Alfred Hitchcock's films are among my all time favorites. I have seen quite a few. Even with modern cinema's technological advances and the modern mind's ability to calmly process the gruesome, Hitchcock movies remain hypnotically chilling, rising above the unnecessary blood and gore commonly associated with the genre of horror and suspense films. Hitchcock's magic did not rely on using fear as a blunt instrument but rather on shrewdly employing it as a vehicle for causing extreme anxiety in the minds of viewers. I rate Psycho as one of the best horror films. I have seen it several times at different stages of maturity, the first time as a teenager (and no, the shower scene was not what scared me the most) and it still gives me goosebumps.
Hitchcock fans know about his fascination with a certain type of women - most of his leading ladies fit the prototype. Hitchcock liked blondes but he did not go for the overtly voluptuous, fun loving bombshells. His golden women were cool, crisp and reserved - almost aristocratic in their demeanor. They gave off an aura of slightly repressed but simmering passions. In his movies, Hitchcock would submit his ladies to unspeakable physical and psychological horrors that shattered their elegant equilibrium and exposed their vulnerability. It is also common knowledge that Hitchcock's taste for the macabre spilled over from the silver screen into real life. In fact the slightly comical, egg shaped, harmless looking old man was a bit of a manipulative sadist in real life and he never got over Grace Kelly, the perfect blonde ice maiden whom he lost to her high profile royal matrimony. (I knew much of this already. The latest unsavory details didn't change my opinion of his classic films.)
Alfred Hitchcock had a thing for blondes -- especially the cool, regal kind whose pristine exterior might mask startling depths of passion.
"We're after the drawing-room type," he told Francois Truffaut (in his interview book Hitchcock). ". . . An English girl, looking like a schoolteacher, is apt to get into a cab with you and, to your surprise, she'll probably pull a man's pants open."
He relished placing his heroines in jeopardy. He broke them down emotionally, and even physically. Preoccupied with manipulating their screen images -- dictating the tiniest details of costume, coiffure, makeup and shoes -- Hitchcock eventually strove to control their private lives as well.
"I always believe in following the advice of the playwright (Victorien) Sardou," Hitchcock once confessed. "He said, 'Torture the women!' The trouble today is that we don't torture women enough."
Renowned as the Master of Suspense, Hitchcock made 53 films -- most of them thrillers, and many classics of the genre.
First through sly cameos in his own films, then in his increasingly hammy introductions as the host of a popular TV anthology series, Hitchcock constructed the public persona he relished: the rotund eccentric with a macabre sense of humor. In this play-acting, his fascination with the dark side was a joke; terrifying audiences, a mischievous prank. He pretended to take it lightly, as in his oft-repeated declaration: "Some films are slices of life; mine are pieces of cake."
But anyone who has experienced the dark depths of Hitchcock masterworks such as Strangers on a Train, Rear Window, Shadow of a Doubt or Vertigo knows that their themes -- fear, guilt, sex and death -- were anything but light.
Film fans easily recognize Hitchcock's signatures: The "wrong man," falsely accused, fleeing both the law and the bad guys; Terror arising in places thought to be safe (a cornfield in North by Northwest, a motel shower in Psycho); Voyeurism (in Rear Window, it's the whole movie); The oft-repeated advice to take a drink because "it's just like medicine." And the sense that (as Truffaut noted) Hitchcock "filmed his love scenes like murders and his murders like love scenes." But of all the director's trademarks, perhaps the most alluring and enduring -- and the most disturbing in real life -- is the Hitchcock Blonde.
Hitchcock was married to Alma Reville from 1926 until his death in 1980. She was a crucial collaborator, especially in refining screenplays. Their only child, Patricia Hitchcock, acted in several of the director's films. Alfred and Alma, by all accounts, shared a stable, satisfying marriage.
Hitchcock's fantasy life, as explored in his films, was something else again. He directed his first film, The Pleasure Garden, in 1925, and a year later created his first suspense movie, The Lodger; he considered it the first "Hitchcock film." Its endangered heroine, June Tripp, was a blonde -- but the type hadn't yet coalesced. Early heroines such as Madeleine Carroll in The 39 Steps and Priscilla Lane in Saboteur were unwilling sidekicks, handcuffed to the hero-on-the-run. Though of questionable loyalty, they were not yet objects of obsession.
The type evolved into the mystery woman whose duplicity endangered the hero: Ingrid Bergman in Notorious, or Eva Marie Saint in North by Northwest. Yet her treachery usually proved the result of the villain's control over her.
The Hitchcock Blonde reached her apex in three films with Grace Kelly (Dial 'M' for Murder, Rear Window, To Catch a Thief). Kelly epitomized his idée fixe: the ice goddess who could unleash unexpected flames of passion. The camera, standing in for Hitchcock, clearly worships her.
He described his modus operandi to Richard Schickel (in The Men Who Made the Movies): "In To Catch a Thief, I kept cutting to Grace Kelly in profile, very still and not much expression -- until Cary Grant sees her up to her room. And suddenly, in the doorway, she turns and plunges her lips onto his. Bowls him over completely. The cool blonde does give you somewhat of a surprise if she does turn out to be very sexy."
Hitchcock's attitude toward this ideal darkened after what he perceived as betrayals: Kelly's abandoning acting to marry Prince Rainier of Monaco; and Vera Miles' opting for pregnancy rather than starring in Vertigo, which Hitchcock had planned as her breakthrough role.
Vertigo was his most autobiographical work. James Stewart played Scottie, a man obsessed with Kim Novak's Madeleine, who was herself haunted. After her death, Scottie forces an unwilling second woman (Judy, also played by Novak) to duplicate every aspect of the dead woman's attire and hairstyle. The plot creepily echoed Hitchcock's domination of his female stars. Vertigo's recurring shot of a tightly wound coil of ash-blonde hair atop Novak's head encapsulates the theme of obsession. It's a hypnotic vortex into which Stewart (or Hitchcock) could fall and disappear forever.
In Psycho, Hitchcock treated his blonde viciously, killing off Janet Leigh's pert embezzler less than halfway through the film. The shower murder was widely regarded as the most shocking act in film history up to that point.
With Tippi Hedren, star of The Birds and Marnie, his obsession finally spun out of control, like the berserk carousel at the climax of Strangers on a Train. He discovered Hedren in a TV commercial. A model, she had no plans for an acting career. Signing her to an exclusive contract, he launched his most intensive and intrusive campaign to play Pygmalion, as detailed in Donald Spoto's biography The Dark Side of Genius.
Because Hedren was an unknown, Hitchcock could take his proclivities to extremes he would never have dared with stars such as Bergman or Kelly. "It was really very clear, wasn't it?" Vertigo screenwriter Samuel Taylor observed years later. "He was doing Vertigo with Tippi Hedren."
He dictated conditions of both her professional and personal life. He sent her inappropriately personal notes and expensive presents, including jewelry. To Hedren's daughter, Hitchcock sent a doll of Hedren, resting in a small pine box shaped like a coffin. The gift traumatized the 5-year-old (who grew up to be actress Melanie Griffith).
To film The Birds final attack, Hedren crouched in a corner as animal handlers hurled seagulls and ravens at her. Toward the end of the week's shooting, Hitchcock decided the birds were backing off too soon. He had stagehands wire some of them to Hedren's costume, so the confused animals would continue flapping and scratching against her. When Hedren sustained a gash near her lower left eyelid, shooting had to be suspended.
He'd planned Marnie as Grace Kelly's comeback to the screen. When she refused the role, he cast Hedren and resumed his cat-and-mouse game with her: notes, gifts, suggestive remarks.
As he told Truffaut (in Hitchcock), Marnie was based on "the fetish idea -- a man wants to go to bed with a thief, because she's a thief." Hedren played a deeply troubled woman, her thieving and sexual frigidity rooted in childhood trauma.
Sean Connery's Mark blackmails Marnie into marrying him, then essentially rapes her on their wedding night. Hitchcock's notes in preparing the film made it clear he wanted to make that scene as explicit as possible.
Perhaps the scenario emboldened him. During the latter part of shooting, he crossed the line (even for the amazingly patient Hedren): He sexually propositioned her in her trailer. After she refused, he turned against her and lost interest in the film. He disparaged the performance he'd previously touted as Oscar-worthy, and never spoke her name again. His disinterest led to sloppy handling of the film's technical aspects. The result was a critical and box-office disaster.
"He was never the same after Marnie," Truffaut wrote. "Not so much due to the financial failure of the film, but the failure of his professional and personal relationship with Tippi Hedren." The discreet Truffaut called it only a "disastrous falling out." But Spoto's biography is specific about the details.
Hitchcock made four more films. While some contained blonde characters (notably Barbara Leigh-Hunt's murder victim in Frenzy), none centered on the director's fantasy ideal. There was never another true Hitchcock Blonde.
This brings back the memories of when I could sit through a whole movie (Notorious, Spellbound, Rebecca, etc.) glued to the small screen without walking away for a snack or break. I never really noticed Hitchcock's blonde obsession till you pointed it out in this post! Thanks for Another New Thing that I learnt today.
Posted by: Sujatha | February 20, 2007 at 12:34 PM