Head over to Top Ten Films and read my list of the greatest performances in Alfred Hitchcock movies.

THE May Shower.

Earlier this week I began reading Stephen Robello's Alfred Hitchcock and the Making of 'Psycho' which is being turned into a motion picture. Needless to say how excited I am about this movie, today we got our first look at ScarJo as Janet Leigh. Y'all know I'm obsessed with actresses and as much as I loved Tony Hopkins as Hitch, it was ScarJo in full costume that truly got me freaked out. Will she win the Oscar Janet was robbed of in 1960? 

Monsieur Hitchcock's Vacation.

Head over to PopMatters and read my review for To Catch a Thief.

The Pleasure of Watching.

Above all Psycho is a movie about the movies. From its opening shot, in which it establishes that it takes place in a city not so far away, it's telling us "this could happen to you".

Alfred Hitchcock was the ultimate voyeur, but unlike many filmmakers who used this as means to their specifically sexual ends, Hitch turned each of his voyeuristic adventures into explorations of the human subconscious.

Particularly when it comes to the eyes as a camera.

Notice how right after this city setting, he takes us right into the room where Marion Crane (Janet Leigh) is spending the afternoon with her lover (John Gavin).

The fact that the blinds are halfway down makes our intrusion even more violent, but Hitchcock calms our nerves because the window and the blinds resemble the eye of a camera, attracting us towards its darkness, always ignoring what we will capture with it.

That we end up capturing one of the most erotic love scenes ever filmed is no coincidence.

After all, one of the reasons why we go to the movies is to fantasize about things we might never have.

The scene is filled with sweeping camera moves that approach the characters without ever feeling intrusive or announcing its presence. The closer the camera gets to them, the less aware they are of it even being there. The more intimate they become.

Hitchcock has established the fact that while this is happening in a world like ours, once we entered the hotel room, we are watching a movie.

When later, we meet Norman Bates (Anthony Perkins), Hitchcock has no trouble in making him seem like the weirdest guy who lived. His love for taxidermy, only an extension of the themes of preservation Hitchcock had explored in the past.

What's so different between these stuffed, dead animals and the Carlotta painting in Vertigo?

Hitchcock who's often regarded as a misogynist, probably knew that the easiest way for him to look past his personal issues and to represent them on film would be to filter them through lenses, cameras and movies.

Therefore as Norman feels the urge to spy on Marion (and later kill her) it all begins with a simple peek through a peephole.

We are reminded this way of the Lacanian notion that men derive sadistic pleasure out of watching women fragmented by the camera. By spying on shattered women, male audiences (and the director himself) felt a reassurance that their own bodies were complete, whole.

Watching women through cameras, whether on regular films or pornography, realizes males' fantasies because it gives them godlike power.

They are whole, they have control.

This leads to my favorite shot in the movie:

Here, as Norman's curious eye discovers Marion for the first time we too feel his pleasure, we too want to watch what he's watching.

Not all of us want to be murderers, but that was never the point. It's the pleasure of viewing that seduces and eventually releases our innermost desires.

The notions of media and real life violence being related are questionable (at least not provable in scientific terms) but for a moment we understand that the joys of watching are some we share with everyone: from serial killers, to babies, to hypnotized movie audiences.

Have you ever noticed how after that first shot of the city, nothing else in Psycho ever looks "real"?

When the movie ends, it's as if we never left the world we entered through the first hotel window. Norman is inarguably trapped in it, but are we too?

This reminds us of the Lacanian notion that fantasy is not really the object of desire, but its setting. Through fantasy we learn to desire.

Whether you desire to be a killer, a thief, or a taxidermist is strictly up to you. The movies can help us find our heart's desire but their power isn't enough to control it.

This post is part of Nat's "Hit Me With Your Best Shot" series.

15 Directors.

Mr. Paolo from Brown Okinawa Assault Incident decided to tag me in a meme and seems to have forgotten to tell me about it...
Most of you know I suck at memes because I never know what to say but this one is particularly interesting because lately I've been asked a lot who my favorite filmmakers are. I was going to eventually compile a list and Mr. Paolo just made my job easier by making me do one ASAP.
So without further ado, here are my fifteen favorite directors and my fave movie of theirs.

The Holy Trinity
Elia Kazan (A Streetcar Named Desire)
Francois Truffaut (The 400 Blows)
Federico Fellini (La Strada)

The Rest of the Best
Alfred Hitchcock (Notorious)
Pier Paolo Pasolini (Saló or the 120 Days of Sodom)
Pedro Almodóvar (Volver)
Woody Allen (Annie Hall)
Lars von Trier (Dogville)
Michael Haneke (The White Ribbon)
Catherine Breillat (Brief Crossing)
Todd Haynes (Far From Heaven)
Victor Fleming (Gone With the Wind)
Jane Campion (The Piano)
Baz Luhrmann (Moulin Rouge!)
Vincente Minnelli (Meet Me in St. Louis)

Are these who you expected? Any omission you think I made? Who are your fave fifteen?

Flow It, Show It.

"Lady animals figure very largely as predators."

"I love strange men!"

While Watching "The Wrong Man"...

...I couldn't stop thinking how this is perhaps the worst film to watch in the middle of the recession.

Forgive me Monty, for I have sinned...

"What seems to be the trouble, Captain?"

Watching "The Trouble With Harry" and the disinterested way Shirley McLaine's character acts towards her deceased husband I wondered if the reason why she acts like that is because there is some sort of homosexual subtext in the whole thing?
She says how he didn't show up for their honeymoon and Hitchcock never stayed shy from gay backgrounds.
Anyone else think the same, or is it my flu making me see weird things?

Fear of Commitment in "Psycho".

While watching the opening scene the other day something became quite obvious to me: Sam Loomis (John Gavin) perhaps doesn't want to be with Marion Crane (Janet Leigh).
As they share a post coital conversation (with sex so good that she didn't even have time to eat as Hitch suggests by showing us a wrapped sandwich) he tells her all the reasons why they can't be together.
Most of them concerning money and his ex-wife. Marion rolls on the bed like a kitten as she confesses she can't be without him and is tired of the secretive life they're leading.
As she gets dressed, and he remains shirtless, the idea that she might break up with him becomes tangible (while they're naked she's still his'?) and he says "I want to see you under any circumstances, even respectability".
Anyone who's seen the film knows that he never will see her again, which led me to question if in fact everything that happens to Marion afterwards isn't in fact a manifestation of Sam's fear of commitment with her.
She steals the money because of him and it's this event that gets her killed (that the money becomes irrelevant to the plot perhaps suggests that this wasn't going to solve their life as a couple as he said).
In the opening scene Marion also mentions that ideally she'd like Sam to eat with her in her family house with her mother's portrait on the mantel.
By specifying the mantel she seems to be putting her mom into a sort of immovable pedestal.
And what scares off a heterosexual male more than meeting his girlfriend's mother or his own in any case? Maybe he isn't as scared of her mom as to the idea of what his own mom would think of the way he's leading his life and the thought of disappointing her.
This piece of dialogue is a sort of premonition of what will happen to Marion later on. She is, technically, killed by someone's mother.
It's as if Sam's fantasy of guilt reversal is realized.
This all might be dismissed by the fact that when Marion disappears Sam helps in the investigation. But this might as well be one part guilt, one part need to fulfill his role in the equation and embrace responsibility (is he making sure she won't come back to have his way with her sister or any other woman?).
Or maybe, just maybe, Sam really did love Marion Crane.

A Woman of Ill Repute.

The tagline in the poster for 1949's "Under Capricorn" read "Ingrid Bergman shows you the heights and the depths to which a woman like this can go".
Why not concentrate on the power of the actual plot twists, the presence of the other actors or the fact that it was directed by Hitchcock and instead concentrate on Bergman and her abilities?
Can it be perhaps that the marketing team was trying to sell the film based on the scandal that was going on in the actress' life?
"Under Capricorn" was released in September 1949, time by which Bergman had left her husband, and daughter, to live with legendary director Roberto Rossellini in Italy.
It's well known that she gave birth to several children with him, that she became persona non grata in the United States and that she ended making one of those legendary comebacks a few years later winning two subsequent Oscars that make her only second in number of all time wins.
What caught my eye though was what would happen of marketing people now tried to sell us the films based on actual scandals?
Can it be that movie marketing, as bad as most of it seems, has actually gone classy?

While Watching "The Paradine Case"...

...it became obvious to me that Alfred Hitchcock became known as the "master of suspense" not only because of his huge, fairly famous setpieces (think "North by Northwest" or "Rear Window" or the entire "Vertigo"), but also because he was able to create mystery in the smallest of moments.
In "The Paradine Case" Gregory Peck plays Anthony Keane, a London lawyer defending a woman, the seductive Mrs. Paradine (Alida Valli), accused of killing her husband.
During one scene Keane visits her house, interested in meeting the late Mr. Paradine's valet, Andre Latour (Louis Jourdan) who might be a key witness in the trial.
Everybody in the town where the house is mentions how odd Latour is and when we're going to see him for the first time, Hitch plays it out like this:

We never get a good look at his face, we can even assume Keane himself didn't see him well. He asks one of the servants "is Latour coming back?" she coldly answers "he might, he might not."
The film features a fantastic, innovative system of cinematography (Lee Garmes was DP; he photograhed the breathtaking train yard scene in "Gone With the Wind" but remained uncredited for his work in it) and the game of light and shadows Garmes uses in this sequence is perfect.
This mystery just makes us instantly assume Latour obviously is hiding something and we become desperate to see his face.
A few minutes later Keane spot his again and calls out his name from a window on the second story,

Only those with superhuman vision can make out Jourdan's mug from that distance.
Keane never gets to see Latour on that first visit and goes back to his inn.
Later at night while the wind blows, the tree branches hit the window and Franz Waxman's score swells, Keane proceeds to close his window.
We are sure he'll see something, but it doesn't happen.
A few seconds later he hears a knock.

And voilá!
It's interesting to note that while Jourdan became world famous for his matinée idol looks and that certain "je ne sais quoi", "The Paradine Case" is the movie that first introduced him to English speaking audiences.
The opening credits announce the introduction of both Jourdan and Valli (who just went by her surname back then) so for modern audiences wtaching the film it's obvious that someone named Latour can't be anyone other than Jourdan.
But back then, when people were seeing him for the first time Hitch made sure they were left with an unforgettable first impression.
The rest of the film is excellent as one would expect (the fact that in the end it has nothing to do with the "main" trial is yet another of the master's incredible nuances) but the first scenes with Jourdan and Peck are the definitive highlights.
I also asked myself what was it in the 40's with Hitch and sinister, loyal house servants?
The scene in the Paradine manor practically screamed "Manderlay!" and Latour felt a tad like Mrs. Danvers, including a bizarre love triangle of sorts between two living people and a ghost.
"The Paradine Case" was Hitch's last collaboration with David O. Selznick, one that had began almost eight years before with "Rebecca".
Can it be that Latour was Mrs. Danver's bookend?

Busted!

Where's Adolf?

While Watching "Notorious"...

...I couldn't help but feel elated by how brilliant Hitchcock's symbolism is and how it serves as a delicious disguise for his truly wicked subconscious.
A lot has been made about how his trademarks became as expected as his cameos, but in what I consider to be his greatest film, even after a million viewings they provide new layers and ways of reading what's going on with his characters.
For example the stairs in "Notorious" have such a key role that they could easily spoil the plot, but instead help the actors and hint at things we never saw coming.
I was struck in particular by the scene where Alexander Sebastian (Claude Rains) finds out what his wife Alicia is up to. He climbs the stairs of his home with a mixture of anger, thirst for revenge and selfpity.
Hitch however turns things upside down for him in the last, so-good-it's-worthy-of-the-whole-film, scene where he has to go down those same stairs feeling the exact same opposite as before.
This time the steps are aiding Devlin (Cary Grant) who is the film's central character and whose see-saw of a heart is the real storyline we're supposed to follow. Grant was never better than in this scene and the way Hitchcock makes those steps almost grin at us is nothing if not extraordinary.