News and Comment (Home) Page of the Alfred Hitchcock Scholars/'MacGuffin' website, conducted by Ken Mogg. There's also a separate official title-page, mainly for new visitors and search-engines.

The MacGUFFIN


This webpage was last modified 6 February, 2010.

A review by film scholar Brian Wilson of a new DVD of
To Catch a Thief is included a little down this page.

Special item.  The copy of Hitchcock's Psycho (1960) currently available on DVD has an aspect ratio of 1.85:1.  This is not how Hitchcock meant it to be shown.  Gus Van Sant, for one, remembers that the original cans were labelled 1.75:1.  The DVD makes the film's compositions too 'tight' at top and bottom.  Visual information that the film's original viewers saw is now cut off (e.g., details on the map of Shasta County in the sheriff's office).  
Richard J. Anobile's out-of-print 1974 book of Psycho for The Film Classics Library prints many of its frame stills in the proper aspect ratio.  They are clearly 'better composed' than the images in the DVD (e.g., Arbogast in the telephone booth).  Also, in the full-frame VHS tape of Psycho released in 1984, the images are appreciably closer to what Hitchcock intended.  A leading expert on Psycho has told us: 'What obviously [then] happened was the "brains" at Universal took the 1.75:1 and widened it to 1.85:1 for later VHS and DVD releases.  In doing so, they cut off the top and bottom as if no one would notice.'  Here's an excellent statement of the situation: http://www.hitchcockwiki.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=13&t=406&start=0&sid=28f14044d0f8dd01f990ac37089fa079

Footnote.  It seems a similar over-cropping of the image may have occurred with the DVD of Orson Welles's Touch of Evil (1958).  Here's a link to Dave Kehr's blog about this:
http://www.davekehr.com/?p=127
     


I invite film teachers, film students, fellow-authors of books on Hitchcock, and anyone else, who has some keen interest in the work of the great English-born director, Alfred Hitchcock (1899-1980), to email me.  I welcome Hitchcock-related ideas, insights, 'news tips', etc., etc., and am happy to discuss them on-site or by return of email.  Snippets from classroom or conference-hall are especially welcome - not to mention CFPs (Calls for Papers), and announcements of books, exhibits, screenings, and the like.  KM

To contact KM (whose website this is), click here: muffin@labyrinth.net.au

To go straight to the latest "Editor's Week" item further down this page, click here.  (But first allow the page to fully load.  Note: our News section begins immediately after "Editor's Week".)

Click here to go straight to bottom of page, where you'll find links to our other pages

An 'advanced' Hitchcock discussion group, strictly for articulate film academics, scholars, writers, professional filmmakers, etc., exists. Here's the URL: http://movies.groups.yahoo.com/group/hitchen2/
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Rare Hitchcockiana, from DVDs to scripts, obtainable here (mention us): www
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Still available is the 'Hitchcock Annual', 2006-07 edition.  (We understand that the 2008-09 edition, published by Wallflower Press, is delayed but on the way.)  For details of how to obtain copies, click the following link to item "The other Hitchcock journal" at the bottom of this page: rates and contact details for 'Hitchcock Annual'.
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'For those who care': Ken Mogg ('MacGuffin' Editor) writing elsewhere on the Web about Hitchcock:

1.
 Monograph (35,000 words, including notes and appendices) on Hitchcock's The Birds.  Called 'top drawer stuff' and 'an absolute joy to read'.  'Senses of Cinema'
2.  Profile of Hitchcock's life and work (containing analysis of The Lodger, Murder!, Jamaica Inn, Rope, Vertigo, Psycho, and The Trouble With Harry): 
'Senses of Cinema'
 
3.  On The 39 Steps (book review):
'Screening the Past'
 
4.  On I Confess
'Senses of Cinema'/ Melbourne Cinematheque
5.  On The Birds (and the critics):
'Screening the Past'
6.  On Psycho (book review): 
'Senses of Cinema'
7.  On "Banquo's Chair" (episode of 'AHP'):
'Senses of Cinema'/ Melbourne Cinematheque
8.  On "Back for Christmas" (episode of 'AHP'):
'Senses of Cinema'/ Melbourne Cinematheque
9.  On Hitchcock and Charles Dickens (book review): 
'Senses of Cinema'
10. The 'ten greatest films', including two by Hitchcock: 'Sight and Sound'
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Important.  The old (1999) US edition of 'The Alfred Hitchcock Story', by Ken Mogg, et al., was a drastically cut, reduced, and even 'bowdlerised' version (which its author disowns) of the original UK edition (also 1999).  However, the full book has now (2008) been re-issued world-wide, including in the US.  American readers can obtain it from Amazon.com and other booksellers.

Testimonials about this site from readers

These haven't been updated with a new selection for a while, but here goes (May 2009 - remember that our blog "Editor's Week" has itself been inactive from August 2008 until now).  Btw, if this weren't the Web, where a certain amount of author-promotion seems needed (against a billion 'competitors'), I most certainly would not have broadcast these testimonials (and, yes, some are from fellow authors and/or friends!).  KM

'Excellent Hitchcock website.  I've been a regular visitor for years and look to your site first for news and information on anything related to Hitch.  Your commentary is consistently enlightening and rewarding.' - C.S., Florida, USA, 2009

'I think that you are not Jeffrey Archer's "First Among Equals" but first among unequals since your knowledge is so astounding.' - Prof. T.W., Illinois, USA, 2008

'I want to compliment you on your erudition in the sense that you move easily from the macro to the micro, and back again.'  - B.H., USA, 2008

'Over the years, I have found you to be very receptive to theories other than your own.  Your disagreement with such theories is always supported with [citation], and the presentation of both sides allows the reader to make up his own mind.' - N.A., USA, 2007

'I salute your splendid website and your continuing scholarship.' - D.S., Denmark, 2007

'Your website is a pleasure for true fans!' - G.R., Israel, 2007

'It is an amazing job you have done for anyone interested in Hitchcock.  It is also an act of love!' - A.S., Venezuela, 2007

'I must say that I have been pleased (yet again, and again) by recent "Editor's Day" [items] - I was especially happy about your pieces on Under Capricorn.' - D.F., Germany, 2007

'The world's greatest expert on Hitchcock's sources and influences is the Australian scholar K.M., and his ["MacGuffin"] site is well worth visiting on this point, as on all others.' - A.M., Australia, 2007

'Thanks for the website that is still the best Hitchcock-related place on the Internet, after all these years!' - N.B., Hungary, 2007

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That's quite enough.  It's fair to say that a good deal of this site's reputation for providing quality information about Hitchcock rests on the 'blogs' that have been appearing for over a decade in the "Editor's Day"/"Editor's Week" feature on this page.  (Sometimes, of course, it has been "Guest Editor's Day"!)  For reasons of space, it hasn't been possible to simply cache the entire feature, nor has there been time to regularly update a Selections page based on it.  However, the information isn't lost, and much of it will undoubtededly feature in forthcoming publications.  Also, we anticipate various new pages appearing on this site from time to time.  KM
    
'[Y]our site [is] one of the best on the Internet ... for quality, accuracy of content, presentation and usability.' - Britannica.com
                                Britannica award to this website

What you'll find on the remainder of this Home Page includes:

1. Review of To Catch a Thief on DVD (March 2009).  2. 'Editor's Day'/'Editor's Week': November 21, 28, December 5, 19, January 2, 9, 16, 23, 30, February 6.  2. News and Comment (last revised 23 January, 2010).  3. Links to our other pages.

And what you'll find on our other pages includes:

1. About 'The MacGuffin'/ How to Subscribe (revised 8 June, 2004).  2. About me (skippable).  3. ACADEMIC HITCHCOCK 1 - TMWKTMACADEMIC HITCHCOCK 2 - Vertigo. ACADEMIC HITCHOCK 3 - Marnie.  4. EXCERPTS 1 - "Confined Spaces" in Hitchcock.  EXCERPTS 2 - MarnieEXCERPTS 3 - Irony; Jamaica Inn. EXCERPTS 4 - Mr and Mrs SmithEXCERPTS 5 - critical writing on Hitchcock.  EXCERPTS 6 - Stage Fright.  EXCERPTS 7 - Franz Waxman and Suspicion.   5. About Arthur Schopenhauer (who? why?).  6. Alfred Hitchcock and Charles Dickens.  7. Article: Hitchcock on melodrama.  8. Screenwriter Charles Bennett on "Shakespeare, Melodrama, and Hitchcock".  9. Two-part 'Report' on Patrick McGilligan's biography of Hitchcock (including film-by-film, to 1950).  10. The original, previewed ending for Suspicion (script excerpt + Bill Krohn's research).  11. Notes on all of Hitchcock's films (1: the silent films).  12. Notes on The 39 Steps.  13. Notes on Rear Window.  14. Notes on Vertigo (and Strangers on a Train).  15. Two discoveries: (1) Frank Baker's novel 'The Birds'; (2) Wanted for Murder (film by Lawrence Huntington).  16. Hitchcock's villains.  17. Kim Novak interview.  18. Interview with Psycho screenwriter, Joseph Stefano.  19. Long article: "The fragments of the mirror: Vertigo and its sources".  20. Article by Bill Krohn on Family Plot.  21. Article by Martin Grams Jr: "Alfred Hitchcock Presents".  22. Article by Martin Grams Jr: "Murder and Suspense".  23. Article by Philip Kemp: "Hitching Posts" (on Hitch's 'imitators').  24. New Publications (one of this site's main pages - last revised 18 January, 2010).  25. FAQs page (new material added 12 May, 2006).  26. Links (last revised 18 January, 2008).

Links to these other pages are grouped at the bottom of this page. (If you want to go straight to the bottom of this page now, click here.)


Review of new DVD of Hitchcock's To Catch a Thief (Region 1, March 2009)

[Editor's note.  My thanks to both Brigid D'Arcy of Click Communications for supplying the Paramount Home Entertainment DVD reviewed here, and to reviewer Brian Wilson.  Brian is a graduate student in Mass Communication and Media Arts at Southern Illinois University, Carbondale, USA.  His work has appeared in a number of film journals, including 'CineAction', 'Film International', and 'Senses of Cinema'.  KM]

To be honest, I have long regarded To Catch a Thief as one of Hitchcock's minor works.  Perhaps its chronological position between the masterpiece Rear Window and the underrated but superb The Trouble with Harry (the latter one of my personal favorites) has caused me to unjustly compare the film to these other works without recognizing its own merits.  Or perhaps my opinion has stemmed from the fact that, when considering the quality of work that Hitchcock produced during the 1950s, the film seems to me much closer to certain 'recharging the batteries' projects like Stage Fright and I Confess than to The Man Who Knew Too Much, Vertigo, or North by Northwest.  But, of course, opinions are always subject to change, and in reviewing the new Paramount Centennial Collection DVD release of To Catch a Thief I have made every attempt to give the film an unbiased (as much as that is possible) second chance. 

To begin with, this edition of To Catch a Thief contains a remarkably good transfer.  Since Paramount does not indicate that this release of the film has been remastered in any way, I can only assume that the transfer here is identical to the one featured on the 2007 Special Collector’s Edition.  Unlike that earlier version, however, the Centennial Collection edition of the film is a two-disc release.  Disc One contains the film itself, with audio options for Dolby Digital 2.0 surround, English mono, French mono, or Spanish mono.  It also contains an entirely new commentary by Hitchcock film historian Dr. Drew Casper, replacing the one by Peter Bogdanovich and Laurent Bouzereau featured on the 2007 release.  While I have not listened to that earlier commentary, I have been told that it relies too much upon personal reminiscences and anecdotes without offering consistent insight into the film itself.  Casper’s commentary, on the other hand, offers an extremely detailed analysis of the film.  His observations are succinct and precise while revealing his vast knowledge of Hitchcock’s body of work.  The level of attention he provides the film is apparent from the very beginning of his commentary, in which he interprets the opening credits as anticipating the complex mood underlying the film’s narrative.  Here he observes that the bright colors, high-key lighting, and optimistic score featured during the opening credits exist in direct contradiction to the slightly skewed diagonal placement of the credits themselves, suggesting something of the pivotal role that conflict will play throughout the film.  Ultimately, Casper’s commentary combines close readings of individual scenes with broader historical observations.  While he uses specific scenes to illustrate several of Hitchcock’s thematic and stylistic traits such as use of a 'birds' motif, frame-within-a-frame compositions, and the macguffin, he also goes into detail regarding the history of the VistaVision process, backgrounds of the main actors, and issues of censorship faced by Hitchcock during the film’s production.  If it feels at times like Casper is reading from a scholarly paper, his evident enthusiasm for Hitchcock’s work diminishes any tendency toward the rigidity and didacticism that often plague such commentaries.  

Disc Two contains several special features, three of these new.  “A Night with the Hitchcocks” is a Q&A session between Drew Casper’s film students at the University of Southern California and Hitchcock’s granddaughter Mary Stone and daughter Pat Hitchcock.  Although this piece has moments of interest, I felt that it was ultimately unrewarding.  Many of the students asked routine questions such as what was Hitchcock’s favorite film, or what he would think of contemporary Hollywood film if he were alive today, without really delving into deeper issues concerning his body of work.  “Unacceptable Under the Code: Film Censorship in America” is a short documentary about the history of the Motion Picture Production Code and its specific impact on To Catch a Thief.  Tracing the evolution of Hollywood censorship from Will Hays to Hitchcock, it offers a fascinating glimpse into both the cultural and logistical implications posed by the code.  Dr. Casper, Dr. Richard Jewell, and others, offer detailed insight into the bureaucratic problems Hitchcock faced during the production of To Catch a Thief, particularly in regard to the film’s many sexual innuendoes.  “Behind the Gates: Cary Grant and Grace Kelly” is a short celebration of the lives and work of the two actors, featuring several production stills and excerpts from To Catch a Thief. 

The Centennial Collection edition of To Catch a Thief is certainly a welcome addition to the plethora of Hitchcock DVDs, if only for the inclusion of the Casper commentary and the new special features.  In the end, however, my personal opinion of the film has not greatly changed.  That is, I still consider it a minor work in comparison to many of the films Hitchcock produced during the period.  Nonetheless after seeing the film a few more times while preparing this review, I have come to recognize it for what it offers and not simply for what it lacks.  Despite its seemingly simple narrative structure, it is a complex work both conceptually and stylistically.  In many ways, it marks an essential step in the director’s creative evolution.


The editor's day/The editor's week

[This feature will cover musings on Hitchcock-related topics and similar matters with which the 'MacGuffin' editor has been occupied lately. Don't expect total rigour - these are basically 'ideas in progress'. Thanks!]

 
November 21 I was talking above about Hitchcock and the topic of Romantic Irony, and last week suggested that Downhill (1927) may be the first of the director's films to systematically embody Romantic Irony.  Dr Doug Muecke notes that '[s]omething like Romantic Irony (but it is only a first step towards it) may be found in works of all ages' (starting with Aristophanes).  He explains: 'In these works the author expresses his awareness that what he is writing is after all only an illusion by bringing himself or his readers unexpectedly into the work ...  We come closer to Romantic Irony when the work is accompanied by a critical commentary on events and characters and closer still when the commentary directs its ironic attention to [artistic] composition in general or even to the composition of the work in hand.'  ('Irony', 1970, p. 79)  Downhill perhaps doesn't go quite that far (contra, say, Vertigo) but it certainly does manage to compare 'the game of life' (in which Roddy soon finds himself caught up) with the 'game' of performance and the 'art' of story-telling.  First, remember that Downhill consists of three sections.  The first is called 'The world of youth' (the school scenes, including a fateful episode with a treacherous waitress Mabel), the second is called 'The world of make-believe' (Roddy's involvement in theatre and a brief marriage to the treacherous actress Julia), the third is called 'The world of lost illusions' (in which Roddy in Paris is reduced to near-gigolo status and finally near-death in Marseilles).  There is also a coda in which Roddy, reprieved, finds himself playing for the Old Boys - which just goes to show that 'playing the game' and maintaining one's 'honour' (an overt theme of Downhill) may matter more than any naive quest for 'experience' (which will come soon enough anyway).  There are many things to comment on here.  Tonight I'll take up just one or two.  First, you could say that Hitchcock's alleged misogyny is on show in Downhill for the first time.  When the waitress Mabel, pregnant to Roddy's room-mate Tim, accuses Roddy of being responsible (she knows that Roddy's father is rich, whereas Tim's is poor) and demands recompense, Roddy shakes her.  Here you can practically hear him saying the words Guy in Strangers on a Train says to Miriam, 'You conniving little liar!'  To be fair to Hitchcock, though, he does show that circumstances got out of control - the scene in Ye Olde Bunne Shoppe - and that therefore 'no-one is to blame'.  In that scene both Tim and Roddy had been present, summoned by Mabel, and both had danced with her.  In a fleeting melodramatic shot (see frame-capture below), it is actually Roddy and Mabel who are lit exotically by light filtered through a nearby bead-curtain, and the delirium of passion is implied.  (By the end of the film, Roddy will have experienced other kinds of delirium too.)  If a customer hadn't entered the shop at just that critical moment, causing Mabel to go and serve her, maybe things would have happened differently.  What Hitchcock actually shows in Downhill is that human beings are weak but women especially so.  When Roddy has his affair with the actress Julia and eventually marries her - or, rather, she marries him, for the windfall of £30,000 he has come into - we are made aware that she has been put up to the marriage by her boyfriend, the actor Archie, despite initial protest by her.  (But both she and Archie know that they have accumulated heavy debts and that here may be their surest way out.)  Concerning Romantic Irony, the scenes involving Roddy, Julia, and Archie constitute the film's second act, 'The world of make-believe', in which acting - and mirrors - are integral.  There's a foretaste here of Vertigo, something I'll describe next time.

                                                                            Exotic shadows in DOWNHILL                           


November 28 I have suggested that Downhill is about Romantic Irony (in which the audience is implicated in the film's delirium and 'make-believe') and that it prefigures Vertigo.  Quite specifically, its second 'act', which is called 'The world of make-believe', begins with a marvellous piece of dynamic trompe l'oeil.  A close-up of Roddy (Ivor Novello) in a tuxedo momentarily tricks us into thinking that he has somehow risen in the world rather than plunged 'downhill' (as we had just been told would happen to him).  But when the view widens slightly, we see that he is only a waiter and is serving a couple drinks at a table.  The couple soon get up and move right where they begin to dance; meanwhile, Roddy has pocketed a cigarette-case which the woman left behind on the table.  Is he, then, a thief?  (See frame-capture below.)  Now the view widens further and the camera begins to pan right.  Suddenly we realise that we have been tricked again!  We see that we are in the wings of a theatre (a favourite place for Hitchcock to put his camera: vide The Pleasure Garden, Murder!,The 39 Steps, Stage Fright) and that what we took to be, say, a garden party is in fact a theatre stage!  Moreover, this isn't just a play - it's a full-blown musical!  A row of chorus girls enters from the wings opposite and soon everybody on stage - including Roddy - is facing screen-right and joining in the dancing.  There are a couple of shots from the front of house (the orchestra pit, actually), giving us the full proscenium-framed view of the stage.  Then the scene fades out.  In the next scene, we cut between the actors' dressing-rooms.  Roddy shares his with other actors.  He is seated in front of a mirror, pondering.  Next we cut to the dressing-room of the male lead, Archie (Ian Hunter), whom we have just seen onstage dancing with the female lead, Julia (Isabel Jeans).  Archie, in front of his mirror, puffs on a cigarette.  Then a 'thinks' shot shows us Julia, in front of her mirror and also smoking.  The effect of this inter-cutting is to suggest a three-way relationship between Roddy, Julia, and Archie, which of course is what subsequent developments will establish and confirm (in which Roddy will be the almost literal fall-guy).  The mirror-imagery implicates them all in a complex 'world of make-believe'.  I could say more (the cigarette-case will prove to be Roddy's excuse to visit Julia in her dressing-room and strike up a closer acquaintance), but what is most striking, I suggest, in the above, is how closely it anticipates Vertigo.  Very specifically, I'm thinking of the virtual start of that film's second 'act' in which Scottie (James Stewart) at Ernie's restaurant first sees 'Madeleine' (Kim Novak) with whom he will strike up an acquaintance and fall in love.  This famous sequence in Vertigo (analysed elsewhere on this website by Richard Allen), like the one just described in Downhill, is about a man watching a couple - and for whom he will soon become their fall-guy.  Also, it too involves an elaborate widening-out and panning-shot and some brilliant cutting, plus finally an ingenious mirror-effect - all totally appropriate in a film about art and artifice and, yes, another 'world of make-believe'.  Here, then, is the sequence in more detail.  After an exterior establishing-shot (with track-in), we see Scottie seated inside Ernie's at the bar.  He is gazing off-screen.  The camera pulls back and we see that he is looking towards the main dining area, which is crowded with well-to-do diners at their tables.  The area is separated from the bar by wooden arches which suggest frames - or prosceniums.  The view widens further to show all of the dining area with its red-plush walls, and it's as if we, the audience, were being admitted to this privileged area, were being allowed inside the 'painting' or 'stage'.  This impression is confirmed and enhanced when the camera, after a momentary pause, begins to move in (excluding Scottie from the shot), and our eyes are drawn towards one particular table at which are seated a man and a blonde woman who is dressed in an emerald-green off-shoulder dress, her back towards us.  (This of course is Gavin Elster and 'Madeleine'.).  Cut to Scottie, looking.  He too has been as drawn to this particular view as we have, yet our view,as I say, has been more 'privileged' (closer) than Scottie's.  So, as with Roddy in Downhill, we both share and go beyond what he sees - Romatic Irony at work.  One more thing for now.  When Gavin and 'Madeleine' leave the restaurant (note: we have just seen, from Scottie's point of view, 'Madeleine' both frontally and in profile, which is very pleasing), they pass in front of a long mirror, which momentarily 'doubles' them.  This both anticipates Madeleine's line later, about 'a corridor that once was mirrored', and strongly suggests the onset of Scottie's fantasy about Madeleine (which resembles Roddy's about Julia).  In sum, two brilliant sequences, and remarkably alike in several respects.  More next time.              

                                                                            Make-believe in DOWNHILL


December 5  Last week I suggested how an elaborate sequence involving the unjustly-expelled schoolboy Roddy (Ivor Novello) in Hitchcock's Downhill (1927) prefigured an equally elaborate - and celebrated - sequence involving the recently-dismissed police detective Scottie (James Stewart) in Vertigo (1958).  The sequence in Downhill is introduced by a title 'The world of make-believe' (note that Roddy will use a windfall to pursue the duplicitous actress Julia who really loves the actor Archie) while the sequence in Vertigo is about the beginning of Scottie's fantasy involving the mysterious 'Madeleine' (he will pursue her not knowing that she is playing a part and that he has been set up).  I described both sequences at length last time - though in the case of the Vertigo one I omitted certain details mainly because I analysed those details here three years ago ("Editor's Week", November 24, 2006).  Time to re-visit that Vertigo moment now!  See the frame-capture below.  'Madeleine' (Kim Novak) has momentarily paused close to Scottie (offscreen).  Beside her is what I am told is a 'trompe l'oeil' painting showing a child: from a slightly different angle the image appears as that of a young woman and from a slightly different angle again the image appears that of a wizened crone!  (In other words, a whole lifetime is shown in all its poignance and ephemerality.)  Next, notice that the frame is full of upright objects, emphasising verticality - and not least among those objects is the painting itself and the single rose in a tall vase (of spiral design) placed directly below it.  'Madeleine', the painting, and the rose are thus being likened to each other, partly by their contiguity in the frame.  But other factors are also at work.  For example, next notice the frame's several pendant objects: the emerald below Madeleine's neck, the crystal chandelier, and again the picture.  Both vertical objects and pendant ones recur throughout the film, and both subliminally remind us of the film's title and the moment at the start when Scottie hung suspended from a rooftop (while we, the audience, watched in a suspense, or vertigo, of our own ...).  Similarly, in Downhill, a visual motif of 'descent' constantly recurs (e.g., when Roddy takes an escalator down into the London Underground), as do spiral designs and spinning objects (e.g., a revolving record, a ship's engine) which remind us of Roddy's inexorable downward spiral until the film's coda appears to reprieve him.  But to return to Vertigo ...  The colour-scheme shown here has subtleties of its own, not least the general artificiality/artifice of it: remove Madeleine from the shot and the effect is stark and unpleasant!  Madeleine's emerald wrap is complemented (set off) by the pink rose; the latter, in turn, is complemented (set off) by both the deep red of the wall and by the rose's dark green leaves.  Also, those red walls (like Ernie's itself) may seem removed from the forest which Scottie and Madeleine will visit later - yet, paradoxically, both of those places imply, I think, the inextricability of life and death.  (Red in Hitchcock is often the colour of life as well as of death.  The Vertigo forest, containing what Scottie claims are 'the oldest living things', is a redwood forest, after all.)  Let's stay on this matter for a moment.  That rose in the vase is a rich symbol.  The spiral or concentric formation of its petals echoes both the grouping of those plates on the back wall and other spiral or concentric images in the film, including the nosegay that Madeleine carries to the cemetery and, of course, the concentric rings of the felled tree in the forest.  The beautiful but ephemeral rose is a symbol of Madeleine (perhaps specifically her breasts) just as the nosegay and the felled tree symbolise Madeleine and/or her ancestors, specifically Carlotta, who 'speak' through her (so that Madeleine can say, pointing to the rings of the felled tree, 'Here I was born and here I died').  What Scottie sees in 'Madeleine'/Judy is both her frailty (that's  mainly Judy) and yet the Eternal Feminine (or anima-figure) that 'Madeleine' represents for him.  (Another such figure in Hitchcock would have been the title character of Mary Rose, which sadly he never filmed though Jay Presson Allen's draft script exists.)  In effect, Scottie seeks to be an artist, hoping, via his transfiguring of 'Madeleine'/Judy, to transcend all ephemerality.  He is more pro-active than Roddy most of the time, but in fact, in their different ways, both are fall-guys.  This Romantic Irony is most pronounced in Vertigo.  But there's more to say ...

                                                                            Madeleine in Ernie's Restaurant in VERTIGO  


[December 12.  Return next week.]

December 19  In the process last time of comparing a sequence in Hitchcock's Downhill (1927) to a famous one in Hitchcock's Vertigo (1958), I analysed a frame from the latter film (see above) to show how artful it was.  Pendant objects, vertical objects, spiral and/or circular designs, life/death (and sexual) symbolism, subtle-yet-bold colour design, lush décor captured on the Technicolor film stock and filling the Vistavision frame - this particular image may represent the film as a whole.  (The whole film is similarly designed.  I only regret that I could not reproduce the frame in larger size - such an analysis as the above is even more convincing when individual details can be readily seen and appreciated for their decidedly non-random inclusion in the film.)  The film itself is about Scottie as victim and as an artist manqué (with Midge as his extension), a theme taken from the original Boileau & Narcejac novel; so the artfulness and the artiness of the film is highly fitting.  I also noted previously parallels of Scottie (James Stewart) in Vertigo with an earlier fall-guy, Roddy (Ivor Novello) in Downhill.  Scottie's aspiration in Vertigo is upwards, to rise above this mundane world: pride comes before a fall, as they say.  Until that fall comes (Judy/Madeleine's but also Scottie's), the actual trajectory followed by Scottie is indeed gradually upwards, in a spiral fashion (though not, of course, without some descending passages on the way).  By contrast, Roddy's general trajectory is downwards after his initial fall from grace (his wrongful expulsion from school: cf. Scottie's near-fall off the roof at the start of Vertigo), and only at the end does he rise again when he is exonerated of the misdeed for which he had been earlier found guilty.  Both films have a quality of Symbolism, by which I mean that they speak about the nature of 'life' itself, as did the 19C Symbolist art movement (circa 1886-1905) which Hitchcock avowed had influenced him - Downhill speaking more optimistically than Vertigo, though.  The latter film is decidedly the more mature work in every way, yet the seeds were in the earlier film.  (Not incidentally, a moment early in Downhill when Roddy wanders forlornly down a deserted cloister, after having been expelled from school, forshadows the moment in Vertigo when Midge wanders forlornly down a corridor after she has just told a hospital doctor that Mozart and music therapy aren't going to help Scottie 'at all'.)  Something Downhill lacks when compared with Vertigo is simply the latter's rich texture in which each scene reinforces another in a more than sequential way.  Thus, as I've suggested, the above-analysed Ernie's Restaurant scene is the complement of the later scene in the Sequoia forest: both are about life and death but where the Ernie's scene finally emphasises ephemerality (symbolised by the rose in the spiral vase) and the red décor is lit by artificial light (more ephemerality), the forest scene is all about longevity, the human figures dwarfed by the tall green trees, and the forest gloom only weakly penetrated by beams of sunlight.  Put these two scenes together and you have an iconic statement of what Scottie (and by extension the viewer) wants: to live in the world and yet transcend it, to live forever!  (Could this be a statement about the nature of art and film themselves?)  Not that Downhill doesn't have a richness of its own.  I'll give just one example this time, and it is probably the contribution of the screenwriter, Eliot Stannard.  An ambiguity accompanies Roddy's question to the headmaster on being expelled, 'Does this mean, sir, that I shan't be able to play for the Old Boys?'  (The happy-ending last shot will show him doing exactly that, playing rugby and scoring a try for the Old Boys.  See frame-capture below.  Cf. November 14, above.)  Hitchcock didn't appreciate this line, probably because of the flack it drew from reviewers and 'intellectuals', but it is brilliant.  It is just what a school football hero, immature but idealistic (and already possessed of the English stiff upper lip), might say, surely?  And when at the end we see his 'dream' realised (he is indeed now playing for the Old Boys), we may take it two ways.  Hasn't all of his experience in the real world - his downhill trip - taught Roddy anything?  Does this 'artificial' triumph of scoring a goal for the Old Boys really matter in the face of the suffering (and human duplicity) he has been witness to?  On the other hand, maybe it is exactly this artificial triumph that is the most that can be hoped for by most human beings in the face of the infinite 'souring' effect that the real world offers to our earliest hopes and aspirations.  This, too, is an anticipation of the message of Vertigo, with its rich Romantic Irony.  [Back in two weeks.  Have some book reading to do in that time and to enter on our New Publications page.]

                                                                            The last shot of DOWNHILL                                   


 
January 2  2010 is the 50th anniversary of Hitchcock's Psycho, and several new books on that film are set to appear.  But as we note on our New Publications page (http://www.labyrinth.net.au/~muffin/publications_c.html), few of them may be as good as 'The Psycho File: A Comprehensive Guide to Hitchcock's Classic Shocker' (McFarland) by Joseph W. Smith III.  Smith's book is as no-nonsense as its author's name, and draws freely on its predecessors, such as Raymond Durgnat's 'A Long Hard Look at Psycho' (2002) and Stephen Rebello's 'Alfred Hitchcock and the Making of Psycho' (1990).  I hope to discuss several of its ideas here in coming weeks.  I'll start with how Smith comments on some lines of 'Mother' in which she berates Norman for wanting to invite Marion up to the house for supper: 'And then what?  After supper?  Music?  Whispers?'  Smith notes, first, that there's an echo (repetition) here of Sam's similar assertion in the film's opening scene: 'And after the steak - do we send Sister to the movies?  Turn Mama's picture to the wall?'  Then Smith continues: 'Another notable aspect of these lines - one that hasn't been discussed in the written material on Psycho - is the curious doubling in Mom's dialogue, her habit of repeating words and phrases.  It's apparent elsewhere in the film - for example, in her monologue at the very end: "Let them.  Let them see what kind of person I am. ...  They'll see.  They'll see and they'll know and they'll say ....".'  (p. 59; cf frame-capture below)  Well, Smith is perfectly correct to comment on Mother's proneness to repetition.  It's an excellent point, and (in my view) deserves even more attention than Smith gives it.  For a start, I have several times commented both here and elsewhere on the 'cadences of madness' that screenwriter Joseph Stefano has invested in those final lines of 'Mother'.  I would relate such repetition to Norman's own proneness, earlier, to stuttering, for both Mother's repetitions and Norman's stuttering are the product of psychological disturbance.  But further, repetition (and doubling) is everywhere in the film, and it can suggest, for one thing, the banality of life - which is something I think Psycho is very much about.  (Scottie in Vertigo was someone else who wanted to escape banality and pursued the woman Madeleine in quest of such escape; while in Psycho, Norman as a boy had listened to a  recording of Beethoven's 'Eroica' Symphony and dreamed of glory - but now, he tells Marion, he is content to live in his 'private trap'.)  Think of Norman changing the linen each week in all of the cabins regardless of whether the beds have been slept in (he doesn't like 'a creepy smell'!).  Or recall what he says to Mother when (from a high angle) we see him pick her up and start carrying her downstairs to the cellar: 'Come now, mother!  He [Arbogast] came after the girl and someone will come after him!'  This conveys more than just Norman's increasing sense of persecution.  In the Symbolist dimension of Psycho, it underlines the general sense of entrapment that Norman has referred to, the sheer overwhelming sense of life's pointlessness, when practically all hope has gone.  (For more on Hitchcock's Symbolism, see December 19, above.)  Marion, too, had felt persecuted when fleeing with the money she had stolen from her boss and encountering on the road suspicious policemen and used-car dealers - yet she was buoyed up with hope that marriage to Sam would solve all problems, which of course is itself a banal expectation.  ('A perfectly ordinary bourgeoise', Hitchcock once called her, no doubt thinking of his favourite fictional character, Emma Bovary.)  In truth, the repetition I have begun to describe in Psycho may recall key lines in the novel 'The Trouble With Harry', whose own repetitions foreshadow those of both its film version (Hitchcock, 1955) and those of the film Psycho.  (The Trouble With Harry and Psycho are very much complementary films.)  The artist Sam is inspired to paint the face of the dead man Harry because he suddenly sees there 'the millions and millions of dead faces of all the centuries ... the people of every day in every country, all standing looking and not knowing.'    Finally, the repetitions in Psycho are not unrelated to Freud's 'death instinct' and the 'repetition-compulsion' (which were prominent also in such key 1940s films as Hitchcock's Suspicion and Spellbound and Otto Preminger's Laura and Whirlpool).  Although it's precisely the Symbolist dimension of Hitchcock's films that I think Joseph Smith III may not fully appreciate - though he singles out the film's main motifs and begins to ask what they mean - yet his book does frequently allow us to feel that Psycho is a film about the ineffable, with 'a terrifying, almost apocalyptic vision' (p. 161).  To be continued.

                                                                             Cadences of madness at end of PSYCHO       


January 9 Last time I talked of repetitions in Psycho, and suggested that ultimately they contribute to that film's Symbolist aspect.  (Another example of such repetition, and Joseph Stefano's clever dialogue: Norman's alliterative remark about 'lighting the lights and following the formalities'.  Hitchcock's films from the 1920s onwards loved to generalise about 'life' symbolised in some way by light - real or artificial.  Read on.)  Then, during the week, our 'Hitchen2' discussion group challenged me to spell out what I mean by Hitchcock's drawing on the Symbolist tradition.  I replied at length, beginning like this: 'Well, in a nutshell, I'm thinking of whatever (largely by design) is generalisable from Psycho to what is true and representative of the human soul or psyche - a type of content, amounting to statements, that I do not believe is present in most other "slasher" or "horror" films.  I would say that making such statements became second-nature to Hitchcock.  The particular content might differ from film to film, but I believe there's a Symbolist dimension in most of Hitchcock's American films. They are microcosms.'  I wrote a whole lot more, but here's how I concluded: 'Of course, it can be argued of Vertigo and Psycho and many other Hitchcock films, that they are purely subjective worlds, and that therefore no broad generalisations are implied.  Yes, you can argue that  - which is also part of Hitchcock's design!'  Now, last week I particularly noted (or began to note) how Psycho and The Trouble With Harry are related Symbolist films, and both full of repetitions.  Notably, in Harry, there's the constant interring and disinterring of Harry Worp's body by the two (doubled) couples, Sam and Jennifer and Captain Wiles and Miss Gravely.  In Psycho, you have the film's two murders (with the mention or threat of several others, starting with the time young Norman poisoned his mother and her lover).  On the face of it, where Harry is a joyous film, visibly celebrating (in Ed Sikov's phrase) 'the ongoing life-force', Psycho should be a downbeat film, far from exhilarating - but of course for most people it's the opposite of that.  Further, research of mine (to be published this year) suggests that the original Symbolist movement (c. 1886-1905), which Hitchcock told Charlotte Chandler had greatly influenced him, was all about an attempt by certain artists and writers to penetrate workaday appearances in order to reveal 'eternal [timeless] meanings' - and to overcome German Weltschmertz (world-sorrow; thoroughgoing pessimism).  Let's look this week at Psycho and Harry with all of that in mind.  It will be convenient at this point to return to 'The Psycho File' by Joseph W. Smith III, an excellent new book which I mentioned last week.  On p. 119, Smith refers to how the film's 'final voyage of discovery begins with Lila emerging behind the motel' and how '[t]he film is greatly enriched by ... brief but evocative shots of ... piled-up detritus: a discarded mop, heaps of broken crates, the bedsprings from an old mattress, and in particular, a broken-down automobile' (see frame-capture below).  As Smith notes, this wreck deepens our sense of Norman's 'stagnant, dead-end existence, literalizing the notion that he is going nowhere' (pp. 119-20).  Quite true!  What it also can remind us of is how, in Harry, Calvin Wiggs, a puritannical soul (as his name suggests), passes some of the time by restoring old cars.  I'll quote something I once wrote: '[Calvin's world-weary] mother is very astute in describing the nature of Calvin's work.  Referring to his interest in restoring antique cars, she calls them "mechanical antiques"; and she says that his other job as Deputy Sheriff involves "piece-work".  In short, there's something non-organic and isolated about Calvin.  [In a sense, he is the film's Norman Bates.]  The contrast is with the film's [two couples] whose combined energies are marshalled by the artist Sam.  As he cuts [Miss Gravely's] hair, in a charming scene inside the Wiggs Emporium, Sam foresees that "the true Miss Gravely" will be "timeless with love and understanding".'  That's a Symbolist aspiration, if ever there was one.  Next time, I'll discuss the remarkable way in which, almost by tone alone, Hitchcock can turn a film's meaning one way or another - positive or negative, pessimistic or optimistic.

                                                                            Lila and wrecked jalopy in PSYCHO                             


January 16 Actually, this week I want to interrupt our discussion of Psycho (and Joseph Smith III's excellent book on that film) and turn to the play 'Rope' now running at the Almeida Theatre in London (see News item below).  Danny Nissim watched the play last week and 'thoroughly enjoyed' it.  He has sent along his detailed thoughts on the production, and I'll incorporate several of them in this note.  Here's Danny: 'The first thing to note is that the production is set in its original period and this is central to its main themes.  We’re in the world of the "bright young things" of the English upper classes of the 1920s.  Brandon and Granillo (Phillip in the film) are Oxford undergraduates of a type familiar to anyone who has read or seen the TV adaptation of Evelyn Waugh’s "Brideshead Revisited".  This is a generation determined to throw off the outdated moral authority of their Victorian parents.  And those with the money and connections are willing to push everything to excess and revel in the new amorality of the times where anything goes.  The one great world-changing event in the background is of course the Great War of the previous decade, dramatically foregrounded in the character of [Brandon and Granillo's former tutor, the poet] Rupert, wonderfully characterised at the Almeida by Bertie Carvel as a slightly camp cynical aesthete who limps across the stage casting his spell simultaneously over the other characters and the audience.  In a speech which is central to the whole play, he tells us that he lost his leg in the war (at one point he whacks it dramatically with his walking stick) and explains how the whole experience of that apocalyptic conflict has left him unwilling to condemn the act of individual murder when whole nations enthusiastically engaged in murder on such a grand scale.'  Hmm.  All of what Danny Nissim has just observed I find very helpful to an appreciation of Hitchcock's 1948 film version of Patrick Hamilton's 1929 play.  For a start, readers may like to recall what we noted here on October 31 (above): that 'Hitchcock's films contain both "dandy" and "rogue" male characters, and that these two complementary types sprang to prominence from post-World War I historical circumstances'.  Clearly, there is something of both the dandy and the rogue in at least two of Rope's main characters, and probably in all three of those characters, namely, Rupert himself (who delights in teasing, if not actually shocking, people), Brandon and Phillip.  I imagine that Rupert's name is designed to remind us of the legendary English poet Rupert Brooke (1887-1915), symbol of World War I's 'lost generation'.  Hitchcock and his screenwriter Arthur Laurents would have felt that Rupert's position on individual murder was no less apt after the mass-slaughter of World War II - and they probably took their cue from Chaplin's Monsieur Verdoux (1947), as I point out in 'The Alfred Hitchcock Story'.  Also, I have often remarked here and elsewhere, citing John Carey's outstanding book 'The Intellectuals and the Masses' (1992), how incredibly disdainful of ordinary people were the Nietzsche-influenced literary intellectuals in England between the Wars.  D.H. Lawrence (1885-1930) would happily have seen the masses gassed, as a passage cited by Carey shows.  Brandon and Granillo/Phillip are part of that 'set', and in filming Rope Hitchcock was working out his own ambivalence towards what he called 'the moron masses'.  All power, then, to Arthur Laurents's screenplay which has Rupert finally see the light.  'Did you think you were God, Brandon?', he asks at the film's climax - see frame-capture below.  (No matter that the screenplay has had to play down Rupert's own gayness and his possible direct complicity in 'corrupting' Brandon with Nietzsche's ideas.  As Laurents has said, once James Stewart was cast in the role, probably in part because of his own distinction as a pilot in the War, all shadings of gayness in his character had to be dropped.)                      

                                                                            'Did you think you were God, Brandon?' - ROPE


January 23 Back to Psycho again this week, and thoughts occasioned by my reading of Joseph Smith III's sturdy new book, 'The Psycho File' (McFarland).  I remember once reading about how Hitchcock showed a rough-cut of the film to its screenwriter Joseph Stefano and how Stefano's face fell as he watched it.  'Don't worry,' Hitchcock assured him when the lights came up, 'we'll fix it!'  Well, Hitch was correct of course (though Stefano may also have had a point - there's not a lot there in the film's second half apart from the sheer momentum of the murders investigation, and some nice 'touches', plus the rather brilliant conception of the film itself - I would compare the latter to a play by the great Pirandello, whose studies in sanity/madness and illusion/reality I have discussed here and elsewhere previously, and am currently re-visiting with unflagged admiration, I must say).  In the space of a few pages of Smith's book, I was several times reminded about the importance to Hitchcock, as to any author, of 'tightening' and revision.  Thus on p. 43, Smith tells us that the film's scene where Marion is just setting off from Phoenix with the stolen money and is spotted by her boss and Cassidy at a street corner, was scripted rather differently.  (It's not clear just when the changes were made, but no matter.)  In the script, reports Smith, 'where Cassidy sees Marion first, [he] lets out a "cheery exclamation," and elbows Lowery'.  Smith thinks that the filmed version is 'infinitely preferable' - 'Cassidy trudging blindly ahead while Lowery smiles and nods absently at Marion: she returns an automatic half-smile (also not in the script) and he [Lowery] then stops and gives Marion a puzzled frown' (she had complained of a headache and had said she would bank the money and then go straight home).  Yes, it's much better as filmed.  For one thing, the scene now avoids the cliché of the two men simply celebrating Cassidy's house-purchase by getting drunk together.  As filmed, the scene tells a whole story in itself, about individual differences - something (subjectivity) the film is about, after all.  Also, the scene now has a definite victim (Lowery) and direct interaction between Marion and him, rather than presenting a general 'young woman trumps older guys' situation.  Next, on p. 44, Smith mentions how in the scene where Marion is spoken to by a traffic cop, the script went though various changes.  'Stefano's first draft had the policeman flirting with Marion - but Hitchcock told his writer to omit this.  He also trimmed quite a bit from the revised draft, in which the policeman responds at length - and with some compassion - to Marion's assertion, "You're taking up my time"'.  Hitchcock, I think, simply didn't want any 'softening' at this stage in the film, perhaps because he knew that the scene with Norman in the parlour was coming up, which is where the audience subconsciously relaxes with Marion after her long interstate drive.  The parlour scene itself seems long, but is clearly of a different order from what had preceded it - we sense a deepening here (which will be explained in retrospect, as when the psychiatrist says that Norman had been 'touched and aroused' by Marion, as she herself had been touched - if not aroused - by Norman.  Her thoughts had suddenly turned to the enormity of what she had done, and Norman's plight and talk of 'private traps' had brought her to her senses.)  Another scene in which a lot of trimming was done (though again I'm not sure just when) was the scene where Sam and Lila drive out to the motel.  As Smith notes, this was where 'the script gives Lila a chance to provide much of the otherwise-unknown background on the Crane family' (p. 116), but again Hitchcock obviously felt that the plot momentum was what mattered most (and that, in any case, I dare say, concerning characterisation, the film was principally about Norman and, even more, the audience).  Finally - to come back to the scene with the traffic cop - Smith astutely notes a small matter in which time was saved and tension maintained.  The policeman never actually tells Marion that she's free to drive away, he simply hands back her licence and returns to his car.  (Frame-capture below.)  By contrast, notes Smith, Gus Van Sant, in his 1998 version of the film, found 'it necessary to resolve the tension by having the cop say, "Have a nice day," as he hands back her license' (p. 46).  To be continued.

                                                                            The PSYCHO cop hands back Marion's licence


January 30 I remember that in Dan Auiler's book on Vertigo, he made the good point that Scottie, for all his shortcomings, or because of them, is an Everyman figure.  What if I were to suggest that the same might be said of Norman Bates in Psycho?!  Last week I again mentioned my admiration for the plays of Luigi Pirandello (1867-1936), which are often 'Hitchcockian' in the way they reflect aspects of their audience.  Pirandello's 'Right You Are! (If You Think So)', is a predecessor of Psycho in many ways, not least in emphasising the fine line between sanity and madness and in building suspense on the sheer curiosity of both characters and audience to learn a 'truth' that is finally mysterious.  (By the way, the first London production of 'Right You Are!', in 1925, starred Claude Rains, and I have argued elsewhere that Hitchcock saw it.)  The play ends on the sound of mocking laughter from the character Laudisi, who has consistently questioned the nature of appearances.  I think a similar function is performed by the scene with the psychiatrist near the end of Psycho whose 'explanation' arguably deepens our understanding of what has gone before but, next moment, appears inadequate when we are confronted by the mad Norman in his cell.  Pirandello expert, Eric Bentley, has written splendidly about 'Right You Are!'.  He has noted, for example, how Pirandello always 'retained Ibsen's image of modern man as neurotic sufferer' but emphasised 'not the theory of emotional disturbance, as with so many post-Freudian playwrights, but the concrete fact'.  ('Life of the Drama', University Paperback, 1969, p. 133)  Now, I haven't space this week to give Bentley's full argument for why the ending of 'Right You Are!' is so fine, but its essence is this: the mysterious 'veiled lady', Mrs Ponza, whom we have been dying to see, claims to have no significant identity of her own but only what particular individuals ask of her.  Bentley writes: 'She plays the role each wishes her to play.  Everyone would agree that this is most feminine of her, and Pirandello is adding that he considers it most human and right.'  (p. 189)  Well, I believe that the ending of Psycho is profoundly similar, that is, once you see that Norman - who has effectively become his own mother - is now no less the mother of us all!  Norman, ever-obliging, has seen to that!  In other words, the ending of Psycho parodies Norman's, and our, never-completely-abandoned wish to be mothered!  Even more, it is Hitchcock's ultimate statement about our reverence for mothers, vide especially Shadow of a Doubt (1943), filmed when Hitchcock's own mother was dying in England.  There, Emma Oakley/Newton is heard to say, late in the film, 'Sometimes you forget you're you.'  (See frame-capture below.)  Further, a related way of seeing Norman - though this may be easier for gays - is to see him as representing our desire to be the mother, to be exemplary, i.e., a superego figure.  I shall take these matters up next time, but I want to end this week by quoting a further passage from 'The Psycho File' (McFarland) by Joseph Smith III.  Here it is: '[M]ore than one writer has observed that Perkins's Norman sometimes resembles Marion (when he looks feminine), sometimes Sam (dark and handsome), and sometimes Mother's corpse (thin and angular).  Nicholas Haeffner adds that this odd blend is possible because Perkins himself was "a very complex, and inwardly conflicted, bisexual actor".  Indeed, Perkins's bisexuality was "an open secret in Hollywood, and Perkins as Norman Bates couldn't help but draw on that subtext" (McGilligan).'  (p. 56)                              

                                                                            Emma speaks of forgetting in SHADOW OF A DOUBT


February 6 Critics hardly agree about what the death of Marion in the Psycho shower (frame-capture below) signifies.  Raymond Durgnat, we are told, 'goes so far as to assert that the scene evokes not so much lust and vice in the viewer as "tenderness towards the maternal body, first object of love to both sexes"'  (Joseph Smith III, 'The Psycho File', p. 83).  The maternal body?  Well, it's true that Marion is a potential mother who had wanted a 'baby' (her envy and dislike of Cassidy is partly because he had spoken of his 'sweet little baby' for whom he was now buying a house as wedding present - and the $40,000 Marion steals is like an interim/surrogate 'baby' of her own).  But Durgnat may be pushing it to speak of 'the maternal body' here.  On the other hand, the conventional view of the shower murder as a 'rape' may not be the whole story either, as Gary Giblin insists on our New Publications page, reviewing David Thomson's new book on Hitchcock's film.  As so often, when wanting to understand Psycho, I would go back to Hitchcock's The Lodger (1926).  There, in this film of a 1913 novel, Victorian and Freudian notions meet and clash.  (On the French and London stages, Freud had just arrived in plays by Lenormand and others; meanwhile Pabst's new film Secrets of a Soul brought psychoanalysis to the screen for the first time.)  Two contrary attitudes to sex are apparent.  At one extreme, I have argued elsewhere, the film's neurasthenic young Lodger is in almost total denial, to the extent that he may himself be 'The Avenger' who after murdering his sexy blonde sister at her coming-out ball, has lately taken to killing a blonde a week.  And for why?  Because, to some Victorian and post-Victorian minds (or unconscious minds), the family was literally sacrosanct, to the extent that any suggestion of sexuality (even that the mother had conceived her children in sexual relations with the father) was practically unthinkable.  (Suggested reading: Albert Mordell's 'The Erotic Motive in Literature', first published in 1919.)  The film shows the young man to have been very close to his mother, whom we see in an old-fashioned death-bed scene.  At the other extreme, the film shows an attitude to sexuality newly become fashionable in post-War Europe, an attitude liberated and accepting (and espousing Freud as one of its prophets).  The film's heroine, Daisy, is herself a bit of a 'flapper' and works in modelling which brings her into sophisticated circles where she clearly feels at ease (though her home is in East London with her shabby-genteel, old-fashioned parents).  So what I am suggesting is this.  Hitchcock knew both 'worlds' and in a way upheld both.  He himself, a Catholic, venerated motherhood and things of the spirit (including art and literature), but equally, as an intelligent young film director, didn't close his eyes to the realities of the modern world, i.e., to what actually went on there.  One result was described by playwright/screenwriter Arthur Laurents who wrote the screenplay of Rope (about two gay murderers), who said of Hitchcock that although he held himself 'above' actual sex - being celibate for much of his life - was fascinated by all sexual matters, including so-called 'perversions', and anecdotes about sex, and that he loved to tell dirty jokes.  Right, let's hasten back to Psycho.  The film is about motherhood (see last week) and there is a kind of mordant pun when Marion makes literal Cassidy's intention that his $40,000 is for a 'baby'.  I suggested last week that Norman Bates is effectively all things to all people - which is very 'feminine' of him - and shortly I want to suggest that the shower scene is like that too.  But first, let's note that even when Norman becomes so 'feminine' that he turns into his own mother, he is not really a 'good boy', being still a murderer (like, arguably, the Lodger) and thus 'bad', which is a word that Mrs Bates herself would apply to sex (or so Norman thinks).  Aptly enough, some such divided attitude is also the nature of the shower scene, which may explain the critics' disagreement.  Gary Giblin astutely argues that we find the shower scene both 'rewarding' and our punishment for accepting that reward.  We had wanted something exciting to happen and we got it, including nudity.  On the other hand, Marion had been effectively our identification-figure, notwithstanding that she stole $40,000 (which is significant, because it shows that she is 'bad' too).  We had been sympathetic to her motives, and we disliked the man from whom she stole the money.  What I would add is that human nature is divided against itself (cf Schopenhauer's Will or Freud's Unconscious), and that Hitchcock, out of his largesse, is mirroring it right back to us.  More next time.

                                                                            Marion seems prayerful in the PSYCHO shower                                       


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News and Comment

(Readers of this webpage are urged to send reports for possible inclusion in this feature. Both general-interest and Hitchcock-specific items are sought.  N.B.: information about Hitchcock DVDs is incorporated at several points below.)


Korngold opera with a Hitchcock connection receives a different performance in Paris

We have taken this item from the December 2009 issue of 'Positif'.  Yann Tobin writes:

'Saw "La Ville Morte" ("Die tote Stadt"/"The Dead City") at the Opera Bastille.  The powerful score, modelled on the "degenerate art" that was soon to be persecuted by the Nazis, was composed by Erich Wolfgang Korngold in 1920.  The links between this opera and cinema are many.  The opera has been staged in a knowing way by Willy Decker to bring out numerous filmic references, from Caligari to Fellini.  It was adapted from the novel by Georges Rodenbach, "Bruges-la-Morte" (the source of inspiration for Vertigo, via Boileau and Narcejac), but with the ending changed: the hero finally "psychoanalytically" frees himself from the memory of his deceased beloved, whose double he has encountered.  In the 1930s, Korngold will follow Max Reinhardt to the United States, where he will eventually become the epic composer of action films for Warner.  Coming from this genial exile, the original scores for Captain Blood [Michael Curtiz, 1935] and The Adventures of Robin Hood [Curtiz, 1938] retain traces of his hymn to liberty.'

[The above item was freely translated by Adrian Martin, whom we thank.]

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Death of Eric Rohmer (Maurice Schérer), filmmaker, philosopher, author, in Paris

Frenchman Eric Rohmer has died in his ninetieth year.  This prolific director will perhaps be best remembered for the series of films he called his 'contes moraux' such as Ma Nuit Chez Maud/My Night With Maud (1970).  A former editor of 'Cahiers du Cinéma', he co-authored with Claude Chabrol the book 'Hitchcock' (1955), the first full-length study of the films of Alfred Hitchcock.

The following tribute is supplied by Inge Pruks who in the 1970s briefly studied under Rohmer while at the Sorbonne:

‘What a dignified, serene person was Eric Rohmer. He always concerned himself with the important if minimalist things in life: such as conversation (even disagreements) conducted in a civilized manner, like the small white lies we tell and hope that no one notices, like unifying the arts, like what it means to be a social being, or maybe even a human being. This often led him into an exploration of such dualities as young/old, male/female, reflective/active, honest/dishonest, contemporary/medieval, not to forget familial/professional (his own lifelong duality of Maurice Schérer/Eric Rohmer). I can still picture his tall, lean figure, his head on one side, listening with interest to students after lectures, quizzical yet authoritative. A real gentleman, a true intellectual, forever questing and never satisfied with the answer he might have discovered. His death is the passing of an age.’

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Passing of Robin Wood, author of 'Hitchcock's Films' (1965)

English-born film critic and author Robin Wood has died of cancer, aged 78, in Toronto.

This is very sad news.  Wood was the author of several seminal - and influential - books of film criticism, among them 'Hitchcock's Films' (1965), 'Personal Views: Explorations in Film' (1976), and 'Hollywood from Vietnam to Reagan' (1986).  Wood's essay on Hitchcock's Psycho appeared in 'Cahiers du Cinéma' soon after the film came out and led to his decision to write an entire book on Hitchcock in English.  The book was ground-breaking and passionate in answering the question, 'Why should we take Hitchcock seriously?'  His subsequent articles on film were prized by journals such as the English 'Movie' and the American 'Film Comment'.  For many years he was a contributing editor of the journal 'CineAction' published in Toronto.  His partner Richard Lippe remains on its editorial board.

For David Bordwell's fine obituary (with further links), click here: http://www.davidbordwell.net/blog/?p=6483

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Some films recommended by our friends!

Adrian Martin, Senior Research Fellow in Film & Television at Monash University, Melbourne, Australia, tells us that he recently saw 'the most profoundly (not superficially) Hitchcockian film made in several decades: [South Korean director] Bong Joon-ho's Mother.  What a brilliant movie this, on every level!' 

Another new film is strongly recommended by Michael Walker (author of 'Hitchcock's Motifs') after seeing it at this year's London Film Festival.  He wrote to us that newcomer Giuseppe Capotondi's Double Hour (La Doppia Ora) was a 'revelation'. Michael added: 'The following day I simply could not stop thinking about it; it's many years since a new film had such an impact on me and was so vivid in my mind afterwards.'  He strongly suggested not familiarising oneself with details of the film's plot before seeing it.

Lastly, our friend Dr Steven Schneider is an executive producer on Oren Peli's Paranormal Activity (2009) which is less Hitchcockian than inviting comparison with The Blair Witch Project.  Roger Ebert's review calls it 'an ingenious little horror film'.

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Patrick Hamilton's 'Rope' (1929) at the Almeida in London

The play that Hitchcock filmed in 1948 works splendidly on stage in its own right.  Loosely based on a US case, but set in London, the play presents a chilling anatomy of an apparently gratuitous murder, and a brilliant snapshot of a jazz-age generation wallowing in privilege, booze, parties, a shallow obsession with fashion and films, and a desperate inner emptiness.  Not to speak of an arrogance that infected many British intellectuals after the First World War licenced, some of them boasted, by the philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche.  (Meanwhile, in Germany ...)

The season at the Almeida Theatre in Islington, North London, runs from Thursday 10 December 2009 to Saturday 6 February 2010.  The play will be directed by well-known stage and film director Roger Michell.  Ticket prices £6 - £32.  For further information, click here: http://www.almeida.co.uk/production_details/production_details.aspx?code=82

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For sale: bronze statue of Hitchcock (here seen in clay, before casting) 

Andrew Gamache is a respected sculptor who specialises in portrait studies, and who has lately turned his attention to Hitchcock.  Seen here are two photographs of the clay model, 30 inches high, from which Andrew will cast his study of the great director.  'I originally created this piece as an exercise to enhance my portfolio with no intent to sell.  I intend to sell only one or two copies.'  Andrew is looking for expressions of interest from prospective purchasers.  'I suppose that I would ask a round figure of 5000 dollars on top of the 1500 dollars for the casting.  This would include the cost of a stone mount.'  Andrew may be contacted by email at <hippjoint@gmail.com>.  Or telephone him in the USA using this number: 386 214 3309. 

                                                                            Hitchcock statue by A.G., before casting in bronze


                                                                            Profile of Hitchcock statue by A.G., before casting

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Another bronze statue of Hitchcock

Speaking of statues of Hitchcock ... the seacoast town of Dinard, northwest France, for several years had a resin statue of Alfred Hitchcock gracing its foreshore.  On Hitch's shoulders perched a seagull and a crow.  The sculptor was Lionel Ducos.  In 2004 the original statue blew away in a gale but this year it was replaced by a sturdier one in bronze, by the same sculptor.  The photo below was supplied by Dr Alain Kerzoncuf, whom we thank.  Note: Dinard is a movie-conscious town and hosts an annual British Film Festival with invited celebrities.  Deliberately, it sometimes shows films with a Hitchcock connection.  According to the recent British documentary Alfred Hitchcock in East London, directed by Bill Hodgson, the young Hitchcock and his family 'spent several happy holidays' at Dinard.     

                                                                              Bronze statue at Dinard, France, of Hitchcock

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Actors campaign to save Hitchcock-connected East London cinema

Actors Tony Robinson ('Blackadder') and Meera Syal ('The Kumars at No. 42') have joined a campaign to stop an historic cinema, the EMD Cinema in Walthamstow, London, from being turned into a church.  Alfred Hitchcock, who grew up nearby, is said to have seen his first movies there.  The cinema first opened as a dance hall in 1887 and finally closed its doors to the public in 2003.  The building was then purchased by a Brazil-based religious organisation, the Universal Church of the Kingdom of God (UCKG).  The organisation's initial plans to turn the building into a church were rejected by the local council, but it is now expected to submit new proposals.  Opposing this, a local film society, the McGuffin (sic) Film Society, wants the council to offer the UCKG ownership of an empty building next to the cinema, allowing the EMD to be sold to operators who would re-open it to show movies.  Tony Robinson calls the cinema 'an exotic masterpiece'.  He says: 'At this exciting time when east London is about to be revitalised, it would be crazy to turn our backs on such a magnificent venue.'

The above item is taken from an article that appeared in the London 'Telegraph'.  To read more, click here: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/film/5184501/Tony-Robinson-campaigns-to-save-cinema-where-Alfred-Hitchcock-saw-first-films.html 

And for an update, click here: http://www.mcguffin.info/

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Premiere of film Alfred Hitchcock in East London

To commemorate the 80th anniversary of Britain's first talkie, Blackmail, the above-mentioned McGuffin (sic) Film Society recently held a screening of Hitchcock's 1929 film followed by the world premiere of the 65-minute documentary Alfred Hitchcock in East London.

'Most people are ignorant of Hitchcock's associations with east London,' says the documentary's writer and director Bill Hodgson.  'My film paints a picture of Hitchcock and his roots which is radically different from previous biographies.'

In Leytonstone the film identifies the old cinema buildings where the boy Alfred was first exposed to motion pictures.  His churchgoing in nearby Stratford and his schooldays in Hackney are also explored as well as his teenage years in Limehouse during the First World War.

Alfred Hitchcock in East London is now available on DVD.  For more information, click here:
http://www.mcguffin.info/

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Deaths of composer Maurice Jarre (1924-2009) and cinematographer Jack Cardiff (1914-2009)

Sadly, both of the above individuals have recently died.  Maurice Jarre composed the scores for Hitchcock's Topaz (1969) and films by such directors as Georges Franju, Luchino Visconti, and David Lean.  Jarre won Academy Awards for his scores for Lean's Lawrence of Arabia (1962), Doctor Zhivago (1966), and A Passage to India (1984).

The brilliant Jack Cardiff, a regular collaborator with Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger (Black Narcissus, The Red Shoes, et al.), photographed Hitchcock's Under Capricorn (1949).  Cardiff published his autobiography, 'The Magic Hour' (with a preface by Martin Scorsese), in 1996.  He reported that he enjoyed painting and that the French Impressionists had been a major influence on his cinematography.  That may explain why, as Richard Allen ('Hitchcock's Romantic Irony', 2007) has observed, Under Capricorn is atypical of Hitchcock's films visually.  Under Capricorn seeks to convey emotion in its images directly, with suitable use of diffuse colour, whereas Hitchcock's other colour films typically use symbolic or stylised colour, often in discrete blocks, to signify emotion.

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Production designer Robert Boyle, aged 99, further honoured

Robert Boyle, who turns 100 in October, still lectures about his craft to students at the American Film Institute.

In March, he was toasted at a tribute arranged by the Art Directors Guild Film Society and the American Cinematheque.  The same week, the 'Los Angeles Times' ran an article on him (March 27 2009).  It noted that Boyle began his career in 1933 in the art department at Paramount, having just come from USC with a degree in architecture.  At Paramount and later at Universal, where he graduated to art director, he worked on a wide range of movies including horror films such as The Wolf Man (1941), the Alfred Hitchcock movies Saboteur (1942) and Shadow of a Doubt (1943), and even the old 'Ma and Pa Kettle' comedies.

After working on the two Hitchcocks, Boyle went into the Army during World War II. 'After my discharge, I went back to work with Hitch, who had formed a company at RKO with Cary Grant and that didn't pan out.  The next opportunity to be with Hitch was [when] he called me for North by Northwest [1959] and then after that The Birds [1963] and Marnie [1964].'

According to Boyle, once you worked with Hitchcock you became part of his movie family.  'He was a great collaborator,' Boyle says.  'He would discuss a movie with anybody, including his driver.'

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To Catch a Thief on DVD with new commentary (Region 1)

On March 24th, Paramount Home Entertainment released two more DVDs from its Centennial Collection, including Hitchcock's To Catch a Thief (1955).  (The other release is Gene Saks's The Odd Couple from 1964.)  Our review by Brian Wilson occurs earlier on this page.

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Death of Hitchcock artist and designer, Dorothea Redmond, in Hollywood

The 'Los Angeles Times' reports as follows:

Dorothea Holt Redmond, an illustrator and production designer who helped visualize several Alfred Hitchcock films and worked with Walt Disney to design a private apartment in Disneyland's New Orleans Square, has died. She was 98.

Redmond came to be regarded as one of the most talented illustrators in the industry, according to research by Tania Modleski, a USC English professor who is documenting the contributions women made to Hitchcock's films.  [Modleski's previous book on Hitchcock was the excellent 'The Women Who Knew Too Much'.]

Working with Hitchcock and an art director, Redmond would create an illustration that became the basis for communicating to the cameraman and others - and essentially set the tone of key scenes, Modleski told The Times in an e-mail.

The artist 'was masterful at working with light and shadow,' Modleski said, 'and deserves credit for working with Hitchcock to convey the German Expressionist aesthetic he has been praised for adopting throughout much of his career.'

Redmond's suspense-filled graphite drawings interpreting a sequence in Hitchcock's 1943 film Shadow of a Doubt helped transform a sleepy town into a threatening locale, which was essential to the movie's evolution, according to the 2007 book 'Casting a Shadow'.

Hitchcock was 'one of her very favorite people to work with,' said Redmond's daughter. 'She just loved his personality and his taste.'

In a film career that started with 1937's Nothing Sacred and spanned 20 years, Redmond contributed to seven Hitchcock films, including Rebecca (1940), Rear Window (1954) and To Catch a Thief (1955).
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Hitchcock engages viewers on more levels, suggests a recent study 

Researchers in a new field called 'neurocinematics' use MRI scans to monitor brain activity while subjects watch films.  Recently, subjects were shown 30 minute clips from Sergio Leone's The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly (1966), an episode of 'Alfred Hitchcock Presents' ("Bang! You're Dead"), and an episode of the TV comedy series, 'Curb Your Enthusiasm'.

The researchers, from the Computational Neuroimaging Laboratory at New York University, found that the Hitchcock clip provoked the most consistent pattern of brain activity among all subjects studied, 'consistently turning on and switching off responses of different regions in more than 65 percent of the cortex'.  By contrast, the Leone clip produced a score of 45%, while 'Curb Your Enthusiasm' scored 18%.

Quote: 'The fact that Hitchcock was able to orchestrate the responses of so many different brain regions, turning them on and off at the same time across all viewers, may provide neuroscientific evidence for his notoriously famous ability to master and manipulate viewers' minds.  Hitchcock often liked to tell interviewers that for him "creation is based on an exact science of audience reactions".'

To read more, go here: http://scienceblogs.com/neurophilosophy/2008/06/neurocinematics.php

Note.  At the end of the above-listed report (just before 'Comments'), there's a link marked simply PDF.  Click on that to read the original report as published in a new online journal called 'Projections: The Journal for Movies and Mind'.

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Region 2 release of Hitchcock's Bon Voyage (1944) and Aventure Malgache (1944)

Network DVD in the UK have released a double-bill of Bon Voyage and Aventure Malgache, the two short films Hitchcock made in England in 1944 featuring the Molière Players, a group of exiled French Resistance actors.  Also on the disc is a brief compilation of newsreels and interviews featuring Hitchcock.  For more information, click here: 
http://www.networkdvd.net/product_info.php?cPath=26&products_id=732

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Passing of Rear Window screenwriter John Michael Hayes (1919-2008)

We are saddened by the recent death of the man who between 1954 and 1956 wrote four classic Hitchcock screenplays (Rear Window, To Catch a Thief, The Trouble With Harry, and The Man Who Knew Too Much).  Each was noted for its emotional warmth and sophisticated dialogue.  Author Steven DeRosa has paid full tribute to the remarkable Hayes-Hitchcock collaboration in his book 'Writing With Hitchcock' (2001).
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Yet another Hitchcock borrowing? The likely influence of Yellow Canary (Herbert Wilcox, 1943) on Hitchcock's Notorious (1946)

Dear to our heart is a piece of research by film scholar Doug Bonner in Texas.  His paper, now published on the Web, shows that several key sequences in Notorious probably took inspiration from a British spy drama Yellow Canary made three years earlier by producer-director Herbert Wilcox as a vehicle for his lovely actress wife Anna Neagle.

How often Hitchcock resorted to such borrowing!  Often, though, he was only returning a favour to another director who had borrowed from him first!  Robert Siodmak, for example, engaged in a 'reciprocity of influence' with Hitchcock during the 1940s.  (At one point, both men shared the same producer, Joan Harrison.)  Wilcox's Yellow Canary may possibly show the influence of Hitchcock's Saboteur (1942) as well as of earlier British productions like The Spy in Black (1939) and Contraband (1940), both directed by Michael Powell.

To read Doug Bonner's article, click here:
http://www.postmodernjoan.com/pomoYCWEB01.htm   

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Producers of Disturbia (2007) sued for allegedly ripping off the story on which Hitchcock's Rear Window (1954) was based

The makers of a largely teenage-actor film version of Rear WindowDisturbia (d. D.J. Caruso), are being sued by the estate of Sheldon Abend (whom Hitchcock once called 'an ambulance-chaser'!).  The estate claims ownership of the rights to the original Cornell Woolrich story.  Strangely, a recent news item names this story "Murder from a Fixed Viewpoint" - whereas we had always understood that the story, originally published in the February 1942 issue of 'Dime Detective', was first called "It Had to Be Murder", then changed by Woolrich himself two years later to the more evocative "Rear Window" when he included the story in his early collection of short fiction, 'After-Dinner Story' (1944), published under his William Irish pseudonym.

We contacted Woolrich expert Francis M. Nevins who told us that the author himself originally chose the name "Murder from a Fixed Viewpoint" for his story but that it was never used - until now, for complicated (presumably legal) reasons.  

For the recent news item, click here:
http://www.reuters.com/articlePrint?articleId=USN0844655020080908

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Online: forum on Psycho's influence

Co-Editor of online journal 'Midnight Marquee', Gary J. Svehla (with Susan Svehla), recently controversially omitted Hitchcock's Psycho from a list of 'the 13 most influential horror films'.  Some of our readers may be interested in reading a transcript of a forum in which Gary defended his list against several challengers.  The transcript is available online as a .pdf document (copy and paste the following URL into your browser): http://www.midmar.com/midmar76.pdf

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'Alfred Hitchcock Premiere Collection' (seven titles) to be released 14th October 2008 (Region 1)

MGM Home Entertainment has announced the 'Alfred Hitchcock Premiere Collection' which includes Sabotage, Young and Innocent, Rebecca, Lifeboat, The Paradine Case, Spellbound, and Notorious.  (Also included in the package is the 1944 film The Lodger, directed by John Brahm.)  Each film has been restored and remastered.  Most of the films have new 'extras' (e.g., Bill Krohn and Stephen Rebello discussing The Paradine Case) plus the package contains a 32-page booklet of production notes, etc.  Retail will be $119.98.  For more information, please paste the following URL into your browser: http://www.dvdactive.com/news/releases/alfred-hitchcock-premiere-collection.html

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New editions of Hitchcock's Rear Window, Vertigo, and Psycho, and Orson Welles's A Touch Of Evil to be released on 7th October 2008 (Region 1)

Universal Studios Home Entertainment has announced two-disc special editions of the above four films.  Each will have 'extras', both 'old' and 'new' (e.g., Stephen Rebello's commentary for Psycho), with a SRP of $26.98.  For more information, click here:
http://crimespreecinema.blogspot.com/2008/07/dvd-info-universal-announces-special.html
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DVD release (Region 2) of ten episodes of the 'Alfred Hitchcock Hour'

Koch Media in Munich have announced that on 25 May, 2008, they will release a set of ten selected episodes on three DVDs of the 'Alfred Hitchcock Hour' (which had 93 episodes in all).  The majority of the shows will have German audio soundtracks (no mention of English subtitles); however, four shows will have their original English soundtracks plus German subtitles.  Koch say that further sets will follow.  Here's the list of the initial set, which includes the Hitchcock-directed "I Saw the Whole Thing", starring John Forsythe:

1.  A Piece of the Action

2.  I Saw the Whole Thing

3.  Captive Audience

4.  Ride the Nightmare

5.  Diagnosis: Danger

6.  The Star Juror

7.  Last Seen Wearing Blue Jeans

8.  Nothing Ever Happens in Linvale

9.  The Cadaver

10. The Dividing Wall

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Death of Suzanne Pleshette (1937-2008)

Suzanne Pleshette, the husky-voiced actress who redefined the television sitcom wife in the 1970s, playing the smart, sardonic Emily Hartley on 'The Bob Newhart Show', has died of respiratory failure at her home in Los Angeles. She was 70.

She made her film debut in the 1958 Jerry Lewis comedy, The Geisha Boy.  In Alfred Hitchcock's The Birds (1963) she played the schoolteacher Annie Hayworth.  Our tribute comes from Stephen Rebello in Hollywood:

'What a witty, intelligent, and stylish woman she was.  For me, one of the most intriguing things she ever did was to one day turn up on the set
of The Birds with blonde, upswept hair, a new makeup style, wearing a mink coat, Edith Head clothing, and a haughty expression.  She did it, she said, when she realized that Hitchcock only had eyes for the blonde.

'Apparently, Tippi Hedren thought it was hilarious.  Hitchcock, not so much, although I have been told that he saw in Pleshette's directness, outspokeness, and legendarily bawdy language a throwback to the days of stars like Carole Lombard.'


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French-German film coming about the young Alfred Hitchcock

French-German cultural channel ARTE have made a series of short films on the childhoods of "Six Great Filmmakers", including Hitchcock.  Other directors to be featured are Welles, Renoir, Bergman, Lang, and Tati.  The films will be shown in cinemas and on television.

The Hitchcock film is directed by Corinne Garfin and has the title Nuit Brève (The Short Night).  It shows a young Alfred going with his parents to a play starring Ellen Terry (played by Camille Natta) and afterwards meeting the famous actress.  Below is a still.  For more information, click here: http://www.umedia.fr/UMedia/enfances.htm

                                                                            Young actor portraying Alfred Hitchcock in forthcoming production
                                                                  Scene from the forthcoming ARTE production, Nuit Brève

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The stage production of The 39 Steps in Boston (and now Broadway, et al.)

Back in 2005 Michael Walker reported here on the opening in Leeds, England, of a play based on Hitchcock's film The 39 Steps.  (See "UK stage production of The 39 Steps" below.)  Later, in "Editor's Day", we quoted correspondent DN - Danny Nissim - on how the play had transferred to London's West End and had provided an exhilarating night-out for Danny, his wife, and friends.  In 2007 the production crossed the Atlantic and played in Boston.  In January 2008 it will move to New York (see below).  Here's what WB reported in our 'Hitchcock Enthusiasts' Group about seeing it in Boston:

'I went to Boston last Saturday to see a new play entitled "Alfred Hitchcock's The 39 Steps". The title makes clear that the play is based (loosely) on the Hitchcock film and not the John Buchan book, although perhaps a more apt title would add the tag "meets Monty Python".   Citing a Pythonesque dimension, though, doesn't fully suggest the great warmth with which the whole thing celebrates Hitchcock.  Four actors play 100+ roles and do it with great verve and ability.   It's quite funny and wonderful.   It has played for a couple of years in London's West End and one of the original actors from the UK is playing the lead here.  It transfers to Broadway in January [namely, the American Airlines Theatre in Times Square, opening on Tuesday 15 January.  In Australia, a Melbourne Theatre Company production will open in April.] They simulate effects from the film in funny, creative and low-tech ways.  They even pull off Hitchcock's cameo.   My ten-year-old daughter also loved the show.  Given my love for the original, I went a skeptic and came out a great fan.'

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New 10 DVD Hitchcock set coming to the UK (Region 2) in February, 2008

The set will include Hitchcock's first film as director, The Pleasure Garden (1925), from the Rohauer Collection.  All of the discs will have 'extras' (including film analyses by Charles Barr).  Here is the list of films:

Disc One: The Pleasure Garden
Disc Two: The Lodger (A Story of the London Fog)
Disc Three: Downhill
Disc Four: The Man Who Knew Too Much
Disc Five: The 39 Steps
Disc Six: Secret Agent
Disc Seven: Sabotage
Disc Eight: Young and Innocent
Disc Nine: The Lady Vanishes
Disc Ten: Jamaica Inn

[We thank Ryan Hewitt of Sony DADC UK Ltd, and Dave Pattern of the hitchcockwiki.com website, for information in the above item.]

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Art director Robert Boyle to receive Oscar

Production designer Robert Boyle, 98, who first worked for Hitchcock on Saboteur (1942) and who was nominated four times for Oscars in the art direction category, including for Hitchcock's North by Northwest (1959), will receive an honorary Oascar during the Academy Awards ceremony on February 24, it has been announced.

Born in Los Angeles in 1909, Boyle trained as an architect.  When the Depression cost him his job, he found work in films as an extra.  In 1933, he was hired as a draftsman in the Paramount Studios art department.  He went on to work on various films as a sketch artist, draftsman, and assistant art director before becoming an art director at Universal in the early '40s.

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Martin Scorsese's new Spanish TV commercial a mock Hitchcock film

Okay, drop everything.  Every year, the Freixenet company in Spain puts out an expensive commercial for the Christmas season. This year, it's for their Reserva wine. That's not important. What is important is that they got Martin Scorsese to make the commercial this year, a nine-minute film that is a tribute to Hitchcock's '50s masterworks. It begins with film preservationist Marty, in Last Waltz style, claiming that he has found three pages from a never-made Hitchcock script called 'The Key To Reserva'. Then it shows Scorsese making the film, and it's a joy. It's full of Hitchcockian color schemes and camera angles, all shot in a concert hall and scored to Bernard Herrmann. It makes visual references to The Man Who Knew Too MuchRear WindowNorth by Northwest and several other Hitchcock masterpieces. Lensed by Harris Savides. Edited by Thelma Schoonmaker. Starring Simon Baker in a Cary Grant suit. Trust us: drop everything you're doing and watch Marty's film here:  http://www.scorsesefilmfreixenet.com/video_eng.htm

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Another remake: The Lodger

Hitchcock was the first to make a film version of Mrs Belloc Lowndes's 1913 novel (expanded from her own short story) about a Jack-the-Ripper killer terrorising London.  The full title of Hitchcock's 1926 film was The Lodger, A Story of the London Fog.  Now writer/director David Ondaatje will attempt his version of the novel - with the setting reportedly moved to Los Angeles.  It will focus on the relationship between a paranoid landlady and her tenant. A second plot thread will involve some personal and professional problems of detective Chandler Manners, hot on the killer's trail.

• Other Hitchcock-related projects are slated or are awaiting release.  The thriller Number 13 takes its name, and setting, from the 1920s film that Hitchcock worked on but which was never finished.  It shows the youthful director (played by Dan Fogler) somehow caught in a love triangle involving two crew members. When the lead actor turns up dead, the film's editor suspects Hitchcock, and tries to uncover the truth.  Chase Palmer will direct the film, starting in January.

• A new version of The Birds is slated, to be directed by Martin Campbell (Casino Royale).  Australian actress Naomi Watts has been announced to play the lead role of Melanie Daniels.  However, according to 'The Guardian' (20 October 2007), the film has already run into opposition.  Co-star of Hitchcock's original film, Tippi Hedren, is quoted as saying, 'Must you be so insecure that you have to take a film that's a classic, and I think a success, and try to do it over?'

 British actor Bill Nighy has reportedly signed to star in Australian director Stephan Elliott's Easy Virtue, an adaptation of Noel Coward's play to be produced by Ealing Studios for 2009 release.  The play casts a critical eye at hypocrisy and upper-class English life in the 1920s.  The previous film version of the play was Hitchcock's, made in 1927 and starring Isabel Jeans and Robin Irvine.

• Another Psycho-related project (see also below) is said to be called Psycho/Analysis from a script by the late Joseph Stefano (who, of course, wrote the original Hitchcock-directed film from Robert Bloch's novel). 

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Coming: Alfred Hitchcock and the Making of Psycho: The Movie

'[I]t could never be said that director Ryan Murphy (Running With Scissors) is one to let grass grow under his feet.'  Thus wrote 'Hollywood Elsewhere' columnist Jeffrey Wells by way of 'leaking' some exciting news for Hitchcock buffs: that Murphy is set to direct 'a drama about the making of Hitchcock's Psycho, and particularly the hurdles and roadblocks that the great British director [to be played by Anthony Hopkins] went through in order to bring it ... to fruition'.  Wells also reveals that British actress Helen Mirren (The Queen) may play Hitchcock's wife and collaborator, Alma.

We can add some details.  The film will be based on Stephen Rebello's book 'Alfred Hitchcock and the Making of Psycho' (1990.  (Rebello is an Exutive Producer on the project.)  A recent draft of the film's screenplay is said to have a tone closer to The Queen or Gods and Monsters than to RKO 281: The Battle Over Citizen Kane (as named in the 'Hollywood Elsewhere' item).  Apparently, too, the true focus of the film will be on Alfred and Alma and the impact of their intricate personal lives on the creation of the 1960 film.

                                                                           Coming: ALFRED HITCHCOCK AND THE MAKING OF PSYCHO

 

Major Hitchcock exhibition in Illinois emphasises his filmmaking methods

The exhibition in Evanston, Illinois, has now opened.  We hear that visitors so far have included Hitchcock actresses Tippi Hedren and Veronica Cartwright and Hitchcock biographer John Russell Taylor.

Our thanks to Burke Pattern of Northwestern University, Evanston, for these details about the exhibition ...

“Casting a Shadow: Creating the Alfred Hitchcock Film,” from Sept. 28 to Dec. 9, features approximately 150 sketches, designs, storyboards, script pages, and other film production documents from such movies as Shadow of a Doubt (1943), North by Northwest (1959), and The Birds (1963), drawn from the archives of the Margaret Herrick Library at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences and the British Film Institute. The exhibition, which will also include film clips and recordings of audio conversations between Hitchcock and his collaborators, will be accompanied by a screening of more than 30 films directed by Hitchcock, an international symposium, gallery talks, and an illustrated catalogue published by Northwestern University Press and the Block Museum of Art.
 
The exhibition will travel to the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences Gallery in Beverly Hills, California, in 2008.
 
A companion catalogue ('Casting a Shadow: Creating the Alfred Hitchcock Film,' $32.95) features an introduction by Block Museum film curator Will Schmenner and essays by Scott Curtis, associate professor of radio/television/film at Northwestern University; Tom Gunning, Edwin A. and Betty L. Bergman Distinguished Service Professor, department of art history, University of Chicago; Jan Olsson, professor of cinema studies, Stockholm University, Sweden; and author Bill Krohn. The 160 page-book includes 63 plates and 33 illustrations.
 
To complement the exhibition, the Block is organizing the symposium “Hitchcock’s Myth and Method” at 9:30 am on Friday, November 2. Participants include Curtis; Gunning; Olsson; Krohn; Tania Modleski, Florence R. Scott Professor of English, University of Southern California; and Sarah Street, professor of film, University of Bristol, England. This day-long symposium is free and open to the public.
 
In addition, Block Cinema will screen many of Hitchcock’s films during the fall quarter; some of them will be introduced by noted film scholars. The Block Museum will also offer a series of gallery talks focusing on specific aspects of the “Casting a Shadow” exhibition. Details on the film screenings and gallery talks are forthcoming. Free guided tours of the “Casting a Shadow” exhibition will be held at 2 pm every Saturday and Sunday from September 29 to December 9.
 
The Block Museum is located at 40 Arts Circle Drive on Northwestern’s Evanston campus. Admission to the Block’s exhibitions is free. General admission to Block Cinema screenings is $6 or $ 4 for Block Museum members and students with ID. For more information, call (847) 491-4000 or click here: http://www.blockmuseum.northwestern.edu/exhibitions/future/hitchcock.html.

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Deaths: Oscar-winner Jane Wyman at age 93, and actor Hansjörg Felmy at age 76

Jane Wyman, who starred as trainee actress Eve Gill in Hitchcock's Stage Fright (1950), has died.  The first wife of former US President Ronald Reagan was 93.

She won an Academy Award for her role as a deaf-mute in Johnny Belinda (Jean Negulesco,1948).

Meanwhile, the actor who played the menacing Heinrich Gerhard, head of State Security, in Hitchcock's Torn Curtain (1966), has died in Lower Bavaria after a decade-long battle with osteoporosis.
  
Felmy was one of the best-known and most important actors in Germany from the 1950s onward, including television. One of his most significant stage successes was his role in Kurt Hoffmann's satire 'Wir Wunderkinder'/'We Children of the Economic Miracle' of 1958.

[Our thanks to DF for this item.]

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Articles and reviews wanted by new journal

Dr Mark Bould (University of the West of England) has sent us the following ...

Science Fiction Film and Television is a biannual, peer-reviewed journal published by Liverpool University Press. Edited by Mark Bould (UWE) and Sherryl Vint (Brock University), with an international board of advisory editors, it encourages dialogue among the scholarly and intellectual communities of film studies, sf studies and television studies.

We invite submissions on all areas of sf film and television, and which situate texts, practices and institutions within broader national, historical, cultural, theoretical and critical contexts.

We publish articles (6000-8000 words), book and DVD reviews (1000-2000 words) and review essays (up to 5000 words). Suggestions for papers include but are not limited to the following areas:
•    silent sf
•    European sf (e.g., French New Wave, Turkish pop cinema)
•    East Asian sf (e.g., kaiju eiga, anime)
•    Hollywood sf blockbusters
•    animation and greenscreen
•    adaptations
•    low-budget and independent sf
•    children’s sf
•    costume, design and music
•    spectacle and special effects
•    the ‘soap opera-isation’ of television sf
•    sf and avant-garde practice
•    the relationships between globalisation, transnationalisation, media convergence and sf
•    the science-fictionality of media technologies and forms themselves
•    cross-media and transnational franchises
•    audience, fans and consumption

Articles should be 6000-8000 words (MLA format) and include a 100-word abstract. Electronic submission in MS Word is preferred. The deadline for submissions for the inaugural issue (March 2008) is September 1, 2007. Send submissions to both editors at mark.bould@gmail.com and sherryl.vint@gmail.com. If you are interested in reviewing a book or DVD, or have materials you would like reviewed, please contact Sherryl Vint.

Advisory Editorial Board: Jonathan Bignell (University of Reading), Catherine Constable (University of Warwick), Susan A. George (University of California, Berkeley), Elyce Rae Helford (Middle Tennessee State University), Matt Hills (Cardiff University), Brooks Landon (University of Iowa), Rob Latham (University of Iowa), Sharalyn Orbaugh (University of British Columbia), David Seed (University of Liverpool), Steve Shaviro (Wayne State University), Vivian Sobchack (University of California, Los Angeles) and JP Telotte (Georgia Institute of Technology)

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Farewell Richard Franklin (Psycho II)

Our esteemed director-friend, Richard Franklin, has died of cancer in Melbourne, Australia, a few days short of his 59th birthday.  Among his early films were Patrick (1978), starring Sir Robert Helpmann, and Roadgames (1980), starring Stacy Keach and Jamie Lee Curtis - the making of which led in turn to Richard's work in Hollywood for Universal Studios: Psycho II (1983), starring Tony Perkins and Vera Miles, and Cloak and Dagger (1984), starring Dabney Coleman and young Henry Thomas plus John McIntire (the sheriff in Psycho) and wife Jeanette Nolan (who had voiced Mrs Bates in Psycho) playing the villains.  (The film was a re-working and opening-out of the 1949 movie The Window.)  Back in Australia, Richard made such admirable films as Hotel Sorrento (1995), from Hannie Rayson's stage success, and Brilliant Lies (1996), from the play by David Williamson.  No-one admired the work of Hollywood masters Alfred Hitchcock and John Ford more than Richard.  Accordingly, we have lost the one person with whom we were best able to converse about Hitch's filmmaking, and whose many insights on the films were always keen and true.  There is a superb profile of Richard written in 2005 by young Canadian critic Aaron Graham for the 'Senses of Cinema' Great Directors pages: http://www.sensesofcinema.com/contents/directors/05/franklin.html                  

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How tall was Alfred Hitchcock?

We've had this controversy before.  In one of the Second Season episodes of 'Alfred Hitchcock Presents' ("Number Twenty-Two"), in which Hitch appears in a police lineup (!), his height is given as 5 feet, 6 inches.  But on his British passport recently auctioned by Juliens of Hollywood (see image below), which is stamped 9 February 1954, his height is entered as 5 feet, 8 inches.  (Mind you, the same passport appears to indicate that Hitch was single, mentioning neither wife nor daughter!  But perhaps that's simply because the distaff side of the Hitchcock family had long ago become American citizens.)

                                            British passport of Alfred Hitchcock   

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A couple of DVDs

Recent DVD releases of The 39 Steps (1935) and To Catch a Thief (1955) have been enthusiastically praised by our readers.

The particular DVD we mean of The 39 Steps is the one contained in the package known as 'The Rank Collection' (which has actually been out for a couple of years).  Correspondent DF in Germany tells us: 'The whole thing appears to be Carlton Video, and I already have The 39 Steps on a DVD from Carlton.  But the Rank Collection version is rather better.  The transfer is beautifully done; the sound has been improved - very judiciously too.  The result is certainly the best 39 Steps that I have had the pleasure of seeing.'  For more information about 'The Rank Collection', click here: http://www.dvdtimes.co.uk/content.php?contentid=57543 

As for Paramount's new release of To Catch a Thief - not to be confused with the one of about five years ago - some reports suggest that it's a considerable improvement on the earlier one.  'The New York Times' review (8 May 2007) quotes Paramount themselves on how this version 'has been taken from a restored VistaVision negative, and [how the result] shows in far crisper detail, much deeper colors, and a new sense of depth'.  The new release, we gather, has a commentary track by Peter Bogdanovich and Laurent Bouzereau that wasn't on the earlier disk.  And our director friend Richard Franklin (Psycho II) emailed us to praise the look of the new version: 'it's FABULOUS!'  For a full review, click here: http://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/read.php?ID=27798 

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Five early Hitchcocks, fully remastered, coming on DVD

Canadian company Lionsgate Home Entertainment, part of the Lions Gate Entertainment Corporation, will release the 'Alfred Hitchcock: 3-Disc
Collector's Edition' on February 6th, 2007. The set will feature five films: The Manxman, Rich And Strange, The Skin Game, Murder!, and The Ring.  All of the films are said to be fully remastered, and new soundtracks have been recorded for the silent films.

• Caveat.  We have been told by P McF that the edition of Murder! has some drawbacks.  Though in general the restored soundtrack and visuals are superb, 'sound effects' are now sometimes 'severely noticeable'.  And dissolves look scruffy compared to the cleaned-up images on either side of them. Also, reportedly, 'of the last three scenes, the first two are missing!  They are each short, [consisting of] just one shot: Diana leaving the prison gates, and then Diana and Sir John in the car together [as he tells her] "you must save those tears - for my new play".'  However, this last matter is a known issue, and is simply a case of the original UK theatrical release print having been used for the Lionsgate DVD: the two 'missing' shots were ones included only in the original US release of the film.  (For more about the US ending, here's a link to Dave Pattern's Hitchcock wiki-site: http://www.daveyp.com/hitchcock/wiki/Murder_ending.)

• Dave Pattern tells us that sections of the audio track for Rich and Strange appear to have had Foley effects added (notably footsteps).

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New selection of Hitchcock-directed TV programs on DVD can be played without the French subtitles

Congratulations to the people responsible for the Region 2 release (PAL format) of a boxed collection of Alfred Hitchcock's work for television.  The box contains all of the episodes directed by Hitchcock of 'Alfred Hitchcock Presents' plus three other items that he directed for television: "Incident at a Corner", the celebrated episode of 'Ford Startime' which Hitchcock made in colour and which stars Vera Miles; "Four o'Clock", starring E.G. Marshall, which Hitchcock directed for the show called 'Suspicion', from a story by Cornell Woolrich; and "I Saw the Whole Thing", starring John Forsythe, which was the only Hitch-directed episode of 'Alfred Hitchcock Hour'.  Note: although the items have French subtitles, these can be turned off if not required.  Price of the 5-disc set is reportedly now 65.00 € (previously 49.95 €).  For more information, click the following: 
Hitchcock selection (Region 2)
and 
How to order (in English)

• Further good news from Region 2, specifically France.  For the first time, the full 80-minutes, English-language version of Hitchcock's Waltzes From Vienna (1933), starring Jessie Matthews, Esmond Knight, and Fay Compton, is to be released on DVD, by Universal.  But note: the release-date has been put back (it was originally going to be 20 June, 2006 - it is now March, 2007).  Also, apparently in this case the French subtitles can't be turned off.  On the same disk: Downhill.  For more information, click here: http://www.dvdfr.com/dvd/dvd.php?id=24556

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A revelation: Maurice Elvey's The Water Gipsies (1932), part-scripted by Alma Reville, screened in London

Our London correspondent, Michael Walker ('Hitchcock's Motifs'), has sent us the following.  'The NFT has just done a short season of quota quickies. The Water Gipsies (Maurice Elvey, 1932) was a revelation. Taken from a novel by A.P.Herbert, it allowed its heroine (played by Ann Todd) and her sister quite astonishing sexual freedom without being punished.  I mention it for two Hitch-related reasons. First, Alma Reville [Mrs Alfred Hitchcock] was one of the scriptwriters (along with Miles Malleson, Basil Dean and John Paddy Carstairs).  I sensed Alma's hand in the liveliness of the two sisters.  Second, Ann Todd projects a palpable sexual desire, which I don't think is a commonly recognised feature of her performances. But I do think it's also there in The Paradine Case (1947), where it contributes to a real sense of a sexual marriage - perhaps the strongest example in Hitchcock.'

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Rare early Hitchcock photo

In the rare 1922 photo below, that's Alfred Hitchcock (with moustache?) squatting beside the camera and gesturing across the road at actress Clare Greet.  The occasion was the filming of Number Thirteen (aka Mrs Peabody) on location outside the public house, "The Angel", in Rotherhithe, London.  The film was never finished.  According to a caption, the director, Hitchcock, had two assistant directors, A.W. Barnes and  Norman Arnold.  Cameraman was Joe Rosenthal.

The photo is reproduced from 'The Cinema Studio', December 7, 1949.  We thank Mr Ray Ridley for sending us the photo.

                                                       Rare production still from the unfinished Hitchcock film NUMBER THIRTEEN
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Deaths

• We're saddened to learn of the death of Psycho screenwriter Joseph Stefano, on August 25, of a heart attack.  He was 84.  Besides Hitchcock's Psycho (1960), Stefano wrote the screenplay of Gus Van Sant's Psycho remake (1998) and a TV 'prequel' called Psycho IV: The Beginning (1990), as well as such films as Michael Anderson's The Naked Edge (1961), starring Gary Cooper.  In 1963 Stefano co-produced TV's 'The Outer Limits', the successful s-f series for which he wrote several of its 49 episodes.  Our first tribute is from Stephen Rebello, author of 'Alfred Hitchcock and the Making of Psycho' (1990): 'Joseph Stefano spoke very much like a musician, with a rich voice and a delivery dotted with jazzy riffs and deep, sonorous chords, often punctuated by the pizzicato of explosive laughter.  I can't imagine Hitchcock not being delighted, inspired, and perhaps a bit perplexed by such a free spirit.  I wish they had stayed together for Marnie not only because Stefano was so good at story structure but because he showed great empathy for tragic, melancholic characters who tough things out with unexpected jabs of dark, anarchic humor.'  Our second tribute is from Dr Phil Skerry, author of 'The Shower Scene in Hitchcock's Psycho' (2005): 'Two years ago, when Janet Leigh died, I wrote to Joe expresssing my sorrow, and he replied, "I still haven't got it into my head and (more so) my heart that I will not be seeing her dear smile again. I feel a terrible loss, and I will never forget her." Joe's words perfectly convey my feelings about this wonderful, generous, talented man.'  

• Actress Kasey Rogers, aka Laura Elliot, died on July 6.  She was 79.  As Laura Elliot, she played the trampish wife Miriam in Hitchcock's Strangers on a Train (1951).  On TV, Kasey Rogers was Louise Tate in the hit series 'Bewitched'.  Our tribute is from Richard Valley, editor of 'Scarlet Street' magazine: 'Kasey was a smart, amusing, good-natured woman and we were very, very, very fond of her.  Anyone who has ever met her or enjoyed her fine work in Strangers on a Train or on 'Peyton Place' or 'Bewitched' must feel the same.'

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DVD news: 'Alfred Hitchcock Presents', Season Two, on the way

A year after they released the first season of the entertaining 'Alfred Hitchcock Presents', Universal Studios Home Entertainment have announced that the second season will be released on October 17 (Region 1) ...

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Henry Bumstead (1915-2006)

Henry Bumstead, the veteran Hollywood production designer who worked for Hitchcock on The Man Who Knew Too Much (1956), Vertigo (1958), Topaz (1969), and Family Plot (1976), has died at the age of 91 in Pasadena, California.

In a nearly 70-year career that began when he was a draftsman in the art department at RKO in the late 1930s, Bumstead's first picture as an art director was the 1948 Paramount drama Saigon, starring Alan Ladd.

Bumstead twice won Academy Awards: for his work on To Kill a Mockingbird (Robert Mulligan, 1962) and The Sting (George Roy Hill, 1973).  He also received Oscar nominations for Vertigo and Unforgiven (Clint Eastwood, 1992).  

In recent times, Bumstead's longtime association with actor-director Eastwood saw him still on the job into his 90s.  It was while working on Eastwood's Million Dollar Baby (2004) that Bumstead learned that he had prostate cancer.

'Bummy was one of a kind,' Eastwood remembers.  'We will all miss him terribly.'

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Anna Massey reads from her memoirs

Actress Anna Massey (Peeping Tom, Hitchcock's Frenzy, etc.) has just finished reading extracts on BBC Radio4 from her recently-published memoirs, 'Telling Some Tales'.  In one program she talked about Frenzy.

Danny Nissim in London (whom we thank) notes that the Frenzy segment had some interesting material covering Massey's audition: Hitch sat behind a huge desk and spent the first 45 minutes talking about making batter pudding!  At one point, he asked how tall Massey was, explaining that she would have to fit into a potato sack.  But Massey disputed the myth that Hitch treated actors as cattle.  He was patient and helpful, often using a comic irony which put everyone at their ease.

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On Alfred Hitchcock and his screenwriters

We're told that a lengthy article on Hitchcock and his relationships with his writers features in the May 2006 issue of 'Written By', the Magazine of the Writers Guild - west.  The piece is said to be the first that comprehensively treats this topic.  The May issue contains new interviews with Joseph Stefano, Patricia Hitchcock, Norman Lloyd, and Jay Presson Allen who passed away on May 1.
 
The issue is available on news stands or by contacting the magazine at <writtenby@wga.org>.
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Passing of Jay Presson Allen

Screenwriter, novelist, playwright and producer, Jay Presson Allen, has died at the age of 84 from a stroke, at her home in Manhattan.

Her extensive film credits include Marnie (Alfred Hitchcock, 1964), Cabaret (1972), Just Tell Me What You Want (1980, from Allen's novel), Prince of the City (1981), and The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie (1969).  It was in fact Allen's fine stage adaptation of Muriel Spark's novel 'The Prime of Mis Jean Brodie' which drew her to Hitchcock's attention: he read an advance copy of it and hired her for Marnie.  Afterwards, he commissioned her to adapt J.M. Barrie's play 'Mary Rose' but his cherished project never actually made it to the screen.     

Ms Allen once told an interviewer, 'I never wanted to direct. I always thought that was a brutal job, one that I never had an interest in. A lot of it’s baby-sitting, and I could never stand for that. Hitchcock wanted to make me into a director. But I had a husband [film producer Lewis Allen], a child and a life and I didn’t want to give those things up.'

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Murder! plus Mary on one DVD

Hitchcock's Murder! (1930) and its German version, Mary - which Hitchcock shot immediately afterwards - have now been released on one DVD by Arthaus. Our correspondent, DF, in Germany reports: 'The quality is quite good except for one or two places where the original film seems to have been irreparably damaged - only very short spots, and of little consequence - and among the extras is an excerpt from Hitchcock's interview with Truffaut in August 1962.'  (Regrettably, for our English-speaking readers, we learn that the Arthaus release of Mary does not have English subtitles.)  

• Nor, we now hear, will an imminent French DVD release of Mary have English subtitles.  It will appear on a disc with Hitchcock's Jamaica Inn (1939).  Also forthcoming soon from France (probably in June) are these Hitchcock discs: Under Capricorn (1949) plus an interview with Claude Chabrol; Juno and the Paycock (1930) plus The Man Who Knew Too Much (1934).  Coming later from France are Waltzes from Vienna (1933), as previously announced here; The Pleasure Garden (1925); Downhill (1927).

(Thanks to AK for information about the French DVDs.) 

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Actress Alida Valli dies

Italian actress Alida Valli, star of Hitchcock's The Paradine Case (1947), Carol Reed's The Third Man (1949), and Luchino Visconti's Senso (1954), has died in Rome at the age of 84.

Born Alida Maria Laura von Altenburger in 1921 in Pola (now Pula in Croatia), she made her cinema debut at the age of 15 and appeared in over 100 films.  One of those films was Mario Soldati's exquisite Piccolo mondo antico/Little old-fashioned world (1941), set in the Italian lakes in the 1850s, and described by critic David Shipman as 'a "literary" film but otherwise as near as dammit perfect'.  After the War she was discovered by US producer David Selznick, who put her under contract, thinking he had found a new Ingrid Bergman.  In fact, her English-speaking career did not last long (supposedly due to her thick accent), but she continued to act in Italian and French films, as well as theatre.

She was awarded a Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival in 1997 for her contribution to Italian cinema.

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The play 'Hitchcock Blonde' finally reaches the US!

A good two or three years ago we reported on the play by noted playwright Terry Johnson, 'Hitchcock Blonde', then running in London.  (See "Another Hitchcock-related stage play" lower down this page.)  Last year, the Editor of 'The MacGuffin' watched the Australian production of the play, and found it excellent!  So we're happy to announce here that South Coast Repertory, located in Costa Mesa, California (about an hour's drive south of Los Angeles), will shortly premiere the play in America, with Terry Johnson directing.  The supposed excerpts from a 'lost' Hitchcock film that figure in the play have apparently been re-done (using 'state-of-the-art videography') by William Dudley who also did the video for the original British production.  Performances will begin on February 3, with official opening on February 10, and closing March 12.  For more information, click here: 
http://www.scr.org/season/05-06season/blonde.html

• Update.  A review of the new production of 'Hitchcock Blonde' appeared in the February 14th issue of the  'Los Angeles Times'.  Headed "Hitch just a subplot in overstuffed 'Blonde'", the review, by Sean Mitchell, starts by calling the play 'A brainy bit of titillation, salted with some deep thoughts on Hollywood's dark powers and the unseemly genius of the famously morbid British director'. However, though Mitchell praises some of the performances, notably Dakin Matthews's as Hitchcock, he finds that '[playwright Terry] Johnson hasn't located a narrative structure that adequately serves his gifts' ...


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They've made a film of Hitchcock's short story "Gas"!

Hitchcock was still a teenager when he wrote several short stories for the staff magazine of the Henley Telegraph and Cable Company where he was employed.  The best-known of these stories, "Gas", showing the possible influence of Edgar Allan Poe or Wilkie Collins, appeared in the June 1919 issue.  Now there's a 12-minute film of the story.  It was shot in London on 35mm and was directed by Sylvie Bolioli for Polaris Productions.

• Update.  The film had its world premiere in Edinburgh in January.  More recently, it was marketed at the Cannes Film Festival.  An unorthodox cast includes Johanna Mohs as the story's terrified woman, Tony Hadley as the dentist, and veteran actress Valerie Leon (several Carry On films, the original The Italian Job, etc.).  Leon plays two roles in Gas - a prostitute in the anaesthesia-induced nightmare and, back in the real world, the dentist's classy receptionist.

For more information, click here: 
http://www.gasthemovie.com/index.html


Finely scented:  Laurent Fiévet's latest Hitchcock video installation opening in Paris

The third of artist Laurent Fiévet's presentations inspired by Alfred Hitchcock's work, 'Essences de l'image: portraits olfactifs' ('Essences of the image: olfactive portraits'), is a follow-up to presentations held in Finland during 2003-04.  The artist - who has a PhD in film studies - seeks to create a relation between selected shots from Hitchcock's films and some famous paintings which could have inspired them.  Fi
évet's latest presentation will run from February 14th to March 14th at the Galerie La Ferronnerie.  For more information, click here: http://www.associationdesgaleries.org/laferronnerie/

                                                                            Portrait, after A.Hitchcock and W. Turner

Laurent Fiévet: 'Portrait ...', after North by Northwest (Alfred Hitchcock) and 'Shipwreck' (William Turner)


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Cinematographer Leonard J. South dies at 92

The camera operator on nearly a dozen Alfred Hitchcock classics, including North by Northwest (1959) and The Birds (1963), and the director of photography on Hitchcock's last film Family Plot (1976), has died in California (6 January, 2006).

South began his three-decade association with Hitchcock as cinematographer Robert Burks's camera assistant on the 1951 film Strangers on a Train.  He was soon elevated to camera operator, becoming part of what Hitchcock biographer Donald Spoto called 'the ongoing Hitchcock crew who came to know exactly what the director wanted and how to give it to him.'

In a 1979 interview for the 'Daily Pilot' newspaper, South recalled that one morning on the Family Plot set, actor Bruce Dern, 'a very outgoing, nervy guy,' walked up to Hitchcock and said, 'I understand you call all actors cattle. Does that mean me, Hitch?'

'I'd say, Bruce, you are the golden calf,' Hitchcock deadpanned.

That, South recalled, 'came right out of nowhere. Bruce laughed for half an hour.'

South, a former member of the board of governors of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, also was a longtime board member of the American Society of Cinematographers, for which he served as president in 1989-90.

(Adapted from an article in the 'Los Angeles Times'.  Our thanks to RC for supplying it.)



Universal's 'Alfred Hitchcock Presents', Season One, discs have flaws ...

Correspondence on our 'Hitchcock Enthusiasts' Group indicates several production flaws in the dual-sided 3-disc DVD set containing the 39 episodes of the First Season (1955-56) of 'Alfred Hitchcock Presents' which was released last month in the USA (Region 1).  Problems include discs sticking or not playing some sections, and images breaking up.  One correspondent, after talking to a DVD collector friend, reports similar problems occuring on other dual-sided disc sets of Universal's television shows.

Our advice?  Heed what lawyer Mitch Brenner (Rod Taylor) says in The Birds: 'caveat emptor', 'let the buyer beware'.
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Mike Leigh slights Hitchcock's Frenzy (1972)

At a recent London Film Festival event whose theme was the best and worst of films about London, panellist Mike Leigh (Naked, Topsy Turvy, Vera Drake) suddenly exploded when questioned about Hitchcock's 33-year-old Frenzy, set in and around Covent Garden.  According to Leigh: 'Frenzy is a horrible film. It's sloppy. It's superficial. It says nothing about London life, and it shouldn't be in the Time Out list [of best London films]. I'd be very happy if none of my films ever stoops to the level of Frenzy.'

Hmm.  Come back in another 33 years, Mike, and let's see how your own films have fared against Hitchcock's in the estimation of audiences.  (Meanwhile, to read more about Mike Leigh's outburst - by the person who asked the question about Frenzy - click here:
http://globalnix.blogspot.com.  We thank Nick Poteri for contacting us and for permission to cite his excellent blog.)


More DVD news: 'Alfred Hitchcock Presents', Season One, coming (Region 1)
On October 4, 2005, Universal Studios Home Entertainment will release on DVD the entire first season of 'Alfred Hitchcock Presents' (39 episodes, 4 of them directed by Hitchcock himself) plus 'Alfred Hitchcock Presents: A Look Back', a featurette on the show.  For more information, click here:
http://www.tvshowsondvd.com/newsitem.cfm?NewsID=3735


Finally, Hitchcock's Lifeboat on DVD

On October 18, 2005, Fox Home Entertainment will release a 'Special Edition' of Lifeboat (1944).  The disc will include a 'making of' featurette, the theatrical trailer, and a commentary track by Professor Drew Casper of USC.

• Update, February 2006.  The above release-date was for Region 1.  We're told that the DVD is now available in Region 2 with extra material, including a two-part interview with Hitchcock by Fletcher Markle of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation.  The Region 2 release is on two discs.   


The shower scene from Psycho: new book

Is this a first?  In October, 2005, Edward Mellen Press will publish a book-length study of a single scene from a movie - admittedly, both the movie and the scene are particularly famous.  'The Shower Scene in Hitchcock's Psycho: Creating Cinematic Suspense and Terror' is authored by Dr Phil Skerry.  As well as detailed analysis, Dr Skerry includes lengthy interviews with star Janet Leigh, scriptwriter Joseph Stefano, assistant director Hilton Green, sound designer Danny Greene, assistant editor Terry Williams, and with the editor of the Gus Van Sant remake of Psycho, Amy Duddleston. The book culminates with first-person accounts of the initial viewing of Psycho and its shower scene - including reminiscences by several readers of this website. For more information, click here:
http://www.mellenpress.com/

• Robert Meyers worked for famous designer and storyboard artist Saul Bass in the 1980s.  He currently owns Bass's sketches - or virtual storyboard - for the Psycho shower scene.  Professor Meyers, formerly of Rochester Institute of Technology, will soon be opening a communication design firm in Pittsburgh.  He tells us he would be interested to receive offers for the Bass sketches.  He may be contacted here: <robertmeyersdesign@hotmail.com>.
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Death of Barbara Bel Geddes

She was superb as the Scottie-fixated Midge in Hitchcock's Vertigo (1958).  Stage and film actress Barbara Bel Geddes has died, aged 82 (8 August, 2005).  Besides her work for Hitchcock - which included four episodes of 'Alfred Hitchcock Presents' - film buffs particularly remember her for George Stevens's I Remember Mama (1946), Max Ophüls's Caught (1948), and Henry Hathaway's Fourteen Hours (1951).     
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UK stage production of The 39 Steps

Our London correspondent, Michael Walker, reports: 'In last Saturday's "Guardian" (25 June, 2005) there was a review of a theatrical production of The 39 Steps at the West Yorkshire Playhouse in Leeds. The review by Michael Billington wasn't that enthusiastic, but what was apparent was that, once again, the adaptor (Patrick Barlow from a concept by Simon Corble and Nobby Dimon) had followed the Hitchcock movie, not the novel: Forth Bridge, handcuffs, peeling off stockings and all. The play is directed by Fiona Buffini; Robert Whitelock and Lisa Jackson (a blonde) are the two stars. It runs until 16 July. I feel encouraged that Hitch has more purchase on the popular culture in general than Buchan.'
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Universal/Paramount (etc.) Hitchcocks in DVD set (Region 1)

Essentially this is a re-issue, though the 14 films are said to be 'digitally remastered'.  (And note the bonus disc.)  Release-date is announced as 4 October, 2005.  The set is available on pre-order at a discount.  For example (and to see details), click here:
http://homevideo.universalstudios.com/details.php?childId=35678


French and German DVDs of early Hitchcock


Courtesy of Dave Pattern's Hitchcock DVD website comes this information on exciting new and forthcoming releases ...

First, there's a French DVD collection of early Hitchcock films, including the previously-unreleased-on-DVD Champagne (A l'Américaine).  Altogether there are 10 titles and a couple of documentaries.  These are split across 3 volumes:

    Volume 1 (Les Premières Oeuvres 1927/1929)
    http://www.daveyp.com/hitchcock/dvds/boxsets/9002/

        The Ring/Le Masque de Cuir (1927)
        Champagne/A l'Américaine (1928)
        The Farmer's Wife/Laquelle des Trois (1928)
        The Manxman (1929)

    Volume 2 (Les Premières Oeuvres 1929/1931)
    http://www.daveyp.com/hitchcock/dvds/boxsets/9003/

        Blackmail/Chantage (1929)
        Murder!/Meurtre (1930)
        The Skin Game (1931)
        52 minute documentary about Hitch's early films

    Volume 3 (Les Premières Oeuvres 1932/1940)
    http://www.daveyp.com/hitchcock/dvds/boxsets/9004/

        Rich and Strange/A l'Est de Shanghaï (1932)
        Number Seventeen/Numéro 17 (1932)
        Foreign Correspondent/Correspondant 17 (1940)
        26 minute documentary about Foreign Correspondent

Dave Pattern writes: 'StudioCanal [the company releasing these discs] was involved in the excellent German Blackmail DVD. ... The new transfers are excellent - especially the 1920s films.  Champagne looks fantastic and it's hard to believe from the transfer that the film is nearly 80 years old!  My only negative comments are that the DVDs have forced French subtitles when you select the English language audio.  Some DVD players
may be able to override this, but neither of my standalone players were able to do so.  Also, the two documentaries have French only audio with no subtitles.' 

Then there's a French DVD collection coming soon from TF1 Vidéo which looks like it will contain the same excellent transfers used in the German 'Early Years' boxset (released by Concorde):

    'Hitchcock - Le Maître du Suspens'
    http://www.daveyp.com/hitchcock/dvds/boxsets/9046/

Finally, German company Kinowelt/ArtHaus are planning a couple of DVD releases:

    1) a DVD of Mary (the German version of Murder!) and possibly Murder! itself on the same disc
    2) a DVD of both Rich and Strange and Champagne

There's no release-date as yet for the Mary DVD, but the other DVD is scheduled for 19 August 2005.


Other Hitchcock remakes?

We have no comment on any of this.  In a recent on-set interview for the thriller The Skeleton Key, Kate Hudson (daughter of Goldie Hawn) confirmed that 'My production company is trying to develop a remake of Hitchcock's Vertigo'.  Also, we hear that, yet again, Warners have said that they're re-making Strangers on a Train.  And Universal have announced plans to re-make The Birds.  

[Thanks to AN, and others, for this information.]

Magazine-issue and book on Hitchcock's The Trouble With Harry (1955) both coming

Vermont writer, artist, and film critic Stephen R. Bissette has begun a new magazine, 'Green Mountain Cinema', dedicated to New England movies and video, whose Spring 2005 issue will feature Hitchcock's VistaVision comedy The Trouble With Harry.  The first issue of the magazine has recently appeared.  For more information about it, click here: http://www.blackcoatpress.com/greenmountaincinema1.htm

Stephen is also working on an entire 'making of' type of book about Hitchcock's wonderful film.  He is visiting locations in Vermont, such as Craftsbury Common, where parts of the film were shot, and interviewing local residents.  He would be very thankful to receive any production stills or photocopies of newspaper clippings (especially those of the period).  Stephen may be contacted at <msbissette@yahoo.com>.

[Our thanks to Tony Williams and Nandor Bokor for information in this item.]

Hitchcock biography by McGilligan criticised

Reviews of Patrick McGilligan's 'Alfred Hitchcock: A Life in Darkness and Light' (2003) have now appeared in 'Cineaste', the 'Hitchcock Annual', 'Film Quarterly' - and (at great length) on this website.  All have been luke-warm.

For example, Prof. Marshall Deutelbaum concludes his review in 'Film Quarterly' (Vol. 58, Issue 1) like this: 'By choosing to write a biography without attempting to discern any trace of his subject's life in his films, McGilligan has limited Alfred Hitchcock: A Life in Darkness and Light to the facts of a life's work without insight into the life itself.' (p. 58).

To read this website's long 'Report' on McGilligan's book, click on the following URLs:

http://www.labyrinth.net.au/~muffin/mcgilligan1_c.html  
http://www.labyrinth.net.au/~muffin/mcgilligan2_c.html  

'Miss Torso' dead at 68

Georgine Darcy was just 17 when Alfred Hitchcock chose her to play the dancer 'Miss Torso' who is seen living opposite Jeff's apartment, and entertaining a string of suitors in the evenings, in Rear Window (1954). 'I had absolutely no idea who Alfred Hitchcock was,' she said. 'I considered myself a dancer and photographer's model and not an actress. I think he was impressed with my portfolio as I paid the extra, and had photos taken of me in colour.' On meeting her, Hitchcock suggested she find an agent, but she ignored the advice - to her cost. She was paid $350.

Georgine Darcy died in Malibu, California, recently.

What is of interest to Hitchcockians is that Hitchcock kept in touch with her after Rear Window.  He told her: 'If you go to Europe and study with [actor and acting coach] Michael Chekhov, I could make a big star out of you.' But she again ignored his advice, and settled into an undistinguished career. Her most noticeable roles came as Gypsy, the secretary to Pat O'Brien on 'Harrigan and Son' on television in the early 1960s, and in such unmemorable films as Don't Knock the Twist (1962), Women and Bloody Terror (1969), and The Delta Factor (1970).

Georgine Darcy is survived by her second husband, the actor Byron Palmer, to whom she was married for 30 years. .

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Another To Catch a Thief coming

There's no word yet on who will direct or star in Paramount's remake of the Hitchcock comedy-adventure To Catch a Thief (1955), now set in Miami.  'Entertainment Weekly' (25 June, 2004) quotes screenwriter Todd Komarnicki: To Catch a Thief is one of Hitchcock's fluffier offerings. 'It was a delicacy on the Hitchcock menu, not one of his full-meal movies.'  A faster pace is promised this time: 'Thievery [must now compete] with alarm systems and bodyguards and everything protected.  We're going to see some really badass thieving this time around.'


Latest DVD news: Hitchcock releases from Warners and from MGM

Warners has announced a Region 1 release date - September 7 - for nine Hitchcock titles on DVD, each with its own 'making of' documentary and other extras.  As previously announced here, the titles include: Foreign Correspondent (1940), Suspicion (1941), Mr and Mrs Smith (1941), Stage Fright (1950), Strangers on a Train (1951), I Confess (1953), Dial M For Murder (1954), and The Wrong Man (1957).  In the case of Strangers on a Train, it will be released on two discs comprising a new Special Edition.  The ninth title will be the previously released North by Northwest (1959): Special Edition.  The discs will sell as a set for $99.92 (SRP).  The Strangers on a Train: Special Edition two-disc set will be available separately for $26.99.  The other discs will each be available separately for $19.97.

We can reveal that among the people participating in the 'making of' documentaries are members of the Hitchcock family, filmmakers Peter Bogdanovich and Richard Franklin, critic Bill Krohn, and various others.

We also hear of titles coming in November as part of MGM's Alfred Hitchcock promotion. These will include: The 39 Steps (1935), Sabotage (1936), Young and Innocent (1937), The Lady Vanishes (1938), Rebecca (1940), Spellbound (1945), Notorious (1946), and The Paradine Case (1947). They'll be available in a box set and separately.

[Thanks to Kristopher Valentine and Richard Carnahan for forwarding information contained in this item, and to the Digital Bits website.].


More on Rodenbach's novella Bruges-la-Morte (1892) and the line to Hitchcock's Vertigo (1958)

We'll put a special page concerning the above topic on this website soon, but meanwhile readers are reminded to visit our 'Selections' page to read the article called "The original of Vertigo".  The editor of 'The MacGuffin', Ken Mogg, says: 'It's clear to me that two Belgian (or Belgian/French) literary works, Georges Rodenbach's novella "Bruges-la-Morte" (1892) and Georges Simenon's novel "Lettre à mon juge" (1947) were both influences, probably directly, on the novel by French writers Pierre Boileau and Thomas Narcejac, "D'Entre les morts" (1954), that became Alfred Hitchcock's film masterpiece Vertigo (1958).  However, Boileau and Narcejac's novel was also almost certainly influenced by two French films.  Henri Verneuill's Le Fruit Défendu/ Forbidden Fruit (1952) was an adaptation of "Lettre à mon juge", and it starred Fernandel as the married doctor who takes a mistress Martine (Françoise Arnouil) who from the moment he sees her exerts a strange fascination over him, and whom he eventually strangles.  Also, Robert Siodmak's Le Grand Jeu/ Card of Fate/ Flesh and the Woman (1953) is a classic Foreign Legion story (originally filmed in 1934 by Jacques Feyder) starring Gina Lollobrigida as both a Parisian redhead and her brunette "double" who turns up in Algiers and haunts the hero.  I think it was Peter Cowie who first pointed to this latter film as a possible predecessor of Vertigo.

'Then there are all the literary and cinematic (and even operatic) descendants of Rodenbach's original novella that may have exerted a degree of influence on Vertigo.  Here I'm thinking of the silent films The Unfinished Portrait (1910), attributed to Léonce Perret, and Daydreams (1915), directed by Yevgeni Bauer (both of these works were direct adaptations of "Bruges-la-Mortes"); the novellas "Gradiva" (1903), by Wilhelm Jensen, and "Der Tod in Venedig"/ "Death in Venice" (1913), by Thomas Mann; and the opera "Die tote Stadt"/ "The Dead City" (1920), by Erich Wolfgang Korngold (again this was taken directly from "Bruges-la-Morte" or perhaps from its stage version, "Le Mirage", first performed in 1901).

'Finally, I wouldn't be surprised if Rodenbach influenced Belgian artists, most notably, perhaps, the Surrealist Paul Delvaux (1897-1994), who produced a series of paintings depicting nude and semi-nude women in dreamlike settings, often cityscapes at night.  (Other influences on Delvaux were his fellow Belgian Magritte and the Italian Chirico.)  I'm sure that Hitchcock knew his work.  For example, I detect his influence on the death scene of the Karen Dor character in Topaz (1969).'

For an earlier version of this News story, see below.  And for more information about the novellas 'Gradiva' and 'Der Tod in Venedig', see the article "The Fragments of the Mirror: Vertigo and its Sources" [parts (b) and (c)] elsewhere on this website..


From Rodenbach's novella Bruges-la-Morte (1892) to Hitchcock's Vertigo (1958) - firming the line

Dominique Païni's essay "Léonce Perret, le dernier symboliste", included in the anthology 'Léonce Perret' (2003), which was published in conjunction with the 2002 Cinema Ritrovato festival in Bologna, Italy, refers to the short film Het Onvoltooide Portret/The Unfinished Portrait (1910), apparently directed by the Frenchman Léonce Perret (1880-1935).  In a French setting, the film reworks the story originally told by the Belgian Symbolist author Georges Rodenbach (1855-98) about a man whose first wife dies but who 're-appears' in the form of a double, and whom the man then obsessively woos, leading (in the novella) to a bizarre murder.  Rodenbach's story is set in the Belgian city of Bruges, 'a city of silence, ennui and ... desolation', and the story's original publication was accompanied by 35 half-tone reproductions of photographs of the city.  A stage version of the story, 'Le Mirage', was first produced in 1901.

In 'The MacGuffin' #29 (January 2004), Michael Walker described The Unfinished Portrait at some length, and its obvious influence, direct or indirect, on the novel 'D'Entre les Morts' (1954), by Pierre Boileau and Thomas Narcejac, that eventually became Hitchcock's masterpiece, Vertigo.  Walker noted, though, that neither Rodenbach's novella nor Boileau and Narcejac's novel alludes to a portrait of the dead woman.

Now, after reading Walker's account, Prof. Tony Williams (whom we thank) has emailed us as follows:

'I recently viewed a film which is another "unlikely candidate" in anticipating Vertigo. This is Daydreams (1915), directed by the Russian filmmaker Yevgeni Bauer (1865-1917), and also based on "Bruges-la-Morte".  However, unlike The Unfinished Portrait, Daydreams is complete.  Bauer is one of those recently rediscovered pre-Revolutionary directors put into the shade post-1917. His work belongs to those excavated silent films often shown at the Podernone Festival and others. I'll give a brief synopsis.

'It opens with the main character distraught over the body of his recently deceased wife (significantly covered with flowers). As a last memory, he cuts off a plaid of her hair (fetish associations!) and continues to mourn his dearly departed to the concern of his maid (cf. Midge in Vertigo). One day, he passes a look-alike in the street and follows her to a theatre where he discovers her playing a revived corpse in a performance of Meyerbeer's "Robert le Diable". Already psychologically disturbed, he reacts like a male hysteric.  Parallels with Hitchcock's Scottie are not hard to see, as well as with Bernard Herrmann's operatic score.

'He brings her back home and asks an artist friend to paint her portrait with her wearing the clothes of the dead wife. Since "Tina" is a vulgar Judy-type, the artist warns his friend against this "magnificent obsession", but to no avail. I believe the dead woman's jewelry also figures in the narrative. Tina attempts to seduce his friend. The maid gives her notice since she cannot put up with her master's obsession any longer.

'The film also involves a ghostly appearance of the deceased wife similar to that described in The Unfinished Portrait, and further contains a flashback to the courtship and eventual death. Finally, Tina goes too far in provoking the man by playing with the braid before him. The man strangles her with the braid, and the film ends with the maid returning to witness this tragic climax.

'Naturally, like The Unfinished Portrait, this is not an exact anticipation of Vertigo. But it contains elements which will later appear in "D'Entre des Morts" and  Hitchcock's film.'

We'll print more about this matter here shortly..


Ronald Neame talks about Hitchcock's Blackmail (1929)

At the Hollywood Heritage Museum in Los Angeles recently, a screening of the sound version of Blackmail was attended by both Patricia Hitchcock and the British director Ronald Neame.  Neame, who is now in his 90s (biography), worked as an assistant camera operator on Hitchcock's film.  The following report is from Mark Norberg (whom we thank).

Neame said he was amazed at the memories of the shoot that came to him while watching the picture. He remembered standing behind a curtain (where Anny Ondra kills the artist) with a couple of other stage hands and hitting the curtain to represent the struggling pair. Something else he mentioned was the fact that Hitch assigned him to shoot 16mm footage of the filming.  [Editor's note.  About a minute of such footage was included on the Criterion laser disc of Blackmail, released in 1992. The footage is silent and has the title "The kiss".  Shot on the set of the artist's studio, it shows Hitch having fun demonstrating to Cyril Ritchard how he wants him to kiss Ms Ondra!  The latter is co-operative but laughing!]

He also was able to recall the occasion when the then Duke and Duchess of York (later the King and Queen Mother) visited the set of the 'first British sound picture'. He recounted how the Duchess stepped into the sound booth with Hitch where she took off her hat so that she could put on a headset and listen to the sound being recorded. Neame recalled immense problems with the recording of the dialogue, the cameras having to be contained in large soundproof booths - and these having to be moved in their entirety for a tracking shot or a pan of more than a few degrees.

He stated that he hadn't seen the sound version of Blackmail for some time but that he had seen the original silent version about four years ago and that he felt the silent version was much superior. And he noted that although Blackmail was [officially] the first British talkie, since most British theaters were not equipped for sound most people saw only the silent version anyway when it was first released.

When asked about working on the set with Hitch, Neame mentioned the usual things you hear: 'he was always calm and in control', 'always wore a jacket and tie', etc. Then Neame turned to Pat Hitchcock and said with a devilish grin, 'but most I remember Hitch's sense of humour which tended to be rather sadistic'. In the tobacco shop scene there is a gas flame on the counter from which the villain lights his cigar. One day Neame came on the set to see Hitchcock heating a half crown over the open flame with a pair of pliers. He couldn't imagine what Hitch was doing. After the coin was quite hot Hitch threw it to the ground and called over the prop man who seems to have been his favorite victim.  Hitch pointed across the floor to the coin and said something like 'Hey there! What's that half crown doing just lying on the floor?' Of course, when the man went to pick it up, he discovered exactly what it was doing there!  Later, Hitchcock induced the same man to put on a pair of handcuffs, which were in abundance during the shoot.  Hitch then told the man that if he would keep them on until the next day, while locked in the studio, Hitch would reward his efforts with a gift. The prop man readily accepted the bet, not knowing that the director had put a generous amount of laxative in the poor fellow's tea! Neame was later told by the man that, with the industrious help of his wife, he had made it through the night and onto the set the next day with the handcuffs intact. (Neame was unable to recall exactly what Hitchcock gave the man for his troubles but said Hitch did pay off his bet.)

An especially touching story concerned Neame's recounting how kind Hitchcock always was to him and how, during the time they were working together, Hitch always referred to him as 'one of his boys'.  Decades later, Neame met up again with Hitch, now in a wheelchair, and very nervously asked if Hitch remembered him.  Hitch was quick to reply, 'Why of course! You're one of my boys!.... And my goodness - you've grown sideburns!'.


Report on recent Kim Novak forum

Author Stephen Rebello, who on January 17 chaired the above sell-out event in Los Angeles for the American Cinematheque, tells us: 'For the moderator, these things are tricky.  The conversation needed to be about a six-film retrospective and [Ms Novak's] overall career.  For Hitchcockians, of course, that means not enough telling detail about Vertigo, for "fans," not enough gossip about Harry Cohn, Rita Hayworth, feuds with leading men, etc. I think we struck a balance, though.'

The following report is by Bill Krohn ('Hitchcock at Work'), who adds some material and asks a question:

'After a screening of Vertigo, and with Stephen Rebello handling the mike, [Kim] recounted that Harry Cohn, her boss, told her it was a lousy script, but to do it because it was Hitchcock. She read it and thought it was a wonderful script. She said that she knew instinctively how to play the role because she had been in the hands of men telling her what to do, how to dress, how to walk, ever since she got to Hollywood - notably Harry Cohn. She said she hated Madeleine's grey dress and the black shoes that went with it. All she had to do was put them on to feel imprisoned - which again worked for the performance.

'The rest of the evening was about the rest of Kim's career. Nothing but nice things to say about Hitchcock. Stephen asked her afterward for me if she looped the Nun's line "I heard voices" [at the end of Vertigo], and she said she didn't, but it would have been a wonderful way to convey Madeleine's feelings of guilt. She did actually - it was almost 50 years ago, so she's forgotten. And her reading of that "Hitchcock touch" is exactly right. "I heard voices" is looped over Madeleine and Scottie embracing - a disembodied voice that could very well be Madeleine's conscience (the maternal superego, Slavoj Zizek would say), which then rises up in the darkness of the next shot. Go, Hitch!

'Noted in passing while watching the film for the umpteenth time: Midge's last name is Wood (= Midge would, if Scottie could), and for some reason she is polishing a spectator pump (medium-heeled woman's shoe) when Scottie comes to her apartment to ask for an expert on San Francisco history.  (Explanations, MacGuffinists?)  Another small detail: I'm pretty sure the Madeleine stand-in wearing the grey suit walks through the first dolly-in on Madeleine in the black dress at Ernie's. She would have been on the set anyway, ready to shoot her walk-on as Madeleine later in the film, and Hitchcock probably just sent her through the first shot for the hell of it.

'Finally, a question: If Scottie's real friends - like Midge - call him Johnny, why does Madeleine, in both incarnations, call him Scottie?'

[Our thanks to both Stephen Rebello and Bill Krohn for the above.  Stephen further tells us: 'Also in attendance at the showing of the 70 mm restored print of Vertigo were Tippi Hedren and Diane Baker, sitting together. Patricia Hitchcock and two of her daughters also attended the benefit party which followed the screening, as did Hedren and Baker.  The mayor of Hollywood officially declared it Kim Novak Day.' ] 

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Maybe this time?

We've announced a few coming remakes of Hitchcock films here, only to end up with egg on our face.  It seems that the strike-average for such remakes actually getting made is about one project in two.  But this one sounds promising ...

Noted screenwriter Robert Towne (Chinatown, Mission Impossible 3) has struck a deal to write, and direct, a remake of Hitchcock's classic comedy-thriller The 39 Steps (1935).  The American president and CEO of Carlton International Media, Stephen Davis, whose company owns the rights to all of the film versions of The 39 Steps that have been made (three so far, including Hitchcock's original, from John Buchan's novel) said: 'There is only a handful of individuals in our business with the talent, experience, and insight to whom we would entrust [such a project], and Robert Towne is one of them.'.


How many actors appeared in both versions of The Man Who Knew Too Much?

The answer to that question, according to Charles Barr's 'English Hitchcock' (1999), p. 234, is 'one'.  Frank Atkinson played the policeman shot dead on the mattress during the gun battle with Peter Lorre's anarchists in the 1934 version and was one of the employees in Ambrose Chappell's London taxidermist's visited by James Stewart in the 1956 version.

But a recent newspaper obituary for Betty Baskcomb (d. 15 April 2003) claimed that she, too, appeared in both versions of TMWKTM.  Our man in London, Michael Walker, decided to check.  He soon found that in the 1956 film Baskcomb plays Edna, the bespectacled woman at London Airport who telephones the villains.  But where is she in the 1934 version?  Our man had a flash of inspiration: 'I thought the most sensible character to check out would be the young woman who is displaced from her bed during the gun battle. We only see her face briefly as she turns, but I think it's enough. She does the same strange mouth movement as Edna in TMWKTM (2); she has the same long nose. To check further, I tracked Baskcomb down in Robert Hamer's It Always Rains on Sunday (1947): she's the incumbent barmaid (Edie, I think), in effect Googie Withers's successor. She has a little scene with a reporter around 71 minutes in; and there we can see what she looked like. Allowing for the age differences, I'm now pretty confident that I've found her in the 1934 movie.'  (Good work, Michael!).


DVD news:  German 6-disc release reportedly superb

We hear that 7 Hitchcock features have been released as a set entitled 'Hitchcock: The Early Years'.  The 6 discs comprise The Lodger (1926), Downhill (1927), The Man Who Knew Too Much (1934), Sabotage (1936), Secret Agent (1936), Young And Innocent (1937), and The Lady Vanishes (1938).

A Yahoo 'MacGuffin' Group correspondent, JG, writes: 'DVD aficionados [report that] this set is far better than all else out there ... including the Criterion.  The soundtracks are in English.  I have the set and it is superb and all the fanfare is accurate.  I have the Laserlight sets of the early Hitchcocks ... and these transfers are far, far better. Enormously so.'

Here's a link to the German Amazon site: Amazon.de: Verwandte Artikel entdecken

• And for soundtrack enthusiasts, the City of Prague Philharmonic, conductor Paul Bateman, have recorded        'The Essential Alfred Hitchcock': new digital recordings including The 39 Steps, The Lady Vanishes, Rebecca, Spellbound, Lifeboat, Under Capricorn, Stage Fright, Vertigo, North by Northwest, Psycho,Marnie, Topaz, and Frenzy.

Here's a link to Silva Screen Records, UK: PSYCHO: The Essential Alfred Hitchcock  

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New Agatha Christie TV movies coming

Hitchcock didn't care for Christie's novels as film fare, finding them too dry and cerebral, but of course they do have suspense after their own fashion.  And TV adapatations, in particular, of the Jane Marple and Hercule Poirot stories have shown just how engagingly filmic those stories can be.  Our favourite series remains the Miss Marple series with Joan Hickson.  But both Peter Ustinov and David Suchet have been fine Poirots.  So we print here an item from the latest 'Scarlet Street' (#49) headed "Boob Tube Tidings".  Some brief comment then follows.

'Fans of David Suchet's letter-perfect performances as Agatha Christie's Poirot will be delighted to hear that he'll return as the natty Belgian sleuth in four new productions to be telecast on the Arts & Entertainment Channel starting this fall.  Shooting has completed on Five Little Pigs- based on Christie's 1942 novel [known as 'Murder in Retrospect' in the US] - and three other adaptations will roll between now and early 2004: Death on the Nile, The Hollow, and Sad Cypress.  Four additional Poirot productions are tentatively set for filming next year.  It seems Mr Suchet is as anxious as any fan for the entire canon to be filmed, and is confident that he'll appear in them all.'

Comment.  All four titles mentioned above are outstanding Christies.  And Sad Cypress may have an additional interest for Hitchcock fans because, to quote Robert Barnard's 'A Talent to Deceive' (1980), the novel represents 'the only time Christie uses the lovely-woman-in-the-dock-accused-of-murder ploy' - à la Robert Hichens's 'The Paradine Case' (1933) and Hitchcock's 1947 film adaptation, starring Alida Valli as Mrs Paradine.

Those Hitchcock mosaics at Leytonstone [update]

We once printed an item here from the 'London Morning Metro' for 15 September, 2000:  '[Alfred] Hitchcock is to be acknowledged ... in the East End.  Hitchcock's work, depicted in a series of metre-high mosaic panels, will be featured in the main corridor at Leytonstone Tube station, half a mile from the old Hitchcock family home.'  As soon as the 17 (Number Seventeen, get it?!) mosaics were unveiled, Londoner Mark Eyers visited them with his camera, and sent us 4 of the resulting photos, which we offered our readers.  But now (November 2003) all of the mosaics may be viewed on the Web.  Here's a link: Alfred Hitchcock mosaics, Leytonstone  Enjoy!.


Bad news about Criterion Hitchcocks ...

The quality Criterion DVDs of Rebecca, Spellbound, and Notorious are to be allowed to go out of print - at least for the time being - from the end of 2003 (Region 1).  All three of these DVDs carry valuable extras, including commentary.  Marian Keane (Harvard University) gives the commentary on Spellbound and Notorious, film historians Leonard Leff and Rudy Behlmer the commentaries for Rebecca.  A case of shop early this year for Christmas?


Onstage, a gay take on Hitchcock ...

Performance-artist John Epperson has just finished a two-month engagement in New York in the show 'As I Lay Lip-Synching'.  The character he plays, 'Lypsinka', dressed to the nines and wearing a flamboyant orange wig and heavy make-up, presents what is essentially a nightclub act with songs and patter derived from live and studio recordings of mainly obscure female singers of the fifties and sixties. But these musical sections of the act are repeatedly interrupted with extensive audio excerpts from films.  At one point, the character begins to undergo some kind of crisis within a dream state.  Here, extensive dialogue excerpts from Hitchcock's Marnie are used, including the scene in the kitchen between Marnie and her mother, the 'You Freud/Me Jane?' scene between Marnie and Mark Rutland, and the scene in which Mark drives Marnie back to 'Whykwyn'.  However, all of the dialogue of Mrs Edgar and of Mark has been edited out so that it becomes a form of monologue. In addition, the Marnie dialogue is interspersed with dialogue from other films - including Elizabeth Taylor carrying on about lobotomies in Suddenly, Last Summer and Sandra Dee screaming 'I'm a good girl!' in A Summer Place! -  all of this forming a brilliant audio and performance montage.

According to our informant, Assistant Professor Joe McElhaney (whose forthcoming book on Hitchcock contains a chapter on Marnie), previous stage acts of Epperson's also drew on Hitchcock's film, using such memorable lines of Mrs Edgar (Louise Latham) as 'We don't talk smart about the Bible in this house, missy' and 'We don't need no filthy man comin' 'round here no more, do you understand?'  In that same act, Epperson repeatedly used Bernard Herrmann's 'neurosis' theme from the film to signify the moments when Lypsinka was lapsing into insanity.  The latest act uses the Psycho shrieking violins as transitions.