Hitchcock's Appetites

McKittrick, Casey. "Epilogue." Hitchcock’s Appetites: The corpulent plots of desire and dread. New York: Bloomsbury Academic, 2016. 159–163. Bloomsbury Collections. Web. 28 Sep. 2021. <http://dx.doi.org/10.5040/9781501311642.0011>. Downloaded from Bloomsbury Collections, www.bloomsburycollections.com, 28 September 2021, 08:18 UTC. Copyright © Casey McKittrick 2016. You may share this work for non-commercial purposes only, provided you give attribution to the copyright holder and the publisher, and provide a link to the Creative Commons licence. Epilogue itchcock and his works continue to experience life among generation Y Hand beyond, though it is admittedly disconcerting to walk into an undergraduate lecture hall and see few, if any, lights go on at the mention of his name. Disconcerting as it may be, all ill feelings are forgotten when I watch an auditorium of eighteen- to twenty-one-year-olds transported by the emotions, the humor, and the compulsions of his cinema. But certainly the college classroom is not the only guardian of Hitchcock ’ s fl ame. His fi lms still play at retrospectives, in fi lm festivals, in the rising number of fi lm studies classes in high schools, on Turner Classic Movies, and other networks devoted to the “ oldies. ” The wonderful Bates Motel has emerged as a TV serial prequel to Psycho , illustrating the formative years of Norman Bates; it will see a second season in the coming months. Alfred Hitchcock Presents and The Alfred Hitchcock Hour are still in strong syndication. Both his fi lms and television shows do very well in collections and singly on Amazon and other e-commerce sites. And as I have learned many times over, grandparents and parents growing up in the 1940s through the 1960s love telling their children about their fi rst time watching Psycho ’ s shower scene and about their deep distrust of birds after cringing through his follow-up. The year 2012 saw the release of two Hitchcock biopics that were reasonably successful, both critically and commercially — one in wide cinematic release and the other as a made-for-TV movie on HBO. The two fi lms, Hitchcock and The Girl , focus on the making of Psycho and the Hitchcock-Hedren relationship during The Birds and Marnie , respectively. I use “ biopic ” advisedly because each covers a very small section of Hitchcock ’ s life and work (more a “ slice of life ” than a “ piece of cake, ” perhaps, and slices that should not necessarily be extrapolated), and The Girl especially is arguable in its status as a biopic in that it privileges Hedren ’ s point of view over her director ’ s. I would like to end this book with a brief consideration of these two fi lms and how they will potentially help shape the public memory of Hitchcock, especially in light of his appetites, which are both the overarching concern of this book and the focus of the biopics, albeit in quite different ways. Hitchcock was produced by Fox Searchlight and released in November 2012. Directed by Sacha Gervasi, a fi rst-time feature director, the fi lm HHitchcock.indbitchcock.indb 115959 228-04-20168-04-2016 112:41:172:41:17 160 HITCHCOCK’S APPETITES stars Anthony Hopkins as Alfred Hitchcock, Helen Mirren as wife Alma, and Scarlett Johanssen as Janet Leigh, with a wonderful supporting cast including, among others, Jessica Biel as Vera Miles, Toni Collette as longtime collaborator and assistant Peggy Robertson, and an impeccable James D’ Arcy as Anthony Perkins. The screenplay was written by John J. McLaughlin, who used Stephen Rebello ’ s book Alfred Hitchcock and the Making of Psycho as source material. The fi lm opens with Hitchcock ’ s reluctant consideration of Robert Bloch ’ s bestselling novel Psycho for his next movie. He has just come off the wildly successful North by Northwest , which he made for MGM, and he faces still one more fi lm as a contractual obligation to Paramount. The fi lm takes us through Hitch ’ s growing fascination with the story, and his various struggles with Paramount and the censoring arm of Geoffrey Shurlock ’ s enforcement of the Production Code to get Psycho made, his marital struggles— in terms of their budgetary crises and Alma ’ s extramarital interests — and his usual battles with food, drink, and blonde leading ladies. The fi lm ending is straight out of Hollywood: Alma recommits to the Hitchcock marriage and collaboration, Hitch creates a wildly successful fi lm, and Janet Leigh escapes with only minor trauma. The most interesting thing about the fi lm from a narrative perspective is its beginning with a reenactment of serial killer Ed Geins ’ s murder of his brother (who has just called him a Mama ’ s Boy), and the interspersed passages throughout the fi lm that dramatize Hitchcock ’ s fantasized interactions with Ed Gein. While these fantasies seem to read as moments when the director is trying to get inside the head of his next lead character, there’ s a comic reversal that takes place, which puts Hitchcock on the analyst couch and Gein in the place of therapist, and we come to realize that Hitch ’ s creation has in turn begun to probe the director ’ s own dark thoughts about his mother, about sexuality, and about aggression. The Girl — a Warner Brothers-BBC-HBO collaboration— picks up almost exactly where Hitchcock leaves off, chronologically speaking. Written by Gwyneth Hughes, who used Donald Spoto ’ s Spellbound by Beauty as its source material, and directed by Julian Jerrold, The Girl features Sienna Miller as Tippi Hedren, Toby Jones as Hitchcock, Imelda Staunton as Alma, and an impressive supporting cast of Conrad Kemp ’ s Evan Hunter, Penelope Wilton ’ s Peggy Robertson, and Carl Beukes ’ s Jim Brown. The movie debuted on HBO on October 20, just two weeks before the theatrical release of Hitchcock . The fi lm takes us from the discovery (by Alma) of Tippi Hedren, her subsequent casting, all the way through the productions of both The Birds and Marnie . As mentioned above, the fi lm champions Hedren ’ s point of view, while Hitchcock is presented as the fi lm ’ s principal antagonist — a man desperate for the love and attentions of Hedren and sadistically cruel to her when these feelings HHitchcock.indbitchcock.indb 116060 228-04-20168-04-2016 112:41:172:41:17 EPILOGUE 161 are not returned. It is a fi lm about the abuse of power and the psychological trauma such abuse infl icts, particularly when the abuser is a rich white man who is universally loved and respected, and never questioned. The interpretation of Alfred Hitchcock ’ s character is markedly different in each fi lm. Hopkins ’ s Hitchcock is something of an overgrown child, an indulgent imp, given to late night caviar binges and secreting liquor in magazine stands, and Mirren portrays Alma as an aggressive, savvy writer, networker, and perhaps most intriguingly, as a nanny of sorts to her husband — the one with the power to bestow foie gras and take it away. Their sparring is fun, superfi cially wounding, and indicative of a comfortable familiarity, and a mutual ability to provoke and inspire. Hopkins studied hard and well for the part, replicating Hitchcock ’ s awkward mannerisms, his tendency to gulp down drink, whether wine or brandy, and his delight in feeding delicious crumbs to the media. Toby Jones ’ s Hitchcock is more reserved and sullen, more malicious and nasty in his pursuit of an intended effect, whether from wife, would-be lover, or underling. Imelda Staunton ’ s Alma is more passive than Mirren ’ s, more resigned to Hitchcock ’ s fl aws than combative about them, and ultimately a much sadder woman. If Hopkins and Mirren engage in sparring of wits, Jones and Staunton are often out for blood, Who ’ s Afraid of Virginia Woolf -style. In Hitchcock, we see a man bewitched by food and by women. In fact, he is eating in the majority of scenes in which he is featured. The Girl ’ s Hitch is almost never seen eating, but almost always drinking heavily; two scenes portray a stuporously drunk Hitchcock, who is fi lled with frustrated desire (mostly for Hedren and perhaps a little for Jim Brown) and self-loathing. All in all, The Girl has the stamp of Spoto ’ s recriminations on it; it portrays Hitchcock as defeated by his compulsions and dangerous to those under his care. Hitchcock, on the other hand, has been justifi ably accused of tidying up the messier bits of biography but, to its credit, it depicts how his appetites and his artistic drive fed one another. I applaud The Girl for making visible a story of exploitation and abuse that had been papered over by so many layers of denial, by power-saturated conspiracies of silence, and fear of reprisals in an environment historically hostile to women. Implicitly argued in this movie is that artistic genius and immense power do not exempt one from moral culpabilities, that one ’ s greatness does not license lechery or deep injury. Yet, by and large, The Girl suggests that Hitchcock ’ s sadism toward women was something he was both conscious and unrepentant of — that his actions toward females came from a fundamental place of wishing them harm and humiliation. Born a decade or so after The Birds , I can only speculate. Yet, I fi nd it very hard to believe that, in regard to fi lming the upstairs bird attack with Hedren, throughout what would have to have been one of the most exhilarating days of shooting, Hitchcock HHitchcock.indbitchcock.indb 116161 228-04-20168-04-2016 112:41:172:41:17 162 HITCHCOCK’S APPETITES remained immobile in his director ’ s chair, leering and seething with hatred at Hedren, rather than engaging with the shifting camera setups, the diffi culties in preserving continuity, and the other similar wonderful technical challenges presented by the scene.

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