Sunday, July 29, 2007

The "Now I've Seen Everything" Dept.- Alfred Hitchcock IV

Alfred Hitchcock and Bernard Herrmann-Masters of Suspense

It is a period of extraordinary freedom and creativity for Hitchcock. Despite having never won an Oscar, he is one of the few film directors known to the American public by name, along with Walt Disney and Cecil B. DeMille. In fact, the "Hitchcock" name could well be considered a brand, for it appears on pulp mystery magazines and a new television anthology series.* Hitchcock enjoys a contract deal that allows him to retain the rights to several of his best films, as well as working for M-G-M and Paramount Studios, not as an employee but a commodity. It is also the period where Sir Alfred finds one of his most effective collaborators in composer Bernard Herrmann. Together, they would create a string of films that would define both of their careers. And this period ends with his greatest success and biggest reach in subject matter and a bravura display of technique.

WARNING! SPOILERS ABOUND IN THESE CAPSULE SUMMARIES!! WHATEVER YOU DO, IF YOU HAVEN'T SEEN THESE HITCHCOCK FILMS, THEN DO NOT READ ANY FURTHER (By all means, go to the attic OR the basement, take a shower OR a ride on a carousel, wait in a corn-field OR the schoolyard, visit Mt. Rushmore, the Statue of Liberty, the Bates Motel, OR the beach at Monte Carlo, or for that matter, just sit in your room and watch your neighbors, but for the love of an omnipotent uncaring God...) I REPEAT, DO NOT READ ANY FURTHER!!!
(Thank you and have a nice day)

Alfred Hitchcock's "Psycho" (1960) Hitchcock liked to shake things up a bit when he made movies, pushing boundaries wherever he could. But "Psycho" is unique. It is a straight up horror film. It pushes accepted levels of taste and subjects anathema to the Legion of Decency. Long after he'd experimented with and mastered color, this one's filmed in black and white. The last film of Hitchcock's Paramount contract (though rights were eventually bought by Universal), it was made on-the-cheap using his production crew from television because he was unsure of its box-office potential, in fact, he wasn't sure of the film at all. Yet, it is Hitchcock at his most strategic in its blueprint--it is a series of film feints and manipulations designed to keep its audience on the edge of their seats, questioning everything. In his landmark book-length interview with Francois Truffaut, Hitchcock was particularly pleased with "Psycho," because he made it so cheaply and yet it generated the biggest box-office of his career. He also enjoyed the effect it had on audiences, as, more than any other film, he was deliberately "playing the audience like an orchestra." The story is simple, though its strategies are not. We follow Marion Crane, a Phoenix career girl who has just embezzled $40,000 from her boss to help set up her and her boyfriend. She suffers a crisis of conscience and before she can act on it, she is brutally murdered in the shower of the motel she is staying at. The young proprietor of the Bates Motel, Norman Bates, discovers the body and hides all evidence of the killing to protect his mother, then must ward off detectives, police and Marion's sister and beau from discovering the truth.

Yeah. Right. Hitchcock's first big gotcha is to kill off his star forty five minutes into the picture. The audience is left in a state of shock... what do we do now? Who do we follow? And "johnny-on-the-spot" here comes Norman! The fact is, "Psycho" is a cold little exercise in toying with people. Our loyalties to Marion as an audience are divided, and when she's killed we glom onto the young Mr. Bates, because a) we don''t want him to get caught, but b) we want to know his secret. And as clues mount (with the body-count) the director takes us further and further into territories of dread as sweet as molasses candy...and just as sticky. So commanding is Hitchcock's grip on the audience that he even feels free to explore that age-old question "Why don't they just go to the police?" Hitchcock's stock answer: "Because it's bo-ring!" In "Psycho," they do. And...it is. But its a relief to get away from the Bates Motel by this time. Any excuse will do.

Along the way are some technical marvels of camera and editing work that have been studied and copied but never topped by lesser lights. The snaking shot up the stairs that shinnies up to the ceiling to cast a "God's eye-view" as Norman moves his mother down to the basement is one of the great sleight of hands by any director. Hitchcock's scrupulously maintained "Look/ Object Observed/ Reaction" editing strategy for Vera Miles' search of the Bates house is a nerve-jangling tour-de-force. Then there's the justifiably classic murder sequence made up of snippets of film that flash and slash across the screen, showing us nothing but suggesting everything. And Bernard Herrmann's strings-only score--Black and white music for a black and white film--shoves and kicks us along the scary maze. So confident of Herrmann was Hitchcock that on his score suggestions when he reached the point of Marion's drive from Phoenix he merely wrote "Reel 4 is yours." Hitchcock originally planned the shower murder to be unscored, but Herrmann scored it with its now iconic shrieking strings. When the composer reminded the director of his original plan, he replied "Improper suggestion..."

From Hitchcock, that's a compliment.

Mention has to be made of the cast. Everybody's terrific, but Anthony Perkins is so good he never played another normal human being again. Towards the end of his life when asked if, knowing the effect it would have on his career he would do it again, his reply was "In a heart-beat." His fidgeting, shimmying Norman is one of The Great Performances. Only one of the great failings of Gus Van Sant's shot-for-shot color remake was Vince Vaughn's inability to evoke anything nearly as good--but then all the actors failed at that. You remake masterpieces at your peril...even if you do have the blue-print at hand.


Alfred Hitchcock's "North By Northwest" (1958) The wit begins immediately as the opening bars of Bernard Herrmann's manic fandango get out of the way for the MGM lion's roar. Then, life goes crazy for a very bad couple of days in the life of blithely selfish Madison Avenue ad-man Roger O.Thornhill ("What does the 'O' stand for?" "Nothing...") as he is mistaken for a government agent, kidnapped, nearly assassinated and then is accused of murdering a U.N. official. He then falls under the wing of the very government service his phantom doppelganger belongs to, evading the police and the spies on a cross-country getaway from New York to North Dakota.

What does it all stand for? Nothing. Thornhill is a nowhere man, mistaken for a person who doesn't exist and nothing is what it seems. Even the MacGuffin everyone is after is dismissed as "goverment secrets, perhaps?" -- secrets wrapped in an enigma. For the lead Hitchcock goes with his "better-than-everyman" Cary Grant, his blonde is the slyly coy Eva Marie Saint (never better), and the villains are James Mason (one would think the perfect Hitchcock actor) and his aide-de-camp the very young, very reptilian Martin Landau. It's a trifle--a bouncing nightmare made of cotton-candy whisps, with wild Hitchcock set-pieces held together by Ernest Lehman's yeoman-work trying to keep everything light-hearted and semi-plausible. It's hard to find a better entertainment, from that opening roar to the final salacious joke.


Alfred Hitchcock's "Vertigo" (1957) Everybody has their favorite "Hitchcock." ** This one is mine. "Scottie" Ferguson is a desk-bound police detective on disability following a traumatizing incident that involved a dead policeman and revealed a susceptibility to vertigo--a dizzying sensation in situations dealing with heights. An old friend hires him to follow his wife whom he suspects of falling under the spell of a dead woman who committed suicide. "Scottie" takes the job, and in following the woman, learns of her obsession, rescues her from an attempt to take her life...and falls hopelessly in love with her. But in an attempt to jog her memory she makes a second attempt which he is unable to prevent due to his infirmity. The guilt and grief (plus an embarrassing investigation) lands "Scottie" in a sanitarium, a broken man. When he is released, vulnerable and impressionable, he obsesses on a woman who resembles the dead woman and finds himself unable to shake the grip of his lost love.

When the authors of "Les Diabolique" heard that Hitchcock had tried to obtain the rights to it, they wrote "D'Entre les Morts" ("From Among the Dead") with him in mind. He snapped it up immediately. One can see why. It had all the elements--a mystery, a passionate love story, a blonde damsel, an obsessive man, a wounded psyche, a manipulative make-over, and something else that might have driven Hitchcock. When we reach the end of the film and are left at the precipice, it's only then that we're aware that, yes, it's a love story, but it's a love for a woman who doesn't exist--who never existed...ever. "Scottie's" obsession is for an ideal, a figment of his imagination, just as Hitchcock's obsession with blondes (over and over again they appear in his films) is an ideal. So, then, what is love? If "Scottie's" love doesn't exist, what is he in love with? Do we love the people we love, or the ideal of that person? Is love real? For any of us?

Not the most romantic of questions to ask in a love story, but the story suggests that love is an affliction, like "Scottie"s" vertigo--like his depression. It's all in his mind, whether he has the heart or not. And Bernard Herrmann's turgid, swirling score suggests, as does Saul Bass' moire-pattern titles sequence, a whirlpool, forever trapping us.***

As usual during this period, when he was casting the part of an interior, complex man, Hitchcock cast James Stewart in the lead--the '50's saw Stewart in a great many of his most neurotic performances but this one tops them all. Stewart's Ferguson starts the movie hanging from a gutter, and he's on the edge throughout a falling man who never reaches bottom, but is broken nonetheless. Stewart comes as close as he ever does to losing the audience's sympathy--by the end, he's an obsessive caring not for the woman he supposedly loves, and jabbering in semi-hysterics. Hitchcock wanted his new favorite, Vera Miles for the lead, but pregnancy forced her to give it up, and the director cast Kim Novak, not an actress of great depth, but you'd never know it from this performance--there's a luminousness and other-worldliness to Novak that Miles would have been hard-pressed to achieve. Barbara Bel Geddes got her first movie role in "Vertigo," and she took to Hitchcock's direction immediately (she, like Miles would work in some of the director's impressive TV work*). Her sorrowfully loyal Midge is a vital third wheel, a reflective choice, in a story about loss...of love, of self, of control.


Alfred Hitchcock's "The Wrong Man" (1956) One is tempted to say this one's surprising, but Hitchcock was never one to do something that wasn't unique. In this "kitchen-sink" neo-noir adapted by playwright Maxwell Anderson, Hitchcock tells the true story (the court case number is even displayed on the poster for the doubters to research) of "Manny" Ballestrero, a musician at New York's "Stork Club," who was falsley accused of assault and robbery and his years-long struggle to clear his name. Because the story is itself "stranger than fiction," Hitchcock films it in an almost documentary fashion in many of the actual locations (and with some of the people involved in the story!) **** It's a realistic version of the standard Hitchcock story elements of false accusation and imprisonment, and the guilt associated with those events. A highlight of the film (and bear in mind when you see it, that it actually happened the way it was depicted) is the trial as Ballestrero furtively glances about the court-room at the casual indifference of the participants and spectators, while he is fighting for his life. Henry Fonda is such an "every-man" actor that any star-persona is completely submerged, and Vera Miles gives an incredible performance as his long-suffering wife (this, and "Vertigo" are good, unhysterical depictions of depression) Anthony Quayle plays their defense attorney.

Hitchcock was still very much the Catholic boy making this movie--the hallucinatory camera-rotation when Ballestrero is alone in his cell no doubt reflected Hitchcock's feelings when he was briefly incarcerated as a boy (Dad wanted to teach him a lesson), and the story doesn't resolve itself until the moment his character begins to fervently murmur a prayer to a portrait of Jesus. Fonda's words to the cause of his problems still haunt to this day.

Alfred Hitchcock's "The Man Who Knew Too Much" (1956) A remake of Hitchcock's 1934 film with Peter Lorre, this one stars James Stewart and Doris Day (tight blonde hair, grey suit) as American vacationers in Morocco who stumble on to a plot to kill an ambassador at a concert in Albert Hall. To ensure their silence their son is kidnapped. The two go their separate ways to find the son and foil the plot, which culminates at London's famous hall in a sequence that lasts 12 minutes without a single line of dialogue. Day's character as a singer comes in handy for a high-pitched scream and two renditions of "Que Sera Sera" that you have to suffer through twice, though its in service of the story. Herrmann's second score for Hitchcock is a bumptuous affair emphasizing thrills over atmosphere and Herrmann even appears on-screen as the conductor of Arthur Benjamin's cantata "The Storm Clouds" (which was written for the 1934 film). It's a fine Hitchcock thrill ride, one of the five Hitchcock films that were wholly owned by Hitch (the others were "Rope," "Rear Window," "The Trouble with Harry," and "Vertigo") and held as a legacy for his daughter, Pat.

One moment has always stood out for me, and it's Doris Day's. Stewart must tell his wife that their son has been taken, but before he'll say anything he insists that she take a powerful tranquilizer. She reluctantly does so, and he waits for it to start taking effect before he tells her. What follows is a heart-breaking scene as Day starts to go into hysterics, as she begins to lapse into unconsciousness. Say what you will about Doris Day--this is one of the great acting scenes in film.


Alfred Hitchcock's "The Trouble with Harry" (1955) No matter how quaint a Vermont town can be, no matter how picturesque the autumn surroundings, and no matter how charming its people, a corpse can do a lot to upset things. While out playing "spaceman," young Arnie Rogers (played by a pre-"Beaver" Jerry Mathers) comes across something totally out of his orbit--a dead body. Gunshots had been heard, and maybe "Harry" was felled by one by accident. Or something else happened. Harry's former wife, Jennifer, certainly had a motive. And then there's the little matter of the body always turning up, inconveniently. Pretty soon, people are feeling guilty about Harry, even if they had nothing to do with it. And it's up to the most un-bohemian of bohemian artists--Sam Marlowe to get to the bottom of the mystery...or at least keep it buried for awhile. Call it a black comedy of manners or call it an Agatha Christie novel, but moved out the dark drawing room into the bright sunshine and fall-colors of the outside, it's Hitchcock in a whimsical mood by way of Charles Addams. His cast includes veterans Midred Natwick and Edmund Gwenn and representing romance on the other side of the age scale John Forsythe and Shirley MacLaine (in her film debut). Hitchcock and Robert Burks do an incredible job photographing the New England autumn capturing the golden light filtering through the trees, showing just how beautiful things can look when they're dying.

In their first collaboration, composer Bernard Herrmann (Citizen Kane, The Ghost and Mrs. Muir, The Devil and Daniel Webster) gives Hitchcock a wistful score full of sad melody, offset by a bouncy little tuba theme that he reworked as a concert piece "A Portrait of Hitch." Together they would achieve the heights of their respective careers and lead the pack of other great director/composer teams as Lean/Jarre, Edwards/Mancini, Truffaut/Delerue, Spielberg/Williams and Burton/Elfman.

"The Master of Suspense" can't keep his own composer awake...

Hitchcock and Herrmann in happier times

* "Of Marginal Interest" are two very important video's: one, the first episode of "Alfred Hitchcock Presents," a truly creepy tale unmistakably directed by the Master himself; the other an excellent documentary on Hitchcock's musical muse, Bernard Herrmann. Herrmann doesn't come off very well in this (and he rather deserves it), but Hitchcock's treatment of him is treated with contempt--"Hitchcock had the loyalty of an eel," sneers the usually very gentlemanly David Raksin.

** The director's was the lovely and very creepy "Shadow of a Doubt" written with Thornton Wilder. We'll get there, eventually.

*** And the director makes the point with the "Vertigo" shot, which he'd been trying to perfect since "Rebecca," a simultaneous zoom-in, and track-back that prismatically warps space--it has been used endlessly by directors trying to convey disorientation or shock. Hitchcock never used it again--he kept coming up with new innovations.

**** Herrmann's score is similarly muted, more textural--to be felt rather heard--not unlike his final score, "Taxi Driver," twenty years later--and only "breaks out" as source music at the Club.



Next: The Master's Grace Period

Thursday, July 26, 2007

True-Life Adventures on the Rock V

Life Will Find a Way

One of the first things I did when we moved into The Cabin On the Rock was to clean the deck and patio. After three years of rental use, it needed to be cleaned of old birds' nests in the rafters. The nests were from barn swallows--agressive little dive-bombers who would just miss your head when swooping home. Plus, they left bird-poop everywhere. Nasty. So, for awhile, we would "discourage" their setting up shop, though I suppose they were pre-disposed to seek us out for accomodations. Swinging brooms at them did some good--our Birding Average was abysmal. But the most effective thing were the spikes.

You can get 'em at Ace Hardware, or any hardwre store, for that. Plastic spikes that you can nail or glue to the rafters to discourage the alighting on. But they did try. My, how they did try, swooping up and grabbing one of those vertical spikes in their talons, and just kind of...hanging there, sideways. Maybe they were doing it out of spite ("I'll show ya!"). Maybe they were testing their endurance ("If I can hang here for five minutes, maybe we could tolerate living like this awhile..."). After awhile they would get bored, or the blood rushing to their heads would get to them and they'd depart. Eventually they stopped trying and found another neighborhood. The broom went back into the shed. The spikes did an effective job...and looked lovely in the winter with white Christmas lights glowing on them.

Well, this summer, a robin family built a nest up there this Summer. That's their place in the picture. I was a bit upset; I thought I'd put spikes on the outside rafters. Then, a closer look told me I had. The robins had just been tenacious enough to build there despite the peculiarities of the location, something they have in common with our neighbors' houses on stilts.

"Life will find a way" was the lesson of "Jurassic Park." One need only look out our window to see it proved in the real.

And any remorse I might feel about them living around those spikes is chased away at night as I'm poked by the feathers in our mattress. I say we're about even.
-------------------------------------------------------------------
K.'s away again for two weeks helping Mom. She's going to miss her birthday, the Wilson Family Reunion (always a hoot), a visit from the Sister-in-Law and some dog-training (the dog's jumping on the counters, and this evening, coming back from a 2 day trip to Portland reconoitering, he was so excited to see his frisbee he jumped onto the table with all four feet!!! Bad dog! Dexterous, but bad!) Well, my next few days are filled with work, and an honest-to-b'gosh interview, so things are jumping...uh, besides the dog I mean.
-------------------------------------------------------------------
Today's bumper sticker: "If it's called 'Tourist Season,' why can't we shoot 'em?"

Monday, July 23, 2007

Movie Review - "Transformers"

"I bought a car--turned out to be an alien robot. Who knew?"

One has always suspected from the evidence that Director Michael Bay likes machines more than he does people. The stunts--the "tent-pole" sequences-- have loving care lavished upon them, but character development is there for laughs...people are more effective as collateral damage than the purpose of the story. And if somebody gets squished along the way...well, who cares? After all, another stunt is on the way, and how cool is that? The epitome of this director-fetish occurred in "Pearl Harbor" (never seen it, for personal reasons) when the "money" shot of the attack was one that followed an air-dropped bomb on its destructive path through the U.S.S. Arizona. Bay said in interviews he did "Pearl Harbor" just so he could do that shot. I've seen that little piece of film numerous times (I keep looking for a CGI version of my father waiting on the dock), and it is impressive. It's also the coldest, most heartless way to present a tragedy I've ever seen. What if Oliver Stone had had a "bullet" shot that travelled from the Texas School Book Depository to the meat of JFK's brain (As cruel as that sounds, I've seen similar things a few times on the CSI shows), wouldn't someone raise a stink about that? It's as if one of these little destructive things is on a hero's quest and we follow it's little travails to its ultimate goal. Boom! "Scoooore!" So I've looked at Bay's career with a jaundiced eye, looking for the day he'd grow up and become a real director.


I don't know that he has, but if he keeps making movies like "Transformers," maybe he shouldn't. One wants to be cynical about a 2 hour 20 minute commercial for Hasbro (the movie is rife with product placement for young and old alike), but damn, if the things isn't as effective an action-comedy that has come down the pike in quite awhile. Aimed directly at where male adolescents live, the movie has the great good sense to cast Shia LaBeouf as its token humanoid.* LaBeouf's fidgety, jittery, always "on" performance is one of those joys to behold in movies-- constantly shifting, feeling like an ad-libbed performance (though the prize for that must go to Julie White as the slightly addled Mrs. Witwicky, always trying to make something positive out of a negative) and holding his own against all comers be they performing veterans or CGI monsters.

The story deals with an invasion of Earth by warring stealth robots, the Autobots and the Decepticons, who hide in plain sight by adapting the forms of the mechana of whatever world they crash-land on. They're decidedly nostalgic, taking on the form of boom-boxes and 70's Camaro's. When we meet hyper high-schooler Sam Witwicky, he is combining a school assignment with a mercenary sales-pitch trying to raise money for wheels. This sets in motion a plot so full of contrivance that it almost knocks your block off (sorry, wrong battling robots), but between the machine gun performances and Bay's constantly moving camera (a bit less shake and quiver than usual), you don't have time to notice, so deeply submerged is the movie in the "now."

Along the way are some interesting performances by Bernie Mac, matching LaBoeuf shift for shift in animation,** Jon Voight, looking florid and dour as the Secretary of Defense, John Turturro, whose agent for the secretive Section 7 ("...never heard of it." "And you never will.") careens into Pacino-like histrionics, and Michael O'Neill from "The West Wing," brings an understated straight-faced gravity in the face of sci-fi mayhem that just allows the movie to survive a lengthy exposition sequence at Hoover Dam. All fit as the tone of the movie is more like the Spielberg-produced "Gremlins," than, say, "The Iron Giant."

After pulling off a good movie for most of its length, it succumbs to the wishes of the toy-clutching fanboys, and turns into 45 minutes of "Rock'em, Sock'em Robots" in the streets of L.A., which is just as boring as it sounds. All the fun just drains right out of the movie while the titular charcters get in each other's grills, kick each other's cans for what seems like an eternity.

That's one of the problems. One can kvell about stereotyping, but I can't thinkl of any minority (or majority, for that matter) not being lampooned (in fact, there's a nice double-shot at white geeks and director Bay when a fan boy reacts to a violent meteor shower--"This is SO cooler than 'Armageddon!'") except for Asians. Didn't "Transformers" start in Japan? Hmmm.

Also, why are two of the more prominent women-roles both made up like 30 year old porn stars? And one's supposed to be in high school? How many grades was she sent down? They may be hawt (I believe the phrase is), but really, the only other person who comes close to having that much make-up caked on them is Jon Voight! And there is the staple of Bay--the slow-motion military shots that look like they've been culled from recruitment ads, and the faux-Hans Zimmer thudding score makes it feel more germanically militaristic than normal.

Still in all, it's the best damned, most entertaining toy commercial I've seen in a long time. Can't wait for "Furby: The Movie."

"Transformers" is a matinee.

* Ever been annoyed at black-themed movies where the stars and main characters are white? This is sort of a mechanoid version of that scenario.

** Though it does cause some of the dialogue editing to be a bit ragged in places.

Thursday, July 19, 2007

So Many Reviews...So Little Time

Spike it! "The Men of Tomorrow" by Gerard Jones

"Here Lies Mort Weisinger--As Usual." p. 131

If ever there was a cautionary tale, it is this one: What can happen if you follow your bliss and chase your heart's desire, without considering the bottom line or getting a good lawyer. It's the story of the young sons-of-immigrants who created, developed and exploited the new invention of the comic book industry--that strange concoction of the pulps, science fiction and funny papers that spawned the superhero craze, started when two jewish kids from Ohio created "Superman." The story of Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster is the main subject of "Men of Tomorrow" by Gerard Jones, a past comic writer himself, who understands the psyche behind the superhero, and the various creators--some shy, some bullies, some trying to avoid a regular job, all of them geeks--who dreamed them up, up and away.
This was the bed in which the comic book was conceived: counter-cultural, lowbrow, idealistic, prurient, pretentious, mercenary, forward-looking, and ephemeral, all in the same instant. p.62

But Jones delves into the whole era--not just Siegel and Shuster, but also the history of DC comics, the home of "Superman," which began life as the antithesis of "Truth, Justice and The American Way," at least not in the way that Way was percieved. The original printer-publishing house of Harry Donenfeld was also a cover for bootlegging gangsters like Frank Costello, as well as distributing pornography. The philosophy was not "what's good for America"(that would be considered when public officials and police started snooping around), but what would bring in the most sheckels.

So much of comic-bookishness is based on mythology, and so, too, is its history. After all, the folks telling their stories were fantasists writing about delusions of grandeur. But Jones bursts through the hyperbole, the accepted truths and industry legends with tight, beefy, compact prose full of good ideas, vivid attitude and no room for sentimentality. For instance, the familiar story of Siegel and Shuster was that "Superman" was stolen out from under them and they were left to live in poverty by the indifferent money-men of "Superman's" publishers. Some of that is true. But it's also true that Siegel and Shuster (and certainly Siegel)also, out of arrogance or their own hubris wouldn't hire lawyers when questions first arose, and were willing to let "Superman" go, thinking that they could come up with even better properties. It's a book full of professional success and personal failings, about what it takes to succed in America, and how ideas become commodities.

The comics was not a meritocracy. Call it an opportunocracy, a fluke-ocracy, a dumb-ass-luck-ocracy. The truest kind of American enterprise. p. 203

It's a pleasure reading this book. Not just for the refreshing clearing of the musty air of comics' origins, but also for the way Jones tells it. There is a tight precision to his prose that brings a smile to the lips (even if you're moving them while reading) and a satisfaction to the heart. Jones likes to tell his story, and build up incident and then hit you with a zinger, as here in his description of one of National Periodicals' contributors, Major Wheeler-Nicolson:

The major wore a French officer's cloak, a boulevardier's sharp moustache, a supercilious glare, and a beaver hat always perfectly brushed. He also had bad teeth. He claimed to have been a hero in the world war and a cavalry commander in the undeclared war against the Bolsheviks in Russia. Upon the end of hostilities, went his story, he's grown troubled by the "Prussianism" rampant among his superiors and saw threats ahead to our domestic institutions. He wrote a letter of warning to President Harding and was rewarded with a court martial, a trumped-up charge that he tried to escape his cell, and a gunshot to his head. After his dishonorable discharge he's come to New York and become a sought-after magazine writer with stories based on his own knowledge of the hell of war. The major couldn't have shoveled half as much horse manure in the cavalry as he did in New York. p. 101

Jones begins one segment with a perfectly precise. cogent and clear-eyed look at the Second World War and its aftermath globally, societally, socialogically and psychologically without any "Greatest Generation" sentimentality. It's one of the best summings-up of the conflict I've ever read, and its just three pages of the beginning of one section of this enjoyable book. Along with the Siegels and Shusters and Donenfelds and Leibowitzes, it talks about the stories of other sons of immigrants and how they waded through the treacherous waters of "work-for-hire." Some, like Bob Kahn (or "Bob Kane") as he became known simply lied to get a better deal. Stanley Lieber ("Stan Lee") ingratiated himself with his superiors. Jacob Kurtzberg ("Jack Kirby") toughed it out like a street-kid. And some, like Mort Weisinger, the subject of the Julius Schwartz quote above, just bullied and berated and lied through his teeth.

None of them knew how everything would begin to change when that first issue of Action Comics came out. None of them could have foreseen how they would change the popular culture of America. None of them could have imagined how different their own lives would become, how huge the money and the fame and the ruination would be. p.125

A good read, a fun read, and a sobering one.

Finally, I'm grateful to this book for re-introducing the term "schmendrick" into my life, courtesy of Art Spiegelman's back-cover blurb.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Tales From the Red Envelope:


Dreamgirls (Bill Condon, 2006)
Think "The Color Purple" in sequined gowns and moved north to Motown and you've got it in a nutsell. Or the story of "The Supremes" but without the good music. I've always liked the material provided Motown's premiere girl-group (the singer, not the song/the singer, not the song) even though they were vamping cross-gendered "Pip's," but I've always had a feeling like chewing aluminum foil when it comes to uber-diva Diana Ross. In fact the only concert I'd kept a record of was the one in Central Park that was interrupted by a freak thunderstorm of such magnitude that New Yorkers started leaving in throngs (cabs and coaches being presumably unavailable), while the rain-pelted, wind-whipped Ross was exhorting "Please! Stay! Just sing with me! It'll blow over! " (It didn't. Sometimes reality can overwhelm ego) That one always gave me a chuckle. Poor drenched Diana. Nobody loved her enough to risk electrocution. Musta been hard.

So to see a fictionalized version of their story, even one not to Ms. Ross' liking, might have had some sort of crass-enjoyment to it. But the songs have none of the agressive bop of Motown pop, the conceit of songs in concert/songs as commentary doesn't work and most of the performances try to trudge through the treacle unsuccessfully. Who'd have thought that Beyonce, child of Mariah, born of Whitney, out of Diana would prove to be such a non-entity on-screen, even when the movie is made to order for her. And the very talented Jamie Foxx can't play a bad guy when all his life he has sung like a good guy. It is his sorry fate to be cast as "Mister" splitting up the women, then banished to inconsequence when we end with The Big Reunion.

But...the things that make the movie watchable and of any interest at all are Jennifer Hudson and Eddie Murphy. Hudson won the Oscar for the over-wrought "And I'm Telling You I'm Not Going," but her bad-attitude acting and her quieter singing are what really make you miss her when she's off-screen. And Murphy proves that, despite the schlock that he's attached his name to, he's a man of unqualified gifts. His fictionalized riff on James Brown shows the athleticism, the brio, the stage-power and the inherent puffery of "A Hardest Working Man in Show Business." Not a false or contrived-cute note in that performance. And he sings good, too. He shoulda won that Oscar.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Charlotte's Web (Gary Winick, 2006)
E.B. White's children's classic comes out in a live action version (there was an animated musical in 1973 with Debbie Reynolds as Charlotte the spider, Paul Lynde as Templeton the rat, and Henry Gibson as Wilbur the pig--Rex Allen narrated), which could just as well be called "Babe II," if there's wasn't already one. Not to worry, though. As movies of children's classics go, this one's really good--a bit awash in celebrity voices, but the kids won't care, and it does give the parents something to do ("Who's doing the cows do you think?") Since I've given you the '73 version, I'll tell you who does the same for 2006--a very sober Julia Roberts as Charlotte, Steve Buscemi as Templeton, and kid-actor Dominic Scott Kay as Wilbur--Sam Shepard narrates. Dakota Fanning ably shoulders the role of Fern, and while she's not as scarily real in this one, she's not annoyingly sugar-coated , either. Director Winick keeps the special effects unflashy, although there are some intricate CGI spider-web moves (left over from Sam Raimi story-boards, no doubt) that are over quickly. It feels properly home-spun, and Danny Elfman's score, though it brings on the "Edward Scissorhands" Choir, still manages to evoke the joys of simple gifts without beating you over the head with them. I remember one of my grade-school teachers reading "Charlotte" in class, and at one pivotal point, the entire class weeping. That point in the movie brought tears to K., so it did its job. The bonus is you get to hear Robert Redford doing an out and out comedy turn. How rare is that?
-----------------------------------------------------------------------

Spirited Away (Sen to Chihiro no kamikakushi), (Hayao Miyazaki, 2001)
This is the first Miyazaki animation I have seen, and it's a little off-putting to be hit with so much in one film--a bit like "Yellow Submarine" but with crystal meth instead of mushrooms--everything's just a little bit threatening. And one has to get used to the sudden shifts in motivations of characters at times, and the almost constant sense of dislocation. Puts one in sympathy with the main character, certainly, and keeps one mindful that we're back in Oz, again, except the Emerald City is a bathhouse, and the Great and Powerful Oz is also the Wicked Witch of the West. Better take "Howl's Moving Castle" off the queue, and replace it with "My Neighbor Totoro." K. lost patience with it 90 minutes in, and went to bed.

Tuesday, July 17, 2007

"Now I've Seen Everything" Dept. - Alfred Hitchcock V

Alfred Hitchcock--The Master, Compromised

I've been doing most of these "Now I've Seen Everything" posts starting with the earliest work, and working forward in time to the latest films. I can't do that with Hitchcock and feel good about it.* For in the years following "Psycho," Hitchcock, certainly one of the top five film crafstmen ever, was having difficulty making pictures. Fact of the matter was, Hitchcock was old, often in ill health, and he was seen by the studios financing his films (primarily Universal under the control of former Hitch agent Lew Wasserman) as something of a has-been, a fogey--someone with old-fashioned ideas who couldn't bring the kids into the theaters. He was good for publicity, but they'd rather he just stayed in his bungalow office and didn't make any more movies, and with every mediocre success, his value decreased. After all, in Hollywood you're only as good as your last picture (Billy Wilder's response was "You're only as good as your BEST picture!" but he was having trouble getting financing, too). At times, the big backlot of Universal must have seemed like a pasture he was being put out to. But Hitchcock continued to make films as long as his stamina held out, though his pace was slowing, and the care he took with planning each film (or planning, then abandoning) stretched his output to six films in fourteen years. Another disadvantage at this time was that the team of artisans he had been working with in the decades at his peak (and had the best communication with) were starting to desert him--whether through disagreements with Hitch, or death. It only added to the compromise that the Master of Suspense had to contend with in the last years of his career.

Nevertheless, a lifetime of making films exploring fears, fetishes, phobias and film-making limitations will still find its way into Hitchcock's films no matter what the circumstances. One can tick them off, as if on a checklist: the vexing mother figure; the innocent, wronged; the struggles over nothing (the MacGuffin); the vertiginous angles; the voyeurism; the threatening presence of constabulary; the way architecture informs character; the banality of evil; and finally, the ice-cool blonde with tightly bound hair dressed in a grey suit that barely disguises her seething sexuality. Sir Alfred was one phobic, complex dude. But they informed some of the medium's most thrilling films (in content and construction) while simultaneously being some of the most personal films to be found in any director's career.


WARNING! SPOILERS ABOUND IN THESE CAPSULE SUMMARIES!! WHATEVER YOU DO, IF YOU HAVEN'T SEEN THESE HITCHCOCK FILMS, THEN DO NOT READ ANY FURTHER (By all means, go to the attic OR the basement, take a shower OR a ride on a carousel, wait in a corn-field OR the schoolyard, visit Mt. Rushmore, the Statue of Liberty, the Bates Motel, OR the beach at Monte Carlo, or for that matter, just sit in your room and watch your neighbors, but for the love of an omnipotent uncaring God...) I REPEAT, DO NOT READ ANY FURTHER!!!

(Thank you and have a nice day)

Alfred Hitchcock's "Family Plot"** (1975) There is always some humor to varying degrees in a "Hitchcock film," whether its dark humor, some punning banter, or even merely his playful manipulation of the medium (ie. staging a meeting in "North By Northwest" in the exact opposite place as the cliched "dark alley" -- an expanse of flat prairie in the high-noon sunshine). But Hitchcock hadn't done an out-and-out comedy since "Mr. and Mrs. Smith" in 1941 (The autumnally sweet "The Trouble with Harry" doesn't count). But the bizarre "Family Plot," reuniting the director with his "North by Northest" screenwriter Ernest Lehman combines a caper film with a lot of humor as a hapless grifter couple (Barbara Harris and Bruce Dern) get embroiled with some serious bank-robbers (Karen Black and William Devane, who, having just made a splash playing JFK in "The Missiles of October" on TV, replaced Roy Thinnes.). There are trademark touches and some surprising violence that kind of upsets the mood. But one gets the sense that Hitch produced 2/3 of a film. It lacks polish and substance, though the performances can't be faulted. Even a Hitchcock not firing on all cylinders can still design a film with some thrills.
Cameo: Hitch silhouette behind the "Certificates of Death and Birth" door @ 41:00 in. ***

Alfred Hitchcock's "Frenzy" (1972) Wow. If the old man had gone out on this one, nobody would have squawked. In it, Sir Alfred goes home to London--not the posh London of Carnaby Street and "Mod," but the squalid London of his childhood. There's even a visit to the Covent Garden market where his father worked...and a particularly evocative overhead shot of an innocent man being thrown into a jail-cell...as was done to young Alfred to teach him "what happens to bad little boys.". Considerably rougher than any previous Hithcock film, with cursing, nudity and beastly behavior: the neck-tie murderer is strangling women throughout the city and the police are baffled, with bodies turning up in all sorts of unexpected places. An Innocent Man is accused, and must find the killer to clear his name...but said killer has enough knowledge of said "AIM" to make sure that never happens. Has a great ending that slams the movie shut like a steamer trunk. Screenplay by "Sleuth" author Anthony Schaffer, but however strong a presence the screenwriter, its Hitchcock's blueprint they're building on.
Cameo: Hitch is not applauding an environmental speaker on the banks of the Thames... seconds before they find something else polluting the river. @ 4:00 in.

Alfred Hitchcock's "Topaz" (1969) I remember Hitchcock appearing on the "Today" show to promote "Topaz," spinning yarn after yarn about anything but, then interrupting himself every so often to turn to the camera to say "Topaz, by the way..." Maybe that says something about how the film turned out. "Topaz" is a curiosity. There are rumors that it was forced on Hitchcock by the suits at Universal, but the duplicitous world of spies has held fascination for him before. And one can tell by the many shots of newspaper headlines that it was Hitchcock's intent to tell the story behind the story. There are also rumors that he was foiled from getting an "all-star cast," Or that he was "incensed" at paying Julie Andrews and Paul Newman $750,000 a piece. Maybe so. But casting "names" would have distracted from the reality of the story--as it did to a certain degree with "The Wrong Man.". As it is, Hitch gets good work out of his international cast (John Forsythe, from "The Trouble with Harry" and several "Alfred Hitchcock Presents..." reunites with Hitchcock and is as close to a name star as the film gets, while Frederick Stafford is a bit of a stiff in the lead role). There are good sequences: everyone remembers Karin Dor falling dead into her dress, and Roscoe Lee Browne's undercover florist picks things up a bit. But Hitchcock never gets too frivolous with the plot--as he points out real lives were at stake, while we blithely read about it all in black and white, (and, as it is one of Hitchcock's least idiosyncratic movies, it may have been to attract an Oscar--he never won one, but was awarded the Irving G. Thalberg Award in 1967) The film's score by Maurice Jarre is not good, sometimes laughably so, and Samuel Taylor's ("Vertigo") script only almost jells.
Cameo: Half an hour in, Hitchcock is wheelechaired through a french lobby.


Alfred Hitchcock's "Torn Curtain" (1966) After "Marnie" failed at the box office, Hitchcock had some pressure put on him to make a more commercial film, so he went back to a suspense format with spies and spying during the "spy-film" craze of the 60's. Then he cast two of the biggest stars at the time, Julie Andrews and Paul Newman. And he instructed his regular composer Bernard Herrmann to write a more "commercial" score. All for not. Herrmann responded with a dark score, meant to heighten the totalitarianism of the countries behind the Iron Curtain, and when Hitchcock heard it, he fired his longtime collaborator and they never worked again. Newman, a "Method" actor had problems with Hitchcock's "photo-acting" style, and try as he might, Hitchcock just couldn't sex up "Mary Poppins" (after "Poppins" and "The Sound of Music" it was impossible for most theater-goers to see Andrews as anything but a plucky care-giver, although several directors with several million dollar projects tried--and failed--to show her range). And for a spy movie, it just didn't have the thrills audiences expected from the current spy formula--the "James Bond" movies (despite the fact that the "007" producers cribbed an awful lot from The Master's play-book, specifically "North By Northwest")

There are great sequences: the killing of Gromek in a farm-house--done in such a way as to not arouse any noisey suspicion...and to show how difficult it is to kill a man--is Hitchcock at his practical, gruesome best; and the old saw about yelling "Fire" in a crowded theater (while playing in a crowded theater...) is put to Hitchcock's good use as the lovers are separated by a wave of panicked theater-goers.

But despite eveyone's best efforts to create a box-office smash, those elements seemed to work against Hitchcock at the box office...and it cost him one of his best collaborators. For years on, Bernard Herrmann would be hired to compose scores of dread, like the ones he'd used to do for the Old Master.**** One of the greatest collaborations in the history of film was no more.
Cameo: Early in the film, Hitchcock can be seen (back to the camera) in a hotel lobby, bouncing a baby on his knee.



Alfred Hitchcock's "Marnie" (1964) Intended to lure Grace Kelly back to the silver-screen, "Marnie" is a powerful psychological drama with multiple suspense elements thrown in, considerable acting opportunities, costume changes and "entrances." But when the Princess decided to stay in Monte Carlo (keeping her promise to Prince Rainier to give up her film career), Hitchcock turned to his new "discovery," the blonde willowy 'Tippi' Hedren, another trademarked classy, tightly coiffed "Hitchcock blonde." The role might have been a bit beyond her, but Hedren excelled at playing mysterious behavior, and when she engages in serial kleptomania, the audience is with her--though not sure why, after all, we want to know her secret and to do that she has to be found out. As her getting caught by the police would end the movie right away, the investigation falls to the male lead, Mark Rutland (wink, wink) played with a tamped-down smoulder by Sean Connery.***** Rutland is no Hitchcock hero ala Cary Grant. He has more of Jimmy Stewart's aberrant behavior magnified ten-fold: he's a sexual predator with a perverse interest in animal motivations. One follows Rutland's efforts with interest, but the fact of the matter is he's just as screwed up as Marnie with power issues of which she's the injured victim. He sexually stalks her, kidnaps and blackmails her, keeps her his prisoner, finally raping her on their forced honeymoon. Some hero. Hitchcock is exploring new psychological territory, but like his "Spellbound," it feels a bit forced and false, perhaps because Hitchcock's film language can't communicate it, or the restrictions of the movie industry at the time prevented it.****** It doesn't help that Bernard Herrmann's score, though wonderful, is still in the romantic mode of "Vertigo," and love is not what this film is about: obsession is. In the end, "Marnie" gives off mixed signals. Hitchcock is at the top of his film-making skills and when he explores psychological themes he may do so with some understanding, but he also does so in a highly explotitive manner.
Cameo: Hitchcock is seen (very prominently) exiting a hotel room after the passing of the dark-haired Marnie at @ 5:00.

Alfred Hitchcock's "The Birds" (1962) An extraordinarily polarizing film, "The Birds" is also Hitchcock at his best and his most experimental-- from its stylized Main Titles to its meticulously composited but enigmatic final shot, it is a special effects extravaganza. It also finds all sorts of interesting ways to invoke dread and terror, sometimes with staged practical effects, sometimes with opticals, and sometimes merely with sound (it is the only Hitchcock film to not utilize a musical score, though regular composer Bernard Herrmann worked with early electronic musicologists to "orchestrate" the bird sounds, showing how much Hitchcock trusted Herrmann with the sonic/psychological side of his films--he would change his tune, literally, with "Torn Curtain"). He has a marvelous cast: Jessica Tandy, Rod Taylor, who with his wry intelligence and physique made a great Hitchcock lead, and Suzanne Pleshette, the dark brooding counter-point to his female star, 'Tippi' Hedren.

'Tippi' appeared to be the perfect Hitchcock blonde--a model who moved well with expressive eyes and an enigmatic smile, Hitchcock was her Svengali (ala "Vertigo"), training her to act in the Hitchcock manner, with no pre-concieved notions, and whose modelling background made her unfussy about wardrobe (a big Hitchcock concern). The director introduces her in the same way he first saw her in a Sego commercial--with a little boy whistling at her on the street. Hedren never really ingratiated herself with audiences, due, in part, to Hitchcock casting her in somewhat unsympathetic roles that a star with a following--like Grace Kelly--could have risen above. But she's a good actress, capable of the character development her roles required. She does win an audience's respect if given a chance.

But one reason that "The Birds" might have left audiences and critics unsatisfied was another Hitchcock experiment--a deliberately open-ended and unresolved finale. It's never explained why the birds become so aggressive, and without that, the movie feels unfinished (unlike the extended explanation at the end of "Psycho"). But dramatically, it is resolved: The now-harmonious Brenner family ******* is allowed to drive off into the dawn with Nature, like them, in a temporary truce. How long that will last is anyone's guess. It could change at any time. What else would you expect from the Master of Suspense?

Cameo: at 02:18, as 'Tippi' walks into the pet store, Hitchcock walks out with two scottish terriers (yes, they were his).

* Also, "I Confess" I haven't really seen everything Alfred Hitchcock has directed--there are a couple of his TV shows, and his earliest silent films in Germany and England that I haven't seen. But I've seen most of them (Heck, you can see entire films from his British days on You-Tube! Check it out!)

** The American version of Hitch's films all have titles with the the director's name in the possessive. This often led to some amusing juxtapositions when taken with the name, so I've included his name in all the titles, ie. Alfred Hitchcock's "The Birds." Was it intentional to do this? You've seen his movies. What do YOU think?

*** If you want to see all of Sir Alfred's cameos on one page go to this link.

****And usually for Hitchcock disciples, like Truffaut, Larry Cohen, DePalma and Scorsese. Hitchcock hired Henry Mancini to write the score for "Frenzy," which he did very much in the Herrmann mold that he admired. When Hitch heard it, he reportedly said, "If I wanted Herrmann, I'd have hired Herrmann" and fired him.

***** At Hitchcock's AFI Lifetime Achievement Banquet, while Connery was talking about his work with Sir Alfred, Hitch pointedly turned to Ingrid Bergman and asked "Who's he?" not recognizing the older, bald and bewhiskered star of his "Marnie."

****** One of the more shallow criticisms of "Marnie" is the obvious use of process shots--a staple of Hitchcock films. Those process shots are usually well-consdiered in a Hitchcock production, not only for the safety of the performers, but also they have a tendency to show the protagonist isolated in their environment. They do serve a story-telling purpose.

******* Maybe, as she's accused in the diner, the disruptive Melanie Daniels really is a witch.

Next time: Alfred Hitchcock, The Master of Suspense Meets his Musical Match!