Frenzy | Therese Shechter | Page 1 of 5

Frenzy by Therese Shechter

My paper on The 39 Steps, the first I wrote for this course, includes the sentiment that “I feel a bit predisposed to judge [Hitchcock's] treatment of gender in a negative way, so one of my goals this term will be to get a fuller understanding and appreciation of Hitchcock's women and not just be appalled at the sexism and violence his characters endure” (Shechter, 1).

These sentiments were inspired by my negative reaction to Hannay's physical abuse of

Pamela–dragging her handcuffed across the moors, yelling at her, insulting her, choking her. In that same paper I referenced to an article that declared the film might be the most misogynistic that

Hitchcock ever made. Those were more innocent days. Little did I know what was to come with our final film, Frenzy (Shechter, 3).

In class, we have often discussed how Hitchcock likes to play with the seductive nature of voyeurism, our interest in 'watching,' in treating murder as entertainment. The opening scene in

Frenzy certainly establishes that tone, with a naked women strangled with a necktie washing up on the banks of the Thames in the middle of a public ceremony. And this enjoyment of onscreen murder–sexualized murder, in fact–is echoed by the two anonymous gents in the pub, who discuss whether the latest series of sex murders might increase tourism, a jolly good thing for London, I assume. It's not just the characters in the film getting a kick out of this. Vincent Canby's review of the film includes the astonishing line “Frenzy is the first good movie about a sex murderer since

Psycho.” and Stanley Kauffman writes about 'the razzle-dazzle murder editing...this time dealing with rape and strangling” (Allen, 30).

I admit that I've also marveled at Hitchcock's skill in depicting murders in ways that are creative and meaningful to the story–and yes, sometimes gorgeous. The reflection we see in Miriam's glasses as Bruno strangles her in Strangers on a Train comes to mind as a particularly powerful Frenzy | Therese Shechter | Page 2 of 5 combination of visual storytelling techniques. But in Frenzy, from the first naked woman in the

Thames to the last victim in Rusk's bed, I felt repulsed by a nasty perversity that pervaded the film.

My initial understanding of this reaction was that Hitchcock was forcing us to endure a deeply disturbing series of crimes as a challenge to consider why we find voyeurism so entertaining. You want to see what a rape and murder look like? You want to see someone die terrified? You want to see a dead body? Here you go!

By taking murder from stylized abstraction to technicolor reality, Hitchcock makes us sit with it, forcing to us to really look at the horror of it. Tongues hanging out, finger bones snapped, the desperate fear in a sympathetic victim's eyes when she knows she is about to die. Perhaps that's a more honest way of dealing with death than artistically reflecting it in a pair of glasses. However, after some reflection if feels more like Hitchcock is simply getting off on it, and he presumes we must be as well. While I sit disturbed and disgusted, he's enjoying himself–along with Canby and

Kauffman.

The fact that this violence is sexualized makes it even more difficult to watch. Jeanne Thomas

Allen writes about the many male rape fantasies being played out in the murder of Brenda Blaney.

When Rusk enters her office, she is putting on makeup, offering “the 'women are always asking for it' male erotic fantasy that provides the rationale for male aggression.” During the rape her body is objectified, shown as a crude sequence of parts, ripe for the picking just like the apple Rusk grabs from her desk and eats. When she asks to remove her own clothing to get back a bit of control, she acts in a way that is more commonly seen as damning evidence that the victim was complicit in the act. And finally, Allen describes the lighting as becoming more soft and 'romantic' as he rapes her while she quietly says a prayer (33).

While this is the only graphic rape and murder sequence, Rusk's ride in the back of a potato Frenzy | Therese Shechter | Page 3 of 5 truck is also disturbing in that it seems to be a collection of corpse sight gags. I can't find the humor in Babs, a good woman we have grown fond of, reduced to a collection of limbs sticking out of a burlap bag and then and then flying out of the truck onto the street. In a final insult,

Hitchcock uses his considerable directorial skills to relocate our sympathies to Rusk, manipulating the audience into rooting for the successful retrieval of his tie pin. It makes me wonder why I am so delighted by Bruno Antony's progress through Strangers on a Train, and so repulsed by Rusk's in Frenzy.

In watching previous films in this class, I've asked myself whether Hitchcock's female characters, despite being treated badly, have a point of view they are allowed to express. Do they move the plot forward by the things they do, or by the things done to them? The answer has provided me with important insights into their unfolding narratives, and the ways their situation illuminates Hitchcock's larger messages. But as hard as I try, I can't find that here.

In fact, I feel empathy with the female characters simply because they are so badly used.

Brenda Blaney dares to be more successful and prosperous than her loser of an ex-husband. Her secretary is some kind of nosey sexless prig, their client large and overbearing. The wife of

Blaney's sympathetic army buddy is a suspicious shrew. The women walking down the street are indifferent to screams coming out of Brenda Blaney's office. And even the kind detective's wife is serving him a succession of French dishes, each more disgusting than the last. The food was almost as disgusting to look at as the dead bodies, with Hitchcock mining the humor to be found there amid the revulsion. Only Babs is kind and she still gets killed along with the anonymous woman found in Rusk's apartment (Allen, 36).

For me, Frenzy is the type of film where even understanding all the skill and style involved can't make it any more palatable. In fact it can make it worse, by hiding its reprehensible nature Frenzy | Therese Shechter | Page 4 of 5 behind impeccable editing or cinematography, and spawning countless essays on the number of seconds spent on Brenda's dead and contorted face without once questioning the gender dynamics underlying the scene. As Allen writes, “Hitchcock films are sometimes clever, witty and intelligent. They are also profoundly hostile to women or reinforce their subjugation” (37).

I've been so fortunate in this class to get to study Hitchcock's massive genius alongside his equally massive set of issues. I discovered new gems, such as The Lady Vanishes, as well as found new appreciation for films like the breathtaking The Birds. I doubt I'll ever watch Frenzy again, but it's always helpful to understand what you really hate–and why–so you can also understand what you really love. Frenzy | Therese Shechter | Page 5 of 5

WORKS CITED

Shechter, Therese. "The 39 Steps." Class paper for The Films of Alfred Hitchcock, Empire State

College, 2016.

Allen, Jeanne Thomas. “The Representation of Violence to Women: Hitchcock's "Frenzy".” Film

Quarterly, vol. 38, no. 3, 1985, pp. 30–38., doi:10.1525/fq.1985.38.3.04a00060. Accessed 13

Apr. 2017.