Offbeat Blu-ray Review: Sisters – The Criterion Collection

Spine #89

Distributor: Criterion Collection (USA)

Release Date: October 23, 2018

Region: Region A

Length: 01:32:42

Video: 1080P (MPEG-4, AVC)

Main Audio: English Mono Linear PCM Audio (48 kHz, 1152 kbps, 24-bit)

Subtitles: English SDH

Ratio: 1.85:1

Bitrate: 34.71 Mbps

Notes: The Criterion Collection had previously released a DVD edition, but this is the film’s Blu-ray debut.

WARNING: This article contains spoilers. We prefer not to discuss a film’s plot in intricate detail so that spoilers aren’t an issue, but it was necessary to compare very specific elements in Sisters to those found in Alfred Hitchcock’s work. We apologize in advance.

Brian De Palma in 1973

“I have found that people who like and are knowledgeable about Hitchcock also like Sisters—they know the references I am making to his films and they seem to appreciate it all the more for that. Which is good, because you could so easily be attacked as a tawdry Hitchcock rip-off.” –Brian De Palma (Filmmakers Newsletter, September 1973)

After several decades worth of hindsight, it seems more accurate to say that those who are truly knowledgeable about Alfred Hitchcock are much more likely to find fault in the film homages of Brian De Palma—not because he is using ideas and themes popularized by a much better filmmaker, but because he doesn’t seem to understand how and why Hitchcock’s technique for creating suspense in his audiences actually works. In fact, these borrowed techniques are often rendered less effective when used alongside De Palma’s own stylistic flourishes.

Sisters is the film that began this particular pattern of filmmaking for Brian De Palma, and it may very well be the homage that works the best on its own terms. This is probably due to the fact that he wasn’t attempting to set himself up as the next Hitchcock when he started the project. In a 1973 interview, De Palma clarified his intentions: “Basically, I wanted to make a movie in the Hitchcock mode in order to work out my own problems as a storyteller. It was also a study in the realization of precise visualization.” He was also attempting to make a film that could capture a wide enough audience to make a decent profit at the box-office after the epic failure of Get to Know Your Rabbit. This meant turning his attention towards exploitable subject matter and learning how to plan his scenes visually.

“I was at Columbia in the late ’50s and early ’60s, terrified of being drafted. So I made movies about not wanting to go to Vietnam—very much the politics of the day. And then I decided I wanted to start learning how to tell stories with pictures. So, of course, Hitchcock is the great master of that, and I saw a lot of his movies and began to use some of his story ideas and techniques in order to learn how to do that.” –Brian De Palma (NPR, July 01, 2016)

Borrowing heavily from Psycho, Rear Window, and even Rope, the film tells a sordid story about a gorgeous model named Danielle (Margot Kidder) who has a secret: she was once a conjoined twin and was recently surgically separated from her sister, Dominique (also Margot Kidder). This particular story element was actually based on a very real set of Siamese twins:

“I got the idea from a picture in ‘Life‘ magazine. They had these Russian Siamese twin sisters called Masha and Dasha as they’re sitting together on a couch—one looking kind of gay and happy and the other sort of slumped over to the side looking completely psychopathic. And the caption was ‘although they’re physiologically perfectly normal, as they develop into adolescence, they’re developing certain mental problems.” –Brian De Palma (De Palma, 2015)

This is the photograph of Masha and Dasha (at age 11) that gave Brian De Palma his inspiration for Sisters (1973). It appeared along with a photo essay entitled “Rare Study of Russia’s Siamese Twins,”  which appeared in the April 8, 1966 issue of Life. The caption actually read: “When they were younger, they enjoyed special attention. As they matured, they came to comprehend the full meaning of their deformity. Doctors now predict they will need psychiatric help.”

The first act of Sisters is an obvious nod to the structure of Psycho as it introduces a character as the film’s protagonist only to kill him off at the end of the first act. In this instance, the protagonist is Phillip Woode (Lisle Wilson). We first see Phillip as the unwitting guest on a hidden camera show called ‘Peeping Toms.’ (Some critics suggest that this may be a homage to Michael Powell’s Peeping Tom, but those familiar with De Palma’s earlier films understand that voyeurism had long been a staple of his work—especially in Greetings and Hi, Mom!. It is also a theme that is omnipresent throughout Alfred Hitchcock’s body of work.

The aforementioned model, Danielle, has been hired to portray a blind woman in Phillip’s locker room who begins undressing (seemly unaware of his presence) as the show’s contestants make guesses as to whether he will be a gentleman and leave or if he will simply gawk at the attractive woman undressing before his eyes. He does the right thing and is given a dinner for two at a cheesy restaurant called “The African Room.” One might assume that Danielle was paid for her participation, but this is apparently not the case since she is given a set of cutlery. In any case, Danielle asks Phillip if he wouldn’t mind taking her as his date to “The African Room” and they take a fast liking to one another.

Unfortunately, their enjoyment of the evening is soon hindered by a strange looking gentleman named Emil Breton (William Finley) who seems to be stalking Danielle. We first see him in the studio audience at the game show, he confronts her as she dines with Phillip at “The African Room,” and he follows them back to Danielle’s apartment. It turns out that the gentleman stalker is actually Danielle’s ex-husband. After temporarily getting rid of Emil, Phillip and Danielle make love as the camera reveals a rather large scar on her hip.

Morning soon comes and Phillip is awakened by the sound of Danielle arguing with an unknown woman in another room. The argument is in French and therefore inscrutable to Phillip. However, he is soon told what the audience has already inferred from their subtitled argument: the other woman is Dominique, Danielle’s unstable twin sister who is visiting her on their birthday. It seems that she is jealous of Phillip’s presence in the apartment. He offers to leave them alone so that they can enjoy their day together, but Danielle prefers that he stay with her. She does, however, ask him to go and pick up some medication for her. He does this and also stops at a bakery to buy Danielle and Dominique a personalized birthday cake. Meanwhile, Danielle is in a great deal of pain and in desperate need of her medication.

Phillip returns and it seems that she has passed out on the sleeper sofa—but the woman asleep on the sofa isn’t Danielle. It will suffice to say that Dominique doesn’t seem to care much for birthday cake, because Phillip is stabbed to death for his efforts. The structural similarities between Sisters and Psycho are obvious: Phillip Woode is the Marion Crane of Sisters. De Palma has made it a point to discuss this similarity in interviews, bragging that “there are a great many structural elements here that are in all [of] Hitchcock’s movies: introducing a character and then having him killed off early in the film, switching points of view, taking the person who sees the murder and then having him solve the crime.” He isn’t quite right in stating that this was a structural feature of all Hitchcock films. After all, the master really only dispatched what the audience assumed was the film’s protagonist in Psycho, but De Palma is right to give credit where credit is due. (One might argue that Hitchcock also killed off one of his primary characters two-thirds of the way through Vertigo, but it should become clear why this isn’t technically the case if they give it any serious thought.)

Phillip desperately crawls to a window where he writes “help” in his own blood. This is seen by Grace Collier (Jennifer Salt), a struggling reporter living in an apartment across the way. This is one of several nods to Rear Window, but this is shown in split-screen instead of Hitchcock’s preferred technique of subjective montage. In fact, the next sequence in this film relies heavily on split-screen—a device that Brian De Palma is known for and uses in many of his films (with varying degrees of success). It actually works surprisingly well in Sisters for a variety of reasons. For one thing split-screen reflects the “split” nature of Danielle and Dominique (in more ways than one), but it also provides a bridge between the Phillip/Danielle perspective and the Grace Collier perspective since this single sequence is shared equally between them. Of course, it wasn’t the first time that he had used this device and it wouldn’t be the last.

“[The] split-screen, I got from Dionysus in ’69 where I shot the narrative of the play and Bob Fiore shot the audience’s involvement with the players and the play. And then I got this idea: ‘Well we’ll show them simultaneously.’ The thing about movies is that you’re telling the audience what to look at. When you cut to something, you’re saying ‘Oh, there’s something important going on here. Look at that! The thing about split-screen is the audience has a chance to sort of put two images together simultaneously, and something happens in their head. You’re giving them a juxtaposition as opposed to, “THIS!” Split-screen is a technique that can take you out of the experience. The idea is, ‘where is it appropriate?’ In Sisters it worked quite well: ‘Can I get the blood cleaned up before Jennifer [Salt] comes around with the police?’” –Brian De Palma (De Palma, 2015)

Grace calls the police and hurries around to find the location of Danielle’s apartment before two police officers arrive at the scene with a chip on their shoulder. (It seems that Grace has recently written a rather unflattering article about the local police department.) As our new protagonist answers their questions and tries to talk them into investigating the murder instead of wasting time as they address their own hostilities, Emil has arrived at Danielle’s apartment and helps her clean up Dominique’s bloody mess. Much of this plays out in split screen and it is really quite effective as the viewer waits to see if the mess can be cleaned up before Grace arrives at the door with the police. If the sequence has a flaw, it lies in the fact that there is temporal manipulation in the form of editing during the Emil/Danielle portion of the frame while Grace interacts with the police in real time. Ideally, both scenes should have played out mostly in real time for maximum effect.

Even with these flaws, the split-screen device works much better in this film than it did in many of De Palma’s other films. One can’t help but wonder if he didn’t continue using the device in an effort to put his stamp on a film without ever considering how it would affect the scene. One example would be the prom rampage in Carrie. After her cruel humiliation, we see the film’s titular character take violent vengeance on the students and faculty. It plays out in a series of split-screen shots, and the effect of the chaotic violence is largely diminished as a result. This is only one example of many, but it seems that the director now agrees with this particular criticism after having given the sequence a few decades of retrospective analysis:

“[Split-screen is] very good for some types of storytelling and not so good for things like the trashing of the prom in Carrie, because split-screen doesn’t really work well in action. It’s more of a meditative technique.” –Brian De Palma (The Autopsy, 2004)

The split-screen scene in Carrie (1976) was an error in judgement, and the device doesn’t work nearly as well in this film as it did in Sisters (1973).

Actually, Carrie has a number of distracting touches that seem to serve no function other than to take the viewer out of the film. The most obnoxious example might be a scene where Tommy Ross (William Katt) is seen with a group of his friends as they try on and choose their tuxedos. Suddenly, the scene speeds up and their voices sound like chipmunks. This is a horror film! Establishing and maintaining a certain tone is of paramount importance, and this completely takes the viewer out of the film. De Palma claimed in a commentary track that he felt that the scene was too slow, but this is a scene that could have been shortened by cutting to the next scene a bit earlier or deleting it entirely (it wasn’t at all a necessary scene). There are weird quirks in many of his films, but this is one of the more annoying examples.

However, it seems that this article has gone off on a tangent—and just as it was about to discuss one of the most important scenes in the entirety of Sisters.

It is during the aforementioned clean-up sequence that another Hitchcockian touch is introduced. Emil and Danielle hide Phillip’s body in the sleeper sofa just as a body was hidden in a trunk throughout the entire duration of Rope. It turns out that they finish cleaning and Emil is able to exit the apartment with the rest of the evidence just as Grace arrives at the door with the two police officers—a very nice ending to the film’s celebrated  and the split-screen sequence.

What follows is an investigation of the apartment that might have had even stronger ties to Alfred Hitchcock’s Rope if De Palma had been able to shoot the sequence as he had originally intended:

“One of the scenes which I would have completely reshot had I the money (and it’s no longer in the picture because I couldn’t reshoot it) is one that I had thought about for years and years, where the body is in the couch and it’s bleeding through the bottom of the couch. The whole search scene is a Max Ophuls-type tracking shot about six minutes long, and while they are searching through the apartment, the camera keeps coming back to the couch, and the spot keeps getting bigger and bigger and bigger. I shot it, but because the camera could only get down so low and still go up high enough to shoot the rest of the scene, we couldn’t get down to the bottom of the couch, and when we saw the rushes it looked ridiculous because it looked like the guy was bleeding up through the arm of the couch. So I had to throw out the whole tracking shot, and I was forced to use close-ups and television-type coverage—which bothered me a lot because it was a great conception for that kind of material. (In fact, the whole set had been constructed so that I could track through the entire length and back around, just like Hitchcock did in Rope.)” –Brian De Palma (Filmmakers Newsletter, September 1973)

What we are left with is still quite interesting as the couch still manages to loom large in the scene as we are shown a blood stain that goes unnoticed just as Grace actually sits down on the sofa as she argues that there must be evidence of the murder. As they go through the apartment, Grace discovers that the closet contains two of each outfit and asks Danielle if she has a twin sister. Danielle insists that she has multiples of her outfits because she is a model and sometimes need a backup. This lie is nearly exposed when Grace discovers the birthday cake (which reads “Happy Birthday, Dominique and Danielle”) in the refrigerator, but she slips on the floor and destroys the cake before the two police officers can read it.

The police consider the matter closed after this fruitless search, but Grace is undeterred and continues to investigate the matter on her own and hires a private detective named Joseph Larch (Charles Durning) to assist in the investigation. Larch decides that another search is in order and uses the guise of a window cleaner to enter the residence after it is determined that the residence is empty. Meanwhile, Grace watches this search from her apartment with a pair of binoculars in a scene that recalls a sequence from Rear Window wherein Lisa Freemont investigates Lars Thorwald’s apartment while he is away. Larch soon signals to Grace from one of the windows that he has found something, but Danielle and a pair of unknown men return to the apartment. Grace distracts Danielle by dialing her phone and Larch soon signals that everything is okay (it is unclear what actually transpires since the view is much more limited here than it is was in Rear Window).

Lisa Fremont (Grace Kelly) silently addresses L.B. Jefferies from Lars Thorwald’s apartment in Alfred Hitchcock’s Rear Window (1954).

Joseph Larch (Charles Durning) silently addresses Grace Collier from Danielle Breton’s apartment in Brian De Palma’s Sisters (1973).

De Palma uses Hitchcock’s favored subjective editing style in this particular scene, but he is unable to build the same level of apprehension for a variety of reasons. One important factor here is that we just met Joseph Larch and are not nearly as invested in his character as one is to that of Lisa Fremont in Rear Window. Another issue here is that the film is less carefully thought out and the result is a scene that isn’t nearly as clear as the similar scene in Hitchcock’s film.

Shortly thereafter, Grace watches Emil and the two men previously seen in the apartment as they load the sleeper sofa into the back of a moving van. Meanwhile, Larch returns to the van and gives her a file that he found hidden in Danielle’s room and tells her that he tried moving the sofa to find that it was much too heavy and has come to the conclusion that this is where they have hidden Phillip’s body. He decides that he will follow the moving van and tells Grace to wait in her apartment and he will call her with updates. However, Grace has no intention of doing this, because the records contained in the file reveal that not only does Danielle have a twin sister named Dominique, but they were conjoined at the hip until very recently.

Grace remembers a story written about Dominique and Danielle that was published in Life magazine and visits the writer of the piece. It is here that she learns two important things: Dominique was once mentally unstable, and she died in surgery as the result of the separation. Those familiar with Psycho might compare this revelation with the scene where Lila Crane and Sam Loomis are told by Sherriff Chambers that Mrs. Bates died in a murder-suicide incident several years prior.

Soon thereafter, Grace tails Emil and Danielle to a mental institution in a sequence that owes more to Roman Polanski than it does to Alfred Hitchcock (at least in terms of style). Grace watches as Danielle struggles against Emil and is soon discovered. Emil (the head doctor at this institution) convinces one of his staff that she is a new patient and proceeds to hypnotize her, “There was no body, because there was no murder.” While she is still under hypnosis, we are taken into a dream or hallucination that inexplicably places Grace in Dominique’s memory:

“…The history of the twins growing up in the Institute and their separation is via a sort of dream imagery, which I think makes it much more interesting. The idea derives from Polanski. I have always liked the dream sequence in Rosemary’s Baby where the devil makes love to her. It was a good idea because you never really know whether or not it happened, and the imagery is terrific. It also avoids the scene in Psycho where the psychiatrist sits down and explains everything. An expository scene can be a kind of boring scene, but you need it because the audience doesn’t know what’s happening and you’ve got to explain it to them. By placing it in a dream, I think you get a sort of visceral feeling for what went on rather than specific information.” –Brian De Palma (Filmmakers Newsletter, September 1973)

The surreal nightmare-rape sequence in Roman Polanski’s Rosemary’s Baby (1968) inspired the ill-advised dream elements that tainted the final act of Sisters (1973).

Frankly, this is the moment that the film de-rails. The dream sequence is an unnecessary element and serves only to confuse the viewer (while exposition is intended to clarify or provide information). We really don’t learn anything of paramount importance that we do not already know or won’t learn in the moments following this hallucination. Furthermore, it isn’t nearly as interesting or as well executed as the scene in Rosemary’s Baby that inspired it.

This ineffectual nightmare is immediately followed by a scene wherein Emil reminds Danielle that Dominique died as a result of the surgical separation that he performed on them, and we learn that she compensated for this loss by giving Dominique life in her mind (a psychological phenomenon that is now referred to as Dissociative Identity Disorder). He also explains that Dominique’s personality takes over any time that he tries to make love with her. If De Palma’s intention for the illogical hallucinatory nightmare was to provide the film’s expository revelations in a more cinematic manner than the typical dialogue scene, one has to ask why he follows the scene with expository dialogue.

It also seems unlikely that an educated doctor who has just revealed the fact that his sexual attention triggers the wrath of Dominique would punctuate this information by giving Danielle a passionate kiss when she is obviously in an unstable state of mind, but this is exactly what he does. Of course, the inevitable result of this moment of incredible stupidity is his death—and the result of this murder is that Danielle is arrested (although she still seems completely oblivious to the reality of her condition). Unfortunately, Grace seems irrevocably damaged and emphatically insists that, “there was no body, because there was no murder” when the police take her statement. The picture ends on a short shot of Joseph Larch watching the abandoned sleeper sofa that no one will ever claim. It goes without saying that the film’s premise owes a huge debt to Psycho.

It seems fitting that such a film should be scored by Bernard Herrmann, but his participation actually began after the film entered post-production. In fact, one might even say that his score was merely an inspired afterthought.

“When we were doing Sisters my editor, Paul Hirsch laid a lot of Benny’s stuff from Psychoin a temp track. As we were looking at it and it worked so well, we sort of looked at each other and said, ‘where’s Bernard Herrmann now?’ So, we brought him to New York to look at the film… Of course, as soon as he hears—I forget what it was, but I think it was either Vertigo or Psycho—but he starts to hear the music [and] he starts shrieking. He says, ‘Stop the projector! Stop it, stop it. I can’t hear that!’ And I said, ‘Oh, my God! So we stop the projector. He says, ‘I can’t look at your movie and listen to that!’ So, we frantically pulled all the temp track off and then played the movie silent for him… But he was scary.” –Brian De Palma (De Palma, 2015)

Of course, Herrmann’s score added immensely to the film’s overall power. It also reinforced all of the inevitable comparisons with Alfred Hitchcock’s oeuvre.

Conclusion: The Trouble with De Palma

“…But then I am no Hitchcock—I don’t have the resources or the time or the skill to do that yet.” –Brian De Palma (Filmmakers Newsletter, September 1973)

It has now been 45 years later since the release of Sisters, and Brian De Palma now has the resources and the time. He has also developed his technical skills, but this shouldn’t suggest that he has risen to Alfred Hitchcock’s level since technical proficiency is no match for creative genius. This should have never become De Palma’s goal in the first place, because it is impossible to develop one’s own creative voice while attempting time and time again imitate someone else.

It is somewhat difficult to get a handle on such a filmmaker. One cannot say that he merely mimics Alfred Hitchcock since a great number of his films bear very little if any resemblance to Hitchcock’s work. However, De Palma has made quite a few films that borrow heavily from the master’s work and seem to delight in rubbing the viewer’s nose in these similarities. This is unfortunate, because one never becomes fully engaged in a film if they are constantly comparing it to someone else’s movie. To confuse matters even further, he consistently compares his films to those made by Alfred Hitchcock only to chastise critics and scholars for making these same observations.

“Well, I’m compared to Hitchcock all the time, mostly by people who don’t quite understand me or Hitchcock. I understand Hitchcock extremely well. I mean, I’ve been behind those eyeballs. I see the way those shots are constructed.

And many of the comparisons… are ludicrous. You read them all the time. You don’t know what these people are seeing on the screen. They talk about Carrie—the bath scene—being like the Psycho shower scene, and it’s like, ‘what?’ I mean, the Psycho shower scene is completely unique. It’s a whole series of very clever quick cuts. Carrie gets into the bathtub [and] washes the blood off in about three different cuts! There’s absolutely no relationship except [that] there’s a girl in water.” –Brian De Palma (The Autopsy, 2004)

This may seem a like an extremely valid argument, but thousands of comparisons have been made of the two directors throughout the years (many of them by De Palma himself), and most of these comparisons are blatantly obvious. His arrogant and manipulative assertion that those who compare him with Alfred Hitchcock do not “understand” him or Hitchcock is beyond absurd. What’s more, his argument is based purely on how these two scenes are shot. He never considers their context or what the two scenes being compared actually represent. One imagines that it is De Palma who misinterpreted whichever critic happened to make this comparison and not the critic who misinterpreted him.

At first, this reviewer agreed with De Palma’s assertion that any comparison between Hitchcock’s shower scene in Psycho and the bath scene in Carrie is ridiculous. However, after giving it a moment of consideration, it now seems like an interesting observation—an observation that has nothing to do with how the two scenes are shot or how they work on the audience. Marion Crane’s shower was a symbolic baptism in that she was washing away her sin (the theft of the $40,000). Carrie White’s bath can also be seen as a cleansing of her sins (the murderous rampage at the prom). The symbolism is made even more obvious in Carrie due to the fact that she is literally washing away blood (not to mention the other religious iconography that saturates the film).

Whatever one’s opinion on this particular argument may be, it should certainly strike the reader as incredibly strange that De Palma should become irritated at being compared with Alfred Hitchcock. It was he himself who started this comparison during his publicity interviews for Sisters, and he would continue positioning himself in this manner for quite some time. He seems to have spent a significant portion of his career making films that he himself admits borrow heavily from the master’s oeuvre. This is the same man who made Obsession! To call this a radical contradiction would be a massive understatement.

Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo (1958) is actually one of Brian De Palma’s primary influences and he has borrowed liberally from the film throughout his career. Obsession (1976), for example, borrowed liberally from the film:
“…I saw [Vertigo] in 1958, and it had an incredible impression on me way before I was interested in making movies. And there was something about the way the story was told and the cinematic language used in it that connected to me, even though, at that point, I was studying to be an engineer.” –Brian De Palma (NPR, July 01, 2016)

For a filmmaker who has consistently gone out of his way to promote himself as a student of Hitchcock’s, De Palma doesn’t really seem to have a handle on his work. He even seems ignorant about basic trivia that is known to basically everyone who has even a casual interest in the subject. As an example, he writes in Murder by Moog: Scoring the Chill—an article about his working relationship with Bernard Herrmann that he had thought the composer had already passed away. When his editor, Paul Hirsch questioned this, De Palma stood firm, “Look, I don’t have the dates, but the last movie I remember him doing was The Birds and that was ten years ago.”

Most cinephiles are aware of the fact that The Birds has no score and that Herrmann merely acted as a “sound consultant” (which in retrospect seems like a title one gives to temperamental composers with sensitive egos as a way to ensure a continuing working relationship). Oskar Sala and Remi Gassmann deserve more credit for bringing Hitchcock’s unique ideas to life than Bernard Herrmann. Worse, De Palma seems to have forgotten the composer’s great work on Marnie—even though they had used a selection from this score in the temp track for Sisters (as is indicated later in the same article).

Of course, De Palma’s ignorance about such trivialities doesn’t really matter very much. One simply feels that if he wants to sell himself as a student of Alfred Hitchcock’s (much less the “heir” to his thrown), he should at least admit that he never paid any attention in class! De Palma may borrow heavily from Hitchcock, but he often overlooks (or ignores) important elements that are inherent in the master’s approach to a scene and replaces them with devices that are more in line with his own aesthetic. The result is usually a mishmash that doesn’t quite work. Luckily, Sisters almost came out unscathed in spite of these tendencies… almost.

The Presentation:

4.5 of 5 MacGuffins

The Criterion Collection houses their disc in the same sturdy clear case that has become the standard for their releases (we prefer this to their digipaks). The cover sleeve includes thematically appropriate artwork by Jay Shaw that is an improvement over their artwork for the earlier DVD edition but somewhat less impressive than Criterion’s best cover art. Happily, we are given an attractively illustrated booklet instead of their standard folded leaflet. It contains an essay by Carrie Rickey entitled, Sisters: Psycho-Thriller, Qu’est-ce Que c’est?, excerpts from an archival interview with Brian De Palma that was originally published in Filmmakers Newsletter in September of 1973, and Murder by Moog: Scoring the Chill, which is an article written by the Brian De Palma about his professional relationship with composer Bernard Hermann. It was originally published in the October 11, 1973 edition of The Village Voice. This booklet adds an enormous amount of value to an already attractive package.

Criterion’s animated menu features footage from the movie and is in the same style that collectors have come to expect from Criterion’s Blu-ray releases. It is attractive and should be intuitive to navigate.

Picture Quality:

4.5 of 5 MacGuffins

Well, Criterion’s new 4K digital restoration transfer is a significant improvement over Arrow’s 2014 transfer. There may be a few fans who prefer Arrow’s color grading but it seems reasonable to assume that Criterion’s disc is more accurate since it has been approved by Brian De Palma (although this isn’t necessarily true). We know that Criterion has always prided itself on trying to represent the films in their collection in the manner that the filmmakers originally intended. Highlights look especially better here than they did in the earlier release. The only issue here is that the color does shift a bit.

Another difference between the two transfers is that Criterion presents the film in its original 1.85:1 aspect ratio. We should make it a point to mention that while Arrow’s 1.78:1 transfer may have included more information at the top and bottom of the frame, Criterion gives the viewers more information at the left and right of the image (while presenting the film as it was seen in theaters).

There may be a bit more grain evident but this is likely due to the increase in detail that the new 4K scan gives the image. Frankly, this grain looks more organic and well resolved here despite the fact that there is more of it. Many cinephiles will appreciate the filmic texture of the image. There are some density fluctuations that were inherent in the source elements that are unfortunate, but since these were unavoidable it would be unfair to blame the transfer. Depth has certainly been given a boost as has fine detail. There may be a few age-related issue present, but Criterion seems to have removed most of these anomalies. Overall, this is a very nice transfer that was limited only by the original source elements.

Sound Quality:

4.5 of 5 MacGuffins

Criterion’s lossless Mono track represents the film’s original mix. It might be a marginal improvement over Arrow’s transfer as it seems to be fuller and allow the various elements (including the Bernard Herrmann score) more breathing room. There isn’t a huge difference, but that earlier sound transfer was really quite decent. Some may criticize Criterion for not including an upgraded 5.1 track, but the important thing is that this is a very good representation of the original sound.

Special Features:

4 of 5 MacGuffins

Feature Length Audio Interview with Brian De Palma

This 1973 discussion with Brian De Palma was recorded at the American Film Institute and plays over the film as if it were a commentary track. The conversation is largely focused around Sisters, but other films are briefly discussed as well. It is certainly an interesting listening experience, although some of the questions from members of the audience are quite difficult to hear or can be inarticulate even when they are audible. It is amusing to hear De Palma’s irritation at times as certain questions rub him the wrong way, but he is quite open as to his intentions and his responses are worth hearing. Especially interesting are his recollections about working with Bernard Herrmann.

Interview with actor Jennifer Salt – (24:07)

Jennifer Salt discusses her friendships and the lifestyle that she shared with her Margot Kidder and Brian De Palma before the production of Sisters, and how she and Kidder were eventually cast in the film (their roles were written for them). She also goes into their experiences while shooting the film and her initial disappointment that it wasn’t an immediate classic. Her memories are interesting and worthwhile even if much of the information is vague and generalized.

The Autopsy – (26:32)

The Autopsy is a “making of” retrospective that was produced by “Wild Side Video” and features interviews with Brian De Palma, Paul Hirsch, Bill Finley, Edward R. Pressman, and Charles Durning. It was produced in 2004 and contains a fair amount of information about the film’s conception and production. It isn’t as comprehensive as one might hope, but it is well worth the viewer’s time as it does add to one’s appreciation of the film itself.

Margot Kidder on The Dick Cavett Show (1970) – (08:56)

This pre-Sisters interview with the late Margot Kidder finds the actress in a quirky but charming form. This excerpt also includes a rather large dose of an equally charming Gloria Swanson and a tiny dose of Janis Joplin (we don’t see much of her). It’s a nice addition to the disc even if it doesn’t bring anything in the way of Sisters-related information. It is an enjoyable nine minutes.

Photo Gallery – (11:20)

Herrmann’s music accompanies this lengthy no-frills slideshow of production photography. It is nice to see these photos included in some manner as most of them were new to this reviewer.

Radio Spots – (03:31)

This collection of radio spots is accompanied by pages from the film’s press book. Both the press book and the collection of radio spots give cinephiles a brief glimpse into the film’s marketing. Unfortunately, much of the text featured here is impossible to read.

Final Words:

De Palma has proclaimed himself to be the “only true heir” to Alfred Hitchcock’s cinematic technique. We disagree with this on a number of levels, but such a claim wouldn’t be worth celebrating even if it were true.

Luckily, Sisters works as mindless exploitation once accepted on its own terms (even if—like Danielle—it is unable to establish its own identity), and this Criterion release offers genre fans a very good transfer coupled with a supplemental package that adds to one’s overall appreciation of the film… Just remember that those who want to see something truly Hitchcockian should watch a film that was actually directed by Alfred Hitchcock.

Review by: Devon Powell

Advertisements

Offbeat 4K UHD Review: Halloween

Distributor: Lionsgate Films

Release Date: September 25, 2018

Region: Region A

Length: 01:30:56

Video: 2160P (HEVC, H.265)

Main Audio: 7.1 English Dolby TrueHD (48kHz, 24-bit)

Alternate Audio: Mono English Dolby Digital Audio

Subtitles: English, English SDH, Spanish

Ratio: 2.35:1

Notes: This title has seen many DVD releases and two Blu-ray releases. This marks the film’s UHD debut. Special features are never consistent when it comes to this particular title, and this creates a problem for anyone who wishes for a clean upgrade. The transfer for the UHD disc was sourced from different elements than the included Blu-ray (see below for a more detailed analysis).

“Well, you call it a slasher film. I guess the original slasher film was Psycho. That was the film that all of these things are kind of based on… Psycho was the big daddy of them all. And it had a literal slashing scene in it! The famous shower scene. So I don’t think I created anything…” –John Carpenter (Crave Online, Oct 23rd, 2013)

Is it even possible to discuss John Carpenter’s classic without mentioning Psycho? It’s difficult to find an article about (or a review of) Halloween that doesn’t at least mention Hitchcock’s landmark film. In fact, Roger Ebert opened his original review of Halloween with a quote by Alfred Hitchcock before he proceeded to compare the two films:

“‘I enjoy playing the audience like a piano.’ –Alfred Hitchcock

So does John Carpenter. Halloween is an absolutely merciless thriller, a movie so violent and scary that, yes, I would compare it to Psycho. It’s a terrifying and creepy film about what one of the characters calls Evil Personified… Halloween is a visceral experience — we aren’t seeing the movie, we’re having it happen to us. It’s frightening. Maybe you don’t like movies that are really scary: Then don’t see this one… Credit must be paid to filmmakers who make the effort to really frighten us, to make a good thriller when quite possibly a bad one might have made as much money. Hitchcock is acknowledged as a master of suspense; it’s hypocrisy to disapprove of other directors in the same genre who want to scare us too.

It’s easy to create violence on the screen, but it’s hard to do it well… ” –Roger Ebert (Chicago Sun-Times, October 31, 1979)

John Carpenter during the production of Halloween.

The truth is that there is very little “violence on the screen” after the film’s opening murder sequence. Carpenter plays by the same rules utilized by Hitchcock while maintaining a style all his own. It is no small wonder that Ebert goes on to describe Carpenter’s expert command of the frame—it is a command that demands participation from the viewer. The film’s killer, Michael Myers, looms ominously in the background and usually remains in the shadows (or is seen at some distance). He is a malignant force that can be felt even when our eyes might miss him, and one never knows where he might turn up next. At other times, he will appear mysteriously in the foreground as his potential victims complacently go about their lives in the distance. Either way, the audience is aware of his presence while the teenagers remain blissfully in the dark—and this is Hitchcock’s primary rule for creating suspense. We know something that the characters do not know, and their ignorance may very well cost them their lives.

The emphasis is on the stalking sequences instead of the inevitable carnage. The eventual deaths contain little violence and relatively little blood. It simply isn’t needed. Carpenter, like Hitchcock before him, shows his audience the threat before making them wait for the violence. He has an uncanny ability to slowly build an audience’s anticipation until the suspense is nearly intolerable.

Mother and Daughter: Janet Leigh with Jamie Lee Curtis.

However, while one cannot deny that Hitchcock’s influence on Carpenter can be felt while watching Halloween, one doubts if a thorough comparison to Psycho would withstand serious scrutiny. Frankly, most of their commonalities are somewhat superficial. One imagines that Halloween’s various homages to Hitchcock’s film is responsible for linking these two vastly different exercises in suspense: Dr. Sam Loomis was named after John Gavin’s character in Psycho, Marion Chambers seems to be an amalgam of Janet Leigh’s Marion Crane and John McIntire’s Sheriff Chambers, and Jamie Lee Curtis is the daughter of Janet Leigh. One could argue that both Bates and Myers favor the butcher knife as their weapon of choice, but this isn’t a particularly revelatory observation.

Janet Leigh as ‘Marion Crane’ in Psycho and Jamie Lee Curtis as ‘Laurie Strode’ in Halloween.

John Gavin as ‘Sam Loomis’ in Psycho and Donald Pleasence as ‘Dr. Sam Loomis’ in Halloween.

Several scholars have chosen to compare the original murders of Michael Myers and Norman Bates from a quasi-psychological perspective and argue that Myers murdered his sister for showing another boy sexual attention just as Bates dispatched his mother for having a relationship with another man. This reading of the film suggests that, like Norman Bates, Myers is a stunted adolescent. Norman Bates forms an alternate personality to keep from facing the consequences of his actions while Myers literally wears a mask to keep reality at bay. This would certainly explain why sex seems to act as a trigger for Myers, and such an examination would definitely be more interesting than the popular opinion that Halloween is a kind of puritanical morality play about the evils of carnal knowledge (a reading that Carpenter himself has always argued against). It might be very interesting to view the film from this perspective, but it is impossible not to feel that this particular argument is a bit overreaching.

Perhaps it doesn’t matter either way. After all, the fact that Halloween is still being discussed and analyzed some forty years after its initial release places it in a distinguished group of timeless classics—and this is inarguably something that the film shares with Psycho. What else matters?

The Presentation:

4 of 5 MacGuffins

Lionsgate houses their UHD and Blu-ray discs in a standard 2-disc UHD case with a sleeve that includes the same iconic jack-o’-lantern artwork that graced the film’s most popular one sheet. This is as it should be! It is one of the best marketing images that has ever been produced for a horror film. The first pressing also includes a sleeve with this same artwork that will help protect the case and the discs that are housed inside.

The UHD menu is reasonably attractive and easy to navigate. Meanwhile, the included Blu-ray features the same animated menu seen on Anchor Bay’s original Blu-ray release of Halloween in 2007. (It is exactly the same disc. The only difference is the artwork that decorates it.)

Picture Quality:

UHD: 4.5 of 5 MacGuffins
Blu-ray: 3.5 of 5 MacGuffins

Disc 1: 4K UHD

This transfer was approved by John Carpenter and Dean Cundy, so fans can breathe a collective sigh of relief! This disc offers the viewer an option of HDR10 and Dolby Vision. The film has been scanned at native 4K for this release, and the result is really quite pleasing to the eye. There is, of course, a natural patina of grain inherent in the image, but this only adds to the filmic look of this overall transfer. The significant increase in resolution and dynamic range has resulted in a crisper and significantly more detailed image. The anamorphic lenses tend to result in a softer look at the edges of the frame, but this is hardly the fault of the transfer. Everything looks terrific here! The best news of all is that the color timing seems to correspond with the filmmaker’s original intention and mirrors the overall look of the “35th Anniversary” Blu-ray release.

Disc 2: Blu-ray

It is next to impossible to review this image transfer without also discussing the film’s “35th Anniversary” Blu-ray released in 2013. This disc is actually an earlier 2007 release—complete with the same opening previews, menu, and transfer. It has simply been decorated with artwork from the 2013 release. This may be confusing, but trust us when we tell you that this is the 2007 version.

The transfer included here simply isn’t inaccurate and doesn’t represent the original intention of those who worked on it. It is way too bright as the image practically glows, and the color timing is a complete mess. This throws the film’s tone off-kilter (a real tragedy as Carpenter has an amazing ability to create an atmosphere of dread). Unfortunately, these aren’t the only areas in which the later edition bests this disc in terms of image quality. The early exterior scenes were vastly improved and exhibit less vibrant colors and more natural skin tones than this particular transfer (as the colors here read much too warm). It had a crisper and more detailed image as well and clarity isn’t quite as good here either.

When the “35th Anniversary” edition was released, marketing materials highlighted the fact that it was a new transfer that had been overseen by Dean Cundey (the film’s cinematographer):

“A lot of the previous editions had just been made from a print or a previous digital version or whatever. I was very impressed by the fact that they wanted to make this sort of the definitive copy. Obviously, Blu-ray is, at the moment, state-of-the-art, and the fact that they went back to original materials, the camera negative and IP, and brought John and myself in to sort of approve the work and make sure it looked like our original intention, was highly commendable, I think. Yes, they did take advantage of all the latest technology, with scratch and dirt removal, things like that, so it is a very pristine example of the movie we made.” –Dean Cundey (Liner Notes: “35th Anniversary” Edition, 2013)

Such careful preparation was obviously in response to this disc, so those who own the “35th Anniversary” Edition would be wise to hold on to it if they wish to own the very best transfer in both the UHD and Blu-ray formats.

One wonders why they chose this disc over the other edition, and the only reason one can reasonably conceive is that this disc was chosen so that Halloween fanatics could have the supplements included here (since the supplements on the UHD have been carried over from the “35th Anniversary” edition). However, they could have easily put them on the freshly minted UHD along with the others if this was the reasoning behind this choice.

Sound Quality:

UHD: 4 of 5 MacGuffins
Blu-ray: 4 of 5 MacGuffins

The disc employs a TrueHD 7.1 lossless mix that is an obvious upgrade from the previous disc. The film’s iconic score has never sounded more dynamic and the dialogue is noticeably clearer than in the previous Blu-ray edition. This is especially clear in an early car scene where Dr. Loomis and Marion Chambers are driving in the storm. In the previous release, the dialogue seemed to be swallowed by the sounds of the storm. Here it seems to be balanced at a more acceptable level. The track has decent range and clarity making for a solid listening experience. It would be unreasonable to believe that a 7.1 mix on an older low budget film could sound any better than it does on this disc.

It will irritate most purists to discover that a high definition transfer of the film’s original mono mix isn’t included here, and I must admit that I include myself in this group. I’m tempted to give the sound a three star rating do to this oversight, but one doesn’t wish to give an unfair assessment of what is actually here.

Special Features:

UHD: 3 of 5 MacGuffins
Blu-ray: 4 of 5 MacGuffins
Total: 4.5 of 5 MacGuffins

Disc 1: 4K UHD

Every supplement featured on this UHD disc has been carried over from the “35th Anniversary” Blu-ray edition of Halloween.

Feature Length Audio Commentary with John Carpenter and Jamie Lee Curtis

People will likely feel that this new commentary is superior in some ways to the track on the 2007 Blu-ray disc that has been included in this same package. That track includes John Carpenter, Jamie Lee Curtis, and Debra Hill—but all three of these collaborators were recorded individually for that track, and the result isn’t nearly as fluid as the conversation between Carpenter and Curtis that is featured here. Having said this, the other track might be a bit more informative than this one. Both tracks should be of interest to fans of the film.

TV Version Footage – (SD) – (10:46)

This collection of scenes is actually my favorite supplement on the UHD disc. They were shot by Carpenter during the production of Halloween II in order to extend the film’s length for its original television broadcast, but he claims to regret doing this and feels that he sold out. It’s easy to understand why the director doesn’t care for them as they add nothing to the proceedings and interrupt the fluidity of the overall film. Having said this, one is happy to have them included on this disc for fans to revisit.

The Night She Came Home!! – (HD) – (59:43)

This featurette gives fans a glimpse of Jamie Lee Curtis as she attends a horror convention in order to monetize her horror celebrity for charity. She is shown signing autographs, talking to her fans, taking photos, and even hanging out with other Halloween alumni. Fans should find it extremely interesting if somewhat anemic when it comes to the amount of actual information provided. It simply isn’t terribly revelatory.

On Location: 25 Years Later – (SD) – (10:25)

This feature is ported over from one of the film’s many DVD editions and is a look at the various South Pasadena locations as they appeared on the film’s 25th anniversary. It is worth viewing, but why did they not include Halloween Unmasked 2000 instead? Unmasked is a 28 minute documentary about the making of the film that is far more informative than this featurette, and it includes some of the film’s important locations as well. What’s more, it hasn’t been included on either of the film’s Blu-ray releases. Oh well.

Theatrical Trailer – (SD) – (02:42)

It is nice to have the film’s trailer included. Too many supplemental packages seem to forget this basic feature.

Three Television Spots – (SD) – (00:32, 00:32, 00:12)

Three Radio Spots – (HD) – (00:29, 00:27, 00:28)

These vintage television and radio spots are interesting artifacts and nice additions to the supplemental package (even if watching them all together does tend to become somewhat repetitive).

Disc 2: Blu-ray

Again, this is the exact same disc that was released by Anchor Bay in 2007. The disc includes three unique supplements.

Feature Length Audio Commentary with John Carpenter, Jamie Lee Curtis, and Debra Hill

As mentioned previously, this commentary track may provide a bit more information to listeners than the 2013 track discussed above, but one’s listening experience isn’t quite as fluid. Basically, both tracks have their own strengths and weaknesses.

Halloween: A Cut Above the Rest – (SD) – (01:27:07)

The best overall supplement included in this set is undoubtedly this feature-length “behind the scenes” documentary. It covers the entire production history of Halloween, the film’s release, and its enduring legacy. Frankly, it was incredibly annoying to find that the “35th Anniversary” Blu-ray didn’t include this essential supplement. Those who are annoyed that Lionsgate included the 2007 Blu-ray instead of the “35th Anniversary” Edition may find solace in the fact that they are getting an excellent documentary that wasn’t included in that later edition.

Fast Film Facts (Textual Trivia Track)

This feature allows the viewer to watch the films with occasional trivia information occasionally appearing on the screen (very much like subtitles). One doubts if most people will want to revisit this particular feature terribly often since it tends to take one out of the film. It would be better to utilize this option while listening to the commentary track.

Trailer – (SD) – (02:42)

Three Television Spots – (SD) – (00:32, 00:32, 00:12)

Three Radio Spots – (HD) – (00:29, 00:27, 00:28)

The Theatrical Trailer, Television Spots, and Radio Spots are all exactly the same as those featured on the UHD disc.

Final Words:

John Carpenter’s Halloween is forty years old and still going strong. It is an incredibly efficient suspense thriller that demands to be revisited. Luckily, it can now be revisited in 4K UHD. Just remember to hold on to your “35th Anniversary” Edition Blu-rays since the image transfer on that release is vastly superior to the Blu-ray included in this package.

Review by: Devon Powell

 

Book Interview: The Essential Films of Ingrid Bergman

Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield

Release Date: September 15, 2018

A Conversation with Constantine Santas

It doesn’t matter what you’ve read or what you may have heard about the importance of Alfred Hitchcock’s collaboration with Grace Kelly. Ingrid Bergman’s place in the master’s legacy is every bit as important and possibly even more interesting. Needless to say, any book examining her work is worth reading for fans of the director as well as for those who admire this incredible actress.

In “The Essential Films of Ingrid Bergman,” Constantine Santas and James Wilson look at what they consider her most notable performances (and they had plenty to choose from). Her career began in Sweden in the 1930s and lasted until the year of her death in 1982, but this text focuses on the 21 films that they consider her most noteworthy. Special attention is paid to those aspects of her acting that made her stand out most—her undeniable range of emotion, her stunning vulnerability, and her indisputable beauty. Among the films discussed in this volume are Casablanca, Gaslight, Spellbound, The Bells of St. Mary’s, Notorious, Stromboli, and Autumn Sonata. Each chapter is devoted to a specific film and provides a general production history, a plot summary, thematic highlights, and major award details.

Constantine Santas (professor emeritus at Flagler College) agreed to sit down for a series of questions about his new book, Ingrid Bergman’s incredible legacy, and the impact that certain directors may have had on her craft.

AHM: I’ve read the book and enjoyed it immensely. Could you describe THE ESSENTIAL FILMS OF INGRID BERGMAN for our readers and what your intentions were in writing such a book?

CS: “The Essential Books of Ingrid Bergman” was part of a series called, “The Essential Films…” of several books on Hollywood stars by Rowman and Littlefield, based on their most important works. Books on Mickey Rooney, James Garner, Jack Nicholson, and my own, “The Films of Humphrey Bogart,” have already appeared, along with others that I may not know about. My intentions in writing the book was basically derived from the aim of the series: to select the best films of Ingrid Bergman, out of a total of 51 films, including her pre-Hollywood Swedish works (but not including her television works, with the exception of A Woman Called Golda), for close analysis, including introductory materials, plot designs, and theme selections. These guidelines were set by the publisher and we followed them closely. Obviously, the process of selections was in close cooperation with Stephen Ryan, the chief editor of R&L. With these guidelines in mind, we set out to produce a book on Bergman that would include her best work while sketching out a portrait of an actress who was thoroughly devoted to her work, talented, beautiful and one of the biggest stars of Hollywood’s “Golden Age.”

AHM: When and how did the idea for the book arise, and what were the biggest challenges in making it a reality?

CS: I started thinking about doing a book on Bergman while I was still finishing up Bogart. Aside from their Casablanca collaboration, the two had certain similarities in outlook and theme. Both had come from modest backgrounds (Bogart had debts to play after his father’s financial failures) and both rose by dint of talent and dedication to the art of cinema. Both had extensive backgrounds before they became famous, Bogart as a stage actor, Bergman a Swedish actress before David O. Selznick brought her to America. Both had extraordinary film careers in the 1940s, generally considered the Golden Age of Hollywood. Bergman was my personal choice among several candidates and I thought it a good idea to be my next target after Bogart. I mentioned the idea to Mr. Ryan, and, when he showed interest, Dr. James M. Wilson and I embarked on the project and signed the contract soon after we submitted a proposal.

AHM: Bergman had such a rich and distinguished career that I can’t imagine having to choose which features to include in a book. You mentioned that Rowman and Littlefield set certain guidelines for you. What exactly was the criteria or approach for choosing which films to highlight in this text?

CS: Choosing the films to include was indeed a challenge. The idea was to choose the best and most representative films of Bergman, the “essentials,” as the series was called. They were to be the best among Bergman’s long career, marked a by a key, ***** a classic, **** as good as a classic, and *** as good. Titles that received ** and * (given in the filmography section) were not chosen for inclusion. As it happens, we chose one of her Swedish productions, and the rest were the most prominent of her classic period in Hollywood. Classics included Bergman’s best movies that reflected her outstanding performance in a movie that was also outstanding in itself. Poor films even with an outstanding performance were not chosen. Most inclusions were from her Hollywood period (like Casablanca, Notorious, Gaslight, and several others), two were from the Rossellini period (including Stromboli), and only a few after Anastasia. [This was] mainly because her output in cinema declined in the following decades. We made certain, however, to include Murder on the Orient Express, which was a classic and gave her third Oscar. There is an element of subjectivity in selecting titles, but with three people involved (including the co-author and editor), we believe that the selections given in the book represent Bergman’s best work.

AHM: What qualities did Ingrid Bergman bring to her films that are unique to her?

CS: Her down-to-earthiness was a quality that gave her appeal. When [she] first came to Hollywood, Selznick proposed to alter her appearance, thinning her eyebrows, changing her hair color, fixing her teeth, etc., as was usually done by studios in that era. Bergman refused staunchly, thus retaining her natural looks, which endeared her to American audiences.

Bergman projected the image of a good woman who frequently appeared vulnerable and was often exposed to dangers (whether physical or psychological) by manipulative men who were usually older and socially or professionally superior (as in Intermezzo, Gaslight, and Anastasia). However, far from being naïve, she usually fought back [while] showing a keen intellect (as in Spellbound) and the ability to extricate herself from treacherous situations. She never played a villain or treacherous person, but she did sometimes portray a woman who suffered blows because of weakness or poor choices (Arch of Triumph or Stromboli). Though known for playing straight dramatic roles, Bergman displayed a talent for comedienne, as in Indiscreet and The Yellow Rolls-Royce. Bergman honed her skills constantly, from the start of her career in Sweden to her last role as Golda Meir (for which she posthumously received an Emmy). Bergman was not an imitator but always did things her own way. She commanded the screen with her presence like no one else.

AHM: Do you think that Bergman’s move to Hollywood transformed her acting in any way?

CS: Yes. In her Swedish films, aside from looking much younger (she looked younger than her age throughout her career), she was more realistic [since] films in Sweden had not attained the polish and glamor of Hollywood’s output. Her appearance and character were linked to her Swedish environment. People tried to make a living by leading simple lives and were surrounded by a near-polar environment with long nights and snow on the ground. Bergman’s mentor and director of several of her Swedish movies, Gustaf Molander, was consciously trying to present her on the screen as a woman of modest background (looking middle-class or lower). In the only film included in this book, En Kvinnas Ansikte (A Woman’s Face), she is not only low class but also a criminal that leads a gang which blackmails straying lovers. She also has an ugly scar on one side of her face, the result of a fire wound in her younger days.

David O. Selznick would not have allowed his Swedish import to look anything but beautiful. In Hollywood, beauty and glamor were institutions and actors and actresses had to undergo changes in their appearance, including hair color, eyebrows, lip design, teeth, not to mention accent and body movement. Bergman was tutored in English to learn the American idiom, while her appearance on the screen would change radically. In Hollywood, her Swedish plainness would be transformed into glamor. Though she would not allow Selznick to thin her eyebrows, Bergman was manipulated on a set to look glamorous, and one way to do that was to photograph her face from the left, which, some agreed, favored her profile. In Casablanca, this becomes evident, as one sees her face in profile from several angles, in numerous close-ups. Though retaining her individuality, Bergman became a glamorous movie star, being given proven male leads, and becoming world famous within a year or two after her arrival in Hollywood.

Though her Hollywood image was soiled after her adventure with Rossellini, Bergman regained her glamor with Anastasia, after which she projected an international image, making movies in several languages, Italian, French, Swedish, and never quite becoming a Hollywood idol again. Her last movie, Autumn Sonata, made for her namesake, Ingmar Bergman, brought her back to her homeland (though it was actually filmed in Norway) and the cycle was completed. Bergman’s image of an international star came into being in the second part of her career, but she is mostly still remembered as a Hollywood mega-star.

“Bergman was wonderful in Casablanca (1942) but that film is Bogart’s.” -Constantine Santas

AHM: What do you think Bergman took away from her experiences working with Alfred Hitchcock?

CS: Actresses who worked for Hitchcock said that they learned a great deal about acting from the Master of Suspense. He tutored them individually, on and off the set, supervising their movements, dress, accent, commandeering their performance in every film, while almost never praising a performance. With Bergman, Hitchcock developed a warm relationship from the start, guiding her adeptly through the three films she made for him. In Spellbound, she developed leadership qualities by adopting an unorthodox method of treating a patient, who was also her lover. Over the objections of several senior members of a psychiatric clinic, she undertakes to prove that he is not a suspected killer. Hitchcock shows her wearing glasses in her early scenes, suggesting that she was sexually repressed—a favorite Hitchcock gambit. As the plot progresses, the glasses are tossed off, while Constance Petersen takes the lead in investigating a crime against the advice of her seniors. In Notorious, Bergman was a dominant figure on the screen throughout the movie. Hitchcock taught her to be subtle in reaction shots, as for instance at the time she realizes that she is being poisoned by Madam Sebastian and Alex. Almost every possible shot was used to photographing her in several mental states—which is actually his strategy in the film. Bergman was a mature actress when she started working for Hitchcock; it shows on the screen. But her work for the Master gave her an extra sheen and cinematic stature that she retained for the rest of her career.

Bergman’s portrayal of Alicia Huberman is one of her best performances. This production photograph from the set of Notorious (1946) shows the actress enjoying a ‘behind the scenes’ moment with both Cary Grant and Alfred Hitchcock.

AHM: Not only is NOTORIOUS my favorite Ingrid Bergman film, but it also happens to be one of my five favorite Hitchcock films. I actually believe that it is superior to CASABLANCA (which is admittedly an incredible film) because it has so many layers of subtext to appreciate. I enjoy the relationship politics involved between Alicia and Devlin and their testing of one another—a test they both fail miserably. There is always more to see with each viewing. On top of all of this, Bergman is simply incredible! It’s really her show.

CS: I could have written these exact words. Yes, Bergman was wonderful in Casablanca, but that film is Bogart’s. He has much more screen time than she has, and he is the character that makes the major decisions. In Notorious, Bergman is center stage from beginning to end. Dejected after her father’s trial (and a bit later his death), she takes refuge in carousal and goes driving with an unknown man who happens to be at her party. When she is asked to collaborate with American Intelligence, she accepts and embarks on a dangerous mission that nearly costs her life. She handles everything “with great intelligence,” as Prescott tells her. Alicia Huberman is a heroine in the best sense of the word. She takes on the challenge to be another “Mata Hari” and, despite a heartache caused by her lover Devlin (Grant), she delivers the goods. Hitchcock makes sure the viewer understands her plight by having his camera following her in close-ups, the famous crane shot where the key to the cellar is shown in her hand, and many sequences where her actions, as well as her state of mind, are clearly communicated to the viewer. The love story cannot be ignored here either: the man she loves, stung by his conscience and realizing her plight comes to her rescue, just in time. Casablanca is a story of at least half a dozen people, put together with superior artistry. Notorious is following a single narrative line and the center of that line is Bergman.

AHM: Do either of you have a favorite Bergman film?

CS: For me, Notorious is Bergman’s best film and the reasons for that are explained in the paragraph above. I will add that a close second is Gaslight, for which Bergman received her first Oscar. This is an extraordinary performance in which Bergman is playing a woman losing her mind, subjected to mental torment by a designing villain-husband. In the last scene, when Sergis Bauer (Boyer) is tied, Bergman as Paula Anton delivers a caustic speech in which she explodes with feelings that were held back. She pours out her soul, it seems, providing a balm (catharsis) to the audience, thirsting for her to take revenge.

AHM: Is there a least favorite?

CS: That for me would be Arch of Triumph. It was made by Enterprise—United Artists, a company aiming to make movies with artistic ambitions. The company did not survive the failure of this film. In it Bergman plays Joan Madou, a European woman of undermined background, taking lovers, rather than pursuing a career (possible that of the singer since Madou could sing). The film was poorly edited and the plot seems murky at times. The reason for including it is that, despite its shortcomings, the film still manages to convey the plight of Russian and other refugees at the brink of the Second World War. Besides, the film features strong characters, Charles Laughton as a sadistic Nazi, Charles Boyer as a displaced doctor, and Louis Calhern (remembered from Notorious) playing an expatriate Russian who shelters and helps other displaced persons. Even as a “bad” character, Bergman gives a notable performance as an aimless, displaced woman who suffers the consequences of her ill-judged actions.

Ingrid Bergman portrayed the wayward Joan Madou in Arch of Triumph (1948).

AHM: It’s impossible to discuss Ingrid Bergman’s career without at least touching on her relationship with Roberto Rossellini, but instead of the resulting scandal, I prefer to discuss their work together. How do you think their distinctive styles changed the other’s work?

CS: Bergman’s collaboration with Rossellini demanded special work and a special study of the Italian Neo-realistic movement. It was her torrential affair with Rossellini that caught the attention of her fans and obscured the relationship of the two in purely cinematic terms. One thing that should be noted is the vast differences between the movie-making styles and methods of Hollywood and the Italian neo-realists—especially Rossellini. Generally, in Hollywood, preparations for filming demand a considerable amount of time spent on the writing of a script, [the building of] sets, costume design, art direction, musical scoring, the casting of professional actors, and etc.

When Bergman arrived in Stromboli, she saw a volcanic island spuming lava and a few inhabitants eking out a living as fishermen while living under the constant threat of an eruption (which actually happened during filming). What astonished Bergman more than anything else was Rossellini’s unorthodox style of film-making. He had no script—only an idea of a displaced woman he had met earlier in a refugee camp—and it seems that the story evolved as filming progressed. Instead of sets, Rossellini shot scenes on the village streets of Stromboli, the sea-shore, and on the mountainsides. There were no doubles, so Bergman had to do all the running up and down the slopes. And basically, all the actors were untrained uncomprehending villagers who had no idea what was going on, and moved on cue, as Rossellini attached strings to their toes when he wanted them to move in one direction or another.

At first, Bergman was appalled, tossing out a complaint: “Is this realistic filmmaking?” Gradually, however, she complied with Rossellini’s methods as their love affair intensified. To her, Rossellini was a genius and she came under his spell with considerable enthusiasm and eventually she went along with his projects, which included four more films and an oratorio. As a consequence, her Hollywood persona was demolished, and she played women in failed marriages, either because of the conditions of the environment (as in Stromboli), or social class (as in Europe 51), which describes her as attaining sainthood, leaving her husband and his high class, and ending up as an inmate in a psychiatric asylum. Bergman’s talents were so capacious that she could adjust and adapt to Rossellini’s demands, and she rose to the occasion, making three films (Stromboli, Europe 51, Journey to Italy) playing failed women in which Rossellini describes the wreckages of the war, the emptiness of soul in the upper classes in Italy and Europe, and a marriage that goes through the motions—themes that were developed by his contemporaries, Vittorio De Sica and Federico Fellini among others.

During the Rossellini episode, Bergman lost her good reputation in America, but her artistic abilities expanded as she became a more mature and skilled actress. This was due to her unparalleled professionalism which demanded excellence at any level of filmmaking. Rossellini himself explored Bergman’s talents to the limit and most of his films with her stood the test of time, although one cannot say that they have become more popular. In the end, setting aside the dimensions of a scandal that rocked Bergman’s career, both Rossellini and Bergman profited from working together, and their work merits further study.

AHM: Which Rossellini/Bergman collaboration is the strongest, and why do you think it shines above the others?

CS: Unquestionably, the strongest Rossellini/Bergman collaboration is Stromboli. The film shines in its objectivity in describing conditions in a God-forsaken place as realistically as was ever done in film. Despite the primitive conditions of filmmaking, Rossellini knew what he was doing and combined narrative and documentary style (the tuna fishing episode) while creating a story compelling enough to be watched with interest today. As for Bergman, the plainness of the environment favors her appearance, as she is more beautiful than ever (sitting on a rock, her hair, with a silver streak in it, blowing in the Mediterranean breezes). The Criterion Blu-ray of Stromboli is worth watching, as it reveals the uniqueness of this film in the Bergman canon.

Stromboli (1950) might be the best Rossellini/Bergman collaboration.

AHM: Do you think that her work with Rossellini in Italy had any influence on her later work?

CS: In films that followed, The Inn of the Sixth Happiness, Goodbye Again, The Yellow Rolls-Royce, Murder on the Orient Express, Bergman appears to have gained additional skills, playing mostly European women with an expanded range—a leader in the mountains of China, an American rich woman who fights for a cause against the Nazis, or a woman who a adjusts to a failed marriage—these are signs of maturity that may be attributed to her relationship to Rossellini. It is to be noted, however, that Bergman did not actually make a film in Hollywood until Cactus Flower in 1969. Her Hollywood career had essentially ended after her affair with Rossellini, but her performances were always good and at times superb, as Bergman always sought to try her best in every film she made. Rossellini had left his marks on her which can be traced in the rest of her career.

Interview by: Devon Powell

Blu-ray Review: Under Capricorn

Distributor: Kino Lorber

Release Date: June 19, 2018

Region: Region A

Length: 01:57:14

Video: 1080P (MPEG-4, AVC)

Main Audio: 2.0 English DTS-HD Master Audio (48 kHz, 16-bit)

Subtitles: English

Ratio: 1.33:1

Bitrate: 35.93 Mbps

Notes: This title was previously given a bare bones DVD release.

“Under Capricorn was made for Ingrid Bergman… but if I’d been thinking clearly, I’d never have tackled a costume picture. You’ll notice I’ve never done any since that time. Besides, there wasn’t enough humor in the film. If I were to make another picture in Australia today, I’d have a policeman hop into the pocket of a kangaroo and yell, ‘Follow that car!’” –Alfred Hitchcock (Hitchcock/Truffaut)

Many scholars have pontificated as to why Hitchcock chose to adapt Helen Simpson’s Under Capricorn as what was originally intended to be the première Transatlantic Films production. The major studios had all wisely passed on optioning the property. In fact, they had also passed on the other properties purchased by Sidney Bernstein and Alfred Hitchcock for Transatlantic. Under Capricorn, Rope, Stage Fright, and I Confess were all considered inappropriate material in which to build a suitable film script. Few if any of these historians seem to have given any consideration to the possibility that these “passed over” properties may have been the only ones that the budding production company could afford. It is doubtful that they would be able to outbid the major studios on more promising subjects (although Rope and I Confess are both incredibly underrated). This is only conjecture but it seems a reasonable possibility and one wishes that this avenue could be explored in more depth.

Alfred Hitchcock always claimed that he chose the property because he felt that Ingrid Bergman would respond to the material and that he was so absorbed with signing the actress to a film that this became his only consideration.

“I had no special admiration for the novel, and I don’t think I would have made the picture if it hadn’t been for Ingrid Bergman. At that time, she was the biggest star in America and all the American producers were competing for her services, and I must admit that I made the mistake of thinking that to get Bergman would be a tremendous feat; it was a victory over the rest of the industry, you see. That was bad thinking, and my behavior was almost infantile. Because even if the presence of Bergman represented a commercial asset, it made the whole thing so costly that there was no point to it. Had I examined the whole thing more carefully from the commercial angle, I would not have spent two and a half million dollars on the picture. At the time, that was a lot of money, you see… Anyway, I looked upon Bergman as a feather in my cap. We were making it with our own production company, and all I could think about was, ‘Here I am, Hitchcock, the onetime English director, returning to London with the biggest star of the day.’ I was literally intoxicated by the thought of the cameras and flashbulbs that would be directed at Bergman and myself at the London airport. All of these externals seemed to be terribly important. I can only say now that I was being stupid and juvenile.” –Alfred Hitchcock (Hitchcock/Truffaut)

This makes sense when one considers that the director was enjoying his first taste of freedom after being emancipated from the shackles of his contract with David O. Selznick. It was more important for the director to distinguish himself as a producer than to satisfy his own creative interests (at least when it came to his material). Under Capricorn was to be a star vehicle to rival those that Selznick was so fond of producing, and the fact that Bergman had already refused to sign another contract with Selznick would have made this victory even sweeter.

Publicity Still of Ingrid Bergman: “The film was done more or less for the benefit of Ingrid Bergman. That was a case of trying to find a subject to suit the star, which I don’t believe in. So, it was really a compromise…” –Alfred Hitchcock (John Player Lecture, March 27, 1967)

 WRITING THE SCRIPT

Unfortunately, Selznick had been able to procure prestigious properties and Hitchcock was stuck with a rather tedious novel that borrowed heavily from much better pieces of literature. Hitchcock’s film is thankfully much different than the convoluted mess that Simpson originally concocted. Her story is divided into three sections, and Hitchcock’s film only follows the first of these before providing a more coherent denouement. His final act has been criticized for being rather weak, but it must be said that reading the original novel gives one new respect for Hitchcock’s conclusion.

As mentioned, the film follows the first section of Simpson’s text rather faithfully, but the stories diverge at the Governor’s ball (which is a St. Patrick’s Day dance in the novel). This dance begins the second section of Smith’s novel, and it is at this point when her story becomes much more convoluted and tangential. Constantine Verevis gives a more detailed comparison between the film and the novel in an essay entitled, “Under a Distemperate Star” (although she takes a more appreciative view of the original novel than it really deserves). Her account of the rest of the book is a concise and more enjoyable way of comparing these two very different stories than actually having to read the book:

“The beginning of [section] two takes up the story—some three months after Adare’s arrival—on the occasion of the St. Patrick’s Day dance, the event Adare chooses to present the restored Lady Henrietta to social life… The Irish dance becomes the point of Hitchcock’s departure, setting up Henrietta’s emergence at the ball (as Adare’s first artistic creation) as the occasion of Flusky’s public reclamation of his wife. This event provokes—in the celebrated 9.5 minute sequence shot—Henrietta’s confession to Adare that it was she (not Flusky) who killed Dermont [James in the novel] in self-defense and sets up a number of confrontations that lead ultimately to the restoration of the married couple, Flusky and Henrietta. In order to effect this, Hitchcock excises from the novel Adare’s encounter at the dance with a young working-class woman much nearer his age—the locally born Susan Quaife—to whom he takes an immediate liking…

…Adare proceeds to court Susan, visiting her at her father’s barbershop on George Street. Around the same time, Adare enlists the help of ‘Ketch,’ the aboriginal leader introduced (none too sympathetically) following Adare’s first dinner with Flusky, to embark upon a treacherous journey north to Port Macquarie and then inland to unknown territory in search of gold. Milly has spread vile rumors that Adare and Henrietta are lovers, and Flusky (mildly suspicious of Adare) is quick to agree to fund the expedition. Convinced that Flusky has effectively delivered Adare (in repetition of her brother’s fate) to his death, Henrietta becomes despondent and turns to drink.

[Section] three thus begins with Henrietta again fighting her demons. Five months have passed with no word of Adare. Milly returns to assume control of the household, and this time it is Winter, the gentleman servant, who challenges Milly’s authority. Winter is soon expelled (given his ticket back to convict prison), but before leaving he passes to Henrietta a message left by Adare prior to his departure. The letter asks Henrietta to look up Susan Quaife, and upon doing so she invites Susan for an extended stay at the Flusky mansion, where Henrietta proceeds to groom the illiterate colonial girl in manner and appearance. Around the same time, Flusky is told that Adare has been found close to death but that he is recovering and is expected back in Sidney in December. After some weeks, Adare returns, declaring his love for Susan and [his] desire to stay and work honestly in the colony. This along with Susan’s exposure of Milly’s attempt to usurp Henrietta’s place, conclusively disrupts the romantic triangles and paves the way for a restored relationship between Henrietta and Flusky…

…Simpson does this by substituting the character of Susan Quaife for that of Charles Adare, whose search for gold happens entirely off-stage. Upon relocating to Minyago Yugilla, Susan not only proves herself an able match for the wily Milly, but also comes to function as a surrogate daughter to the childless Henrietta. Adare returns from the expedition matured by his experience on the land… [And] at this point, [he] asks for Susan’s hand in marriage and declares his dedication to the new continent. Simpson sets up the working-class Susan and the nobleman Adare as a parallel (cross-class) couple to Henrietta and Flusky, the latter stating (in anticipation of the young folks’ union), ‘It would be like us, only t’other way round,’ to which Henrietta replies: ‘With a better chance. Better hope. Both free.’” –Constantine Verevis (Under a Distemperate Star, Hitchcock at the Source, 2011)

Although, it goes without saying that Under Capricorn isn’t amongst Hitchcock’s best work, it is impossible not to admire how he transformed this convoluted mess into something that resembles a reasonably coherent narrative—although he may have been aided by an earlier dramatization (most likely written for the stage but never produced) by John Colton and Margaret Linden. Their play had also seen fit to jettison some of the book’s later subplots but also confined the action to the Flusky mansion. Having never seen or read this adaptation, it is best not to make any assumptions as to any similarities between it and the film version.

In any case, one completely loses interest after the first section of Simpson’s meandering novel, but Hitchcock and his writers were able to trade this nonsense for a resolution that examines some of Hitchcock’s pet themes regarding an innocent carrying the burden of a wrong that isn’t their own. It comes as no surprise that the French critics loved it! Unfortunately, the film’s pacing is constricted by the kind of long monologues that plague so many of the era’s costume dramas. The director was never able to find an appropriate writer and settled on inappropriate collaborators.

“My second mistake was to ask my friend Hume Cronyn to do the script with me; I wanted him because he’s a very articulate man who knows how to voice his ideas. But as a scriptwriter, he hadn’t really sufficient experience. Still another error was calling on James Bridie to help with the scenario. He was a semi-intellectual playwright and not in my opinion a very thorough craftsman. On thinking it over later on, I realized that he always had very good first and second acts, but he never succeeded in ending his plays. I still remember one of our working sessions on the script. The man and wife had separated after a series of terrible quarrels, and I asked Bridie, ‘How are we going to bring them together again?’ He said, ‘Oh, let them just apologize to each other and say, ‘I’m sorry, it was all a mistake.’” –Alfred Hitchcock (Hitchcock/Truffaut)

Hume Cronyn cited Hitchcock’s obsession with the film’s visual design as the source of the weaknesses inherent in the script:

“…I learned a lot from him and I have enormous admiration for him. He put together Under Capricorn image by image, and with all due respect, I think this method sometimes led him astray. He became so fascinated by these images that sometimes the direct line of the narrative would get lost or be bent, or there would be an awkwardness telling the story. He had of course been very revolutionary in the way he approached Rope, and it had been written to be shot in tremendously long takes. But when he came to his next film, it was to cover the vast panorama of colonial life in Australia. The difference in the quality of the two stories was the difference between a miniature and an enormous landscape. Yet, he decided to use the same approach, and I feel that was a mistake and got him into trouble.” –Hume Cronyn (as quoted in ‘The Art of Alfred Hitchcock,’ 1976)

This tendency to blame Hitchcock’s visual approach for the film’s failure is ridiculous, but there were certainly issues that should and could have been addressed and the director was well aware of them when the team was working on the script.

“In the year following Rope, Hitch asked me to do another treatment, this one based on Helen Simpson’s novel Under Capricorn… I went to London with Hitch to work on Capricorn. We would meet for our story conferences at Sidney Bernstein’s offices in Golden Square. From the beginning, the work was fraught with problems. On one particular morning, with Hitch at the end of the table and Sidney and I on the either side of him, Hitch suddenly reared back in his chair, scowling like an angry baby, and announced, ‘This film is going to be a flop. I’m going to lunch.’ And he stalked out of the room, pouting. I was appalled; Sidney was immediately solicitous. ‘Now, Hume, don’t be upset. You know Hitch: he’ll have a good lunch, come back, and everything will be serene.’ It was true; I’d seen Hitch suffer these tantrums before. He never had them on the set; by the time we got there, the whole film was already shot in his head, down to every cut and camera angle… But during a film’s preparation, he could become very mercurial; his emotional thermometer would soar to over a hundred degrees in enthusiasm, only to plunge below freezing in despair. We were alike in that, and I should have been more philosophical about the morning’s upset. The trouble was that in this particular instance I had the awful, nagging suspicion that Hitch’s premonition was accurate.” -Hume Cronyn (his memoirs as quoted in ‘Hitchcock’s Notebooks,’ 1999)

Interestingly, the director originally tried to engage Bridie to write the script to Under Capricorn after finishing his work on The Paradine Case (a Selznick production that has its own script issues) and turned the project down.

“I don’t mind helping to turn The Paradine Case from a bad book into a good film, but it is another story when the book is a good book but based on a philosophy that means nothing to me. If you get the right script writer, Under Capricorn ought to be really memorable. But it is not up my street.” –James Bridie (as quoted in ‘Alfred Hitchcock: A Light in Darkness and Light,’ 2003)

How anyone could judge Simpson’s novel as anything better than mediocre is a mystery, but perhaps this isn’t important since he later relented and agreed to work on the project.

THE PRODUCTION

The script wasn’t the only aspect of the film’s production that gave Hitchcock headaches and the director felt that the film’s casting compromised the film’s verisimilitude.

“Under Capricorn was again the lady-and-groom story. Henrietta fell in love with the groom, and when Joseph Cotton was shipped to Australia as a convict, she followed him there. The main element is that she degraded herself for the sake of her love. Cotton wasn’t the right type; Burt Lancaster would have been better.” –Alfred Hitchcock (Hitchcock/Truffaut)

This statement about the inappropriateness of Joseph Cotton in the role of Flusky isn’t merely the lamentations of a disappointed filmmaker who suddenly becomes aware of something after the fact. During the film’s pre-production, Hitchcock actively sought Burt Lancaster, but the actor required too much money and had other obligations. The production couldn’t be pushed back, and Bergman’s salary had already taken a considerable chunk out of the budget. He would have to find someone else, and that someone ended up being Joseph Cotton.

Hitchcock had originally sought Burt Lancaster for the role of Sam Flusky as he believed Cotton too distinguished and charming to portray an ex-stable hand.

One can understand why audiences may have been unable to accept Cotton as an uneducated, manure smelling, brutish groom—but this isn’t such a problem for modern audiences. Frankly, Cotton’s portrayal frees the character from the sort of stereotypical trappings of such characters. Is it outside the realm of possibility that a poor stable-hand might also be intelligent and charming? In any case, this has never been one of the more troubling aspects of Under Capricorn. After all, it is rare to hear anyone complain about Ingrid Bergman’s accent as Lady Henrietta Flusky which isn’t convincingly Irish—a fact that wasn’t lost on the actress. Her inability to give her character a proper Irish brogue plagued Bergman throughout the film’s production and exacerbated an already stressful situation.

Ingrid Bergman and Alfred Hitchcock enjoyed a warm friendship that lasted their entire lives, but the production of Under Capricorn put a strain on their relationship. Bergman blamed the contention on various stresses created by the director’s long mobile takes, an approach he carried over from Rope. A series of letters to Ruth Roberts gives one an intimate glimpse into the troubled production. The first and lengthiest of these letters is dated August 06, 1948:

“…Oh dear! This is my seventh week waiting. [Under Capricorn] started O.K. [on] the 19th, but with Hitch’s ten-minute takes they were behind one week after one day’s shooting. The technicians here have very little or no experience—and they don’t seem to care. I have been waiting and waiting, but every day it is the same: ‘We didn’t get the shot today, but for sure we’ll have it tomorrow morning.’ Finally after four days I was told [that] Hitch had abandoned the shot and would start with my entrance. I was so happy. [We] rehearsed and at two o’clock the same day had the first take. During the second take all the lights went out, the electricians walked down the ladders and left. Strike! All afternoon we waited for them to finish their meeting, but they never came back. This morning I was up at six; at nine I was told they had not come back yet: ‘Just relax in your dressing room!’ I am outraged but the others seem to take it relaxed. Nothing new. After the war they always have a couple of strikes. The reason for the strike was that two men were fired because of bad work and coming late to work several times.

Hitch is trying to find an entirely new electricians’ crew. Until then, we’ll have no peace. This is their second walkout. The camera crew and sound crew are nice, but it is a hostile feeling on the set that just kills you. People hardly look or speak to you. When I had the first test, the crew were whistling and making funny remarks. I was stunned because you know how very good people have always been. Don’t think everybody is bad but you know if it is just a few they color the whole set. The script is interesting now [and] we’ve got a pretty good end but Hitch’s new technique I don’t like. I have had no experience with it yet, for my first entrance was just a normal shot. But I have watched him with the others. It is so frightening for actors and crew. If the least bit goes wrong, you know … I think Hitch and I will have some arguments. He wanted to shoot a whole roll of film, the camera following me everywhere and the sets and furniture being pulled away. It meant we had to rehearse a whole day without shooting and then shoot the scenes the following day. It made everybody nervous but he insisted. We already had one little argument about my entrance and I got my way. I know I always can with him, but I dislike the argument… To top the rest of the mishaps I have a slow hairdresser. I have to be here at seven thirty. Makeup is very fast—hardly any—and very grey: no lipstick, no ice-towels, and the rest of Jack Pierce’s fun. All the time is for hair, so already at nine a.m. I am sore, not only my behind… Look what a long letter the strike will give you. It is now eleven thirty. No move in any direction…” –Ingrid Bergman (My Story, Apr 01, 1983)

The long takes that she mentions in this letter did create a few problems—some of which were not an issue during the production of Rope. However, any objective analysis of these troubles will reveal that most were beyond Alfred Hitchcock’s control. Could he be blamed for the various strikes that halted production (or the time lost when Michael Wilding took ill with pleurisy)? Absolutely not.

In any case, the problems that were actually created by the long takes took a lot of ingenuity to solve. Jack Cardiff would often discuss his work on the film, and his memories weren’t happy ones.

“I had been much more involved than usual in the production planning. Usually, I tried to dream up ideas for dramatic lighting, but on Capricorn, I had for the most part to work out how on earth I could possibly light so many sets at once! I worked more closely with the director than usual… Practically all of Hitchcock’s dramatic ideas were visual. If a cameraman is supposed to ‘paint with light,’ Hitchcock painted with a moving camera…

…We would rehearse one whole day and shoot the next day. Good recorded sound was impossible: the noise was indescribable. The electric crane lumbered through sets like a tank at Sebastopol, whole walls cracked open, furniture was whisked away by panting prop men and then frantically replaced in position as the crane made a return trip. The sound department did exceptionally well just to get a ‘guide track.’ … When we had made a successful ten minute take, everyone had to leave the studio except the sound people, Hitch, the script girl, and the cast, who would then go through the motions with dialogue without the camera. Amazingly, by sliding the sound tape backward and forward, it all came together.” –Jack Cardiff (as quoted in ‘Hitchcock’s Notebooks.’ 1999)

This strategy took the cooperation and agility of everyone on the set and this included the actors.

“…Required to light as many as six sets for a single take, English cinematographer Jack Cardiff attached lights to cranes, dollies, boom mikes and even crew members to make them mobile enough to light a shot and then get out of the way of the cumbersome crane as it followed the actors to another part of the set. ‘It was a fantastic sight,’ he wrote in an article for American Cinematographer, ‘to see a lamp silently glide in through a window, or even in through a hole in the wall, twist and tilt and pan in several directions, then just as mysteriously disappear again.’

…The Regency table that production designer Tom Morrahan built for Under Capricorn [were] cut into fourteen sections. It came apart to permit the camera to pass through. ‘The actors often helped,’ Cardiff writes, ‘and as the camera approached them seated nonchalantly enough, it looked positively weird to see them suddenly grab a section of the table, with a candle or plate of food fixed on it, and fall wildly out of picture … with their own parts of the table clutched in their hands.’ Mattresses were placed strategically behind the actors to catch them when they toppled backwards.

A bed was made for Ingrid Bergman that could be made to tilt up at a 45-degree angle, permitting the camera to shoot ‘down’ at the actress. Despite the contortions this setup imposed, Bergman succeeded in conveying so many conflicting emotions in one shot where, lying in bed, she realizes she is being systematically driven mad by a jealous servant, that Eric Rohmer wrote he would give all of Stromboli (1950), her first film with Roberto Rossellini, for that shot, if cinema were ‘only’ the art of plumbing the depths of the human soul.” –Bill Krohn (Hitchcock at Work, 2000)

Needless to say, this kind of chaos can be a great handicap for actors trying to lose themselves in their role, and this eventually all became too much for Bergman and led to an infamous outburst which was discussed intimately in another letter written to Ruth Roberts towards the end of August, 1948:

“Under Capricorn is half finished. The other day I burst. The camera was supposed to follow me around for eleven whole minutes—which meant we had to rehearse a whole day with the walls or furniture falling backwards as the camera went through—and of course that couldn’t be done fast enough. So I told Hitch off. How I hate this new technique of his. How I suffer and loathe every moment on the set. My two leading men, Michael Wilding and Joe Cotton, just sat there and said nothing—but I know they agree with me—and I said enough for the whole cast. Little Hitch just left. Never said a word. Just went home… oh dear…” –Ingrid Bergman (My Story, Apr 01, 1983)

Years later, Hitchcock himself remembered this exchange in his famous interview with François Truffaut:

“Ingrid Bergman got angry with me because of those long shots. And, since I never lose my temper and I hate arguments, I walked out of the room while her back was turned to me. I went home, and later on someone called to inform me that she hadn’t noticed my departure and was still complaining twenty minutes after I’d gone.” –Alfred Hitchcock (Hitchcock/Truffaut)

She would try again while having drinks with the director and her two male leads. Somehow the conversation shifted to the long takes and she began complaining about the approach once again. Unfortunately, she made the mistake of turning away and he took this opportunity to leave her company. “That’s the trouble with Hitch,” the actress lamented, “he won’t fight!” This was true. Hitchcock loathed conflict and felt that drama should be reserved for the screen.

Even so, it should be made clear that Hitchcock didn’t always ignore Bergman’s protests. When it was possible, he preferred to placate her by offering some sort of compromise that would allow him to have his way while seeming to bend to her will.

“…They were shooting a drunk scene on the stairs and Bergman could not, or would not keep her marks. ‘Why should she anyway?’ she asked. She was supposed to be drunk. Couldn’t they just let her act the scene the way she felt it and follow her? This time, Hitch decided on a little demonstration, so he agreed to shoot the scene her way if she would play it his, and leave the decision of which version to use up to her. Once she saw the rushes of their respective versions she was in no doubt that Hitch’s was better and generously admitted as much.” –John Russell Taylor (Hitch: The Life and Times of Alfred Hitchcock, 1978)

Luckily, none of this had a lasting effect on their friendship, and Bergman would even admit that his approach had merit after seeing some of the footage. This admission first appeared in a follow-up letter:

“The picture is nearly finished. Some of those damned long scenes work out very well. In one nine-and-a-half-minute take, I talked all the time; the camera never left me and it worked fine. I must say much better than being cut up and edited.” –Ingrid Bergman (My Story, Apr 01, 1983)

This same sentiment would be repeated publicly in an essay written for the Toledo Blade that was published on August 27, 1949:

“…I know I put myself completely in [Hitchcock’s] hands. In the making of that picture Hitch was the boss—and, within the four walls of the sound stage, his word was law… Merely acting for ten minutes at a stretch is no problem to anyone with stage training, but doing a ten-minute tense emotional scene without a break for the screen is a different matter. Your positions and your movements must be correct to the fraction of an inch for camera focus. Walls and doors are constantly disappearing to make way for the camera as you move from room to room, Property men are crawling under foot removing obstacles in your path. And a Technicolor camera on a 30-foot crane is constantly pursuing you, coming in swiftly for a close-up and then sweeping away—all these make demands upon an actress that go far beyond the realms of mere acting. But a lot of people do exhausting work and are happy to do it because the results are gratifying. And that’s how it is with me. I have seen Under Capricorn and I know the experiment, if you care to call it that, has succeeded. Hitch sees, and commits to paper, every movement of the cast and camera six months before hand. He has the whole production in mind, from beginning to end, on the day the camera starts turning. And it is not only a general idea; it is the detailed development, with every camera angle and every movement, worked out to the last quarter.” –Ingrid Bergman (Ingrid Bergman Cables Story of Technique Used in ‘Under Capricorn,’ Toledo Blade, August 27, 1949)

Joseph Cotton was more worried about weaknesses within the script and his dialogue. As a matter of fact, he referred to the project as “Under Crapricorn” or “Under Cornycrap” (depending on which version of the story you want to believe) within earshot of his director and James Bridie (who had come to the set to adjust some of Cotton’s dialogue). Of course, it is quite possible that this comment was born out of his insecurities as an actor (he was never able to handle an authentic Irish lilt) and personal issues that were not at all related to the production as he was going through quite a lot in his personal life. The lengthy takes only exacerbated these simmering issues.

The director himself may have privately cursed his sequence shots after having his toe crushed by the camera and the crane that held it. Perhaps this was a negative omen.

Alfred Hitchcock and the mammoth Technicolor camera used for the production of ‘Under Capricorn.’

RELEASE, RECEPTION, & LEGACY

Under Capricorn became the first British feature to have a world première at Radio City Music Hall on September 08, 1949 and had already accumulated $1,875,000 by this time on account of its world distribution rights. On September 17th, The Gloucestershire Echo reported that the film had already accumulated $2,000,000 but is unclear as to whether this amount includes the amount earned by selling these territorial rights (it is likely that it does). Either way, it seems that the film’s New York engagements were reasonably successful as the film played to “capacity audiences” for four weeks if newspaper reports can be believed. One assumes that the film was given a substantial boost due to the names of Alfred Hitchcock, Ingrid Bergman, and Joseph Cotton in the first week or two of release only to fall off in the following weeks. Whatever the case, Under Capricorn didn’t do enough business and was eventually repossessed by the bank that financed the project.

In The Alfred Hitchcock Story, Ken Mogg proposes that Ingrid Bergman’s presence in the film may have contributed to its eventual failure.

“…Then another setback occurred. The previous year, when Under Capricorn was being shot in England, Bergman had flown to Paris with her husband Petter Lindstrom to meet the Italian neo-realist director Roberto Rossellini. The meeting lasted two hours. There and then, Bergman agreed to appear in Rossellini’s next film, and joined him in Stromboli just before Under Capricorn was released. In fact, it was also a rendezvous of another kind. News of their affair and the scandal it caused spread quickly. Catholic organizations in America reacted by banning the Hitchcock film, and many cinema owners were sufficiently outraged to follow suit. Hitchcock blamed Rossellini for what had happened and always remained bitter towards him…” –Ken Mogg (The Alfred Hitchcock Story, 1999)

This may have some merit. However, it seems likely that the film had probably already failed by this point (at least in America). It was March 14, 1950 when—at the height of the scandal—Senator Edwin C. Johnson denounced the actress on the floor of the Senate calling her a “powerful influence for evil” who had instigated a violent “assault on the institution of marriage.”

“Mr. President, now that the stupid film about a pregnant woman and a volcano has exploited America with the usual finesse, to the mutual delight of RKO and the debased Rossellini, are we merely to yawn wearily, greatly relieved that this hideous thing is finished and then forget it? I hope not. A way must be found to protect the people in the future against that sort of gyp!” –Edwin C. Johnson

Of course, the senator had an agenda as he was proposing a censorship bill based on the “moral compasses” of those who work on any particular film. Such a bill sounds like an excuse to take away the inalienable rights of those who do not think or believe the same as Mr. Johnson and others like him, but this neither here nor there. The point is that this was months after the film’s initial release and it is doubtful that it had any effect on the film’s box-office earnings. It may have been a factor in the bank’s decision to repossess the picture but this is merely conjecture.

Critics and audiences tend to excoriate films that don’t meet their expectations and have difficulty judging them on their own merits, so Under Capricorn never really stood much of a chance. Alfred Hitchcock often made mention of this in his interviews.

“[The French critics admired Under Capricorn] because they looked at it for what it was and not what people expected. Here you get a Hitchcock picture which is a costume-picture and not approached from a thriller or excitement point of view until towards the end. I remember some remark by a Hollywood critic who said, ‘We had to wait 105 minutes for the first thrill.’ They went in expecting something and didn’t get it. That was the main fault with that picture… Also I used a fluid camera—mistakenly perhaps because it intensified the fact that it wasn’t a thriller—it flowed too easily.” –Alfred Hitchcock (The Cinema of Alfred Hitchcock, 1963)

This is probably a reference to William Brogdon’s awkwardly composed review for Variety:

“Under Capricorn is fortunate in having a number of exploitable angles that can be used to parlay sturdy initial grosses. On the long pull, though, box-office will be spotty. Ingrid Bergman’s name will be a potent help and there are Technicolor, Joseph Cotton, and Alfred Hitchcock as added lures to get ticket sales going, even though it doesn’t appear likely [that] momentum will be maintained in the general market.

It is overlong and talky, with scant measure of the Hitchcock thriller tricks that could have sharpened general reception. A moody melodrama, full of long speeches and obvious movement, it uses up one hour and fifty-six minutes in developing a story that would have had more impact had not Hitchcock dwelt so tediously on expanded single scenes. He gives it some air of expectancy, but this flavor eventually becomes buried in the slow resolution of tangled human relationships into a happy ending… Miss Bergman’s scenes have their own particular brand of thespian magic. On their own, they glow, but when combined with the other lengthy sequences, the effect is dulled…

…In an opening sequence, Hitchcock plants the fact that Australian aborigines shrink the heads of their victims. One hundred minutes later he uses a mummified head as the single shocker in the footage. It will cause a round of horrified gasps. In between, he is just as obvious in the development, resulting in a regrettable lack of the anticipated Hitchcock subtleties… Margaret Leighton does the housekeeper, an unrelieved heavy so obvious that the other characters should have seen through her…

…Photography is another example of Hitchcock’s bent for an extremely mobile camera, playing long scenes in one take, but the moving camera is not a substitute for the dramatic movement that would have come with crisper story-telling…” –William Brogdon (Variety, September 14, 1949)

Other critics shared Brogdon’s opinion and echoed his sentiments, and British critics followed suit. This review in The Times sums up the majority opinion:

“Miss Ingrid Bergman, Mr. Joseph Cotten, Mr. Michael Wilding, Miss Margaret Leighton, and, as director, Mr. Alfred Hitchcock — there is clearly a team here, if not of all the talents, at least of a considerable number of them; and the question is, are they going to play well together? The answer, in the end, must regretfully be that they do not… and only occasionally is Mr. Hitchcock’s cunning and dramatic hand visible in the direction. The colour, especially while the camera is indoors, is admirable, but Under Capricorn lasts far too long and has far too many loose ends.” –The Times (Mr. Hitchcock’s New Film, October 05, 1949)

Many critics enjoyed the film but qualified their praise by pointing out that the material wasn’t up to the director’s usual standards. Usually, these reviews credited Hitchcock and his all-star troupe of actors for elevating the material. This review published in Harrison’s Reports is a case in point:

“Lavishly produced and photographed in Technicolor, this period melodrama with psychological overtones is an impressive entertainment of its kind. The story… is not unusual, nor are the characters, with the exception of the heroine, particularly sympathetic. Yet the acting of the entire cast is so competent that one’s interest is held well. Ingrid Bergman, as the wretched dipsomaniac who is victimized by a murderous housekeeper in love with her husband, comes through with another striking performance. The story is not without its weak points, particularly in that much of the footage is given more to talk than to movement, but Alfred Hitchcock’s directorial skill manages to overcome most of the script’s deficiencies by building up situations that thrill and hold the spectator in tense suspense…” –Harrison’s Reports (September 10, 1949)

Helen Williams wrote a similarly positive review for the Yorkshire Post:

“Mr. Alfred Hitchcock has exploited to the full the dramatic possibilities of Under Capricorn, Helen Simpson’s romantic story of Australia in 1831… He is ably supported by a brilliant cast… The probabilities in this melodramatic tale may not bear analysis, but the excellence of the acting and Alfred Hitchcock’s direction carry the film to a triumphant close…” –Helen Williams (New Film by Mr. Hitchcock, Yorkshire Post, October 07, 1949)

Of course, the French critics were enamored with the film and would eventually vote Under Capricorn into a list of the ten greatest films ever made in Cahiers du Cinéma. It’s hardly one of the ten greatest films ever made. Frankly, it isn’t even one of the ten greatest films in Hitchcock’s filmography. Unlike Vertigo, few Hitchcock scholars try to elevate the film’s reputation in the public consciousness. Books covering the director’s filmography tend to see it as a forgettable blemish on the face of the director’s career, and this is actually a pretty fair assertion. Unfortunately, the scholars making these assertions don’t seem to have any real understanding as to why the film doesn’t measure up to his greatest work.

A perfect example of this appears in The Art of Alfred Hitchcock:

“…The impressive long takes that sometimes move from floor to floor, through lengthy corridors, and several rooms make this a sporadically beautiful movie, but the obsession for this technique also inspired lengthy monologues and dialogues that became perilously arid. Too often motionless, the camera seems indifferent, as if actors had to keep talking until the film ran out… This results in very talky motion picture-making without a prevalent viewpoint. The conversation simply isn’t engaging or suspenseful, and the lack of cutting short-circuits tension and necessary visual narrative rhythm.” –Donald Spoto (The Art of Alfred Hitchcock, 1976)

Spoto makes the mistake of assuming that the lengthy monologues were inserted to cater to the director’s lengthy takes, but they really only complicated them. If one will think back to The Paradine Case (which was also adapted by James Bridie and then given another polish by Selznick), they will recall that the film had a similar tendency of employing longwinded monologues and constant dialogue. This is a characteristic of Bridies writing. Unlike Rope, Hitchcock wasn’t trying to get through an entire roll of film without cutting. He simply employed this technique when it best suited the material.

Robert A. Harris and Michael S. Lasky similarly complained in their book about the film’s excessive dialogue but do not blame the sequence shot for this weakness:

“If [Under Capricorn] proved anything, it was that Hitchcock was literally making ‘talkies.’ Ostensibly [it] is a costume epic with a suspenseful side story. It was Hitchcock in a terrain in which he did not belong… The plot of the film was as uninspiring as [the] nearly two hours of dialogue.” –Robert A. Harris & Michael S. Lasky (The Films of Alfred Hitchcock, 1976)

Patrick Humphries doesn’t elaborate on the film’s weaknesses, but he makes it clear that his opinion follows suit:

“At best Under Capricorn is an unholy cross between Jane Eyre and Rebecca, with the three witches from Macbeth thrown into the kitchen for good measure. At its worst, it is a turgid historical potboiler.” –Patrick Humphries (The Films of Alfred Hitchcock, 1986)

Stephen Whitty goes even further in his condemnation of the film:

“…The production design is cheap and unconvincing—the Flusky mansion a more-than-usually obvious matte painting, the waterfront and pier a cramped mock-up—and although Bergman is given a nice, dramatic entrance, there’s no standout sequence or memorable moment. It’s the sort of picture that Hitchcock always said he hated—pictures of people talking—and it marks the lowest point in a dull period of halfhearted efforts that stretched from The Paradine Case to Stage Fright.” –Stephen Whitty (The Alfred Hitchcock Encyclopedia, 2016)

Surprisingly, Ken Mogg seemed to disagree in his analysis of the film and gives it his enthusiastic praise:

“Under Capricorn is one of several Hitchcock films of the late 1940s and 1950s that pleased few people at the time, but now seem full of interest… The result is a moody, stylized film where people talk endlessly while their real points stay unspoken. A key line is given to Flusky, who complains about the unfeeling legal process, which goes ‘on and on and on.’ The line is significant because beyond all the legality—and the talk—lies hope of something else, a return to a lost paradise. Under Capricorn may be Hitchcock’s finest film to explore that theme… [It] is more than a key Hitchcock film: it is one of his most lovely pictures. Its fluid design suggests life itself, sometimes wasting, sometimes being savored.” –Ken Mogg (The Alfred Hitchcock Story, 1999)

The truth—as is often the case—lies somewhere between these two extremes. Some films are neither brilliant nor terrible, but Under Capricorn was certainly a failure in the mind of its director, and Hitchcock’s tendency to adopt the prevailing critical opinion of his films has poisoned objective reevaluation.

FINAL ANALYSIS

“I made Under Capricorn because I wanted to apply the concepts of Rope to a different sort of story to see what that would yield.” –Alfred Hitchcock (Interview with Alfred Hitchcock, Cahiers du Cinéma, February 1955)

Obviously, many scholars seem to believe that the failure of Under Capricorn was due to the fact that Hitchcock insisted on carrying over the sequence shots he utilized in Rope, and these people aren’t thinking past the semi-formed opinions of other critics that plagued newspapers and magazines in 1948 when the film was released. The fact is that his approach to Under Capricorn is fundamentally different than the technique used in Rope, because: a.) This film wasn’t shot to look as if it was shot in real time, b.) Under Capricorn includes traditional cutting in conjunction with sequence shots while Rope consists only of sequence shots, and c.) it doesn’t make any effort to camouflage the film’s edits.

In short, the technique used in Capricorn is a refinement of the experiment that he used for Rope. He is searching for the proper equilibrium between two opposing techniques and some of the director’s future work proves that he found it (even if it wasn’t perfected in this particular film). Hitchcock realized that there were flaws in his approach to Rope and is testing the sequence shot as an added tool to use in conjunction with other techniques. One can see a difference in his aesthetic before he made the two Transatlantic films and those that he made after them. He grew from these experiments and never completely abandoned the sequence shot. He confessed that he still admired the technique in a 1955 interview with Cahiers du Cinéma and this won’t come as a surprise to those who truly pay attention to his later work.

“Certain people thought it was a mistake and that it wasn’t truly cinema. Yet it’s pure cinema because you must do the editing in your head in advance. Then the movement between the scenes is made continuous by the movement of the actors, not of the camera alone, but of the actors and the camera together. Thus the camera roams about while the actors change positions, and together they establish various framed compositions. In my opinion, it’s a purer cinema but not enough people agreed.” –Alfred Hitchcock (Interview with Alfred Hitchcock, Cahiers du Cinéma, February 1955)

This is an important point that seems to be lost on most critics and scholars. Hitchcock incorporates a wide array of shots into these long takes. The wide master, the two shot, the close-up, the extreme close-up, and the insert shot are all utilized. It isn’t as if he were simply pointing the camera at the actors and allowing the scenes to play out as if this were a play. What’s more, his use of this technique adds power to a number of the film’s traditional edits.

Some of the cuts in Under Capricorn are dramatic solely because they happen to follow a sequence shot. Take, for example, Bergman’s introduction. We follow Adare as he meets other guests after arriving at the party, Flusky gives instructions to Milly regarding Mrs. Flusky (which makes the viewer curious about her), and the men finally sit down to enjoy a meal and say grace. Soon the guests notice something that is happening just outside the scope of the frame, and Flusky notices their attention and nervously begins turning his head to see what has captured their gaze. We then cut to Bergman’s bare feet as they move into the room and carry us back to Sam Flusky as she places her hand on his shoulders. Finally, we move to the intoxicated face of Ingrid Bergman. It’s quite the introduction.

Hitchcock never abandons his devotion to the visual in this experiment, he simply expands and adds to the language of the medium. If Under Capricorn fails, it is due to the weak script and an arguably less interesting subject. It does not stand with Alfred Hitchcock’s best films—or even his second-tier titles—but it was an essential phase in his artistic evolution. What’s more, it isn’t any worse than a number of other overwrought and syrupy costume melodramas being made at around that time. One wonders if the film wouldn’t have a different reputation if another director’s name were written on it.

The Presentation:

4 of 5 MacGuffins

Kino houses their Blu-ray in a standard Blu-ray case with a reversible sleeve that offers a choice of film related artwork.

The default art is taken from the film’s original American One Sheet while a more lurid foreign poster was used for the reverse as an alternative. The American one sheet is the superior choice.

In fact, Kino must agree with us on this point since it is this artwork that has been carried over for the disc’s static menu.

Picture Quality:

4 of 5 MacGuffins

Kino’s 4K restoration transfer is a huge improvement over the previous DVD editions of the film, and the improvement isn’t merely due to the added resolution. However, it must be said that the final result is less that completely satisfying and will probably disappoint some collectors. This doesn’t seem to be the fault of the restoration or the transfer but is instead the unfortunate symptom of the ravages of time. Damage and debris is evident, but the most significant problem here stems from the various color elements in the Technicolor print which has resulted in slight haloing. Luckily, this never becomes distracting. In fact, most people won’t notice it and will instead pick up on the obvious improvement over earlier transfers in terms of both vibrancy and clarity. Motion is also greatly improved upon here (something especially important considering the mobile nature of the image). Best of all, we get quite a bit more information in the frame in this new transfer. This is likely the best this film is going to look on home video at this point.

Sound Quality:

4 of 5 MacGuffins

The 2.0 English DTS-HD Master Audio is an admirable representation of the film’s original source elements. It doesn’t offer the dynamic sonic experience one expects from more recent films, but no one should really expect this. The film’s dialogue is well prioritized and clearly rendered and the music is given adequate room to breathe thanks to the high definition transfer. Fans should be pleased.

Special Features:

3.5 of 5 MacGuffins

Audio Commentary by Kat Ellinger

Kat Ellinger has provided commentaries for a wide variety of films in recent years. As editor-in-chief for Diabolique magazine, she has a reasonably deep well of general knowledge to aid her in this track—but those expecting any in-depth information will be somewhat disappointed. Some of her analysis is interesting enough to keep the listener engaged, but it isn’t an especially focused discussion about the film (which she insists is underrated). She has a tendency to overlook important points and there are a few questionable statements along the way. This is par for the course with third-party “scholarly commentaries.” It is nice that she has included some general information about the careers of various cast and crew, and this is really the best reason to give the track a listen.

Hitchcock/Truffaut: Icon Interviews Icon (Audio) – (12:23)

Absolutely essential is this excerpt from Alfred Hitchcock’s infamous interview with François Truffaut as it finds the director speaking candidly about Under Capricorn. Those who have already read the book won’t learn anything, but it is nice to hear the director discussing this often overlooked film. It is illustrated with a still photograph of the two filmmakers that was taken during the interview sessions in 1963.

A Cinema of Signs: Chabrol on Hitchcock – (26:42)

The disc’s best supplement is probably this half-hour program that finds Claude Chabrol discussing a variety of Hitchcock related topics, including Cahiers du Cinéma’s infamous Hitchcock issue that would help change critical opinion of Hitchcock’s work, the equally important book that he penned with Éric Rohmer (Hitchcock: The First Forty-Four Films), an analysis of a scene from Under Capricorn (which was taken from the text of this book), Truffaut’s book-length interview Hitchcock, and his own analysis of scenes from Marnie and Frenzy. Fans will find this material fascinating even if they find themselves in disagreement. It offers food for thought and is a welcome addition to Kino’s package.

Theatrical Trailer – (02:04)

While trailers for other Hitchcock titles are much more interesting and original than the rather standard approach used to market Under Capricorn, it is certainly nice to have the trailer for this film finally available on home video.

We are also given a number of other trailers, including one for Hitchcock’s The Paradine Case (1947), Bergman’s Intermezzo: A Love Story (1939), Cotton’s A Portrait of Jennie (1948), and a remake of The Lodger (1944).

Final Words:

“If I seem doomed to make only one type of picture, the movie audience is responsible. People go to one of my films expecting a thriller, and they aren’t satisfied until the thrill turns up.” –Alfred Hitchcock (Core of the Movie—The Chase, New York Times Magazine, October 29, 1950)

This quote frames our parting thoughts admirably. Those who expect a typical Hitchcockian suspense story are bound to be disappointed. Under Capricorn is probably one of the director’s five weakest American films but it certainly wasn’t a waste of his time. In fact, it was an extremely important step in Alfred Hitchcock’s creative evolution.

Kino Lorber’s Blu-ray includes the best transfer of the film currently available on home video and a very nice supplemental package.

Review by: Devon Powell

Source Material:

Ingrid Bergman (Ingrid Bergman Cables Story of Technique Used in ‘Under Capricorn,’ Toledo Blade, August 27, 1949)

Staff Writer (The Times, August 31, 1949)

Staff Writer (Harrison’s Reports, September 10, 1949)

William Brogdon (Variety, September 14, 1949)

Staff Writer (Gloucestershire Echo, September 17, 1949)

Staff Writer (Mr. Hitchcock’s New Film, The Times, October 05, 1949)

Helen Williams (New Film by Mr. Hitchcock, Yorkshire Post, October 07, 1949)

Staff Writer (Amusements: Ingrid Bergman in Australian Romance, Western Morning News, February 14, 1950)

Staff Writer (The Cinema World, Yorkshire Post, February 28, 1950)

D.J. (Derby Daily Telegraph, March 14, 1950)

David Brady (Core of the Movie—The Chase, New York Times Magazine, October 29, 1950)

François Truffaut and Claude Chabrol (Interview with Alfred Hitchcock, Cahiers du Cinéma, February 1955)

Peter Bogdanovich (The Cinema of Alfred Hitchcock, 1963)

François Truffaut (Hitchcock/Truffaut, 1966)

Bryan Forbes (John Player Lecture, March 27, 1967)

Donald Spoto (The Art of Alfred Hitchcock, 1976)

Robert A. Harris & Michael S. Lasky (The Films of Alfred Hitchcock, 1976)

John Russell Taylor (Hitch: The Life and Times of Alfred Hitchcock, 1978)

Michael Haley (The Alfred Hitchcock Album, 1981)

Ingrid Bergman (My Story, Apr 01, 1983)

Patrick Humphries (The Films of Alfred Hitchcock, 1986)

Leonard Leff (Hitchcock and Selznick: The Rich and Strange Collaboration of Alfred Hitchcock and David O. Selznick in Hollywood, 1987)

Sidney Gottlieb (Hitchcock on Hitchcock, 1995)

Dan Auiler (Hitchcock’s Notebooks, 1999)

Ken Mogg (The Alfred Hitchcock Story, 1999)

Bill Krohn (Hitchcock at Work, 2000)

Patrick McGilligan (Alfred Hitchcock: A Life in Darkness and Light, 2003)

Barton Palmer and David Boyd (Hitchcock at the Source, 2011)

Constantine Verevis (Under a Distemperate Star, Hitchcock at the Source, 2011)

Lesley L. Coffin (Hitchcock’s Stars, 2014)

Sidney Gottlieb (Hitchcock on Hitchcock: Volume 2, 2015)

Stephen Whitty (The Alfred Hitchcock Encyclopedia, 2016)

Book Interview: Hitchcock’s Heroines

Publisher: Insight Editions

Release Date: May 01, 2018

A Conversation with Caroline Young

From his early days as a director in the 1920s to his heyday as the Master of Suspense, Alfred Hitchcock had a complicated and controversial relationship with his leading ladies. He supervised their hair, their makeup, their wardrobe, and pushed them to create his perfect vision onscreen. These women were often style icons in their own right, and the clothes that they wore imbued the films with contemporary glamor.

Quite a lot has been written over the past few decades regarding Alfred Hitchcock’s use of women in his films—some of it from a scholarly or theoretical standpoint and some of it from a sensationalized tabloid angle that only serves to muddy the waters of responsible scholarship. However, it must be said that this new Insight Editions release of Caroline Young’s Hitchcock’s Heroines doesn’t quite fall into either category. She chronicles six decades of glamorous style while exploring the fashion legacy of these amazing women and their experiences working with Hitchcock. It is informative without being pushy but still manages to have a point of view. What’s more, Young’s text is well researched and beautifully illustrated with studio pictures, film stills, and original drawings of the costume designs. Anyone with a fondness for attractive coffee table books should consider adding this volume to their collection.

Caroline Young is based in Edinburgh Scotland. Her love of film and fashion led to her writing Classic Hollywood Style, Style Tribes: The Fashion of Subcultures, and Tartan and Tweed. Young recently consented to this exclusive interview with Alfred Hitchcock Master, and we hope that you enjoy it as much as we did!

This photograph of Alfred Hitchcock and Doris day is one of the many gorgeous photographs contained within the pages of “Hitchcock’s Heroines.” It was taken during the production of The Man Who Knew Too Much.

AHM: When did you first become interested in Alfred Hitchcock’s work and what instigated the interest?

CY: I have been a Hitchcock fan since my early teens. I would read Empire magazine, which would often do lists of the best films ever made, and Hitchcock was frequently on the list. So I would rent as many videotapes as I could, and I think the first one I saw was Rear Window. I just loved the visuals and the way it felt like I was in this tenement in a sweltering summer in New York. I did film studies at university so my appreciation was further built, studying the shower scene and applying various film theories to his work.

AHM: Could you describe Hitchcock’s Heroines for our readers? What makes this book stand out amongst the others in your opinion?

CY: Hitchcock’s Heroines is the first book to visually explore the costumes and image of the women in Hitchcock’s films. It has great images and costume sketches, including one from Frenzy that has never been published, but it offers a lot more than this. I wanted to take a balanced approach to Hitchcock’s relationship to his leading ladies, weave in details on the making of the films, and celebrate these amazing actresses and their stories. I also researched and found further detail on the designers behind the different films, such as Adrian for Shadow of a Doubt, and how it was David O Selznick who shaped the character’s image in Rebecca and Spellbound.

AHM: What gave you the initial idea to write a book that centers on the heroines in Hitchcock’s canon and what were the biggest challenges in making it a reality?

CY: The idea came from my first book, ‘Classic Hollywood Style,’ which explore the story behind the costumes in classic movies. As a follow up I wanted to do another film costume book that focused entirely on Hitchcock, as I had only featured To Catch a Thief, but I had found out so much more information on the costumes in his films that I would’ve liked to have included. This was in 2012, and there was also a lot of interest in the relationship between Tippi and Hitchcock at this time, and his obsession over blondes, particularly on the release of The Girl. But rather than look at him through this misogynistic filter, I was interested in seeing how the women in his films were sympathetic and inspiring, how their image was constructed, and what the actresses thought of Hitchcock and how they got on with them.

The main challenge was the topic, as firstly, Hitchcock was considered controversial, and also that books on film fashion are not always considered popular. I was also conscious of being respectful to Tippi and that a balanced approach didn’t diminish what she was saying.

AHM: Do you have a favorite Hitchcock heroine? If so, who would that be and why is she your favorite?

CY: Difficult to choose, but I adore Nova Pilbeam as she’s really fresh and plucky in Young and Innocent (you wonder how did she learn skills from being in a boxer’s dressing room), but Ingrid Bergman in Notorious is another favorite. I like the character arc from self-destructive to showing complete guts in sacrificing herself for duty, the way the ‘female gaze’ is reversed in the party scene, and those Edith Head costumes which use stark black and white to make her stand out. Also, Ingrid Bergman does being drunk really well.

AHM: Now, the reverse of the last question: Which of Hitchcock’s leading ladies is your least favorite and why did she not appeal to you?

CY: Maureen O’Hara in Jamaica Inn, probably because the film doesn’t really feel like a Hitchcock work, and it doesn’t leave a memorable impression.

AHM: How did you decide upon which films and actresses to include in the book?

CY: It was a tough call as there was a limit to how much I could include—so I went for the most notable films in terms of visuals around the female character, along with ones I felt illustrated the journey. Nova Pilbeam is not that well known but had been an early protégée of Hitchcock’s, which is why I included Young and Innocent. I would have liked to have explored Vera Miles in The Wrong Man but her image is secondary in that film. However, that could have been interesting in itself.

Madeleine Carroll: Alfred Hitchcock’s “first glacial blonde prototype.”

AHM: How do you think his British films—and the heroines that feature in these films—differ from those he made as a Hollywood director? Did his heroines change once he moved to America? If so, what are these differences? What do you feel the reasons for this might be?

CY: The British period was when he was finding his own style, developing new techniques and narratives, and in the British period, apart from Anny Ondra, who he enjoyed working with, and Madeleine Carroll who was the first glacial blonde prototype, it wasn’t until Grace Kelly that he found his muse. There are articles in the early 1930s where he talks about what makes the ideal heroine—and he notes that above all they must be appealing to a female audience, so that’s really what he had in mind when casting his British heroines. In later interviews with Hitchcock in the 1950s, when the ideal of the Hitchcock blonde had been established, he pushed a PR line about the Nordic blonde, the ‘snow covered volcano’, and I feel that this was really shaped by Grace Kelly, whose magic he was striving to recreate.

One of the main factors in the differences is that it was in the late 1940s American period where he finally found autonomy in his work as both director and producer, and this allowed him to have complete control, rather than having to answer to other producers. That’s why Notorious is interesting as the first Edith Head collaboration, and the first where he really takes control of the heroine’s image.

Some of the differences are also down to the period they were made. Women in 1930s films often followed the screwball comedy mold, and they were designed to appeal to female audiences who liked plucky, fashionable heroines on screen. Then in the early 1940s, there was a trend for gothic romantic films that delved into the heroine’s anxieties, and this was all shaped by the Second World War. Priscilla Lane in Saboteur was another example of the archetype he would later develop more fully, but I feel he was disappointed a little in her performance. The period of the Hitchcock blonde was predominant in the 1950s, once he had his dream team, and with Edith Head shaping the costumes, and perhaps it could also be argued that the Hitchcock heroine that we think of is very much a 1950s woman.

AHM: As you well know, Hitchcock had originally intended to pull Princess Grace out of retirement so that she could star in MARNIE before later deciding to make the film with Tippi Hedren. How do you think the casting of Grace Kelly would have changed the final film? How do Hedren’s qualities differ from Grace Kelly’s?

CY: I imagine the making of the film would have been a happier experience for all involved if Grace Kelly had played Marnie, and this could, in turn, have had a significant effect on the final work.

Grace Kelly was also a more experienced actress, requiring less guidance than Tippi, and while Tippi has this real vulnerability and emotional quality, I wonder if Grace Kelly would have made the character seem more manipulative and less frightened. Maybe she would have had the ability to convince him of character changes, to cut the rape scene etc, which many people believe he kept in to demonstrate complete control of Tippi.

It’s often said that Hitchcock was never the same after the making of Marnie, it was an upsetting time for Tippi (as she has recounted). If Grace Kelly had done the role, his later films may have been different. He may have been allowed to make Mary Rose… It’s an interesting question as it could potentially have had a big effect on how we judge him now.

AHM: Alfred Hitchcock’s films are still enormously popular all around the globe. Why are his films still relevant while so many others have long been forgotten?

CY: They were highly innovative, combining humor, suspense, and similar themes throughout which have provoked countless theories and examinations around his fetishes and obsessions. He was a great PR man who knew how to publicize himself, evident from some of the early interviews in the 1930s, and so he became a fascinating, intriguing figure in himself. One of the appealing aspects of Hitchcock is also that he captures a particular time and place in his visuals, and Hitchcock, as a British director, captures America through the eyes of a Brit. So he explores Americana in Psycho, with the highways and motel, and uses huge American landmarks for the climax of many of his films (Mount Rushmore, the Statue of Liberty, and etc). He was also always looking to be innovative [and] to push boundaries, but he also changed the way we view films with Psycho. [It’s] hard to believe people would just wander into the cinema to see a film at any time, but Hitchcock insisted audiences not be permitted once the film started. So all these factors have contributed to the longevity of his films, and that we are still discussing him in detail along with recent controversies which have continued to keep him in the news.

“Ingrid Bergman in Notorious is another favorite…”

[Note: Some of the opinions expressed in this interview are not necessarily shared by Alfred Hitchcock Master. Please be respectful to others in your comments if you wish to dispute any of these opinions. Remember that this is a friendly community.]

Interview by: Devon Powell

Blu-ray Review: 78/52 – Hitchcock’s Shower Scene

Distributor: Shout Factory

Release Date: February 27, 2018

Region: Region A

Length: 01:31:46

Video: 1080P (MPEG-4, AVC)

Main Audio:

5.1 DTS-HD Master Audio

2.0 DTS-HD Master Audio

Subtitles: English, Spanish

Ratio: 1.78:1

Note: This release comes with a DVD disc that is housed in the same case.

“Of course, you can’t talk about the shower scene without talking about Psycho, and you can’t talk about Psycho without talking about Hitchcock, and you can’t talk about Hitchcock without talking about other films that influenced him, or films that he influenced, and so on. But everything in 78/52 was very carefully designed to be always, always, always about the shower scene.” -Alexandre O. Philippe (Michael Gingold, Rue-Morgue.com, October 18, 2017)

A lot of people may be asking themselves why anyone would devote a ninety-minute documentary to a single scene, but ninety minutes wasn’t nearly enough to do a proper job if Alexandre O. Philippe’s 78/52: Hitchcock’s Shower Scene is any indication. The shower scene is one of the most audacious scenes in cinema history, and it affected the viewer like a surprise punch to the solar plexus without infuriating them. That takes some doing. Unfortunately, the scene (and in fact the entirety of Psycho) has been parodied, ripped-off, discussed, analyzed, and even re-made so many times at this point that it is probably impossible for the majority of people to experience the scene in that same manner any longer.

In any case, the shower scene deserves to be studied. It is a remarkable moment in a terrific film. 78/52: Hitchcock’s Shower Scene attempts to dissect the reasons this influential scene was so effective. Philippe should certainly be applauded for his effort, but the end result doesn’t quite meet these intentions. The film’s first misstep is the ham-handed re-enactment of Marion Crane’s fateful drive to the Bates Motel. It wasn’t at all necessary and merely serves to distract and irritate those who love the film. However, the most discouraging aspect of this documentary is that it never rises above what people might find in a well-made Blu-ray supplement. It even carries a number of the same flaws—and the most notable of these flaws concerns some of the interview participants. For example, one would assume that a film seeking to dissect one of Alfred Hitchcock’s most infamous scenes would include a greater pool of legitimate authorities on either Hitchcock or cinema in general. The presence of Stephen Rebello, Bill Krohn, David Thomson, and Peter Bogdanovich was probably supposed to fulfill this requirement, but none of these people are prominently featured in the film (although Rebello fares better than the others). Worse, they don’t provide very much insight during the few moments that they are actually featured. Some might point out that Guillermo del Toro can be seen as an authority on Hitchcock (and his contribution is more than welcome).

Unfortunately, competent theorists are buried by participants that have absolutely no business being in the film at all. Such individuals pollute the entire duration of 78/52, and few of them actually add anything pertinent about the subject at hand. For example: Could someone please explain why Elijah Wood, Illeana Douglas, and Eli Roth are featured in the film? How could any of these people be considered an authority on Alfred Hitchcock? Elijah Wood doesn’t even seem to have seen North by Northwest! He looks completely lost when the film is mentioned and later seems surprised to learn about the film’s infamous final shot. Eli Roth throws Hitchcock’s name around quite a bit in his publicity interviews and commentary tracks, but nothing in his films suggest that he has learned anything from him (except perhaps on the most superficial level). The inclusion of such individuals only serve to remind the audience that the statements made throughout the piece can’t be taken seriously. Their very presence undermines the validity of what is good in the film (and it does have its virtues).

Alexandre O. Philippe directed 78/52: Hitchcock’s Shower Scene.

Marli Renfro’s participation is especially appreciated. Her voice is one that has largely been excluded from previous documentaries about Psycho. She recalls what it was like to double for Janet Leigh in the shower scene, and one imagines that some of her recollections will be new discoveries for many viewers. Leigh discusses the scene in some very interesting archival footage from Laurent Bouzereau’s The Making of ‘Psycho, and Tere Carrubba, Jamie Leigh Curtis, and Oz Perkins are also on hand (although their contributions are nominal).

A large number of contemporary filmmakers have been brought in with somewhat mixed results. Justin Benson, for example, doesn’t seem to bring much more than snarky comments about the film to the table, while some of Bob Murawski’s valuable comments are undermined by his tendency to keep criticizing the shape of Mrs. Bates’ head. Murawski is an editor that has worked on a number of films (including a good number of Sam Raimi titles) and one can understand his presence, but it is Walter Murch’s contribution that holds the most promise. Oddly enough,  Amy E. Duddleston’s discussion about trying to replicate the shower scene in Gus Van Sant’s Psycho remake (which this reviewer loathes) is rather interesting as she admits that they were never able to make it work.

Unfortunately, the film’s better elements are buried by too many inappropriate participants, and this results in a documentary that isn’t nearly as focused as the premise promises. Audiences are merely given an abundance of conjecture that is rarely supported by insightful analysis (and they only skim the surface when any effort is actually made). It is an extremely engaging documentary, but the reason for this has more to do with the film being discussed than with the thrill of receiving any truly revelatory insight into the scene that is supposed to be dissected.

The Presentation:

4 of 5 MacGuffins

The two discs are protected in a standard Blu-ray case with related artwork that is reasonably attractive.

The menu also utilizes this artwork and is accompanied by the sound of faint shower water. Overall, it is an above average presentation for a documentary film.

Picture Quality:

4 of 5 MacGuffins

As is usual with documentary films that contain numerous archival elements, the quality of the film’s image fluctuates a great deal depending on the source being used at any given moment. The transfer is certainly solid and newly shot footage always displays an impressive amount of fine detail. All other elements are well rendered as well and are beyond criticism. However, the archival elements are all over the place and some of the footage seems to be sampled from up-scaled standard definition sources (although, this isn’t necessarily the case). Obviously, documentary filmmakers must make do with the materials that they are allowed to use. In any case, the quality falls in line with what one has come to expect from such productions.

Sound Quality:

4 of 5 MacGuffins

The 5.1 DTS-HD Master Audio and 2.0 DTS-HD Master Audio options are both strong options with the 5.1 mix obviously offering a slightly more dynamic experience. Obviously, the dialogue driven nature of the film should limit the viewer’s sonic expectations, but music and sound effects do expand the sound design quite a bit. It all sounds very good. The dialogue is clean and intelligible, the music and effects have room to breathe, and everything is mixed for maximum impact.

Special Features:

4 of 5 MacGuffins

Extended Interview with Walter Murch – (55:28)

The inclusion of this lengthy interview adds a bit of legitimacy to the disc. Murch has made a name for himself as an editor and as a sound editor. It is in this capacity that he gives a sort of examination of the shower scene, but he takes it further and actually goes into theories about how the viewer processes images. Obviously, this infuences his own personal approach to editing—even though the collision montage in Psycho purposly goes against this in order to cause slight disorientation in the audience.

Extended Interview with Guillermo Del Toro – (22:13)

It is always interesting to hear Guillermo Del Toro discuss cinema. He is the perfect blend of scholar and fanboy (not to mention the fact that he is a talented filmmaker in his own right). His discourse may be largely theoretical but it is always interesting (despite the fact that one doesn’t always agree with his comments). As with the interview with Walter Murch, this footage was obviously shot to be utilized in the film itself and is therefore presented in black and white.

“Stabbing Melons” with Director Alexandre O. Philippe – (02:52)

It’s difficult to discern why this footage was included on the disc as it doesn’t add anything worthwhile to the proceedings. The viewer is shown a small crew as they set up tables of melons and shoot them (some of the footage being shot is in the film). They mic the melons and proceed to stab them. Finally, the casaba melon used by Alfred Hitchcock is brought out to recreate the sound of the knife cutting into Marion Crane’s flesh.

Theatrical Trailer – (01:23)

IFC took a bit of a risk using so much of the newly shot “Psycho” footage in their trailer for the film. One can imagine a select portion of the intended audience cringing and being turned off by the film completely. However, the moody atmosphere of the images certainly raises a certain amount of interest.

Final Words:

78/52: Hitchcock’s Shower Scene is fun to watch, but it doesn’t really add anything revelatory to our understanding of the film (or of the scene in question). There is an excellent “making of” documentary included on the various Psycho Blu-ray releases that would probably make better use of the viewer’s time. However, anyone interested in the film will find it worth seeing if they happen to get the opportunity. Just don’t shell out any money for the privilege.

Review by: Devon Powell

Blu-ray Review: Alfred Hitchcock – The Ultimate Collection

Distributor: Universal Studios

Release Date: October 17, 2017

Region: Region A

Notes: These films are also available individually with standard Blu-ray packaging and as a part of The Masterpiece Collection.

Universal owns the rights to more Alfred Hitchcock titles than any other studio and they certainly milk these properties for every penny that they are able to squeeze out of his admirers. However, one really shouldn’t complain because this allows fans ample opportunity to own these films (and have plenty of choices as to how they want these discs packaged). Each of the films available in this collection have been available on Blu-ray for quite some time (both as individually packaged titles and as a part of other sets), and these image and sound transfers are the same ones utilized for those earlier releases. What’s more, these discs include the same supplemental material. Interested parties can read more detailed information about each of the discs included in this set by clicking on the individual links below:

Saboteur

Shadow of a Doubt

Rope

Rear Window

The Trouble with Harry

The Man Who Knew Too Much

Vertigo

North by Northwest

Psycho

The Birds

Marnie

Torn Curtain

Topaz

Frenzy

Family Plot

What really sets this release apart from the previous releases is that it includes two new standard definition DVDs that focus on his television work.

The Best of ‘Alfred Hitchcock Presents’

This new disc showcases a single Alfred Hitchcock directed episode from all seven seasons of Alfred Hitchcock Presents. The following episodes are included:

Revenge (Season 1, Episode 1)

The series premiere of Alfred Hitchcock Presents is one of the show’s best episodes. It first aired on October 02, 1955 and starred Vera Miles and Ralph Meeker. Those who admire The Andy Griffith Show will also notice Frances Bavier in a supporting role. The story by Samuel Blas follows Carl and Elsa Spann, a newlywed couple just starting their life. Elsa has recently suffered a nervous breakdown but seems to be on her way to recovery. Unfortunately, Carl returns home from work one evening to find that his wife has been attacked. When the police prove to be unhelpful, Carl decides to get justice on his own.

Vera Miles gives a great performance here—a performance that looks forward to her portrayal of Rose Balestrero in Alfred Hitchcock’s under-appreciated docudrama, The Wrong Man.

Mr. Blanchard’s Secret (Season 2, Episode 13)

Mr. Blanchard’s Secret pales in comparison. The episode first aired on December 23, 1956 and starred Mary Scott, Robert Horton, Dayton Lummis, and Meg Mundy. The story by Emily Neff revisits some of the themes better explored in Alfred Hitchcock’s Rear Window. Babs Fenton, a housewife with an overactive imagination who fancies herself a writer, believes that Mr. Blanchard has murdered his wife. However, her suspicions are called into serious question when Mrs. Blanchard shows up at their door looking to be very much alive. Babs alters her theory as to the reason behind Mr. Blanchard’s suspicious behavior only to be proven wrong once again.

Lamb to the Slaughter (Season 3, Episode 28)

Lamb to the Slaughter is rightly mentioned amongst the series best episodes. It aired on April 13, 1958 and stars Barbara Bel Geddes (who portrayed Midge in Vertigo that same year). The story by Roald Dahl follows a devoted housewife named Mary Maloney who decides to kill her cheating husband with a frozen leg of lamb rather than let him leave her. What follows is classic Hitchcock.

Poison (Season 4, Episode 1)

Poison—which was based upon another tale by Dahl—first aired on October 05, 1958 and stars Hitchcock alumnus Wendell Corey and James Donald. Harry Pope (Donald) wakes up with a poisonous snake in his bed. Worse, it finds a comfortable place to rest right on his chest. The entire episode is devoted to solving this tense predicament.

Arthur (Season 5, Episode 1)

Arthur first aired on September 27, 1959 and stars Laurence Harvey in the title role. Unusually for an Alfred Hitchcock Presents episode, the story begins with Arthur standing amongst a large number of chickens as he addresses the audience directly. After this opening monologue, we flash back in time as he tells the viewer how he killed his gold-digging girlfriend and was able to get away with it. The story itself is rather amusing, but the framing device at the beginning and end doesn’t work very well (possibly because there is already an introduction and epilogue performed by Hitchcock).

Mrs. Bixby and the Colonel’s Coat (Season 6, Episode 1)

Mrs. Bixby and the Colonel’s Coat is more benign than many episodes, but it has a very similar sense of irony. It originally aired on September 27, 1960 and stars Audrey Meadows, Les Tremayne, and Stephen Chase. The story by Roald Dahl follows Mrs. Bixby as she visits her secret lover “the Colonel,” who ends their affair but offers her a mink coat as a parting gift. She isn’t sure how to explain the coat to her husband, so she pawns the item without putting a description on the ticket. She then tells her husband that she has found the ticket and instructs him to turn it in for the pawned item. Obviously, things aren’t going to work out in quite the way that she expects.

Bang! You’re Dead! (Season 7, Episode 2)

Bang! You’re Dead! originally aired on October 17, 1961 and is the final episode that Alfred Hitchcock directed for the original half-hour series. It was based on a story by Margery Vosper and stars Billy Mumy as a young Jackie Chester—a spoiled six-year-old who mistakes a loaded gun for a gift from his uncle. The child then proceeds to pretend he is an outlaw and points it at the random people he meets throughout the day. It is only a matter of time before he actually pulls the trigger. Meanwhile, his family has discovered the mistake and tries frantically to locate him. Hitchcock’s gift for building suspense is evident throughout the duration.

This disc also includes a single special feature entitled Alfred Hitchcock Presents: A Look Back. Gary Leva’s 15 minute featurette is far from a comprehensive examination of the series, but the retrospective interviews with Norman Lloyd, Hilton A. Green, and Patricia Hitchcock do reveal some general information about how the show was produced and those responsible for its success.

The Best of ‘The Alfred Hitchcock Hour’

The second new disc showcases a single episode from all three seasons of The Alfred Hitchcock Hour. Unlike the first disc, only the first of these episodes is actually directed by Alfred Hitchcock because he only directed a single episode of this series. The following episodes are included:

I Saw the Whole Thing (Season 1, Episode 4)

I Saw the Whole Thing is the only episode of The Alfred Hitchcock Hour that was actually directed by Alfred Hitchcock. It originally aired on October 11, 1962 and is based on a short story by Henry Cecil. Hitchcock alumnus John Forsythe portrays Michael Barnes in this Rashomon-like courtroom drama with an interesting twist. Barnes has been accused of causing a fatal car accident, but he insists that he is completely innocent and acts as his own attorney at his trial. In court, he proves that the various eyewitnesses called by the prosecution are unreliable.

Three Wives Too Many (Season 2, Episode 12)

Three Wives Too Many was directed by Joseph M. Newman and was based on a short story by Kenneth Fearing. It aired on January 03, 1964 and stars Hitchcock alumnus Teresa Wright, Linda Lawson, Jean Hale, and Dan Duryea. The story follows a bigamist who is suspected of murdering his various wives.

Death Scene (Season 3, Episode 20)

Death Scene was directed by Harvey Hart and was based on a story by Helen Nielsen. The episode aired on March 08, 1965 and features Hitchcock alumnus Vera Miles as Nicky Revere, the daughter of a movie director named Gavin Revere (John Carradine). It is best that viewers see this particular episode knowing as little as is possible about the actual story, but it is certainly one of the most memorable of the hour-long episodes.

This disc includes a single special feature entitled Fasten Your Seatbelt: The Thrilling Art of Alfred Hitchcock. This six minute fluff piece includes interviews with Martin Scorsese, Guillermo del Toro, William Friedkin, John Carpenter, Eli Roth, and Joe Carnahan, but none of these filmmakers say anything particularly enlightening. It is almost like an EPK created to sell the idea of Hitchcock’s greatness without ever revealing anything that isn’t immediately obvious.

This is a promotional photograph for ‘Alfred Hitchcock Presents’ that was taken in 1962 by Gabor ‘Gabi’ Rona.

It’s nice to have both of these new standard definition discs included here, but it is impossible not to wonder why Universal didn’t choose to release discs with each of the seventeen Hitchcock-directed episodes of Alfred Hitchcock Presents and his single episode of The Alfred Hitchcock Hour instead. Such a collection would have been a much more appropriate and satisfying addition to the package. What’s more, this approach would’ve only required one more disc (three instead of the two). Actually, it is ridiculous that Universal hasn’t released these episodes together in a single collection already.

In addition, one cannot help but lament some of the choices made by Universal as to which episodes to include. Some of these episodes are inferior to other Hitchcock-directed episodes from that respective season. For example, season two’s One More Mile to Go is vastly superior to Mr. Blanchard’s Secret. In fact, it is one of the best of the entire series. Of course, this particular issue wouldn’t be a problem if all of the Hitchcock directed episodes had been included.

The Presentation:

4 of 5 MacGuffins

The packaging is very similar to Universal’s Masterpiece Collection, but the artwork is somewhat different. It is of course a matter of taste as to which is better, but most should agree that the design is just as pleasing as the one utilized for that earlier release. From an aesthetic standpoint, this collection is beyond reproach. Unfortunately, it is the sort of design that seems special on the surface but actually provides the consumer with less value than if each film had been provided with a sturdy individual Blu-ray case.

It is time for studios to do away with these book-style sets that house the discs in folder-like sleeves. This leaves the discs vulnerable to scratching and other types of damage, and disc protection should always be the first priority when designing these collections. What’s more, it doesn’t allow the collector to arrange their collections in the manner that they might wish. (This reviewer prefers chronological arrangement).

This particular book-style release devotes two pages to each of the films included therein. The first of the two pages features the film’s one sheet while the second includes a quote, a brief description of the film, and a list of bonus features. A promotional still from the film is also utilized. Since this is the same information that one might find on the slip sleeve of any regular release, it only gives one the appearance of additional value when in actuality it is probably much cheaper than including individual cases for each title.

A small softbound book entitled “The Master of Suspense” is also included. There are around 58-60 pages worth of material here (depending on how one chooses to count them), and it does add a bit of value to the package. It includes some extremely general biographical information about Hitchcock and his career, a few paragraphs about his leading men, a page that focuses on “The Hitchcock Blondes,” two pages that focus on Edith Head (including a handful of costume sketches), two pages that showcase Saul Bass (with a series of screenshots from the title sequences for Vertigo and Psycho), a page about Bernard Herrmann, a half page about “The MacGuffin,” and another half page about the director’s cameo appearances. After these subjects, the book focuses on each of the films included in this set. Film trivia, artwork, storyboards, photographs, letters, and memorandum have been included throughout these pages in Universal’s effort to create an attractive keepsake. There isn’t much in the way of information here (and some of it borders on being erroneous), but it does make for a fun reading experience.

Final Words:

The back sleeve of this release screams “The Best of Alfred Hitchcock,” and one must admit that the set does include a number of the master’s best films. However, it is ridiculous to claim that the set represents Hitchcock’s best work because some of his best films aren’t included here while some of his worst films are present. For example, few would rank Topaz above Notorious or Strangers on a Train. This set is simply a complete collection of the films that Universal actually owns (with North by Northwest included as a healthy bonus due to a licensing trade).

It is certainly an impressive collection of films and those that don’t mind the folder-book packaging might wish to grab this set while supplies last—that is if they do not already own these films individually or as part of The Masterpiece Collection. The two new DVDs might not be worth an upgrade (especially since they weren’t given a new 1080P transfer for this release).

Review by: Devon Powell

Book Interview: Grace Kelly: Hollywood Dream Girl

Publisher: Dey Street Books

Release Date: October 24, 2017

A Conversation with Manoah Bowman & Jay Jorgensen

“Mr. Hitchcock taught me everything about cinema. It was thanks to him that I understood that murder scenes should be shot like love scenes and love scenes like murder scenes.” -Grace Kelly

The creative relationship between Grace Kelly and Alfred Hitchcock was one of the most mutually beneficial in the history of cinema. It’s nearly impossible to even discuss the director’s work without mentioning Grace Kelly’s name. However, she was so much more than the master’s temporary muse. No movie star of the 1950s was more beautiful, sophisticated, or glamorous than Grace Kelly. The epitome of elegance, the patrician young blonde from Philadelphia conquered Hollywood and won an Academy Award for Best Actress in just six years, then married a prince in a storybook royal wedding. Today, more than thirty years after her death, Grace Kelly remains an inspiring fashion icon. This book by Jay Jorgensen and Manoah Bowman is being promoted as “the definitive visual biography of Grace Kelly’s unforgettable Hollywood career,” and we are happy to report that this isn’t merely hype. Filled with a dazzling array of photographs (many of which are quite rare), Grace Kelly: Hollywood Dream Girl showcases the legend’s brief yet significant acting career as never before.

Alfred Hitchcock Master is honored to have had the opportunity to interview both Jay Jorgensen and Manoah Bowman about their work, and we are proud to present that interview here for your reading enjoyment.

AHM: Tell us a bit about GRACE KELLY: HOLLYWOOD DREAM GIRL. How is this book different from previous books about the actress’s life?

Manoah Bowman: Thank you for asking. This is a very important question. The answer is in the title — GRACE KELLY: HOLLYWOOD DREAM GIRL. This is the first book to focus on Grace Kelly the actress. Practically every biography and coffee table book splits her life into two equal size sections due to the relatively short time she worked in Hollywood. Often her contribution to the movies gets shortchanged outside of the Hitchcock films so we made an effort to delve not only into these films but also her process as an actress. This book takes a more “behind the scenes” approach than any other book on her has ever attempted. Basically what you are getting is a lot less Monaco and a lot more of the movies.

AHM: I think that the book more than lives up to your intentions. How did the original idea for such a book arise, and what were the biggest challenges in making it a reality?

Manoah Bowman: This is a book I have wanted to do since I saw the Hitchcock reissues in the early 1980’s. Some of those films had been out of circulation for many years and I was particularly impressed by Rear Window. Having only been exposed to Princess Grace at that point I was awestruck by Grace Kelly the movie star, and her eye-popping introduction in that film is burned into my subconscious for life. The greatest challenge in making the book a reality was two-fold. One, finding a publisher that was okay with making the book about her movies and not her time as a real-life princess. And two, finding any photo of her that was previously unpublished. Fans are so hungry for photos of her that there are literally Tumblr pages, Instagram accounts, and Pinterest walls with every clipping, photo, and magazine cover ever taken of her. The fans have infiltrated every photo agency around the world and left virtually no stone unturned. We were fortunate to have a large collection of Grace material between us that we had been archiving for many years prior to the internet so we do have quite a few images unavailable anywhere else…at least in good quality.

AHM: The photographs are really quite remarkable. In fact, some of the publicity stills are better than the films that they were supposed to promote! Which of the eleven films made during her brief career stands as your personal favorite, and why does this film win out over the others?

Manoah Bowman: Rear Window is my personal favorite because it is a virtually perfect film and she is perfect in it. Though I may actually enjoy watching To Catch a Thief more because she seems to be having a better time with the part.

Jay Jorgensen: I think Rear Window is her best film, but I return to To Catch a Thief more often. Grace takes a character for which the audience really shouldn’t have much sympathy, and has us eating out of her hand. While Rear Window may boast a better script, Thief has the more glamorous locations and more opportunities for humor. I think by that time Grace also knew exactly what Hitchcock expected of her, and is a lot more at ease in her role.

AHM: One notices that there is a bit more material in the book about the three films that she made with Alfred Hitchcock than is included for her other films. For example, the section about REAR WINDOW includes an additional essay entitled “Dangerous Female” by Sloan De Forest, the publicity campaign manuals for all three films are included, and there even seems to be a few more photos available for these chapters. Why did you decide to include more material for these films?

Manoah Bowman: This was completely calculated on our part. Not only do we agree that these are the films she is most remembered for today, it is also readily apparent how Alfred Hitchcock and his work continues to amaze and inspire. To make this book appeal to a wider group of fans and scholars we took aim at the Hitchcock crowd as well. Our chapters on these films are more photographically in depth than any other Grace Kelly or Alfred Hitchcock photo book previously published.

AHM: How do you think working with Hitchcock influenced the actress personally, and how did this association change the public’s perception of her? Did this have any effect on the films that she made for different directors?

Jay Jorgensen: I think working with Hitchcock made all the difference. Before Hitchcock, I am not sure that any director had really taken the time to teach Grace how to act specifically for the camera. High Noon had to be shot very quickly because of the budget, and on Mogambo, John Ford was managing an enormous production on location. But Dial ‘M’ for Murder was filmed on one soundstage, and Hitchcock saw that Grace needed a lot of direction and taught her how to modulate her performance. But it was Rear Window that really put Grace on the map in the mind of the public. Grace may have had very definite ideas about the types of roles she wanted to play, and sometimes about her wardrobe, but the script and the director were the blueprints to her performance. It’s why so many people wanted to work with her. There was no temperament on the set. I think it’s a big part of why she won the Oscar over Judy Garland.

AHM: I also wanted to touch upon something that is discussed briefly in the book regarding a performance that she was never able to give. Hitchcock had originally intended to pull Princess Grace out of retirement so that she could star in MARNIE—a role that eventually fell into Tippi Hedren’s lap. What qualities do you think Grace Kelly would’ve brought to the role, and how do you think this would have changed the finished film?

Manoah Bowman: One of the single greatest regrets of my life is that I don’t live in a reality where Grace Kelly played Marnie. Marnie is my favorite Hitchcock film and I can only imagine how I’d love it even more if Grace had gotten to star in it.

Jay Jorgensen: I think just by virtue of the mystery in Marnie hinging on sex, it may have presented some problems for Grace after it was released. But both Grace and Rainier had read the script, and they trusted Hitchcock’s taste. Grace may have brought more of a warmth to the character and made her more sympathetic. But I think Hedren perfectly captured a woman who is cold and doesn’t understand her own motivations.

AHM: The book mentions Grace Kelly’s fondness for practical jokes. It was apparently a trait that she shared with Alec Guinness—but Alfred Hitchcock was also notoriously fond of pulling elaborate practical jokes on people. I couldn’t help but be curious as to whether she and Hitchcock pulled jokes on each other.

Jay Jorgensen: Hitchcock enjoyed telling bawdy stories in front of Grace to try to chip away at her ladylike demeanor. Grace was nonplussed and told him that she’d already heard all those stories when she was growing up at girls’ school.

AHM: Right. I think the book actually mentioned that and discusses her sense of humor. I think that her sense of humor (or appreciation for humor) is why she was able to work with Hitchcock so effectively… Going beyond your interest in her film career, which aspects of Grace Kelly’s life do you find the most interesting?

Jay Jorgensen: For a woman born into wealth, Grace Kelly had an amazing work ethic. It’s tough to imagine now, but things did not come easy for her. She had to really apply herself in sports at school; she worked very hard to overcome speech problems when she became an actress; when she was so unhappy with her performance in High Noon, she sought out one of the best acting teachers in New York; and she listened and learned from every director she worked with—especially Hitchcock. This discipline served her well when she got to Monaco. She could have spent her days only entertaining society ladies, but she worked hard to make Monaco a better place for its residents—especially the poor and the aged. She was an especially compassionate and empathetic person, for someone who could have rested on her wealth and beauty.

AHM: Nicole Kidman portrayed Princess Grace in GRACE OF MONACO—a film about her marriage to Prince Rainier III. I don’t believe that it was well received, but I was wondering what your opinions about that film might be. Have either of you seen the film?

Jay Jorgensen: I don’t know if the problems with that film are specifically in Kidman’s performance. The filmmakers chose to focus on a time in Grace’s life where Monaco was being threatened by a blockade from France, and Grace was also being offered the role in Marnie by Hitchcock. Then they threw in a misplaced intrigue where Princess Antoinette tries to dethrone Rainier, and a fabricated showdown between Grace and de Gaulle, and it’s all a jumbled mess. To me, the real tragedy of Grace’s life was that after serving Monaco so honorably, and raising her children, it appeared that she was just about to get her creative life back when the accident happened. Kidman didn’t try to mimic Grace, and that must have been her conscious choice as an actress. Had the film been historically accurate, or if Kidman had delivered a performance that really evoked Grace, perhaps the film might have had a chance. But Grace’s real life was almost unrecognizable in the film.

AHM: Worse, the changes didn’t result in a dramatically compelling film… How does Grace Kelly’s style differ from other actresses from that period? For example, how would it compare to Audrey Hepburn’s influence on fifties fashion?

Jay Jorgensen: I believe Audrey’s collaboration with Givenchy, beginning with Sabrina, showed she was more forward-thinking in terms of fashion than Grace. Grace was very concerned about appearing as a serious actress in Hollywood, and not a fashion plate. Therefore the “Grace Kelly look” she influenced in the fifties was a more casual or tailored look. However, when Grace began dating designer Oleg Cassini, he convinced her that dressing well off-screen helped display a certain versatility as well. So while Grace was keenly aware of what worked for her onscreen in Rear Window (made in 1954) her off-screen fashion sense was pretty conservative until 1955. But the clothes in Rear Window and To Catch a Thief look as fresh today as when they were designed. That is a tribute not only to Grace but to designer Edith Head, who had to make sure that clothes didn’t appear dated between the time a film was made and the time it was released.

Interview by: Devon Powell

Blu-ray Review: Rebecca – The Criterion Collection

Spine #135

Distributor: Criterion Collection (USA)

Release Date: September 05, 2017

Region: Region A

Length: 02:10:40

Video: 1080P (MPEG-4, AVC)

Main Audio: English Mono Linear PCM Audio (48 kHz, 1152 kbps, 24-bit)

Subtitles: English SDH

Ratio: 1.33:1

Bitrate: 35.69 Mbps

Notes: This title is also available both individually and as part of The Premiere Collection boxed set (both with different cover art) in the DVD format and was given an incredible release in the same format by The Criterion Collection several years before that release.

The film was later given a lackluster Blu-ray release by MGM Home Entertainment both as part of a three-film set entitled, The Classic Collection and as an individual release.

“Well, it’s not a Hitchcock picture; it’s a novelette, really. The story is old-fashioned. There was a whole school of feminine literature at the period, and though I’m not against it, the fact is the story is lacking in humor.” –Alfred Hitchcock (Hitchcock/Truffaut, 1966)

Most of the contemporary critics and scholars tend to agree that the film belongs more to Selznick than to the director. In his book of essays about Alfred Hitchcock’s filmography (The Art of Alfred Hitchcock) Donald Spoto writes:

“Hitchcock’s first American film won David O. Selznick the Oscar as producer of the best film of 1940. In fact, it’s more a Selznick film than it is Hitchcock. Depending on your mood, it’s either impossibly dated, woefully prolix as well as comically overstated every step of its long way—or it’s deliciously entertaining, the kind of gothic romantic hokum they don’t make anymore. Or both…” -Donald Spoto (The Art of Alfred Hitchcock, 1976)

We have trouble understanding how any movie made in 1939 and released in 1940 can be “impossibly dated,” but one must certainly admit the validity of Spoto’s assertion that the film could be perceived as “woefully prolix.” This would be the result of Selznick’s insistence that entire paragraphs of the novel’s dialogue should be included in the script—even if the same points might be made visually or with less ornate verbiage. Selznick’s fingerprints are all over the film to be certain, but it would be an incredible injustice and completely misleading to ignore the fact that Hitchcock’s influence is just as dominant and can be seen in every frame—and there are traces of the director’s humor on evidence (even if he would later claim otherwise).

As a matter of fact, Hitchcock had been interested in purchasing the rights to Daphne du Maurier’s source novel while he was still working in England but the cost of the property proved prohibitive. This and the fact that Rebecca contains elements that Hitchcock would return to in his later work should be evidence of the director’s sincere affection for the material. Rebecca might not be the version of the film that Hitchcock originally wanted to make, but the director was wrong when he claimed that it isn’t a Hitchcock picture. It is a Hitchcock film, but it is a Selznick production of a Hitchcock film. This subtle distinction is what really bothered the director.

“While, in many respects, Rebecca was very personal to Hitchcock—allowing him to explore more clearly than ever before his deepest thematic concerns—the film belongs as much to its producer as it does to its director. Hitchcock appears to have undertaken the film with certain misapprehensions: that he would have the full control he’d been accustomed to; that he could adapt the source novel as freely as he pleased; that he could insert touches of his typical British humor (his early draft had Maxim and his anonymous wife meeting on a channel steamer, with Maxim bringing on her seasickness by blowing smoke in her face!). Hitchcock was swiftly disillusioned. Selznick insisted on the strictest fidelity to du Maurier that censorship would permit, oversaw the entire production, and asserted his contractual right to final cut.” –Robin Wood (Rebecca: The Two Mrs. de Winters)

To be fair, the Monte Carlo sequence works much better than this would have, because the audience understands that Maxim de Winter has been away from Manderley for quite some time in an effort to forget his past. It is also much more mysterious. However, the pages of endless dialogue work much better in the novel, and the film is at its best when Hitchcock is allowed to tell the story in a visual manner. What’s more, Selznick’s generic cutting style wouldn’t have benefited the film. Luckily, Alfred Hitchcock knew a way around Selznick’s final cut and was one of the few directors capable of forcing aspects of his own personal vision upon the producer by cutting in the camera so that the footage could only be assembled in the manner that Hitchcock envisioned. Selznick wasn’t a fan of what he called the director’s “damned jigsaw cutting,” but this is exactly what he was paying for when he brought Hitchcock to America.

In retrospect, it might be said that much of what hasn’t dated in the film seems to belong more to Hitchcock than to Selznick. This may be an oversimplification, but Selznick’s insistence on fidelity created a more literary melodrama with more unnecessarily protracted dialogue than is typical of a director who prefers to tell his stories visually. If the film seems dated to contemporary audiences, this is undoubtedly one of the primary reasons. Another side effect of Selznick’s meddling is the sometimes overwrought and syrupy score provided by the talented Franz Waxman. Selznick obviously didn’t trust Hitchcock’s wonderful visuals to make their point and musical punctuation overwhelms what might have been poignant subtleties had the director been left to his own devices. The score is very good at conveying the film’s gothic and ghostly atmosphere, but there is more “Mickey Mousing” than is necessary, and there are cheesy (and unnecessary)musical punctuations every time a character reacts to something. The production values also seem to belong to Selznick, and Alfred Hitchcock has gone on record about his disappointment about the film’s production design. Rebecca has a gloss that is tonally different than even the glossiest of Hitchcock’s later films. Whether this is a good or a bad thing will depend on the viewer.

On final analysis, Rebecca is a brilliant Hitchcock/Selznick hybrid that rightfully earned eleven Academy Awards nominations (Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor, Best Actress, Best Supporting Actress, Best Cinematography, Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Art Direction, Best Film Editing, Best Score, Best Visual Effects) and won in the Best Picture and Best Cinematography categories. The film is required viewing and marks an extremely important benchmark in not only Hitchcock’s career but also his artistic evolution. The stormy production created by a thunderous crashing of two giant egos resulted in more than a great film. It resulted in the creative growth of an already brilliant director.

The Presentation:

4.5 of 5 MacGuffins

Criterion has once again given cinephiles a beautiful Blu-ray package. The special 2-disc set looks like most of their standard single disc releases. Both discs are housed in their standard clear case with a cover sleeve featuring an attractive painting by Robert Hunt.

Inside the case, there is a collector’s booklet that features an essay by David Thomson entitled “Welcome to the Haunted House.” Thomson is the author of a long list of film-related books, including: Showman: The Life of David O. Selznick, The Moment of ‘Psycho,’ Rosebud: The Story of Orson Welles, Scorsese on Scorsese, A Biographical Dictionary of Film, The Whole Equation: A History of Hollywood, Moments That Made the Movies, and a ridiculous number of other titles. This reviewer found some of his scholarly insights somewhat questionable, and wonder why Criterion didn’t simply utilize the two essays that were included in their original DVD release years ago. These essays were written by Robin Wood and George E. Turner, and they were more informative than this new piece.

Luckily, Criterion more than makes up for this minor issue by including a section entitled “Hitchcock vs. Selznick.” This section is essentially a collection of four memos from the production of Rebecca (all of which were featured on the second disc of their DVD release several years ago) with a short introduction by David Thomson. One must admit that having these memos collected in a booklet is preferable to including them on one of the discs as it makes them much easier to read, and their inclusion here makes this booklet a significant addition to the overall package. Our only complaint is that more memos weren’t included. It would’ve been incredibly awesome if Criterion had included a larger book containing all of the memos that were included on their earlier release of Rebecca!

Both disc menus make use of production stills and Franz Waxman’s score, and they are up to Criterion’s usual high standards. Those who own other Criterion discs will know exactly what to expect.

Picture Quality:

5 of 5 MacGuffins

There is every reason in the world to be excited about Criterion’s new 4K restoration transfer of Rebecca. As is their usual practice, they include information about their restoration in the collector’s booklet:

“This new digital transfer was created in 16-bit 4K resolution on a Lasergraphics Director Film scanner at Motion Picture Imaging in Burbank, California, from the 35mm nitrate original camera negative. Digital restoration was undertaken by the Motion Picture Imaging Group…” –Collector’s Booklet

The result is beyond stunning as there is an incredible improvement in quality when one compares this release with the earlier MGM Home Entertainment release. For one thing, the grain structure has been improved upon and is better resolved. There is a more film-like quality to the overall image in this release, as it exhibits a very natural contrast and better black levels (which are incredibly deep without crushing). Fine detail is also vastly improved, density is much better and indeed quite impressive, and stability is terrific. It also looks absolutely incredible in motion. The image has been cleaned of any distracting blemishes (such as age chemical imperfections, stains, scratches, cuts, dirt, and other damage). There also aren’t any signs of overzealous manipulation or improper compression.

The only negative aspect of the new transfer is that there seems to be marginally less information on the sides of the frame when compared to the other releases, but there is more information at the top of the frame. You might say that everything evens out rather nicely in this respect. In any case, this seems to be the only aspect of this new release that nitpickers will have to complain about. Everything else is beyond reproach, and the reasonably high bitrate makes the most of their beautiful work.

Sound Quality:

5 of 5 MacGuffins

The film’s soundtrack was also given a new restoration by Criterion.

“…The soundtrack was re-mastered from the original soundtrack negative at Chace by Deluxe in Burbank and restored by Disney Digital Studio Services. Additional restoration was performed by the Criterion Collection using Pro Tools HD and iZotope RX…” –Collector’s Booklet

The resulting uncompressed monaural (Linear PCM) audio track is as good as anyone has a right to expect, although it isn’t quite the upgrade in quality that the image received. As a matter of fact, it is relatively identical to the MGM track in many respects. The differences between the two tracks will be directly related to Criterion’s efforts to clean the track of imperfections. While the mono mix cannot be described as dynamic, it is certainly faithful to the original as it exhibits clear and well-prioritized dialogue, a good representation of Franz Waxman’s score, and the effects are strong and undistorted. The flat nature of this extremely old track may disappoint modern ears, but purists are certain to appreciate the final result.

Special Features:

5 of 5 MacGuffins

When Criterion originally released Rebecca as a two-disc set in the DVD format, it was impossible to imagine that anyone would ever include a superior supplemental package for the film. However, this release contains quite a bit more material than that release, and not a single one of these added features could possibly be described as “filler.” Everything included here should be an incredibly fulfilling experience for anyone who admires Alfred Hitchcock, David O. Selznick, Daphne du Maurier, or classic cinema in general.

There are over 3 hours and 56 minutes of video-based supplemental entertainment on the disc—the accumulation of which would have easily earned the disc a five-star rating all on its own. However, they have also included over 3 hours and 30 minutes of audio based supplements (and this isn’t even counting the commentary track)!

Disc One

Feature Length Audio Commentary by Leonard J. Leff

Leonard J. Leff is the author of Hitchcock and Selznick: The Rich and Strange Collaboration of Alfred Hitchcock and David O. Selznick in Hollywood. The book is a well-researched and incredibly comprehensive account of Hitchcock’s working relationship with David O. Selznick and the films that Alfred Hitchcock made during that period. Frankly, it is one of a handful of books on the director that is absolutely essential.  Leff brings some of this knowledge to this track, but it leans more towards scholarly analysis. We have no doubt that this will likely disappoint a lot of fans. However, Leff’s archival Criterion track is a much better commentary than the one provided by the late Richard Schickel for the MGM release. Some might be put off by the dry and decidedly academic tone, but those who give it a fair chance will find it well worth their time.

Isolated Music and Effects Track

This feature allows audiences to experience the film with only the music and sound effects. It is presented in the Linear PCM format.

The Making of Rebecca – (28:02)

Film historians discuss the uneasy relationship between David O. Selznick and Alfred Hitchcock during the making of the film. It offers more generalized “behind the scenes” information than many of the more comprehensive documentaries of its kind, but there is enough information to make the viewing experience rich and rewarding. It was nice to learn that Criterion decided to port this over from the earlier MGM DVD and Blu-ray releases as this set would have suffered considerably without it.

Conversation between Molly Haskell and Patricia White – (24:39)

Molly Haskell and Patricia White discuss the film’s enduring appeal as well as some of the thematic concerns that contribute to that its ongoing popularity. The conversation is decidedly casual but always intelligent. Unfortunately, it doesn’t delve terribly deep into the themes discussed with specific examples that illustrate their observations. It is certainly a worthwhile addition to the disc’s supplemental package, but one wishes that the conversation delved a bit deeper.

Theatrical Re-release Trailer – (02:23)

One wishes that the film’s original release trailer could have been included here, but is always nice to see vintage trailers included on a disc and this is no exception. It exploits the success of the film’s original release as well as its well-documented awards success.

Disc Two

Daphne du Maurier: In the Footsteps of Rebecca – (55:03)

Elisabeth Aubert Schlumberger’s hour-long documentary about the life of Daphne du Maurier was originally produced for French television and is a multi-lingual production presented in both French and English. Much of the information divulged is revealed through the French narration, but there are a number of English language interviews and some archival footage of the author. One of the more interesting elements featured within the film is the BBC footage of the author taken later in her life.

Those disappointed about the omission of Criterion’s essay about du Maurier can rest assured that the inclusion of this program more than makes up for its absence, as it is much more in-depth and engaging.

Alfred Hitchcock on NBC’s Tomorrow – (44:03)

In 1975, NBC’s Tomorrow devoted an entire episode to the “Master of Suspense” and it is included here in all of its fabulous glory. The director is certainly feeling his age here but he is still an extremely entertaining raconteur. The Tom Snyder interview covers a wide variety of topics, including cockney rhyming slang, his film work, entertaining stories, his then-upcoming film (Family Plot), and a wide variety of other engaging topics. Some of this will be a rehash for a lot of fans, but there is quite a bit of unique material as well.

Joan Fontaine on NBC’s Tomorrow – (17:11)

Almost as great as the amazing interview with Alfred Hitchcock is this incredibly charming interview with Joan Fontaine from a 1980 episode of Tomorrow (again hosted by Tom Snyder). The actress has a dignified grace and an undeniable charm that takes the viewer by surprise. She candidly discusses her rivalry with Olivia de Havilland as well as the production of Rebecca, her then current projects, politics, old Hollywood, and aging. Every word of it is a pleasure to witness, and it is an incredible addition to the package.

Casting Gallery with Notes by Alfred Hitchcock and David O. Selznick

It is nice to see that Criterion has included memorandum between Alfred Hitchcock about casting the unknown protagonist eventually played by Joan Fontaine. These memos discuss various actresses considered for the part in no uncertain terms, and it all makes for instructive reading. The text is illustrated with publicity photos of the various talent discussed. All of this provides strong contextual information for the screen tests that have also been included on the disc.

Screen Tests:

Unlike the previous MGM Blu-ray, this new Criterion release has ported over their entire collection of tests from their earlier (now out of print) Blu-ray release. These are priceless production artifacts from one of Alfred Hitchcock’s most important film, and it is instructive to see what he and Selznick were up against. In total, there are over 41 minutes of screen test footage from some of Hollywood’s biggest stars of the era!

Here is a list of the various tests included on the disc and their respective durations:

Joan Fontaine – (07:57)

Vivien Leigh (with Laurence Olivier) – (05:03)

Vivien Leigh (with Alan Marshall) – (04:02)

Anne Baxter – (11:48)

Margaret Sullavan – (07:52)

Loretta Young – (04:45)

Hair and Makeup Tests – (03:14)

These hair and makeup tests are presented in a kind of split screen and features Anne Baxter, Margaret Sullavan, and Vivien Leigh in various wigs and make-up designs. There is a short contextual introductory commentary by Leonard Leff that plays over the beginning of this silent footage. It is evident from these tests just how late in the process final casting decisions were made It is an incredible treat to glimpse this sort of test footage from such an old classic!

Costume Tests – (02:57)

Joan Fontaine’s costume tests are equally interesting as they showcase Joan Fontaine in various costumes—some of which weren’t included in the final film. If the actress looks less than enthusiastic, this is due to the fact that she was under an enormous physical and emotional strain during the weeks leading to the production. Needless to say, this raw footage is of enormous value to Hitchcock fans and devotees of classic cinema.

Interview with Craig Barron about Rebecca’s Visual Effects – (17:28)

This Criterion interview with Craig Barron is essential for anyone interested in special effects. The viewer is taken through a number of effects included in the film as they are explained in a very general way. Some will already know much of this information, but others will find it revelatory. It should certainly add to one’s appreciation of the film.

1986 Phone Interview with Joan Fontaine – (20:15)

Joan Fontaine speaks affectionately about Hitchcock and discusses working with the director during the set of Rebecca. She is articulate and incredibly charming throughout the entire length of the interview, and she leaves us wanting to hear more about her days in Hollywood. Fans should be very pleased to have this carried over from Criterion’s earlier disc because it is a very instructive twenty minutes.

1986 Phone Interview with Dame Judith Anderson – (10:42)

Judith Anderson’s interview is equally informative and articulate, and it is really a treat to listen to the actress as she talks about her experiences shooting the film, and the differences between acting on the stage and the screen. I dare say that interviews with Judith Anderson are rather rare, so having this included here is a wonderful treat.

Campbell Playhouse Radio Broadcast (1938) – (59:54)

Perhaps the most interesting of the three radio adaptations of Rebecca—although each version is interesting for very different reasons—is this first episode of Campbell Playhouse, the radio program produced by Orson Welles. The program followed closely behind the infamous War of the Worlds broadcast and featured Welles in the role of Maxim de Winter, Margaret Sullivan as the second Mrs. De Winter, Mildred Natwick as Mrs. Danvers, Agnes Moorehead as Mrs. Van Hopper, and an assortment of other “Mercury Players.” It also features a music score by Bernard Herrmann (who would go on to score a number of Alfred Hitchcock’s most beloved films).

Those who notice the identical dialogue should be reminded that this isn’t an indication that the film was directly influenced by this radio adaptation because both productions drew directly from Daphne du Maurier’s classic novel. One element of the program that should be of special interest to both fans of the film and the novel is the short television conversation with this esteemed author. It seems scripted and isn’t particularly informative—but what it lacks in information, it makes up for in cheekiness and novelty. It is probably the highlight of the entire broadcast.

Lux Radio Theatre Broadcast (1941) – (59:00)

Following the success of the Selznick/Hitchcock film version of Rebecca was this Lux Radio Theatre adaptation of the film starring Ronald Colman as Maxim de Winter, Ida Lupino as the second Mrs. de Winter, and Judith Anderson as Mrs. Danvers. Interestingly, Ronald Coleman was considered for the role of Maxim in the film version, but the actor chose not to appear in that landmark production.

The program aired on February 03, 1941 during Rebecca’s Academy Awards campaign, of which this particular broadcast was very much a part. (The Oscars were held on the 27th of that same month.) Speaking of awards, Cecil B. DeMille presents David O. Selznick with an award from Fame magazine for his work as a producer at the end of the program.

Lux Radio Theatre Broadcast (1950) – (01:00:35)

In light of the fact that both Laurence Olivier and Vivian Leigh had lobbied quite aggressively for Leigh to win the role of “I” in Hitchcock’s film version, this radio program (which was produced an entire decade later) offers listeners the opportunity to experience the ex-Scarlet in this very different role. It is a rather instructive experience, but most will be quite happy that the part was given to Joan Fontaine after hearing Leigh in this radio version—that is if seeing the screen tests didn’t already convince you. In addition to Olivier and Leigh, Betty Blythe can be heard in the role of Mrs. Danvers.

WHAT WASN’T INCLUDED?

With such a mind-boggling collection of wonderful extras, it seems almost ungrateful to complain about the few features that haven’t been ported over from previous releases of the film, but one imagines that most people who are considering an upgrade will be wondering about this particular matter.

There are quite a few text-based features from the original Criterion release that didn’t make its way to this new package—including an essay on Daphne du Maurier, the final results of a test screening questionnaire, an article about differences from the novel, and some of the production memorandum. However, most of the memos can be found here in some form. For example, that early release contained a gallery entitled “We Intend to Make ‘Rebecca,’” that featured several pre-production memos. These have all been included as part of the collector’s booklet. The memo’s found in the section of that disc entitled “The Search for ‘I’’’ have been included on this disc to contextualize the disc’s collection of screen tests. Frankly, these omissions aren’t particularly troubling. The same information is covered elsewhere on the disc. For example, the information found in the essay about Daphne du Maurier is more than covered in the included documentary about the author.

There is also a huge gallery of photos included on that release that wasn’t included here, but this hardly seems worth mentioning. The photos are certainly fascinating, but one grows weary clicking through such a gallery—and the same can be said about the aforementioned text screens.

More unfortunate is the exclusion of the 1940 Annual Academy Awards Ceremony Footage (01:37). The footage was silent but a commentary by Leonard Leff was included for this feature. It is strange that Criterion didn’t carry over this short clip.

Even more troubling is the exclusion of the excerpt from Hitchcock’s Interview with Francois Truffaut (Criterion – 07:54) and (MGM – 09:15), which was included in some form on both the earlier Criterion DVD and the MGM Blu-ray release. Considering the fact that their other Hitchcock Blu-rays have included this feature, it is extremely strange to discover that Criterion doesn’t include it here. The excerpt from Hitchcock’s Interview with Peter Bogdanovich (04:20) is also not carried over to this release but was included on MGM’s Blu-ray edition.

It is easier to understand the exclusion of a short featurette from the MGM Blu-ray entitled The Gothic World of Daphne du Maurier (19:02). After all, the documentary that is included in this package (Daphne du Maurier: In the Footsteps of ‘Rebecca’) covers the same territory and in more depth. However, it would’ve been nice to have it included here as it is a charming primer and could’ve made a nice companion to the longer documentary.

One doesn’t miss MGM’s Commentary with Richard Schickel, but it is another curious omission. To be perfectly honest, Schickel’s commentary was incredibly sparse. He seemed bored as he mumbled his way through the track. He didn’t say very much and what he said usually wasn’t rich with information. It’s difficult to enjoy listening to an apathetic commentator. Perhaps Criterion understood this and didn’t want their disc marred by such a track.

Everything else is here and most will agree that this is the edition to own.

Final Words:

The Criterion Collection’s release of Rebecca covers the film’s production in such a comprehensive manner that it altered our approach to this article. We usually include a rather detailed production history for the Hitchcock films that we review. However, in this particular instance, such an approach could potentially rob certain viewers of the richly rewarding experience provided by this outstanding supplemental package. Both this and the incredible image and sound transfers make this Blu-ray package an easy recommendation. It is absolutely essential.

Review by: Devon Powell

Blu-ray Review: The Lodger – The Criterion Collection

Spine #885

Distributor: Criterion Collection (USA)

Release Date: June 27, 2017

Region: Region A

Length:

The Lodger – 01:30:24

Downhill – 01:50:59

Video: 1080P (MPEG-4, AVC)

Main Audio:

The Lodger – 2.0 Linear PCM Audio (48 kHz, 2304 kbps, 24-bit)

Downhill – 2.0 Dolby Digital Audio (48 kHz, 192 kbps)

Ratio:

The Lodger – 1.33:1

Downhill – 1.33:1

Bitrate:

The Lodger – 29.36 Mbps

Downhill – 15.09 Mbps

Notes: This is the North American Blu-ray debut of “The Lodger,” but the film was given a DVD release by MGM. Unfortunately, the MGM edition is now out of print. The release also marks the Blu-ray debut of “Downhill.”

The Master Finds His Voice

PART ONE: THE LODGER

“The Lodger is the first picture possibly influence by my period in Germany. The whole approach to this film was instinctive with me. It was the first time I exercised my style. In truth, you might almost say that The Lodger was my first picture… I took a pure narrative and for the first time, presented ideas in purely visual terms.” –Alfred Hitchcock (Le Cinéma Selon Alfred Hitchcock, 1966)

It is rather easy to understand why Alfred Hitchcock considers The Lodger his true film debut, and the most obvious reason for this was his choice of subject matter.

“I had seen a play called ‘Who Is He?’ based on Mrs. Belloc Lowndes’s novel ‘The Lodger.’ The action was set in a house that took in roomers and the landlady wondered whether her new boarder was Jack the Ripper or not…” –Alfred Hitchcock (Le Cinéma Selon Alfred Hitchcock, 1966)

Obviously, the property was ideal for a Hitchcock project and the director tackled every aspect of the production with unprecedented relish. He had already worked with Eliot Stannard on the scripts for both The Pleasure Garden and The Mountain Eagle and brought the writer on board to help with The Lodger as well.

 “With the director whispering in his ear, Eliot Stannard wrote the script over the first two months of 1926; then Hitchcock went back over it one last time, breaking it down into several hundred master scenes, making notes and little sketches to guide each camera setup, ‘each one specifying the exact grouping and action of the characters and the placing of the camera,’ in his words. The script was always written with the flow of pictures in mind, but storyboarding was the final revision. Stannard was encouraged to suggest visual ideas, but again the more important contributor was the expert in continuity and cutting: Alma.” –Patrick McGilligan (Alfred Hitchcock: A Life in Darkness and Light, 2003)

Interestingly, Alfred Hitchcock’s first film to feature a man wrongly accused of a crime was considered a major compromise by the director.

“Of course, strictly speaking, he should have been the Ripper and gone on his way. That’s how Mrs. Belloc-Lowndes wrote the book. But Ivor Novello was the matinee idol of the period and could not be the murderer. The same thing was true of Cary Grant in Suspicion many years later. So, obviously, putting that kind of actor into this sort of film is a mistake because you just have to compromise.” –Alfred Hitchcock (The Cinema of Alfred Hitchcock, 1963)

Hitchcock claimed that he would have preferred to have the Lodger “go off in the night so that we would never really know for sure” if he is guilty of the murders or simply an eccentric innocent. This particular ending reminds one of Hitchcock’s ending for The Birds. It is impossible to guess how audiences of the time might have welcomed such an ending, but it is easy to imagine it having an extremely powerful effect on the viewer.

“The script satisfied the front office concerns that Novello’s character be proved innocent. But that left the second issue: Novello was a stiff, mannered actor, whose technique leaned heavily on his repertoire of tedious ‘handsome’ poses. That was a challenge to be addressed in the directing, but one Hitchcock had already anticipated, incorporating into the shooting script a brooding visual design to eclipse Novello’s flaws.” –Patrick McGilligan (Alfred Hitchcock: A Life in Darkness and Light, 2003)

Ivor Novello was one of Britain’s biggest matinee idols when he starred in Alfred Hitchcock’s The Lodger.

Vintage newspapers and trade articles suggest that the film entered production in the early months of 1926 (as early as February), although Patrick McGilligan suggests that principal photography didn’t begin until March. Unfortunately, there aren’t many surviving production documents from this period in Hitchcock’s career, so a specific date is impossible to pinpoint. However, one can say with some degree of authority that some of Hitchcock’s already established crew returned to bring The Lodger to the screen—and Alma’s work as his assistant director and editor is no doubt the most significant. Baron Ventimiglia also returned as the film’s primary cameraman and lavish sets were designed by C. Wilfred Arnold.

Of course, certain scenes were shot on location which could sometimes be a significant logistical challenge for a film crew even in the silent era. In fact, one particular scene was such an ordeal that it still haunted the director over a decade later when he related his experience to the News Chronicle.

“…The thing I wanted above all else was to do a night scene in London, preferably on the embankment. I wanted to silhouette the mass of Charing Cross Bridge against the sky. I wanted to get away from the (at the time) inevitable shot of Piccadilly Circus with hand-painted lights.

The story demanded the dragging of a body out of the river. Here, I thought was my chance. But Scotland Yard said, ‘No.’ We pulled strings. We used influence. We went from step to step until we were within shouting distance of the Home Secretary. Scotland Yard says ‘No.’ but we were told that, if we did shoot the scene, we should not be stopped. That’s how we always used to get our permission: told usually in a hint, that authorities would turn a blind eye on us.

So we went down to the Embankment. We took two sets of light vans—that does not mean vans for light work. It means vans to carry lights. We had ‘sun arcs’—huge, powerful lights to give a real background. Otherwise, the brilliantly lit close-up shots would seem to have been photographed against black velvet. We parked the vans in the middle of the roadway on Westminster Bridge. We massed the arcs on the parapet of the bridge. We went to the Embankment and started shooting.

We took our short shots. They were fine. But I was concentrating on the long shot. Every time a tram passed we had to disconnect the cables that lay across the lines. Work below had to be held up until the lights came on again. But finally, we shot the big scene. The sun arcs turned night to day. The artists did their stuff. The bridge stood out clear and sharp. The camera turned.

The number of the scene was 45. It should have been 13. For when we went to the projection room, to see the rushes—the first prints of the day’s takings—there was no scene 45. We looked through all the reels. We looked through all the prints. We looked through positive and negative. There was no scene 45. The cameraman forgot to put his lens in the camera. That has happened more than once: call it tragedy or farce.” –Alfred Hitchcock (Life Among the Stars, News Chronicle, March 01-05, 1937)

The influence of German Expressionism can be seen in nearly every frame of The Lodger and would be a large part of Alfred Hitchcock’s aesthetic throughout his entire career.

Of course, the studio work went much more smoothly, and the director was very much in his element. Hitchcock’s time in Germany had a profound impact on the director’s artistic sensibilities, and The Lodger perhaps the first time expressionism becomes a major part of his aesthetic.

 “You have to remember that a year before, I was working on the UFA lot. I worked there for many months—at the same time [that] Jannings was making The Last Laugh with Murnau—and I was able to absorb a lot of the methods and style.” –Alfred Hitchcock (The Cinema of Alfred Hitchcock, 1963)

Hitchcock’s actors took notice of his unusually meticulous attention to framing, sets, and lighting design as they met the challenges that this attention to detail sometimes created for them.

“‘Fresh from Berlin,’ recalled June [Tripp], ‘Hitch was so imbued with the value of unusual camera angles and lighting effects with which to create and sustain dramatic suspense that often a scene which would not run for more than three minutes on the screen would take an entire morning to shoot.’ ‘Once,’ she said, she was forced to carry ‘an iron tray of breakfast dishes up a long flight of stairs’ some twenty times before Hitchcock was ‘satisfied with the expression of fear on my face and the atmosphere established by light and shadows.’” –Patrick McGilligan (Alfred Hitchcock: A Life in Darkness and Light, 2003)

Spending an entire morning on a scene is certainly not uncommon nowadays, but this was apparently less common in Britain during the mid-1920s. Alfred Hitchcock was a unique entity in the British film industry and went the extra mile to achieve his visual goals. This is more than obvious in the very first frames of The Lodger wherein what seems to be a simple shot of a woman screaming actually took quite a bit of creative ingenuity to achieve.

“We opened with the head of a blonde girl who is screaming. I remember the way I photographed it. I took a sheet of glass, placed the girl’s head on the glass and spread her hair around until it filled the frame. Then we lit the glass from behind so that one would be struck by her light hair. Then we cut to show an electric sign advertising a musical play, ‘Tonight, Golden Curls,’ with the reflection flickering in the water. The girl has drowned…” –Alfred Hitchcock (Le Cinéma Selon Alfred Hitchcock, 1966)

Of course, the director was always quick to point out that many of the film’s lauded visual flourishes were the product of the silent era. The limitations of the medium made it necessary for director’s to pictorialize sound in a clear and concise manner. A perfect example of this technique would be the celebrated invisible ceiling scene.

“In his room the man paces up and down. You must remember that we had no sound in those days, so I had a plate-glass floor made through which you could see the lodger moving back and forth, causing the chandelier in the room below to move with him. Naturally, many of these visual devices would be absolutely superfluous today because we would use sound effects instead. The sound of steps and so on… Today, I would simply use the swaying chandelier.” –Alfred Hitchcock (Le Cinéma Selon Alfred Hitchcock, 1966)

Hitchcock’s one inch thick plate glass ceiling was only six square feet, but this was large enough to sell the sound of the footsteps in a visual manner. This makes it clear to viewers that the chandelier is swinging because the lodger is pacing back and forth in his room. There were other examples of visualizing sound throughout the film, but the best (and certainly the most famous) of these is probably the staircase shot showing the lodger’s hand going down a handrail. Shots of the lodger leaving his room and eventually the house is alternated with shots of Mrs. Bunting listening to his movements. It is quite clear that she hears him leaving and is becoming suspicious of her new tenant.

“Just as much as the set I had built for when the lodger went out late at night—almost to the ceiling of the studio, showing four flights of stairs and a handrail. And all you see is a hand going down. That was, of course, from the point of view of the mother listening. Today, we would substitute sound for that. Although, I think that the handrail shot would be worthy of today in addition to sound.” –Alfred Hitchcock (The Cinema of Alfred Hitchcock, 1963)

After six weeks of shooting, principal photography wrapped on The Lodger—but all of Hitchcock’s hard work was very nearly in vain. Unfortunately, the director had a few enemies at the studio. One of his biggest foes was his old friend and mentor, Graham Cutts (who was once considered one of the greatest directors in Britain). Hitchcock had served as his screenwriter, art director, and assistant director on a number of his films.

In fact, Hitchcock began building sets so that they could only be shot in a certain way—Hitchcock’s way. People started to notice that the success of these films owed as much to Hitchcock’s work as to his mentor’s directorial abilities—and Cutts made his dissatisfaction about these things known by firing his protégé. Some scholars suggest that Cutts also resented that Michael Balcon assigned Ivor Novello to Hitchcock’s film after having directed the actor in his star-making turn in The Rat (1925) and The Triumph of the Rat (1926). Whatever the case may be, it is enough to understand that Graham Cutts was under the influence of the green-eyed-monster and this resulted in a bitter enemy for the future master of suspense.

“After seeing an early screening of The Lodger, [Cutts] told ‘anybody who would listen that we had a disaster on our hands,’ said Michael Balcon.

Another diehard was C.M. Woolf, who still held Hitchcock partially responsible for the fiasco of The White Shadow. He had opposed Hitchcock’s promotion to director; now, paranoid that an ‘artistic’ picture could not be easily launched into the maximum number of English theaters, Woolf convened a high-level screening…” –Patrick McGilligan (Alfred Hitchcock: A Life in Darkness and Light, 2003)

This screening was very nearly the end of Alfred Hitchcock’s career and the director would retell the terrible story in interviews for the rest of his life:

“It was first shown to the staff of the distribution company and the head of their publicity department. They saw the film and then made their report to the boss: ‘Impossible to show it. Too bad. The film is terrible.’ Two days later the big boss [C.M. Woolf] came down to the studio to look at it. He arrived at two-thirty. Mrs. Hitchcock and I couldn’t bear to wait in the studio to know the results and we walked the streets of London for an hour and a half. Finally, we took a cab and went back. We were hoping out promenade would have a happy ending and that everyone in the studio would be beaming. What they said was: ‘The boss says it’s terrible.’ And they put the film on the shelf, canceled the bookings that had been made on the basis of Novello’s reputation.

A few months later, they decided to take another look at the picture and to make some changes. I agreed to make about two. As soon as the picture was shown, it was acclaimed as the greatest British film made up to that date.” –Alfred Hitchcock (Hitchcock/Truffaut, 1966)

Actually, there is a bit more to the film’s resurrection than Hitchcock’s retelling would suggest. The truth is that Michael Balcon believed in both Hitchcock and the film. What’s more, the studio had quite a bit of money invested. It seemed worthwhile to give the film another chance, so the producer held another private screening—this time for an impartial party.

“Hitchcock—a shadowy figure at that time, whom I vaguely knew by name—had just finished a picture and [Michael Balcon] could not get the distributor to show it. He had taken a risk in promoting Hitch from floor assistant actually to direct. (Mick, all his life, loved recruiting fresh talent to direction, and this was not the least of his blessings to British film production.) But this was now not Hitch’s first picture for the company but his third, and the distributor would have none of any of them. The mounting unused investment was becoming impossible for Balcon to defend…

…They ran the film, with which at once I fell enthusiastically in love. Now, the hackneyed treatment of the plot and a weakness in characterization makes it look primitive. Then, by contrast with the work of his seniors and contemporaries, all Hitch’s special qualities stood out raw: the narrative skill, the ability to tell the story and create the tension in graphic combination, and the feeling for London scenes and characters.” —Ivor Montagu (Working with Hitchcock, Sight and Sound, 1980)

Graham Cutts was once Hitchcock’s friend and mentor, but he soon became one of his strongest adversaries: “I suspect that the director who had me fired as his assistant was still being political against me. I know he told someone, ‘I don’t know what he’s shooting. I can’t make head nor tail of it.’” –Alfred Hitchcock (Le Cinéma Selon Alfred Hitchcock, 1966)

The result of this showing should be obvious considering that Hitchcock is now considered one of the cinema’s greatest auteurs—but first there was quite a bit of work to do on The Lodger before it could be granted a release.

“[Montagu] was in something of a quandary, since he could hardly say that he didn’t think the film needed anything done to it. Finally, his solution was to get together with Hitch and suggest a couple of points in the film where something might be clarified by re-editing, plus some re-shooting of the final chase sequence where it was originally too dark to see details (Hitch willingly complied with this, since apart from anything else it meant an effective addition to his budget and shooting time for the film). The only radical modification Montagu suggested was to make the film more extreme in one area where Hitch had experimented cautiously. British films at this time were very heavy on titles, and British filmmakers knew little or nothing of the movement abroad in favor of telling the story as completely as possible in visual terms. Hitch had seen this done in Germany, but he knew how conservative his employers were, and so had left little to chance in verbal explanations of what was happening. Montagu told them that they should go all the way, reduce the titles to an absolute minimum and make those that were left as punchy and to the point as possible. Since he qualified as an outside expert whom they were paying good money (if not very much of it) to advise them, they took his word for it. He went ahead eliminating and tightening the titles, and brought in E. McKnight Kauffer, the painter and poster designer who was at the time considered very advanced, to design the credits and the title backgrounds.” –John Russell Taylor (Hitch: The Life and Times of Alfred Hitchcock, 1978)

All of this additional work seems to have paid off because the film was a commercial and critical success. Nearly every critic focused largely on Hitchcock’s adept direction. An excellent example of such praise can be found in a review published in the Daily Mail.

“Here is a British film which grips the imagination… The very angles at which these scenes are photographed create terror, and the exquisite homeliness of the settings piles up apprehension. Mr. Novello has never appeared to such advantage, Miss June is natural and pretty as the heroine, and Miss Marie Ault [is] magnificent as the motherly but frightened landlady. The Lodger [is] the second fine British film this week and can more than hold its own against any foreign production. It is arresting without being in any way gruesome.” –Daily Mail (September 15, 1926)

Meanwhile, a similar review was published in the Nottingham Evening Post that very same day.

“There is further satisfactory proof of the fact that British films are on the upgrade in The Lodger… The story is adapted from the novel by Mrs. Belloc Lowndes, and is a first-class attraction of the mystery order, with a series of sensational murders of fair-haired girls, committed by some individual who apparently does not prefer blondes

The direction of this theme by Alfred Hitchcock, a young Englishman who has little to learn from Hollywood in the technique of his craft, judging from some very original and clever devices in this picture, ensures its effectiveness. Ivor Novello gives a striking and arresting performance as the Lodger, against whom suspicion is pointed, and there is a charming heroine in the pretty musical-comedy actress popular with playgoers as ‘June.’” –Nottingham Evening Post (September 15, 1926)

The Sydney Morning Herald was especially enthusiastic about the film.

“The Lodger is a film of a distinctly unusual type. When one looks back on its plot, to be sure, there seems to be nothing remarkable about it as a whole: but in the working out of the details there is much to absorb the spectator’s interest. Such originality can be easily explained, for the picture was made in England, and on this account escaped that contagion of methods and ideas which tends to standardize the output of Hollywood. The whole of the actors are English; also the director (Alfred Hitchcock). As a matter of fact, the acting throughout is very fine. Ivor Novello, who heads the cast, is every whit as handsome as the best-looking of the American leading men; and he is fortunate in having a face that photographs well from every angle. But In addition to being handsome, he has dramatic depth and fire. Some may object to his first entrance, and his actions in general during the earlier part of the play as being too theatrical, too artificial, slowed down as they are to a portentous languor; yet they form part of a deeply considered conception of the character, and fit exactly into their place in the light of subsequent revelations. For The Lodger is a mystery play. Not a thing of shrieks, and haunted houses, and grisly corpses, however. No. It is much more subtle than that. In fact, at the end the real motive for the series of murders, and the real perpetrator of them, are never revealed at all. They do not matter — they have served their purpose in the plot, and can be left freely to the imagination of the spectators to fill in at will. To presume the murderer merely a homicidal lunatic will provide an explanation as good as any. Surely this policy of vagueness is better than the plan usually followed by playwrights, of pitching on one of the characters at random and crying, ‘Behold the man!’ By methods too detailed to be explained here at length, the director has made some of the episodes remarkably gripping in their suggestion of the sinister. Indeed, for those interested in the technical side of motion picture production the whole film will repay close study. Besides Mr. Novello the cast includes Marie Ault, Arthur Chesney, Malcolm Keen, and ‘June.’” -Sydney Morning Herald (February 20, 1928)

The first Hitchcock cameo: “It was strictly utilitarian; we had to fill the screen. Later on it became a superstition and eventually a gag. But now it’s a rather troublesome gag, and I’m very careful to show up in the first five minutes so as to let the people look at the rest of the movie with no further distraction.” –Alfred Hitchcock (Le Cinéma Selon Alfred Hitchcock, 1966)

It is interesting to note that special mention is always made as to the film’s British origins and that the actors re discussed in a manner that betrays a public familiarity with their names. It might be easy for modern viewers to forget that these performers were both popular and well regarded at the time of the film’s release. In other words, the film was presented as a prestige project. Unfortunately, even prestige productions aren’t immune to critical condescension as this review in The Times adequately illustrates.

 “‘To-night… Golden Curls… To-night… Golden Curls.’

Mr. Hitchcock has used the electric sky-sign, advertising a revue, as a symbol that appears again and again throughout his narrative. After its first appearance we see a murdered girl lying on the ground; she is the Avenger’s sixth victim and, in common with all the others, she has light hair. The news spreads. The tape-machine ticks it out; the printers print it; the newspaper vans distribute it; the chorus of Golden Curls read it in their dressing-room and the mannequins at a dressmaking establishment read it in theirs. There is, it seems, not a fair-haired woman in London that does not tremble in her decorative underclothes and go in terror of her life. Yet, though we see them tremble, we do not participate in their fear. The dark atmosphere of terror and the steady regard for character which were the making of Mrs. Belloc Lowndes’s book are dissipated by the sky-signs, the tape-machine, the frocks, and the absence of frocks. It is Jack-the-Ripper or the Avenger who should be brooding over London; instead it is ‘Golden Curls… To-night… Golden Curls.’

And when a stranger knocks at the door of Daisy Bunting’s parents and asks for a lodging in their house; when we should all be wondering whether this dark young man, with a mysterious handbag and his face muffled in accordance with the police reports, is indeed the Avenger; when, observing that Daisy has fair hair, we should be in exquisite anxiety for her fate, there is no escaping the fact that Daisy is June Tripp and the lodger Mr. Ivor Novello, to whom, and through whom, no harm, in the films, can come. It takes the sting out of excitement. It might, indeed, have been possible to forget that June was June and Mr. Novello Mr. Novello, if Mr. Hitchcock had concentrated on any other aspect of Daisy and the lodger than their insipid charm. But that on the screen would never have done; the spirit of a good tale must perish so that the camera be not denied its close-up kisses, its soft yearnings over breakfast trays, and its whisperings through bathroom doors. The Lodger becomes, in consequence, a story, not primarily of mystery, but of the landlady’s daughter (who, of course, being a mannequin, is becomingly dressed) and the young man upstairs. Mr. Malcolm Keen, the detective, is appropriately jealous, and Mr. Arthur Chesney and Miss Marie Ault come much nearer than anyone else to preserving the novel’s genuine atmosphere. One or two of Miss Ault’s scenes, when she hears her lodger go out at night and is terrified by her suspicions, are an indication of the manner which, if the book was to be justly interpreted, should have pervaded the film. They are quiet and unforced; they have that shrewd insistence upon the truth of ordinary life and character by which Mrs. Lowndes obtained a great part of her effect. But the film has nothing else that is their equivalent. It has frittered away terror in garish irrelevance.” –The Times (January 18, 1927)

Apparently, “the book was better” is an extremely old complaint about film adaptations. Frankly, this argument is nearly always short-sighted (especially when it comes to Hitchcock’s filmography). Alfred Hitchcock usually took the basic concept from a novel or short story and constructed a new screen story based upon that concept. The Lodger is an extremely accomplished calling card from one of cinema’s greatest auteurs and to concentrate on the diversions from the original novel is to miss out on a rich and rewarding cinematic achievement.

PART TWO: DOWNHILL

After The Lodger found success, Alfred Hitchcock would take a short break in order to marry Alma Reville on December 02, 1926, but it wasn’t long before the director found himself tackling another project.

“When the boy wonder returned from his honeymoon in January, it wasn’t hard to convince him that, rather than stagnating, it made sense to follow The Lodger with another picture capitalizing on the rage for Ivor Novello—who, along with Constance Collier (under their pen name, David L’Estrange)—had written the hit play from which Downhill would be adapted.” –Patrick McGilligan (Alfred Hitchcock: A Life in Darkness and Light, 2003)

Alfred Hitchcock and Alma Reville on their wedding day (December 02, 1926). William John Hitchcock (Alfred’s older brother) can be seen standing behind him.

Unfortunately, the original play didn’t particularly interest Hitchcock and had less to do with the adaptation than was his usual practice. His particular contribution was the visualization of the scenes that were discussed in the script meetings with Angus MacPhail and Eliot Stannard (who remained relatively faithful to the original play). Luckily, the director tackled the direction of the film with the same creative fervency that distinguished his work on The Lodger. In fact, the director betrayed a genuine affection for a few of the ideas in the film during his interview with François Truffaut (even as he insisted that they were “naïve touches”).

“I experimented a bit. I showed a woman seducing a younger man, She is a lady of a certain age, but quite elegant, and he finds her very attractive until daybreak. Then he opens the window and the sun comes in, lighting up the woman’s face. In that moment she looks dreadful. And through the open window, we show people passing by carrying a coffin.” –Alfred Hitchcock (Le Cinéma Selon Alfred Hitchcock, 1966)

Shots of Roddy descending became a motif in the film. The above three screen captures illustrate three examples as the protagonist descends the stairs, the escalator, and the elevator.

Another touch that Hitchcock insisted wouldn’t work today is a motif throughout the film where Novello’s character is shown descending. The most famous of these shots involves an escalator heading into the Underground. “That’s when the boy is thrown out of the house by his father,” the director remembered later. “To show the beginning of his downhill journey, I put him on an escalator going down.” Apparently, this scene was shot on location after midnight so as not to disrupt the commuters.

“For more than three hours a British film company took possession of the Maida Vale tube station [in] London recently for a special scene in the Piccadilly Picture, Ltd.’s production of Downhill, directed by that most promising of the new school of English producers, Mr. Alfred J. Hitchcock. Late travelers arriving at the station were puzzled by the huge sunlight arc lamps installed along the escalator and vestibule until the familiar face of Mr. Ivor Novello—in yellow grease paint and a camera on trestles—explained the situation. In the street were loudly purring generators on lorries… Scenes were made by Mr. Novello entering the station and booking a ticket, but the real interest lay in a wonderful ‘shot’ on the moving escalator—the first of its kind made in England. The bore of the escalator gave some surprising lighting effects, and Mr. Hitchcock is making the ‘slow’ descent of the character something half symbolic…” –The Canberra Times (Film Making in a Tube, May 06, 1927)

Interestingly, Hitchcock directed the scene in an eloquent formal suit complete with white tie and top hat because he had gone to the theatre earlier that night! By most accounts, principal photography was otherwise uneventful, but there was one particularly unfortunate disagreement that led to the temporary loss of one of his most important colleagues.

 “Hitch had a quarrel over a rather strange matter of principal with Ivor Montagu, who had helped him change the apparent disaster of The Lodger into a triumph and was now working on the scripting and editing of Downhill. Montagu, as befitted a young intellectual invader of the cinema, had all sorts of principles about what could and couldn’t, or should and shouldn’t be done in films. He objected particularly to shots which seemed to contain a built-in impossibility or to be cheating in some way. He himself admits to a measure of inconsistency… but a shot Hitch was determined to include in Downhill stuck in Montagu’s gullet. It was a scene in a taxi with the knees of the hero, his new love, and her old protector all touching in a rather equivocal manner, photographed from directly above. Montagu complained that the shot was an impossible viewpoint—not even a fly on the ceiling of the taxi could see things that way unless the taxi was ten feet tall. Hitch, characteristically, didn’t care: the shot showed what he wanted it to show, and that was that. Montagu was irritated at his inability to put over his point, and though he remained quite friendly with Hitch he departed after preliminary work on Easy Virtue, and he and Hitch did not work together again until seven years later when fate and Michael Balcon reunited them on the first Man Who Knew Too Much.” –John Russell Taylor (Hitch: The Life and Times of Alfred Hitchcock, 1978)

Taylor’s mention of Montagu’s preliminary work on Easy Virtue brings up an interesting point. Alfred Hitchcock was actually working on that film throughout a good portion of Downhill’s production and the shooting of these two films overlapped a bit.

 “When the rest of Downhill was completed they still had a couple of necessary close-up shots left to do of [Ivor] Novello staggering through the east End of London on his return to England. Hitch had already begun work on his next film, Easy Virtue, and was on location on the Riviera. Novello came down very grandly, checked into the Hotel de Paris in Nice for one night, gave a lot of interviews there in his suite, and then, having got that out of the way, vanished to a very humble pension for the rest of his time on location. The shots were done on the flat roof of the pension, with a couple of men holding a painted backdrop of the London docks while Novello walked on the spot in front of it in the bright Mediterranean sunlight and the natives looked on incredulously, speculating as to what on earth these crazy Englishmen could be doing.” –John Russell Taylor (Hitch: The Life and Times of Alfred Hitchcock, 1978)

Once the film was finished and then released (in relatively rapid succession), it seems to have received some modest critical and commercial success with the overall critical opinion being extremely mixed. As a matter of fact, Iris Barry captured the overall critical response to the film in a single sentence when she wrote that Hitchcock “made a clever picture out of poor and indeed unsuitable and undramatic material.” Nearly every review reiterated these same sentiments. Alfred Hitchcock’s direction was always met with praise even as the scenario was torn to shreds as in this review published by the Yorkshire Post:

“Downhill is the latest Ivor Novello picture, directed by Alfred Hitchcock… Mr. Novello has already had success in the stage play of the same name from which the film is taken, and I have no doubt that he will succeed in the film, for Mr. Hitchcock is remarkably skillful at combining clever photography with sound ‘entertainment value.’ But this story of an innocent school boy’s road to ruin is childish nonsense. We are asked to believe that the head master of a public school accepts without question the unsupported word of an obvious little minx from a tea shop, accusing his head prefect of having seduced her. Without inquiry the head master insinuates to Roddie that he must instantly pack his bags. Roddie arrives in London, where his father, not to be outdone by the head master, violently disowns him. The door slams mid we see Roddie starting down a tube escalator—symbolism—on the downward career that is to take him through chorus work to sudden wealth, to marriage with an expensive actress, poverty, cabaret dancing, and so at last happily home again.

Mr. Novello acts very competently throughout the picture, and Miss Annette Benson, as the minx who gets him expelled, displays the greatest promise. She will soon be well known. The direction and photography are consistently vivid, ingenious, and effective, but it is pretty plain that Mr. Hitchcock does not take this sort of stuff seriously. I am glad to see that he is now to direct a story of his own, called The Ring, for British International…” –Yorkshire Post (May 31, 1927)

A review published in The Guardian was just as critical and perhaps even more pointed than similar reviews that were being written at the time.

“The Lodger was the best film made in England up to the end of last year. It had power, point, imagination, and an entirely new angle—new, that is to say, in an English studio of visual expression. Downhill carries out every promise of its predecessor without being at all a good film. It is interesting. It is shrewd. It is brilliant to the point of the camera. But the danger of a man possessing an individual and startling style is that he is apt not to be particular about the occasions on which he uses it. The material of The Lodger was slight and sensational, but the material of Downhill is down-right bad… I have never seen such an interesting production of rubbish nor [such] a clever film which deserved quite so little praise…

When Hitchcock sets to work on real film material… there will not be more than half a dozen producers in the world who will be able to beat him. There are none in England now.” -C.A.L. (The Guardian, June 11, 1927)

Critics rightly chastised the British Film Industry for their backwards attempts at improving their productions by focusing on the technical qualities rather than seeking out mature dramatic material and claimed that “no policy could be worse for the British film industry than an attempt to out-do Hollywood in mechanism to the neglect of human dramatic quality. To out-do Hollywood in technique is extremely difficult and not necessarily worth doing. To out-do Hollywood in dramatic value is immensely worth doing, and should be singularly easy.”

A review published in The Times followed suit, but the most interesting aspect of their review is the mention of a short interlude that allowed Ivor Novello to perform a scene in person!

“Downhill… shows more than anything else, the extraordinary way in which British film technique has advanced during the last few years. Many people will remember the play on which the film is based… This threadbare story has been taken over by Mr. Alfred Hitchcock… and by sheer technique, he has managed to breathe some life into it. He has not made it credible—that would be expecting too much—but he has at least made it seem far less ridiculous than one could possibly have expected.

The thesis is such an inverted one that it is difficult to know how he could have done better… That Mr. Hitchcock, with the improbable material to his hand, has succeeded so well is an achievement… Mr. Ivor Novello is excellent as himself, but he is never so much like a schoolboy as when he appears in person in an interpolated scene. This scene, on Monday night, seemed to interest the audience, but the advisability of mingling the two forms of entertainment seems very doubtful…” -The Times (October 12, 1927)

Not everyone disliked the film’s premise. A review in the Dundee Evening Telegraph betrays a genuine affection for Hitchcock’s direction and the scenario alike (even if they do describe it as being an “old theme”).

 “In the list of British films released last year which really can be classified as good the name of Alfred Hitchcock appears as producer opposite two…

…Hitchcock has taken a very old theme and dished it up anew, like cold mutton which is much more appetizing in rissoles form. He has given us the prodigal son in a new garb, and the hero shines more gloriously than the original, because his fall was due to his kindness of heart when he screened a fellow-student.

Thus the climax, when he returns broken and weary to his father’s house and all the things that can be summed up as ‘fatted calf,’ is just what is expected, but in various ways the picture has been cleverly thought out along fresh lines.

Several well-known British stars of the legitimate stage — Ivor Novello, Isabel Jeans, Norman McKinnell, Lilian Braithwaite, and Violet Fairbrother — are the featured players, the whole cast combining to give an impression of careful and clever direction.” -Dundee Evening Telegraph (January 10, 1928)

Modern scholars tend to agree with the majority of these old reviews and praise the director’s experimentation even as they condemn the plot—which is extremely dated and not particularly interesting. However, the film itself is a genuinely enjoyable experience and later scholarly assessments have been nothing if not grudgingly commendatory. An excellent example would be a mostly flattering paragraph published in Donald Spoto’s The Art of Alfred Hitchcock.

“Technically, the picture is superior to just about anything that was made in England that year: there are perfectly matched dissolves to relate characters and themes; a fine dream sequence; and astonishingly stable follow shots with a hand-held camera along the docks of Marseilles. The sets, to be frank, are more convincing than some of the acting.” –Donald Spoto (The Art of Alfred Hitchcock, 1976)

John Russell Taylor was even more admiring in his 1978 biography about the director.

“It is not, one would gather, among the films Hitch feels particularly proud of nowadays… But seen today, Downhill comes over as one of his liveliest and most joyously inventive silent films—possibly a lack of any great sympathy with the material (‘a poor play,’ Hitch says) made it easier to regard the film as an exercise in technique… And at the time Downhill was made, absolutely no one else in the British cinema was working with this kind of cinematic imagination, telling a story with this mind-grabbing command of the medium’s possibilities—which, one senses, Hitch was incapable of not doing, even with a subject not at all to his taste.” –John Russell Taylor (Hitch: The Life and Times of Alfred Hitchcock, 1978)

Taylor captures the thoughts and feelings of this reviewer quite admirably. Downhill isn’t one of his better films, but it does give the Hitchcock fan an opportunity to watch a raw cinematic talent as he is discovering his voice.

The Presentation:

4.5 of 5 MacGuffins

The Blu-ray disc is housed in the clear case that has become the standard for The Criterion Collection. Criterion is known for their brilliant tailor-made cover designs and Geoff Grandfield has designed a cover for The Lodger that mirrors the style of poster art used the silent era.

As is their habit, Criterion also includes an attractive fold-out pamphlet that features two interesting essays by Philip Kemp. The first of these is titled “The First True Hitchcock Movie” and focuses its attention on The Lodger. The second essay focuses on Downhill and is titled, “Playing for the Old Boys.” Both essays are worth reading as they should add to the viewer’s appreciation of both films despite the unfortunate fact that Kemp seems to be a blind devotee from the Spoto school of Hitchcock scholarship (if you can call it “scholarship”).

The disc’s menu utilizes a still image of the film’s title art, which actually works quite beautifully. This artwork is coupled with Neil Brand’s new score for the film, and the result is elegant in its simplicity.

Picture Quality:

4.5 of 5 MacGuffins

As is Criterion’s usual practice, they provide information about their restoration work in the included pamphlet:

“The Lodger: A Story of the London Fog is presented in its original aspect ratio of 1.33:1. On widescreen televisions, black bars will appear on the left and right of the image to maintain the proper screen format. The digital transfer was made from the 2012 restoration undertaken by the BFI National Archive in association with ITV Studios Global Entertainment and Park Circus Films. A 35mm duplicate negative was scanned in 2K resolution on an ARRISCAN film scanner at Deluxe 142 in London, where restoration also took place. The tint and tones of the original nitrate print have been reproduced in the digital intermediate grade. Principal restoration funding was provided by the Hollywood Foreign Press Association and The Film Foundation, along with Simon W. Hessel…” –Liner Notes

The restoration was originally released by Network in the United Kingdom, but Criterion’s release is its North American debut. This is a very different restoration than the one included on MGM’s 2009 DVD release of the film as is indicated by the shorter duration and the fact that this particular transfer showcases less (and very different) tinting. This makes one wonder about the reason (or reasons) behind these differences. Was the film tinted differently in different territories? Was the MGM release artificially tinted by the restoration team? So many questions come to mind.

Luckily, this transfer is the superior of the two and North American Hitchcock fans now have reason to celebrate! When one considers the film’s age, this transfer seems almost like a minor miracle. The image exhibits a surprising level of detail, and the grain pattern appears natural and well resolved throughout the duration of the film. Depth is strong for such an old feature, and contrast is about as good as anyone should expect considering the film’s origins. The restoration team has eliminated most signs of aging, although a few small and insignificant blemishes such as scratches, debris, damage marks, and lines do occasionally appear. Compression never becomes problematic either.

Our only small criticism concerns Criterion’s choice of putting both The Lodger and Downhill on the same disc. This particular release probably warrants a 2-disc treatment. Each film could have probably benefited from the maximized bitrate that this would have allowed—although The Lodger is reasonably well represented at 29.36 Mbps.

Criterion also includes information about their transfer for Downhill:

 “Downhill is presented in its original aspect ratio of 1.33:1. On widescreen televisions, black bars will appear on the left and right of the image to maintain the proper screen format. The digital transfer was made from 2012 restoration undertaken by the BFI National Archive in association with ITV Studios Global Entertainment and Park Circus Films. 35mm nitrate print reels were scanned in 2K resolution on an Oxberry wetgate film scanner at Haghefilm Digital in Amsterdam. Digital restoration of the picture and intertitles took place at Deluxe142 in London. The tints and tones of the original nitrate prints have been reproduced in the digital intermediate grade. Principal restoration funding was provided by Simon W. Hessel” –Liner Notes

The result is an extremely solid image transfer (even at the relatively low bitrate of 15.09 Mbps) of the film. It seems every bit as strong as The Lodger and some aspects of the image might very well be marginally superior. Depth, for example, is extremely solid and detail often impresses the realistic viewer. Density can occasionally be less than perfect, but one suspects that this is due to the irreversible ravages of time. Like their restoration of The Lodger, the team has cleaned the image of distracting anomalies and only the occasional scratch and speck of dust remains here. This is an extremely satisfying image transfer.

Sound Quality:

5 of 5 MacGuffins

Since original sound elements for silent films are usually nonexistent (as is the case with both The Lodger and Downhill), it has become the common practice to have new music written especially for these films. Whatever opinions one might have about this practice, it is admittedly the better of the two options available under the circumstances (the other being to simply release it without any sound track). This option at least allows the viewer a choice in the matter as one can simply mute their television sets if they don’t want outside sources to influence their viewing experience.

Criterion includes information about the included score for both films in their liner notes:

“Neil Brand’s score for The Lodger is presented in stereo sound. It was performed by Brand and the Orchestra of Saint Paul’s and conducted by Ben Palmer, with score preparation by Thomas Hewitt Jones. The performance was recorded at Eastcote Studios in London by producer Brand and engineer George Murphy…

…[His] piano score for Downhill is presented in stereo sound. It was performed by Brand and recorded at Eastcote Studios in London by engineer George Murphy.” –Liner Notes

The score for The Lodger is presented in a 2.0 Linear PCM audio transfer and is the more robust of the two tracks (and the only one presented in an uncompressed format. Since it is an orchestral score, the lossless environment gives the music more room to breathe and sounds fantastic.

Downhill is presented in 2.0 Dolby Digital and is therefore compressed, but it still sounds great. It is a simple piano score and requires less room to breathe than his orchestral score for The Lodger. This is another area that might have benefited from a two-disc Blu-ray release, but one shouldn’t be as critical about the standard definition soundtrack for this film as they might be if this were a talking picture with original sound design. After all, these scores are in all actuality third-party supplemental features that have nothing to do with the original film.

Special Features:

5 of 5 MacGuffins

Downhill (1927)

A 2K digital restoration of Alfred Hitchcock’s 1927 follow-up to The Lodger is included on the disc as one of the film’s “special features,” and it adds an inordinate amount of value to the disk.

In addition to this bonus feature, Criterion includes over 2 hours and 51 minutes of additional video and audio based material that should fascinate fans of Alfred Hitchcock.

William Rothman: Hitchcock’s Visual Signatures – (32:54)

William Rothman discusses the visual signatures in The Lodger and how they can be found in many of the director’s later films. Scenes are dissected and analyzed in a scholarly manner, and even those who disagree with some of Rothman’s rhetoric will find something here to enhance their appreciation of the master’s work.

Interestingly, it seems that Rothman subscribes to the opinion that it is indeed Alfred Hitchcock who is seen in the angry mob at the film’s climax. This is certainly questionable and this fact calls some of his interpretations of this particular scene into question (which is unfortunate).

The Bunting House: Space and Structure in ‘The Lodger’ – (17:42)

Steven Jacobs (author of The Wrong House: The Architecture of Alfred Hitchcock) offers a rather comprehensive examination of Alfred Hitchcock’s use of architecture in The Lodger: A Story of the London Fog and offers comparisons to some of the master’s later work. The German influence is discussed and a diagram of the bunting home is even offered as Jacobs discusses the dream-like inconsistencies some of the film’s geography. It probably won’t appeal to all viewers as Steven Jacobs speaks with a rather unusual and distracting accent that only exacerbates what might be seen as an overly dry and academic tone. However, those who enjoy theoretical analysis will no doubt find their appreciation of the film enhanced.

François Truffaut Interviews Alfred Hitchcock – (26:23)

Those who have been collecting Hitchcock films on Blu-ray will know exactly what to expect from this excellent excerpt from François Truffaut’s legendary book length interview with the master of suspense. This portion of the interview predictably concentrates on The Lodger, and it is an extremely interesting discussion that betrays Hitchcock’s genuine affection for the film.

Criterion presents the interview over a sepia-tinted silent film styled title card that says “François Truffaut and Alfred Hitchcock.” This allows Criterion to utilize less disc space, but these interviews often play better when they are illustrated with photos and film footage. However, this is merely a small complaint. The important thing is that they have included what has become an essential part of any Hitchcock release.

Peter Bogdanovich Interviews Alfred Hitchcock

Criterion includes excerpts from two separate interviews and presents them over blue-tinted silent film styled title cards that say “Peter Bogdanovich and Alfred Hitchcock.” This is essentially the same style of presentation given to the Truffaut interview. Each interview is presented over a blue-tinted title card that says “François Truffaut and Alfred Hitchcock.”

It is surprising to discover that these two interviews are more comprehensive discussions about Alfred Hitchcock’s early life and career. In fact, there is very little overlap with Truffaut’s interview. Frankly, the information discussed in these interviews is richer and more revealing than the excerpt from Truffaut’s interview with the director (and the opposite is usually true).

1963 Interview – (19:42)

1972 Interview – (20:58)

Radio Adaptation of The Lodger (1940) – (30:48)

Alfred Hitchcock directs this radio adaptation of Marie Belloc Lowndes’ The Lodger for the July 22, 1940 pilot episode of Suspense—which would become a CBS Radio series. Alfred Hitchcock’s Foreign Correspondent was set for release and the radio program would serve as a promotion for the film (which explains the presence of Herbert Marshall as Mr. Sleuth and Edmund Gwenn as Robert Bunting). Interestingly, Gwen was cast in the same role given to his brother, Arthur Chesney, in Hitchcock’s original film version.

It is an interesting radio drama and has the added interest of being directed by Hitchcock himself (who rarely worked in radio). It adds an enormous amount of value to the disc.

Neil Brand: Scoring Hitchcock’s The Lodger – (22:37)

The least interesting addition to the disc is this rather comprehensive interview with Neil Brand about the new score that he provided for The Lodger. Since this discussion is less about the film itself and more about Brand’s thought process while composing a new score for silent films, it is bound to disappoint those who are essentially looking for information or analysis about Hitchcock’s breakthrough film. However, anyone interested in a detailed account of the work that went into Brand’s score will no doubt be impressed.

Final Words:

The Lodger is Alfred Hitchcock’s best and most important silent film and Criterion’s release contains a strong transfer, instructive supplemental material, and Downhill (the director’s follow-up feature). This is an incredible release that has been a long time coming! We hope that cinephiles can expect Criterion releases of some of the master’s other British thrillers in the near future.

Review by: Devon Powell

Source Material:

Staff Writer (Another Fine British Film: A Murder Novel Screened, Daily Mail, September 15, 1926)

Staff Writer (New British Film: Ivor Novello in ‘The Lodger,’ Nottingham Evening Post, September 15, 1926)

Staff Writer (The Times, January 18, 1927)

Iris Barry (Downhill: A Clever British Film, Daily Mail, May 25, 1927)

Staff Writer (The Cinema World: New German and British Pictures, Yorkshire Post, May 31, 1927)

C.A.L. (The Guardian, June 11, 1927)

Staff Writer (The Cinema World, Yorkshire Post, June 14, 1927)

Staff Writer (The Times, October 12, 1927)

Staff Writer (Downhill at the Elite Theatre, Hastings and St. Leonards Observer, October 22, 1927)

Staff Writer (Around Dundee Cinemas, Dundee Evening Telegraph, January 10, 1928)

Staff Writer (Sydney Morning Herald, February 20, 1928)

Staff Writer (Ivor Novello Superb, Australian River Record, August 17, 1928)

Staff Writer (Empire Theatre: Downhill, Queensland Morning Bulletin, October 23, 1928)

Alfred Hitchcock (Life Among the Stars, News Chronicle, March 01-05, 1937)

Peter Bogdanovich (The Cinema of Alfred Hitchcock, 1963)

François Truffaut (Hitchcock/Truffaut, 1966)

Donald Spoto (The Art of Alfred Hitchcock, 1976)

Maurice Yacowar (Hitchcock’s British Films, 1977)

John Russell Taylor (Hitch: The Life and Times of Alfred Hitchcock, 1978)

Dan Auiler (Hitchcock’s Notebooks, 1999)

Patrick McGilligan (Alfred Hitchcock: A Life in Darkness and Light, 2003)

Sidney Gottlieb (Hitchcock on Hitchcock, 1995)

Thomas Leitch (Hitchcock from Stage to Page, Hitchcock at the Source, 2011)

Barton Palmer and David Boyd (Hitchcock at the Source, 2011)