Auteur List: Alfred Hitchcock - Discussion and Defenses

[zedz]

Yes. I think the problem with Spellbound is that the importance of this angle is pushed so hard by the script (which desperately wants the psychoanalysis to be so much more than a McGuffin) that it all comes off as incredibly silly and overdetermined (as in the dream sequence that plays like how an enthusiastic but dim undergraduate imagines literary symbolism works). In other psychologically-inflected Hitchcock films, that stuff tends to be unfussily tidied away as economically as possible.

[Rayon Vert]

Specific titles escape me, but it seems to me I've come across a number of films in this period of Hollywood (40s) that feature psychoanalysis/psychiatry (pretty much one and the same at this moment in time). I don't know if Spellbound was an initiator or just part of the wave. This article discusses the trend.

I think I put Spellbound somewhere near the bottom of my top 20. Atmosphere and a very good Bergman make this one still enjoyable to me, despite the film's many flaws.

[Shrew]

Run down on a couple silents.

Pleasure Garden—A pulpy mess of a film that feints in many different directions, but never hits. However, the first five minutes are fantastic. Montage, subjective “gaze” shots, dry asides, “blonde” as performance—all the Hitchcock highlights are there. From the production stories, it seems this opening nightclub sequence was some of the last stuff filmed, while location shooting that makes up a good chunk of the film’s last half was first. The gap in confidence shows. Also, this features what must be Hitchcock’s least suspenseful murder sequence lacking practically any build-up. Also also, the villain is a drip who looks more like a waiter or police inspector than a possible love interest, let alone murderer/raving maniac.

Lodger—Not much to add here except that it’s great and Novello hits exactly the right level of camp/creepiness/elfin handsomeness to make both a believable love interest and murderer. I’m kind of surprised the “kiss” sequence doesn’t come up more often in discussions of “the gaze” #notallhitchcocks

And quick discussion question: does the imposed ending improve or lessen the film? I’m in the former camp, as you get a nice demonstration of how similar romantic and murderous obsessions can look.

Downhill—This is Hitchcock’s most stylish silent, but good god is Novello’s source material dumb. Zedz noted earlier how the later Manxman avoids some melodramatic pitfalls through clever staging, and here’s where Hitch may have learned the lesson. The first sequence, wherein a waitress pins her undefined “trouble” on Novello’s poor Roddy because he’s richer than his guilty friend, does actually elevate the material. The girl tells her story in a stunning overlay of images upon her head, all scenes we’d previously seen but re-edited in a sinister light. There’s also a great tracking shot right before of the boys approaching the headmaster.

However, it all goes----wait for it----downhill. In the second sequence, Roddy gets a surprise windfall inheritance, marries a golddigger, then has everything stolen from him. This all plays out in tedium, with no attempt to make the sequence of events more exciting. Instead, Hitchcock fills in the edges with humor, but even the good jokes (Novello appears first to be a waiter, then we pull back to see he’s in a play’s chorus line) don’t make up for the dismal plotting. There are nice touches in the last sections (the nightclub in the cold light of day, the fever dream), but the connective tissue is increasingly lacking and it’s had to root for a hero whose noble flaw is stupidity.

Downhill also gives Rope a run for the title of queerest film in Hitchcock’s filmography, but it also has the fun distinction of being one of his most misogynistic. Seriously, the women in this in film (except, as always, Mother) are all cruel vamps who want to suck our hero dry, when all he really wants is to play rugby with the boys. In the nightclub scene, women even become objects of horror and revulsion (though at first glance I thought the rather mannish woman Roddy tries to confide in was a transvestite, which would explain Roddy’s initial appeal). It’s easy to read this as Novello lashing out/working out issues with what I assume was his predominantly female fan base, and it’s weird that no one seemed to take issue with this (I assume—anyone knowledgeable about British criticism history know what the reaction to this film was like?).

Champagne—I do not care for Betty Balfour, and by the looks of this film I doubt Hitchcock did either. The best things are the recurring sinister point of view shots of Balfour filmed through a glass and the “leaning” ship. Honestly, I’ve forgotten near everything else.

[domino harvey]

Specific titles escape me, but it seems to me I've come across a number of films in this period of Hollywood (40s) that feature psychoanalysis/psychiatry (pretty much one and the same at this moment in time). I don't know if Spellbound was an initiator or just part of the wave. This article discusses the trend.

You see it a lot in noirs-- for me the title I always think of is Mate's the Dark Past, which is so overblown in its psychoanalysis that it beggars belief how anyone could ever have taken it seriously. But there were a lot of great titles from the post-war period that exploited fears of psychoanalysis-- the Snake Pit, Whirlpool, and the Three Faces of Eve all being quality examples.

The trend pretty much died by the time Huston did his Freud biopic in the early 60s, and that film exhibits the worst tendencies of misunderstanding and oversimplifying Freud's theories while also providing a terrific finale wherein Montgomery Clift's Freud gets absolutely slaughtered at-length by his peers. It's a brief but wonderful examination of anti-intellectualism and a moment fully in the spirit of the Story of Louis Pasteur in its misplaced outrage, and it's too bad Huston didn't start the film there rather than ending with it.

[Black Hat]

Man there's few things more frustrating than wanting to participate in these lists but not getting around to watching or in the case of Hitch rewatching what you want.

Domino, just to confirm you said Saturday morning is the absolute latest to submit?

[domino harvey]

Yep, whenever I wake up (prob ~10 AM EST)

[TMDaines]

Presume I'm not the only who assumed the watching period was inclusive of November 5th, i.e. deadline of 23:59 5th November.

[domino harvey]

Oh my God, the first post says the 5th not the fourth. Okay, so lists are due no later than Sunday morning then. Wow, where did I get the fourth from? Sorry for the confusion

[zedz]

Oh my God, the first post says the 5th not the fourth. Okay, so lists are due no later than Sunday morning then. Wow, where did I get the fourth from? Sorry for the confusion

The only thing for it is to build an effigy of you, parade it around the neighbourhood asking for money, and then burn it on a bonfire.

[Dr Amicus]

OK - actually managed some viewing!

The 39 Steps - I'd watched this 30 years ago and thought it was OK, but no more than that. However as with a recent rewatch of Lady Vanishes, this time it really clicked as a gloriously entertaining romp - the plot barely makes sense, but somehow that doesn't seem to matter. And Donat makes a great lead.

The Trouble With Harry - 30 years down the line, this made a similar impression to last time. Quite fun in places, dips a bit in the middle (the sequence with the art collector...) - on the whole a bit average. The Blu Ray is nice though.

The Man Who Knew Too Much (British) - Similar to 39 Steps and Lady Vanishes in that this is brisk and to the point. It makes an interesting companion piece to the 1960 film The Siege of Sidney Street (Berman & Baker), another (fanciful) restaging of the climactic events.

[HJackson]

Haven't been keeping tabs on this thread so it's too late to go back and watch it again to give a proper defense, so I'll just concede it's a weird eccentricity, but I love Spellbound and it will either be first or second on my list with Rear Window. Like Feego I don't take the psychoanalysis stuff seriously at all and it just plays like a great romance and mystery for me. I'm in love with Ingrid Bergman and I think the naff psychoanalysis twist on the Hitchcock thriller keeps this one stuck in my mind much more clearly than Notorious, for example, which I never took any particularly great pleasure from. The Dali dream sequence is of course a part of the whole crazy mix but I don't think it justifies the film any better on its own than all of the other stuff I think the film has going for it - a great score, Peck's sleepwalk with the blade, the really nasty flashback etc.

[dustybooks]

Speaking of that switchblade Spellbound does boast, in my opinion, one of the most beautiful of Hitchcock's movie posters.

[domino harvey]

Wow. I've never seen that before but I agree, that's a beautiful poster!

[Lemmy Caution]

I rather like Spellbound. It's a real fun/interesting premise.
Was hoping to rewatch it, but no idea where it's stored, and had workers redecorating the past few days, so today it was a challenge just finding my razor.

[Feego]

Speaking of that switchblade Spellbound does boast, in my opinion, one of the most beautiful of Hitchcock's movie posters.

Yes, it's a lovely poster. It was also used by Intrada as the cover for their re-recording of the soundtrack a few years ago:

[domino harvey]

Okay, list submission will close no earlier than 10 AM EST. An incredible 36 lists have been submitted so far... but don't you want to live in a world where the Hitchcock List gets at least 39 though? So submit your list and make the dream a reality!

[Lemmy Caution]

At least 37 . . .

[domino harvey]

Okay, so my Sunday morning's shot in the best way: 41 lists have been submitted! Voting closed, results soon

EDIT Results will be posted this evening

[domino harvey]

THE ALFRED HITCHCOCK LIST: FEATURES

01 Vertigo (1958) 39 (13)
02 Rear Window (1954) 37 (8)
03 Psycho (1960) 39 (4)
04 North by Northwest (1959) 33 (3)
05 Shadow of a Doubt (1943) 36 (2)

06 Notorious (1946) 33 (1)
06 Strangers on a Train (1951) 36 (3)
08 the Lady Vanishes (1938) 31 (2)
09 the 39 Steps (1935) 32
10 the Birds (1963) 27 (2)

11 Rebecca (1940) 25
12 Rope (1948) 25
13 the Wrong Man (1956) 22
14 Marnie (1964) 16 (1)
15 Dial ‘M’ For Murder (1954) 18 (1)

16 To Catch a Thief (1955) 16
17 Foreign Correspondent (1940) 18
18 Saboteur (1942) 15
19 Frenzy (1972) 18
20 Blackmail (1929) 17

21 Suspicion (1941) 14
22 the Lodger: A Story of the London Fog (1927) 16
23 Sabotage (1936) 13
24 Young and Innocent (1937) 11
25 the Man Who Knew Too Much (1934) 10


ALSO RANS
Lifeboat, Stage Fright, the Trouble With Harry, the Man Who Knew Too Much (1956), I Confess, Under Capricorn, Family Plot, Spellbound (1), the Ring, Secret Agent, Mr and Mrs Smith, the Manxman, Rich and Strange, Torn Curtain

ORPHANS
Easy Virtue, Murder, the Paradine Case

KEY First number following feature is the total number of lists (out of 41 submitted) the film appeared on. The number in parenthesis is the number of lists with the film ranked Number One




THE ALFRED HITCHCOCK LIST: SHORTS AND TELEVISION WORK

01 Lamb to the Slaughter (1958 AHP S3E28)
02 One More Mile to Go (1957 AHP S2E28)
03 Arthur (1959 AHP S5E01)
04 Breakdown (1955 AHP S1E07)
05 Bang! You’re Dead (1961 AHP S7E02)

06 Wet Saturday (1956 AHP S2E01)
07 Back For Christmas (1956 AHP S1E23)
08 Incident at a Corner (1960 Startime)
09 Four O’Clock (1957 Suspicion)
10 the Case of Mr Pelham (1955 AHP S1E10)
10 Poison (1958 AHP S4E01)


ALSO RANS
Revenge (AHP S1E01)

ORPHANS
Bon Voyage, Dip in the Pool (AHP S3E35), (Psycho Trailer)

[domino harvey]

My Lists (No Orphans on either, that’s a first!):

FEATURES
01 North by Northwest
02 To Catch a Thief
03 Rebecca
04 Rear Window
05 Dial ‘M’ For Murder
06 Psycho
07 Saboteur
08 Strangers on a Train
09 Vertigo
10 the 39 Steps
11 Stage Fright
12 Lifeboat
13 Suspicion
14 Rope
15 the Birds
16 Frenzy
17 Notorious
18 Shadow of a Doubt
19 I Confess
20 Family Plot

SHORTS
There was so much great discussion and participation in this thread, but we didn’t end up talking about Hitchcock’s TV work much. I’ll try to get the ball rolling a bit by justifying my inclusions and commenting a bit on the other titles that made it

01 Arthur As I said at the outset, it’s probably the most twisted thing Hitchcock ever made, and my tastes with his TV work either gravitate towards the cheeky “Can I get away with this” black comedies or the exercises in style. This is the former.

02 One More Mile to Go And this is the latter. A completely gratuitous show of Hitchcock’s skill, and a lovely piece of noir where the protagonist’s undoing is the unflappable helpfulness of those he encounters.

03 Back for Christmas Just a wonderful sick joke, with John Williams (who is in a lot of these Alfred Hitchcock Presents episodes!) giving a hilarious comic turn as the henpecked husband who must endure his wife’s indignities one last time.

04 Incident at a Corner A perverse telefilm in which the family of an elderly crossing guard wrongfully accused of having an inappropriate relationship with little girls is first outraged at the unfair nature of the claim and then proceed to treat everyone else they meet and accuse in the same fashion they were treated. It’s almost too ironic and neat, but Hitchcock really sells it with the “happy” finale, in which it is revealed not a single one of these people learned a goddamn thing from their experience.

05 Bang! You’re Dead Half of the episode is among the tensest things Hitchcock’s ever done (and every few minutes he ratchets up the scenario to gloriously squirm-inducing heights), with a premise that is still all too relevant: a Westerns-obsessed little boy takes his Uncle’s gun, thinking it a realistic toy. He then proceeds to add more and more real bullets to the chamber as he goes about his play amongst an unsuspecting public. But every single moment Billy Mumy isn’t on screen is sheer torture as we get tone-deaf cocktail parents and utterly false family patter. The ending is also far too anticlimactic, especially considering how wound-up Hitchcock made the situation. But man, the parts that work just work so well.

Apologies to those who picked them, but several of the episodes that made the cut are pretty weak: the Case of Mr Pelham is the only flat-out awful one, uncinematic and weirdly padded for an episode that apparently adapted an entire novel. How are you going to cast Tom Ewell and then not make the ep a comedy? Four O’Clock and Breakdown are basically variations on the same structure and idea, and I think endless internal narration is one of the most annoying things imaginable, though of the two I’ll give the edge to Four O’Clock for its delightful narrative rearrangement after the first act. Wet Saturday is solid though the episode lacks a strong finish, but the windup is fun. I didn't remember I had already seen Dip in the Pool and Poison til I sat down to watch them again-- neither is bad, just forgettable. Lamb to the Slaughter and Also Ran Revenge are good ideas in summary (and memory) but never work as full episodes in the moment (and I'm clearly in the minority on Lamb!).

EDIT: Oh, I almost forgot to mention: Thank you to every single contributor for not trying to "reclaim" Topaz by voting for it

[knives]

Thanks for all your hard work. Sad to see Lifeboat off the list, but that's life.

[swo17]

Nice work! I ordered the Madman set at the start of the project and it only just barely arrived to me, so my list was compiled following a marathon viewing yesterday based on first impressions. My lists:

01 Vertigo
02 Dial 'M' for Murder
03 Notorious
04 Shadow of a Doubt
05 Strangers on a Train
06 The Lady Vanishes
07 Stage Fright (also ran)
08 The Wrong Man
09 Frenzy
10 Blackmail

01 Lamb to the Slaughter
02 Wet Saturday
03 One More Mile to Go
04 Dip in the Pool (orphan)
05 Revenge (also ran)

[Mr Sausage]

Here's my list:

1. Psycho
2. North by Northwest
3. Vertigo
4. The Birds
5. Notorious
6. Rope
7. Frenzy
8. Strangers on a Train
9. Rear Window
10. To Catch a Thief
11. Dial M For Murder
12. The Lady Vanishes
13. Shadow of a Doubt
14. Rebecca
15. Marnie
16. Suspicion
17. Stage Fright
18. Saboteur
19. Torn Curtain
20. Foreign Correspondent

I don't know what this says about me, but of my top ten, six are childhood favourites and my foundational Hitchcocks--the ones I built my fandom on (1-4, 6, 9). Psycho will always be the most unsettling and horrific Hitchcock, the one that unnerves me the most. It is an incredible, powerful movie. So much so that even though I spoiled it for myself meticulously (reading everything on it I could in the horror film books in the library, and even reading the ugly, worthless novel) as a substitute for actually being able to see it, its grip on me was still iron tight when I finally got my opportunity.

I've seen only a handful of the British films, and of those only The Lady Vanishes impressed me.

I had a lot of fun with this. I don't normally have time to participate in the lists, but this landed at just the right time. I wasn't able to get to everything I planned (I still have to see Lifeboat, The Paradine Case, and Under Capricorn among the American films, and I didn't get to rewatch Rebecca and Strangers on a Train as I planned), but I was really happy to see some long-standing unwatched Hitchcock's, two of which made my list (Torn Curtain and Foreign Correspondent). It also allowed me to revise my opinion of Shadow of a Doubt, which went from being absent from my list to high on the second half. And overall, I came to a renewed appreciation of Hitchcock.

[Rayon Vert]

My list:

1. Vertigo
2. Notorious
3. North by Northwest
4. To Catch a Thief
5. Strangers on a Train
6. Saboteur
7. Psycho
8. Foreign Correspondent
9. The 39 Steps
10. Rope
11. Shadow of a Doubt
12. Suspicion
13. Rebecca
14. The Birds
15. The Lady Vanishes
16. Marnie
17. The Wrong Man
18. Sabotage
19. Spellbound (also ran)
20. I Confess (also ran)

Rear Window was in my top 10 before doing the rewatches (it wound up finishing at no 21) - I focused on ranking the films in the order I liked rather than abstractly esteemed. I did end up rewatching North By Northwest yesterday and that made it slip behind Notorious. (I doubt that would happen with Vertigo). As much as I still love Hitchcock, I was surprised at how many of the films I rewatched lost part of their appeal this time around.

[zedz]

Thanks domino!

My list was a little perverse, as it stopped short at 19 films. The twentieth would have been Vertigo, but it's a film I'm so ambivalent about (I love some of sequences, but overall it leaves me cold) that I decided to leave it off my list of favourites, and it just so happens that I found nineteen Hitchcock films I liked more than it.

1. Shadow of a Doubt - Delighted this did so well. My top three picks were pretty much equivalent in my mind, so I ranked them in what I thought would be reverse order of popularity.
2. Rear Window
3. Psycho - This is often celebrated as a perfect suspense machine, but what really makes it stand out for me are Leigh and Perkins' superb, eccentric, detailed performances. Possibly the two best performances in a Hitchcock film, and they happen to be in the same one.
4. The Lady Vanishes - This film is so moment-by-moment delightful that I always manage to forgive the horribly lame (non-)twist at the end.
5. Strangers on a Train
6. The 39 Steps
7. Notorious
8. The Wrong Man
9. The Trouble with Harry
10. Foreign Correspondent

11. Sabotage
12. Suspicion
13. The Man Who Knew Too Much (1934) - Mostly I love how the mother gets to be the action hero at the end of the film.
14. The Manxman
15. The Lodger
16. Blackmail (silent)
17. Rich and Strange - I didn't get around to rewatching this, but from the last time I saw it I thought it was an overlooked gem and another one of those films that approached core Hitchcock material (the uneasy marriage) from an unexpected angle.
18. The Ring
19. To Catch a Thief - I find the actual story rather boring, but this is some top-rank eye candy.