One angry father wrote to the brilliant director, saying his daughter had not bathed since viewing a bathtub drowning in the 1954 French film “Les Diaboliques,” and now she was refusing to shower after seeing Janet Leigh’s character slashed to death in “Psycho.” Hitchcock responded, “Send her to the dry cleaners.” – The Secrets of “Psycho’s” Shower Scene, Salon.com
“Always make the audience suffer as much as possible.” – Alfred Hitchcock
My obsession with Hitchcock was not one that blossomed in a split second. As someone exposed to the art of filmmaking and movies as a whole from a very early age, it took much time and patience to come around to appreciating folks like Stanley Kubrick, David Lean, William Wyler and Alfred Hitchcock. As a person who grew up in front of the television watching slasher films and zombie movie, it required some effort to sit down in front of a television screen to soak in the nuances and undertones of “Psycho” that would soon become one of my favorite horror films of all time. As a horror movie it’s without a doubt a keen exploration in the unending madness and reign of terror of a man forever damaged by his mother during and after her death. But as a film it’s so intricately made and so diversely entertaining that it’s almost impossible not to enjoy it. As a piece of horror filmmaking, Hitchcock made a movie that’s the epitome of the convention breaking genre masterpiece.
It’s a slasher that only has a few murders in it, it’s a murder mystery with an impossibly twisted climax, and it dares to kill off a money making starlet in the first half of the story. And it wasn’t a quick win for me when I first saw it as a kid in a Bronx apartment on a restless Saturday afternoon. Back then stations played marathons of Hitchcock and Godzilla and Hitchcock was always a guarantee with only one TV and my mom controlling it. So, I had to sit through “Psycho” and it was always a constant state of bewilderment. Why was this even considered a horror film? Why is there so little killing? But as time went on, I learned to mature as a person and as a film lover who was eventually enamored by the small bits of genius the man inserted beneath his black and white mystery. Throughout my years exploring film and Hitchcock’s method, it’s clear the man was like every other artist of his generation, someone with an old world sensibility who dare not take advice from an actor or else he’d lash out on them.
But behind the screen he showed us his wounds and vulnerabilities, his wants and desires, and he put his entire soul out for us to watch on baited breath and we obliged. Hitchcock’s whole methodology through most of his films were that if he had to suffer, so did we, so he devised the slow bang effect. This is an instrument he devised in all of his films to where he built and built and built upon suspense, giving us minute after minute of what may seem like a splash of excitement for the audience only to keep us waiting for more. Hitchcock is the last of his kind, the man who was intent on making audiences work for their meals, and didn’t mind enjoying their suffering through the endless tension that amounted when keeping us on the edge of our seat. Take for example that classic scene during “The Birds” where the gorgeous Tippi Hedren is sitting along the bench near the school listening to the children sing serenely as evil broods behind her.
Along the jungle gym, we see the birds flocking behind her growing in groups as the seconds pass. One is three, three is seven, seven is twelve, and the like. She has no idea what awaits her and the poor children of the seaside town, but we do. The trick is we’re watching what they’re not aware of and sadly we can do nothing to warn them. We want to get in to the movie and tell them and warn them of this impending danger from the skies, but we can’t. Hitchcock knows that and takes great joy from it. You just have to love the utterly gripping and intense sequence where the lovely angelic Lisa Fremont is called upon to enter the abode of the wicked Lars Thorwald to inspect his things for evidence of his wife and her corpse, all of which is witnessed through L.B. Jefferies photo lens. Left with only one leg, he can do nothing but watch and hope for her to use common sense to guide her in and out the shroud of evil and once Thorwald comes home much to the astonishment of L.B. he can do nothing but watch and hope for the best as Fremont continues investigating aware of the looing psychopath lurking in the darkness.
Hitchcock of course let loose with his unabashed desires and fetishes within his films providing us with peeks in to the taboo that would later be explored with a more gruesome effect by folks like Dario Argento and Lucio Fulci. As we all know Hitchcock was utterly in love with Grace Kelly and deified her to a great degree on film, while “Psycho” seemed to be most sexual and sardonically twisted little thriller that show a man incapable of expressing his own bodily desires, and the women he punished for revealing it to him. In the landmark shower scene, the sexually repressed Bates is raping Marion as she’s finally revealed to be in a vulnerable position where she can do nothing but bear witness to her own mutilation. She’s sexuality and free will unabashed and Mother Bates makes her pay for that through Norman’s own phallic symbol, the knife.
The knife in many ways represents Bates own impotence and possible homosexuality, while Marion pays for such a deed in getting to know him and arousing some sense of lust in him. It’s alluded throughout most of the story that Bates and his mom had an abusive and possibly incestuous relationship where his dependence on her led to a possible affair, thus he can find no one else to turn to for his needs than his mother. Like most artists, Hitchcock sought out to show the world what he feared the most, and that was mainly representative in the harrowing and brutally nightmarish “The Wrong Man.” Though I am a hardcore Henry Fonda fan, the 1956 thriller is not Hitchcock’s best. It falters a bit in the climax and even in the fifties the premise required some suspension of disbelief, but what we’re seeing on the narrative is Hitchcock’s greatest fear: the police. In many noted interviews, Hitchcock explains his paralyzing fear of the authorities and how he avoided them quite often like boogeymen and “The Wrong Man” is essentially Hitchcock living out his nightmare where Manny Balestrero is confuse for a convicted felon and has no way of actually proving his innocence.
He is left in a web of scandal and accusations that not only affect him, but his beloved wife who is forever tortured by his incident that broke their lives in two. The shocking part of the film is that this happens all of the time. The criminal justice system is flawed to a great degree, and Manny’s fate is not far off the mark. So for a fictional accounting, Hitchcock touches on events that could happen to anyone of us someday if fate would have it that way. I know it’s not popular opinion but I consider “Rope” to be without a doubt Hitchcock’s supreme masterpiece among the many gems of his career. While it’s difficult to pick out the best from a string of excellence that is Hitchcock, “Rope” is the madman at work behind the camera constantly toying with the audience. Even though I’ve seen it over a dozen time, I am always at the edge of my seat watching and waiting for someone to open up that damn book chest. What is still a disturbing prologue, two young high class men take great pride in strangling their friend to death at their apartment. The evening of their dinner party, they invite all of their friends over for a buffet and see how far they can take this scenario. Using the very rope they strangled him with to tie up books and keeping his body in a book chest that is used as a table for the party food, “Rope” always leaves me on the verge of a break down watching Hitchcock follow these characters back and forth in extended takes and rely on deceiving the viewer in locking us out of our own movie.
When characters enter a room we only see their backs, we have to contend with swinging doors, and whenever someone opens up the book chest, we only bear witness to the door opening obscuring our view of what’s inside. “Rope” is the very definition of this sick joke that Alfred insists on playing on us and as such it’s such a twisted little murder mystery that constantly wins me over whenever I sit down to watch it. You have to enjoy Jimmy Stewart’s performance here as a man whose own keen intellect soon catches on to their ruse after their own sense of self worth causes them to giveaway the fact that they’ve murdered their best friend and are trying to get away with it as everyone leaves the party woefully oblivious to the horror that occurred hours before.
He’s a character whose own intellect never gets in the way of his own sense of morality where he wields his wit and knowledge as a tool for good instead of corrupting the very fabric of society as these two men seem to want to do. He knows that he’s caught on to them and it’s up to him to put a stop to them when he learns of the murder. Hitchcock’s films are full of sick little twists and surprises that many fans continue to appreciate and the man is just a stellar wizard behind the camera even in his weakest state. I’m one who did not enjoy his foray in to dark comedy that was “The Trouble with Harry,” personally. While I appreciate the sick plot device of a dead body standing as a source of hijinks, the film is not Hitchcock’s best effort when applied to dark comedy and slapstick. And I am insistent that his spy films like “Saboteur” and “Torn Curtain” are not the most entertaining films, since they’re mainly just tedious little espionage thrillers and lack any of the usual punch we see in most of the his films despite the gruesome head in the oven murder. And I was never much for “To Catch a Thief” which is much too glossy even with the Hitchcock signature.
Finally, yes, I am aware that I’m in a vast minority when I saw that “North by Northwest” is his weakest in spite of being his most notable, mainly for the convoluted story and anti-climactic confrontation on Mount Rushmore. However, to see something from Hitchcock that involves murder and a plot that no one will really be able to get out of, watch “Strangers on a Train.” It’s a murder fantasy that torques constantly in to a labyrinthian series of conflict and obstacles that leave our protagonist Guy Haines on a constant threat of being put in to jail for something he had absolutely no part in. Once Bruno manages to meet Guy on a train one humble day his soul and his good image are forever tainted as Bruno manages to seduce Guy in to an offer of murder that could become the perfect plot to end their woes. Guy’s money grubbing wife gets offed by Bruno, and Bruno’s brother gets offed by Guy. No one is the wiser. But of course Guy doesn’t oblige and Bruno makes him suffer for it throughout the entirety of the mystery where Guy has to find a way to prove his innocence and bring Bruno to a stop or else his entire livelihood will crumble around him. I can still fondly remember sitting in front of my television thinking about what Guy should do to put an end to Bruno’s reign of terror once and for all, and how anyone would believe Guy once Bruno pointed him out as his wife’s murderer.
Hitchcock was the DaVinci of capturing moments on film that would embed themselves in to the movie viewers minds. He staged scenes in his films that could work as still paintings and hang in any gallery. Who can forget the sequence in “The Lodger” of the mysterious lodger walking around his room along a transparent floor for all of the audience to see with suspicion and raised brows, Mother Bates’ shadow looming over a showering sexual Marion, Jimmy Stewart looking through his photo lens in his bedside window along his apartment complex, the survivors in the ill fated Lifeboat waiting for fate to play a hand in their destinies, and of course Bruno staring at Guy during a tennis match. The audiences heads are bobbing left and right, left and right, left and right, only the sounds of the thuds and whiz of the tennis ball as Bruno sits among the spectators with a wide grin still as stone, keeping his eye on Guy the entire time, never losing sight of his goal in spite of the heated tennis match ensuing. It’s a wonderful and amazing little scene in horror cinema. And who can forget the strangling that occurs through Guy’s wife’s thick glasses as Bruno struggles with her silently among the glittery carnival behind them.
And I dare you not to hit the roof during the brilliant “Notorious” where Alicia Huberman is being poisoned and accidentally takes the wrong cup of tea prompting her saboteurs to shout “No!” giving up their ruse in a moment of haste and panic. The shock from this revelation and the disappointment delivered by the duo makes for a shocking slap in the face. Hitchcock just had a way of keeping the audience as his prisoner and we weren’t allowed to leave until he decided he’d had enough time playing with us and tormenting those of us usually keen to quick cuts and big explosions. He was a man confronted with many demons in his life time and like every artist he let us in. He’s a rare breed of individual, one who loves to toy with us, and… we love being toyed with every single solitary time.