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For Christmas(?): Two New Books About Alfred Hitchcock and his films

posted a month ago by roger1 (3876)
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I've been alerted to two "new" (to me) books about Hitchcock. One I actually found at the bookstore. Its a big, thick book. I held that bad boy in my hands and gave it a "bookstore browse."

The other book I have read about via internet advertising.

Here they are:

ONE: ALFRED HITCHCOCK: ALL THE FILMS. What was interesting about this big, kinda sorta coffee table book is that it was next to an "exactly the same except different color cover" book called "STEVEN SPIELBERG: ALL THE FILMS."

The two books are a "matched pair" and they settle (for now) the primacy of Hitchcock (from the 1920s through the 1970s) and Spielberg (from the 1970s to the 21st Century) as the premier "Household Name Brand Name Directors" ...of two eras back to back now spanning 100 years.

Hitchcock also remains "contemporary." I'm not sure we will get "JOHN FORD: ALL THE FILMS" or 'FRANK CAPRA: ALL THE FILMS".

i suppose we could get "MARTIN SCORSESE: ALL THE FILMS" (but he's not done yet, neither or Spielberg), or even QUENTIN TARANTINO: ALL THE FILMS (a short book.)

Anyway, a bookstore browse of the Hitchcock book revealed fairly familiar material to me, and fairly familar photographs -- though a few were new to me.

I'll select out these FOUR items that caught my attention:

ONE: Mistake in the Psycho Plot Synopsis. I've seen this mistake in OTHER books and articles, and I'm amazed every time. The book writers are SUPPOSED to be "experts on Hitchcock," and to have watched ALL his films at least once. But THESE writers make the same mistake that EARLIER writers have made. Its small but it stands out.

The mistake is this sentence(paraphrased): "Sam and Lila hire a detective, Arbogast, to search for Marion." Or sometimes the mistake is more focussed: "Lila Crane hires a detective, to search for her sister."

Either version is WRONG. Of course, Arbogast was hired by....well, we're not totally sure. By Lowery the real estate guy? Or by Cassidy the millionaire? Likely both: Arbogast is an insurance company investigator and when Cassidy complained to Lowery, Lowery likely called his insurance company and the deal for Arbogast was made.

(A scene Hitchcock never shot -- or needed to shoot -- for Psycho has often tantalized my imagination: Arbogast sitting in Lowery's office(out of Caroline's earshot) with Cassidy in there and the sliding glass door to the office(an oddity) closed. I picture this scene because Arbogast -- just like Marion -- "comes from Phoenix Arizona" and Arbogast is rather "at home" with Lowery and Cassidy. He's a male authority figure in this story. )

TWO: A full-page photo of the theater where The Man Who Knew Too Much 1956 premiered in Hollywood. HUGE poster of James Stewart and Doris Day high on the theater's outside wall. Cars lined up to deposit people. People lined up to go inside. Looks like a blockbuster movie and we are reminded -- Hitchcock had a STRING of hits in the 50s climaxing in Psycho in 1960.

.THREE: An "interesting" staged still for a movie that Hitchcock never made. It is said that it was to be called Kaleidoscope OR Frenzy. Since this was around 1967, I say it would have NEVER been called Kaleidoscope (because Warren Beatty put out a movie CALLED Kaleidoscope in 1966.) So I call it "The First Frenzy." Because Hitchcock made LATER real movie called Frenzy. The second Frenzy was from a London-set book called "Goodbye Piccadilly, Farewell, Leceister Square." The First Frenzy was...an original idea which -- like Torn Curtain - was from Hitchcock's own story.

The record shows that Hitchcock hired an NYC -based company to film "text photographs" and "silent text movie footage" to illustrate his plans for a modern, sex-and-nudity thriller in the spirit of Blow Up and other European films. The R rating wasn't there yet, but Hitch clearly wanted to push the envelope.

And so, the unknown models hired to enact shots from The First Frenzy were...often photographed in the nude.

I had seen OTHER photos and films from The First Frenzy shoot before but not this one in the new book:

Staged on a rock and waterfall outdoor area, the staged photos shows; (1) a near-nude male psycho with a sweater tied around his waist to obscure his genitals and (2) his dead female victim laying on the rocks beneath him -- entirely nude herself, and with a pretty graphic look at her public hair.

CONT

[–] roger1 (3876) a month ago

Hitchcock showed all these prurient films and photos to Universal executives in 1967 -- and was rejected on the spot. He made the comparatively tame and staid spy drama "Topaz" instead (in 1969) and returned with his new "Frenzy" in 1972. Frankly, if we only got one Frenzy, I prefer the one we DID get, with its London setting in general, and its Covent Garden setting in particular.. Its just more flavorful than what we could see(and in script form, read) of the First Frenzy.

FOUR: Coverage of ALL the TV episodes that Hitchcock personally directed. A couple of them weren't even for his TV series(either the half hour or hour version.) Hitchcock directed the spectacularly suspenseful "Four O'Clock"(a man tied up in his basement with the time bomb he built to kill his wife) and "Incident on a Corner"(Hitchcock's only COLOR TV episode...released in 1960, the year of Psycho, starring Vera Miles OF Psycho and using the "floating overhead platform" FROM Psycho used to film the Arbogast overhead shot of his murder. "Four O'Clock" was for "Suspense Theater" and "Incident at a Corner" was for Ford Startime or some such.

I"ve always been intrigued that Hitchocck directed only ONE of his hour-long shows, "I Saw the Whole Thing" (with John "Trouble With Harry" Forsythe) in 1962. I'll guess that once Hitchcock hit "superstar director" status from Vertigo through Psycho, he just didn't want to work in TV anymore, where, Hitchcock noted "You make the film for a price" and cannot make a big profit. During this time, he also made the very strenuous The Birds, and eventually tired and ended his TV series in 1965.

So that's some of the new stuff(amidst a lot of OLD stuff -- the same photos, the same discussions)in HITCHCOCK ALL THE FILMS

CONT

[–] roger1 (3876) a month ago

The Other Book, I didn't find in the bookstore , but rather in internet advertising:

It is called "Hitchcock: Nonetheless" and that's a cool title, because;

THAT book is about all the movies that Hitchcock made that were NOT either artistic classics OR box office successes. The full title is: "Hitchcock Nonetheless: The Master's Touch in his Least Celebrated Films."

And yeah, that means that Torn Curtain and Topaz -- "The Cold War TO- movies" made the list. But interestingly, neither Marnie nor Family Plot of "the late ones" made the list.

Here IS the list of 15 movies covered in "Hitchcock: Nonetheless":

Juno and the Paycock
The Skin Game
Rich and Strange
Number Seventeen
Waltzes from Vienna
Secret Agent
Jamaica Inn
Mr. and Mrs. Smith
The Paradine Case
Under Capricorn
Stage Fright
I Confess
The Wrong Man
Torn Curtain
Topaz

Hmmm...well, I find The Wrong Man..the one right ahead of Vertigo North by Northwest Psycho and The Birds...to be just as much a masterpiece as any of those. (And it has a Bernard Herrmann score, if not a Saul Bass credit sequence.) Plus, the only film Hitchcock made with Henry Fonda and the movie fits him like Vertigo fits James Stewart and NXNW fits Cary Grant. You could say that Hitchocck "finished the 50s" with Grant, Stewart AND Fonda...even though Fonda was late to the party.

Mr. and Mrs. Smith was a screwball comedy. Waltzes from Vienna...some sort of musical?

I Confess is a nice bookend to The Wrong Man made three years later: Black and white photography, a strong Catholic theme(and a man of faith as the protagonist in each one) and FAITH AS A THEME. Hitchocck "believed" and both Monty Clift in I Confess and Fonda in The Wrong Man are pretty much saved because of their faith.

I'm not strong either way with the others, but I DO have great affection for BOTH Torn Curtain AND Topaz, seen in my youth as part of my life, and not just on TV.

And The Master's Touch IS in Torn Curtain and Topaz, surely.

CONT

[–] roger1 (3876) a month ago

Also: Topaz especially looks and feels like...Psycho. The "basic" Universal studio sets. The "small scale suspense sequences." (Rico Parra heading down to break down a door is basically Arbogast heading up the stairs TO an opening door.)

The cover of " Hitchcock Nonetheless" is a deliberate re-staging, circa 1969 of a similar still from the making of Psycho at the beginning of the decade in 1960. Hitchcock - -seen from behind , sitting in his chair, his face not visible -- looking up as his players look down on him: same shot.

In 1960:

Anthony Perkins, Vera Miles and John Gavin look down on Hitch.

In 1969:

John Vernon(Rico Parra) and Karin Dor(Juanita de Cordoba) ...look down on Hitch.

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Well, these are books I might MAYBE get but the important news is: Hitchcock remains relevant to GET books written about him