Blackmail

Comparison is ridiculous, but the only film I've ever thought was cinema's finest achievement is Blackmail. I might have discussed Hitchcock's debt to Keaton, the shot here of Trafalgar Square at dawn, the phone gag, Renoir and Hitchcock, why the shop's number is 227, Kubrick's debt to Hitchcock, etc., but all discussion and description seemed superfluous, somehow.

The film opens in the manner of Fritz Lang: it represents an arrest from the radio call received in the flying squad van all the way to booking and detention. This is silent, and a ritual. A woman views a lineup and identifies the man, standard police procedure.

The scene in the crowded restaurant gives you Anny Ondra's face in disconcerting close-ups, and John Longden's out in the street. The superbly hieratic shot of the two at table is a compensation for much sudden camera movement throughout, as when after the murder Longden picks up Ondra's glove and turns to his fellow detectives-the camera hurtles forward to a close-up of her æsthete friend.

The "discovered cry" of the landlady is a device Hitchcock was experimenting with at the time, and is well known from The 39 Steps. The glass telephone booth featured prominently in the little shop reappears in The Man in the Glass Booth, arguably. The double image superimposing a smug Inspector on a snug blackmailer was later used in The Wrong Man.
The flying squad is called in again as a structural device later worked in The Quiller Memorandum, a varied repetition. Why the British Museum? To state the law in its basis. Ondra's confession was repeated by Ian Holm in Night Falls on Manhattan.

The æsthete's picture of a laughing clown is filed away as a police exhibit, which is an admirable irony, Robert Browning would say.

Emilio Fernandez caught the spirit of the thing as a No play out of Milton, say. Hitchcock's performance on the Underground train is, I believe, his best, even better than his snapshooter in Young and Innocent. Nabokov wrote an extremely funny bit for himself in his unfilmed Lolita screenplay as a butterfly collector (himself) out West who gets asked for directions by Humbert Humbert (another Hitchcock influence, I believe).

Blackmail has a congruency of image and meaning that's hard to beat, and then the shop scene with its ghostly drama transcends itself, and the cool pictures of the tenement during the arrest are as plain as water, or as serene as a fen. The famous knife scene breaks the spell abruptly, so that it seems young Hitchcock has burbled it, that his Irish is up, but he's simply cast it into a new level (Kubrick remembers this knife tossed into the air in 2001: A Space Odyssey).

The original ending had the girl arrested, but then we would not have had Scarlet Street and The Phantom of Liberty.

There's a moment in Paris vu par... which shows you why cinema isn't literature. Jean Rouch is using a hand-held camera on location to film a conversation in a Paris flat, moving about to show the speakers, and when Sacre-Cœur is mentioned, he simply tilts up off the breakfast table and points his camera at the window, where you see Sacre-Cœur in the distance, briefly, before he pans back to the room. Hitchcock does this: Ondra and Longden at the end emerge from the Inspector's office and stop in their tracks, looking off right. The camera quickly pans over to show what they're looking at (a policeman just standing there) and pans back to them.

It is impossible to do Murder! justice without a scene-by-scene, shot-by-shot and perhaps frame-by-frame analysis. Broadly speaking, it is in two parts. The first is directly modeled on Dreyer's The Passion of Joan of Arc, even to the point of imitation. The second is Hitchcock's own invention; each part is divided and interlaced, thus:

Overture

I(a) Trial

II(a) Investigation

I(b) Jail

II(b) Dénouement

The "overture" states the theme very brilliantly: Hitchcock first builds up a scene by cutting, then shows analysis by camera movement. The opposition of what we might call "caméra-stylo" and montage is the entire theme of the film, and the "half-caste" trapeze-artist villain is a gag.

The trial sequence is loosely based on Dreyer, and the tennis-audience joke from Strangers on a Train appears here (compare the rapidity and deftness of Hitchcock's pan around the jury table with Lang's similar shot of the students in The Testament of Dr. Mabuse).

Sir John's investigation is the central achievement of the film. It is a landmark of cinema which may never have been equaled, or even attempted, by anyone including Hitchcock before Antonioni and Losey and Godard and Rouch, if then. It beggars description and deserves long study, as it resumes within itself the novelist's art in pictures that really are "worth a thousand words." This is a subtlety of camera work and acting that is surprising at every moment, with the camera moving from speaker to speaker, pausing on a gesture, moving in or out of a conversation, or standing motionless on one. Things become real as they are perceived, and change their existence as perception of them changes, or perception itself.

The jail scene is pure Dreyer, a painter's copy, a direct study, employed dramatically (or even comically) as a foil, it might almost be said.

The dénouement, including the circus scene, simply gives up the joke of this extraordinarily self-referential little masterpiece, which was so fruitful for Hitchcock and others (the visual dichotomy of Torn Curtain again finds a structural use for this study). Twelve Angry Men comes to mind.

The overture, again, affirms Juno and the Paycock as a deliberate choice; Hitchcock uses sound offscreen to introduce matter not in evidence. A voiceover blends the accused's state of mind with the play she acts in at that hour. The trial is fanfared on by trumpets. A striking backstage scene may have inspired a similar technique in one of Nabokov's plays; the jury speaks in choral unison at one point (another effect anticipating Nabokov). The jailhouse colloquy allows an offcamera interlocutor.

Sean O'Casey's fine tragedy was a comic choice for Hitchcock's first independent sound film, with its offstage sound and fury and the introduction of a gramophone onto the set. The script slightly streamlines the three-act play in the American manner, and introduces at least one joke (when O'Casey has 'Captain' Jack Boyle say, "The sea is always callin' me," Hitchcock & Reville condense the two succeeding lines of dialogue into Mrs. Madigan's "Well, the tide's out here", holding her empty glass). There is a stretto just before the end involving the young lovers, the furniture movers, the two irregulars and the votive light that in itself is spectacularly virtuosic.

A very complicated work. For the most part, Hitchcock is intent on setting off the play's words and music in static ten-minute takes, interwoven with transitions, occasionally animated by dollying-in, and spotted with inserts. The marvelous, lambent evocations of Ireland old and new are brought to pitch over a background set up to project them, in a technique not far removed form the still center of Blackmail. This is capable of turning on a dime, as when a mother's keening prayer is answered by Boyle's arch frown at Joxer, who returns the look as they lift their glasses to the inevitability of this proposition. In five seconds or less, and by means of one cut, Hitchcock goes from the deepest tragedy to a natural comedy with surprising ease.

Sara Allgood's performance is permitted a bit of Abbey Theatre style at the end, a fact which seems to have impressed John Ford, who saw in Mister Roberts the chance of incorporating Henry Fonda's stage work.

The first two minutes are a 180° crane shot on complex action followed by fine silent comedy on an Underground train. The McGuffin is established with an experiment in focus (background in, foreground out) followed by the lines of Shakespeare from which the title is taken, on the first of a series of title cards introducing the scenes. These are very properly treated as dramatic introductions, and only cease at the turn of the tide, dramatically speaking, in this contemporary retelling of the parable of the prodigal son.

An incomparable film, which perhaps more than anything else explains the evolution of Hitchcock's style, as there is enough material in it for at least two films, and almost everything in it occurs in a fraction of the time it takes to describe it, and the very best of it has a certain Shakespearean ineffability, if that is not too strong a word.

Whistler's view of a seaport, Chaplin's shipboard camera from The Immigrant, and Man Ray (Les Mystères du château de Dé) accomplish the channel crossing. Paris is seen with the phone booth intercutting from The Birds, with a madcap view of the Folies Bergères, and the detail work at ground level that appears throughout. Note the Cunard drop-cloth.

The rich comedy material has drunken Fred, for example, setting his watch by an elevator floor dial. In three one-second shots (ship/gangplank/steaming) the round-the-world trip begins. Fred seasick sees menu items fly off the card at him, and The Battleship Potemkin is paid direct homage with some quick engine room shots. Hitchcock's characteristic inset shots include a deck-chair conversation interrupted by a Knife in the Water view of lifeboat ropes swaying in the wind (later Emily's downcast viewpoint will show water scudding past the side of the ship, or asphalt racing by the running board). Texts are treated in the manner of Shadow of a Doubt. Lloyd's A Jazzed Honeymoon is treated to a one-second gag in tribute.
The shipwreck is accomplished in a few shots that take one minute, and becomes an ample quotation from Keaton's The Navigator. This is followed by a string of cruelties before the redemption and silent return to London (the ending anticipates Pommer's Vessel of Wrath).
Hitchcock's use of sound follows on Murder! and Juno and the Paycock with material offscreen, and the playing of a wireless. The distinctly Nabokovian touches include a romantic conversation interrupted at what was then called the psychological moment by a rather bluff character smoking a cigarette who simply opens a door (or a hatch) and sticks his head in. The prodigious wealth of detail is almost beyond description; a role later played by Patricia Hitchcock is featured here in an earlier avatar.

The ship seen sailing through the sand (the Suez Canal) recurs in Lawrence of Arabia. As a whole, Huston's Beat the Devil is a more complete study. As in The Lady Vanishes, the model work is quite uncanny, being handled with a certain wry panache.

This is precisely my understanding of how Shakespeare composed Hamlet, by imagining a situation and registering all the consequences. The structure of Number Seventeen is a schematization of Hamlet influenced by Murnau and Chaplin, both of whom are cited. Amarcord's motorcyclist puts in an appearance, and the train scene in The Wild Bunch, as well as the railyard wreck in The Train. The inspiration of Buñuel's Subida al Cielo may be here, and the penultimate shot is a gag borrowed by Malle for Le Souffle au Cœur and Richardson for Tom Jones.

Two scenes from Torn Curtain occur here, and the plane crash in Foreign Correspondent.

A year earlier, Frank Capra made It Happened One Night; a year later, Gregory La Cava made My Man Godfrey. John Huston saw this and made The Maltese Falcon (and The Mackintosh Man). Orson Welles remembered bits in Citizen Kane, but probably the sound editing impressed him most. Stuart Rosenberg's Love and Bullets (and Peter Hunt's Assassination) owe a debt to it, as well as countless films more or less technically. Fellini paid special tribute to the music hall scene in Amarcord. The writers of I Love Lucy remembered much of it (handcuffs, innkeepers). Hitchcock himself drew upon it repeatedly in nearly all of his films.
In the first place, he reaps the benefit of ten years of work giving him the freedom to take inspiration from, in the second place, an inspired screenplay. Note that the brilliant music hall scene is entirely an invention for the film (in the novel, Hannay is a bored expatriate who spends one sentence at a music hall-here, as a Canadian, his adventures begin there). Third, Hitchcock's steady advancement of sound techniques blossoms into a complete art. He creates ambience at the train station, creates sound poetry again and again, and shows nothing up his sleeve, as for example in a long motionless shot of the Forth Bridge with the APB being broadcast (note also the musical theme). This shot is echoed in a long take of sundown on the braes.

Another artistic parallelism has Hannay cheerfully expected in the dining car as well as on the speakers' platform. Godfrey Tearle's resemblance to FDR is as much a mystery as the character of Patricia, who appears in Rich and Strange, Strangers on a Train and Stage Fright, if not elsewhere.

The profundity of each shot is reflected in the acting, and mirrored laterally by the rest of Hitchcock's work.

Jamaica Inn

In the first few minutes, it represents a storm at sea, a shipwreck and a massacre. The first fifteen minutes are cut with extreme rapidity. The stagecoach scene includes a one-second POV shot from the driver's seat, and jump-cutting to indicate his haste departing Jamaica Inn. This opening concludes with a tracking shot on Sir Humphrey in his dining room, with his horse prominent in the foreground.

A few lines of Byron introduce a transition, then opens a sequence recognizably heralding Virgin Spring and Kurosawa. The lynching sequence takes up the savagery and ferocity of the opening, with a reaction shot of Maureen O'Hara anticipating The Birds; the escape has a bit of subtle camera work elsewhere avoided in this film. It also has a scene Beckett must have admired: Mary and Trehearne are in a cave (the sound is characteristic) talking when an object is lowered on a rope behind them. The theme is continued with a joke on "three men in a tub" descending the same rope.

After this, material unfolds that transpires in The 39 Steps and on to Family Plot (note the cliffside struggle). The ending might recall The Scarlet Pimpernel, but it plays on a larger scale.

The key film to Hitchcock's system in at least one of its aspects, and to a good many other films as well. Also, a transitional film that attains a real picture of a black hole, and then lets the light in. One of Laughton's more monstrous makeups actually enables him to give a sharp caricature of Hitchcock, which is a good trick in itself and the keystone of a sovereign film.

Rebecca

Hitchcock's first American film is about an Englishman who kills his first wife and marries a young girl. Essentially, it's a variation on the theme of Blackmail.

The structural point that informs the earlier film (a systole and diastole of collapse and resumption) weighs in architectonically.

The main problem for Hitchcock is to establish the gag (Mrs. Van Hopper=Mrs. Danvers) as swiftly as possible. So, in the Monte Carlo overture, he drops all the activities of a director and embarks upon a meticulous carelessness which you will find in all of his American films. In effect, he tells the crew to film these scenes comme il faut. The result is a survey of Hollywood style, which also lays the groundwork for To Catch a Thief, and is almost certainly an inspiration of Nabokov's Lolita.

Where his film precisely begins is at the moment when young Mrs. De Winter sees Manderley for the first time. Hitchcock folds up the structure to introduce crazy Ben, then resumes it brilliantly. Ben, who only knows he doesn't want to go to an asylum, is to Maxim de Winter as Mrs. Van Hopper is to Rebecca.

The theme is thus closely related to King Lear as a study of conformism. Lear's elder daughters simply want to live the life they read about in magazines. Rebecca wants to make Manderley "the showplace of England".

There is an astounding quantity of material related to other films such as 2001: A Space Odyssey, The Servant, Scarlet Street, etc. There's a flavor of Jamaica Inn, and a foretaste of Citizen Kane. C. Aubrey Smith anticipates John Williams in Dial M for Murder. Even Pnin and Ada are fleetingly adumbrated.

An enormous amount of attention has been paid to creating the second Mrs. De Winter, so that when she changes into an evening dress, for example, a momentary alteration of the character is perceived. This is an extraordinarily precise rendering, even for Hitchcock, and fully half the film depends on it. Olivier's precision is called upon for extremely swift acting.
To Catch a Thief is also prefigured in the distress signal (a thematic cue from Jamaica Inn). The fire at the end is from Jane Eyre. Admiral and Lady Burbank are perhaps a joke.

Suspicion

A succession of images, like Büchner or Welles. It passes through, among other things, Beaky and Aysgarth as Falstaff and Prince Hal.

The superacute dialogue is a trademark of Hitchcock, from the days when he would devise it. Beaky speaks racily somewhat, and his catchphrases pall in tempo with his meaning.
The formal spring of Blackmail is here two or three times: deflation, followed by a renewed breath on a higher scale.

The Picasso gag, if that's what it is, is followed immediately by mention of The Hogarth Club.
The hilltop scene in Torn Curtain, the lady writer in The Birds, much of Shadow of a Doubt, and the timpani theme from Alfred Hitchcock Presents, are all here.

Spellbound

Spellbound has a key, which is the name of the mental institution: Green Manors (Green Manners). It displays a concept of psychosis related to Prince Feisal's view of T.E. Lawrence in David Lean's film: "With Major Lawrence," he says, "mercy is a passion. With me, it is merely good manners."

The structure is in three parts: a comically Freudian view of repressed sexuality, a consideration of mental breakdowns, and the re-ordering of the mind as a murder mystery.
What is more important than the structure is what you find inside it (unless they're one and the same): an homage paid to the great Spanish painter Salvador Dali, centered around a brief dream sequence devised by him.

Dali and his wife (and model) Gala are closely mirrored by Gregory Peck and Ingrid Bergman. The resemblance is spellbinding. Dali may well be regarded as the foremost artist of his century, with all due respect to Sir Herbert Read and Vladimir Nabokov (to take two points of view), respectively. That an Englishman should have paid so fine a tribute is all the more remarkable in that Dali himself said he could live anywhere but in England, perhaps (who knows?) because George Orwell was a critic.

Notorious

Ben Hecht likes a tight script, indeed, Hollywood has never seen a wit so dry. But he deals out jokes in the overture, as when a drunken Ingrid Bergman tells a sober Cary Grant that her car is outside and he replies, "Naturally."

The actual film begins (after a hilltop scene which also figures in Torn Curtain and Suspicion) with a two-shot in close-up of Grant and Bergman kissing, which moves with them over to the telephone (more kissing), and then to the door (still more), when he leaves. It's a tour de force, technically speaking, but its real point is simply to be so hot and heavy it establishes Grant's champagne bottle in the next scene, standing unattended on Louis Calhern's desk.

It will multiply into several bottles of wine on Claude Rains' sideboard, and finally explode into his opulent wine cellar full of black powder (uranium ore). So ends the first movement.

After an entr'acte, closely related to Psycho (Claude Rains and his mother) and Rebecca, Bergman is served little cups of coffee tainted with poison (the main inspiration for Rosemary's Baby, probably) until Grant takes her from Rains' house in a scene which ends exactly like The Birds, just after another tour de force, the floating camera down the staircase.

Dial M for Murder

A very curious film, this represents the development of the flat in Murder! with the little still life in it, a profound movement necessitated by that work, and having as its immediate inspiration the provocations of Strangers on a Train (Ray Milland at the outset is right out of his mind as the husband, and those lamps revolve in dolly shots like little merry-go-rounds) and Notorious (the key). The strenuous labors of Rope have paid off here in a subtle depiction of time passing in a given room.

The phone call announces the montage in Sylvia Miles' apartment from Midnight Cowboy, and the body on the floor is cited from Manet. Tippi Hedren's triple look in The Birds is Grace Kelly's ordeal "expurgated, accelerated, improved and reduced," which itself is doubtless imagined out of Dreyer's Passion of Joan of Arc, the film Hitchcock modeled half of Murder! on.

Inspector John Williams combing his mustache at the end is more than just an evocation of one of Hitchcock's jokes, it is related to Godard's use of hands in, I think, Détective (a pianist placing one hand over the other, congruently, before attacking the keyboard), and the signature of a film whose 3-D version is as much to be preferred as the Globe to a proscenium stage.

The joke seems to be on the diagonal, from the famous title shot to the last one of the train entering the tunnel at the same angle, if it isn't on the nightmare of suburbanization. This is an interesting organizational principle Hitchcock remembered from The Battleship Potemkin, and carried out most systematically in Torn Curtain, where again it is reflected in the title sequence.

Topaz

An artist is in danger twice: young because unknown, old because known too well. As in Murder!, the two poles of the work are imitation and invention. Here, a shocking re-creation of nothing short of a Michelangelo trues the picture against the long-lens work in New York City.

                                                                 © FILM JOURNAL 2002