ALFRED HITCHCOCK – THE WORLD'S GREATEST DIRECTOR
There's Bergman and there's Fellini; there's Antonioni and
there is Satyajit Ray. Today there is even Scorsese and it you want to push the
envelope you might even include the Coens or one of those Anderson boys, Paul
Thomas or Wes, (no relation). But name one who has gone into the lexicon, who
has produced their own adjective to describe, not just a way of working, not
even just a genre, but an artistic and psychological history of cinema that
spanned six decades. The only one I can think of is Alfred Hitchcock, the
greatest director of all time.
In an age when the movies meant to most people actors and
actresses Hitchcock was only one of two people behind the camera, (the other
was Walt Disney), known the world over. He was, of course, an entertainer
beginning his career in his native Britain before moving to America in 1940.
His first American film, "Rebecca" won the Oscar for Best Picture
though Hitchcock himself lost the best director prize to John Ford, the only
director to date to have won four directing Oscars while Hitchcock, remarkably,
never won a competitive Oscar, perhaps in the mistaken belief that entertainers
were not worthy of the big prizes
.
In Britain he had already earned the title 'The Master of
Suspense'. His much altered version of John Buchan's "The 39 Steps"
was the first of his masterpieces, a film in which one set piece followed
another. His cosier, "The Lady Vanishes", was the second of his
masterpieces and to some fans remains his best loved film. It was its
international success that launched his American career. "Rebecca"
was a gothic romance; in some respects it's an unlikely Hitchcock picture but
on closer inspection it's the film's dark psychology, (hints of lesbianism, the
memory of a dead woman who haunts the living), rather than the unlikely romance
at the centre which dominates. Here was a film that showed 'the master of
suspense' had a darker side to him that those earlier British films might have
suggested and although the forties were perhaps less fruitful for Hitchcock
than either the thirties or the fifties, (an unwise move to screwball comedy
with "Mr and Mrs Smith", the faux psychology of
"Spellbound", the turgid courtroom melodrama of "The Paradine
Case"), it was also the decade that saw him make two of his greatest
films, "Shadow of a Doubt" and "Notorious" as well as ten-minute take experiment of
"Rope", which daringly for 1948 hinted that two of its central
characters were in a homosexual relationship.
These films explored elements of Hitchcock's nature with a
depth that perhaps his earlier films only hinted at.
"Shadow of a Doubt" and
"Notorious" showed that both in family and romantic relationships
Hitchcock could be cruel, (we had already seen him blow up a boy in
"Sabotage"). Uncle Charlie, (a magnificent Joseph Cotton), was a
sexual predator who was prepared to murder his doting niece, (an equally superb
Theresa Wright), in "Shadow of a Doubt" while Cary Grant's secret
agent Devlin in "Notorious" was prepared to prostitute the woman he
loved, (a brilliant Ingrid Bergman).
At this point I should point out that while Hitchcock has
never been considered 'an actor's director', (his famous and misquoted 'actors
are cattle' remark),many performers have done some of their best work in his
films; Robert Donat in "The 39 Steps", Olivier, Fontaine and Judith
Anderson in "Rebecca", Fontaine again, and winning an Oscar, in
"Suspicion", Cotton and Wright as well as Patricia Collinge in
"Shadow of a Doubt", as mentioned Bergman and Grant in
"Notorious", Robert Walker in "Strangers on a Train", James
Stewart in "Rear Window", Milland, Grace Kelly and John Williams in
"Dial M for Murder", Stewart again as well as Kim Novak in
"Vertigo", Perkins and Janet Leigh in "Psycho", not to
mention the hugely underrated Tippi Hedren in both "The Birds" and
"Marnie". Could these performances really be the result of a man who
is said to have treated his actors like cattle?
In 1951 he made "Strangers on a Train" from the novel
by Patricia Highsmith, embarking on what was to be his greatest sustained
period. Highsmith was gay and, although never made explicit, so too was Robert
Walker's murderer in "Strangers on a Train". He picks up Farley
Granger's 'straight' tennis player on a train and tries to talk him into
committing a murder. Ironically, in real-life it was Granger who was gay. Here
was a thriller than was genuinely thrilling, psychologically dark and crammed
full of Hitchcock's best set-pieces. He followed it with perhaps his most
underrated great film, "I Confess", his most explicitly Catholic film
in which a priest is accused of murder because he can't reveal the secrets of
the confessional.
"Rear Window" came a year later. By now Hitchcock
wasn't just making 'conventional' murder yarns but movies that were prepared to
explore the very nature of cinema itself. Here was a film about looking, about
making audiences complicit in the crimes being committed on screen. Here was a
movie about voyeurism, (isn't just going to the movies a form of voyeurism), in
which James Stewart's photographer, (again a man who looks, who intrudes), laid
up in his apartment with a broken leg begins to spy on his neighbours, using
his camera's zoom-lens to get a better look. Stewart, Hitchcock and we, the
audience, never leave the apartment or the backyard where a good deal of the
'action' happens making this the director's most brilliant and formal use of
'space' as well as providing up with his greatest single set. In the course of
his spying Stewart thinks he has detected a murder which is where the suspense
kicks in. I have seen "Rear Window" many times and I never tire of it
even when I know everything that is going to happen.
In the same year he made what many consider a 'throwaway'
movie, again basically using a single set. Talked into making his screen
version of Frederick Knott's play "Dial M for Murder" in 3D the film
was released mostly 'flat'. To many it's minor Hitchcock but I love the film;
its suspense, its comedy, its bravura set-pieces, (who else could have gotten
so much out of one room), and the brilliant performances of Ray Milland, Grace
Kelly, (the quintessential Hitchcock heroine), John Williams and, as the
potential murderer who ends up the victim, Anthony Dawson. Only the bland
Robert Cummings lets the side down.
If his next two films, ("To Catch a Thief" and
"The Trouble with Harry"), are minor Hitchcock's they are at least
very pleasurable divertissements, remembering that minor Hitchcock is always so
much better than the best of lesser directors, leading, in 1956, to "The
Wrong Man", an almost documentary-like account of a miscarriage of
justice. This was definitely not the kind of film we had been used to seeing
from Hitchcock up to that point. For starters, it was based on the true story
of "Manny" Balestrero, mistakenly accused of a robbery and imprisoned
for a crime he didn't commit, leading to the breakdown of his marriage and the
institutionalization of his wife. It was only a thriller in that we hang on to
see it the truth will come out. Hitchcock shot it on locations, adding an
authenticity it might otherwise not have had, the main focus of his attention
being Manny's breakdown and that of the family unit. At the time both critics
and audiences didn't quite know what to make of the film; now it is regarded as
one of the best things he has ever done.
In the same year Hitchcock remade one of his earlier films, “The
Man Who Knew Too Much”, altering both the locations and a good deal of the
plot. The original is beloved my purists who believe we should never tamper
with anything and if it ain’t broke it don’t need fixing. I prefer the remake,
(it’s both funnier and more suspenseful). It was also around this time that he
moved to television with a long-running series of, at first thirty minute and
then sixty minute, shows dealing with crime in one form or another. He seldom
directed personally but his name and his introductions ensured their success.
And then in 1958 he made “Vertigo”, the first of five enduring classics in a
row.
When it came out “Vertigo” was not a success, particularly
amongst critics who found the lack of suspense and the emphasis on the
psychology of its central character a tad on the dull side. However, in the
last Sight and Sound poll, “Vertigo” overtook “Citizen Kane” as the greatest
film ever made. With “Vertigo” he continued breaking the rules, (with the
underrated “Stagefright” a few years earlier, he gave us a flashback that was a
lie). With “Vertigo” he let us into ‘whodunit’ about three quarters of the way
through the movie. The film was a mystery but not necessarily a murder mystery.
Was it also a ghost story? And could it really be about necrophilia? Did James
Stewart’s character Scottie really want to mould Madeleine into the woman he
believed was dead?
It's a film that repays repeated viewings; like all great
psychological dramas it’s the play between the two main characters that grips.
Our interest isn’t primarily on what has happened as on what is going on inside
the character’s heads. Stewart, arguably the greatest actor in the history of
the movies, is magnificent here and Kim Novak, never the most expressive of
actresses, is perfectly cast as the woman he finds, loses and finds again, (her
very blankness allows us to read so much into her character). It’s not my own
personal favourite Hitchcock but I certainly won’t deny its greatness.
His next film, “North By Northwest” may be his most popular
and was seen by critics as a return to form. It was an old-fashioned comedy
thriller harking back to the spy movies of the thirties and forties. You could
say he rehashes many of his earlier set-pieces but on a much larger scale and
in the crop-dusting sequence, he gave us one of cinema’s most iconic scenes.
Like all great comedy-thrillers it too repays repeated viewings and, of course,
it helped that his hero was once again played by the great Cary Grant, way too
old for the part, (Jessie Royce Landis, who played his mother, was only 8 years
older than Grant), but perfect nevertheless. Indeed, this was just the kind of
film the studios would have wanted him to repeat, a sure-fire commercial
success. Instead he made “Psycho”, an outright horror film shot in black and
white. It could have failed horribly, too but thanks to Hitchcock’s own
brilliant publicity it was his greatest success and, I think, his greatest
masterpiece.
Innovative in so many ways, “Psycho” was unlike anything he
had done before. It begins like a straightforward tale of a robbery with a
leading lady, (the superb Janet Leigh), who is virtually never off the screen
thus making it very easy for the audience to identify with her. Then midway
through the film Hitchcock pulls the plug on us quite literally as Leigh’s
Marion Crane is very brutally stabbed to death in the shower, (in what may be
the most sequence in the movies), and the film shifts gear once again to become
a tale of murder most foul. It would appear the killer is also a woman, the
mother of the films newly introduced ‘hero’, Norman Bates, (Anthony Perkins in
a career-defining role), but this is just the tip of the iceberg. There’s
another murder before Hitchcock tidies everything up in a brilliant and daring
bit of cod-psychology in which a psychiatrist ‘explains’ the plot of the film
we have just watched. Even knowing the resolution here is a film we can watch
over and over again and a film I think I can reliably call Hitchcock’s
greatest.
Three years passed before Hitchcock made another film, this
time delving further into the horror genre with his screen version of Daphne Du
Maurier’s short story “The Birds”. Technically the film is a marvel but it is
so much more than that. He never explains why the birds behave the way they do,
rather he builds up set-piece after set-piece of bird attacks and ‘action’
while allowing us time to ponder why the humans in the picture behave as they
do. Some critics were dismissive of the film at the time as a piece of clever ‘junk’;
it is now rightly regarded as a classic.
For his next film Hitchcock was reunited with his star of “The
Birds”, Tippi Hedren, (he had wanted Grace Kelly but her husband refused to let
her make the picture). After the technical flourishes of “Psycho” and “The
Birds”, “Marnie” was a distinct throwback to his set-bound psychological
thrillers of the forties. It was about a frigid kleptomaniac blackmailed into
marriage by the man who was stealing from and who probably rapes her on their
wedding night, (discreetly done, by the way). Critics, for the most part, hated
it but again, like “Vertigo”, it has been reassessed and is now quite highly
thought of and, like “Psycho”, it ends on a piece of cod-psychology in which
the heroine’s actions are also ‘explained’.
By now Hitchcock was 65 and was to make only four more
feature films. Though they had their good points, both “Torn Curtain” and “Topaz”
are mostly forgotten. In 1972 he went back to Britain where he filmed Arthur Le
Bern’s novel ‘Goodbye Piccadilly, Farewell Leicester Square” as “Frenzy”. After
his previous two films this was seen as a real return to form. It was also seen
as perhaps his most vicious film, certainly since “Psycho”. Its villain was a
sexual psychopath and by now Hitchcock was getting bolder in showing his
murders. “Frenzy” turned out to be his penultimate film. For his final film, “Family
Plot”, he went back to California. This was certainly his ‘lightest’ film since
the fifties, with his con-artists and thieves seldom reverting to violence.
Again, critics largely dismissed it but its pleasures were that of a good
script and four excellent performances from Bruce Dern, Karen Black, William
Devane and Barbara Harris and it certainly wasn’t the failure that many
suggested and turned out to be a better end to his career than many might have
feared
In 1967 he was awarded the Irving G Thalberg Memorial Award, the only Oscar he was to personally receive. He had his failures, certainly, but how many directors made as many masterpieces in a career than spanned six decades. How many directors entertained us and probed into the darkest reaches of our psychics as Hitchcock, and often in the same moment. He story-boarded all his films but he cherished good writers. Actors, he is reputed to have said, should be treated like cattle and yet he drew many great performances from his players and he knew more about technique than any director working at the same time. When you watched a Hitchcock film you knew you were watching a Hitchcock film; no-one else made films like him and we will never see his like again.
Third World poverty is a subject the
cinema seems unwilling to tackle, perhaps understandably so since the
movies are fundamentally a commercial enterprise and 'entertainment' is
the name of the game. When 'western' cinema tackles the subject, (and I
am thinking here of Hollywood cinema), it tends to romanticise it or make it the subject of a thriller so it's often left to 'native' cinema to deal with their own issues and a lot of the time, when they do, the subject is turned around and treated as an 'action' flic or simply ignored altogether. "La Soledad" is mercifully, and thankfully, the exception.
Jorge Thielen Armand's film hails from Venezuela where
poverty and crime are debilitating issues. In a society ruled by
violence Negro and his family have virtually nothing, living on the edge
and with the likelihood of being thrown out of the crumbling mansion
where they are virtual squatters. There is no melodrama in the telling
of their tale and little drama either. Armand simply observes his
characters as they struggle from one day to the next. This could be a
documentary and his cast, all playing themselves, respond with
extraordinarily naturalistic 'performances'. The tragedy lies in our
knowledge that for many people in Venezuela life is unlikely to get any
better than it is shown here. 'Action', for want of a better word, when
it happens does so off-screen and yet, never for a moment, could you
describe this film as boring; the potential for violence never actually
seen is never far from the surface. Let's hope this extraordinary film
finds the audience it deserves.
