Author:
Simulacrum
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Date:
2/26/2018 5:43:58 AM
Subject:
Alfred Hitchcock is not the master of suspense
I had an epiphany the other night and spammed ILA about it on Steam. I thought that would get it out of my system, but I still feel the need to discharge my mind on this subject, to wit: Alfred Hitchcock was really only a mediocre suspense director.
What I mean is that he did suspense pretty well and successfully managed to create a mythos around himself as the Master of Suspense, but other people have done it better. George Stevens' masterful gunfight between Alan Ladd and Jack Palance in Shane is one example (watch the dog crossing the saloon floor). Most of Black Edwards' Charade is another. Brian De Palma's Mission Impossible computer room scene is another. In fact, De Palma out-suspenses Hitchcock all over the place. If you don't believe me, watch the train station scene in The Untouchables. I realize that De Palma would call himself a student of Hitchcock, but in this scene alone he surpassed his master.
No, Hitchcock mis-advertised himself as the Master of Suspense. He was, instead, the Master of Romance.
Think about it.
In practically every movie (Psycho being a notable exception), he's interested in three things: (1) the MacGuffin, (2) some suspenseful moments, and (3) a romantic relationship. In almost every case, number 3 is the most important element.
In Saboteur and Foreign Correspondent, Bob Cummings and Joel McCrea care more about Priscilla Lane and Laraine Day than the Nazi plots, and so does the audience.
Once Hitchcock found Cary Grant, this "grew," as Robert Browning would say. Name your Hitchcock/Grant movie, and you'll see the same pattern. Does anyone remember the actual plots of Notorious, Suspicion, and North by Northwest? I don't. I do remember the wonderfully crafted relationships with Ingrid Bergman, Joan Fontaine, and Eva Marie Saint, because those were far more important to Hitchcock.
Even The Birds was a romance. The first gull attack doesn't happen until well into the movie, and it's as if Hitchcock remembered that he should put in something suspenseful before going back to the relationship between Rod Taylor and Tippi Hedren, which gets far more attention than the birds. I always get the feeling that he regretted the whole bird thing and just wanted to make a movie about these two falling in love.
Marnie is just a continuation of the Janet Leigh story in Psycho. It has very little suspense and quite a lot of focus on Tippi Hedren's criminality and -- oh yeah -- her relationship with Sean Connery, which you care about more than anything else.
Rear Window? Okay, pretty suspenseful, but would you care without the James Stewart/Grace Kelly romance? Vertigo? Almost no suspense at all -- mostly it's a love story with a silly church tower scene (which Orson Welles did better in The Stranger). Marnie, by the way, strikes me as Vertigo Part 2.
Time after time, in movie after movie, Hitchcock demonstrates what he really wanted to do -- make romantic stories. I think he foamed up the suspense thing so that people would watch his romances. Even Lifeboat has a romance. I mean, come on. Don't you see this?
Show me I'm wrong.
