The Birds

I can't stop talking about Alfred Hitchcock's The Birds. I'm still terrified by it, perhaps because Hitchcock wisely avoided providing any explanation for the avian attacks on Bodega Bay. It came after right after his success of Psycho, so he was given his biggest budget yet, $3.3 million.  The starring actors made $800 a day.  I'm still fascinated by how it was made, especially because star Tippi Hedren continues to hold forth on the horrors of working with Hitchcock:

In one horrific sequence, the filmmaker withholds from Hedren that real birds, not mechanical ones, will be used in a scene in which she'll be attacked at close quarters. Then he subjects her to five days of shooting, take after take, leaving her injured and distraught.  A physician FORCED Hitchcock to suspend production for a week to allow Hedren to recover.  "Hitch said we had to keep filming," the actress recalled. "The doctor said, `What are you trying to do, kill her?'" 

Near the end of the film, when Mitch carries Melanie down the stairs, it is actually Tippi Hedren's stand-in. Hedren was in the hospital recovering from exhaustion, bruising, and lacerations after a week of shooting the scene where she is trapped in the upstairs room with the birds.  The birds were attached to her clothes by long nylon threads so they could not get away.

I'm not sure how much thought Hitchcock gave to the safety of his actors and actresses in this movie. To attract the trained birds, the actors often had ground meat or anchovies smeared on their hands.  They were told the birds were all going to be mechanical when they agreed to shoot the film, but that was not the case.  The only scene when he did use mechanical birds was the scene where children were running from the birds.  But even then, only some were mechanical, a couple were real.  And the children, were running on treadmills, with footage of the Bay in the background, so they couldn't actually run away from them if they tried. 

Perhaps this is why The Birds is so horrifying.  It's real.  It really happened.  Yes, the birds were trained, but the cuts and scrapes and fear, the eyes.... were all real.  Hitchcock had to have it that way.  He couldn't get the same terror out of the actors if the birds had been mechanical.  They didn't know.  Not until it actually happened.

I hope you enjoyed reading this blog as much as I enjoyed writing it.

Lamb to the Slaughter

So....

This one is a little off my norm.  It's from Alfred Hitchcock Presents (his show from the 1960's).  It's a short story, but my favorite one of all that he did for the show.

I'll even re-cap it -- again, against my norm.  It begins with the main character, Barbara Bel Geddes, receiving news from her husband that he is leaving her and has fallen in love with another woman.  Barbara, is noticeably very pregnant, mind you.  She is in denial, of course, that such a thing is happening to her, so she decides to "make a nice home cooked meal" for her future ex.  She chooses a frozen leg of lamb from the freezer.  Without even a trace of a remorseful look, she bludgeons him over the head with the frozen lamb and kills him.

She puts the lamb in the oven to roast and starts cooking some vegetables.  The police arrive, and of course, can't find the murder weapon.   They search and search, but find nothing.  They are there for hours.  In fact, just long enough for the lamb to finish cooking.  I'll spoil the ending with just this photo...

Then, Hitchcock pans to this...

Cut to the credits!

Rebecca!

Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again...

 

 

The haunting opening line conjures the entirety of Hitchcock’s romantic, suspenseful, elegant film.  It's one of the most memorable lines in my personal movie watching history.  I love it.  I say it, around friends, sometimes when I wake in the morning, or when there is a lull in conversation.  It's a silly thing to say, but it gives me a chill I otherwise cannot create on my own.  I'll say it again..."Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again."  I love it.

This is the first film Hitchcock made for Hollywood and the only movie that he made that won an Oscar for Best Picture.  It is another of Hitchcock's films that he insisted be shot in black and white, because of the dark nature of the story.  The above picture of Manderley just wouldn't be the same if it were colorful, now would it?  The film's final cost was $1.2 million (it was supposed to be about $500,000), and it was mostly sucked into Manderley itself.  The ceilings, the chandeliers, the tapestries, the rooms were all furnished. 

Joan Fontaine beautifully and shyly portrays the main character, the new wife that must compete with the infamous Rebecca.  Rebecca died a horrible death in the prime of her beauty and love.  Yet we never see her.  We never see a photo of her or even a memory of her face.  But Hitchcock solves this with random various shadows he subtly casts across the walls of the house of Manderley.  We are always expecting a ghost.  She is there, without any presence.  What a difficult thing to accomplish in a film, yet Hitchcock did it seamlessly.  Around every turn, we are always expecting, almost afraid, that we will see her. 

Mrs Danvers (left)

The Back Story

Because Laurence Olivier wanted his then-girlfriend Vivien Leigh to play the lead role, he treated Joan Fontaine horribly. This shook Fontaine up quite a bit, so Alfred Hitchcock decided to capitalize on this by telling her EVERYONE on the set hated her, thus making her shy and uneasy - just what he wanted from her performance.

Hitchcock wanted the character of Mrs. Danvers to appear ghostly.  She is almost never seen walking. And when she is moving, she glides (with help of some mobile equipment).  She is also strictly told not to blink.  Of course, Mrs. Danvers, the ghostly living entity that we do get to see, dies in the fire she creates as she destroys Manderley.

If you have not seen Rebecca, see it.  In my opinion, it is not his most horrifying movie, but it is his most gripping.  It's memorable.  It's a movie about a haunting, not in the typical sense, but the kind of haunting that drives sane people mad. 


Until next time...

Psycho!

 

 

The Shower Scene

We might as well just start with this.....get it over with.

 

I am pretty careful with what I watch, but this may be the most horrifying scene I've ever seen.  Leave it to Hitchcock to kill off his leading lady 20 minutes into the film.  But it didn't matter...she served such a great purpose.  The shower scene took 7 full days to shoot, and only lasts 45 seconds, the entire film took 30 days to shoot. Although Janet Leigh was not bothered by the filming of the famous shower scene, seeing it on film profoundly moved her. She later remarked that it made her realize how vulnerable a woman was in a shower. To the end of her life, she always took baths. 

After the film's release Alfred Hitchcock received an angry letter from the father of a girl who refused to have a bath after seeing Diabolique (1955) and now refused to shower after seeing this film. Hitchcock sent a note back simply saying, "Send her to the dry cleaners." 

No Spoilers

Every theater that showed the film had a cardboard cut-out installed in the lobby of Alfred Hitchcock pointing to his wristwatch with a note from the director saying "The manager of this theatre has been instructed at the risk of his life, not to admit to the theatre any persons after the picture starts. Any spurious attempts to enter by side doors, fire escapes or ventilating shafts will be met by force. The entire objective of this extraordinary policy, of course, is to help you enjoy PSYCHO more. -Alfred Hitchcock"

Also, the movie ended similarly to a pulp fiction novel that Hitchcock promptly had bought up in every bookstore he could find it in, so as to not give away the ending.

Black and White

 

Films at this time were filmed in color.  But obviously Psycho was not.  Hitchcock chose to film it in black and white for a couple reasons.  One, in the shower scene, he wanted the blood to be just right going down the drain, so he used Bosco chocolate syrup instead of anything red.  It was just the right consistency.  And two, because he thought it would be more horrifying in black and white because that's still what the public was seeing newsreels in.  He didn't want the ooohs and aaaahs of the fact taht it was in color to distract from the viewer.  He was very careful about the viewing of this film, as stated above. 

Until next time.....

 

Rear Window

The view from Jimmy Stewart's apartment window

The Fear

This is a phenomenal movie and probably the one that I've seen the most.  Strike that... it's definitely the one I've seen the most.  It was the first Hitchcock movie I ever saw as a child and it scared me to death.

Not because it is his most frightening, it's not, but because of the implied fright.  That's really what Hitchcock really is best at...implied fright.  With the exception of Psycho, he really doesn't show anything.  And he demonstrates this best in Rear Window.  The THOUGHT of what went on behind closed doors....Thorwald murdering his invalid wife, chopping her up into little pieces in her bathtub with the knives he sells for a living, and carrying her body parts out in a salesman case in the middle of the night, in the rain, to dump her in the river.  Ok, now I'm scared again.

Thorwald

Alfred Hitchcock noted in an interview that the 1910 case of Dr. Hawley Harvey Crippen  served as an inspiration for the film. Crippen, an American living in London, poisoned his wife and cut up her body, then told police that she had moved to Los Angeles. Crippen was eventually caught after his secretary, with whom he was having an affair, was seen wearing Mrs. Crippen's jewelry, and a family friend searched unsuccessfully for Mrs. Crippen in California. After Scotland Yard became involved, Crippen and his mistress fled England under false names and were apprehended on an ocean liner. Police found parts of Mrs. Crippen's body in her cellar.

The Set

The entire movie, takes place looking out the window of Jimmy Stewart's apartment building, as he spies on his neighbors.  It's not my style to re-cap the movie itself, so I'll skip that and get right to my thoughts on it.  Here is the set....

The entire picture was shot on one set, which required months of planning and construction. The apartment-courtyard set measured 98 feet wide, 185 feet long and 40 feet high, and consisted of 31 apartments, eight of which were completely furnished. The courtyard was set 20 to 30 feet below stage level, and some of the buildings were the equivalent of five or six stories high.  All the apartments in Thorwald's building had electricity and running water, and could be lived in.

While shooting, Alfred Hitchcock worked only in Jeff's  (Jimmy Stewart's) apartment. The actors in other apartments wore flesh-colored earpieces so that he could radio his directions to them.  And the actress that played "Miss Torso"?  She lived in her made for movie apartment the entire month long process of the movie's filming. 

One thousand arc lights were used to simulate sunlight. Thanks to extensive pre-lighting of the set, the crew could make the changeover from day to night in under forty-five minutes.

This is the only movie where Grace Kelly can be seen with a cigarette.  She refused to smoke on camera. 

 

 

Not all of Hitchcock's movies received rave reviews from critics, especially in the beginning.  But this one did.  It was acclaimed immediately as one of the best suspense movies ever made almost instantly after it's release.



Oh, gosh.....it's inevitable....next up is Psycho!

Rope

 

 The Filming

 

This film is one of Hitchcock's most experimental and one of the most interesting experiments ever attempted by a major director working with big box-office names abandoning many standard film techniques to allow for the long unbroken scenes. Each shot ran continuously for up to ten minutes without interruption. It was shot on a single set.  It was also the first film he ever shot in color.  Working in color was new and Hitchcock shot the last 4 or 5 segments over and over again because he didn't like the color of the sunset.

Camera moves were carefully planned and there was almost no editing.  The walls of the set were on rollers and could silently be moved out of the way to make way for the camera and then replaced when they were to come back into shot. Prop men constantly had to move the furniture and other props out of the way of the large Technicolor camera, and then ensure they were replaced in the correct location. A team of soundmen and camera operators kept the camera and microphones
in constant motion, as the actors kept to a carefully choreographed set of cues.  Also, the cords of the equipment were massive and plentiful.  The actors had to not only shoot these takes perfectly, but had to avoid tripping over copious amounts of cords on the floor of the set without looking down at all.  The cords were hastily moved constantly so as not to appear in any scenes where the floor was shot with the camera.

The set

 The extraordinary background was the largest backing ever used on a sound stage.  It included models of the Empire State and the Chrysler buildings.  Numerous chimneys smoke, lights come on in buildings, neon signs light up, and the sunset slowly unfolds as the movie progresses. Within the course of the film the clouds—made of spun glass—change position and shape eight times.  All of which was "fake".  Using these long takes, Hitchcock couldn't take any chances that the scenery or weather would change, it had to look like it was shot from start to finish in one continuous take, even though the cameras of that time could only film for 10 minutes at a time.

This is the size of the camera used

Long takes

 

Hitchcock shot for periods lasting up to ten minutes, continuously panning from actor to actor.  Every other segment ends by panning against or tracking into an object—a man's jacket blocking the entire screen, or the back of a piece of furniture, for example. In this way, Hitchcock effectively masked half the cuts in the film. However, at the end of 20 minutes (two magazines of film make one reel of film on the projector in the movie theater), the projectionist—when the film was shown in theaters—had to change reels. On these changeovers, Hitchcock cuts to a new camera setup, deliberately not disguising the cut.  He was the first to ever attempt this.  He wanted the film to look like one long take, a neverending scene.

Since the filming times were so long, everybody on the set tried their best to avoid any mistakes. At one point in the movie, the camera dolly ran over and broke a cameraman's foot, but to keep filming, he was gagged and dragged off. Another time, a woman puts her glass down but misses the table. A stagehand had to rush up and catch it before the glass hit the ground. Both parts are used in the final cut.

Stewart

 

Of course Jimmy Stewart is amazing.  In many scenes, you can actually see his thoughts, so to speak.  His eyes are all he needed to tell the audience that he had it all figured out.  Strangely, it was the only film he later stated that he didn't like doing with Alfred Hitchcock.  He thought he was horribly miscast.  

His final soliloquy is outstanding....

"By what right do you dare to say that there's a superior few to which you belong? By what right did you decide that that boy in there was inferior and could be killed? Did you think you were God, Brandon? Is that what you thought when you choked the life out of him? Is that what you thought when you served food from his grave?! I don't know who you are but I know what you've done. You murdered! You choked the life out of a fellow human being who could live and love as you never could, and never will again!"


Until next time....

The Lady Vanishes

"You're the most contemptible person I've ever met in all my life!"

" Confidentially, I think you're a bit of a stinker, too."

Ahhhhh....doesn't all love start with words like this??  Well, at least that's how it begins with Margaret Lockwood and Michael Redgrave.  The above is my favorite banter between them from The Lady Vanishes.  

What....is it?

It's a spy movie, it's a love story, it's a thriller....it's a political message wrapped inside a thriller...??  Let's talk about it in the latter sense.  That's how I view it.  If I analyze this movie as any of the other ways, I lose interest.  But it's a movie, done in 1938, a time of world turmoil, death camps, war, bombs, deaths, drafts....and of course...spies! 

Miss Froy (centered).  An unlikely spy.

Hitchcock liked to play with censorship as best he could for the time his movies are made.  He did his best to show how the world was changing.  That people were not people to Hitler, but something to dominate and overcome.  But the people, in 1938 were just a couple of years shy of knowing that.  But it was coming.  Their innocence to world politics was changing.  And Hitchcock didn't put this message in this movie by accident.

The Lady Vanishes was made largely in 1937, and released in 1938. In England at that time, the big political question of the day was should we appease Hitler or prepare to fight him?  The shootout scene at the end of the movie shows the audience just what Alfred Hitchcock wants England to do.

In one scene, one of the English passengers shouts amidst the gunfire with the conspirators outside the halted train, “They can’t possibly do anything to us, we’re British subjects”. It is especially disheartening to see how naïve people of the 1930s and 40s were toward the evils going on around them. Another passenger storms out of the train waving a white-flag in the direction of the foreign conspirators, only to be shot dead in his tracks. The director’s point is clear – England can not appease Hitler and survive.

More...

Ok.....next time Rope....I promise!