Vol. 3 # 8 - Viewing Notes: Alfred Hitchcock in the 1960s
Psycho, The Birds and Marnie
Over at The Criterion Channel, they are featuring a collection of three Hitchcock films released in the 60s - Psycho, The Birds and Marnie. These were the first three movies (a rewatch for Psycho, first time for the other two) I watched in 2023, having seen them over multiple nights the past week.
Seeing them back to back to back. . .there really is something creepy with the way Hitchcock shoots female characters. Maybe this is more apparent to me because of the stories around his alleged predatory relationship with Tippi Hedren (as dramatized in the HBO series The Girl) and maltreatment of Janet Leigh. Or maybe it’s because I can’t help but intuit that the man that made these scenes must derive some kind of sadistic pleasure in watching what happens to these women. Or maybe it’s because I can’t get rid of the image of Slavoj Zizek sputtering as he gives a psychoanalytic breakdown of the sexual innuendos underlying some of the classic scenes in these movies. Whatever it is, there was a perverse, dirty feeling that clung to me after watching them.
I enjoyed Psycho the most of the three. What still hasn’t been said about this movie? The story goes that Hitchcock wanted to make this movie after his assistant Peggy Robertson showed him a newspaper review of the novel of the same name, inspired by the real-life murderer Ed Gein and written by Robert Bloch. Gein, like Bates, had domineering mothers who had passed away, kept rooms in their homes as shrines to them, and dressed in women’s clothes. Hitchcock then allegedly ordered Robertson to buy all copies of the novels she could find to keep the twists secret. See — there is always something so manipulative and power-obssessed with Hitchcock, even in the stories surrounding him.
While Hitchcock kept most of the plot, one interesting thing he did is to turn Norman Bates into someone more attractive. In the book, he is described as “middle-aged, overweight, and overtly unstable”. Anthony Perkins, obviously, was none of those. The simmering sexual tension between Bates and Marion Crane made it more disturbing and creepy when the actual shower scene occurs. And that scene — one of the most iconic in cinema — is still so shocking in its perversity, no doubt because of the score of Bernard Herrmann and the way it subverted expectations: who would’ve had the gall to murder the lead bombshell halfway through the film?
I haven’t seen the 1998 shot-for-shot remake directed by Gus Van Sant yet because I found it to be a pointless exercise and the reviews were middling at best, but the cast always intrigued me (Vince Vaughn, Anne Heche, Julianne Moore, Viggo Mortensen, William H. Macy).
As for The Birds and Marnie, I found them to be cornier. Marnie was slightly better, because there is something gripping about the slow tease and big reveal at the end as to why she was a kleptomaniac with strange phobias. Sean Connery and Hedren’s chemistry was fun to watch too. Connery here was in the middle of his James Bond era with Eon Productions, and he plays a similarly svelte but more controlling and manipulative gentleman. Maybe a stand-in for the obsessive Hitchcock himself? Even though his character manages to “solve” Marnie’s psychological problems, he did it in an uncomfortably devious and scheming way. Let’s just say it involves blackmailing her into marriage and forcing her to remember how she murdered a man when she was young. That’s therapy in the 60’s for you!
The interesting factoid about that movie is Grace Kelly was the original star attached to that film, but having married Prince Rainier already, the citizens of Monaco objected to her portraying a sexually disturbed thief. One can’t also help but imagine what Marilyn Monroe’s portrayal would’ve been like, as she was one of Hitchcock’s candidates. Hedren did say though that she enjoyed playing such a psychologically complex character and other actresses such as Catherine Deneuve claim that they would’ve loved to play her as well.