Auteur List: Alfred Hitchcock - Discussion and Defenses

[Ribs]

It's on TCM at 8am tomorrow, incedentally

[Swift]

The front page lists Mr. & Mrs. Smith as OOP and MOD. It's actually also available on TCM's Romantic Affairs DVD set which is where I just watched it. It's a humourous premise where a bickering couple are suddenly no longer married due to a clerical error and is fun for the first hour. There's a genuine laugh out loud moment where Montgomery's character is set up on a double date with a boisterous, uncouth woman. Of course, Lombard is also on a date at the same club, and so Montgomery pretends he's with the oblivious, pretty blonde beside him rather than the loudmouth on the other side of him. After that though, the film becomes rather dull when it focuses on Gene Raymond's soppy character trying to woo Lombard, with Montgomery trying to win her back.

[Rayon Vert]

Revisits for this project.

The Lodger. Right off the bat, H’s first crime thriller includes so many elements that became key to the the Hitchcockian mythos – not the least his thing for blondes! I was surprised at how little I actually enjoyed the film this time around, though. I admired once again the modernist visual elements, like the designs around the titles and the flashing “To – night Golden Curls” sign, and some powerful framings from a purely visual point of view, but the narrative failed to engage me.

Strangers on a Train. This is a prototypical example of Hitchcock’s near-sadistic black-humor-laced thriller style, perhaps at its most extreme (it brings to mind the even more disturbing Frenzy with its similar “perverted” dandy psychopath). It’s only one side of his work, but it’s fully on display here. There’s very little to fault in this recognized classic: strong source material is turned into a film that features some spectacular visual sequences, some of his very best – notably the ones involving the carnival. This film doesn’t have the stronger romantic dimension that – more often than not – characterizes the films of his I like the most, but this is still among the very best ones for me.

The Man Who Knew Too Much (34). The film that starts H’s run of late British-era classics (in which I include Jamaica Inn, my appreciation of which has improved tremendously following the restoration). For me, though, this one is minor Hitch, ahead of Secret Agent, but not in the same league as the ones that follow. Still there’s his constant command of the visuals, the charm of the characterizations and the quaint sets, the enjoyable small comic moments.

The Trouble with Harry. A film I can well imagine people either ranking as one of their favorites, or strongly disliking. I have a hard time rating this film. When watching it, I never laugh, and at several points I get bored to the point of starting to tune out. And yet it’s at the same time appealing: the quirkiness of these nice, sociopathic characters, the way death and sex are played off each other, the winsome settings & location shots, the tremendous Hermann score, the delightful Shirley MacLaine debut. And my God is this film ever gorgeous. I can’t remember another film that captures autumn so beautifully.

Incidentally, the character Sam’s modern art paintings are a focal point, and it brings to mind how often H seems to reference modern art in his films, most often to mock it.

Young and Innocent. Love on the run. Nothing I found too impressive during this viewing, but a charming enough little piece that’s well realized within its limits. A precursor to other Hitchcock films where the woman is the central agent of detection (The Lady Vanishes, Suspicion, Shadow of a Doubt, etc.). Nova Pilbeam’s playing is very sensitive.

The Man Who Knew Too Much (56). A lot stronger than the original, but not in the same class as the other three Stewart-Hitchcock films. Many good sequences and it looks terrific all the way through, but at the same time it feels a little bloated, and it isn’t as sharp or as consistently absorbing as a lot of the films H made during this period. The dark humor touch is missing, and when humor does appear at one point (the fight scene at the taxidermist), it feels a little out of place. But Stewart is always good, and so is Doris Day here.

Saboteur. One of several films, it seems (Young and Innocent, The 39 Steps), where a “wrong man” on the run is joined up by a female acolyte who initially is antagonistic. A somewhat unidimensional, straight-ahead action thriller, but a terrific film nevertheless, one that I always enjoy. Like a lot of H’s protagonists-thrown-by-chance-into-trouble-and-adventure storylines, it’s a road movie of sorts, but the contemporary war backdrop provides an added dimension. Lots of fun twists-and-turns, suspense, an engaging and amusing romance, impressive photography, and that great iconic scene at the end to top it off.

The 39 Steps. This really is the template for a film like Saboteur. Wonderful, distinctive set-ups and scenes one after the other, with plenty of atmosphere, with the moors sequences standing out particularly. The well-played, slightly screwball-toned entanglement between Donat and Carroll adds another layer of delight.

By the way, I don’t think I’d spotted before that when Donat gets on that train to go to Scotland, there’s a poster advertising The Man Who Knew Too Much in the station.

[domino harvey]

Strangers on a Train. This is a prototypical example of Hitchcock’s near-sadistic black-humor-laced thriller style, perhaps at its most extreme (it brings to mind the even more disturbing Frenzy with its similar “perverted” dandy psychopath). It’s only one side of his work, but it’s fully on display here. There’s very little to fault in this recognized classic: strong source material is turned into a film that features some spectacular visual sequences, some of his very best – notably the ones involving the carnival. This film doesn’t have the stronger romantic dimension that – more often than not – characterizes the films of his I like the most, but this is still among the very best ones for me.

I mean, other than the not particularly subtle attraction felt for Farley Granger by Robert Walker! Fun fact: Years ago I had a student who developed a fervent and vocal crush on both Walker and Anthony Perkins in Psycho after we screened the films in my Hitchcock class... I guess we all have a type! It's sometimes awfully strange how circuitously young people find ways to connect to classic films (see: all of Tumblr), but whatever gets their foot in the door, I guess.

I know the Wrong Man trope gets played out when discussing Hitchcock, but he really did perfect it over and over as he dipped back into the same basic framework. I think I'm finally at the point where North by Northwest has usurped Saboteur for my favorite of the lot, but it's still awfully close, and the Statue of Liberty finish to Saboteur might legitimately be the greatest action finale in film history, and the single best example I'd use to preserve and highlight Hitchcock's mastery of film for future generations.

[Rayon Vert]

I think I'm finally at the point where North by Northwest has usurped Saboteur for my favorite of the lot, but it's still awfully close, and the Statue of Liberty finish to Saboteur might legitimately be the greatest action finale in film history, and the single best example I'd use to preserve and highlight Hitchcock's mastery of film for future generations.

NBN is my favorite in that Hitchcockian sub-genre too, and I won't be revisiting it this time because its place is so secure in my current top 2. In regards to best sequences highlighting H's mastery of film, I had similar thoughts viewing those two fairground scenes in Strangers.

[Mr Sausage]

I think I'm finally at the point where North by Northwest has usurped Saboteur for my favorite of the lot, but it's still awfully close, and the Statue of Liberty finish to Saboteur might legitimately be the greatest action finale in film history, and the single best example I'd use to preserve and highlight Hitchcock's mastery of film for future generations.

NBN is my favorite in that Hitchcockian sub-genre too, and I won't be revisiting it this time because its place is so secure in my current top 2. In regards to best sequences highlighting H's mastery of film, I had similar thoughts viewing those two fairground scenes in Strangers.

It's a lock for my number 2 as well (I can think of few more purely enjoyable films). I won't be revisiting it, or really any of the Hitchcock's I've seen. I'm using the project as an opportunity to watch all the American Hitchcock's I've been meaning to see but never have, stuff like the Paradine Case and the Trouble With Harry, movies you feel are probably not in the first rank but ought to be seen at some point, probably.

That and I maybe ought to rewatch Vertigo, which gets a lot of attention for the 'make the ideal woman' theme but not as much for a fun alternate interpretation that has less to do with ideal femininity and more with a Freudian-tinged version of the psychologizing you get in a lot of serial killer movies and some giallos.

[Mr Sausage]

Saboteur: I was not originally intending to rewatch this, but domino's comments above sparked my curiosity. I remembered the beginning and end of the movie vividly, but couldn't remember anything in between except that the contents were enjoyable but unremarkable. On a rewatch, this movie's antipodes proved as vivid and exciting as I recalled (I was surprised how many of its individual images I had committed to memory and retained almost a decade later). As for the middle portions, there's a lot of fun stuff towards the back of it, with an expert cat-and-mouse game during a ball--leave it to Hitchcock to find a way to make you feel trapped and isolated in public--and many odd bits among the supporting cast, including a bonkers conversation about how long a little boy's hair ought to be. But mostly, that second act, with its endless improbable kindness of strangers bits and its speechifying, dragged along and killed the suspense. And I haven't much to say about the romance, because it exists only so that the hero can worry about one more thing later. So, yeah, a fun movie mostly with some great bits, but as a whole never quite takes off like it should. I'll stick it near the bottom of my list probably.

Foreign Correspondent: This was both an immense amount of fun and curiously baggy and unfocused. For such a convoluted plot with so many players, everything curiously comes to nothing: the conspirators slowly drop away and the conspiracy dissolves, leaving us with a baddy who never even tries to seem menacing, imposing, or even dastardly, and indeed is given a strange amount of melodramatic sympathy by the end. Of his accomplices, only two ever get a proper introduction, and of those only one is memorable (and boy is he ever). The plot moved around a lot, but there was something haphazard about those moves, and even why things happened and who did them. The movie isn't stitched together very well in a way I've difficulty pinning down. But it's really exciting; Hitchcock films some of his set-pieces with such beautiful style. The nearly wordless scene in the windmill, with its strange geography and thick shadows is a masterclass in visual filmmaking. The interrogation scene towards the end and the final plane crash are tense and jangling moments. George Sanders steals every scene he's in, so much so that, while I liked Joel McCrae, I wished he weren't the hero of the film (and so I think does the film, since McCrae disappears for some of the crucial and exciting stuff at the end and, unlike Sanders, never has any real plan). And before many of the revelations of the second act dispelled it, the film had successfully built up a suggestive atmosphere of menace and irrationality. I had more consistent fun with this than Saboteur, but it still seems like the lesser film with a plot not quite under control. Still well worth watching among Hitchcock's second-tier American work.

[Lemmy Caution]

Under Capricorn (1949)
An unusual Hitchcock film, a period melodrama set in 1830's Australia.
I thought Ingrid Bergman was rather miscast. She makes almost no effort to sound like an Irish Lady, but also isn't terribly convincing as a drunk or possibly going mad. She does excel at the few scenes where she gets to be radiant and glamorous. But I really liked that pink heart-shaped bonnet she wears when she tries to act normal and retake control of the house. And the costumes are well-done throughout the film.

Overall the characters never blend together well. Cotten is a taciturn gruff type; Michael Wilding plays a happy foppish type; Bergman is a gentle soul haunted by drink and her past; while Margaret Leighton is a tightyl wound, desperate controlling sort. Really Leighton's Millie, the controlling housekeeper, is the only real interesting character here, as the others are rather limited and one-dimensional.

I couldn't really figure out the politics here -- it seemed to say that yes indeed the classes are too different and can't successfully mix. As throughout the runtime, Lady Flusky and Charles the Gentleman are obviously a good match with a lot in common; while Sam Flusky and Millie the housekeeper are both practical minded and co-dependent, and both working class. Instead of the noir idea that you can't escape your criminal past, Under Capricorn posits that you can't escape your birth class.

The film nearly clocks in at 2 hours and feels longer. Really could have used trimming. Hitchcock was apparently into a long-take phase (this coming just after Rope), and it is interesting to see the camera gliding around characters, through doors, and generally being conspicuously mobile.

The storyline is rather melodramatic. A few of the set-ups are rather labored. We're told 2 or 3 times that Charles is a poor rider, so finally towards the end he has a contrived riding accident. In other cases, we get some super-unsubtle camerawork, such as when Millie fingers the bottle of medicine, then pulls it out of her pocket and then the camera zooms in on the bottle. Gee, you think she might use the medicine as poison...? It's a bit of a clunky story, drawn out too long, with characters who don't change. It probably didn't help that the film, as a period piece, presents rather old-fashioned views towards alcohol and sexuality just as these were starting to change in society. Not sure exactly why, but the French were big fans of this film, perhaps rooting for colonialism to survive in the post-war era ...


I see on IMDb that Burt Lancaster was Hitchcock's first choice to place Sam Flusky. Might have added more sexuality to the part and maybe he wouldn't have been so withdrawn as Cotten (?) But really the part just seems written in too limited a fashion. Anyway, I'd really rather have Ingrid Bergman replaced with a more believable actress. But all the characters could have used more variation and nuance. I started imagining how the film would have been if it centered around Millie, the loyal but devious housekeeper, rather than the two opposite and rather boring men competing for Ingrid Bergman.

[Rayon Vert]

Dial M For Murder is the first Hitchcock i ever saw (in a high school social studies class of all places) and it still holds up rather well. I'm a sucker for small cast, one room type dramas providing the casting works

Dial M for Murder. I’m generally not, which goes some ways towards this being only moderate-grade Hitchcock for me. It is indeed clever plot-wise, like swo indicated, but most of the time it’s almost all plot and not much else. H (generally) being suspense rather than mystery, instead of a whodunit we get a let’s-try-to-catch-whodidit. Mostly well-crafted, of course, with Milland diabolically fiendish (I find Kelly a bit ordinary here compared to her two other Hitch ventures, although that’s partly due to her role as written). But it pales in comparison to its predecessor drawing room drama Rope, which was also a lot less conventional.

Rebecca. A sly film in that it starts off fairly simply and turns into a near epic-sized baroque monster full of tone changes and plot twists, as grand and labyrinthine as the Manderley house. This is Gothic Hitch and it’s beautifully lit and shot throughout, with recurrent embroidered shadows right from the get-go in the Monte Carlo scenes. This viewing of the film, however, made much less of an impression on me than the few previous ones, whereas previously this was a cinch for a place in my top 10. It’s frequently visually stunning, but narratively it gets just a touch dull here and there; possibly I just found the storyline less engaging. But it’s a multi-layered work with lots to delve into, and there’s enough pleasing elements – a strong performance by Joan Fontaine, plenty of atmosphere, the element of mystery that’s rarer than one would think in Hitchcock, the secondary characters and notably the always terrific Sanders – to still keep it a winner overall and reward repeated visits.

The Paradine Case. This one too has mystery in its narrative, an element that the three Selznick Hitchcocks share, in addition to having “woman’s film” characteristics. For those who haven’t seen it, Alida Valli is accused of having killed her husband, and Gregory Peck is the star lawyer chosen to defend her, and who falls under her somewhat femme fatale spell. The second half is a courtroom drama and it would be stretching it to call this film a thriller, rather than simply a legal drama. I thought this film was somewhat underrated when I first saw it; after seeing it again, I’d rate it as decent at best, and definitely subpar by Hitchcock’s standards. There’s a very somber, fairly one-note humorless tone through all of it, and a strong cast – Laughton, Ann Todd, Charles Coburn, etc. – is wasted on a mediocre script. (It just struck me that actor Leo G. Carroll plays in both this one and Rebecca, and indeed Wiki reminds me he’s played in six H films.)

The Birds. This is unlike anything else in Hitchcock’s oeuvre in that there’s no rational explanation for what happens, and the danger doesn’t come from humans (unless the birds’ behavior is somehow an unconscious psychokinetic action spawned by the mother, Lydia’s, fear of abandonment triggered by the arrival of the Tippi Hedren character, as some of the early attacks’ placement in the story would seem to hint at!). This film long ago lost its power to scare me (there’s one very gory scene for 1963), and it doesn’t provide an entirely satisfactory experience, but there are still many things that are impressive or that I like. The way several sequences and shots are designed and edited is genius (the town center/gas explosion sequences, the birds gathering on the bars scene), and these often provide further examples of Hitch’s mastery of film grammar. A moment I particularly like is the shot of the actual birds’ eye-view after the explosion in the town, as it suddenly takes us out (for a brief moment) of the characters’ viewpoint. The fact that the film has no music but only the birds’ cawing, screetching and wing-flapping for a soundtrack, sometimes with long silent scenes, creates a strong, original effect. As with Psycho, the first long act of the movie, almost right to the mid-point, is another film-within-a-film, this time a light, romantic comedy with only slight foreshadowings of what’s to come, and it’s the part of the film I actually like the most. The establishment of the story, and the whole part where we follow Tippi’s driving, and finding her way, into this seductive Bodega Bay setting, is quite enchanting and both ingeniously and handsomely made.

[Robin Davies]

The Birds. I like the film but am I alone in hating those static reaction shots of Tippi Hedren when she watches the flames going along the stream of petrol in the gas station scene? It just looks horribly phony to me.

[Feego]

The Birds. I like the film but am I alone in hating those static reaction shots of Tippi Hedren when she watches the flames going along the stream of petrol in the gas station scene? It just looks horribly phony to me.

I used to feel that way too, but in my last few viewings I've grown to really love those shots. What I find interesting is that the shots are not static (in that you can see other actors moving behind her), but only she is. It's almost like an inverse of the famous shots in Battleship Potemkin of the three lion statues, each in a different pose, being edited together to make it appear that the lion is rising from slumber to action. Eisenstein brings an inanimate object to life in three shots, whereas here, HItchcock reduces a live actress to a mere mannequin. Yes, it is very stylistic, which I think goes well with much of the story.

(unless the birds’ behavior is somehow an unconscious psychokinetic action spawned by the mother, Lydia’s, fear of abandonment triggered by the arrival of the Tippi Hedren character, as some of the early attacks’ placement in the story would seem to hint at!)

That has always sounded like an interesting theory, but for me the only problem is that the first bird attack (the gull swooping down at Melanie on the boat) occurs before Lydia even knows about her (unless Lydia also has some extra-sensory maternal instinct). In fact, you might say the bird's attack helps draw Melanie and Mitch together since he then assists her in dressing her wound. There's actually a lot going on throughout with mother issues, continuing Hitchcock's long-standing fascination with this theme, including Melanie's own resentment of her absent mother and her final moment in Lydia's lap. But I actually prefer the bird attacks and the psychological drama to be totally separate. The use of something so supernatural or inexplicable is, as you say, unlike anything else in Hitchcock's films. So in that sense, the birds are literally invading not just Bodega Bay but the Hitchcockian universe as well.

[Satori]

In fact, you might say the bird's attack helps draw Melanie and Mitch together since he then assists her in dressing her wound.

This is true, but is important to note that prior to this attack she is already perusing Mitch to Bodega Bay. What is at stake, then, is how the couple is brought together. I hope I'm not being uncharitable in this reading, but here is where I find the film's sexual politics to be pretty troubling. Hitchcock seems to take a delight in punishing Lydia, who begins the film as a strong character who acts on her own desire by driving to Bodega Bay. But over the course of the film's successive bird attacks, she is left in a catatonic state. The birds bring her and Mitch together, but at the cost of her independence and strength. Then, at the end of the film, when she is completely reduced to helplessness, the attacks end. It is as if the birds stop attacking precisely because she has accepted her subservience to Mitch. So if we are to read the birds attacks as a narrative structure which brings the couple together, they do so in a very problematic way.

The rest of your comment is very well taken, however. I can certainly set aside the readings of the birds as a manifestation of female desire punished by the film and just enjoy the execution of the set pieces. It's just that given how interesting most of Hitchcock's films are from the standpoint of feminist film theory, I've always been a bit disappointed in The Birds. I'd love for someone to change my mind about it, though.

[zedz]

I'm taking the opportunity to rewatch a few favourites films I haven't seen in a while, so:

The Manxman - I'd only seen this once before, in a very poor transfer, but I remembered liking it. It's a somewhat atypical melodrama for Hitchcock (but then, he'd hardly made any 'typical' Hitchcock films at this point), a messy love triangle compounded by some outrageous plot devices. But Hitchcock's treatment of the story is rather interesting. He's so focussed on the characters and their emotions that the plot contrivances are dispatched with almost contemptuous alacrity -

SpoilerShow

as when the fisherman's departure for Africa, death, and miraculous resurrection (oh, and the incidental making of a small fortune) are all simply reported. They're such cliches that Hitchcock feels confident that the merest allusion to the cliche (e.g. the idea that he died while working in a gold mine) is enough to satisfy the Plot Demons and avoid excessive explanation that would just embarrass us all.

What's left - the character dynamics and the landscape, basically - becomes the heart of the film, and the former are strong and the latter spectacular. The story unfolds with a frankness and fatality that's reasonably bracing for the time, and one of the film's strengths is its lack of a villain. Characters behaving selfishly, or less than honorably, is enough to secure a tragic outcome.

SpoilerShow

There's also a deft use of the conventions of intertitling to elide the big revelation that the girl has been knocked up. In the discussion in which this is revealed, those lines are not visually conveyed, though the meaning is clear enough, so that the 'reveal' is delayed to a more structurally climactic moment.

Shadow of a Doubt - (Mild Spoilers Here) One of my favourite Hitchcocks and a lock for a top space. Everything about this film is perfectly realized: its horror is intimate and disturbing; its suspense is impeccable and implacable; the comic relief is effective and adds to character and theme; and the weird quasi-supernatural strand that runs through it in the doubling of the Charlies is uncanny and disorienting, particularly as nothing is ever actually made of it at the base level of plot. Young Charlie enters the film is precisely the same position (and mise en scene) as her uncle, she decides to telegraph him to ask him to stay before she knows he has telegraphed to invite himself, she gets the Merry Widow waltz stuck in her brain before she even knows there is such a thing as the Merry Widow Killer. There's no explanation for any of these things other than the joke of the 'telepathic link', but as the film goes on, it's a completely different link between the two characters that fuels the plot - Charlie is the only person who has figured out the truth about Charlie - and this is ultimately because she is so very different from her uncle (industrious, honest, inquisitive about others). There's nothing in the film to explicitly evoke it, but tonally, this feels like a film about sexual abuse - a relationship with a much older family member that's inappropriately physical (which contact is explicitly linked to sexualised murder), a family secret that the young girl is coerced to keep from her mother, and which she is made to feel guiltily responsible for (if she tells the truth, she will 'destroy her family'). All of this helps the film retain its power and feel more contemporary than many of Hitchcock's 40s films. And despite all that intensity, Shadow of a Doubt is also a terrific portrait of a small town and one of Hitchcock's best representations of an averagely eccentric family, which was always one of his secret strengths.

Foreign Correspondent - As Sausage said above, this film is kinda lumpy, but very enjoyable. A string of solid set pieces (some exemplary: the way the expressionist geography of the windmill is used in that lowkey cat-and-mouse sequence is a visual treat) and nifty character bits, plus two likeable leads go a long way to ameliorating the threadbare / harebrained plot, and somehow I am always amazed how the film's coda actually works, even at such a distance. The film is generally rollicking and glib, but Hitchcock abruptly dims the lights and zeroes in on emotional urgency. Of course it helps that the film was released right smack dab in the middle of the Battle of Britain. Which makes me wonder if that coda was a last minute addition to the film. If not, it's an eerie bit of precognition.

[Feego]

In fact, you might say the bird's attack helps draw Melanie and Mitch together since he then assists her in dressing her wound.

This is true, but is important to note that prior to this attack she is already perusing Mitch to Bodega Bay. What is at stake, then, is how the couple is brought together. I hope I'm not being uncharitable in this reading, but here is where I find the film's sexual politics to be pretty troubling. Hitchcock seems to take a delight in punishing Lydia, who begins the film as a strong character who acts on her own desire by driving to Bodega Bay. But over the course of the film's successive bird attacks, she is left in a catatonic state. The birds bring her and Mitch together, but at the cost of her independence and strength. Then, at the end of the film, when she is completely reduced to helplessness, the attacks end. It is as if the birds stop attacking precisely because she has accepted her subservience to Mitch. So if we are to read the birds attacks as a narrative structure which brings the couple together, they do so in a very problematic way.

The rest of your comment is very well taken, however. I can certainly set aside the readings of the birds as a manifestation of female desire punished by the film and just enjoy the execution of the set pieces. It's just that given how interesting most of Hitchcock's films are from the standpoint of feminist film theory, I've always been a bit disappointed in The Birds. I'd love for someone to change my mind about it, though.

Admittedly, I am not up to speed on feminist film theory, so I'm afraid I can't really address your concerns adequately. Just offering my own personal analysis, I have never read the final attack on Melanie as a punishment, and it doesn't seem to me that Hitchcock is taking a delight in her attack, any more than he took delight in Janet Leigh's attack in Psycho. While much is made of Melanie's "scandalous" behavior by other characters throughout, to me she seems more like Hitchcock's surrogate in the story. She shares with him a sardonic sense of humor and certainly a flair for high-class style. I can see where people may interpret that she is being taken down a peg for her haughty behavior, but then what of poor Suzanne Pleshette, another woman who traveled to Bodega Bay of her own free will and has in essence already become subservient? She is content to just be near Mitch and talk to him occasionally, having given up any romantic pursuit. She herself points out that she is no longer a threat to Lydia, nor I might add to patriarchy in general, but she is cruelly dispatched with, left to rot on her front porch. Melanie's fate has always struck me as more tragic than something for the audience (or director) to relish. And the ending, according to Hitchcock himself, was meant to imply no end to the attacks. If anything, when we see birds of all species amassed together (up til now we saw only one species attack at a time), it suggests that they are just beginning.

[domino harvey]

Probably the most well-known would be Paglia's BFI book on the film, if you have any interest. It's actually pretty mild by her standards!

[Satori]

I can see where people may interpret that she is being taken down a peg for her haughty behavior, but then what of poor Suzanne Pleshette, another woman who traveled to Bodega Bay of her own free will and has in essence already become subservient?

Good point, but her death also clears the way for Melanie to take her place. And I don't just mean as a potential romantic partner to Mitch, but as someone who would fulfill the subservient role as well. When Suzanne dies, Melanie becomes her. Here is where the Hitchcock mother stuff might get interesting, though. You raise a good point that taking Suzanne into consideration complicates the film somewhat: Mitch's rejection of Suzanne in favor of Melanie suggests that he would rather be with somewhat capable of surprising and challenging him as Melanie does in the beginning of the film. Yet it is precisely her ability to challenge him which is threatening, and, within the terms of this reading, triggers the birds as a symbolization of this threat. Maybe here is where an analysis of the film's mother issues would be interesting given Lydia's distaste for Melanie (As an aside, I just noticed I confused Lydia and Melanie's names in my post above. This strikes me as the kind of Freudian mistake very appropriate to an analysis of Hitchcock!) I need to think this through more, because it might open the film up a bit for me.

As for my offhand and thus unhelpful reference to feminist film theory and Hitchcock, I should say the approach I've been implicitly working from comes largely from Tania Modleski's book (which alas doesn't have a chapter on The Birds ). Essentially her idea is that Hitchcock's films are both fascinated and threatened by their female characters, creating a useful ambivalence which is productive for feminism. I probably should have laid this out in my earlier post rather than just making an offhand comment about it, but my thought process was that The Birds forecloses on this ambivalence and refuses to deal with it by turning Melanie into a catatonic who is completely dependent on Mitch. He is no longer fascinated or threatened by her sexuality because she becomes like a child (even more so than his sister). But I think working back on the relationship between Melanie, Suzanne, and Lydia might be helpful in complicating this for me.

I have never read the final attack on Melanie as a punishment, and it doesn't seem to me that Hitchcock is taking a delight in her attack, any more than he took delight in Janet Leigh's attack in Psycho. While much is made of Melanie's "scandalous" behavior by other characters throughout, to me she seems more like Hitchcock's surrogate in the story.

The idea that Melanie is an audience surrogate is interesting too, although here I think we might actually have a variation on the Psycho structure. We begin the film in her position, especially as she takes us to Bodega Bay, but once the attacks start she is largely sidelined. In Psycho, we start the film in Marion's position until she is killed, after which she is replaced variously by Norman, Sam and her sister Lila as points of identification. I'd suggest that Melanie in the first part of the film is roughly like Marion while in the second half of the film she is like Lila, present but no longer the source of identification except when the film requires a female character to be the point of audience identification during a big scare.

Anyway, I think you're right that The Birds is a bit more complicated than I originally thought. I doubt it will ever be one of my favorite Hitchcocks, but I do want to give it another viewing.

[Feego]

I probably should have laid this out in my earlier post rather than just making an offhand comment about it, but my thought process was that The Birds forecloses on this ambivalence and refuses to deal with it by turning Melanie into a catatonic who is completely dependent on Mitch. He is no longer fascinated or threatened by her sexuality because she becomes like a child (even more so than his sister). But I think working back on the relationship between Melanie, Suzanne, and Lydia might be helpful in complicating this for me.

And I would argue that the film is not interested in Melanie as a threat to Mitch but rather as a threat to Lydia. Mitch, to me, is not a terribly complex or multifaceted character in the film, unlike so many of Hitchcock's other male protagonists. It really is the trio of Lydia, Melanie and Annie (Pleshette) who are given the interesting psychology. In the end, as you say, Melanie is in a childlike state and so needs the care of a mother, the "mother's love" that she has been denied in her own life. Thus, the moment I mentioned earlier in which she is lying in Lydia's lap is significant. Lydia has finally come to terms with Melanie because she is no longer threatened by Melanie. This of course goes back to the theory that Rayon Vert brought up of the birds being an extension of Lydia's fear of abandonment.

I'm not confident that everything I'm posting here is making sense, so forgive me if that's the case. But you've really given me some great food for thought, Satori!

[dustybooks]

I strongly recommend the chapter about The Birds in Bill Krohn's Hitchcock at Work, which speaks directly to Hitchcock's feelings of identification with Melanie Daniels, which were apparently intense and played a big role in how painstaking he was about casting that part. I don't have the book handy or I'd quote the relevant passage, but it's a terrific book, the best I've read about Hitchcock after the Truffaut interviews.

[thirtyframesasecond]

The Birds. This is unlike anything else in Hitchcock’s oeuvre in that there’s no rational explanation for what happens, and the danger doesn’t come from humans (unless the birds’ behavior is somehow an unconscious psychokinetic action spawned by the mother, Lydia’s, fear of abandonment triggered by the arrival of the Tippi Hedren character, as some of the early attacks’ placement in the story would seem to hint at!). This film long ago lost its power to scare me (there’s one very gory scene for 1963), and it doesn’t provide an entirely satisfactory experience, but there are still many things that are impressive or that I like. The way several sequences and shots are designed and edited is genius (the town center/gas explosion sequences, the birds gathering on the bars scene), and these often provide further examples of Hitch’s mastery of film grammar. A moment I particularly like is the shot of the actual birds’ eye-view after the explosion in the town, as it suddenly takes us out (for a brief moment) of the characters’ viewpoint. The fact that the film has no music but only the birds’ cawing, screetching and wing-flapping for a soundtrack, sometimes with long silent scenes, creates a strong, original effect. As with Psycho, the first long act of the movie, almost right to the mid-point, is another film-within-a-film, this time a light, romantic comedy with only slight foreshadowings of what’s to come, and it’s the part of the film I actually like the most. The establishment of the story, and the whole part where we follow Tippi’s driving, and finding her way, into this seductive Bodega Bay setting, is quite enchanting and both ingeniously and handsomely made.

Slavoj Zizek, and I'm sure there are plenty of others, see the birds as a manifestation of the unresolved Oedipal complex

http://brightlightsfilm.com/the-pervert ... _P_JGVaHzI

[domino harvey]

He also provided this memorable aside while boating about Bodega Bay: "I feel like Melanie right now. I vant to fuck Mitch!"

[knives]

I'm taking the opportunity to rewatch a few favourites films I haven't seen in a while, so:

The Manxman - I'd only seen this once before, in a very poor transfer, but I remembered liking it. It's a somewhat atypical melodrama for Hitchcock (but then, he'd hardly made any 'typical' Hitchcock films at this point), a messy love triangle compounded by some outrageous plot devices. But Hitchcock's treatment of the story is rather interesting. He's so focussed on the characters and their emotions that the plot contrivances are dispatched with almost contemptuous alacrity -

SpoilerShow

as when the fisherman's departure for Africa, death, and miraculous resurrection (oh, and the incidental making of a small fortune) are all simply reported. They're such cliches that Hitchcock feels confident that the merest allusion to the cliche (e.g. the idea that he died while working in a gold mine) is enough to satisfy the Plot Demons and avoid excessive explanation that would just embarrass us all.

What's left - the character dynamics and the landscape, basically - becomes the heart of the film, and the former are strong and the latter spectacular. The story unfolds with a frankness and fatality that's reasonably bracing for the time, and one of the film's strengths is its lack of a villain. Characters behaving selfishly, or less than honorably, is enough to secure a tragic outcome.

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There's also a deft use of the conventions of intertitling to elide the big revelation that the girl has been knocked up. In the discussion in which this is revealed, those lines are not visually conveyed, though the meaning is clear enough, so that the 'reveal' is delayed to a more structurally climactic moment.

It's also quite fun to compare this to Hitch's dramatic reworking of Lean's Easy Virtue which if my memory isn't sore has a lot of shared elements.

[Lemmy Caution]

Saboteur (1942) is one of my favorite Hitchcock films. It covers a lot of quintessential Hitchcock territory -- man wrongly accused, many things not what they seem (starting off with a fire extinguisher filled with gasoline!?), being trapped in elegant surroundings, seemingly respectable people with good manners are really evil villains, etc. Hitchcock films are often filled with quirky bit players, and the truck driver who gives our fugitive-hero a lift is chatty and amusing. It seems when he sees Barry Kaine again, he helps him get away from the police just to have some excitement (which earlier he laments he always misses).

The pacing is quite good, and the humor is mixed in well with the suspense. The truck driver offers soem comic relief and makes ironic comments. I like when the circus vote on whether to turn over Barry Kaine comes down to the Bearded Lady, who is willing to help Barry because she mistakenly believes the girl with him trusts him. There are even a few subtle throwaway jokes ("Frye seems so small right now" = a small fry). The neighbor who "just happens to have some brandy lying about." The billboards that make a comment on thew action. Etc. I doubt there's a Hitchcock film with better humor. The kicker of course is when Priscilla Lane flags down a car with an elderly couple, Robert Cummings drives up and drags her into the car while she screams for help. And after they're gone, the old woman says, "They must be so much in love."
Is there a more Hitchcock line than that?

The bad guys all seem rather efficient and polite, despite being ruthless. Very well-cast set of saboteurs. Especially Otto Kruger as the loving grandfather and debonair society man, and key link in the chain of 5th columnists. While Alan Baxter's calm manner adds to his menace. Also I think the film benefits from not having big name actors in the leads -- even if Hitchcock wanted a big name male star.

I guess there are a few moments when characters deliver little speeches of patriotism or its opposite. But he film came out in 1942 during the middle of the war, so that's understandable. There are also some minor coups like the shots of the big ship on its side. And of course the Statue of Liberty finale, even if I doubt a fugitive on the run would go there (in Trumpian logic the FBI head says it's a brilliant place to go sicne it is a dead end...)

[xoconostle]

For the interested, Camille Paglia's treatise on The Birds for the BFI Film Classics series is well worth a read. Think what you will of the often hyperbolic and very opinionated author, but this is a superb exploration of the film's mythological elements informed by a thorough understanding of Classical tragedy.

The Birds by Camille Paglia

[Noiradelic]

Amazon has Alfred Hitchcock Presents Season 6 for $5.10. Stated as MOD, but two customer reviews from last month report receiving pressed discs, including one with pics.

[Rayon Vert]

(unless the birds’ behavior is somehow an unconscious psychokinetic action spawned by the mother, Lydia’s, fear of abandonment triggered by the arrival of the Tippi Hedren character, as some of the early attacks’ placement in the story would seem to hint at!)

That has always sounded like an interesting theory, but for me the only problem is that the first bird attack (the gull swooping down at Melanie on the boat) occurs before Lydia even knows about her (unless Lydia also has some extra-sensory maternal instinct). In fact, you might say the bird's attack helps draw Melanie and Mitch together since he then assists her in dressing her wound. There's actually a lot going on throughout with mother issues, continuing Hitchcock's long-standing fascination with this theme, including Melanie's own resentment of her absent mother and her final moment in Lydia's lap. But I actually prefer the bird attacks and the psychological drama to be totally separate. The use of something so supernatural or inexplicable is, as you say, unlike anything else in Hitchcock's films. So in that sense, the birds are literally invading not just Bodega Bay but the Hitchcockian universe as well.

Sorry for the delayed response, because my internet was knocked out for most of the week. Nice last sentence there, and the supernatural/inexplicable interpretation is what makes sense to me. However it's fun to speculate, and it just happened that this viewing made me notice for the first time how strongly Lydia's fear of abandonment is brought up as a theme and how the birds' attacks (at first anyway) come at key moments that can be related to it.

As you say, the first attack comes before Lydia knows about her, but one could associate it in a symbolic way or to something like psi. In fact, that's when I first noticed a possible connection because at the very moment that Melanie has dropped off the birds, Mitch has spotted it and she is is now starting to get the boat going (24:15), you see the seagulls starting to come in and fly around her, like some sort of protective reaction (the seagull that attacks her is just a minute or so later, further along the bay, at 25:29). Then I noticed the second "attack" comes also at a significant moment. Melanie is at Annie's, they're talking about Mitch and Lydia's history of over-protection, then Mitch calls to ask if Melanie wants to come at the birthday party the next day, and this exchange happens between Annie and Melanie: "Do you want to go?" "Yes." "Then go." "Thank you Annie". At that very moment a seagull smashes into the door (47:21), i.e. at the moment that Melanie has decided and communicated her decision to go the girl's party (back at Lydia and Mitch's home).

Then, the next day, at the party, I noticed that the beginning of the birds' attack immediately follows the shot of Lydia walking outside with the birthday cake (51:57) and looking to where Mitch and Melanie are together (offscreen).

However the rest of the attacks don't follow any such pattern. Another possible interpretive angle that struck me is how Melanie can be related to the birds, i.e. as one of "them". First, Melanie (Tippi Hedren) is somewhat "bird-like": delicate, thin, nervous, almost-twitchy physique & features. Second, she's dressed most of the time in that green that matches the lovebirds' plumage. Third, after hell breaks loose and the whole town has been attacked, one of the customers at the restaurant gets hysterical and yells at her: "When you got here, the whole thing started... Who are you, WHAT are you? (...) I think she's evil!!" It's indeed true that "she brought the birds with her", and even literally: she brought the lovebirds to that island and that's when the birds' attacks started.

I don't think any of these interpretative angles can be thoroughly sustained, but there are enough coordinated elements that make you wonder whether Hitch had some of these ideasor associations in mind and put them in to add to the mystery and the perhaps subconscious effects these added layers have on the viewer.