Hitchcock Reconsidered.

Cafe Society
1

Okay. We have my mediocre Film Festival threads, we have lame (no offense) Favorite Hitchcock threads.

We need a serious discussion of Hitchock as a filmmaker and his contribution to the cinematic fabric.

I also just want to hear Cervaise, lissener and Eve talk about Hitch as they did Verhoeven. Don’t look at me like that!
So, Hitchcock first as an English “B” director, tenure under Selznick, “hack” in the late '40s and early '50s, Truffaut and the international awakening, etc.

Why did he use puppets like Hedren and Day and even Kelly to a certain extent? His english thrillers used standard characters from the time (think Myrna Loy), but the 1940s saw great actresses giving good performances. Bergman in Notorious (Spellbound gives a foreshadowing of the puppetry and subversive silliness to come) and Fontaine in Rebecca. Serious (at least ostensibly) films whose atmosphere had a bit to do with Selznick’s ferocity. Why did he use Doris Day like he did in The Man Who Knew Too Much?
The subversion of his own device, the MacGuffin is brilliant, too. Everything is a Mac Guffin. The Birds, for example. The birds are a MacGuffin, Melanie Daniels is a MacGuffin, Mitch Brenner is a MacGuffin. The movie is about, simply, pure hysteria and unbridled panic and fear. This resonates with Tandy’s subplot as well.

Psycho
The money, Marion, Norman, Mother, Arbogast are all MacGuffins!
One of his best films, an early one, Blackmail illustrates this well. The lead, Anny Ondra, is the MacGuffin. She exists solely to drive the plot, which is about how the world around her is a farce. Or is the world in which she finds herself the MacGuffin? This is another film about sheer hysteria. So is Rebecca. So why the changes of pace while creating movies all about the same thing?

The other interesting element is the layers he put into his films. On the surface, the film may be about Thorwald’s murders. Then it’s about Jeff and Lisa’s relationship. Then, once again, it’s about hysteria.

With the “cheesy” endings, I think that he is simply poking fun at the audience. By making you say “Boy, that was cheesy” after Cary Grant pulls Eva Marie Saint up from the mountain onto the cabin, or Jimmy Stewart says “Just went to pick up Hank!,” he has made the point that the whole movie was basically a cheesy vehicle for his themes of interpersonal relationships and hysteria. Basically, he says "You think that this was cheesy, but that Doris Day screaming “QUE SERA SERA!! was suspenseful?” while at the same time entertaining those viewers who thought it was a clever way to end a movie. Entertaining the masses and pissing off wannabe film critics. To quote lissener, Verhoeven is his bastard son. I think that that is the quote.:smiley:

Well?

2

That’s kind of the point of the whole concept of a MacGuffin, isn’t it? Hitchcock’s art is about evoking emotion and examining human motivation, not about lunatics and spies and thieves and jealous lovers; the actual specific characters and situations are of secondary importance, IMO.

3

Big Hitchcock fan here. I’d thought I’d quote a few posts I made re: The Man Who Knew Too Much a few years ago:

My take on this:

Hitchcock was more interested in the mechanics of his movies and manipulating his audiences than he was with credible character development or coherent plotting. The use of “puppets” more easily allowed the audience to project their own emotions onto the characters. I don’t doubt that’s why he refused to discuss motivation with his actors and famously said that they should be treated like cattle.

4

I used to love Hitchcock but now I think most of his films are enjoyable enough but little more.

IMO the “Mcguffin” is used too often as an all-purpose excuse for the lazy scripts and weak endings which are all too common in Hitchcock films. I don’t buy the idea that the plot doesn’t matter because the film is really about emotion and motivation. To me, at least, a film is better at evoking genuine emotions if it springs from a well-crafted plot with well-developed characters. In particular the ending is very important in producing a satisfying experience but also difficult to pull off. Most of Hitchcock’s films fail pretty consistently in this regard IMO.

For example NBNW has not one but two extremely contrived devices to end the film. Not only do the good guys come from nowhere just in the nick of time but you also have Cary Grant’s ad executive pulling off a feat of strength that would have stretched Hercules.

Not all of Hitch’s films share these faults. I think Notorious is a fine film and while I haven’t seen it in a while Rebecca may also be up there. Perhaps the Hitchcock needed the discipline of the 40’s studio system and became too powerful for his own good later on. Whatever the reason, his later films like NBNW, Vertigo and The Birds are too contrived and self-indulgent for my tastes.

5

I understand that. The question is why he underwent the changes of pace for essentially the same goals.

I think you might be missing the point. North By Northwest is supposed to be silly. By having the good guys show up, Hitchcock plays off cliches to advance the plot, as well as poke fun at the whole spy genre that he was basically responsible for. By rebelling at the ending, you seem to be falling for his device of unbridled silliness and high comedy for his denouments. How is Grant’s “Hercules” any sillier than the rest of the film? It is all a bit over the top, but still asks the question “What would YOU do, if this happened to YOU?! [/Crow T. Robot].” Silly, but not for Roger Thornhill.

I don’t think that NBNW is one of his best films, but it is still a good effort.

6

Well, I agree NBNW is a silly film and perhaps intended as such. I can enjoy it for what it is but when it is claimed as a towering masterpiece of world cinema I am skeptical.

To take another example Vertigo is certainly a serious film but the murder plot is one of the silliest I have ever seen in a film. I find it difficult to ignore this and focus on the alleged larger themes of male control over women, obsession etc. To me the very silliness of the basic plot distracts from those themes.

7

Non-coherant plotting? Are we talking about the same director (tubby British guy who usually appears in his own films)?

Hitchcock is a master of plotting. He is one of the few film director who fills holes in the plot long before they ever come up. No one is better at anticipating objections and removing them even before they can be raised. His plotting is the standard that directors need to live up to (and very often fail).

Take, for instance, Strangers on a Train. Raymond Chandler (a fairly good plotter himself :wink: ) insisted that there was no way the audience would believe that the metting between Bruno and Guy was accidental. Yet Hitchcock managed to direct things so that the question is never raised, because it’s absolutely clear by the way the characters are introduced that Bruno had no idea Guy was going to be there.

I’m not a big fan of Vertigo, but there is nothing wrong with the plotting. Since it is a “revealed” plot (the meaning is revealed in retrospect), the fact that it’s far-fetched has nothing to do with the plotting of the film. Take, for instance, “Les Diabloliques” (based on a novel by the same authors). That’s also a pretty far-fetched way to kill someone, too, but since you see it after the fact, it doesn’t matter. And it’s good plotting to know that in order to pull off this sort of thing, you need to reveal it at the end.

Hitchcock also works on multiple levels. While NBNW is one of his lightest movies, it also has some interesting subtexts about sexual attraction, mindless conformity, and homosexuality. Warped sexual obsession is a common theme in Hitchcock, even when the film seems to be about something else.

As far as the actresses are concerned, Hitchcock had trouble finding actresses he liked after Grace Kelly left Hollywood. But I think Doris Day acquitted herself well, and Tippy Hedren, though limited, was just fine in “Marnie” and “The Birds.”

I personally think Hitchcock’s best and richest films were in the 50s and 60s. “Strangers,” “Rear Window,” “Vertigo,” NbNW, Psycho, and “The Birds,” are the sign of a mature artist at the height of his powers.

8

I don’t think that it is a towering masterpiece.

Vertigo, however, is another case entirely. The point of that murder plot was an illustration and reflection on Hitchock’s own use of puppets. The puppet connection, so to speak. I believe that the entire film is in a nonexistent frame, and is a visual metaphor for Scottie’s death. He died after falling off the roof in the beginning of the film.

9

I think there’s misconception of what is and isn’t a McGuffin.

Hitchcock says that McGuffin is the “thing the characters care about but the audience doesn’t.”

NO! Don’t confuse a McGuffin with a red herring! The money may be a McGuffin, but the Mother is a red herring, mis-directing the audience’s suspicions. The viewers certainly care about Marion, and about Norman (a neat trick that gets reversed), and about Arbogast.

Examples of McGuffins would be the uranium in NOTORIOUS. Hitch himself said, it could have been industrial diamonds. My favorite example of a McGuffin is the mathematical formula in TORN CURTAIN (not a very good film, but a good example of a McGuffin!) … it’s a mathematics formula, for cryin’ out loud, that the audience can’t possible care about. But the character does.

Well, sure, if you get down to the bottom that way, you might as well say that MACBETH is about hysteria, too, as is KING LEAR. Reduced to that level, there’s nothing new under the sun. See: What are the seven basic literary plots?

10

The definition I had often heard was something the characters cared about that existed solely to drive the plot. Under those definitions, Mother would be a MacGuffin.

11

Interestingly enough, this showed up in my inbox this morning.

12

The briefcase in Pulp Fiction was kind of a tribute to the idea of the McGuffin.

13

. . . just by way of a pretty clear definition by example.

14

My point is that Hitchock subverted the concept to include less obvious points as MacGuffin. In my opinion.

15

You’ll have to restate or elaborate, Ilsa; I don’t get what you mean.

16

I think “existed solely to drive the plot” is not a very clear definition. Almost EVERYTHING in a movie exists solely to drive the plot. Every character, every setting, everything exists solely to drive the plot.

The McGuffin is more specific than that. In GONE WITH THE WIND, for instance, your definition would say that “Tara” (the planatation) is a McGuffin: something the characters care about that exists solely to drive the plot. I don’t think so. You couldn’t replace Tara with an old family necklace, or great-grandpappy’s papers, without totally changing the movie.

A McGuffin can be interchanged without really changing anything. If Cary Grant didn’t find uranium in the basement of Claude Rain’s house in NOTORIOUS, but found secret papers, it wouldn’t matter one bit to the movie. In NORTH BY NORTHWEST, what is the bad guy smuggling? Leo G. Carroll doesn’t even say, he just says something like, “Oh, call it state secrets” and it’s on microfilm. THAT’s a McGuffin. If Frodo didn’t have a magic ring but had a magic hat or a magic scroll, it wouldn’t matter.

In PSYCHO, if you replace the stolen money with stolen diamonds or secret industrial plans, it wouldn’t matter, and so that’s a McGuffin. But if you replaced the Mother with a second-cousin, or a store clerk, or a janitor, it makes a helluva difference to the movie. That’s why the Mother ain’t no McGuffin.

17

And as far as the mother in Psycho existing SOLELY to drive the plot, well, um, no; she also existed as a classic red herring, as pointed out above. Disqualifies her as a McGuffin on a technicality.

What I like about Psycho is that–being a comedy, and perhaps even a comedy about Hitchcock films and audience expectations–is that the McGuffin, insofar as there is one, is constantly shifting. First it’s the money, for example, but Hitchcock pulls the rug out from underneath the audience (giggling, no doubt) by tossing the McGuffin AND the protagonist in the first part of the film. This is pretty clearly a joke on the audience, as is the mother’s true identity, etc.

18

I have to heartily disagree, CK, even though I LOVED you in The Philadelphia Story.

To say everything in a movie exists solely to drive the plot is to miss the point. You’re talking about it from the audience perspective, and I think the definition is more about the purpose of the object within the movie. The bed in Janet Leigh’s motel room doesn’t exist “solely to drive the plot.” in the first place. In the second, how does that apply to films that are not plot driven?

19

My understanding has always been that the MacGuffin wasn’t an intellectual concept ot story element. It was merely a way of describing elements that required no effective exposition because “who cares”. So things became MacGuffins in retrospect. Take C K Dexter Haven’s Torn Curtain example. Had Hitchcock gone to the trouble of getting a “real” formula, how would that have enhanced the movie.

I saw Psycho recently and my regard for it plummeted. I had totally forgotten the unforegivable crap at the end. What the hell was he thinking and why do reviewers conveniently fail to mention it?

20

I think it’s drawing a long bow to think that every physical object should serve to drive the narrative but write a script where every action or line of dialogue doesn’t and you’ll be doing rewrites.

As to CK I’ve always thought “To hardly know him is to know him well”