A Note on SUSPICION (1941)

I'm continuing my big Cary Grant rewatch, and tonight I caught up with SUSPICION. Something occurred to me as I watched it that I wanted to make note of.

Before I get to that, it's important to say that one of the reasons that Grant has come to pretty much embody the idea of Movie Star for a lot of people is that he managed to play a range of roles while always staying Cary Grant.

For instance: look at him in THE AWFUL TRUTH (1937), HOLIDAY (1938), and BRINGING UP BABY (1938). Three romantic comedies released within the space of two years, and yet Grant is playing very different characters--a blithe ladies man in the first, a guileless idealist in the second, and a befuddled professor in the third--and yet two things are true. 1) He plays each role differently, and 2) Each performance fits within the persona we understand to be "Cary Grant." He could play many different variations on that persona.

Which brings us back to SUSPICION. This film is famous for being a 'nearly great' movie that was sabotaged when the studio made Hitchcock change the ending. The film concerns a shy young woman (played by everyone's shy young woman Joan Fontaine) who meets and marries a handsome rake, played, of course, by Cary Grant. As the film progresses, Fontaine and the audience start to suspect that Grant is more than just irresponsible and loose with money. We start to worry that he might be dangerous. We start to worry that he might even want to murder his wife. 1941 Spoiler Alert: in the original conception of the film, Grant was indeed the killer, and Hitchcock devised a wickedly smart finale in which the lovesick Fontaine lets Grant murder her but tricks him into mailing a letter to the police in which she fingers him for the killing. (You can see this idea being set up in the movie's opening moments when there is much ado about Grant borrowing some stamps from Fontaine.) In the revised ending, however, Grant turns out NOT to be the dangerous man that the rest of the film has painstakiningly prepared us for him to be. 

Opinions differ as to how much the new ending was the result of studio interference and how much was Hitchcock. Either way, Hitch would openly lament the revised ending, and just about everyone who sees the movie agrees. Grant should have been the bad guy. My feeling is that if Hitchcock had gone ahead and kept the original ending (it was never filmed), SUSPICION would certainly rank as one of Cary Grant's finest performances, and might even be considered his pinnacle. 

He's charming but cold, smooth but scary. He's a villain, but he's still somehow Cary Grant. What's interesting is that the ending was rewritten because, the thinking went, "Cary Grant can't be the bad guy." In other words, Cary Grant can be dashing, heroic, comic, goofy, innocent, or sophisticated, but he can't be evil. The great loss of SUSPICION is that the movie itself shows the opposite. His performance here is sheer Cary Grant. You see what she sees in him. Of course you can. After all, he's Cary Grant. And yet as the film goes on, you start to dread him, first because he's such a liar and a sneak, and then as the film progresses, because he seems like he's hiding even darker secrets.

In the fifties, stars like Wayne, Bogart, Stewart, and Cooper all played darker variations on their basic screen personas. Grant really didn't. And, tellingly, he was a marquee romantic leading man longer than anyone else. People just seemed to want him to keep being Cary Grant. So he did. It was good business and a legendary career.

But SUSPICION shows that, if he'd wanted, he could have played a much darker variation on that same persona. This a flawed film, but it contains fascinating hints of what might have been.

Leopold And Loeb

Tonight, I got to catch John Logan's play NEVER THE SINNER on its closing night at Victory Gardens Theater (aka The Biograph Theater). The show was enjoyable, with a talented cast and energetic staging by Gary Griffin, and it sent me once more down the rabbit hole that is the Leopold and Loeb case.

I thought I'd post a link to my Criminal Element piece on the case from back in 2012, Leopold and Loeb Still Fascinate After 90 Years. I feel like a viewing of Richard Fleischer's 1959noir COMPULSION is right around the corner for me...

Talking During The Movie

Unless you live in a big city with access to a good repertory theater, or you are independently wealthy, you probably experience most older films (and many newer films) for the first time on DVD. This presents all manner of problems, of course. For most of cinema history, movies were specifically created to be projected on a huge screen in the dark. To watch them on the small screen, or on a computer, is a fundamentally misleading way to experience the intentions of the filmmakers.

But this isn't a lamentation about the loss of the romantic culture of arthouse theaters. You gotta work with what you got, and I've seen more great movies on DVD than on big screens. The quality of DVDs vary, of course, but for the hardcore movie geeks the DVD offers one exceptional benefit: the commentary track.

Now, I'm guessing most hardcore movie geeks already like commentaries, but I know that many people (especially casual movie fans) are less inclined to sit and listen to people talking about a movie.

In the right hands, however, the commentary isn't simply an addendum to a DVD package, it provides an entirely separate experience involving the film. I once heard Christopher Hitchens say that you never read the same book twice because you are always different when you come back to the text. This is doubly true of the DVD commentary. The commentary track makes you not only watch the film again, it gives you a guide who directs your eye or distracts your attention at any given moment. The film ceases to affect you as a story and becomes instead an object of study. It's the difference between reading a book on your couch and studying the book in class with a teacher. If the home viewing experience robs us of the communal enjoyment of watching a film with other people, the commentary, if done well, can give us an experience quite unlike any we're likely to have at a theater.

Of course, as with the picture itself, quality varies. There are certain things of which to be leery when it comes to commentaries:

1. Actors. I love actors as much as the next geek. I fall in love, hard, with actors and actresses. I see them in my dreams at night. But they rarely add much to a discussion of a film's qualities. There are exceptions to this: Willem Defoe adds interesting insights to The Last Temptation Of Christ, and Brad Pitt is straight up funny on Ocean's Eleven. Most actors, however, just don't have much to say.

2. A crowd of commentators. When you see that a commentary track has twelve people listed, it usually means that you're going to have to endure some banal anecdotes from the technical folks on the crew. I've never heard a sound editor add anything to a discussion of a film. I'm not saying these people aren't important; I'm saying they're dull. Moreover, they are usually telling you something you don't care about. On the commentary for Castaway, for instance, a sound guy talks over the reconciliation scene between Tom Hanks and Helen Hunt. It's a fine scene, delicately written, directed and acted--and the commentary track is literally a monologue about the level of hum coming from the refrigerator. Another example of overkill is LA Confidential. There's no good reason they shouldn't have simply let Ellroy and Hanson do the whole thing.

3. The brilliant but clueless academic. I love Peter Cowie's writing on the Swedish director Ingmar Bergman, but his commentaries for the director's films usually involve him describing what's happening onscreen.

4. Restorationists. Alfred Hitchcock's Vertigo is one of the two or three best movies I've ever seen, but the commentary for the DVD is taken up with a discussion of the restoration process. Don't get me wrong, these guys are heroes. But I want to hear a discussion of the movie itself, not a discussion of how dirt is removed from celluloid.

Having sent up those white flags, here are a few of my favorite commentaries:

Crime Wave: James Ellroy and Eddie Muller watch the great De Toth noir together. Muller knows more about noir than anyone alive and Ellroy is Ellroy--profane, funny and brilliant. After listening to them talk about this movie, you'll want to go out drinking with these guys.

Eddie Muller is, in fact, the best man around talking about noir. If you see his name on a commentary track, it'll be worth a listen. Even when he's watching a stinker like The Racket, he's a wealth of information. He's also, importantly, an affable and lively guide. His commentary on Wise's Born To Kill is splendid--and his story about almost being decked by an elderly-but-still-crazy Lawrence Tierney is priceless. See also: Somewhere In The Night and Where The Sidewalk Ends.

Citizen Kane: Roger Ebert is another tour guide who is a winning combination of affability and knowledge. Citizen Kane is the rare movie which has something interesting to note every ten seconds and Ebert does a fine job of catching most of it. The DVD also has a commentary by Peter Bogdanovich which is less professorial and energetic but which has the added virtue of Bogdanovich's friendship with Welles. Ebert watches the film like an obsessed fan, and Bogdanovich watches it like a friend. See also: Ebert's track on Casablanca and Bogdanovich's track on The Lady From Shanghai.

The Last Temptation of Christ: Scorsese, Schrader, Defoe, and Jay Cocks all weigh in on their controversial adaptation of the Kazantzakis novel. The result is a fascinating discussion of the themes of the film rather than the usual here's-where-we-put-the-camera.

Boys Don't Cry: This is the single best commentary I've ever heard from a filmmaker. Director Kimberly Peirce sits down and tells you how to make a movie. She's as serious as her film, but her observations are never less than fascinating.

Blue/White/Red: Kieslowski's colors trilogy is dissected with palpable glee by the academic Annette Insdorf. Not for everyone's taste, but if you like the movies to begin with, you'll probably want to hear what Insdorf has to say.

Notorious: Marian Keene's assessment of Hitchcock's romantic masterpiece is academic. Really academic. As Oscar Wilde said, it's the kind of thing you like if you like that kind of thing. I like it, though I must say that I've always longed for the brilliant scholar Robin Wood to do a Hitchcock commentary track. As I mentioned above, Vertigo has never gotten the treatment it deserves. (To digress further: Most Hitchcock films still haven't gotten the five star treatment they deserve. The bulk of his American films appear to still be the property of Universal or the Hitchcock family or some similar controlling authority. Very nice versions of these films have been released, but these films deserve a package along the lines of the Criterion treatment. Whoever controls the Hitchcock films staring with Rope needs to realize what they've got. Go big, people. Movie geeks like me will shell out fat cash for a great package of Rear Window or Marnie or The Birds or Psycho or Vertigo. Bring on the academics and the obsessives. Pat Hitchcock seems like a very nice lady, but I don't think she has a lot to add to a discussion of her father's films.)

Some more movies in need of a good commentary track:

1. Chimes At Midnight-like many of Welles' films this is still waiting for a proper DVD release

2. The Trial-ditto

3. The Magnificent Ambersons/The Immortal Story-ditto/ditto

4. Too Late For Tears/Pitfall-both of these Lizabeth Scott masterpieces need a proper DVD release and someone knowledgeable to talk about them. Bring on Muller!

5. Detour-since this movie is in the public domain it's difficult to get a company to pony up the cash to pay for a decent treatment, but it's an irreplaceable work of art that needs to be honored. Bring on Muller!

6. The Big Sleep-this one baffles me. Everyone loves this movie. Everyone. C'mon, Warner Brothers, do it right. Bring in some Hawks experts and Bogie experts and Chandler experts.

7. High Noon-westerns often get shafted when it comes to commentaries. Right now, High Noon has a boring track featuring the aging children of the stars and crew members. Bring on the movie geeks!

8. The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance-an overlooked film in many ways, this deserves the full treatment as well.

***

Finally, here are some fun sites that deal with commentaries. I don't agree with everything on them, of course, but they're helpful guides:

RateThatCommentary.com

CommentaryDVD.com


Let me know if I've missed a particularly informative or entertaining commentary.

Psycho (1960)

Note: If you have somehow never seen Psycho, beware of the following. I discuss plot points—big, important plot points—freely. You’re a lucky devil if you have never seen this movie before. Go see it before you read this. Really. It’s great. Don’t ruin it.

When people write about Psycho they tend to focus on its place in movie history. It’s easy to understand why. Alfred Hitchcock’s low budget thriller marked a turning point in the history of film on numerous counts. Most obviously, the film reformulated the idea of what you could or could not show on screen. It gave birth to slasher flicks like Friday the Thirteenth, which in turn gave birth to torture porn like Hostel. This is a dubious legacy, but there you go. Psycho also interestingly represented one of the last great gasps of black & white cinematography. In 1960 when Hitchcock made Psycho, most mainstream American films had switched to color, and Hitchcock himself would never shoot another feature in b&w. Finally, Psycho’s marketing was a such a huge success (the film made the equivalent of 300 million dollars in America alone, on a shooting budget of less than a million dollars) it can been seen as one of the progenitors of modern blockbuster. In that way, Psycho gave birth to Jaws which set the stage for Star Wars.

That’s all very interesting, but when you see the film again, something odd happens. You realize what a peculiar movie this is. Psycho is a truly weird in a way that it’s violent offspring are not. It begins in a hotel room where a man and woman have just had some afternoon sex. They have a stilted conversation (which sounds as if it were dubbed through a bucket). She rushes back to her office in time to meet her nervous little boss’s rich new client. The client has clearly had a few drinks. He waves around some cash. $40,000 in hundred dollar bills. The woman steals the money and takes off on the road. A cop questions her. She sells her car and the salesman is suspicious. She drives on, not knowing for sure where she’s going. It begins to rain, and she accidently gets off the main highway and ends up in the middle of nowhere. Then she sees a sign for the Bates Motel.

Note: Do not read the next paragraph if you haven’t seen the movie. I ain’t gonna tell you again.

Up to this point (about the thirty minute mark) the film has been about the woman, Marion Crane (Janet Leigh). We like her. Her story is interesting, but where is it going? As we all know, her story ends in the shower of Room #1 of the Bates Motel. She meets a sick man named Norman Bates who has a nice conversation with Marion when she checks in to the motel, fixes her dinner, watches her undress through a peephole, then puts on his dead mother’s old dress and stabs Marion to death in the shower with a butcher knife the size of sword. With Marion dead, we now transfer our sympathy to the only other person we know: Norman Bates.

After all these years, Psycho still has the power to shock. Most of us have seen more movie gore than Hitchcock’s fertile, violent mind probably ever imagined, but his film isn’t about gore. It’s about that shift in perspective (which owes a lot to Psycho’s screenwriter Joseph Stefano). We don’t want to identify with Norman Bates, but when Marion dies, we immediately begin to…well, I was going to write that we root for him, but that’s not quite right. We don’t want Norman to get away with his crimes. When a private detective (Martin Balsam) comes to the Bates Motel looking into Marion’s disappearance, we don’t want Norman to kill him. When Marion’s sister (Vera Miles) comes looking for her, we don’t want to see her hurt either. Yet, we identify with him because after Marion’s death, we see every scene through Norman’s eyes. We share his secret.

The most famous scene in the movie (perhaps the most famous scene in any movie) is, of course, the shower scene. But look at the scenes which follow it, the scenes of Norman discovering Marion’s body after his “mother” has killed her. These scenes, in which Norman cleans the room, disposes of the evidence, and sinks Marion and her car into a swamp, are some of the best of their kind ever filmed. We have just witnessed a horrible event, but with these scenes we are witnessing something almost as distressing. We’re seeing a madman go about his work, not the insane part but the boring old work that someone must do in order to be insane and not get caught. Yet you can’t stop watching these parts, the weird way in which the normal becomes the bizarre. We’re watching Norman Bates mop a floor, and it’s fascinating.

Norman was played by Anthony Perkins, a congenitally underrated actor, who became the poster child for typecasting after this movie. How could this guy ever play anyone else? In the minds of most people, Perkins pretty much became Norman Bates. Even when he starred in something great like Welles’ The Trial (a movie in which Perkins is excellent) most people can’t shake Norman Bates out of their minds. It’s not just the murders that Bates/Perkins commits; it’s the way he creeps out Marion when they talk over sandwiches and milk. He tells her about his insane mother. When Marion gently suggests that he might have to the old lady put away, Norman’s face darkens, his voice rising and getting faster as he talks about society’s intolerance and the way people look down their noses and “cluck their thick tongues.” Perkins is intense and scary in the part, but most of the time he’s likable and goofy, a childlike man who is sad and scary because he doesn’t know he’s a murderer.

That’s the real power of Psycho: the way in which it marks the crossroads between the old and the new, between what is known and not known, between what we fear and what we don’t even expect.

***

Hitchcock has been written about more than any other director in the history of film. Here's a link to a forum of scholars who study his work.

For even more on Hitchcock, check out this great page.