Hitchcock Retrospective - Part One - Family Plot, Frenzy, Topaz and Torn Curtain

[philosoraptor42]

Hitchcock is known for some of the greatest movies in cinematic history with films like "Psycho", "The Birds" and "North By Northwest" getting a regular mention. Recently a friend lent me his boxset of some of Hitchcock's latest works and I had the idea of working my way back from his last film to his earlier (and ever more elusive) films. Hitchcock's career spans around 50 years, his last film being Family Plot released (according to IMDB) in 1976 and his earliest being a film called Downhill released in 1927. I don't expect to get that far back, but I think seeing all the films back to The 39 Steps (released in 1935) might be a more reasonable challenge to set.

So for the first installment of these reviews, here's the last four films Hitchcock released: Family Plot (1976), Frenzy (1972), Topaz (1969), and Torn Curtain (1966). These are all films which I had never seen before. Below I provide my reviews in order of preference, starting with the best.



Topaz (1969)

A film actually often dismissed, however this may be partially because there are a variety of possible endings to this film. (From the sounds of it, I got the best one and certainly the one Hitchcock preferred.) Another reason is because the film was rather rushed initially and has been nicely tidied up for the DVD release.



To be nice and vague about the endings, the original ending which you most likely won't find in a version you watch unless you have purposely chosen an alternate endings version, involves a duel in a stadium. This sounds like it would jar with the rest of the film, but I suspect it was Hitchcock attempting to be ambitious with a visually memorable piece at short notice (since apparently they were shooting this film while the script was still being written). While Hitchcock apparently used a fairly recent real life duel as inspiration, it presumably didn't work on the big screen.

The version I have ends with a scene in an airport. The ending surprised me, but I thought it was a good way to wrap things up. Anyway, apparently this ending confused some test audiences so while the airport ending was used in the UK cinema release, in France and the US they had yet another ending cut from some other footage and some extra scenes filmed without the original actors. This third ending involved a suicide. One commenter claims that Hitchcock was intentionally doing a bad job on this last version because he wanted the studios to pick the airport ending. If your film ends with characters talking at an airport, it's likely you are watching the same version I did: The ending Hitchcock would have preferred.

"Topaz" begins with a family intending to defect to the US. On holiday in Copenhagen the family struggles to lose their accompanying Soviet agents in order to be picked up safely by the CIA. This initial scene is very tense and does a great job of setting the mood of the film. The rest of the film comes to centre around François Picard, a journalist who seems to have a remarkably large network of friends and relationships, allowing him to play a huge part in the highly political situation arising. It turns out that the central focus of the story is new Soviet activity in Cuba. Guess which historic issue this film centers around?

There's one point in the film where I felt one of his relationships was rather closer than made sense for his character. Apparently his previous film "Torn Curtain" was criticised for not being as exciting as the James Bond movies, so perhaps this is part of that influence? Certainly if this is Hitchcock trying his hand at James Bond then I'm with it completely. It's like a James Bond movie with a heart. James Bond expects there to be casualties and is stoic in the face of tragedy. Bond is also capable of fighting his way out of a tought situation. The journalist here is a much more down-to-earth figure who knows what is at stake and, with him, we feel the full force of any deaths along the way.

The build-up of the mystery in "Topaz" is excellent, but admittedly not all of it is entirely believeable. The thing which really served to pull me out of the action the most, however, was the way the different characters who all speak French would decide to talk with one another in English anyway. This took a while to accept because in earlier parts of the film the people speaking to one another are from such a variety of nationalities, so it's not until quite a way into the film that the decision to have everyone speak English becomes obvious.

Topaz is a great cold war thriller which often leaves you doubting the trustworthiness of the characters involved. It's not quite as tight plotwise, nor quite as spectacular, as some of Hitchcock's more well-known classics. Still, I would strongly recommend this. The characters are endearing, the dialogue is engaging, the tension mounts well and there's a decent pace. I think that the lack of well-known American actors in this film is probably the main thing keeping it from being respected as highly as the others reviewed below.

B+





Family Plot (1976)

There's a very odd start with an extended sequence of Barbara Harris contacting a male spirit and putting on an odd voice (to represent being contacted by this man in the beyond) as she takes on the role of a psychic/medium. At the end of the session she is given a task by the rich lady who has employed her. She is tasked with finding the long lost heir of the rich lady's estate in exchange for a sizeable reward. The initial scene of contacting the spirits is a rather poor way to set up the plot as it's quite hard to follow. What's more, those who found what was said during the seance clear and comprehensive will be getting quite bored during the later part of the scene where it is explained precisely what was revealed during the session.



In the car later, it turns out that Barbara Harris and Bruce Dern are romantically entagled and working together. Fortunately here we begin to see the lighter tone as the two make conversation and playfully antagonise one another. Barbara Harris appears to insist that her psychic powers are real, even though in the session we clearly see the old lady feed her most of the information. However, she's not about to claim that her powers will find the lost heir. For that, she needs Bruce Dern to play detective. It seems that the two of them really need the reward money.

As it turns out, the lost heir is not keen on being found. Meanwhile Karen Black and William Devane are involved in a number of jewellry scams and may turn out to be somewhat involved. I only really know William Devane from "Payback" (starring Mel Gibson) where he plays a mob boss. He's a lot younger in "Family Plot" but has a distinctive face and is deliciously creepy here as he plays the cold, calculating criminal mastermind. Karen Black is his love interest and the two are equally committed to their criminal enterprise. Karen Black went on to star in a number of horror titles including "Burnt Offerings" which is supposed to be a bit of a classic. Interestingly she was also in the science fiction movie "Capricorn One" a few years later.

There's an exciting scene at one point where a car has been tampered with so that it cannot brake and so the car continues to accelerate once it's been started. Part of the problem with this scene is how obviously fake it was. In Hitchcock's classic "North By Northwest" there is quite an exciting scene of a car that is somewhat out of control (in that case, the driver is drunk) and the stylistic choices meant that the obvious background screen didn't matter. Here it all looks a bit silly, but the bigger problem was that I'd seen it done better in "Capricorn One". Now this seems a bit unfair to some extent because, coming out the following year, Capricorn One's scene was clearly inspired by this one. That said, the whole of Capricorn One has a bit of a Hitchcock sensibility and deserves credit for doing a better job with it's own runaway car sequence.

There's some good comedy and some good tension in this film, but in the end the opening is a little jarring and the ending is a little too twee. While the acting is great, the story isn't as finely-balanced as it could be. There are a few points where the film drags a little bit. Overall I thought the performances were really great, the chemistry between Barbara Harris and Bruce Dern and their comic timing was particularly impressive, and with a bit of a rewrite I think this could be a really good film. However, I think this is missing something, is a little too cheesy and doesn't quite meet the standard we'd expect from a Hitchcock film.

C+





Frenzy (1972)

I'd been recommended this one quite highly, but when another friend said it contains "the funniest rape scene you will ever see" I was a little worried. If a rape scene will trigger you, you should steer well clear of this film, and probably this review too.



The villain of the piece is a murderer who kills his (always female) victims by strangling them with a tie. We have an early scene where a couple of gentlemen are discussing the modus operandi of a serial rapist and murderer for the sake of the audience. There's a bit of a dodgy bit where the female bartender in their pub joins in saying "he RAPES them too doesn't he?" almost as if she finds the idea exciting. One of the two men discussing the case replies "well at least there's a silver lining" at which point the female bartender laughs, clearly semi-shocked but enjoying the taboo nature of the conversation. Some have tried to excuse the film here, saying that the point of the discussion is the public's typical morbid fascination with serial killers. They claim that the laughter at this stage is brought into perspective by the horror of the later scene. I just felt that this whole introduction was rather poorly judged and that it would have been nice to have been introduced to the basics of serial killer psychology by a character who we would be following in the long term. Neither of the two men in this initial discussion appears to be seen again.

When the rape scene in question turned up, I could see what my friend meant to some extent. Sure, it's not a funny scene and in fact the build up to the rape is very disturbing. However, the end of the rape scene might, with a nicely timed snarky comment, have elicited a laugh. When the woman dies from the strangulation, Hitchcock decides to represent this by pausing the film. It's like Hitchcock didn't realise that audiences can tell the difference between an actress not moving and the screen being paused. What's more the camera then goes to pull away from a close-up of the eyes to show the woman with a tie around her neck and her tongue sticking comedically out of her mouth. I'm not a doctor and perhaps I'm missing something here, but I cannot imagine how being strangled would lead to your tongue sticking right out of your mouth.

The intention is clearly that this film should have comedy elements, but the comic timing feels a bit off. One of the main characters is the detective involved in the case. We see a number of scenes where he is having dinner with his wife who is trying to cook French cuisine. The detective is completely horrified by his wife's cooking so we get scenes where he is trying to explain the case while chewing over and over on the same piece of meat before eventually spitting it out when his wife isn't looking. There was a lot of comic potential here, but somehow it just didn't work in the scenes themselves.

There's a rather cool scene in the back of a truck full of potatoes which was very tense. There's also a neat little moment where Hitchcock has the camera back away from a room all the way down the stairs outside of the door and across the road to hear the hustle and bustle of busy London life outside. This film is not without it's neat little classic Hitchcock moments. However, overall this is a very cheesy film which ties up a little too easily by the end considering how mixed up things get towards the beginning.

At one point in the film the man who becomes the central focus of the film comes to be given the dramatic option of doing nothing by the introduction of his old army buddy played by Clive Swift. Clive Swift's character turns out to be in a relationship with a woman played by Billie Whitelaw. Billie Whitelaw has been in "The Omen", the mini-series "Shooting The Past" and most recently in "Hot Fuzz" and she was instantly recognisable. I was extremely annoyed when her part turned out to be a mere distraction from the main plot. She seemed to out-class the entire production.

In the end, this film had very little to say about serial rapists and murderers. It was a fairly run of the mill crime thriller with some rather poorly timed comic elements and I felt some scenes ran on a little bit. It might have helped to make better use of the characters set up and the idea of a detective sharing all the details of the high profile case he is working on with his wife at dinner just seemed to suspend my disbelief that little bit to far. There were definitely some good elements in this film, but the overall film is really not one I'd recommend.

D+





Torn Curtain (1966)

Okay so I wasn't exactly gushing with praise for the last one, so what didn't I like about this one then? Well actually I enjoyed it a lot to start with. Julie Andrews finds that her fiance, Dr. Armstrong, is acting a little strangely. With a bit of snooping she discovers that he is taking a flight to East Berlin. She follows him there to find him announce quite publically that he wishes to defect, with reasons in relation to his nuclear research no less... Naturally things get very difficult for their relationship, but Julie Andrews cannot seem to bring herself to simply leave. But how can they express their feelings clearly when they are under constant observation by the Stasi?



Gromek, the "guide" employed by the Stasi to accompany Dr. Armstrong, is absolutely brilliant. He claims he lived in New York for several years and regularly mangles New York phrases. A personal favourite was "itz for the boids" ("it's for the birds"). His good humour is neatly contradicted by his profession, making him especially creepy.

At one point there is a fight scene in a kitchen and it's the most absurd fight scene I have ever seen. Having managed to break the one knife in the kitchen, a woman is forced to look around for an alternative weapon. She picks up a shovel and uses it to bring her assailant to the ground. For seemingly no reason, she doesn't continue to use the spade on the guy's head. She looks around the kitchen. What else can she use? (There's another person in the fight who the assailant is scuffling with on the floor at this stage btw.) She looks desperately around the kitchen and what does she do? Now even accepting that she cannot use the spade again, let's think of what we'll find in the kitchen. She could have hit him with a kettle. Most likely one of those heavy-duty ones that is heated on the stove too. She could hit him with a teapot. Earlier in the scene a bottle of Apfelweine is mentioned and after hitting him with that she could use the glass shards. To prevent him making a phone call, the phone was pulled off the wall. Presumably she could hit him with that. She could have poured kitchen condiments in his eyes - and even salt or pepper would probably do the trick (not to mention her own fingernails).

So what does she actually use? She turns on the gas in the stove and slowly drags the man towards it so she can suffocate him to death with the gas. I was absolutely stunned that the fight took such a ridiculous turn and the film doesn't really ever make sense again.

It turns out that one secret method of getting people across the border is to run a bus that is slightly off-timetable from the normal bus route, but travels in the same direction. We're supposed to be worried about the authorities discovering that this is a fake bus, but this whole scene ends up feeling comical. How would it be remotely helpful to have a fake bus that goes the same way as the normal one?

Later there's a scene where the protagonists are trying to find out where the post office is. They go up to ordinary people in East Berlin and neither can speak German. I'm sorry but that is ridiculously suspicious. There would not be a lot of English-speaking tourists in East Berlin during the Cold War. The whole idea is absurd. In the same scene a Polish woman shows up and starts drawing ridiculous amounts of attention to the protagonists by enthusiastically and loudly asking them to be her sponsors to get her to America. And one last thing: Shouting "fire" in English in East Berlin during the Cold War will probably not lead to the entire audience running unquestioningly towards the fire exit. If shouted in German then perhaps, but shouted in English? They might be a little more sceptical (presuming they even recognise this individual word shouted randomly in a less familiar language).

The film started so well and then just descended into nonsense around half way through. The acting was good enough (asides perhaps from the eccentric Polish lady who was a little over-the-top), but the plot was extremely daft. This is definitely the least impressive of the Hitchcock films I've examined so far.

D-
(Edit: Previously gave this E+, but looking back I think that was unfair.)