of view. We continuously see Madeleine portrayed

dreamlike through POV-shots and from a rather great distance, staring at the mysterious portrait and disappearing with her car so that the truth can be easily hidden from the spectator, and from Scott. However, these POV-shots also have another function, which is to convey that the dream of Madeleine really is nothing more than a dream, and to question Scottie’s “reality,” at the latest when we find out about the murder. An example that supports this dreamlike and unreal portrayal is when Judy finally shows herself as the costumed Madeleine, a shot in which she is shown through blurry vision in a glooming blue light, which make her appear like a ghost. Indeed, Scott’s obsession with Madeleine is merely one of that with a ghost, a ghost of a made-up identity that stands for the “eternal feminine,” as Tania Modleski calls it in her book “The Women Who Knew too Much” (93). The fact that Gavin Elster constructed this “eternal feminine” in order to mislead the detective, strengthens the awareness of and the critic on the gender roles, a construct of “male desire and male design” that in reality is nothing. Rear Window has, similar to Vertigo, been an easy target for the male gaze theory, as it also shows the plot from one point of view. Even further, the lead male protagonist L. B. “Jeff” Jeffries (James Stewart) is confined to his wheelchair after an accident, with the story being seen through his eyes, or binoculars. This leaves the viewer with only a few opportunities to emphasize with any other character’s perspective, including that of the female’s. By being confined to a wheelchair with an enormous cast on his leg Jeff, a successful and adventurous photographer, is emasculated much like the character of Scott in Vertigo. This emasculation is important as it not only drives the story forward, but also gives the women in this film, Lisa Fremont (Grace Kelly) and Stella (Thelma Ritter), the insurance company nurse, the opportunity to prove themselves outside of their defined gender roles. In this respect, the gender roles even seem to be reversed, and Hitchcock himself points this out when he refers to the symmetry between Lisa and Jeff’s relationship and that of Mr. and Mrs. Thorwald’: on the spectator’s side we have a unsatisfied wheelchair-bound man and a loving care taking woman, while the opposite is evident on the other side of the backyard (Modleski 72). The reference to Lisa as the stronger and more active character is strengthened later when she takes the initiative to solve the murder, whereas Jeff can only stand – or better, sit – on the sideline when his girlfriend is in danger. Women in danger is also a theme which has been an issue in Hitchcock’s films, and is the least justifiable one in feminist theory. Hitchcock’s The Birds is an example of such exerted violence on women, although here it is the danger that the hero of the story usually has to suffer from, regardless if man or woman. Indeed, it is the female lead character Melanie Daniels (Tippi Herden) whose point-of-view the spectator is looking from, and it is the psychological insight into the females’ character that makes it less misogynistic. In fact, Melanie is portrayed as a independent women and able to take care of herself; in the scene where she navigates the boat over the bay to sneak into her future lover Mitchell Brenner’s (Rod Taylor) house Melanie has no difficulties to maneuver the boat, an action that is not expected from a woman of her class. Mitch on the other hand, although also handy himself and the eventual savior of Melanie’s life, does not have the same importance to the plot that any of the women have, with the most important theme in this film seeming to concentrate around a mother/daughter relationship (Lincoln 615). This is emphasized with the scene in which Mitch’s mother Lydia, who extremely resembles

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Melanie physically, admits that she wished she was stronger, and therefore the power over Mitch shifts from the mother to Melanie, who is repetitively filmed from a lower angle than her female rivals. While it was arguably not in Hitchcock’s intentions to make a feminist statement with his films, it has to be accounted for that his complex, round female characters need interpretation on a deeper level, where psychoanalytic explanations are supported by Hitchcock’s technical mastery, and most likely by his wife Alma Reville’s input. The 1950s, in which two of his most influential films were produced, was a time of extreme decline of women in film, with the decreasing popularity of musicals and “women’s films,” leading straight to the emergence of the “buddy films” in the ’70s, which had no need for major female roles (Lincoln 615). With films like Vertigo, Rear Window, as well as The Birds in mind, it would be too easy to dismiss Hitchcock’s work as mere misogynistic representations of women. Hitchcock did not choose beautiful actresses to simply play a flat passive character, but rather complex individuals who might need a second look in order to see their importance with respect to the plot and the film’s interpretation.

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f o us e g sm ’ n ve ock MAN e D r h OL G e c th hit NDREW d by A e fr rview l a te In

Tippi Hedren, The new HBO movie “The Girl” depicts your relationship with Alfred Hitchcock, who, after giving you your first movie role in “The Birds,” plants an unwanted kiss on you, tries to blackmail you for sex and stalks you. Why would he do these things?

TH He was a misogynist. That man was physically so

unattractive. I think to have a mind that thought of himself as an attractive, romantic man and then to wake up in the morning and look at that face and that body was tough. I think he had a whole lot of problems.

AG The film made me ponder the expression “Revenge is a dish best served cold.” Is there any satisfaction in exacting revenge on a man who has been dead 32 years?

TH Well, I don’t know that I’ve gotten any revenge on

him. Maybe this movie is a bit. But I’m not the first one this happened to. Other actresses never made any overt statements about it. What he did with his life is astounding. There is no one in this world that did films like he did. Nobody.

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“He ruined my career, but he didn’t ruin my life... I still admire the man for who he was.” AG The worst abuse happened after you rebuffed his advances.

Actors have been known to sleep with less powerful directors for advancement in show business. Did you ever consider it?

TH I have a strong Lutheran background, and my parents

instilled in me strong morals. This was something I could never have done. I was not interested in him that way at all. I was fortunate enough to work with him, and as far as I was concerned, he ruined everything.

AG Why? I would assume the only reason you’d want to see his grave is to spit on it.

TH You don’t get it. He ruined my career, but he didn’t ruin my life. That time of my life was over. I still admire the man for who he was.

AG Years later, you bought a huge piece of land in California,

book it’s based on — in which Hitchcock informs you that you are to be sexually available to him any time, any place. How do you even respond to that?

where you still live, acquired a number of big cats and spent a decade making a movie with them called “Roar.” During the filming, a lion scratched your daughter, Melanie Griffith, and she needed plastic surgery. The cinematographer was scalped, and your former husband was mauled. Were you naïve about the dangers?

TH  I said, I’ve got to get out of the contract. He said, I’ll ruin your

TH We had not a clue what we were doing. We really didn’t. We

AG There is a scene in “The Girl” — as well as in the Donald Spoto

career. And he did. He wouldn’t let me out of the contract. I’d be a really big star if he hadn’t stopped my career. There were so many people who wanted me for their films. All he said was, “She isn’t available.” That’s a mean, mean man.

AG You’ve said that his wife, Alma, knew of his obsession with you.

TH That couple was an enigma to all of Hollywood. At one point, she came to me during “Marnie” and said, “I’m so sorry you have to go through all of this,” and I looked at her and said, “Alma, you could stop it.” Her eyes just glazed over, and she turned and left.

AG How did you react to the news of his death?   TH Relief. AG Of course, you must not have gone to his funeral.   TH I did.

had wanted to use Hollywood acting animals, but because instinct dictates a cat will fight a cat they didn’t know, all of the cat trainers said: “I don’t want my cat hurt, and I don’t want to get hurt. Get your own animals to do the movie.” We were in a learning process.

AG There’s a photo of you and a teenage Melanie, whose head is six inches away from Neil, your first live-in lion.

TH He was not a live-in lion. Sometimes I get so annoyed with you writers.

AG The caption from your book reads, “Melanie and I with Neil, our first live-in lion.”

TH O.K., I missed that one. O.K. AG Does Melanie ever say at Christmas, “Mom, thank God I wasn’t eaten by the lions”?

TH Oh, we all say that. Thank God we made it. Thank God nobody was killed. We all say that.

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L uc as an d sp ielberg take over the eighties with shawn miller George Lucas and Steven Spielberg are responsible for 7 of the top 10 highest-grossing films of the 1980s. 1980: Star Wars: Episode V - The Empire Strikes Back (1980)

1981

Raiders of the Lost Ark

1982

E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial

1983 Star Wars: Episode VI - Return of the Jedi 1984 Beverly Hills Cop 1985

Back to the Future

1986 Top Gun 1987

Three Men and a Baby

1988 Rain Man 1989

Batman

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Not only that, but they are also responsible for 4 of the top 5 films of that decade! The seven films include: E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial, Star Wars Episodes V & VI, and the Indiana Jones trilogy. Spielberg also produced Back to the Future. Lucas began the decade with the completion of The Empire Strikes Back (1980), his first Star Wars sequel, and then collaborated with Spielberg on a new project called Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981), which was released the following year. Spielberg then moved on to direct what would be the most financially successful film of the decade, E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial (1982), while Lucas completed his Star Wars trilogy with the release of Return of the Jedi (1983). The next year, the pair got back together for the Raiders prequel Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (1984), before Spielberg signed on as executive producer of Back to the Future (1985). This ended their streak of rabid success for a couple of years. Lucas produced a couple of forgettable TV shows about Droids and Ewoks, and Spielberg directed a pair of less lucrative films. The honeymoon was not over just yet, though - the dynamic duo reunited to sneak one final blockbuster to close out the decade with Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (1989).

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charade

The greatest hitchcock film that hitchcock never made with colin marshall & MATTHEW DESSEM

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Charade is a 1963 American film directed by Stanley Donen, written by Peter Stone and Marc Behm, and starring Cary Grant and Audrey Hepburn. The movie also features Walter Matthau, James Coburn, George Kennedy, Dominique Minot, Ned Glass, and Jacques Marin. It spans three genres: suspense thriller, romance and comedy. Because Universal Pictures published the movie with an invalid copyright notice, the film entered the public domain in the United States immediately upon its release. The film is notable for its screenplay, especially the repartee between Grant and Hepburn, for having been filmed on location in Paris, for Henry Mancini’s score and theme song, and for the animated titles by Maurice Binder. Charade has received generally positive reviews from critics, and was additionally noted to contain influences of genres such as whodunit, screwball and spy thriller; it has also been referred to as “the best Hitchcock movie that Hitchcock never made.”

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Screenplay. Hepburn won the BAFTA Award as Best Actress. Charade, the Best Hitchcock Film Hitchcock Never Made

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Critical reception Charade has received generally positive reviews from critics, receiving an “All Critics” 91% rating from Rotten Tomatoes, with an average of 8.1 out of 10, despite receiving a 67% rating from the “Top Critics” category, with an average of 6 out of 10. In a review published January 6, 1963 in The New York Times by Bosley Crowther, the film was criticised for its “grisly touches” and “gruesome violence”, despite receiving praise for its screenplay with regards to its “sudden twists, shocking gags, eccentric arrangements and occasionally bright and brittle lines” as well as Donen’s direction, said to be halfway between a 1930s screwball comedy and North by Northwest by Alfred Hitchcock. In a Time Out review, the film was rated positively, with the assertion that it is a “mammoth audience teaser [...] Grant imparts his ineffable charm, Kennedy (with metal hand) provides comic brutality, while Hepburn is elegantly fraught.” While reviewing the blu-ray DVD version of the film, Chris Cabin of Slant Magazine gave the film a positive three-and-a-half out of five rating, calling it a “high-end, kitschy whodunit”, and writing that it is “riotous and chaotic take on the spy thriller, essentially, but it structurally resembles Agatha Christie’s And Then There Were None” as well as describing it as “some sort of miraculous entertainment”. Awards Grant and Hepburn were nominated for Golden Globes for Best Motion Picture Actor in a Musical/Comedy and Best Motion Picture Actress in Musical/Comedy. Henry Mancini’s title song, with lyrics by Johnny Mercer, was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Original Song in 1964. Screenwriter Stone received a 1964 Edgar Award from the Mystery Writers of America for Best Motion Picture

The best Hitchcock film Hitchcock never made. That’s how certain enthusiasts of American film think of Charade, Stanley Donen’s 1963 lightly comedic mystery thriller filled with international intrigue. Its cast list draws deeply from the era’s formidable well of cinematic icons: Cary Grant, Audrey Hepburn, Walter Matthau, James Coburn, and George Kennedy. Its action takes place in no less a screen-illuminating world city than Paris. The Criterion Collection has seen fit to give it a scholarly, respectable DVD and Blu-Ray release. It comes scored by Henry Mancini. It has inspired four remakes, including one in Bengali and one in Hindi. It director also made On the Town, Singin’ in the Rain, Funny Face, and Bedazzled. ”A terrifically entertaining comedy-thriller,” critic Dave Kehr calls it, “perfectly crafted” and “a marvelous use of Paris.” Analysis Studios and critics have alternated between celebrating and excoriating the Hollywood star system since Florence Lawrence first got her name in lights. For the purposes of this blog, I’m going to ignore the economic considerations of casting a star. This is really the only part of the whole thing that matters to studios, of course: casting someone who can open a movie is more important than finding a director or a script. As with everything else in Hollywood, the star system is all about mental real estate, shortcuts for the marketing department and so on. (And the only non-actor the unwashed masses remember is Steven Spielberg). But assume the battle is already won: the marketing department has ushered you at gunpoint to your seat and you’re watching a movie with a star. When they appear on screen, whether it’s Humphrey Bogart or Jim Carrey, you’re seeing an amalgamation of the role that they’re playing and their carefully designed persona. Don’t get me started on the way stars protect their images to the detriment of playing interesting characters (see the differences between Skjoldbjærg and Nolan’s versions of Insomnia for a vivid example). But sometimes filmmakers beat the system; if you know what you’re doing, manipulating stars’ images can be at least as interesting as debating whether or not Carrey or Cruise are worth 20 million. Nobody understood this better than Alfred Hitchcock, who made some of the smartest casting decisions of any filmmaker. He’s able to make Cary Grant an absolute bastard to Ingrid Bergman without losing our sympathy in Notorious because, well, he’s Cary Grant. Jimmy Stewart’s creepiness is a surprise every time in Vertigo, and although Anthony Perkins doesn’t strike anyone as a young romantic lead anymore, that was his image until Hitchcock smashed it in Psycho. Shrewd manipulation of audience expectations of stars is one thing, and it’s well represented throughout the Criterion Collection. But it wouldn’t work at all if not for the vast body of movies that trade in on stars’ personas without challenging them. That’s where Charade fits in. Charade isn’t a movie where stars play against type or where their personas are deconstructed. Rather, it’s a giddy exercise in what William Goldman would call “stars as audiences want to see them.” Appropriately enough, it looks a lot like a Hitchcock movie. Like The 39 Steps, this movie is a mixture of thriller and romantic comedy. Stanley Donen was fortunate enough to get two of the most beautiful and beloved actors of their respective generations to play the romantic leads. Here they steal a moment together in the midst of chaos for a romantic meal:

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As you can see, from the first frame, audiences wonder only one thing: how will these two lovebirds end up together? Ok, I apologize; that was ridiculous. Here’s the real still: With Cary Grant and Audrey Hepburn on screen together, you don’t really have to do too much to make a great movie, or at least a fun one. Donen has a serviceable plot, with more than the required number of turnarounds. Hepburn, unhappily married, returns home to find her husband was not the man he claimed to be. Furthermore, she discovers he has sold all her possessions and gotten himself killed while fleeing France by train. It seems that the couple’s wealth (a) was stolen from the United States government as part of a World War II pact and (b) has disappeared completely. This puts Hepburn in kind of an awkward position, since the other people who helped her husband steal the money are convinced that she has it. Fortunately, Cary Grant shows up out of virtually nowhere to help her outwit her husband’s former army buddies. And when it comes to outwitting, nobody was ever better than Grant. Although Hepburn hadn’t played the kind of character she plays in this movie before, anyone who’s seen Wait Until Dark knows she can do one hell of a resourceful-in-a-crisis damsel in distress. One can imagine making this movie and having both actors play against type. But I don’t want to see that hypothetical movie as much as I want to see the two of them being funny and charming. Basically being, you know, Cary Grant and Audrey Hepburn. Charade is an ideal star vehicle for these two, drawing heavily from Hitchcock’s movies (all the way back to The 39 Steps, as Charles Taylor has noted) for its particular mixture of genres. The trailer memorably categorizes Charade as something crafted in a blender: The slight craziness of that image gives you a pretty good sense of the tone of the film. Donen was the director of Singin’ in the Rain, which to me was always the best example of a film that works because of sheer over-thetop commitment. When Donald O’Connor starts singing “Make ‘Em Laugh,” it’s not that funny. But nobody in the history of the human race has made it through the backflips that end that sequence without laughing; he’s just so damn earnest about the whole thing. There’s at least one sequence in Charade that has the same earnest goofiness, a bizarre set piece where Cary Grant takes a shower fully clothed. It’s not much of a gag but he sells it as wholeheartedly as Donald O’Connor (and I think there’s an echo of Singin’ In The Rain’s raincoats in that Technicolor shower curtain). In fact, the scene could be lifted and set right in the middle of Singin’ in the Rain and nobody would notice. But I invite you to find a place in Singin’ in the Rain for the pre-credit shot in which we’re introduced to Hepburn’s husband: The surprised expression and lacerations seem too grim for a Hitchcock movie. In fact, the violence in Charade is not really of a piece with the rest of the film, as early

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viewers noted. Bowsley Crowther’s original review in the Times devotes five of nine paragraphs to warning about how sudden and grisly the violence in the film is (at times, he sounds as though he doesn’t think his readers believe he’s telling the truth: “I tell you, this lighthearted picture is full of such gruesome violence.”) But although they seem at times to be from a different movie, for the most part, these scenes and sequences stand on their own as sick, funny set pieces. The highlight is Hepburn’s husband’s funeral: no one but the detective investigating his murder is there at first. But one by one, his army buddies show up, each trying in less and less subtle ways to verify that he is really dead. Here’s James Coburn holding a mirror under his nose to see if it frosts: This scene is a masterpiece of black humor and economy. Economy because it’s your introduction to the villains of the movie, and roughly lets you rank their level of threat based on their behavior at the funeral. Black humor cause, well, you know, it’s a funeral. The last to enter is George Kennedy, looking approximately ten feet tall: I love the expression on James Coburn’s face—when even Coburn is unnerved, you know you’re in trouble. Kennedy doesn’t even sit down—just slams the door open, stalks to the front of the room, jabs a hatpin in the corpse’s hand, verifies that he doesn’t flinch, and stalks right back out. No respect for the dead, that man; not one to trust. But then the movie doesn’t have much respect for the dead either: the other steady progression through the film is the increasingly Byzan-

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tine ways the villains are killed. Here, for example, is how James Coburn’s body is discovered: As someone who has always thought the “do not put a plastic bag on your baby’s head, or your own, especially if you’re planning on choking yourself” icons were hilarious, I wholeheartedly approve of this shot. (For reference only: See? Hilarious!) It’s not for nothing Charles Taylor compared the murders in this play with the illustrations in a Charles Addams book. And in fact, the murders are shown almost exclusively in static shots; you see the bodies but not the deaths themselves. This lends the whole proceeding a sort of ironic detachment; the corpses are punchlines. Grant and Hepburn pick up on this tone—Taylor called their performances “high deadpan,” which seems about right. They deliver impossible lines in a very stylized way, and your reaction to it will depend on whether or not you enjoy Grant and Hepburn’s screen persona in other movies. Of course, it’s difficult to imagine reading most of Peter Stone’s script in any tone other than arch detachment—the dialogue has little to do with what actual people would say in the situations Grant and Hepburn find themselves. To pick just one example, Hepburn tells Walter Matthau’s CIA agent, “Mr. Bartholomew, if you’re trying to frighten me...” with an unphaseable expression, then changes to a scared rabbit look to finish the sentence, “you’re doing a first-rate job!” I’d tip my hat to any actor who can give that line a method reading, but I wouldn’t hire them for this film. Charade is much more playful than Hitchcock’s thriller-romances, at least in the lead actors’ performances. Presumably the genre conventions were laid down well enough by 1963 for audiences to respond to a movie this self-aware. But while the movie feels breezily ahead of its time in many regards, Hepburn and Grant’s romance seems to be taken from a 1930’s romantic comedy, not a film from the sixties—or even the fifties or forties, as a comparison to North By Northwest or Notorious will quickly show). Partly this was because of Grant’s fear that he would look ridiculous pursuing someone Hepburn’s age; he required that their scenes be rewritten so that she pursues him exclusively. The problem is, one of the major engines of the plot is whether Grant is a threat to Hepburn. It’s hard to give him the requisite air of sexual menace when he doesn’t kiss Hepburn back, and then says, “Oh, no. The doctor said it was bad for my... thermostat.” Suddenly we’re back in Bringing Up Baby mode, which is fair enough, but pretty clearly separates Grant from the other villains. One thing about George Kennedy’s character I didn’t mention by way of illustration: he’s missing an arm, and has a habit of attacking people with his prosthesis: Yes, that’s as much of a joke as Grant’s thermostat line, but Kennedy’s missing hand is a sick joke (and one it’s fun to imagine trying to get into a major studio movie today), and the tones don’t entirely gel.

But who really cares if Charade is a masterpiece where every frame comes together to create a perfect, unified whole? It’s got Cary Grant and Audrey Hepburn, being charming, arch, and good looking. I love movies where the director carefully subverts a star’s image as much as the next guy. But if you’re going to appreciate that, it seems to me that you should also have some appreciation for the movies that cash in on that image in a relatively unironic fashion. Or to put it another way: Randoms: The commentary track, with Peter Stone and Stanley Donen, is crawling with arguments. It was hard to tell whether Stone and Donen were just being crotchety or genuinely have some bad blood between them. Whichever it is, Stone hardly says anything that Donen doesn’t contradict, even when it profits neither of them to argue. The best is a two minute fight over whether the French equivalent of Punch & Judy shows is called Guignol or Guignolet. Donen thinks it’s Guignolet, Stone is of the Guignol camp. The confusion comes from the Théâtre du Vrai Guignolet: The name of the theater nonwithstanding, Stone is right and Donen is wrong. It wasn’t entirely fair of me to choose Grant’s “thermostat” line as an example of his tone being out of synch with the rest of the film. That line wasn’t in the screenplay, but Grant insisted that he have some “Cary Grant lines” and wrote that one himself. Thirty years later, Stone still laments it. Nevertheless, there are many other examples of Grant being goofy in ways that cut against his character’s status as potential villain. If you know me, you know that this part of the film was more or less wasted on me, but fashonistas should see this movie on the basis of Audrey Hepburn’s clothes alone. The joke is that the movie opens with her husband leaving her destitute; all she has is in a few suitcases. But from those suitcases comes Givenchy, Givenchy, and Givenchy, one outfit after another. With the caveat that I know next to nothing about clothes, this was my favorite: That’s apparently what the well-dressed woman wore to lay on a pauper’s cot and think pensively about their dire situation, circa 1963. Classic! This isn’t a film with a lot of flashy camerawork. I did like the corpse-eye view of the morgue drawer closing on Hepburn’s late husband, however: It’s a little self-conscious, particularly in a film that doesn’t have Hitchcock-style camera movement anywhere else. But that mortician’s face is so perfect from that angle (and there’s a nice match cut to a hand closing a desk drawer in the next scene) that I find it hard to hold it against anyone. Henry Mancini’s score for this is exceptionally cool, at least when it’s in the opening-credits arrangement, with wood blocks and surf guitars, and not the Johnny Mercer ballad version. Those opening credits are also noteworthy for their epileptic-unfriendly animations and garish colors.

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“spoiler:

Wait for it... wait for it...” Yes, those animated flowers are rotating about once every three frames. The titles were done by Maurice Binder, who also designed all the Bond title sequences through License to Kill. Charade doesn’t have any naked women as major features of the titles, however. Oh, and if you’re wondering why there’s a Johnny Mercer version of the title theme in the movie, it’s so it could qualify for an Academy Award for “Best Song”—you have to have lyrics to be eligible. Charade was nominated, but lost (to the well-remembered and universally loved “Call Me Irresponsible,” from Papa’s Delicate Condition). Peter Stone wrote Charade as a screenplay at first, and when it was rejected by every studio, he rewrote it as a novel (and not a very good one, by his own admission). However, it was good enough to serialize in Redbook, which got him enough attention to sell the movie rights, then resell the original script as his “adaptation” of his own novel. Another illustration of the mental real estate principle there: an original screenplay is nothing, but if it’s an adaptation, well, that’s something else. And speaking of gaming the studios, Donen and Stone only touch on this briefly, but it seems that the film was set up at Fox, went into turnaround when Grant dropped out, was picked up by Universal, and then Grant came back, much to Universal’s dismay. I’m not sure, but I think Donen (who produced) may have made a great deal of money by switching studios. Unfortunately, Variety’s online archives don’t go back far enough to see what the deal was. According to the IMDB, Charade is in the public domain because of a copyright screwup at Universal. This seems

borne out by the number of different editions available on Amazon, but the Criterion DVD lists it as “Under exclusive license from Universal Studios Home Video, Inc. © 1963 Universal Pictures Company, Inc. & Stanley Donen Films, Inc., All rights reserved.” A little research reveals that the controversy comes down to one frame. The copyright notice in Binder’s title sequence does not include the copyright symbol, “©,” which was apparently required by law until 1989 for a work to be copywritten. So for a long time, anyone who wanted to release a video or DVD of Charade just had to get their hands on a print and do a transfer. This doesn’t mean it was ok to copy the official Universal DVD (under separate copyright as a derivative work), and I bet the studio wouldn’t have been too happy if I’d walked up wanting to “borrow” the negatives for a few days. However, recently studios have been doing all they can to remove movies from the public domain through back-door legal arguments. In the case of Charade, Universal still owns the copyright on Mancini’s score, and they’ve taken to enforcing this claim. So it seems that for all intents an purposes, is not in the public domain any longer. Too bad, because I had a nice four disc set planned for a fall 2007 release... I kind of enjoyed that misleading Matthau/Hepburn still at the beginning of this essay. So here’s one more, a bit of a spoiler. This is the shot in which the mastermind behind the criminal plot is revealed, as he coldheartedly orders his henchmen to murder Hepburn: Wait for it... Wait for it...

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Set tou r The psycho house bates motel ‘For one particular Alfred Hitchock thriller, the script called for Janet Leigh’s character, Marion Crane, to drive up a long and lonely road on a dark, rainy night, and search for a place to stay. Ms. Leigh found more than she bargained for when she stopped at a tiny motel with twelve rooms and twelve vacancies, run by a very odd man named Norman Bates. Of course the film was Psycho, and the house that Norman lived in above the motel has become one of the most recognizable in Hollywood.’ As you approach the front steps of the house and take a close-up look you will be struck by the fact that, unlike many of the one-sided sets or facades on the Backlot, the Psycho house actually has four sides and a roof. And, if you look really carefully, you may still be able to spot Norman’s mother peering out of the upstairs bedroom window, still rocking in her chair. The Psycho house was one of the big draws of the Universal Tram Tour back in 1964, and continues to be the subject of much interest even now. Over the years the house has been through a number of alterations and has even completely moved location twice after construction. These set pieces are perhaps the most popular sites on the Studio Tour at Universal Studios Hollywood reflecting the long-standing popularity of the Alfred Hitchcock classic, Psycho, and its many sequels and remake. Over the years the house has lived through multiple renovations, while the hotel has been completely demolished and rebuilt. In addition to appearing in other works outside the Psycho series, they have both been relocated a few times to where they stand today. The house and motel were designed by Joseph Hurley and Robert Clathworthy and were modeled after types of architecture found in northern California. In an interview by director Francois Truffaut later, Hitchcock would explain, “They’re either called ‘California Gothic,’ or, when they’re particularly awful, they’re called ‘California gingerbread.’ I did not set out to reconstruct an old-fashioned Universal horror-picture atmosphere. I simply wanted to be accurate, and there is no question but that both the house and the motel are authentic reproductions of the real thing.”

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Peter Bogdanovich interviews Alfred Hitchcock

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P e te r Bogdanovich i ntervi ews al f red h i tch coc k th e l eg en da ry in t e rv iew fr o m 1 96 3

AH Pure cinema is complementary pieces of film put together,

y e ars l ater PB

You never watch your films with an audience. Don’t you miss hearing them scream?

AH No. I can hear them when I’m making the picture. PB Do you feel that the American film remains the most vital cinema?

AH Worldwide, yes. Because when we make films for the

United States, we are automatically making them for all the world--because America is full of foreigners. It’s a melting pot. Which brings us to another point. I don’t know what they mean when they talk about “Hollywood” pictures. I say, “Where are they conceived?” Look at this room--you can’t see out the windows. We might just as well be in a hotel room in London, or anywhere you like. So here is where we get it down on paper. Now where do we go? We go on location, perhaps; and then where do we work? We’re inside on a stage, the big doors are closed, and we’re down in a coal mine: we don’t know what the weather is like outside. Again we don’t know where we are--only within our film, within the thing we’re making. That’s why it’s such nonsense to talk about locale. “Hollywood.” That doesn’t mean anything to me. If you say, “Why do you like working in Hollywood?” I would say, because I can get home at six o’clock for dinner.

PB How would you define pure cinema?

like notes of music make a melody. There are two primary uses of cutting or montage in film: montage to create ideas--and montage to create violence and emotions. For example, in Rear Window, where Jimmy Stewart is thrown out of the window in the end, I just photographed that with feet, legs, arms, heads. Completely montage. I also photographed it from a distance, the complete action. There was no comparison between the two. There never is. Barroom fights, or whatever they do in westerns, when they knock out the heavy or when one man knocks another across the table which breaks--they always break a table in bars--they are always shot at a distance. But it is much more effective if it’s done in montage, because you involve the audience much more--that’s the secret to that type of montage in film. And the other, of course, is the juxtaposition of imagery relating to the mind of the individual. You have a man look, you show what he sees, you go back to the man. You can make him react in various ways. You see, you can make him look at one thing, look at another--without his speaking, you can show his mind at work, comparing things--any way you run there’s complete freedom. It’s limitless, I would say, the power of cutting and the assembly of the images. Like the man with no eyes in The Birds--zooming the camera in--the staccato jumps are almost like catching the breath. Is it? Gasp. Gasp. Yes. Young directors always come up with the idea, “Let the camera be someone and let it move as though it’s the person, and you put the guy in front of a mirror and then you see him.” It’s a terrible mistake. Bob Montgomery did that in Lady in the Lake--I don’t believe in it myself. What are you really doing? You are keeping back from the audience who it is. What for? That’s all you

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are doing. Why not show who it is?

PB How do you work when you are shooting? AH Well, I never look through the camera, you know. The

cameraman knows me well enough to know what I want-and when in doubt, draw a rectangle and then draw the shot out for him. You see, the point is that you are, first of all, in a two-dimensional medium. Mustn’t forget that. You have a rectangle to fill. Fill it. Compose it. I don’t have to look through a camera for that. First of all, the cameraman knows very well that when I compose I object to air, space around figures or above their heads, because I think that’s redundant. It’s like a newspaperman taking a still and trimming it down to its essentials. They have standing instructions from me--they never give any air around the figures. If I want air, I’ll say so. Now, you see, when I’m on the set, I’m not on the set. If I’m looking at acting or looking at a scene--the way its played, or where they are--I am looking at a screen, I am not confused by the set and the movement of the people across the set. In other words, I follow the geography of the screen. I can only think of the screen. Most directors say, “Well, he’s got to come in that door so he’s got to walk from there to there.” Which is as dull as hell. And not only that, it makes the shot itself so empty and so loose that I say, “Well, if he’s still in a mood--whatever mood he’s in--take him across in a close-up, but keep the mood on the screen.” We’re not interested in distance. I don’t care how he got across the room. What’s the state of mind? You can only think of the screen. You cannot think of the set or where you are in the studio--nothing of that sort.

PB What is your technique of working with actors? AH I don’t direct them. I talk to them and explain to them what

the scene is, what it’s purpose is, why they are doing certain things--because they relate to the story--not to the scene. The whole scene relates to the story but that little look does this or that for the story. As I tried to explain to that girl, Kim Novak, “You have got a lot of expression in your face. Don’t want any of it. I only want on your face what we want to tell to the audience--what you are thinking.” I said, “Let me explain to you. If you put a lot of redundant expressions on your face, it’s like taking a piece of paper and scribbling all over it--full of scribble, the whole piece of paper. You want to write a sentence for somebody to read. They can’t read it--too much scribble on the face. Much easier to read if the piece of paper is blank. That’s what your face ought to be when we need the expression.” Take The Birds. There is not one redundant expression on Hedren’s face. Every expression makes a point. Even the slight nuance of a smile when she says, “What can I do for you, sir?” One look says, “I’m going to play a gag on him.” That’s the economy of it.

PB You’ve said that your pictures are finished before you set foot on the set--that is, once the script is completed. What is your working process with the writers?

AH In the early days--way, way back in the English period, I

would always work on a treatment with a writer who would

be a plot maker, or story man. I would work weeks and weeks on this treatment and what it would amount to would be a complete narrative, even indicating shots, but not in the words of long-shot or close-up. It would have everything in it, all the details. Then I used to give it to a top writer to dialogue it. When he sent in his dialogue, I would sit down and dictate the shots in a complete continuity. But the film had to be made on paper in this narrative form. It would describe the film, shot by shot, beginning to end. Sometimes with drawings, sometimes without. I abandoned this method when I came to America. I found that American writers wouldn’t go for that sort of thing. I do it verbally now, with the writer, and then I make corrections and adjustments afterwards. I work many weeks with him and he takes notes. And I describe the picture for the production designers as well. Marnie has all been finished as far as the layout of the picture, but there’s no dialogue in it. I would say I apply myself two-thirds before he writes and one-third after he writes. But I will not and do not photograph anything that he puts in the script on his own, apart from words. I mean any cinematic method of telling it--how can he know? On North by Northwest, Ernie Lehman wouldn’t let me out of the office for a whole year. I was with him on every shot, every scene. Because it wasn’t his material.

PB I’ve heard a story about your having been put in jail by your father at an early age. Did this have any particular effect on your development, do you think?

AH It could have--I must have been five when I was sent along

with a note to the chief of police, who read the note and promptly put me into a cell and locked the door for five minutes; and then let me out, saying, “That’s what we do to naughty little boys, you see.” What effect that had on me at the time I can’t remember, but they say psychiatrically if you can discover the origins of this or that, it releases everything. I don’t think it released me from a natural fear of the police.

PB What influence, if any, do you think the Jesuit schooling has had on your work?

AH The Jesuits taught me organization, control, and to some

degree, analysis. Their education is very strict, and orderliness is one of the things that come out of that, I suppose. Although my orderliness is spasmodic. I remember when I was at the age of eighteen or nineteen I was a senior estimator at an electrical engineering firm, and the requests for estimates used to come in, and I was kind of lazy so I’d pile them up on my desk and they’d go up to a big pile. And I used to say, “Well, I’ve got to get down to this,” and then I polished them off like anything. And used to get praised for the prodigious amount of work I’d done in that particular day. That lasted until the complaints began to come in about the delay in answering. That’s the way I feel about working. Certain writers want to work every hour of the day: they’re very facile. I’m not that way. I want to say, “Let’s lay off for several hours, let’s play.” And then we get down to it again. I’m sure the Jesuits did not teach that. As far as any religious influence, at the time I think it was fear. But I’ve grown out of religious fear now. I think I have. I don’t know. I don’t think

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PB The final street fight is based on a true happening, isn’t it? AH It was a very famous incident, called the Sydney Street

Siege. There were anarchists holed up in a house there, and they had to bring the soldiers out because the police couldn’t handle it. Winston Churchill went down and directed operations. I had great difficulty getting that one on the screen because the censor wouldn’t pass it. He called it a black spot on English police history. He said, “You can’t have the soldiers.” And I said, “Well, then we will have to have the police do the shooting.” “No, you can’t do that. The police don’t carry firearms in England. If you want to do those Chicago things, we won’t allow it here.” Finally the censor relented and said I could do it if I had the police go to the local gunsmith and take out mixed guns and show that they’re not familiar with the weapons. Silly. I ignored it, and I had a truck come up with a load of rifles.

PB How did you do the Albert Hall sequence? AH Schufftan process again. I photographed about nine angles

the religious side of the Jesuit education impressed itself so much upon me as the strict discipline one endured at the time. The Man Who Knew Too Much (1934) You’ve said that you could get away with a lotmore things in the early days than you can now. What did you mean?

AH I suppose that’s why there’s a certain amount of nostalgia,

especially in England, for the Hitchcock English period. Around that 1935 period, the audience would accept more, the films of the period were full of fantasy, and one didn’t have to worry too much about logic or truth. When I came to America, the first thing I had to learn was that the audience were more questioning. I’ll put it another way. Less avantgarde. In the first Man Who Knew Too Much, the characters jump around from one place to another--you’re in a chapel, and you’ve got old ladies with guns--and one didn’t care. One said, “An old lady with a gun, that’s be amusing.” There was more underlying humor, at least for me, and less logic. If the idea appealed to one, however outrageous it was, do it! They wouldn’t go for that in America.

PB Do you prefer the old Man Who Knew Too Much to the new one?

AH No, I don’t really. The old one is fairly slipshod structurally. PB What was the purpose of the unraveling sweater towards the start?

AH It’s the thread of life that gets broken. One could still get

pretentious in those days. It was also comic. You combine a little comic action with a break in the thread when the man falls dead.

around the Albert Hall when it was empty, with the same type of lens that we would use ultimately, using long exposures to get clear, sharp pictures, which were then blown up to 14 x 18. I gave them to a famous artist, Matania, who did pictures that were completely representational. I asked him to paint the audience into each photo. The reason I chose more than one angle was so that I didn’t have to repeat myself, otherwise the audience would have gotten used to it and realized that the people were not moving. I had the photos made into transparencies and we went back to the Albert Hall and set up the Schufftan in exactly the same spots where the original photographs were taken--lining it up exactly. Now the mirror reflected this little transparency with a full audience, and we scraped the silvering here and there, a box near the entrance, and the whole of the orchestra. Then in the box we had a woman opening a program, and so forth, and the eye immediately went to the movement. All the rest was static. We had to do it this way because we had no money. Strangers on a Train (1951)

AH Granger was miscast. Warners insisted I take him. It should

have been a much stronger man. The stronger the man, the more frustrated he would have been in the situation.

PB Isn’t the irony of the picture that Walker actual does free Granger from his impossible wife?

AH Sure. Granger didn’t pay back, did he? He didn’t kill Walker’s father. He ratted on Walker.

PB How did you achieve that stunning carousel sequence? AH This was a most complicated sequence. For rear-projection

shooting there is a screen and behind it is an enormous projector throwing an image on the screen. On the studio floor is a narrow white line right in line with the projector lens and the lens of the camera must be right on that white line. That camera is not photographing the screen and what’s on it, it is photographing light in certain colors, therefore the

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camera lens must be level and in line with the projector lens. Many of the shots on the merry-go-round were low camera set-ups. Therefore you can imagine the problem. The projector had to be put up on a high platform, pointing down, and the screen had to be exactly at right angles to the level-line from the lens. All the shots took nearly half a day to line up, for each set-up. We had to change the projector every time the angle changed. When the carousel broke, that was a miniature blown up on a big screen and we put live people in front of the screen. But I did the most dangerous thing I’ve ever done in that picture and I’ll never, never do it again. When the little man crawled underneath the moving carousel--that was actual. If he had raised his head an inch, two inches--finish. My hands sweat now when I think of it--what a dreadful chance I took. I knew what I was doing then, you know, but I thought, “Oh, well, maybe he won’t raise his head too high.

PB Doesn’t Granger chase after Walker mainly to expiate his own feelings of guilt about the murder of his wife?

AH Sure he does. He felt like killing her himself. What was your main reason for making Dial M for Murder?

AH I was running for cover. When your batteries run dry, when you are out creatively, and you have to go on, that’s what I call running for cover. Take a comparatively successful play that requires no great creative effort on your part and make it. Keep your hand in, that’s all. When you’re in this business, don’t make anything unless it looks like it’s going to promise something. If you have to make a film--as I was under contract to Warners at the time--play safe. Go get a play and make an average movie--photographs of people talking. It’s ordinary craftsmanship. But there is another interesting facet about the photographed stage play. Some people make the mistake, I think, of trying to open the play up for the screen. That’s a big mistake. I think the whole conception of a play is confinement within the proscenium--and that’s what the author uses dramatically. Now you are undoing a newly-knitted sweater. Pull it apart and you have nothing. In Dial M, I made sure that I would go outside as little as possible. I had a real tile floor laid down, the crack under the door, the shadow of the feet, all part of the stage play and I made sure I didn’t lose that. Otherwise, if you go outside, what do you end up with? A taxi arrives outside, the door opens, and they get out and go in. Rear Window (1954)

AH The critic on The Observer called this a horrible film

because a man was looking out a window at other people. I thought that was a crappy remark. Everyone does it, it’s a known fact, and provided it is not made too vulgar, it is just curiosity. People don’t care who you are, they can’t resist looking.

PB Isn’t there something sympathetic about the murderer in his confrontation scene with Stewart?

AH Well, the poor man. It’s the climax of peeping tomism, isn’t it? “Why did you do it?” he says. “If you hadn’t been a peeping tom, I would have gotten away with it.” Stewart can’t answer. What can he say? He’s caught. Caught with his plaster down.

PB Kelly is the dominant partner in the relationship, isn’t she? AH Yes, rather. She’s a typical, active New Yorker. There are

many of those women in New York, more like men, some of them. The Man Who Knew Too Much (1956)

PB Of all your pictures, why did you choose to remake The Man Who Knew Too Much?

AH I felt that for an American audience, it contained sentimental elements that would be more interesting than some of the others. The second Man Who Knew Too Much was more carefully worked out than the first one. The first one was, shall we say, a spontaneous creation, without examination.

PB Doris Day, like many of your characters, complains about

a lack of excitement in her life, and then is thrown into a terrible dilemma. Is this your comment on the virtues of the simple life?

AH I think there’s a lot to be said for that. Let’s look at me

psychologically. I don’t feel any of the things that my characters feel, I have no such desires. My God, I’ve been happily married to the same woman for thirty-six years. I have no identification with my characters. If I did, I couldn’t picture them as objectively as I do. Vertigo (1958)

PB Isn’t Vertigo about the conflict between illusion and reality? AH Oh, yes. I was interested by the basic situation, because

it contained so much analogy to sex. Stewart’s efforts to recreate the woman were, cinematically, exactly the same as though he were trying to undress the woman, instead of dressing her. He couldn’t get the other woman out of his mind. Now, in the book, they didn’t reveal that she was one and the same woman until the end of the story. I shocked Sam Taylor, who worked on it, when I said, “When Stewart comes upon this brunette girl, Sam, this is the time for us to blow the whole truth.” He said, “Good God, why?” I told him, if we don’t what is the rest of our story until we do reveal the truth. A man has picked up a brunette and sees in her the possibilities of resemblance to the other woman. Let’s put ourselves in the minds of our audience here: “So you’ve got a brunette and you’re going to change her.” What story are we telling now? A man wants to make a girl over and then, at the very end, finds out it is the same woman. Maybe he kills her, or whatever. Here we are, back in our old situation: surprise or suspense. And we come to our old analogy of the bomb: you and I sit talking and there’s a bomb in the room. We’re having a very innocuous conversation about nothing. Boring. Doesn’t mean a thing. Suddenly, boom! the bomb goes off and they’re shocked--for fifteen seconds. Now you change it. Play the same scene, insert the

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bomb, show that the bomb is placed there, establish that it’s going to go off at one o’clock--it’s now a quarter of one, ten of one--show a clock on the wall, back to the same scene. Now our conversation becomes very vital, by its sheer nonsense. “Look under the table! You fool!” Now they’re working for ten minutes, instead of being surprised for fifteen seconds. Now let’s go back to Vertigo. If we don’t let them know, they will speculate. They will get a very blurred impression as to what is going on. “Now,” I said, “one of the fatal things, Sam, in all suspense is to have a mind that is confused. Otherwise the audience won’t emote. Clarify, clarify, clarify. Don’t let them say, “I don’t know which woman that is, who’s that?” So,” I said, “we are going to take the bull by the horns and put it all in a flashback, bang! right then and there--show it’s one and the same woman.” Then, when Stewart comes to the hotel for her, the audience says, “Little does he know.” Second, the girl’s resistance in the earlier part of the film had no reason. Now you have the reason--she doesn’t want to be uncovered. That’s why she doesn’t want the gray suit, doesn’t want to go blond--because the moment she does, she’s in for it. So now you’ve got extra values working for you. We play on his fetish in creating this dead woman, and he is so obsessed with the pride he has in making her over. Even when she comes back from the hairdresser, the blond hair is still down. And he says, “Put your hair up.” She says, “No.” He says, “Please.” Now what is he saying to her? “You’ve taken everything off except your bra and your panties, please take those off.” She says, “All right.” She goes into the bathroom. He’s only waiting to see a nude woman come out, ready to get in bed with. That’s what the scene is. Now, as soon as she comes out, he sees a ghost--he sees the other woman. That’s why I played her in a green light. You see, in the earlier part--which is purely in the mind of Stewart--when he is watching this girl go from place to place, when she is really faking, behaving like a woman of the past--in order to get this slightly subtle quality of a dreamlike nature although it was bright sunshine, I shot the film through a fog filter and I got a green effect--fog over bright sunshine. That’s why, when she comes out of the bathroom, I played her in the green light. That’s why I chose the Empire Hotel in Post Street--because it had a green neon sign outside the window. I wanted to establish that green light flashing all the time. So that when we need it, we’ve got it. I slid the soft, fog lens over, and as she came forward, for a moment he got the image of the past. Then as her face came up to him, I slipped the soft effect away, and he came back to reality. She had come back from the dead, and he felt it, and knew it, and probably was even bewildered--until he saw the locket--and then he knew he had been tricked. North By Northwest (1959)

AH It’s the American Thirty-Nine Steps--I’d thought about it

for a long time. It’s a fantasy. The whole film is epitomized in the title--there is no such thing as north-by-northwest

on the compass. The area in which we get near to the free abstract in movie making is the free use of fantasy, which is what I deal in. I don’t deal in that slice-of-life stuff. Only one sequence was missing from that picture: the assembly-line in Detroit. Never got that in. I wanted to have a dialogue scene--two men talking, walking along the assembly line--and behind them is a car being assembled. Starts with a bare frame and continues to be built. And the men talk on--their conversation should have a little bit to do with automobiles-and finally the car is loaded up with gas and one of the men drives it off. Well, I wanted to see the car finally come off the line, and they open the door and look in, and a dead body falls out. Also I wanted to get in a shot of Cary Grant hiding in Lincoln’s nose and having a sneezing fit! How did you get the idea for the plane sequence?

AH This comes under the heading of avoiding the clichés. The

cliché of that kind of scene is in The Third Man. Under a street lamp, in a medieval setting, black cat slithers by, somebody opens a blind and looks out, eerie music. Now, what is the antithesis of this? Nothing! No music, bright sunshine, and nothing. Now put a man in a business suit in this setting. Mason really doesn’t act like a villain, does he?

AH No, I didn’t make him do a dastardly thing in the whole

picture. I split him into three in an effort to keep him from

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behaving like a heavy: there’s Mason himself, who only had to nod. I gave him a rather saturnine looking secretary-there was the face of Mason. And the third man--Adam Williams--he was the brutality. Psycho (1960)

PB Do you really consider Psycho an essentially humorous film?

AH Well, when I say humorous, I mean it’s my humor that

enabled me to tackle the outrageousness of it. If I were telling the same story seriously, I’d tell a case history and never treat it in terms of mystery or suspense. It would simply be what the psychiatrist relates at the end.

PB In Psycho, aren’t you really directing the audience more than the actors?

AH Yes. It’s using pure cinema to cause the audience to

emote. It was done by visual means designed in every possible way for an audience. That’s why the murder in the bathroom is so violent, because as the film proceeds, there is less violence. But that scene was in the minds of the audience so strongly that one didn’t have to do much more. I think that in Psycho there is no identification with the characters. There wasn’t time to develop them and there was no need to. The audience goes through the paroxysms in the film without consciousness of Vera Miles or John Gavin. They’re just characters that lead the audience through the final part of the picture. I wasn’t interested in them. And you know, nobody ever mentions that they were ever in the film. It’s rather sad for them. Can you imagine how the people in the front office would have cast the picture? They’d say, “Well, she gets killed off in the first reel, let’s put anybody in there, and give Janet Leigh the second part with the love interest.” Of course, this is idiot thinking. The whole point is to kill off the star, that is what makes it so unexpected. This was the basic reason for making the audience see it from the beginning. If they came in half-way through the picture, they would say, “When’s Janet Leigh coming on?” You can’t have blurred thinking in suspense.

PB Didn’t you experiment with TV techniques in Psycho? AH It was made by a TV unit, but that was only a matter

of economics really, speed and economy of shooting, achieved by minimizing the number of set-ups. We slowed up whenever it became really cinematic. The bathroom scene took seven days, whereas the psychiatrist’s scene at the end was all done in one day.

PB How much did Saul Bass contribute to the picture? AH Only the main title, the credits. He asked me if he could

do one sequence in Psycho and I said yes. So he did a sequence on paper, little drawings of the detective going up the stairs before he is killed. One day on the picture, I was sick, and I called up and told the assistant to make those shots as Bass had planned them. There were about twenty of them and when I saw them, I said, “You can’t

use any of them.” The sequence told his way would indicate that the detective is a menace. He’s not. He is an innocent man, therefore the shot should be innocent. We don’t have to work the audience up. We’ve done that. The mere fact that he’s going up the stairs is enough. Keep it simple. No complications. One shot.

PB Did you intend any moral implications in the picture? AH I don’t think you can take any moral stand because you’re dealing with distorted people. You can’t apply morality to insane persons. The Birds (1963)

PB In The Birds, as in a lot of your films, you take ordinary,

basically average people, and put them into extraordinary situations.

AH This is for audience identification. In The Birds, there is a

very light beginning, girl meets boy, and then she walks right into a complicated situation: the boy’s mother’s unnatural relationship to him, and the school teacher who’s carrying a torch for him. This girl, who is just a fly-by-night, a playgirl, comes up against reality for the first time. That transmits itself into a catastrophe, and the girl’s transition takes place.

PB What do you feel the picture is really about? AH Generally speaking, that people are too complacent. The girl

represents complacency. But I believe that when people rise to the occasion, when catastrophe comes, they are all right. The mother panics because she starts off being so strong, but she is not strong, it is a facade: she has been substituting her son for her husband. She is the weak character in the story. But the girl shows that people can be strong when they face up to the situation. It’s like the people in London, during the wartime air raids.

PB Isn’t the film also a vision of Judgment Day? AH Yes, it is. And we don’t know how they are going to come out. Certainly, the mother was scared to the end. The girl was brave enough to face the birds and try to beat them off. But as a group they were the victims of Judgment Day. For the ordinary public--they got away to San Francisco--but I toyed with the idea of lap-dissolving on them in the car, looking, and there is the Golden Gate Bridge--covered in birds.

PB How did you come to choose The Birds as a vehicle? AH I felt that after Psycho people would expect something to

top it before going on to something else. I’ve noticed that in other “catastrophe” films, such as On the Beach, the personal stories were never really part of it at all. I remember a film called The Pride and the Passion, which was about pulling that huge gun. Well, they stopped every night to have a bit of personal story; then the next morning they went back to the gun again. It was terribly devised, no integration at all. They don’t realize that people are still living, emoting, while pushing the gun. That was one of the things I made up my mind to avoid in The Birds. I deliberately started off with light, ordinary, inconsequential behavior. I even compromised

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by the nature of the opening titles, making them ominous. I wanted to use very light, simple Chinese paintings of birds--delicate little drawings. I didn’t because I felt people might get impatient, having seen the advertising campaign and ask, “When are the birds coming on?” That’s why I give them a sock now and again--the bird against the door, bang! birds up on the wires, the bird that bites the girl. But I felt it was vital to get to know the people, the mother especially, she’s the key figure. And we must take our time, get absorbed in the atmosphere before the birds come. Once more, it is fantasy. But everything had to be as real as possible, the surroundings, the settings, the people. And the birds themselves had to be domestic birds--no vultures, no wild birds of any kind.

PB Aren’t there a lot of trick-shots in the picture? AH Had to be. There are 371 trick-shots in it, and the most

difficult one was the last shot. That took 32 different pieces of film. We had a limited number of gulls allowed. Therefore, the foreground was shot in three panel sections, left to right, up to the birds on the rail. The few gulls we had were in the first third, we re-shot it for the middle third, and for the right-hand third, using the same gulls. Just above the heads of the crows was a long, slender

middle section where the gulls were spread again. Then the car going down the driveway, with the birds on each side of it, was another piece of film. The sky was another piece of film, as was the barn on the left, and so on. These were all put together in the lab.

PB How do you feel, on the whole, about using trick-effects and process-shots?

AH It is a means to an end. You must arrive at it somehow. A

very important thing about The Birds: I never raised the point, “Can it be done?” Because then it would never have been made. Any technician would have said “impossible.” So I didn’t even bring that up, I simply said, “Here’s what we’re going to do.” No one will ever realize that had the pioneering technical work on it not been attempted, the film would not have been made. Cleopatra or Ben Hur is nothing to this--just quantities of people and scenery. Just what the bird trainer has done is phenomenal. Look at the way the crows chase the children down the street, dive all around them, land on their backs. It took days to organize those birds on the hood of the car and to make them fly away at the right time. The Birds could easily have cost $5,000,000 if Bob Burks and the rest of us hadn’t been technicians ourselves.

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C o m p oser spotlight A composer is a person who creates music, either by musical notation or oral tradition, for interpretation and performance, or through direct manipulation of sonic material through electronic media. The level of distinction between composers and other musicians varies. In the development of European music, the function of composing music initially did not have much greater importance than that of performing it. The preservation of individual compositions did not receive enormous attention and musicians generally had no qualms about modifying compositions for performance. Over time, however, the written notation of the composer came to be treated as strict instructions from which performers should not deviate without good practical or artistic reason. Performers do, however, play the music and interpret it in a way that is all their own. In fact, in the concerto form, the soloist would often compose and perform a cadenza as a way to express their individual interpretation of the piece.

John Towner Williams (born February 8, 1932) is an American composer, conductor and pianist. In a career spanning over six decades, he has composed some of the most recognizable film scores in the history of motion pictures, including the Star Wars saga, Jaws, Superman, the Indiana Jones films, E.T. the ExtraTerrestrial, Home Alone and its sequel, Hook, Jurassic Park, Schindler’s List, War Horse, and the first three Harry Potter films. He has had a long association with director Steven Spielberg, composing the music for all but two (Duel and The Color Purple) of Spielberg’s major feature films. Other notable works by Williams include theme music for four Olympic Games, NBC Sunday Night Football, the NBC Nightly News, the rededication of the Statue of Liberty, and the television series Lost in Space and Land of the Giants. Williams has also composed numerous classical concerti, and he served as the principal conductor of the Boston Pops Orchestra from 1980 to 1993; he is now the orchestra’s conductor laureate. Williams has won five Academy Awards, four Golden Globe Awards, seven BAFTA Awards, and 21 Grammy Awards. With 47 Academy Award nominations, Williams is the second most nominated person, after Walt Disney.[1] John Williams was honored with the prestigious Richard Kirk award at the 1999 BMI Film and TV Awards. The award is given annually to a composer who has made significant contributions to film and television music.[2] Williams was inducted into the Hollywood Bowl Hall of Fame in 2000, and was a recipient of the Kennedy Center Honors in 2004.

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The Film Alfred Hitchcock’s “Vertigo” has been named the greatest movie of all time, knocking long-time favorite Orson Welles’ “Citizen Kane” off the top of a once-in-adecade survey of critics from around the world. Vertigo is a 1958 psychological thriller film directed by Alfred Hitchcock based on the 1954 novel D’entre les morts by BoileauNarcejac. The screenplay was written by Alec Coppel and Samuel A. Taylor. The film stars James Stewart as former police detective John “Scottie” Ferguson, who has been forced into early retirement due to disabilities (vertigo and clinical depression) incurred in the line of duty. Scottie is hired as a private investigator to follow a woman, Madeleine Elster (Kim Novak) who is behaving peculiarly. The film was shot on location in San Francisco, California, and at Paramount Studios in Hollywood. It popularized the dolly zoom, an in-camera effect that distorts perspective to create disorientation, to convey Scottie’s acrophobia. As a result of its use here, the effect is often referred to as “the Vertigo effect”.

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The dolly zoom is an unsettling in-camera effect that appears to undermine normal visual perception. It is part of many cinematic techniques used in filmmaking and television production.

in a memorable shot of a dolly zoom into Police Chief Brody’s (Roy Scheider) stunned reaction at the climax of a shark attack on a beach (after a suspenseful build-up).

The effect is achieved by using the setting of a zoom lens to adjust the angle of view (often referred to as field of view or FOV) while the camera dollies (or moves) towards or away from the subject in such a way as to keep the subject the same size in the frame throughout. In its classic form, the camera angle is pulled away from a subject while the lens zooms in, or vice-versa. Thus, during the zoom, there is a continuous perspective distortion, the most directly noticeable feature being that the background appears to change size relative to the subject.

Optics

As the human visual system uses both size and perspective cues to judge the relative sizes of objects, seeing a perspective change without a size change is a highly unsettling effect, and the emotional impact of this effect is greater than the description above can suggest. The visual appearance for the viewer is that either the background suddenly grows in size and detail and overwhelms the foreground, or the foreground becomes immense and dominates its previous setting, depending on which way the dolly zoom is executed. The effect was first developed by Irmin Roberts, a Paramount second-unit cameraman, and was famously used by Alfred Hitchcock in his film Vertigo. The dolly zoom is commonly used by filmmakers to represent the sensation of vertigo, a “falling-away-from-oneself feeling” or a feeling of unreality, or to suggest that a character is undergoing a realization that causes him or her to reassess everything he or she had previously believed. After Hitchcock popularized the effect (he used it again for a climactic revelation in Marnie), the technique was used by many other filmmakers, and eventually became regarded as a gimmick or cliché. This was especially true after director Steven Spielberg repopularized the effect in his highly regarded film Jaws,

For most purposes, we can assume the image space and the object space are in the same medium. Thus, for an object in focus, the distance between the lens and image plane , the distance between lens and the object , and the focal length are related by: The axial magnification of an object at is the rate of change of the lens-image distance as the lens-object distance changes. For an object of finite depth, one can conceive of the average axial magnification as the ratio of the depth of the image and the depth of the object: One can see that if magnification remains constant, a longer focal length results in a smaller axial magnification, and a smaller focal length a larger axial magnification. That is, when using a longer focal length while moving the camera/lens away from the object to maintain the same magnification M, objects seem shallower, and the axial distances between objects seem shorter. The opposite-increased axial magnification -- happens with shorter focal lengths while moving the camera/lens towards the object. Calculating distances To achieve the effect the camera needs to be positioned at a certain distance from the object that is supposed to remain still during the dolly zoom. The distance depends on how wide the scene is to be filmed, and on the field of view (FOV) of the camera lens. Before calculating the distances needed at the different fields of view, the constant width of the scene has to be calculated. For example, a FOV of 90° and a distance of two meters yield a constant width of four meters, allowing a four-meter-wide object to remain still inside the frame during the effect.

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If Alfred Hitchcock had died in 1957, at the age of 58, he would still rank as one of the greatest directors of all time. At this point he would have given the world such masterpieces as The 39 Steps (1935), Rebecca (1940), Shadow of a Doubt (1943), Notorious (1946), Strangers on a Train (1951), Rear Window (1954), and The Man Who Knew Too Much (1956). Lucky for us Hitchcock did not die, and in 1958 he began a six year period that marks the greatest single set of works by any director in cinema history. The Master of Suspense produced four indisputable masterpieces in Vertigo (1958), North by Northwest (1959), Psycho (1960), and the Birds (1963). Vertigo was based on the French novel D’Entre les Morts by Pierre Boileau and Thomas Narcejac. Like a number of previous Hitchcock works Vertigo is an example of turning pulp fiction into art. It took four writers, in addition to Hitchcock himself, 15 months to get the script green lit by Paramount. It is said that truly great art comes truly great suffering. During preproduction Alfred Hitchcock was diagnosed with a hernia and spent the first night of his life in hospital. Two months later he was back in hospital, this time having surgery for kidney stones. It is also said that behind every great man is an even greater woman. In Hitchcock’s case this woman was his wife, Alma Hitchcock. Near the completion of the film Alma, his soul mate and muse, was diagnosed with cancer; this sent Hitchcock into a spell of hysteria. A man who so famously feared losing control had found the person he loved the most in a position he was powerless to help. The film stars Jimmy Stewart (although Hitchcock first wanted Cary Grant having felt that Stewart was too old, too thin and not neurotic enough) and Kim Novak (though Vera Miles was originally cast but had to drop out when she became pregnant). Upon its release the film, budgeted at $2.5 million, grossed a moderate 3.2 million. Although it garnered two Oscar nominations it faired only so-so critically. Over the years though the film has become a cultural icon and has been ‘remade’ numerous times. Elements of the film can be seen in films such as High Anxiety (1978), Basic Instinct (1992), The

Age of Innocence (1993), Twelve Monkeys (1995), and practically every Brain DePalma film. Vertigo is a genre hybrid mixing the genres of the Detective Mystery Thriller, Romance Melodrama and Horror. Some would say it is also autobiographical as Scotty essentially plays god, remaking Judy into Madeleine. It is also, like every Hitchcock film, self reflexive. The film embodies little of the trademark Hitchcock humor though it does contain great horror. It deals with the failure and exploitation of the instinct to love and heal in which the recovery of innocence depends. In addition to this the film deals with such dark themes as scopophilia, voyeurism necrophilia and the effect of the past on the present - a common Hitchcock trait. Ambiguity Hitchcock pioneered the use of morally ambiguous characters in cinema. Vertigo is no exception and marks an important step in the reversal of roles that Hitchcock ultimately achieves in Frenzy (1972). In Frenzy the hero is despicable while the villain is likeable; this has become common place today - Darth Vadar, Dirty Harry, Hans Gruber, Jules and Vincent are only a few examples. In Vertigo Hitchcock creates a film filled with moral ambiguous characters that are more negative than positive. For instance Jimmy Stewart’s character, Scottie, has abandoned the world of law to become a policeman, which he then abandons to become a detective. He falls in love with the object of detection, a women who he believes is his friends wife; he therefore breaks both the professional and friendship codes. He is not a good detective - he fails in following Madeleine, discovering the truth about Gavin, and the about Judy. He doesn’t remain objective as a detective and instead becomes part of the story. He is tricked twice. he is responsible for three deaths. He molds Judy into Madeleine in a manner that denotes lust and obsession not love. He has vertigo. He is a scopophilic and a voyeur. He has a nervous breakdown where he is in a state of suspension, this relates to his identity crisis (which is why he has so many names in the film a Hitchcock trait). He is not honest with Midge. He is naive, gullible,

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The structuring motif of the film, the key, is the

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full of self doubt and he wears a corset. On the positive side he does solve the mystery, faces himself and is ultimately refashioned by women. Kim Novak’s character is also loaded on the negative, she is a masochist. She allows herself to be molded by both Scottie and Gavin. She is the object of gaze and allows it. She is the mistress of a married man. She too has a crisis of identity (again a number of names). She tricks the detective Scottie by hiding in plain sight. She lies (this is way she is usually standing in front of a open doorway, with a lot happening behind it. This reprsents the secret shes hiding). On the positive side she confesses in a letter but then doesn’t send it which is again negative. Midge too is negative, she is not sexually attractive, paints a joke painting to hurt Scottie, is jealous and a voyeur. She is smart and professional though. Gavin Elster, the old college buddy, yearns for the past, has a mistress and tempts both Scottie and Judy; he is therefore the devil. He is however good looking, and a cultured business man. The four above characters are all ambivelous in some way, most clearly seen with Madeleine/Judy. This creates a perception problem for the audience. The audience therefore have Vertigo. The Opening The opening of a film is conventionally the first method of structuring a work. Hitchcock uses it spectacularly himself in Rear Window; The camera glides into an apartment, past various visual indicators, such as ornaments and photographs that expose aspects of the occupants’ life. The camera finally comes to rest on a sleeping James Stewart, constricted by a leg cast and confined to a wheelchair. This opening scene provides the viewer with all the necessary information about the protagonist, his character, his career, his environment, and his current predicament. The opening/title sequence of Vertigo however does none of this. We first see a a women we don’t know who she is or where we are. This woman isn’t Kim Novak and in fact we never see her again This type of filmmaking is extremely, it disoriegntates the audience. We fall into her eye and then into a series of spirals. The representational turns into graphics. There is no direction or stability here; The colors don’t match. Only the motif of the spiral is constant. The films opening begins with a white screen - this is self reflexive as it represents an empty frame onto with things are put. We are then introduced to Scottie, he fails in an attempt to catch somebody because of his own inability to jump. He is responsible for the death of a police officer. He is not in control. Again we see the spiral, here with the use of the tracking in, dolly out ‘vertigo’ shot. The spiral motif connects the opening with the title sequence. We leave Scottie hanging for his life and pick him up at Midge’s; we have no idea how he get off? This happens a number of times throughout the film, though the two most pronounced stops are after the two main deaths. Some people have complained that because of this the film is unbelievable or that it makes no sense. Although Hitchcock didn’t explain everything that happened in his films they were never unbelievable. For instance he often relayed on chance happenings to begin the plot, most clearly in Strangers on a Train. Here I think Hitchcock creates a dreamlike feel. We’ve all had dreams where things move forward even thought they aren’t explained. You wake up and think hang on a minute that doesn’t work. This is further emphasized by the look of the film. Hitchcock used a number of different lens, diffusions, green hues, fogs, filters, various densities to achieve Vertigo’s look. Anti Classical Hitchcock was an innovator of film, he pioneered the classical

Hollywood style and then reinvented it. He was a modernist filmmaker decades before thier was a modernist movement. He used a number of techniques here that were anti classical, for instance scenes end where they begin; Hitchcock also used this to emphisis the sprial motiff and dream like atmosphere. The last shot with the nun leaves the audiece with no reassurances. Thier is more music than dialouge, agian emphaising the dream. The audience identifys with no character. Judy looks into the camera when we first meet her, characters never do this because it breaks the audiences disbelief. Thier is no final explanation given, only clues and not enough at that. Thier is no closure. These are all anti classical. The Spiral The structuring motiff of the film, the key, is the spiral. We see it in the titles, the way the policeman falls, the twist of hair, the tower, the steps, the journey in the car, even the music. The music is endless It consits of chords that are never resolved or melodic. The are repeated broken chords. Why the spiral? It is thematcially important, but why? The sprial is an unstable alternative to the circle, as if the center won’t hold. The film has no center. Vertigo Shot This occurs seven times throughout the film and is also a structuring motiff. It is the visual approximation of the mind and body of Scotty and shows a preception problem. It was a new type of point of view shot. It was accomplished by zooming in and pulling out. It represents ambigous feelings of attraction and repulsion, which are our feelings towards the characters. And the feelings of Judy and Scotty; Madeleine and the grave; Madeleine and Scotty; Carlata and her child; and Elster and Madeleine. Scottys literal vertigo represents his metaphorical falling back in time ie to the spanish time. Dreaming As well as the above other thematics relate to the dreamlike atmosphere. Scotty is always in a state of transition - his job, love etc. San Fransico is stragely empty, this makes it seem not real. No one is having sex in the film, this too is not real and dream like - some say that the famous in/out vertigo shot is an analogy to sex. The nightmare scene by painter John Farren. The car following car scenes. dissolves, fades, soft focus. Unexplained things. Mistaking people for Madeleine. etc. Green The colour green is seen many times throughout Vertigo, this is a technique. On the stage green represents ghosts. Madeleine is a ghost and is often scene in green, so is the car, dresses, stones etc. The are other important colors. Music Music is very important in Vertigo. It never ends, repeating forever. During the love scene we hear slow violins, this is the first time an orchestra is heard in the film. Music is unique here because there is more of it than of the dialougue. It too is a character in Vertigo. There is more emotion in music than in dialouge as music is more primal.

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m o vie cou n td own with shawn miller A thriller is a villain-driven plot, whereby he or she presents obstacles that the protagonist must overcome.

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“The Shining” – Stephen King’s classic thriller novel is adapted by Stanley Kubrick and what results is one of the best thriller movies of all time. Jack Nicholson stars as Jack Torrance, a man who slowly loses his mind while isolated in a haunted hotel. “Inception” – Christopher Nolan took break from the popular “Batman” movies to make this mind twisting thriller movie. The movie takes con-men and places them in a world where they can enter into someone’s mind and steal their memories. “Fight Club” – David Fincher created one of the best thriller movies of all time and one of the biggest cult phenomenon of the last ten years. Brad Pitt stars as an enigmatic man who convinces legions of bored men to rebel against the society that holds them down.

“The Silence of the Lambs” – One of the most successful thriller movies of all time, “Silence of the Lambs” won the Oscar for Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor and Best Actress. Is is one of the few times in cinema history that a movie has ever won all four awards. “Memento” – Christopher Nolan made his name with this twisted thriller movie. The movie’s gimmick is that it plays in reverse order, with the final scene shown first and the first scene of the story shown at the end of the movie. It is an expertly constructed puzzle that pays off by the end. “North by Northwest” – Alfred Hitchcock is known at the master of suspense and, with this movie, created one of the best thriller movies of all time. A hapless businessman is mistaken for a secret agent and has to run for his life while trying to decipher why everyone suddenly wants him dead. “The Third Man” – Orson Welles stars in one of the

best Film Noirs of all time in this exciting thriller movie. Welles plays a man who supposedly died before his only friend showed up to see him. When he is seen wandering the streets, his friend sets out to figure out why he faked his own death.

“L.A. Confidential” – Based on the crime novel by James Elroy, this movie was nominated for nine Oscars making it one of the best thriller movies of all time. The movie follows three police detectives who operate in strikingly different ways. “Seven” – David Fincher directs this classic thriller movie where two detectives try to catch a serial killer who is murdering in the name of the seven deadly sins. Brad Pitt and Morgan Freeman star as the detectives on the case while Kevin Spacey stars as the mysterious killer, John Doe.

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Psycho is a 1960 American suspense/horror film directed by Alfred Hitchcock and starring Anthony Perkins, Vera Miles, John Gavin, and Janet Leigh. The screenplay by Joseph Stefano is based on the 1959 novel of the same name by Robert Bloch. The novel was loosely inspired by the crimes of Wisconsin murderer and grave robber Ed Gein,who lived just 40 miles from Bloch. The film depicts the encounter between a secretary, Marion Crane (Leigh), who goes to a secluded motel after embezzling money from her employer, and the motel’s disturbed owner and manager, Norman Bates (Perkins), and the aftermath of their encounter. Psycho initially received mixed reviews, but outstanding box office returns prompted a re-review which was overwhelmingly positive and led to four Academy Award nominations. Psycho is now considered one of Hitchcock’s best films and is highly praised as a work of cinematic art by international critics. It is often ranked among the greatest films of all time and is famous for bringing in a new level of acceptable violence and sexuality in films. After Hitchcock’s death in 1980, Universal Studios began producing follow-ups: two sequels, a prequel, a remake, and a television movie spin-off. In 1992, the film was selected to be preserved by the Library of Congress at the National Film Registry.