{"id":9166,"date":"2021-08-09T07:00:00","date_gmt":"2021-08-09T11:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=9166"},"modified":"2021-10-20T08:15:28","modified_gmt":"2021-10-20T12:15:28","slug":"hitchcock-howdunit","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=9166","title":{"rendered":"Hitchcock: Howdunit"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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If you\u2019re like me, it was years after seeing Alfred Hitchcock\u2019s Psycho<\/em> before you could take a shower without thinking of That Scene. I have a walk-in shower now, and I can always see who\u2019s coming! <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Film historian Max Alvarez in conjunction with New Plaza Cinema presented a Zoom program on Hitchcock last week that toured his audience through memorable moments from many of the director\u2019s 57 feature films. We knew whodunit\u2014Hitchcock\u2014this was a howdunit.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In our celebrity-obsessed culture, Americans tend to pick films based on the actors. Hitchcock was one of the rare directors in Hollywood history who was himself a draw, like the Coen Brothers or Spike Lee or Quentin Tarantino today.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Hitch\u2019s fame did constrain the types of movies he could make without violating public expectation, however. His films tended toward the charismatic villain, the woman in peril, and a big conspiracy. The scripts came from his (sometimes brief) collaborations with some of the leading writers of the day: Thornton Wilder, John Steinbeck, Dorothy Parker, Anthony Shaffer (Sleuth<\/em>), and many others.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Even though he made so many memorable movies, what catapulted him into prominence in the 1950s was the popularity of his television programs. And he was shameless about using them to promote his films.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Hitchcock\u2019s steps in making the memorable movie Vertigo<\/em> started with the \u201ctreatment,\u201d eight to ten typed pages, resembling a short story, which described what happens in detail, beginning to end. After showing us the initial page, Alvarez showed the beginning of the shooting script. Hitchcock liked to have every camera angle and shot planned out in advance\u2014close-up, medium shot, panorama, whatever. Next Alvarez showed the storyboards that a graphic artist created from the shooting script. They were a sort of (wordless) comic book version, showing the action in every shot. Finally, he showed the way the same scene looked in the final film, which in the theater looked so natural (of course he\u2019d hang onto the gutter that way), but replicated the previous, meticulously planned steps almost exactly.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But even the best laid plans can fall prey to reality, and Hitch would change scenes and shots that didn\u2019t turn out well or as expected. Occasionally, he\u2019d fly by the seat of his pants\u2014like the crop-duster scene in North by Northwest<\/em>. Also, he loved in-camera special effect. An example is the famous \u201cpurple dress\u201d scene<\/a> from Topaz<\/em>, in which unseen stage hands pulled strings so that the character\u2019s dress fanned out around her as she fell.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Alvarez attributes Hitch\u2019s visual mastery to the large body of work he did in the silent film industry, taking on all kinds of jobs, up to the point when, in his 20s, he was allowed to direct. For him, the visuals told the story, and he always made sure there was a story to tell.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

By the way, Hitch\u2019s own favorite film was 1943\u2019s Shadow of a Doubt.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Watch Shadow of a Doubt<\/a><\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Read one great director interviewing another in the classic Hitchcock\/Truffaut<\/a> from Amazon.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Read Richard Brody<\/a>\u2019s \u201cThe Greatness of \u2018Psycho<\/em>\u2019\u201d in The New Yorker, <\/em>covering the films about Hitchcock.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

If you\u2019re like me, it was years after seeing Alfred Hitchcock\u2019s Psycho before you could take a shower without thinking of That Scene. I have a walk-in shower now, and I can always see who\u2019s coming! Film historian Max Alvarez … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"Hitchcock: Howdunit - the way the Master put his films together. Still chilling!","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[56,57,60,66,104],"tags":[1890,1891],"class_list":["post-9166","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-film","category-movies","category-storytelling","category-suspense","category-the-morgue","tag-alfred-hitchcock","tag-max-alvarez"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2NkiT-2nQ","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9166","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=9166"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9166\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9170,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9166\/revisions\/9170"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9166"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9166"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9166"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}