BEFORE: Because I'm a day behind schedule, I don't think I'll hit the benchmark I wanted to hit before this weekend, when I'm heading out to Portland, Oregon for a friend's wedding. I have to suspend operations for 2 days, and I'll explain everything next week when I'm back up.
Linking from "Family Plot", which was quite tough to do - Ed Lauter was also in a film named "Camille" with Sienna Miller (last seen in "Stardust").
THE PLOT: The turbulent relationship between filmmaker Alfred Hitchcock and actress Tippi Hedren.
FOLLOW-UP TO: "Hitchcock" (Movie #1,716)
AFTER: Well, I said I was going to book-end the Hitchcock chain with the two competing biopics made about Hitch - this one was made for HBO, and where "Hitchcock" told the back-story of the making of "Psycho", this one focuses on the making of "The Birds", which was the next film he made. So that kind of worked out.
(ASIDE: Toby Jones also played Capote in the 2nd of two competing films, it's a weird coincidence that he again played in one of two biopics that were released around the same time.)
"Hitchcock" implied that Alfie had a thing for Janet Leigh, and spied on her undressing, in much the same way that Norman Bates spied on her character. So Hitchcock was a voyeur and a freak, a point which this film drives home more blatantly by exploring the dynamic between him and Tippi Hedren. There is an implied sexual relationship, or at the very least, some form of sexual obsession and/or harassment. Even weirder, Hitchcock's wife, who was portrayed as a collaborator and story editor in "Hitchcock", just sort of stands by here and lets it all happen.
Look, who really knows what happened behind closed doors - I'm not here to call anyone out. Who knows what goes on between two people in a long-term marriage? Alma Hitchcock even calls Tippi "our girl" at one point here, so whether she adopted a motherly role, or passively accepted that her husband needed to get some stimulation somewhere in order to keep his creative mind going, that's not for me to say.
What's more interesting to me is the look at what was going on behind the scenes in the making of "The Birds". Hedren was famously forced to spend five days in a room with actual pecking birds to film a 5-minute scene for the climax of that film, and implying that Hitchcock put her through hell because she rebuffed his advances, well, that just adds a layer of dickishness to his already morbid personality. I did find it interesting that he complained to the writer that the film didn't have an ending (really, it didn't...) and for the scene where Melanie was in a glass phone-booth being attacked by birds, hearing Hitchcock say, "She's a bird, and the birds are people" sort of explained things. Now I get it - the phone booth is like a bird cage, and the roles are reversed. Why didn't I pick up on that before?
There's also a look at the making of "Marnie", with Hedren again being put through the ringer while making this psychologically challenging film. The scene where Connery's character essentially rapes his wife can therefore be viewed as a sort of wish-fulfillment for the director.
I'm setting myself up for a chain of glamour girls and various actresses, so I'll be thinking about what it took for actresses to "make it", casting couches and such, and how tough it is to be famous, in upcoming weeks. I've got just enough time for that, and a mini crime/action chain, before I switch over to superheroes (again) in advance of Comic-Con.
Also starring Toby Jones (last seen in "Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy"), Imelda Staunton (last heard in "The Pirates! Band of Misfits"), Conrad Kemp, Penelope Wilton (last seen in "Match Point").
RATING: 4 out of 10 dirty limericks
No comments:
Post a Comment