The Pin
No spoilers, but I thought that whole sequence was brilliant and funny and suspenseful. Classic Hitchcock the whole way!
shareMINOR SPOILERS HERE
If you are speaking of the "potato truck sequence" -- in which the psycho killer Rusk must ride in the back of that truck with the corpse of his latest victim and pry that tiepin out of the cold, dead hands of the victim - yes, its a classic Hitchcock sequence -- composed of 118 different shots!
In the book, it wasn't a tie pin -- it was a latch key to Rusk's apartment, and might give him away. But Hitchcock had used latch keys in a big way in "Dial M from Murder" so he went with the tiepin here and it was a great through-line through the whole movie, thus:
ONE: This killer uses neckties to strangle his female victims. He did NOT use neckties in the book -- he used his bare hands in one murder and a stocking another. By going with the "necktie killer" motif, Hitchcock gave his killer a "movie persona" and a way to sell Frenzy in movie posters.
TWO: Rusk sells fruit, and early on , we see him pick his teeth with that tiepin after eating an apple. Still later in the film, Rusk goes to pick his teeth with the pin , in his flat, after eating fruit and - he realizes that the tiepin is GONE! (Very nice way of showing his realization.)
THREE: After Rusk retrieves the pin, the next day he is wearing it on his lapel, and again eating fruit while talking to the local pub owner. Rusk plucks the pin from his lapel, picks his teeth, and puts in back in his lapel. The pub owner notices nothing but WE know the agony through which Rusk when to get that tiepin back. This "finishes the paragraph" on The Story of the Necktie Tiepin.
CONT
But also this:
FOUR: Having attempted the impotent rape of Brenda Blaney in her office, Rusk keeps her pinned down and makes a theatrical show of plucking the tiepin out of his lapel -- Hitchcock gives the moment a huge close -up and we HEAR the cloth of the lapel react to the plucking. Rusk has freed his necktie so that he can take it off and strangle Brenda with it. Brenda -- who had thought she was at the mercy of a rapist -- now realizes she is face to face with the dreaded Necktie Killer -- "My God, the tie!"
FIVE: And finally this thought. The tiepin has a big "R" on it. For Rusk. Or perhaps for Robert. But that "R" could also point to the wrong man that the police are seeking: Richard. Blaney.
And yet Rusk goes nuts -- into a frenzy -- to get that tiepin back.
The "journey of the tie pin" in Frenzy and its uses -- to pick Rusk's teeth; to presage murder with Brenda Blaney, to force Rusk into that potato truck ride -- is exactly the kind of thematic flourish and plot detail that took Hitchcock a level up in filmmaking and story telling.
Frenzy made many brilliant editing sequences. The Blaney rape scene was composed of so many shots, I had flashbacks to the Psycho shower scene.
That said, I was actually more impressed by the 2nd rape scene. We DONT see it. We don’t hear it. All we have is a camera that slowly pans back from a closed door, goes down the stairs, and emerges into what appears to be a typical street scene. Such simple concept. We know what is surely happening, and there is unspoken horror in knowing that it is happening unawares amongst ordinary people going about their business. Brilliant and bold. We’ll never see Hitchcock’s equal again….
Frenzy made many brilliant editing sequences. The Blaney rape scene was composed of so many shots, I had flashbacks to the Psycho shower scene.
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I think that Hitchcock was clearly trying to bring back memories of the shower scene. He had also done this in the massive bird attack on Tippi Hedren alone in a room near the end of The Birds. This Frenzy strangling made it a trilogy. However, while Hitchcock put Bernard Herrmann's famous screeching violins over the shower stabbing, he released THIS killing scene with no music -- which made it brutal and realistic and very sad. A long strangulatiion is disturbingly intimate.
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CONT
That said, I was actually more impressed by the 2nd rape scene. We DONT see it. We don’t hear it. All we have is a camera that slowly pans back from a closed door, goes down the stairs, and emerges into what appears to be a typical street scene. Such simple concept. We know what is surely happening, and there is unspoken horror in knowing that it is happening unawares amongst ordinary people going about their business. Brilliant and bold.
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Hitchcock was a master of many things, but structure and style were two. And we get that in Frenzy. We are up close and personal and see everything in the rape-murder of Brenda Blaney -- it is truly Hitchcock's most shocking scene, worse than the Psycho murders in its realism. And it has impact -- it wasn't "trite."
But with the killing of Babs, Hitchcock does various things: he spares the audience a second murder to witness, of a very nice person (it would be like Psycho having two shower scenes) and he "flips the equation." With Brenda, we are in the ROOM where the murder takes place, and agonized that "the world" is right outside her office and down the stairs -- and no help comes.
With Babs.. we are down on the STREET in "the world," and we KNOW what's going on up in that room and it is horrible and sad without seeing a thing. (Though Hitchcock springs a shocking surprise flashback to Bab's strangling, later.) And no one will hear a thing down below.
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We'll never see Hitchcock's equal again.
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No...he was a true original. Imitated but never equaled, a man who got to make art films that were loved by millions worldwide.
Once Hitchcock had some hits and proved himself, studios pretty much let him make "experimental movies" all the time -- things like the Frenzy staircase scene have little to do with "the plot" and everything to do with "the artistic statement."
CONT
That staircase scene (called the "Farewell to Babs Shot" by its makers) BEGINS with a great artistic technical flourish too:
Babs walks angrily out of the pub where she has just quit her job into the noisy bustle of the Covent Garden marketplace.
Close up on Babs.
And the sounds of the marketplace RECEDE TO SILENCE.
Totally "un-realistic." A "sound trick."
And then a voice: "Got a place to stay?"
Sudden rack focus behind Babs: its Rusk. Smiling , friendly Bob Rusk. And we know that Babs is in grave danger.
At the beginning of "Farewell to Babs," Hitchcock brings DOWN the marketplace noise. At the end of "Farewell to Babs," Hitchcock brings UP the marketplace noise(no one will hear the murder.)
CONT
I realized that I forgot yet two other references to the tie pin:
ONE: In Brenda's office, after killing her and with her corpse nearby in a chair(Rusk barely notices his victim; he is sated), Rusk takes a bite of the apple on Brenda's desk...and picks his teeth with the tie pin. ANOTHER "plant." And Rusk coughs on the apple , almost chokes on it -- must mean something.
TWO: In his flat after dumping Babs in the potato truck, when Rusk reaches for his pin and it is gone, he gets the flashback to the Babs killing -- very brief, very stylized, with music. The "main attraction" is a camera move in and close-up on the "R' pin and Bab's hand grabbing it in death.
That's one meaningful tie pin!