Resurrected: Hitchcock trivia and movie stills

I love Hitchcock, not because I understand his psycho-suspence and Freudian references, but because I love the thumb-biting moments he created with his sets and characters.  Watching his movies is not unlike appreciating vintage fashion - sometimes it just doesn’t get any better.

Early this year, VF paid tribute to the maestro by recreating some of the most memorable scenes in some of his most memorable movies.  I dug out some tidbits to accompany the original and reproduced stills.

Source: Vanity Fair, Wikipedia.

Dial M for Murder: Imitation is the most sincere form of flattery. The 1998 thriller A Perfect Murder was based on characters created in this movie, although the killer and the lover was combined into one (Viggo Mortensen), and the wife figured out most of the plot (Gwenyth Paltrow).  Titles translated into French, Danish, and German were: “The Crime was Almost Perfect“, “The Phone Rings at 11pm“, and “Murder on Call“. 

Rear Window: Basis for gender and political analysis?  Relationships in the movie were analyzed in a feminist theory book, The Women who Knew Too Much. The movie also apparently cashed in on fears of the 1950s and emphasized the necessity of a “deputized” citizenry to keep tabs on their neighbors and bring the undesirables to justice. Many remakes followed, the most recent one being Disturbia.

Marnie: Not fit for a Princess. Hitchcock originally offered the title role to his former leading lady Grace Kelly, by then Princess Grace of Monaco, and she agreed. However, residents of Monaco objected to her appearing in a film, especially as a disturbed kleptomaniac.

Rebecca: All but one detail. The film adapted to Daphne du Maurier’s novel of the same name faithfully, except for one detail. In order to comply with the Hollywood Production Code at the time, which said that the murder of a spouse had to be punished, Maxim only thinks of killing Rebecca after she taunts him, whereupon she falls back and dies from her head injuries, so that her death is an accident, not murder.

Strangers on a Train: Bruno oh Bruno! 

Bruno Anthony: How do you do, sir? I, uh, I’d like to talk with you sometime, sir, and tell you about my idea for harnassing the life force. It’ll make atomic power look like a horse and buggy. I’m already developing my faculty for seeing  millions of miles.  And Senator, can you imagine being able to smell a flower … on the planet Mars? I’d like to, uh, have lunch with you someday soon, Sir, and tell you more about it.

Vertigo: The sound of music.  In a 2004 special issue by Sight & Sound devoted to film music, Martin Scorsese described the qualities of Hitchcock’s scores: “It is about obsession, which means that it’s about circling back to the same moment, again and again. And the music is also built around spirals and circles, fulfilment and despair.”

To Catch a Thief: Spot the director!  Alfred Hitchcock’s cameo is a signature occurrence in most of his films. In To Catch a Thief he can be seen (10 minutes into the film) as a bus passenger sitting next to Grant, whom Grant turns to look at.

Lifeboat: Spot the director part II.  This particular cameo was one of Hitchcock’s most difficult to achieve, due to the lack of passers-by in the film.  While having originally considered posing as a body floating past the lifeboat, after his success in weight loss, Hitchcock decided to pose in before and after photos for a weight loss drug, shown in a newspaper during the film (24 minutes into the film).  Supposedly, he later received hundreds of letters from people asking where they could buy the fictitious drug.

The Birds: Getting a birds-eye view.  Memorable moments in the movie include: the bird point-of-view shot of Bodega Bay, the birds slowly gathering on the playground monkey bars, the attack on the children’s birthday party, Melanie trapped in the attic, and the final ambiguous shot of the defeated humans leaving Bodega Bay while the thousands of triumphant birds gathered on the ground watch them go.

North by Northwest: It started with the chase. According to the official biography of Hitchcock, the director suffered from a bout of writer’s block.  Upon getting together with a colleague, Hitchcock said he had always wanted to do a chase across Mount Rushmore.  More ideas poured out: a murder at the United Nations Headquarters; a murder at a car plant in Detroit; a final showdown in Alaska.  Eventually they settled on the U.N. murder for the opening and the chase across Mount Rushmore for the climax.  For the central idea, Hitchcock remembered something an American journalist had told him about spies creating a fake agent as a decoy.  Perhaps their hero could be mistaken for this fictitious agent and end up on the run.  They bought the idea from the journalist for $10,000.

Psycho: Mr Bates.  The shower scene in Psycho became the stuff of urban legends.  Jacket Leigh supposedly spent seven days and more than 70 shots getting the scene right.   The blood in the scene is in fact chocolate syrup, which shows up better on black-and-white film, and has more realistic density than stage blood.  The sound of the knife entering flesh was created by plunging a knife into a Casaba.  I leave you with some Norman Bates.

Norman Bates: She just goes a little mad sometimes. We all go a little mad sometimes. Haven’t you?
Marion Crane: Yes. Sometimes just one time can be enough.

Tagged as: film, Hitchcock