Update: Now I've Seen Everything Dept.: Steven Spielberg (Part 4 of 4)

Steven Spielberg, Senior Year

One of the exciting things about seeing movies over an extended period of time is seeing the growth of a genuine artist. Despite reservations about his early output, it was obvious from the outset that Steven Allen Spielberg was a dynamic story-teller and a wizard in communicating with a camera. His training manuals were the classics of the film-makers of spectacle—the David Lean's and Alfred Hitchcock's and Cecil B. DeMille's, the guys who made expansive roadshows that appealed to a mass audience. They made movies of exotic places and large personalities that could fill a Cinemascope expanse with adventure and color and grandeur. They could also manipulate an audience with their technique to fill them with awe and wonder, or propel them out of their seats in an explosion of popcorn. Movies were a thrill-ride, but with better scenery. From the beginning, Spielberg had that impresario spirit to look at an audience as a territory to be conquered: give them bread and circuses and chases. Tell them a story and give them a thrill. Very quickly, he became his own brand: "A Spielberg Film" was something to see.

The events of 9/11/2001 weighed heavily on Spielberg (as it did all of us) resulting in films where the usual sense of wonder was replaced by a loss of innocence. The shocked expressions of Dakota Fanning in War of the Worlds, and the blank look of his "Pinocchio" in A.I. were no longer the awe-inspired faces displayed in so many of his movies. Spielberg's subject matter became darker—even in Tintin—and he seemed to be grasping for stories that illustrated the problems of the world...and how we might best overcome them. At the same time, he became a subtler film-maker, and his collaborators the top of their field.  

War Horse (2011)  Spielberg likes to tell the story of meeting John Ford ("So you want to be a 'picture-maker'") and having Ford make him look at his Remington prints and observe the horizon line of the paintings. "When you're able to appreciate why the horizon is at the top of the picture or at the bottom of the picture, then you might make a pretty good picture-maker. Now get the f#&% outta here!"

War Horse proved that Spielberg had learned his lesson and quite a few other things as well.  Sure it's a horse story, but it's not like the usual "boy/girl loves horse" type of "growing up responsible" tale.  It's gritty, tough and incorporates an Equine Odyssey that offers an objective but not disinterested view of the best of man's instincts and its worst, and so much of it is done without words (and the words, by Lee Hall and Richard Curtis, are quite well done). Pictorially, it is amazing—lush, full, going from verdant Irish hillsides to man-made trenches of death, with the horse (as it would be, anyway, to the audience) the focal point of the story as his human masters fall in and out of his story.  It reads deceptively simple, but Spielberg makes the most of the visual aspects that provide a pictorial sub-text to the story, giving it far more resonance than words on the page could provide.  And there is one episode in the story—a brief truce between Germans and Brits during the first World War that is a grimly humorous reminder of the uselessness of war and how a common goal can shatter a conflict like a disagreement can shatter the peace. War Horse is an overlooked gem.

Lincoln (2012) Spielberg's long-in-the-planning biography of the almost canonized saint of the U.S. Presidency. With the help of his master craftsmen and his Munich scribe Tony Kushner—who manages to convey what was so special (and so irritating) about the man, the team focuses on the last months of Lincoln's life (Kushner's script was voluminous and Spielberg ultimately decided to concentrate on his last months), combining his relationships with the world of his family, compatriots, and enemies at the end of the Civil War, the passage of the 16th Amendment, and his death, while not treading the traditional paths of every other film that touched on the subject—Spielberg doesn't even show Lincoln's assassination at Ford's Theater, choosing instead to show the event through the eyes of his beloved son, Willie. It's a stellar cast, all providing exceptional work but dominated by James Spader's lobby-lizard and Tommy Lee Jones, whose Thaddeus Stevens has reasons for delivering the controversial amendment both ideological and personal, and, of course, Daniel Day-Lewis, whose imaginatively scholarly work on the man creates a moving portrait beyond the static images of Matthew Brady, breathing life and voice into them, making the man less of a monument, more of a man, and no less monumental for it. Much more so, the film is an exercise in showing the messy business of democracy—of seeking agreement for the greater good, despite the polarization inflicted by the various points of view, at a time when the nation was warring over higher ideals that are timeless over the short-sighted goals of economy.  Lincoln is an education in the best sense of the term, providing perspective on the man and his times...and ours.

Bridge of Spies (2015) Spielberg and Tom Hanks reunite to tell the story of insurance lawyer James B. Donovan who was roped into the no-win job of defending a communist spy (a standout performance by Mark Rylance) during the height of the Cold War and, through a combination of ideals and empathy with the man, ended up taking his case, first, to the Supreme Court to save his life, and then, later, to Berlin's Checkpoint Charlie to return him to Russia in exchange for Francis Gary Powers, the captured pilot of an American spy-plane. The film is entirely unflashy, muted and solid, has an impeccable sense of period (with no compromises for younger audiences—which is more unusual than you'd think) and still manages to be intriguing, even when one suspects how it will end—it is, after all, based on a true story. With a script by Mark Charman, it got a polish from the Coen Brothers with an emphasis on ideals...and ideals in the face of pressures, bureaucratic, autocratic, whichever side of The Wall they're on, both sides weigh in on the spirit of morality and grace. Ultimately, it is a story not about winning or gaining advantage, but of aspiring to the better part of humanness, and standing true to it.

The BFG (2016) The BFG is remarkable—stunning in all sorts of applaudable ways. The effects work is stellar, making up the vast majority of the mise en scene of the movie with a fluidity and attention to detail that draws one in with fascination. This is spectacular world-building, similar to the care and beauty that went into Disney' 2016 version of The Jungle Book from earlier that Summer. And the motion-capture performances of Mark Rylance (who was the very sly stand-out for his underplayed work in Spielberg's Bridge of Spies), Jemaine Clement and the other giant actors is truly amazing, completely stepping over "The Uncanny Valley" as nimbly as if there truly were giants of great stride. Spielberg also retains his reputation as a deft director of children, getting a terrific performance from newcomer Ruby Barnhill as the heroine of the story, Sophie.

I was dissatisfied with the film, however, despite it hitting all its marks, and bringing the wonders and chills of childhood to the fore. A great children's film should also appeal to adults, as well. And I found that the film dragged (despite my delight that it wasn't a roller-coaster). Bits of business and Spielberg's scrupulous sense of place by making sure the audience knows where it is at all times bogs the movie down no matter how fluid the camera work and intricacy of the choreography. I found myself drifting off, losing focus and the sense of caring about what was going on. Perhaps it was the circumstances under which the film was made. Maybe the filmmakers couldn't bear to part with a single word or sequence that had been worked out by "Our Melissa"—screenwriter Melissa Mathison, who'd written Spielberg's E.T., and who died from cancer while the film was in production. Gifted she is, but in the editing room, a filmmaker must be equal parts story-teller and butcher. Maybe the affection for the screen-writer overwhelmed the cruelty of the knife that is required to make a tight, concise film that isn't in love with itself, so determined is its aim to win over the audience. I think this was a case of too much affection for the material to the point of protection, and maybe some hubris that a Spielberg children's film was a certain home-run. Nothing is certain in the market-place. This one may be big, it may be friendly, but its quite a few feet below giant stage.

The Post (2017) The Post was squeezed into Spielberg's schedule while post-production continued on Ready Play One and casting hit a snag on another project. The first feature script by Liz Hannah (where it was put on 2016's annual "Black List" of interesting scripts), it has a textual and sub-textual significance during the turbulent Trump years: the obvious, textual one involves the publication of the so-called "Pentagon Papers" (comprised of a Department of defense study on the handling of the Vietnam War from the Truman administration on) by The New York Times and The Washington Post; the sub-textual one involves the struggle of Post owner and publisher Katharine Graham (played superbly by Meryl Streep) to deal with a potentially ruinous and lawfully risky decision to publish when she is being bombarded from all sides by a manfully aggressive phalanx of government and Wall Street types to go against her instincts as a newspaper publisher. Spielberg can be accused of hitting some of the points a bit hard, but there are extraordinarily nuanced sequences, culminating in one amazing sequence of a pressure-cooker of a phone-call where all the arguments in the world cannot dissuade from the role she was born to play and, because of societal and traditional women's roles she has blithely gone along with, she has been denied. The production summarized the story by saying it was "the week Katharine Graham became Katharine Graham" and the pay-off feels more important, personally, than just defying a governmental attempt to suppress the Press, than the breaking free of a woman's lifetime of suppression. It's quite the nifty Big Statement. 

Ready Player One (2018) When Spielberg does dystopian, of course he's going to come up with an alternative to it. The extensive CGI landscapes and characters that suffuses the VR Reality "The Oasis" in Ready Player One is where folks go to when they want to "escape" the reality of life in "The Stacks"—large towers of manufactured homes that have supplanted high-rise apartments as the solution to a growing population and the breakdown of society. Of course, they never really escape—they're just playing at it. The gist of the story is that the creator of "The Oasis" bequeaths his Virtual Empire to whoever can crack the many games contained in that world. The entire world is competing for the prize (including well-funded corporate interests) but the ones who seem to be closest are a motley group of "gunters"—a mongrelization of "egg-hunters"—who call themselves "The High-Five" (who have only met as avatars) have the best synergy to get to the end-game. But, the irony of the competition is that the guy who gets there is the guy who can appreciate not having it the most. He who desires it the least wins the most.

It's a VR version of "Willy Wonka" (with a bit of "Oz" thrown in), celebrating gaming culture while subverting it at the same time with the Big Picture. It's Spielberg at his cagiest and most ingenious.

 

 

West Side Story (2021) Robert Wise's 1960 film of the Leonard Bernstein-Stephen Sondheim-Arthur Laurents street-tough re-working of "Romeo and Juliet" was always a favorite of the director's since childhood. But—like everybody else who's ever watched it—he realized that, as great as it is, it is flawed. And—working with Tony Kushner—Spielberg took pains to improve on them.

And he does. Some of the tent-pole songs were out of place where they were. They're switched to better spots and with better motivations. New York is no longer an abandoned silent city while the songs are sung full-throated in the foreground. The male lead, Tony (played by Ansel Elgort), now has a back-story where both his hopes and his risks are higher, the leader of The Jets, Bernardo (David Alvarez) is a professional boxer, and the city is visibly going through a displacing urban renewal project to make room for the building of Lincoln Center—where the musical would play in 1968—and there is no compromise in casting Latino's for the Jets. Important? Yeah. It is. Especially when you include Rachel Zegler and Ariana DeBose...and Rita Moreno. Also, Mike Faist is a stand-out as Riff. And Spielberg's direction is smart, assured, and, for the first time in a while, bravura. Reviews were laudatory, but audiences stayed away. Online comments were ludicrous—"I hear that 'they' speak Spanish without subtitles" (Yes, they do, but nothing crucial, just overlapping dialogue and "bridge"-statements) and (my favorite) "Why did they have to remake this?" (I dunno. Why remake "Romeo and Juliet"?). It's subtle, smart and energetic, and in every way surpasses the first version.

The Fabelmans (2022) Spielberg's past has informed his films subtly, sometimes metaphorically. The Fabelmans, however, comes right out and spells it out. The movie originated as a 1999 script "I'll Be Home" by Spielberg's sister Anne, and as Tony Kushner and Spielberg worked on other projects, Kushner kept pushing the director to concentrate on bringing it to a final form, something they worked out over Zoom meetings during the pandemic. It is Spielberg's first co-authored screenplay since A.I.: Artificial Intelligence, and is a clear-eyed look at his influences, drive, and conflicts as he set out to make something of himself, in a family split between the practical (his father was a computer engineer) and the fanciful (his mother was a pianist). Along the way, he sees how his dreams can conflict, rather than enhance, his reality and the cost of devotion. It's a great film, much more personal than what he has been doing of late (although his dedication to his craft has never wavered) and his look back may be the final putting away of "childish things." But one doubts that. Spielberg, even as he approaches his 80th spin around the sun, still informs every frame with the enthusiasm of a "whiz-kid."

Disclosure Day (2026) Spielberg's fourth film about humans and extra-terrestrials has a different spin than the previous three. And as those films were of their times and so, too, is this one. All four have something to say about the effect that visitors from another planet would have on Earth society.

 

But, this is the first one where Earthers are the "bad guys". 

 

Sure, the aliens are a little manipulative in getting their message across to human society (see "alien abduction," one of the many of the UFO "theories" that have been marketed since the "flying saucers" days that Spielberg touches on in the film), but, for the most part they are benign (the only time they weren't was in his version of The War of the Worlds in 2005). It's the governments, researchers, and specialists who are the real enemy here, who are determined to suppress the information AT ALL COSTS (Spielberg used this theme much more lightly in CE3K and E.T.) and to a pathological and homicidal degree far beyond the worth of doing it. You worried about aliens and "the replacement theory?" This movie makes a good argument in favor of it.

 

The result is a roller-coaster ride of a movie where two "everyday people" (Emily Blunt and Josh O'Connor) become awake to the possibility that they were "indoctrinated" by aliens and tasked to deliver the message of alien visitation...much like apostles. They become fugitives for the entire movie, dodging bullets, tasers, and parapsychic attacks that escalate to the ludicrous point where they are pushed into the path of a speeding train leaving them clinging to a disintegrating car only to be shot at by a paralleling government vehicle. It sounds like one of those unbelievable "Fast and Furious" stunt sequences, but Spielberg films it with nail-biting, sadistic glee. 

 

There are two Spielberg directing modes, and usually only one shows up per movie project. But, Disclosure Day sees him firing on all his filmmaking cylinders, both as Earnest Message Man and as The Sadistic Carny at the Roller-Coaster.

   

What's next for Spielberg? There are rumors that he wants to make a new Bullitt movie, starring Bradley Cooper, but it's just in the rumor stages for the moment. Tony Kushner's script of David Kertzer's The Kidnapping of Arturo Mortara (a historical piece about a Jewish boy raised Christian in Italy) looks to be next. After that, it's hard to say, as he frequently changes his mind in mid-pre-production about what's "right" to direct (for the longest time he was set to direct Memoirs of a Geisha, then abandoned it, and his long-time project Interstellar ended up being directed by Christopher Nolan). Robopocalypse was in pre-production, but isn't anymore. James Mangold directed "Indiana Jones 5". One suspects that Spielberg hasn't completely put away childish things—his directorial sense is still infused with a youthful enthusiasm. But his films have grown darker, more considered, and less feeling like contraptions.

Whatever his future work holds in store, it will be interesting, provocative, maybe even indelible.

A preview trailer of a five-part video essay on Spielberg on Indiewire.

Highly, highly, highly recommended.

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.