Hitchcock Part Deux

I just couldn’t leave it at one post. I have to expound on a few more things I love about Hitchcock

A. Healthy distrust for and challenges to authority, boundaries, and ‘rules.’ This is shown not only in his movies, but the way he did his movies.

In his movies, he often portrays police, governmental types, authoritarian husbands, etc., in an unattractive, apprehension-inducing light. Police especially are not to be trusted.

As far as challenging limitations, he pushed the limits as far as he could. The scene in Notorious where the camera tracks around Cary Grant and Ingrid Bergman as they have a ‘romantic interlude’ far exceeded the amount of time a couple was allowed to have a kissing scene. So Hitchcock broke up the scene with a telephone conversation, but the two never really broke contact.

Psycho also involved a struggle over its ’raciness’ and Hitchcock cut a few tiny things (a toilet flushing, a clip from the shower scene) but overall he was allowed to keep many things the MPAA board deemed ‘inappropriate.’

Hitchcock did have some of his work ‘destroyed.’ The end of Suspision was changed entirely after the original ending was disaproved of. *spoiler* Cary Grant really was supposed to kill his wife. If you watch the movie again, you could see where a few key phrases would have not dispelled any tension, but made the ending plausible. The movie ending feels jarring because the whole time Hitchcock was aiming for a truly disconcerting end. He liked to push boundaries, which is always a good thing in my book.

2. He had the uncanny ability to insert suspense into the everyday. So many nerve-wracking scenes, if looked at objectively, shouldn’t really be intense. But you are paralyzed and incapable of looking at them objectively, because Hitchcock is a master.

He took great pains to make sure the audience did not find out the ending. He famously bought all the available copies of Psycho he could get his hands on, so no-one would be able to about read the twist. He didn’t even let critics see it early; they had to go in with the public.

3. Speaking of which, Hitchcock adapted many books. Rear Window is inspired by 3 different stories. Many other plots had been done before in print on or screen. Hitchcock understood that there is nothing new under the sun, but he took everything he did and made it better than it had been done before.

Hitchcock was a pioneer in several ways, and even his ‘lesser’ work has many enjoyable elements or different ways of approaching a subject.

 

Two posts in two days . . . what are you still doing here? Go, buy, watch, be happy.