A crippled photographer experiences life through the aperture of his camera and discovers murder is only a f-stop away. Alfred Hitchcock’s voyeuristic thriller subsumes the spectator into an intrusive conspiracy, peering into private lives and secret deeds.
L. B. Jeffries is the narrative aperture, focusing all action and information through his lens. He occupies an almost omniscient position of total knowledge who wields control over the viewing experience, but Hitchcock subverts even this assertion by eliding information from Jeff’s perspective while allowing the audience to be included in the prank. Thus, the pleasure derived from REAR WINDOW is in the separation by the fourth wall: the actor should behave as if he isn’t being observed by an audience, creating a safe illusory reality. Jeff becomes audience to the events where absolute safety is the illusion; confined to his wheelchair (like a filmgoer stuffed into a seat) and the bad guy comes out of the fantasy to seek vengeance. This cinematic theorem defines the passive viewer as both an accomplice in the narrative…and victim.
Another interesting subtext to the film is the corruption of marriage‘s patriarchal institution. Jeff’s beautiful conspirator Lisa (the ever graceful Grace Kelly) isn’t acknowledged until she becomes part of the story, refracted through his camera lens. Jeff is in a room full of windows: his photographs are portals into other worlds, other lives, all masculine action shots or poses. The only feminine portrait is rendered in negative like a grinning skull. Lisa and Jeff become “married” when she puts on the dead wife’s ring. His fear of marriage, being tied down to a nagging wife, is reflected in another couple who go from the honeymoon phase to harsh reality, hidden behind closed curtains.
REAR WINDOW is an cinematic exercise in suspense that subsumes the audience into the story: we have surely become a society of Peeping Toms.
Final Grade: (A)
In search of a private island, a woman steps out of her own personal trap and into another’s, scratching and clawing at the air. In the humid darkness, her fate is washed down a drain and drowned in a brackish bog, at the whim of a mad matriarch. But we all go a little mad sometimes…don’t we?
Alfred Hitchcock’s piè ce de rè sistance may be the shower sequence, as Marion Crane begins to metaphorically wash her sin away, deciding to return the stolen money. But the consequences of her felony will outweigh the crime itself, as a diaphanous figure looms behind the shower curtain with eyes that burn like coal. Bernard Herrmann’s ripcord score shrieks with slashing strings, and though Hitchcock never depicts one puncture wound the quicksilver editing allows imagination to trump revelation. Her palsied hand clutches at the shower curtain and she slumps forward, the dull thud on the tile floor chilling and final. A match cut shows thick blood spiraling down the drain juxtaposed with her lifeless eye now starring into the abyss, as the camera pulls slowly back from extreme close-up.
The most disturbing scene of the film may be the one that precedes this murder, as Norman and Marion share company in his parlor surrounded by stuffed birds. The conversation proceeds from small talk to deep insight, as Marion recognizes her own mistake and Norman slowly transforms his boyish charm into accusatory malignancy. Hitchcock often frames Norman in low angle with the birds hovering above him in raptor-like frenzy, his Adam’s apple bobbing up and down like a bird being fed by its mother. In this case, Norman has been totally consumed by his mother! Norman leans towards Marion and spits his venomous judgment: “People always mean well! They cluck their thick tongues and shake their heads and suggest, oh so very delicately!” These dark reflections foreshadow the tumultuous events and derail the entire narrative structure, shifting the final two acts into a murder mystery: it’s one of the most dramatic paradigm shifts in popular film…a $40,000 McGuffin!
PSYCHO is Hitchcock’s most famous film and arguably his best, and has become the foundation for an entire genre that continues to influence modern cinema.
Final Grade: (A+)
Scottie is a faded apparition who haunts the crowded streets of San Francisco, his love transformed into a bleached vertiginous obsession. Considered by many to be Hitchcock’s masterpiece, VERTIGO attains the dizzying height of a suspenseful murder mystery but deep below the taught surface tension lurks a bestial narrative of male entitlement and naked aggression.
Bernard Herrmann’s score amplifies the psychological dimension, invigorating the trauma with an illusive uncertainty; dialogue is often replaced by suggestive musical cues punctuated by Stewart and Novak’s subtle expressions and body language. Jimmy Stewart plays against type as John “Scottie” Ferguson, an ex-cop who suffers from debilitating acrophobia, a man unable to commit to a healthy relationship with Midge, his college girlfriend who adores him. She is the counterpoint to his fragile emotional state; we judge his spiraling madness against her feminine strength in an attempt to understand his sexual addiction…because Scottie seems to destroy those whom he loves most. Kim Novak’s duel performance is exceptional: she is a doppelganger; a cruel mistress of deception and lust who becomes imbued with a graceful humanity, a lovely woman torn between her past…and passion.
Hitch is at his best with a dazzling 360-degree shot: as Judy and Scottie embrace in her room, his mind reels backwards and we see revealed the carriage-house; the place of the final zealous kiss before the bone-shattering tragedy. As he constructs Judy piece-by-piece like a sex doll she becomes a rapturous puzzle of soft flesh and lipstick, a fabricated ghost deluged with a violent green miasma of jealousy and delusion. Hitch understands suspense: he reveals the cruel charade, which powers the nuclear fission between the audience and the characters. Finally a dark form emerges from the shadows of a bell tower, startling Judy quickly towards her final judgment…and leaves Scottie to bear his own cross of guilt and shame.
Final Grade: (A+)
A woman is split in complex personas but underneath she is still the same little girl, crying out for help, desperate for a mother’s love. Alfred Hitchcock’s final masterpiece is an amalgam of PSYCHO psychiatry and VERTIGO semantics, a bloody transfusion of traumatic therapy.
Hitchcock begins the film with a close-up of a yellow bag tucked under the arm of a raven haired woman (seen only from behind), walking a thin red line on a train platform. Our attention is drawn to the bag as Hitchcock cuts again to a close-up of a man screaming ‘Thief!”: an economy of visual language that begins the story of a tortured young lady. Marnie alters identities and skips from job to job, stealing from her employers then disappearing like a ghost, haunted by a troubled past the consumes her future tense. When she begins to work for Mark Rutland, he eventually recognizes her as “Marion” who stole from one of his clients. Mark blackmails Marnie into marrying him and thus begins another journey into the dreaded unknown inner world of the convoluted mindscape: but are his intentions well-meaning or selfish? Or both?
Hitchcock conveys emotional trauma in a few direct ways: the use of a red filter that blossoms onto the screen when Marnie suffers a breakdown, enacted by the color red in a specific setting (red ink like blood, red flowers in her mother’s house, a red polka-dotted shirt, or a red riding jacket); the lightening flashes that totally obliterate her image and burn a ghostly figure into the retina, her identity erased and occluded; the nocturnal tapping (like Poe’s raven) which invites Marnie into the land of nightmare; or the blank stare of total dissociation when she finally allows Mark to penetrate her femininity…which leads to her suicide attempt. Even her suicide is reasoned through and details justified when her husband asks her why she didn’t jump from the ship: “I wanted to die, not feed the fish”. Wonderful line!
Unlike Marnie, Mark has let go of his past which is beautifully revealed in his study when a branch crashed through a window and smashes his deceased wife’s remaining icons. In an almost callous way, he picks up a fractured piece and smashes it: “We all have to let go sometime”. A picture on his desk also depicts a ferocious animal which he exclaims pride in training, of making the beast trust him. Mark’s intentions seem both honorable and potentially despicable, and it’s to Sean Connery’s credit that his decidedness is both imperfect and credible. He admits to sexually blackmailing Marnie but his desire is to protect her from those “others” who would not be so kind. His sacrifice is not without payoff, as he beds the beautiful protagonist and holds a patriarchal dominance over her position.
One scene in particular is the crux of the narrative, of the violent need for healing through death, of reliving the victimization of a lost childhood: the runaway chase where Marnie’s only viable emotional attachment, her beloved horse Forio, is injured by her own fault and she demands the incredibly sad task of shooting him, to put her suffering friend out of his misery. It’s very interesting that she never turns the gun on herself, and from this point on she can no longer steal money to buy her mother’s affection. Marnie’s eyes reflect eternal sadness, her pallid visage a mask of anxiety (she almost looks like another person), and she pulls the trigger and whispers her apology. Tippi Hedren’s anxious performance is a tour-de-force and makes the film live, allows the audience to associate with the complex desires of a superficial thief…and her self-destructive impulses.
Marnie’s demons are exorcised in her childhood home still inhabited by her mother, under the giant shadow of a ship that looms like a phallus over their lives, understood when the flashback occurs. Bernard Herrmann’s score evokes all the right psychological chords, plucking audience attention, reverberating with delirious meaning, spiraling strings echo dark rooms and lamentations. Though Marnie may be on the path to recovery, her mother will always suffer her own aching crippled leg.
Final Grade: (A)
Based upon the Daphne du Maurier novella, Hitchcock juxtaposes a playfully frantic love story and an apocalyptic fury of feathers and claws, which takes flight as a tense frisson of unbearable suspense and tragedy. Melanie Daniels is a flighty socialite and Mitch Brenner a down-to-earth Public Defender: two disparate people who discover love at the end of the world.
The film begins with Melanie, dressed in her green suite and expensive furs, crossing the street and looking skyward where a flock of birds ominously gather. An eerie hollow screech and sharp beating of wings dominate the soundtrack: Hitchcock doesn’t score the film and only briefly uses foreground music. As Melanie pursues Mitch to Bodega Bay with a pair of lovebirds, the atmosphere begins to subtly change. When the first gull attacks her nearly 50 minutes into the film, the tension begins to quickly mount. Melanie sheds her furs and Mitch soon discovers the true person beneath. Then the avian assault begins.
Hitchcock deftly builds each scene: Melanie at the schoolhouse, as a murder of crows secretly gathers behind her; a tiny finch flitting out of the fireplace moments before the torrent; Mitch’s mother’s quest for her neighbor which reveals broken china…and much more. The running and terrified children, the burning town, Melanie ensnared in a phone booth, and the townsfolk who silently huddle with vacant birdlike stares are sequences that are shockingly unforgettable. The human race has become imprisoned in a cage while the birds now hold dominion. His editing is masterful: from reaction shot to exposing bits of information, cut by cut until the bloody reveal quickens the pulse. The plot only falters with exposition as an ornithologist just happens into the dinner to discuss the impossibility of the attacks, a bible quoting drunk, and the quick accusation against Melanie barely clips the narrative’s tail feathers.
In the final act they take refuge in Mitch’s farmhouse and suffer the frenzied onslaught, bloodied and emotionally spent, while Melanie is reduced to a walking dead, raped by the piercing beaks and raking claws. The two caged lovebirds still nestle together, untouched by madness, a fleeting but hopeful metaphor for Melanie and Mitch…and the whole human race. But the ending is a bleak mise-en-scene as their car sputters through a parting sea of raptors, the world once again belonging to the dinosaurs.
This is the way the world ends, not with a bang but a chirp.
Final Grade: (A)
Richard Matheson recreates the Shirley Jackson classic not as a masterpiece of psychological dread but as a terrifying orgy of supernatural debauchery. Director John Hough is able to charge each scene with a current of malignant energy: he frames each shot with creepy silhouettes or slightly skews our perception. High angle shots give us the feeling of an omniscient voyeur who revels in this sadistic drama.
Hell House is a charnel house of fancies, the tomb of The Roaring Giant, the corrupt Emeric Belasco who stalks the deserted corridors patiently awaiting his next victims: skeptic Lionel Barrett and his wife Ann, mental medium Florence Tanner, and physical medium Ben Fischer. Hired by an aging wealthy sponsor, their task is to prove or disprove the existence of the afterlife, the ethereal identity that transcends the physical body…in one week. They are given charge of the Belasco House, better known as Hell House, though they know the risks: Fischer was the only survivor of the last investigation over twenty years ago. Dr. Barrett’s ambition is to prove that there are scientific causes to what we call supernatural, that our identity does not survive our body; only unfocused, mindless energy. The two mediums believe otherwise.
There are no subtle bumps in the night here, only the disembodied drunken sounds of sexual carnage, ghostly physical manifestations, crashing objects, possessed animals, repressed and destructive desires, and ghostly rape. Florence is like an open nerve and easily manipulated by the spirit(s) while Ben has closed himself off completely. Dr. Barrett’s hope lies with his Reversor, a machine that will flood the house with electromagnetic radiation and disperse the unguided energy in a very scientific and logical manner.
Two are destroyed by the very thing they seek; they never realize their tenuous understanding of Hell House. The survivors limp from the violent sepulcher into the thick choking mist, battered and bruised, and with dawning comprehension hope that their deceased friends can guide the despicable Belasco to everlasting peace.
Final Grade: (B+)
A woman bears the burden of malignant guilt over the sexual assault of her younger sister, a childhood trauma that has left her sibling blind, deaf, and mute. EYES OF A STRANGER is a feminist retelling of Hitchcock’s REAR WINDOW, where the women are empowered and whose actions are not determined by patriarchal egocentrism.
Jane Harris is a reporter for a local news station, a professional who lives her own life as caregiver to her crippled sister; a self-sufficient woman who loves a local attorney but doesn’t rely on him for support. Director Ken Weiderhorn juxtaposes Jane’s passionate reporting with the silly antics of the male weatherman: a specific plot device to discredit the testosterone fueled cliché’s that propel the horror genre. This purposeful break with convention leads the film into new and exciting emotional territory though it still titillates with instances of graphic violence and bare breasts. Weiderhorn subverts the genre by using its own devices, narratively focusing upon Jane and her explorations into the suspect’s private life.
In standard Hitchcock fashion, the killer is revealed early in the film but suspense is generated through empathetic connection to the characters as the violence escalates towards its grim conclusion. Even the killer is given the harmless name Stanley Herbert, an overweight and man of baby-fat innocence, who looks (not surprisingly) like Raymond Burr from REAR WINDOW…even down to the glasses. Look for the subtle homage to Tom Savini whose makeup is used to realistic effect and Weiderhorn’s own late night showing of SHOCK WAVES. The film’s vicious climax ends with forcible compulsion and four bright flashes: not from a camera but a .38 special.
Final Grade: (B+)
Anvil’s career has the buoyancy of its namesake; their music is like pounding on the fragile incus. But founding members guitarist Steve “Lips” Kudlow and drummer Robb Reiner never abandon their dream of being Rock Stars by forging their hammer-and-tongs music, where the screaming power chords and thumping rhythms are contradictions of their angst and gentle humanity. Director Sacha Gervasi’s documentary seems to be more SPINAL TAP than the faux Rockumentary, but here he is interested in depicting the real people behind the music: not a parody of an excess rock’n roll lifestyle.
The film begins with Anvil’s world tour in the 80’s opening for acts like Metallica, Bon Jovi and Anthrax, and then the band receives accolades from talking heads such as Slash, Lemmy, and Lars Ulrich. CUT TO: present day reality where Lips is driving a delivery van, an average working guy with hairnet and gloves, but he dreams big and lives for the day Anvil can release a bestselling record. He is warm and unpretentious, his three-chord fantasy perfectly sustained, but his time is growing short as old age casts its long shadow upon his soul. The documentary follows a failed three-week tour throughout Europe where Anvil plays to crowds of 20 to 30 people, and in one instance don’t get paid for a performance.
Lips and Reiner are best friends and their relationship is poisoned by adversity, but they always just love to play their music: it is a humane and rare gesture in the predatory world of entertainment to find genuine people. Interviews with supporting family members who don’t’ quite understand their obsession but love them anyway: a sister who lends them 20 grand to record their 13th album just brings tears to your eyes. Love and family is the theme whose undercurrent isn’t silenced by Metal on Metal, and their gig in Japan seems to be another failure in a litany of bad luck…that even the mystical energies of Stonehenge can’t alter. Then we cheer with the sold out crowd as Anvil rocks the stage and, for a brief moment, the world.
Final Grade: (B+)
Bob Rainsford learns that the world is indeed divided into two kinds of people and on a mysterious island the predator becomes prey. The title is a double entendre representing the exploits of two Big Game hunters whose machismo is reinforced by hunting dangerous animals and the competition (or game) that will soon exists between these men. Bob Rainsford is a world-renowned hunter whose ship is purposely lead astray upon a coral reef: as the only survivor he swims ashore towards an island and stumbles upon an archaic castle, looming above the jungle like some barbaric idol. It’s here that he meets Count Zaroff, a man who not only knows Rainsford but also considers himself to be the best hunter in the world, and soon a contest for survival ensues.
Director Irving Pichel utilizes all the horror tropes of early cinema: the haunting castle, the evil henchmen, the dank torturous dungeon replete with severed heads, the evil and cunning genius, the beautiful scream-queen whose survival depends upon our protagonist, but instead of leading the narrative into the supernatural…he leads it into the realm of the hyper-natural. Though the setup is easily contrived, Count Zaroff and his henchmen of Russian caricatures, there is an interesting subtext to the film. As technology moves into the modern age and we homo sapiens dominate the world, the only natural predator of our species has become ourselves. Zaroff's mens rea is explained with moral ambiguity, suffering a head injury that may have cause his homicidal impulses. Or did this only allow his true self to emerge?
Count Zaroff decides to hunt Rainsford and the sultry Eve Trowbridge, and she is the voluptuous prize whose fate is to be raped by this despicable coward. If the two can survive until sunrise, Zaroff promises to give them the boat to the mainland but he reminds them that he has never lost this “chess game”. But Rainsford is resourceful and this mano-a-mano confrontation wastes no time creating tension: our protagonists set pits and deadfalls to kill Zaroff but to no avail. He hunts them with a bow but sensing defeat, retreats to his domain and gets a high-powered rife with a scope while his henchmen bring the dogs. The victims escape into the foggy swamps rendering the rifle useless but the dogs hunt them through moor and vine choked trees, until they are trapped upon a treacherous precipice. With one shot, Rainsford seems to fall to his doom as the sun rises, and Eve’s light is dimmed by the coming of Zaroff’s violent ecstasy. Finally, poetic justice is served as the boat races from the harbor and Zaroff becomes the food of the dogs.
Final Grade: (B)
A prophecy of blood inspires a small group of survivors to flee their oppressive warren and search for a new life. Richard Adams’ anthropomorphic odyssey is transposed to the silver screen, a larger-than-life reproduction that captures the essence of imagination in two dimensions. This violent adventure is composed of shadow and light, fear and laughter, birth and mournful death, to create a suspenseful travelogue that doesn’t condescend to the child or adult.
Fiver suffers from prophetic visions, a small scared rabbit who sees the writing in the sky, and convinces his brother to search for a new home. Hazel is skeptical, but after being scolded by the aged Chief Rabbit, a taciturn curmudgeon stuck in the old ways, convinces others to join the exodus. They must fight their way past Capt. Holly of the repressive Owsla (police force) and continue on their many adventures. The small band of survivors must use their wits and strength to survive this cruel journey, and above all work together, each utilizing his unique talent. They encounter a den of complacent rabbits, whose existential dread poisons Fiver’s dreams, and soon realize that the warren is a gluttonous snare. Their exploits take them across the open fields where fear is always chasing them like a hungry elil, but they are fast and cunning. Safe upon the verdant down, the irascible bucks divine their situation: without does, their new society cannot prosper. With the help of a friendly seagull named Kehaar, they seek out mates to expand the warren. But General Woundwort and his fascist Owsla stand in the way.
WATERSHIP DOWN is an epic tale of heroism and sacrifice, of friendship and leadership, of love and duty that becomes life-affirming even though the Black Rabbit of Inle ever stalks the protagonists. It is also a tale of blood and woe, a fight against tyranny, and the film doesn’t shy away from the fierceness of war: Bigwig stuck in a snare as blood froths at his mouth, the horrible injuries of Capt. Holly, or the final battle between Woundwort and Bigwig are shown in viscous detail. Death is part of every great adventure story, a nuclear element that sustains the narrative frisson.
The introduction imparts the wonderful myth of Frith and his gift to El-ahrairah, as the angry god blesses El-ahrairah’s posterior and gives him supple strength, intelligence and speed to outrun his enemies…but Frith makes everything the enemy of rabbits. The abstract animation captures the whimsical nature of Leporidae mythology while the vivid watercolors of the main story represent a pristine natural beauty.
The film’s conclusion is both sad and joyous, as Hazel finally joins the great Owsla in the sky, his blood preserved in the young kits grazing in the field.
Final Grade: (B)
A mercurial young boy is caught betwixt childhood and his awakening sexuality; the worship of both a father figure and a woman condemns him to purgatory. Director Joseph Losey and playwright Harold Pinter conspire to dissect the emotional confusion of a fatherless young boy on the cusp of manhood while condemning the hypocritical values and rigid social hierarchy of the Belle Epoch Period.
Losey focuses the film upon Leo, a young classless boy visiting his wealthy friend’s estate for the summer, who becomes infatuated with the quixotic older sister Marian. When his host gets sick, Leo is left to his own devices and sets out to explore Norfolk, thus discovering the forbidden territory of adult desires hidden within secret notes. Losey’s mise-en-scene is wonderfully seductive, dressing complex characterizations in the guise of costumed melodrama. Leo dresses in an unfashionable buttoned-up suit in the sweltering heat, alluding to the dichotomy of class distinction (they tease him) and his own repressed emotions (he never complains). Losey also shows the poisonous seed through metaphor, as Leo wanders through the abandoned garden ripe with deadly Nightshade. In the climactic scene, the Belladonna stands guardian through the secret passage that leads to the loft where our young protagonist losses faith and innocence. The Cricket match is another example, as the “privileged” challenge the “players” and though Leo plays for the Maudsley’s it’s apparent he is enamored with the roguish Ted Burgess, who becomes a father figure to Leo and carries on a conspiratorial affair with Marian. Hugh is the “proper” husband for Marian and he seems kind enough but is not the object of her desire; his stoic visage is scarred, implying that these wounds run deep and not all problems can be masked.
Losey structures the film in flashback, and most of the story’s perspective is shown from that foreign country of the past, while the present intrudes until both coincide in sublime confrontation. The use of overlapping dialogue between tenses allows the past and present to combine until we discover Leo’s curse. Michel Legrand’s piano variations cue the film with a tempestuous passion while remaining timeless, allowing the same piece to connect both perspectives. The cinematography is exquisitely detailed and precise, capturing Norfolk in the years just before the Great War.
Leo never married because of the events of the sweltering summer so long ago when his childish game resulted in his hero’s suicide. Now, he must confront the product of Ted and Marian’s tryst…and forgive himself.
Final Grade: (A)
Homage to Nicolas Roeg’s DON’T LOOK NOW: inspired by labyrinthine alleyways and murky canals of Venice to the inner demons of anguish and guilt, stalks the tiny deformed killer in a red jacket, one of a demented progeny born of their mother’s primal rage. Writer/Director David Cronenberg takes us on a journey through the looking glass and into the bloody tangled womb of horror, where the inner child dwells, abused and enraged, where it is birthed into a cruel world without consent and imbued with a survival instinct that transcends moral boundary.
A terrible custody battle between Frank and Nola leads to this brutal conflict, as her childhood trauma (both imagined and real?) is born into flesh and blood offspring who carry out her sadistic desires. She is kept isolated at a retreat while undergoing Psychoplasmics: a counseling technique that is ultimately responsible because it’s not a cure, only an exacerbation of her condition. Cronenberg builds the gruesome tension through sound and editing; each death-scene a grueling exercise in suspense as we know what’s coming….until he reveals the horror in shocking fashion. The violence is brutal and unforgiving, the effects upon Candice and the other children frighteningly realistic, and this adds an element of vile realism to this brooding narrative.
Howard Shore’s eerie score evokes Bernard Herrmann and adds a psychotic pathos to the story, a subliminal thrum that creates frisson by making an ordinary scene unnerving and expectant. When Frank confronts his wife, she reveals a pulsing sac, which expunges its fetid fetus and she licks clean its afterbirth. This is absolutely disgusting, perverse, and genius. Now that his daughter is safe and they drive into the night, Cronenberg cuts to close up on Candice’s arm showing two bulging welts, then extreme close up to her tortured eyes…the window to her soul.
Final Grade: (B)
