Now I've Seen Everything Dept.: Alfred Hitchcock (Addendum: Television)

"Murder in the Home Where It Belongs"
 

It's amazing to me that at a time when he was doing, arguably, his best work for the movies, Alfred Hitchcock was also helping to manage this popular anthology series for television.

 

Yes, he had able accomplices—his long-time secretary/assistant Joan Harrison who'd worked with him on his British films and early American ones, and Norman Lloyd, who was repaid for having been dropped off the Statue of Liberty in Hitchcock's Saboteur to be the show's "jack-of-all-trades" acting (5 episodes), directing (19), and producing, (184!)—but the output of the television show was prodigious, the quality amazingly high, and the talent attracted in terms of writing and acting astounding*. Watching all of them surprises in how many actors from Hitchcock's films appeared, how many future stars show up (here's two: Steve McQueen and Walter Matthau), and familiar names that would go on to directing careers (William Friedkin's first directing job was for "The Alfred Hitchcock Hour").**  Hitchcock was so impressed with the technical crews that he economized by using them (rather than more expensive movie crews), when making his classic Psycho (he had, after all, mortgaged his house to get the funds when studios proved to be a little squeamish to finance it due its macabre subject matter).

 

Today would have been his 127th birthday.  

 

 

"Revenge" (AHP, S1:E1, 1955) The first aired episode could just as well have been the pilot to sell the network on the series, and Hitchcock chose to direct it himself. He cast Ralph Meeker (who'd never worked with the director) and Vera Miles (who'd starred in The Wrong Man and was Hitchcock's second choice—after Grace Kelly—to star in Vertigo) as a couple in turmoil when the wife is molested after the two have moved to a California trailer park after her nervous breakdown.

 

It's brilliant casting. Hitchcock had already seen how Miles conveyed mental trauma in The Wrong Man and her vulnerability immediately gains an audience's sympathy. And Ralph Meeker was the favorite "hot-head" of the Movies, always able to make unsympathetic characters relatable and sympathetic ones dark. And he was still able to convey a native intelligence to what he was doing. One could see why his character does what he does in "Revenge"...even if it does turn your stomach a little...that and the "dubious" psychology and sociology of the piece. 

 

 

"Breakdown" (AHP, S1:E7, 1955) Joseph Cotten, (who'd starred in Hitchcock's Shadow of a Doubt and Jamaica inn), reunites with the director for this tense nail-biter about a man who ends up pinned in his car after a motor accident, paralyzed from the neck down. Unable to move or speak, he suffers indignity after indignity, finally ending up in a police morgue.

 

This one is good from start to nerve-wracking finish and one can understand Hitchcock's attraction to it. A lifelong neurotic, Hitchcock had a fear of (and an innate ability to convey) vulnerability and helplessness, and this simple premise (despite some disregard to medicine's ability to detect life) falls right into his trembling wheelhouse.

 

One would think it's an easy role for Cotten to play (and he's helped by quite a bit of use of freeze-frame, so he doesn't betray breathing or eye-blinks), but his voice-over of the character's inner thoughts during the crisis is extraordinary and effective. 

"The Case of Mr. Pelham" (AHP, S1:E10, 1955) Tom Ewell stars as a man with a bit of an identity crisis. Albert Pelham is a well-to-do executive with a fairly mundane, if habit-filled life. But, lately things have gone a bit askew. People he doesn't know recognize him. He's told of experiences that he never did. And he's starting to think he's going crazy.

 

Or...he has a double, who is gradually infiltrating his life...and maybe trying to take it over. He could be dissociating. Or someone is targeting him. So, is the problem with him, or some outside agency? And, what can he do about it, if anything?

 

Ewell had just come off his success with The Seven Year Itch and his "not exactly handsome" everyday ordinariness comes into play, even if the performance is less comedic and more dramatic. There's a cartoonishness to Ewell, even when he's being serious, and that duality keeps one guessing until the end.

 

This is one of the two episodes for which Hitchcock was nominated for an Emmy Award for directing.

 

"Back for Christmas" (AHP, S1:E23, 1956) Metallurgist Herbert Carpenter (John Williams, of Dial 'M' For Murder and To Catch a Thief) and his wife Hermione are planning to leave their impeccable long-established British home for a job that he's taking in America. Of course, the wife assures everyone that they'll be "back for Christmas"—Herbert's been busy in the basement digging a wine cellar for their return. But, the new job will leave the task unfinished and the two busy themselves with the details of their extended trip and buttoning-up the house for their extended absence, an exercise that the fussy Hermione obsesses over and makes the prickly Herbert fume.

 

But, even if it is the twenty-third episode of the first season, one must realize that if anybody in the episode is digging a hole anywhere, someone else is going to end up in it.

 

Williams often played officious and downright stuffy, but it's fun to see him play nastily passive-aggressive. He would have made a great Basil Fawlty.

"Wet Saturday" (AHP, S2:E1, 1956) It is a very soggy day for a murder. Especially for the well-reputed, but rather eccentric Princey family. It seems young Millicent has murdered Mr. Withers the schoolmaster with a croquet mallet when he told her that he was getting married...to someone else. 

Oh, bother. What to do?

Simple. Frame someone else for the murder! It's a good thing the Princey's good friend, Captain Smollett (John Williams) stops by. Being the only practical one on the family, the elder Mr. Princey (Sir Cedrick Hardwicke) constructs an elaborate frame to make sure all the (manufactured) evidence points to Smollett, to make sure a) the body is never discovered and b) that Smollett never talks about it.

It's a veddy British black comedy, quite droll in the writing and execution (if I can use the term), while also being quite absurd, not unlike the Princey's, themselves. No Hitchcockian directorial flourishes, just solid story telling with a dark sensibility.

"Mr. Blanchard's Secret" (AHP, S2:E13, 1956) A mystery writer (Mary Scott) begins suspecting her neighbor, Mr. Blanchard, has murdered his wife. A Hitchcock-directed rebuttal to the director's own theatrical film Rear Window, the somewhat-slight storyline is a cautionary tale about "peeping" and "Kravitzing" your neighbors. Everything she sees leads her to suspect that Blanchard's wife is dead based on circumstantial evidence and her own over-imagination. Maybe it's because she's a mystery writer mid-book and steeped in the worst in human behavior. Maybe she's just paranoid (Blanchard's unneighborly attitude doesn't help). But, it all escalates, despite the attempts of her more cautious husband (Robert Horton, top-billed, despite his lack of screen time) to dissuade her.

The episode is memorable for Scott's non-stop manic performance, and for a sequence where she imagines the murder, with slashing shadows that suggest Hitchcock's roots in German Expressionism and over-the top enactments (it IS conjured up in her fevered imagination, after all), that suggest the ham-acting in the movie parodies on "The Carol Burnett Show."

"One More Mile to Go" (AHP, S2:E28, 1957) A simple story, really. A man murders his wife, and must dispose of the body without being caught. David Wayne, mostly known for lighter fare, plays the murderous husband with a bit of a madman's glint in his eye. With his jaw set, Wayne carries off the cold-bloodedness and paranoia particularly well, with a hang-dog look.

So, what makes this one special? It begins with a bravura sequence with no dialog for the first 8:30 (or until the second commercial break) before the first line of dialog is heard. The first shot...after a perfunctory establishing shot...itself lasts 2:10, and is shot through windows that muffle the sound of the argument that preceded the crime.

 

Hitchcock was a fan of "pure" cinema (or "cinemah" as he pronounced it), where a movie-goer could discern what was going on if the sound suddenly quit, and just had to rely on the picture (he did, after all, start his career in silent pictures). 

The second half of the episode is pure suspense, as Wayne's murderer (who is driving at night to dispose of his wife's body hidden in the trunk of his car) gets pulled over for a busted tail-light that the cop insists be fixed at a service station...tonight.

Watching the episode may make you think that lots of it resembles the third reel of Psycho.

"The Perfect Crime" (AHP, S3:E3, 1957) Hitchcock never worked with the horror-icon Vincent Price (probably because Price was typecast for villainous roles), except for this one half-hour episode.*** It must have been a lovely time on the set, as both men had puckish, dark senses of humor.

The premise is that it is 1912 and two men considered at the top of their field, brilliant amateur detective Charles Courtney (Price) and a defense attorney John Gregory (James Gregory), are having a perfectly amiable chat about "the perfect crime" and the circumstances of a past case in which both men were involved. 

But, it's never that simple. Is it?

 

Hitchcock employs three silent flashbacks with voice-over narration to show three different versions of the "past case" from different points of view, and the acting in a verbal cage-fight, with Price at his prideful, plummy best and Gregory, coarse and blunt, is great to see.

"Lamb to the Slaughter" (AHP, S3:E28, 1958) One of the more famous episodes and one of the simplest episodes of the entire series. Hitchcock keeps it basically to one set, with Barbara Bel Geddes (who'd been featured in the director's Vertigo), in almost every shot, playing a policeman wife, who is shocked to find that he returns home from his shift to announce that he's divorcing her, leaving her for another woman. Before he can pack, she murders him by bludgeoning him with a frozen leg of lamb she had taken out for his dinner.

Hitchcock may have been inspired by the darkly witty script by author Roald Dahl. There are no fancy angles or Hitchcock flourishes, just simple, straight-forward direction that focuses the attention and establishes dynamics between characters, and, thanks to Dahl's darkly humorous script, has one of the best "cappers" in the entire series. 

 

It's one of the best remembered episodes of the Hitchcock show and the second episode for which Hitchcock received an Emmy nomination for directing.

"Dip in the Pool" (AHP, S3:E35, 1958) William Botibol (Keenan Wynn) isn't excited about his cruise vacation to Europe with his wife Ethel (Louise Platt). He has a gambling addiction and there isn't much action on-board ship other than the swaying of the ship through the waves. But, his interest picks up when he learns that the ship does a wager amongst its high-rollers, the subject being how many nautical miles the ship travels each day of the voyage, depending, of course, on weather conditions and the choppiness of the water. 

 

Botibol is hooked. He takes the vacation money and bets it all on a figure using "insider information" and his own boastful brio.

 

But, don't bet against Mother Nature. Not even Hitchcock can direct it. 

 

"Poison" (AHP, S4:E1, 1958) Based also on a Roald Dahl short story, "Poison" tells the story of Harry Pope (James Donald) who wakes up in his tent in Malaya, realizing that a poisonous snake has crawled into his bunk and is sleeping on his stomach. He can't move, lest he disturb the snake's sleep and gets bitten. Trouble is the only guy who can help him is his partner (Wendell Corey from Rear Window), who is more amused at Pope's plight than anything, gloating that Pope is probably too drunk that he's hallucinating and that if he does get bit, his share of the business will go to him.

 

As in "Breakdown," we're back to that theme of vulnerability and helplessness, and Hitchcock's camera placements emphasize Pope's dilemma and his partner's upper-hand. 

 

Wes Anderson remade this for his Roald Dahl Netflix series with Benedict Cumberbatch and Ben Kingsley, in 2023.

Hitchcock's bizarre first shot in "Poison"

 

 

"Banquo's Chair" (AHP, S4:E29,1959) "Blackheath, near London. October 23, 1903. 7:03pm." Retired Inspector Brent (John Williams, once again) arrives at the home of Major Cooke-Finch (Reginald Gardner), current resident of a house that was the scene of the Blackheath Murder, a crime that has gone unsolved. Brent, who'd worked on the case, has always had his suspicions and has arranged a dinner there to crack it and bring the killer to justice. How he does it is based on trickery, entrapment, deceit, but, he pushes on.

 

It's also based on his lead suspect (Kenneth Haigh) being so unhinged that parlor tricks could force a confession out of him.

 

It's something of a stiff episode, with a conceit that the major looks towards the camera in bewilderment, speaking to himself whenever Brent says something surprising. In legal terms, that might be called "leading the witness."

 

Hitchcock does some nice things in it, employing some of the claustrophobic shots he had used in an episode of "Suspense" to suggest mental instability, but the last shot is rather smirk-inducing, employing the same "well, I'll be blinkered" shot that had been used before.

 

"Arthur" (AHP, S5:E1, 1959) Film star Laurence Harvey (The Manchurian Candidate) works with Hitchcock for the first and only time in his career, playing the titular character, who narrates the tale in the first person addressing the audience, and, at one point, even breaking the neck of a chicken (off-screen, of course), setting the stage for the tale of a prideful man, proud of his business raising poultry, who's something of a sociopath.

 

Whets the appetite, doesn't it?

 

His production plant is completely automated, something he takes extraordinary pride in, and so he lives his life a contented bachelor, processing chickens, and their feed from the cradle to the grave, isolated and all the happier for it. Snapping necks is merely a fringe benefit.

 

Complications arise, as you would think. And it's another one of those episodes that provides an idea of what to do with a dead body. Harvey, who had always relished roles of ethically dubious characters, chews the scenery (and a chicken dinner) delightfully. The episode could make one go Vegan.  

 

Nice little role by Patrick MacNee.

Arthur (Laurence Harvey) applying his trade.

 

 

"The Crystal Trench" (AHP, S5:E2, 1959) One immediately sees the care put into this episode over other episodes: the cinematography is lush, the actors international (star James Donald had just appeared in The Bridge on the River Kwai), and the model-work and background shots are cinema-quality (well, yes, as they're borrowed from Hitchcock's own The Lady Vanishes). But, one shot tipped me off that it was Hitchcock-directed—when one character suggests his romantic interest in the presumed-widowed Stella Bannister (Patricia Owens), Hitchcock shoots her non-reply in cold profile.

 

"The Crystal Trench" tells the story of obsessive love with Donald's narrator recalling the first time he met Stella in September, 1907, and of how she was entranced by her husband Michael. Michael is killed in a climbing accident and his body lost, but Stella remains steadfastly true to her marriage, staying friends with the narrator but rebuffing any entreaties of marrying him.

 

This one seems extra special to Hitchcock with its story of obsession to the point of madness and of devotion to the point of denial.

 

"Mrs. Bixby and The Colonel's Coat" (AHP, S6:E1, 1960) One of the least of the Hitchcock-directed episodes, about a two-timing wife (Audrey Meadows), who tells her devoted dentist-husband (the ubiquitous Les Tremayne) that she's visiting her sister when she's actually visiting an out-of-town lover. Her infidelity and taste for the finer things in life prove to be a private undoing.

 

Based on another Roald Dahl story (but with a script by the prolific Halsted Welles, who wrote the Western 3:10 to Yuma and contributed six scripts to "Alfred Hitchcock Presents"), it's not as macabre or grisly as some of the popular episodes. Unless you're a mink, of course.

 

It does have a delicious "comeuppance" scene with triple consequences.

 

"The Horseplayer" (AHP, S6:E22, 1961) Hitchcock reunites with his Notorious star Claude Rains, who stars as Father Amion, whose parish church suffers from a leaky roof, requiring $1500 to fix. But, the daily collection plate yields paltry amounts and the Bishop can't relinquish the funds. What's required is a miracle, which comes in the form of Mr. Sheridan (Ed Gardner, if the voice sounds familiar but not the name it's because, Gardiner was the creator and star of the old radio show "Duffy's Tavern" where he played "Archie the manager") who leaves a fresh $10 bill whenever he appears. The good Father asks about the generous donation and Sheridan reveals that he bet on horse-races but always lost...until he saw the sign on Amion's church that said "Come to Pray." Prayer changed his fortunes at the track and he repaid his good fortune at the church's donation basket. Amion has moral qualms about this, but the temptation is too much and he absconds with church funds for Sheridan to bet in order to pay for the roof repairs.

 

The episode speaks to Hitchcock's Catholic faith and the strictures it demands and the resulting guilt when succumbing to "the near occasion of sin", and the episode isn't too flashy but dramatically efficient, and there's something nicely layered about Rains' frequent looks to Heaven—is he beseeching God or cursing the condition of the roof?

"Bang! You're Dead" (AHP, S7:E2, 1961) An absolute nerve-jangler of an episode with a very simple premise: young Jackie Chester (Billy Mumy) is a 5-year old boy who likes to put on a cowboy hat and play shoot-em-up.

But, when his uncle comes to stay after an extended trip to Africa, Jackie finds his uncle's pistol, and it's a lot better than his toy one. Unbeknownst to the elder Chester family, Jackie has taken the real gun, loaded it with real bullets (just like his toy one!) and is wandering the neighborhood, taking aim and *pew-pew*-ing anyone who gives him a second glance. It's only a matter of time before the real gun kills somebody "real dead." The uncle and Jackie's parents realize what has happened and spend the episode frantically looking for the kid, while Hitchcock amps up the tension, slowing down time with close-ups of the trigger getting closer and closer to firing.

The episode is so tense, and potentially commonplace (kids being the curious, non-consequential monsters that they are), that Hitchcock chose to throw out his usual droll end-commentary and speak seriously.

"On rare occasions, we have stories on this program which do not lend themselves to levity. "Bang! You're Dead" is a case in point. We only hope that this play has dramatized for parents the importance of keeping firearms and ammunition out of reach of children. Accidents of this type occur far too frequently nowadays and the tragic fact is that with proper precaution, it could be avoided. That is all for tonight. Please join us next week when we shall return with another story. Until then, good night." 

"I Saw the Whole Thing" (AHHour, S1:E4 1962) A traffic accident seen through a Rashomon-type kaleidoscope.

 

John Forsythe (from The Trouble with Harry and Topaz) returns to the series as a crime writer who is accused of a hit-and-run accident that leaves a motorcyclist in the hospital near death. Five eyewitnesses swear that they each "saw the whole thing" (and Hitchcock makes the point by zooming in on each of them at the time of the incident and freeze-framing on them—a quick technique that I don't recall Hitchcock ever using in anything he'd done previously or since—unless you count some of the shots of "Breakdown"), their testimonies going to the police and leading to the arrest of Forsythe's mystery writer. Forsythe's writer (for some reason) decides to defend himself against the charges as his own attorney and the majority of the episode entails his unraveling of the five eyewitnesses' "expert" testimony. Once thing is undeniable. Forsythe's car was the vehicle involved in the hit-and-run.

 

In a last ditch effort to prosecute, the DA calls the writer to the stand...and Forsythe's character repeatedly takes the Fifth, leaving him with a contempt citation and a jury leaning against "reasonable doubt."

 

It's a bit too much "Perry Mason"-lite and the story feels a little slight to stretch to an hour (especially with its twist-reveal!), and the story doesn't so much have you guessing as leave you confused throughout ("why the heck is he doing that?"). 

 

Perhaps Forsythe projects too much American competence to pull it off. Maybe if was his fault, after all.

Well, you're ALMOST seeing the whole thing...

  

While he was working on the "Alfred Hitchcock Presents" series, the director had a couple opportunities from his network to see what he could do with an hour-long format (before he could convince them to do "The Alfred Hitchcock Hour." Both of them are notable for different reasons. 

Suspicion: "Four O'Clock" (S1:E1, 1957) Hitchcock had directed some episodes of "Alfred Hitchcock Presents" by this time but the half-hour format (excluding the commercials which he regularly took jabs at in his droll commentaries...which also took time away) was frustrating his story-telling techniques, and those of his directors. "Suspicion," however, was an hour-long show and Hitchcock signed on to one of the first episodes to direct.

 

The film has minimal dialogue up to the second commercial break, merely relying on the director to tell the story visually about a watch and clock repairman (E.G. Marshall), setting up a time-bomb to blow up his wife and her lover (and his house!) to avenge their infidelity. It's a relentless nail-biter with a soundtrack cruelly composed of ticking clocks to amp up the tension. And the closing minutes are as crazy as anything Hitchcock has directed, with tight close-ups, editing that isn't so much quick as relentless, and a denouement that borders on the surreal.

 

Look for Harry Dean Stanton as a hoodlum who complicates things.

 

 

Startime: "Incident at a Corner" (S1:E27, 1960) Just one week after completing the filming of Psycho, Hitchcock took the same crew and made this one hour episode of "Ford Startime" in a story that doesn't quite fit the dark purposes of either "Suspense" or his own series. But, it did allow him to work with his television crew in color for the first time, and work in the hour-long format that was still a couple of years from being realized in "The Alfred Hitchcock Hour." 

 

Hitchcock starts by showing one "incident" three times from three different angles: a 68 year old school crossing guard, James Medwick (Paul Hartman) puts out his stop sign and the head of the Parent's Safety Council (Leora Dana), ignores it and turns the corner to park and enter the school. Medwick and the woman, Mrs. Tawley, get into a spitting tiff about her getting sighted for ignoring a stop sign, something witnessed by one of the school's teachers, Mr. Batle.

 

Just a simple disagreement. Until Medwick is fired from his temp-work on his birthday by the school principal...something about an "anonymous complaint" ("can't say who...") that Medwick is "too fond of little girls." The old man is devastated, but his granddaughter (Vera Miles, right off the lot from Psycho) and her fiancee (George Peppard) are determined to fight the smear campaign and get the old guy's job back. And, incidentally, his reputation.

 

The episode drips with irony as people get defensive, self-righteousness, and get into hissy-fits over who did what to whom (and 'for the sake of the children"), with both sides being wrong at some point. And the ending's a bit on the neat side of "oh, well, things happen (chuckle)" that left me with a grousing final thought. 

 

The lesson being, if someone really wants to smear a person's reputation, they should wait until they're too dead to defend themselves and write a badly-researched biography.

* I was watching one night when I saw an episode starring director/actor Sydney Pollack (okay...but that was early days in his career) only to have my jaw dropped when the episode turned out to be based on a story by Philip Roth!

** The only thing that is a little nagging about binge-watching it is that pretty soon the anthology series gets a little...episodic. Last minute twists and deus ex machina's show up all too frequently and take the piss out of the suspense that had gone before. 

 

*** Hitchcock and Price (and Gregory) apparently got along very well.

Will the Real Alfred Hitchcock Please Stand Up?

It's Alfred Hitchcock's birthday today—he would have been 125. And there was a day last year, when I suddenly became besieged with a lot of Hitchcock documentaries, all purporting to use his words to get at the mystery behind the director of so many mysteries and thrillers. Even the names of the documentaries were creepily similar, confusingly so, which would have made the old guy sniff at the lack of originality, rather than chuckle.

But, the name is the thing. The name "Alfred Hitchcock" was a brand and more people knew his name and the type of entertainment he made than any other director. Like an irony in one of his movies, it was both a blessing...and a curse.

I Am Alfred Hitchcock (John Ashton McCarthy, 2021) A career overview, the type you're likely to see if someone has no real access to the subject and merely a large collection of clips to cull from. Think of it as an "Entertainment Tonight" career overview...with a little bit of speculation about what made Hitch "tick." But, not much.

 

And it's extensive: from home movies to his interviews—both filmed and merely audio as well as with some confederates, old and new—starting from Hitchcock's childhood, including (invaluably) his time in early British silents and German studios. And a lot of unseen talking heads. A couple of snatches of past Spielberg interviews are included, but most of the comments are from Eli Roth (for some reason), William Friedkin, Edgar Wright, and John Landis. Ben Mankiewicz weighs in. Much mention is made of Joan Harrison (as it probably should be, given the work she did for him in his American transition and on his television shows) and there is a lot of nice footage from the AFI salute to the man, including his extensive tribute to his secret weapon, wife Alma Reville. There are nice touches throughout, and it's quite entertainingly put together. But, as an exploration of the man, his movies, and how they all relate, it's pretty basic stuff.

 

 

My Name is Alfred Hitchcock (Mark Cousins, 2023) The iconoclastic Irish documentarian (he made The Story of Film: An Odyssey and The Eyes of Orson Welles) makes his look at Hitchcock (for his first film's 100th anniversary) with a conceit that he's used in some of his lesser-known films, as a conversation between the filmmaker and the director-subject (voiced by Alistair McGowan and quite convincingly). Oh, some of the things that McGowan-Hitchcock says in the film are a matter of record, but Cousins uses this conversational version of "Alfred Hitchcock Explains It All To You" to build on themes that might have gotten lost in the chases and cameos, the Blondes and the wrong men and the usual accoutrements of a Hitchcock film—"the core of things" (as the faux-Hitchcock states). These are Cousins' personal thoughts and observances being seduced and manipulated by Hitchcock, who used the mechanics of cinema, the psychology of photography, and his own neuroses to dredge up our fears, raise our blood-pressures, and ponder our natures (while pandering to them, as well).

And so, though they're Cousins' observations through the voice of Hitchcock, one could hardly help thinking that Hitchcock is being misinterpreted ("You do know that movies are lies, don't you?" says the faux-Hitchcock at one point) as he was one of the most obvious of directors—what he intended he put on the screen. It's just that nobody had done things quite like that before, made movies like that before, thought thoughts like that and confessed them so nakedly like that before.

Cousins is generous with clips as he focuses on six themes that thematically run through the director's films: Escape, Desire, Loneliness, Time, Fulfillment, and Height. Just reading that list, one can tick off random instances from Hitchcock films that will prove the point, but that they run consistently through his work, even fleetingly more than proves Cousins' point.

 

At the same time, Cousins' Hitchcock has a marketer's point of view on making films. This version emphasizes "stars and glamour" as the motivator for attracting audiences, as they already have a sympathetic, empathetic view of the actors, doing a lot of the leg-work to get them on "their side." To the point where Cousins' Hitchcock avatar never mentions character's names in his movies, only the thespians. "When Cary Grant" does this or "when Grace Kelly does that."

 

Double Take (Johan Grimonprez, 2009) 

"You think all the way through that cinema is going to be killed by television or television is going to kill cinema or America is going to kill Russia or Russia is going to kill America. But at the end, it’s the third one, the new one, the younger one, the YouTube version, that comes along and kills them all."

Jose Luis Borges' initial short story August 25, 1983 

 

"They say that if you meet your double, you should kill him. Or, that he will kill you. I can't remember which, but...the gist of it is...that two of you is one too many. By the end of the script, one of you must die."

 

The wildest of the Hitchcock documentaries, Double Take is a "found-footage" documentary using even the very grain of the image to tell the story. Based on a Jose Luis Borges short story, "August 25, 1983" and expanded from Grimonperez's* earlier short Looking for Alfred, it is a long story, narrated by another Hitchcock sound-alike, Mark Perry, of an encounter a fictitious Hitchcock has in 1963 with himself from 1980. It's a shaggy-dog story, recreated with a Hitchcock lookalike, and a lot of editing between Hitchcock footage...from "Alfred Hitchcock Presents" and other sources, interspersed with news coverage of geo-political events and Instant Folgers commercials (which turn bad coffee into domestic drama). It's a bit of a satire about the new replacing the old, but not changing much for the transition. It doesn't precisely nail its thesis, events being difficult to bend to one's advantage. But, there are moments of wit and some lost opportunities.

 

Becoming Hitchcock: The Legacy of Blackmail (Laurent Bouzereau, 2024) Writer-director Bouzereau has made a career out of directing films in support of other films; watch any DVD of any "important" film of the last 30 years and Bouzereau has directed or produced it, even producing anniversary-soundtrack expansions of some film scores. His work has given him a rolodex of contacts and access to some of the great directors and the archives of many a film. His style is breezy, entertaining and imaginative—when he wants to get to the bottom of a story, he'll get there and make it as memorable as its subject. And when doing a documentary of, say, Mark Harris' Five Came Back, he'll shed the customary upbeat promotional stance required to gloss up the subject to a glittering press-release, and risk being too revelatory, even to the subject's disadvantage, in order to drive home his point and make it the definitive word on the subject. He's good. Very good. It's no wonder so many high-profile directors and producers trust him telling the story of their work.

And in his film for StudioCanal and TCM, Becoming Hitchcock, he also tries to get to the depths of what made Hitchcock not only unique but "a brand."  His thesis being that Hitchcock's 1929 film Blackmail was the first of what one could call "a Hitchcock film" with the tropes of wronged people, distinctive weapons, arresting blondes, landmark chases, eroticism, food fetishes and such being firmly in place as they would be for the rest of Hitchcock's career (what, no mothers or enclosed places?)

It's true to a certain extent, even considering there is some cherry-picking going on. But, if one is looking for "the" first "Hitchcock" film, Blackmail is the most likely suspect (the only reason it doesn't loom larger in peoples' memories is it was in his British period, on the cusp of the sound era, and—being in the public domain—it seems less valued as a marketable property than his other films (which is a bit ironic).

 

But, some elements that are discussed—the tropes—are in his earlier films, because what made Hitchcock Hitchcock were his obsessions and his neuroses, which were there in little sparks at the beginning with even his first film, his vulnerabilities only growing full-flower when he had more confidence in the control of his films (how's that for irony?).

But, sure, say it was Blackmail because of the chase through the British Museum (all done in studio, by the way). But, the film is also notable for being the director's first sound film—he did another version for silent cinemas that were not speaker-wired-up while making this one, sometimes shooting alternate footage for scenes where title cards needed to do the talking. There are, frankly, radical transitions using only sound, showing how freakishly ingenious Hitchcock could be playing with new toys. 

 

And how's this for radical? Hitchcock's "blonde" for this one was a Czech actress named Anny Ondra whose English was so heavily-accented that she was directed to just mouth the words while actress Joan Barry performed the vocal part out of sight of the camera. The illusion is almost flawless, noticeable only if you're looking (and listening for it). You come away from Bouzereau's film maybe not so assured that Blackmail set the template for what was "Hitchcockian" in the future, but certainly convinces that the man was a genius for figuring out ways for telling stories pictorially, psychologically...but also sonically.

But, then...we already knew that.

* Grimonperez was nominated for the "Best Documentary Feature" Oscar last year for his documentary Soundtrack to a Coup d'Etat