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Home , Anna and the King, George Tomasini, Janet Leigh, Jeanette Nolan, John Anderson (actor), John McIntire

Virtual March 9, 2021 (42:6) : (1960, 109 min) Spelling and Style—use of italics, quotation marks or nothing at all for titles, e.g.—follows the form of the sources. Cast and crew name hyperlinks connect to the individuals’ Wikipedia entries

Vimeo link for ALL of Bruce Jackson’s and Diane Christian’s film introductions and post-film discussions in the virtual BFS

Vimeo link for our introduction to Psycho

Zoom link for all Spring 2021 BFS Tuesday 7:00 PM post-screening discussions: Meeting ID: 925 3527 4384 Passcode: 820766

Director Alfred Hitchcock Writing Joseph Stefano adapted the screenplay from the novel. Producer Alfred Hitchcock Music Cinematography John L. Russell Editing ... Charlie Mort Mills...Highway Patrol Officer The film was nominated for four Oscars in 1961, was , Paul Jasmin, and ...the nominated for Best Film of 1960 by the legendary voice of Norma "Mother" Bates (uncredited). The French film journal Cashiers du Cinéma and was three voices were used interchangeably, except for the entered into the in 1992. last speech, which was performed by Gregg.

Anthony Perkins... Alfred Hitchcock (b. August 13, 1899 in London, ... England—d. April 29, 1980, age 80, , ... CA) was nominated for 5 but he ...Sam Loomis only won the Thalberg Award in 1980. That was a Martin Balsam...Private Investigator Milton Arbogast very good year for him: he also received a Legion of John McIntire...Deputy Sheriff Al Chambers Honor from the French government and a knighthood Simon Oakland...Dr. Richmond from the queen. Directors Eric Rohmer and Claude Frank Albertson...Tom Cassidy Chabrol wrote of him, “Hitchcock is one of the Pat Hitchcock...Caroline greatest inventors of form in the history of cinema. Vaughn Taylor...George Lowery Perhaps the only filmmakers who can be compared Lurene Tuttle...Mrs. Chambers Hitchcock—PSYCHO—2

with him in this respect are Murnau and Eisenstein…. (Anna and the King of Siam, 1946), and 1942’s Best Here, form does not merely embellish content, but Music, Scoring of a Dramatic Picture (Citizen Kane, actually creates it.” François Truffaut wrote that 1941). He was also nominated for a Grammy in 1977 Hitchcock had “a unique ability to film the thoughts for Best Album of Original Score Written for a of his characters and make them perceptible without Motion Picture or Television Special (Taxi Driver, resorting to dialogue,” 1976). Hermann composed and that he was “almost for 85 films and TV shows unique in being able to including, 2013 The film directly, that is, Audition (Short), 2012 The without resorting to Man in the Silo, 1998 explanatory dialogue, Psycho, 1976 Obsession, such intimate emotions as 1976 Taxi Driver, 1974 It's suspicion, jealousy, Alive, 1973 Sisters, 1968 desire, and envy.” Critic The Bride Wore Black, Andrew Sarris wrote, 1966 Fahrenheit 451, 1965 “What has been most Convoy (TV Series), 1964 disturbing in Hitchcock’s films–the perverse ironies, Marnie, 1959-1963 , 1963 Jason the unresolved ambiguities, the switched and the Argonauts, 1962 Cape Fear, 1962 Tender Is protagonists–now mark him as a pioneer in the the Night, 1961 (TV Series), 1960 Psycho, modern idiom in which nothing is what it seems on 1959 Journey to the Center of the Earth, 1959 North the surface.” Hitchcock left nothing to chance, not by Northwest, 1958 The 7th Voyage of Sinbad, 1958 even that famous image of him as the plump solemn The Naked and the Dead, 1958 Vertigo, 1957 A Hatful joker with a taste for the macabre: that was the of Rain, 1956 The Man Who Knew Too Much, 1956 product of a PR company he set up in the 1930s. The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit, 1955 Prince of Hitchcock began in film as a title designer and art Players, 1954 The Egyptian, 1953 King of the Khyber director, and he claimed he storyboarded (made scene Rifles, 1953 Beneath the 12-Mile Reef, 1952 The and motion sketches) for every shot in every one of Snows of Kilimanjaro, 1952 5 Fingers, 1951 On his 62 films. Some of his films are (1972), The Dangerous Ground, 1951 The Day the Earth Stood Birds (1963), Psycho (1960), Still, 1947 The Ghost and Mrs. Muir, 1946 Anna and (1959), Vertigo (1958), The Man Who Knew Too the King of Siam,1943 Jane Eyre, 1942 The Much (1956), (1955), Magnificent Ambersons, 1941 The Devil and Daniel (1954), (1954), Rope (1948), Webster, 1941 Citizen Kane. Notorious (1946), Spellbound (1945), Lifeboat (1944), Suspicion (1941), Rebecca (1940), John Lowell Russell Jr. (b. May 15, 1905, Brooklyn, (1938), The 39 Steps (1935), The Man Who Knew Too New York--July 22, 1967, Los Angeles, California) Much (1934) Blackmail (1930, the first British talkie), was an American cinematographer who was known and The Lodger (1926). for his work on films like Psycho (for which he earned an Academy Award nomination) as well as his Bernard Herrmann (b. June 29, 1911 in New York extensive work on TV. These are some of the films he City, NY—d. December 24, 1975, age 64, in shot: Backtrack! (1969), Out of Sight (1966), Hollywood, CA) won two Academy Awards in 1977 Billie (1965), Psycho (1960), Hell's for Best Music, Original Score (Taxi Driver, 1976) Crossroads (1957), Star in the Dust (1956), and in 1942 for Best Music, Scoring of a Dramatic Indestructible Man (1956), When Gangland Picture (All That Money Can Buy, 1941). He was also Strikes (1956), The Vanishing American (1955), nominated for 3 Academy Awards including, 1977’s Headline Hunters (1955), Lay That Rifle Best Music—Original Score (Obsession, 1976), Down (1955), Double Jeopardy (1955), The Eternal 1947’s Best Music, Scoring of a Dramatic or Comedy Sea (1955), The Atomic Kid (1954), Tobor the Picture Great (1954), Make Haste to Live (1954), Hell's Half Acre (1954), Geraldine (1953), Champ for a Hitchcock—PSYCHO—3

Day (1953), The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms (1953), Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his City That Never Sleeps (1953), Problem Girls (1953), second film, Friendly Persuasion (1956), but is best Sword of Venus (1953), Invasion U.S.A. (1952), Arctic remembered for playing Norman Bates in Alfred Flight (1952), Park Row (1952), Government Agents Hitchcock's Psycho (1960). His other films include vs. Phantom Legion (1951), The Man from Planet Fear Strikes Out (1957), The Matchmaker (1958), On X (1951), The Golden Gloves Story (1950), Guilty of the Beach (1959), Tall Story (1960), The Trial (1962), Treason (1950), The Green Promise (1949), Phaedra (1962), Five Miles to Midnight (1962), Moonrise (1948), Macbeth (1948), and So This Is New Pretty Poison (1968), Murder on the Orient Express York (1948). (1974), Mahogany (1975), The Black Hole (1979), North Sea Hijack (1980), and Crimes of Passion George Tomasini (b. April 20, 1909, Springfield, (1984). —d. November 22, 1964, Hanford, California) was an American film editor who had a decade long collaboration with director Alfred Hitchcock, editing nine of his movies between 1954 and 1964. Tomasini edited many of Hitchcock's best- known works, such as Rear Window (1954), Vertigo (1958), North by Northwest (1959), Psycho (1960), and The Birds (1963), as well as other well-received films such as Cape Fear (1962). Tomasini was known for his innovative film editing which, together with Hitchcock's stunning techniques, redefined cinematic language. His dialogue overlapping and use of jump cuts for exclamation points was dynamic and innovative (such as in the scene in The Birds where the car blows up at the gas station and 's character watches from a window, as well as the infamous "shower scene" in Psycho). According to Janet Leigh (July 6, 1927 – October 3, 2004) was an Paul Monaco, “Tomasini's most important work with American actress whose career spanned over five Hitchcock was the memorable shower scene in decades. Raised in Stockton, California by working- Psycho (1960). Its aesthetic and dramatic class parents, Leigh was discovered at 18 by actress accomplishment was achieved largely through the , who helped her secure a contract with editor's skill. The completed forty-five second Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. Leigh had her first formal sequence that Hitchcock originally storyboarded was foray into acting, appearing in radio programs before compiled by Tomasini from footage shot over several making her film debut in the drama The Romance of days that utilized a total of over seventy camera Rosy Ridge (1947). Early in her career, she appeared setups. From that mass of footage, Tomasini selected in several popular films for MGM which spanned a sixty different shots, some of them very short, through wide variety of genres, including which he elected to rely heavily on the techniques of (1948), (1949), Angels in the Outfield 'associative editing'.” On a 2012 listing of the 75 best (1951), (1952), (1953), edited films of all time, compiled by the Motion and (1954). Leigh played mostly Picture Editors Guild based on a survey of its dramatic roles during the latter half of the , in members, four films edited by Tomasini for Hitchcock such films as Safari (1956) and 's film appear. No other editor appeared more than three noir (1958), but achieved her most times on this listing. The listed films were Psycho, lasting recognition as the doomed Marion Crane in Vertigo, Rear Window, and North by Northwest. Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho (1960), which earned her a Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actress and (April 4, 1932 – September 12, a nomination for the Academy Award for Best 1992) was an American actor, nominated for the Supporting Actress. After starring in The Manchurian Hitchcock—PSYCHO—4

Candidate (1962), Leigh remarried and scaled back corner, saying nothing….I played by myself, her career. Intermittently, she continued to appear in inventing my own games.” One such game was to films, including (1963), Harper travel over every route served by London Omnibus (1966), (1972), and Boardwalk Company. (1979). She would also go on to appear in two horror It was also to childhood experiences that films with her daughter, : Hitchcock attributed the insistent fear of punishment (1980) and Halloween H20: 20 Years Later (1998). and the processes of law that pervades his films. A much-retailed anecdote relates how, when he was about five and had committed some childish misdemeanor, his father sent him to the local police station with a note. The sergeant read it, then locked the boy in a cell for five minutes or so, saying, “This is what we do to naughty boys.” Hitchcock’s preoccupation with guilt may have been further developed by his education, from 1908 onwards, at St. Ignatius College, Stamford Hill, where the Jesuit fathers dispensed corporal punishment with pious rigor. “It wasn’t done casually, you know. It was rather like the execution of a sentence….You spent the whole day waiting for the sentence to be carried out.” Not that he was often in trouble; he seems to have been a shy, quiet, slightly melancholy child, academically adequate but undistinguished, and with no aptitude for games. When Hitchcock was fourteen his father died. A few months earlier he had left school, aware of no particular vocation, but with a talent for drawing and a vague interest in things mechanical. On the strength of this he was sent to the London School of Engineering and Navigation, where he studied mechanics, electricity, acoustics, and navigation. His training completed, he took a job with the W.T. Henley HITCHCOCK from World Film Directors, Vol. I. Telegraph Company as a technical clerk, and stayed Edited by John Wakeman. H. W. Wilson Co NY there throughout the First World War. (He was turned 1987, entry by Philip Kemp down for active service on medical grounds, being then, as he would always remain, considerably Anglo-American director, producer and scenarist, overweight.) After some years of boredom checking born in Leytonstone, at that time a village on the estimates, his graphic skills got him transferred to the outskirts of London. He was the third and youngest company’s advertising department, where the work child of William Hitchcock, a green grocer and was a good deal more interesting. But by now his poulterer, and his wife Emma (born Whalen). sights were set on a job in the movie industry. Hitchcock’s father seems to have been a stern rather As a child Hitchcock had been taken on distant figure; his mother he recalled as a placid numerous enjoyable visits to both the cinema and the woman, “shaped like a cottage loaf.” Both his parents theatre, but had always preferred the cinema. From the were Catholics, and he grew up in what he later age of sixteen or so he began to study film journals— depicted as a somewhat stifling atmosphere of the trade and technical press, rather than the fan working-class respectability and strict Catholic magazines—and realized that filmmaking was what morality. “I was what is known as a well-behaved he really wanted to do. His chance came in 1919, child. At family gatherings I would sit quietly in a when he heard that Famous Players-Lasky (later to Hitchcock—PSYCHO—5

become Paramount) were opening a studio in brought their star director, . On the Islington, North London. Hitchcock designed a strength of his experience with Hicks, Hitchcock was number of drawings suitable for illustrating title-cards hired as assistant director and assigned to work with and took them around to the studio. The management Cutts on the company’s first picture, Woman to were impressed enough to Woman. He also volunteered offer him some to write the script and serve as commissioned work and soon art director. The after a full-time job. responsibilities of editing and Over the next two script continuity (generally years Hitchcock designed handled by one person in those title-cards for a dozen days) were taken by a young features produced at the woman named Alma Reville, Islington Studios, while also Little of Cutts’ silent work has serving the informal survived; by all accounts he apprenticeship in every aspect was a competent if uninspired of filmmaking that formed the director. Hitchcock worked basis of his formidable with him on three more films, technique. Nearly all the one of which, other personnel, and the (1925) , was filmed in working arrangements, were Germany as a coproduction American—giving him, he with UFA. On a neighboring always said, a professional; set at Neubabelsberg Murnau head start over most of his was shooting Der letzte Mann, compatriots. “All my early and Hitchcock took every training was American, which opportunity to watch him at was far superior to the work. “The Last Laugh was British.” Being bright, industrious, and willing, almost the perfect film. It told its story …entirely by Hitchcock soon found himself designing, editing, and the use of imagery, and that had a tremendous even directing. “Sometimes when an extra scene was influence on me….My models were forever after the needed—but not an acting scene—they would let me German filmmakers of 1924 and 1925. They were shoot it.” trying very hard to express ideas in purely visual Famous Players-Lasky soon discovered—as terms.” Hitchcock was also impressed, in a rather most other Hollywood studios would—that there was different way, by the notoriously exotic nightlife of very little financial or artistic advantage in running a ; he was at this time by his own description “an UK-based operation, and pulled out in 1922, renting uncommonly unattractive young man,” not just out the Islington studios to various independent inexperienced but almost totally ignorant in sexual production companies. It was one of these that gave matters. On the boat returning to England he and Hitchcock his first chance to direct, on a two-reel Alma Reville became engaged. melodrama known either as Number Thirteen or Mrs. Graham Cutts, whose chaotic sex life interfered Peabody. Whatever its title, it was never completed considerably with his directorial duties, was by now and has since vanished—no great loss according to becoming resentful of Hitchcock. The “wonder boy,” Hitchcock. He also helped complete a one-reel he complained, was getting far too much credit on his comedy, Always Tell Your Wife; the star, Seymour (Cutts’) films, and he refused to use him any more. Hicks, had parted company with the original director, Most studio bosses would have mollified their top and finished off the film with Hitchcock’s assistance. director by firing the younger man on the spot. Balcon In 1923 a new company called Balcon-Saville- instead offered Hitchcock a picture of his own to Freedman moved into the Islington studios. It was direct. headed by Michael Balson and Victor Saville, both at Not, admittedly, that it was much of a picture. The the start of their cinematic careers; with them they Pleasure Garden (1925) was to be another German Hitchcock—PSYCHO—6

coproduction, but not with the prestigious UFA; in for want of anyone else.) The technical ingenuity rather, with a shoestring Munich company called that distinguishes, and occasionally overpowers, his Emelka. …More than once Hitchcock was reduced to subsequent work is already on display: at one borrowing money from his actors and crew in order to juncture, as the family gazes suspiciously upwards, continue shooting. Nonetheless, with the help of Alma the solid ceiling dissolves to one of glass, revealing Reville as his assistant director, he managed to get the their lodger’s obsessive pacing across the floor above. film completed. Balcon Most characteristic of all is was pleased with the the film’s moral ambiguity; result, remarking that it ordinary decent people are looked less like a shown relishing every detail German picture than an of the sex killings, yet eager American one, which to lynch any suspect on the Hitchcock took as high flimsiest of pretexts. praise. He and Alma Traces of Hitchcock’s stayed in Germany to German mentors were much make another film, a in evidence…heavy melodrama set in the brooding shadows and hills of Kentucky and oblique camera angles called (1926). This is the only abounded, and several sequences recall the Lang of Hitchcock feature of which no print seems to have Dr. Mabuse….The Lodger was released to ecstatic survived; according to its director, it was “a very bad reviews and enormous box-office success. “It is movie.” possible that this film is the finest British production Hitchcock returned to London as a young director of ever made,” wrote the critic of The Bioscope. promise. The Pleasure Garden had been cordially Overnight, Hitchcock fund himself hailed as the received by the critics, though not yet released. The foremost genius of British cinema. Mountain Eagle was yet to be shown. Meanwhile he If this seems excessive—The Lodger, though it began to work on what he always referred to as “the stand up well today, hardly looks like a towering first true Hitchcock movie.” The Lodger (1926) was masterpiece—it has to be taken in the context of the based on a novel by Mrs. Belloc Lowndes inspired by British films of the period. They were abysmal. Kevin the Jack the Ripper killings. A mysterious, taciturn Brownlow summed up British postwar silent movies young man takes rooms with a London family, who as “with few exceptions, crudely photographed; the gradually come to suspect him of being the Ripper. direction and editing were on the level of cheap revue, And so he is—at least in the original novel. But Ivor they exploited so-called stars who generally had little Novello had been signed to play the lead in the film, more than a glimmer of histrionic talent, and they and since it was unthinkable that the elegant young were exceedingly boring.” Against this dismal matinee idol should play a deranged killer, the ending background, Hitchcock’s innately cinematic vision— was changed. The Stranger, pursued through the American-trained, German-influenced—shone out streets by a baying, bloodthirsty crowd, proves to be with dazzling brilliance. not the Ripper but the brother of one of his victims, In 1926, Hitchcock and Alma Reville (who seeking to unmask his sister’s killer. He thus becomes had converted to Catholicism) were married. the first incarnation of that classic (Hitchcock, who loved to present himself as a figure, the wrongfully accused innocent, hounded and straitlaced sexual innocent, always claimed that they hunted by a self-righteous society. had both preserved strict premarital chastity.) Alma The Lodger also contains much else that continued to work closely with Hitchcock on his anticipates the later Hitchcock, including the first of films, often collaborating on the scripts, and the his celebrated brief onscreen appearances. (In time, marriage lasted, apparently without major strain, until this would become a teasing personal trademark; but his death fifty-three years later. Their only child, on this occasion it seems that another extra was Patricia, was born in 1928; she became an actress and needed to swell a scene or two and the director stood Hitchcock—PSYCHO—7

appeared in small roles in several of her father’s The film was hugely successful with both critics and pictures. public, and Hitchcock’s status as the foremost British With hindsight, and purely on the basis of The director seemed secure, which was just as well, since Lodger, Hitchcock’s aptitude for thrillers seems his next few pictures might easily have demolished a obvious. At the time, though, it apparently didn’t, lesser reputation for good. since none of his remaining six silent films was a From this low point in his career Hitchcock thriller…. was rescued by , now head of Dissatisfaction with uncongenial material, Gaumont-British at Shepherd’s Bush. Here he was along with the promise of bigger budgets and greater given a free hand (barring only the occasional tussle freedom, lured Hitchcock with his old enemy C.M. to a newly founded Woolf) to make subjects of company, British his own choosing, and International Pictures, launched himself into his being set up by John first great period: the Maxwell at Elstree. His unbroken run of six starting salary was masterly thrillers that £13,000 a year, which by brought him international 1929 had risen to fame and mapped out the £17,000, making him the territory of which he was highest-paid director in to become undisputed Britain. master. Hitchcock made a promising start at BIP with As early as 1925, Hitchcock had told a The Ring (1927)…the story was slight…but it was meeting of the London Film Society that “actors come lifted out of the ordinary by Hitchcock’s growing and go, but the name of the director should stay technical assurance and eye for significant detail. clearly in the mind of the audience. The name of …Blackmail (1929) has become something of a Hitchcock, at any rate, was certainly intended to do historical landmark as the first British talkie. It started so; he had always assiduously been courting the press, out, though, as a silent; despite Hitchcock’s urgings, and in 1930 set up a PR company, Hitchcock Baker John Maxwell was reluctant to invest in this new and Productions, whose sole function was to keep himself possibly ephemeral gimmick. Only when the silent in the public eye. Interviews and articles appeared Blackmail was nearly complete did he change his regularly in Film Weekly, World Film news, and so on, mind; the film would be “part talking” with sound building up the carefully fostered image of Hitch, the added to the final reel. Hitchcock was already one plump, solemn joker with a taste for the macabre. jump ahead; anticipating Maxwell’s decision, he had Manywriters have suggested that a less shot the whole film to allow for sound, making it amiable personality lurked behind the public façade relatively cheap and simple to produce two separate (Donald Spoto, indeed, devoted a whole book to the versions. The only serious problem was the star, Anny thesis). Charles Bennett, Hitchcock’s main Ondra, whose strong Polish accent hardly fitted the scriptwriter during the 1930s, described him as a ordinary London girl she was playing. Post-dubbing bully; and his predilection for putting his lead had yet to be devised, so an off-screen actress, Joan actresses through physical ordeals (both onscreen and Barry, spoke the dialogue while Ondra mouthed sometimes, as with Tippi Hedren in The Birds, on set) silently to the camera….Far from letting the new has given rise to charges of misogyny. His weakness medium inhibit him, Hitchcock seized the opportunity for practical jokes was famous…Hitchcock once bet a to experiment with subjective sound techniques well prop-man at Elstree L10 to spend a night in the studio ahead of their time….Blackmail also introduced the handcuffed to a camera; before departing, he poured favorite Hitchcock climax, a spectacular fall from a the man a brandy laced with a strong laxative…. high place, a public monument for preference. In this “Cinema,” Hitchcock once remarked, “is the case, it was the roof of the British Museum, through orchestration of shots.” It was also, for him at least, which the wretched blackmailer make his fatal plunge. the orchestration of the audience…. Hitchcock—PSYCHO—8

Manacles, from The Lodger onwards, are One of Hitchcock’s virtually single-handed something of a Hitchcock specialty, a vivid symbol of achievements was to raise the cinematic status of the the humiliating process of the law; but in The 39 Steps thriller to parity with the other main movie genres…. they serve mainly a source of humor and teasing Though still a British national (not until 1955 sexual innuendo, as when would he take out US Carroll, the first of citizenship), Hitchcock Hitchcock’s long line of had by now decided that maltreated cool blondes, his future, both personal tries to remove her and professional, lay in stockings while keeping America. In 1942, after Donat’s hand off her renting for a while, he and thighs. The film also Alma bought a house on marks the first appearance Bellagio Road in the Bel- of the McGuffin, Air district of Hollywood. Hitchcock’s term (A year later they also (borrowed from Angus bought a vacation house in MacPhail) for a thriller’s nominal motivating factor— the hills north of Monterey near Santa Cruz.) The secret plans, miracle ingredient, priceless jewelry; in Bellagio Road house remained their home for the rest short something that matters vitally to the protagonists of their lives….Hitchcock’s neatness and passion for and not at all to the audience. order were legendary. “Evil,” he once said, “is Drama, Hitchcock once suggested, is “life with disorder,” and his idea of happiness was “a clear the dull bits cut out.”… horizon, no clouds, no shadows. Nothing.” As far as For sheer entertainment, The Lady Vanishes he possibly could, he eliminated the unpredictable (1938) is certainly Hitchcock’s most accomplished from his life, not only in his working methods but in film of the decade….Now free from contractual everything he did. The family holidays were taken in obligations, Hitchcock visited Hollywood and, from the same places—New York, London, , and St. the numerous competing bids for his services, Moritz—and even in the same suites of the same accepted a contract from David O. Selznick, at that hotels, year after year. To some extent, this was part time the most powerful of the independent of the assiduously cultivated public persona; but many producers…. people, including Hitchcock himself, also ascribed it Much critical dispute has centered around the to genuine fear—of surprise, disorder, conflict, social respective merits of Hitchcock’s British and American disgrace, the police, the processes of law–of all the films. Robin Wood, firmly ensconces in the American things, in fact, which he packed into his movies. camp, dismissed the British films as “little more than “Under the invariably self-possessed and cynical ‘prentice work,” and a preference for them as surface,” observed Truffaut, “is a deeply vulnerable, “analogous to preferring A Comedy of Errors to sensitive and emotional person who feels with Macbeth.” To Roy Armes, this constituted “a particular intensity the sensations he communicates to profoundly unhistorical judgment,” Hitchcock’s’ his audience.”… British work being comparable to that of Pabst and Hitchcock returned to America in March 1944 Clair, “constantly exciting in its exploration of the and began working on the second of his films for cinema’s narrative potential and its expression of a Selznick. Freud, in suitably dilute form, was much in consistent set of moral values.”…Undoubtedly the vogue in Hollywood, and in Spellbound (1945), American films benefit immeasurably from Hitchcock, with Ben Hecht scripting, produced what Hollywood’s greater technical sophistication….For might be claim to be the first psychoanalytical some critics, though (and not only British ones), the thriller…. whole of Hitchcock’s American output represents Notorious (1946) also started out as a Selznick nothing but a lamentable decline…. project, but before shooting had commenced Selznick, deeply embroiled with the grandiose Duel in the Sun, sold the entire package to RKO, with Hitchcock Hitchcock—PSYCHO—9

taking over for the first time as his own producer, of Hitchcock’s appealing villains, is cultured, Relishing his increased independence and working charming, and far more sympathetic than the coldly with two of his favorite actors—Cary Grant and Ingrid censorious Devlin. As his mother, Leopoldine Bergman—he produced a film which, in general Konstantin inaugurates the gallery of monster mothers estimation, stands with as his that culminated in Pyscho—an element that enters finest work of the decade. Hitchcock’s films (as Donald Spoto pointed out) only Ben Hecht’s after the death of his own script traces patterns of mother in 1942. emotional manipulation Notorious, Douglas and betrayal. Devlin, a McVey wrote in Montage, government agent is “Hitchcock’s most (Grant), recruits Alicia completely, rigorously Huberman (Bergman), stylized film…and perfect daughter of a convicted in its stylization.” In one of Nazi spy, in Rio de the film’s most famous Janeiro. The two fall in moments, Hitchcock love, but Devlin, duplicates his virtuoso despising Alicia for her crane shot from Young and family background and Innocent. During a lavish former fast life, pushes party at the Sebastien her into marriage with house, Alicia plans to steal Sebastian (Claude down to the wine cellar , Rains), a prominent the key to which she has member of the Nazi previously purloined. circle. With Alicia’s Starting high on a landing help, Devlin penetrates overlooking the thronged the house and finds the entrance hall, the camera McGuffin—uranium, in swoops smoothly down, this case (a detail which past the elegant couples and caused Hitchcock to be the champagne-bearing placed for a time under servants, to where Alicia FBI surveillance). But stand with Sebastian Sebastien realizes that he has been betrayed, impelled welcoming their guests, and into a close-up of her by his formidable mother, he starts to poison Alicia. hand behind her back, which half opens to reveal the At the last moment Devlin breaks in and rescues her, one tiny vital item in the whole bustling scene—the leaving Sebastien compromised and at the mercy of cellar key…. his fellow Nazis. Either through luck or judgment, Selznick For François Truffaut, Notorious “is the very generally left Hitchcock alone—he once referred to quintessence of Hitchcock having “at once a him as “the only director I’d trust a picture with”—but maximum of stylization and a maximum of on occasion his interference proved disastrous….[in simplicity.” It was also, in William Rothman’s view, The Paradine Case]…. “the first Hitchcock film in which every shot is not Hitchcock returned to the United stated with only meaningful but beautiful….. his career at its lowest ebb in two decades. Not since The camera’s lush romanticism, for the first time, is Notorious had he achieved a major hit, and he seemed equal and constant partner to its wit, to have lost his bearings. From this nadir he launched elegance, and theatricality.” Much of the film, himself—as he had done in 1934—into the second of including Ted Tetzlaff’s soft lighting and sensuous his great periods. Perhaps his greatest; among the camera movements, takes its tone from Bergman’s eleven films he made between 1951 and 1960 are at warm, vulnerable performance. Claude Rains, another Hitchcock—PSYCHO—10

least five which most critics would agree in rating tune (Gounod’s “Funeral March of a Marionette”) among his finest work. made him s a national figure, better known than most The work of this period also consolidated movie stars. The Hitchcocl publicity machine soon Hitchcock’s pubic image as the Master of , developed into a whole industry; spinoffs from the TV the black humorist who transformed his own latent shows included short-story anthologies (Stories They anxieties into practical essays in applied terror, Wouldn’t Let Me Do on TV, and so forth), magazines, capturing his audiences through skillful appeal to the records, games, toys, and even an Alfred Hitchcocl universal fear of finding ourselves helplessly Fan club. entangled in events beyond our control or At the same time, Hitchcock’s reputation was comprehension. In this he was in tune with the also receiving a boost on a more elevated intellectual decade, insecure beneath its superficial complacency, plane. Serious critical opinion had largely tended to ready to see nameless menace lurking behind bland ignore him or to dismiss him as a presenter of skilled quotidian appearance. As Andrew Sarris (Film but trivial entertainments. In the 1950s, though, Culture, Summer, 1961) commented, “What has long Hitchcock became, with Hawks, one of the chief been most disturbing in Hitchcock’s films—the beneficiaries of the Cahiers school of criticism. A perverse ironies, the unresolved ambiguities, the mass of articles, culminating in Rohmer’s and switched Chabrol’s protagonists—now controversial study mark him as a and Truffaut’s book- pioneer in the length interview, modern idiom in confirmed which nothing is Hitchcock’s status as what it seem on the one of the great surface.”… cinematic auteurs and [Strangers on a fit subject for a Train, I Confess, critical exegesis. This Dial M for Murder, evidently afforded Rear Window, To him huge delight. To Catch a Thief, his numerous Marnie] By now, interviewers he was Hitchcock was probably the best-known film director invariably polite and forthcoming, rarely venturing the in the world, rivaled only (barring actor-directors like discourtesy of straight disagreement; at most, he Chaplin) by Cecil B. DeMille, one of the few whose would evade the issue or deflect the question into one names on a poster could attract an audience of his many well-polished anecdotes…. irrespective of the actors involved. But he was about Vertigo (1958) has become a classic. . . “I deal to become even better known, as he first major in nightmares” Hitchcock often said….Vertigo was Hollywood director to concern himself the last of the four films which Stewart made with wholeheartedly with television. In October 1955, the Hitchcock. Comparing them with the four starring first Alfred Hitchcock Presents as transmitted by CBS, Cary Grant, Victor Perkins noted Hitchcock’s habit of produced by his old associate Joan Harrison. The “casting Grant for films whose tones are series, and its successor The Alfred Hitchcock Hour predominantly light and in which Grant’s presence ran continuously until1965; of the 550-odd episodes, acts as our guarantee that all will turn out well. At the Hitchcock himself directed twenty. Much of their same time he centres his meaning on the moral huge success derived from the famous prologues and weakness of the hero’s disengaged attitude. In the epilogues, scripted by James Allardice and invariably Stewart films,,,,the tone is much darker, reflecting the delivered by Hitchcock himself straight to camera in disturbing ambiguities of the central personality. characteristic deadpan style. Stewart’s bemused detachment is seen as a mask These lugubrious performances preceded by his which thinly disguises a deep and dangerous caricature self-portrait and bouncily sinister signature involvement.” If Vertigo serves as a valedictory Hitchcock—PSYCHO—11

summation of Stewart’s Hitchcockian persona, North greatest living artists” (Jacques Leduc), doubts begin by Northwest (1959) doest he same for Grant. The to surface. “The greatest” is playing for high stakes— most accomplished of Hitchcock’s—or, probably, line Hitchcock up alongside Renoir, Satyajit Ray, anybody else’s—comedy thrillers, it triumphantly Ophuls, or Mizoguchi (to name only moviemakers), concludes the series of cross-country chase movies and at once a whole missing dimension becomes begun by The 39 Steps. evident. (It must be admitted, though, that any one of “I plunder my films for ideas, but in my those four would have made a fairly appalling hash of business self-plagiarism is hailed as style.” North by North by Northwest.) The famed control, the Northwest (made, under a one-picture deal, for MGM) premeditated, pre-edited exactitude of his working not only lifts ideas from its picaresque predecessors, it method, preclude something to which the creative reworks for laughs….Ernest Lehman, imperfection of less rigorous directors grants access— Hitchcock’s wittiest collaborator since John Michael something which Robin Wood defined (à propos Hayes, furnished a crisply sophisticated script whose Renoir) as “the sense of superfluous life.” ironies and thematic subtlety never for a moment …Truffaut observed that “the director who, impede our enjoyment. …The casting, right down to through the simplicity and the clarity of his work, is the smallest role, is faultless: James Mason as the the most accessible to a universal audience is also the suavest of villains; Eva Marie Saint as the duplicitous director who excels at filming the most complex and blonde; Jesse Royce Landis, unshakeably complacent subtle relationships between human in another monster-mother role (“You men aren’t beings….Hitchcock belongs….among such artists of really trying to kill my son, are you?” she inquires anxiety as Kafka, Dostoevsky, and Poe.” brightly of a pair of hit-men in an elevator); the ever- reliable Leo G. Carroll as a Dulles-like CIA boss. At two and a quarter hours, North by Northwest is Hitchcock’s longest film, but it never seems like it. … Although five times nominated for Best Director, Hitchcock never won an Oscar; in 1968 the Academy, perhaps slightly embarrassed by the omission, gave him a Thalberg Award “for production achievement.” Numerous other awards and honors were bestowed on him, especially in his later years, including the Légion d’Honneur and, in 1979, a Lifetime Achievement Award from the American Film Institute. In the New Year’s Honours List of 1980, he made a knight—Sir Alfred Hitchcock, KBE. Four months later he died quietly at home. Of kidney failure, at the age of seventy-nine. Hitchcock on Hitchcock. Edited by Sidney Gottlieb. If during the first half of his long cinematic U Cal Press, Berkley, LA, London, 1997. career Alfred Hitchcock received less than his critical What do you feel are the most important elements to due, that situation has been amply remedied; he has be considered in the establishment of mood on the now been more extensively written about, his work screen? analyzed in greater detail, than any other film director. AH: I think, to sum it up in one way, the risk you run …Hitchcock’s status as an auteur—despite his having in trying to get mood is the cliché, the shadow in the worked exclusively within the distorting pressures of room and what have you. I spend half my time the commercial Anglo-American cinema—is as avoiding the cliché, in terms of scenes. In North by secure as that of any director in the world; no one Northwest, the girl sends Cary Grant to a rendezvous could deny his films a consistent stylistic and thematic where we know an attempt will be made to kill him. vision. His technical expertise is immense. Yet when Now the cliché treatment would be to show him his admirers number him among “the work’s greatest standing on the corner of the street in a pool of light. filmmakers” (Maurice Yacowar) or even among “the The cobbles are washed by the recent rains. Cut to a Hitchcock—PSYCHO—12

face peering out of a window. Cut to a black cat Isn’t there sometimes a very fine line between a slithering along the bottom of a wall. Wait for a black setting that is most unusual and one that is credible to limousine to come along. I said no. I would do it in the audience? bright sunshine with no place to hide, in open prairie The basic principle to be observed is to be as life-like country. And what is the mood? A sinister mood. as one can—especially in my sort of material. I deal in There’s not a sign of where the menace can come fantasy. In other words, I don’t deal in slice-of-life from, but eventually it turns up in the form of a crop stories. My suspense work comes out of creating duster airplane. Some one inside the plane shoots at nightmares for the audience. And I play with an Cary Grant and he has nowhere to hide. audience. I make them gasp and surprise and shock them. When you have a nightmare, it’s awfully vivid Do you feel that lighting is perhaps the most if you’re dreaming that you’re being led to the electric important single element in the creation of cinematic chair. Then you’re as happy as can be when you wake mood? up because you’re relieved. It was so vivid. And that’s Motion picture mood is often thought of as almost really the basis of this attempt at realistic exclusively a matter of lighting, dark lighting. It isn’t. Mood is apprehension. That’s what you’ve got in the crop duster scene….

You have spoken of working with the production designer in the selection of locales during the scripting phase of a production. What is your primary consideration in the choice or setting for a particular sequence? A rule that I’ve always followed is: Never use a setting simply as a background. Use it one hundred percent.…In the crop duster sequence in North by Northwest, the crop duster is used as a weapon carrier. That is to say, someone in the plane shoots at Cary Grant; but this is not enough. If w are using a crop duster—then it must dust crops. In this particular case, the crops are the hiding place of Cary Grant. So I photography. don’t use a crop duster with only a gun. That’s not AH quotes enough. It must be used according to its true function. All background must function. “Cinema is the orchestration of shots.”

Certainly one of the most off-beat settings you’ve “I don’t believe in mystifying an audience. I believe in ever used was in that same film. The Mount Rushmore giving them all the information and then making them Memorial. sweat.” Yes, but unfortunately, I couldn’t us the Mount Rushmore Memorial to function according to my “I’m not interested in content. It disturbs me when established pattern. The authorities wouldn’t let me people criticize my films because of their content. It’s work on the faces at all. I had to work between them. I like looking at a still life and saying ‘I wonder wanted Cary Grant to slide down Lincoln’s nose and whether those apples are sweet or sour.’ Cinema is hide in the nostril. Then Grant has a sneezing fit, form.” while he’s in the nostril. That would have made the setting very functional. About showing detail: “If you free the spectator to choose, you’re making theater, not cinema.”

Hitchcock—PSYCHO—13

“I’d compare myself to an abstract painter. My 78/52 is comprehensive yet thrilling, a frame- favorite painter is Klee.” by-frame investigation with insights from Peter Bogdanovich, Guillermo del Toro, Jamie Lee Curtis, “Staircases are very photogenic.” Bret Easton Ellis and others. No stone is left unturned, with heaps of eye-opening revelations. So even eagle- About the cigarette put out in eggs– “to show my utter eyed Psycho fans will find new nuggets of trivia to dislike of eggs.” commit to memory. To celebrate 78/52’s release, we sat down with “You know, people say that you can cut a film and Philippe to talk about some of the insights put forth in make it go fast. I the film. Here are 10 things don’t believe that. you (probably) didn’t know Speed is about the shower scene. preoccupation. In The 1. Hitchcock made 39 Steps there was no Psycho because of the shower dead footage, so the scene audience’s absorption “When Truffaut asked creates the impression [Hitchcock] point-blank why of speed.” he wanted to make Psycho, Hitchcock replied, ‘I think the “I didn’t walk into murder in the bathtub, coming this business without out of the blue, that was about proper knowledge of it. I’ve been a technician; I’ve all’,” says Philippe. been an editor; I’ve been an art director; I’ve been a Everything else in the movie hinges on that writer. I have a feeling for all these people. I fill my scene, with the doc drawing attention to the visual responsibility to myself by the manner in which I rhymes that foreshadow it: shots of showerheads make films.” appear in the background; the slashing of window wipers in the rain presage the slashing of the knife in “Some films are slices of life. Mine are slices of the shower. “The movie never really achieves this cake.” kind of poetry again,” says Bret Easton Ellis. 2. The scene contains more layers of “We’ve substituted the language of the camera for voyeurism than you think dialogue.” In Hitchcock’s earlier thriller Rear Window (1954), Jeff () observes his “The more successful the villain, the more successful neighbours from his window; we observe him, the the picture.” voyeur, and so the observer becomes the observed. Psycho’s shower scene takes this idea to new levels. Oliver Lunn: 10 things you (probably) never knew First, the painting that masks Norman’s peep hole. It’s about the shower scene in Psycho (British Film called ‘Susanna and the Elders’ and it’s about men Institute, 2017) spying on a woman while she bathes. You’ll never look at the shower scene the same way “He removes the voyeuristic painting to again, says filmmaker Alexandre O. Philippe, whose become the voyeur looking in on the shower,” says new documentary, 78/52, lays bare the nuts-and-bolts Philippe. Add to that the male crewmembers above artistry of that scene from Hitchcock’s Psycho (1960). the shower, voyeurs out of frame. “There were all The doc’s title refers to the total number of these people above, just watching her, which I think is camera setups (78) and cuts (52) in the scene, which another interesting element of voyeurism – it’s very itself lasts a mere 45 seconds. It took a whole week to meta.” They watch her, Norman watches her, film (a third of the film’s shooting schedule), and it Hitchcock’s camera watches her, and of course, we was, as the new film shows, something of an watch her. obsession for the master of suspense. Hitchcock—PSYCHO—14

3. They used a casaba melon for the sound 180-degree shifts in viewpoint. “One of the huge of the stabbing reveals was John Venzon, one of the editors, talking When Hitch and his sound guy searched for about that moment when Tomasini [George Tomasini, the perfect stabbing sound, they didn’t turn to stock editor of Psycho] removed maybe four or five frames Hollywood effects. They turned to melons. They laid to give the impression she’s being slammed against out an epic spread the wall; you see the of every kind of hand out of focus, and melon you can then the next thing you imagine, until they see is she’s against the found that perfect wall,” explains Philippe. sound. Enter: the Aside from jump-cuts, casaba melon. This Hitch framed Leigh with melon sounds a huge expanse of denser, less hollow. curtain behind her, And, as they found, drawing our eye to the it sounded even empty space. “There’s more realistic when something that’s just not interspersed with a slab of steak. quite right. And you know that instinctively, you 4. They did 26 takes of the spinning shot know that that shot is off. Why all this empty space? emerging from Janet Leigh’s eye Well, we know why [laughs].” When the camera spins out of the plughole, 7. Janet Leigh’s was a dissolving to the iris of Janet Leigh’s eye, also cover girl spinning, you see an optical shot (Hitch resorted to was a 21-year-old Playboy cover this technique, where a single frame is held as girl when she landed the role of Janet Leigh’s body opposed to running in real time, because the double in the shower. One of the original Playboy technology wasn’t available yet). The camera pulls bunnies, Renfro had to strip down for Hitchcock and back, with the optical returning to the regular 24- Leigh to make sure she was a good match. She frame rate footage, and you see her eye shake slightly, worked for seven days on that single scene. And it’s the last flicker of life. her hand that you see clenching the curtain as the life Hitch made her do this 26 times. slowly drains from her limp body. After working with “Unfortunately all the outtakes had been destroyed,” Hitch, Renfro – a redhead, as it happens – starred in says Philippe. “We’ll never get to experience the 26 ’s first movie, Tonight for Sure takes that come out of her eye. 26 takes! They’ve all (1962). It’s her only acting credit. been destroyed.” 8. It changed moviegoing – in terms of 5. Janet Leigh took a breath in the only arriving, strictly, before the picture starts usable take for the same shot “It changed the very ritual of moviegoing,” In that same shot, Philippe explains: “Janet Philippe says, referring to the fact that Hitchcock Leigh took a breath in the one take that they could insisted viewers not enter the theatre after the picture use, and so to hide that, they had to cut back to the began. “That’s insane, that it even changes the way showerhead.” What’s more, the breath was only that we behave in relation to the silver screen.” spotted after production and therefore couldn’t be re- Peter Bogdanovich, talking in the doc, shot. But, as it is, returning to the showerhead with remembers attending the first press screening: “As nothing but the sound of running water, it’s arguably you went in, Hitchcock’s voice was blaring on loud more powerful than it would have been. speakers, saying: ‘No one will be allowed in after the 6. Hitchcock broke the rules of cinematic picture starts’.” Hitchcock said he did this because of grammar by using jump-cuts and 180 breaks the plot, because the leading lady was killed off a 78/52 zeroes in on a number of formal third of the way through. He didn’t want people innovations that broke with conventional cinematic whispering, ‘When is Janet Leigh coming on?’ grammar. Not least the jarring jump-cuts and dizzying Hitchcock—PSYCHO—15

9. They used Hershey’s chocolate syrup for Bloch had been inspired to write his potboiler (copies the blood of which Hitchcock reportedly bought up to keep the Is it food colouring? Watered down paint? end a surprise) by news reports about Ed Gein, the Pig’s blood?? None of the above. Google says they seemingly ordinary Wisconsin loner who was used Bosco chocolate syrup, which is close, but revealed to be a murderer and necrophile. Dubbed Renfro confirms the actual source. “They had a can of "the Wisconsin ghoul", Gein made ornaments and Hershey’s syrup, which was watered down, and that’s clothing from the skin of the dead and inspired a what they used for blood. But they had to dribble it legacy of fictionalised screen shockers, ranging from around me and on me.” You also hear Hitch explain the trashy Deranged to the epochal Texas Chainsaw that he made the film in black and white because the Massacre and Oscar-winning The Silence of the draining away of the blood would have been too Lambs. But it was Anthony Perkins's maternally “repulsive” in colour. Tell that to Gus van Sant. obsessed misfit in Psycho who most perfectly distilled 10. You think you see the knife penetrate the modern fear of the monster who looks just like skin because of one specific shot that was filmed in you. "My name is Norman Bates," sang British synth reverse combo Landscape in 1981, "I'm just a normal guy …" There’s one shot that you might have paused proving that Perkins's creation still had pop cachet two and pointed to as proof that Hitch showed a knife decades after his first appearance. penetrating skin (or fake skin). You even see blood as Dispute still rages as to the provenance and the knife goes in. In reality it didn’t go in. “They put a power of Psycho's notorious shower sequence, which little blood on the tip,” says Philippe, “and then put it has become perhaps the most iconic murder scene in against her belly button, and then shot it in reverse. the history of cinema. Designer 's That’s as close as it gets. But there’s never any actual preparatory storyboards so closely detail every special effect needed to show an actual wound. The moment of the sequence that some have suggested he body remains immaculate throughout the entire should share directorial credit with Hitchcock. Others sequence.” argue that it is Bernard Herrmann's stabbing score, Incidentally, this was how Hitch bypassed the with its screeching atonal strings, which packs the real censors’ scissors. “It’s exactly what Hitchcock told punch. them: No, you didn’t see this. You thought you did But it was the maestro's flair for carnivalesque but you didn’t. I didn’t do the things you told me not showmanship that made Psycho headline news – from to do. I was a good boy.” the unforgettably camp trailer in which Hitchcock led audiences around the "scene of the crime" before throwing back the shower curtain to reveal a screaming Vera Miles, to his much-publicised ruling that no one be allowed to enter the theatre once a performance of Psycho had begun. "Any spurious attempts to enter by side doors, fire escapes or ventilating shafts will be met by force," announced a cardboard lobby cut-out of Hitchcock, pointing sternly at his watch. "The entire objective of this extraordinary policy, of course, is to help you enjoy Psycho more." Its edgy exploitation aesthetic and taboo- Mark Kermode; “Psycho: the best of breaking "toilet flush" shot (even more controversial all time” (The Guardian 2010) than the shower scene) have meant Psycho forged a Author Robert Bloch, on whose novel Joseph template for the money-spinning slasher franchises Stefano's screenplay was based, described Alfred that still thrive – or fester? – today. It directly inspired Hitchcock's Psycho as embodying "the fear of the boy Halloween (which starred Janet Leigh's daughter, next door". The terror, for Bloch, lay in the fact that Jamie Lee Curtis) and Friday the 13th (in which the the killer "could be the person sitting next to you". murderous mother-son relationship is sneakily Hitchcock—PSYCHO—16

reversed), and spawned a string of sequels including a shooting in black-and-white to give the production a TV movie that brought Bates's legacy into the direct- vérité news-footage feel. Many viewers still insist that to-video age. the blood running down the plughole after Marion's Groaning artworks followed too, from Gus murder is bright red, but it is the power of their Van Sant's allegedly post-modern colour-copy imaginations that makes the brown chocolate syrup remake, to Douglas Gordon's puzzlingly feted seem so. After half a century of terror, Psycho is still installation , which simply slowed the ensuring that no one feels safe in the shower. appropriated film to a snail's pace. Hitchcock would never have been so pompous; he made Psycho fast The Wikipedia entry on Psycho is very well done. and cheap (it cost a mere $807,000) to entertain a It’s worth a look. mainstream audience, using his regular TV crew and

COMING UP IN BUFFALO FILM SEMINARS, SPRING 2021, SERIES 42 Mach 16 1969 Éric Rohmer My Night at Maud’s March 23 1972 Peter Medak The Ruling Class March 30 1978 Terrence Malick Days of Heaven April 6 1981 Karel Reisz The French Lieutenant’s Woman April 13 1989 Do The Right Thing April 20 1993 Jane Campion The Piano April 27 2000 Joel and Ethan Coen O Brother, Where Art Thou? May 4 1982 Ingmar Bergman Fanny and Alexander

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The Buffalo Film Seminars are presented by the State University of New York at Buffalo, with support from the Robert and Patricia Colby Foundation and the Buffalo News. Ozu—FLOATING WEEDS—17