Alfred Hitchcock: Classic or Dud?

C'est ne pas un gâteau

Fair enough. I find those shots distancing in a way that can undermine the carefully calibrated engine of the story, but--depending upon which film it is--there's usually enough (and sometimes more than enough) to compensate.

I like the forest in NbN too because of it's dreamlike quality. I don't get the same feeling from two people in a car.

it's the opposite of suspension of disbelief

100% this ... it's the "seduction of disbelief"

Evidently it doesn't work on all of us.

Sure, I wouldn't argue with questions of personal taste

Ok lol I would but that isn't my point

You could make an argument that in NxNW for example, in the scene with drunkened Cary Grant careening downhill in the car, the bathetic effect of the process shot is tied in to Thornhill's status as a comedy playboy at that point - when he tells the story back to the police it sounds like a drunk fantasy and we've just watched it play out in much that way. But then I'd be trying to make a case for a kind of metarealism that I'm not interested in making, really

whoa thanks omar, that looks great!

the process shots work against the seduction of disbelief - in all those examples of foregrounded technique, the point was that the manipulation worked and was motivated by its effectiveness on the audience. he wasnt saying "make this angle real disorienting to kick the audience out of the movie and remind them this is all fake," quite the opposite. the weak process shots are the opposite of that kind of seduction, they actively work to undermine it in a way that i cant accept Hitchcock would have deliberately sought. i just refuse to believe that he ever looked at a completed process shot and said "take another run that and make it look worse and more wobbly, because i hate reality and love the artificiality of cinema." he obv just didnt like to waste a lot of time building sets and wrangling extras, its not rocket science.

He was using them in films where he had budget and time to do what he liked. Cropduster scene for example

well exactly - he had the luxury to avoid dealing with directorial chores he dgaf about. him having the time & money to do them and wanting to do them are two different things.

like you said no accounting for taste, but idk its just never been hard for me to believe that he treated them like an afterthought because he didnt think they mattered much. because they dont, the movies are great!

I'd extend his who-gives-a-fuck attitude (to things he didn't consider important; obviously he was meticulous to the nth degree about things he did) to some of the minor parts in his movies, but I should have some specific examples on hand, and I don't.

I'm a fan too. I don't think you have to like every last thing about a filmmaker to like lots of other things.

Yes, some of the supporting performances in his films distract with what is obviously a lack of direction.

Hitchcock being so excellent w/plot and thriller psychology and casting would I think make a lot of that irrelevant even if I was skeptical of their charms.

― omar little, Thursday, January 5, 2023 5:26 PM (forty-four minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

Hitchcock wasn't a realist film-maker.

― Camaraderie at Arms Length, Thursday, January 5, 2023 5:27 PM (forty-three minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

Drinks for both of you.

Does anyone defending these shots give younger viewers a pass for finding them hard to accept (as I imagine they might)?

Hitchcock wasn't a realist film-maker.
― Camaraderie at Arms Length

That's fine, but as Cary Grant runs from the plane in NbN, are we supposed to think "Ah, it's just a movie--he'll be fine." I'm pretty sure Hitchcock wants us to feel like he's in mortal danger, to be 100% caught up in the moment. And he didn't use any fake-looking shots there, if I'm remembering correctly.

This is a fun little essay

https://reverseshot.org/features/640/north-by-northwest

Think we should now discount all of Hitchcock's earlier black and white films - so unrealistic as we don't see things in black and white, we see in colour FFS

fwiw when she was younger my older daughter really enjoyed the Hitchcock movies we watched. and that's not true for most movies starring, in her words, "old white men who all look alike." she still speaks fondly of her favorites.

Yep. My students were wild about Rear Window and especially Psycho.

I think if younger people can dig the affected tableaus of Wes Anderson, they can deal with Hitchcock.

that sounds right

Robin Wood’s chapter on Marnie from his Hitchcock book includes a fine discussion of the “artificiality” of the sets in that film that might be useful to the current discussion; wish I had my copy of the book handy, or at least remembered some specific details about his argument, so I could say more.

Can't watch The Simpsons any more, the skin tone is so unnatural and everyone is missing a finger on each hand, wtf

Some of these analogies are a little wanting.

Nothing in Hitchcock is as bad as the matte shot of the nazi shaking his fist at the zeppelin in "Last Crusade".

Really like NV's tentative point that "the scene with drunkened Cary Grant careening downhill in the car, the bathetic effect of the process shot is tied in to Thornhill's status as a comedy playboy". That sounds right - it's rather lightweight in the first 30 mins, and Grant seems like a bit of a ninny. He gets handsomer and more authorative as the peril increases.

even in cases where Hitchcock did go out of his way to highlight the artificiality of techniques and effects (which he certainly did often enough as a promotional tool, making such a big deal about the spun-glass clouds in Rope or the synthesized bird sounds in the Birds, etc etc) it was always with the idea that the audience would enjoy admiring the craftsmanship, even if they literally saw through the illusion. it was never about intentionally foregrounding what he felt was sloppy work.

On the train having cocktails he's glowing. Xpost

The apartment complex in Rear Window is lit as luridly as any Sirk scene.

First part of North By Northwest is Hitchcock priming you to think you're watching a different sort of movie, the reason the airplane scene works so well is that it yanks you right out of that, especially with the explosion at the end.

My favorite part of the plane scene in Northwest is his awkward artificial run, which is almost like people running in slow motion in their dreams/nightmares.

And it's also Cary Grant thinking, "Let's not muss my suit."

it's him having to suspend his disbelief that this bizarre shit is happening to him

I've used the line about a host of bartenders "depending on me" more times than is healthy

The conversation scene on the train has such sizzling banter it’s amazing he got away with it.

I'm pretty sure Robin Wood criticizes some of the visual effects in Marnie, especially the boat scene mentioned below, despite loving the movie:

Hitchcock loved to shoot on the lot, where he had complete control. But many of the things that Hitchcock employed frequently, like back projection and matte paintings, were already starting to look old-fashioned. For the street where Marnie’s mother lives, Hitchcock ordered a large matte painting of a ship to be placed at the end of the street. This setting has a clear artificiality to it. Some critics have called this a deliberate choice, implying that Hitchcock was returning to his German expressionist roots. However, even Hitchcock himself admitted in an interview that the painted backdrop was “bad”.

No surprise--she wasn't his biggest fan--but Kael hated that stuff too.

Feel like towards the end when those things were looking dated he also didn't have the kind of A-team anyway that could have done something more modern. Did many of those people exist? Did the techniques exist? I guess Kubrick was able to to do it. Feel like he was one of the first to use forward projection instead of rear projection iirc.

Front projection.

http://www.visual-memory.co.uk/sk/2001a/page2.html

Heh.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rear_projection

Alfred Hitchcock was a master at using process screen shots, mixing them with location shots so that the slight artificiality of the process screen shots does not distract from the action. He used the process to show Cary Grant's character being attacked by a crop duster plane in North by Northwest and throughout the film, but it was criticized when he used it extensively in Marnie.

DIdn't remark upon the rear projection in NXNW but did witness something in the town of SXSW when I went to screening of the film at UT Austin which featured a discussion between Charles Champlin and Ernest Lehman. The (16mm?) print that was shown was fine, except when they got to the cropduster scene, which was noticeably scratched up from being shown in a 1001 film classes.

Finally reading the fun little essay NV linked to.

The apartment complex in Rear Window is lit as luridly as any Sirk scene.

I'm watching all of the Hitchcocks again in order. Vertigo is still the greatest so far

Rear Window also really stands out, as well as Rebecca and Shadow of a Doubt. North By Northwest was great too, but it felt like more of a caper, like To Catch a Thief.

I'm looking forward to rewatching Psycho and The Birds, and haven't yet ever seen Marnie, Torn Curtain, Topaz, or Frenzy.

Vertigo is one of the films most epitomizing the male gaze - it makes a heavy statement about male privilege

I love that Robin Wood essay.

the Leo Goldsmith piece Noodle Vague posted is also really good

https://reverseshot.org/features/640/north-by-northwest

Thanks for excerpting, Halfway. That was the bit I was thinking of; I just didn’t remember it properly, in that I thought he made a point of discussing how the film’s noted “flaws” actually worked in its favor (he may make a similar point elsewhere in the essay).

sorry if we've moved on but i wanted to say that acknowledging that certain filmmakers work with a limited palette or within a certain set of techniques or whatever doesn't mean we now have to prove that they took steps at every turn to prove that cinema was "artificial" and "not real" ? like you can still try your darndest to achieve verisimilitude given certain constraints and it's still a kind of artistry; but it isn't necessarily some kind of brechtian statement. i don't think that's controversial but maybe i'm misreading

i also don't think it follows that just because H didn't adapt to every new technique or technology of filmmaking as it became available he must have been some kind of lazy man; but maybe future critics will make similar arguments about the lack of 3D coen bros. movies