Checking Into The "Bates Motel" on Hitchcock's Birthday

Glenn here. Can I talk a little bit more about Alfred Hitchcock? After all, he was born on this day 114 years ago and it's pretty astounding that his works are still being mimicked, adapted and homaged to this day. So few classic directors can be spoken about in this day and age and still have new and interesting things to be said. My personal favourite is Psycho (1960), but then I've always had a softer spot for his more pulpy work. Think of others like The Birds (1963) and The 39 Steps (1935) for instance. He's known for refined, classy, adult thrillers, the likes of which are barely made today, but it was his embrace of genre that continues to impress me the most. He supposedly hated horror movies and wanted to go about reinventing them. It's hard to deny he succeeded.

Several sequels followed, including Psycho II, which is actually quite impressive if still nowhere near the genius of Hitchcock's original. That one was directed by Richard Franklin who, much like Brian DePalma, frequently lifts Hitchcock wholesale for his own movies to sometimes incredible effect (see Road Games with Stacy Keach and Jamie Lee Curtis for a rather fantastic open road retelling of Rear Window). I'm also a huge, huge fan of Gus Van Sant's much-maligned 1998 remake starring Vince Vaughn, Anne Heche, Julianne Moore and Viggo Mortensen. It's the last mainstream experimental film and the very reason people hate it is why I think it works so well.

And now in 2013 Psycho has been reinvented once more in the form of A&E's Bates Motel. 

A preposterously absurd, but wickedly entertaining series that reposits Norma and Norman Bates to the modern day and surrounds them in all sorts of wacky, grisly, mysterious events. It's a prequel and it's fun watching the writers insert little bits and pieces from the movie into the plot: Norman learns taxidermy! Norma fights city planners to keep a bypass from being constructed! Norman has "blackouts"! It's not subtle, but I was entertained so much by the first season that I can't wait to see how the show weaves its way towards the ultimate conclusion. Mother won't be happy. As Gawker succinctly put it:

[Like] Jessica Lange on the first season of American Horror Story... there's something about macabre television that brings the best-worst out of its women."

What's curious about Bates Motel, however, is that despite its origins as a riff on Psycho, it is David Lynch's Twin Peaks that the show most resembles. And deliberately so. Bates Motel is like the unofficial sequel to that groundbreaking prime time murder mystery soap opera of the early 1990s that we never knew was coming. The action of Bates Motel has been moved from California to the same region as Twin Peaks, it's set in a small town where murders and drug dealing and all sorts of illegal activity take place below the surface just like Twin Peaks, and there's a secret diary of sorts that the high school kids try to solve just like Twin Peaks. The series even utilised Twin Peaks iconography in its marketing, not to mention favoured Lynchian directorial trademarks like buzzing neon and car accidents.

Audrey, Shelly, and Donna piece clues together in "Twin Peaks"

I recently returned from Twin Peaks Fest, a fan convention held in the town where Peaks and its cinematic prequel were films. It was basically one of the greatest weekends of my life, but while I was there I asked if any of the other Twin Peaks obsessives had watched the show. They hadn't, but I hope they do. I can't imagine Alfred Hitchcock would have liked it all that much, but it stands as one of the zanier and more entertaining ways that the Master of Suspence's legacy lives on.

Recent Hitchcockian Goodies
The Hitchcock Ten
Shadow of a Doubt Best Shot
Rope
Top Ten Memorable Performances
Great Moments in Gayness: Suspicion 
Oscar Horrors: Terrifying Mrs Danvers in Rebecca 

The Hitchcock Ten

If you haven't checked out the Guardian's very fun infographics on Hitchcock's oeuvre -- just in time for his birthday today! -- you should do that. This is my favorite part because I think it's just brilliant with the top tens from film fans, critics, and the general public overlapping and disagreeing.

What's more I think it's absolutely accurate in its overlaps and exclusions  for all three groups with the possible exception of The Birds not finding its way to the "film fan's top ten". But this can't have been easy to flip around with a stuck landing. 

As for myself I have six total favorites: Notorious, Psycho, Rear Window, Rope, Shadow of a Doubt, and Vertigo. But the rest of his output fights over my leftover affections and wins and loses depending on my moods and depending on which part of the movie we're talking about. 

Happy 114th Birthday, Hitchcock!

Recent Hitchcockian Goodies
Shadow of a Doubt Best Shot
Top Ten Memorable Performances
Great Moments in Gayness: Suspicion 
Oscar Horrors: Terrifying Mrs Danvers in Rebecca 
Introducing...Madeleine in Vertigo 

Hit Me With Your Best Shot: Shadow of a Doubt (1943)

While we're on the subject of Alfred Hitchcock, having just discussed the most memorable performances in his films, we thought we'd look at Hitchcock's own favorite Shadow of a Doubt (1943) for this week's Hit Me With Your Best Shot. I wasn't surprised that the film failed to score in that list we just made, if only because the whole cast is so memorable. How do you choose amongst them? What's more, the subject of the film is, if you ask me, not the gruesome crimes that are continually referenced but the family unit itself. How protective and proud of one's own blood should you be? How do you preserve the family's happy cohesion, whether real or imagined? What to do about the rotten apple in the bushel? 

Since Shadow of a Doubt (1943) is strangely underseen given Hitchcock's own love of it and the endurance of so many of his films, I don't want to spoil any of its surprises (the writing was Oscar nominated and deservedly so). But I will say that the surprises do not include the nature of Uncle Charlie (Joseph Cotten). He's bad news.

But how bad?

That's up to his family to gaily ignore or vaguely worry over and for his favorite niece and namesake (Teresa Wright) to puzzle out. Shadow of a Doubt has several delicious shots that are case studies in Hitchcock's mastery of visual storytelling and his glorious understanding of the power of shot variation (which is, if you ask me, the single element of filmmaking with the greatest depreciation in quality over my lifetime). I'm absolutely crazy about the way he shoots the growing conflict between the niece and her uncle... which you think will play out like cat and mouse but is closer to cat and kitten in its visual language since Young Charlie is no scurrying fool but a resourceful creature. My favorite shot is one that should be welcoming, but plays out with just as much potency as a disturbingly intense closeup of Uncle Charlie earlier in the film during a particularly nasty monologue.

Uncle Charlie is merely standing on the porch this time. Young Charlie would "like to pretend the whole dreadful thing never happened" but she knows that her "typical American family" home is no longer a sweet or safe one. 

Other Best Shot Choices...

Cal Roth on Hitchcock's repetitive "truth reveal" shot
Film Actually likes the fourth wall broken and Cotten's intriguing performativity
The Entertainment Junkie loves the camera's retreat from Teresa in the library
Antagony & Ecstacy puts a ring on it. It's one of his favorite Hitchcocks.
The Film's The Thing there's evil right beside you!
And...
We Recycle Movies cheats by never getting past the opening credits! 

NEXT WEDNESDAY: The Color Purple (1985). Won't you sing 'Miss Celie's Blues' for us by selecting your "best shot" from that Spielberg hit?

Team Top Ten: Most Memorable Performances in a Hitchcock Film

Amir here, with this month's edition of Team Top Ten. To celebrate Alfred Hitchcock's birthday next week (Aug 13th), we've decided to celebrate his career by looking at something that isn't discussed quite as often as it should be: the performances he directed.

Hitchcock has more auteur cred than any other director so its understandable that his presence behind the camera attracts the most attention in all discourse about his oeuvre. Yet, his films are undeniably filled with amazing performances, from archetypal blondes and influential villains to smaller, eccentric supporting turns from characters actors. The list we've compiled today is the Top Ten Most Memorable Performances from Alfred Hitchcock's Films.

Make of "memorable" what you will! Our voters each certainly had their own thinking process. Some of us - myself included - took the word literally and voted for what had stuck with us the most, irrespective of size and quality of the performance. Some went for the best performances, some for the best marriage of actor and role and some for a mix of all of those things. Naturally, the final list veers towards the consensus, but as always, I've included bits and pieces of our individual ballots that stood out after the list.

Without further ado...

10. Grace Kelly as Lisa Fremont (Rear Window)
There's memorable, and there's iconic. And then there's Grace Kelly in Edith Head. A performance all at once decadent and demure, Hitchcock's crown jewel struts and strolls glowingly in Rear Window, lithely giving off the allure to which she's come to recognize is her signature (and she worries, her sole) appeal. It's only as the mystery of the picture begins to unravel that the shades are lifted (literally) and the flinty little girl we thought we knew positions herself to be the real knight in shining armor. The famed icy Hitchcock blonde archetype manages that most remarkable and memorable of transformations in this, his best film; thanks to and because of Ms. Kelly, the sculpture discovers itself and its purpose. It's a beautiful thing when an actor can make a director forget himself and his tendencies. Something New Happens.
- Beau McCoy

9 more iconic turns after the jump

Click to read more ...

Great Moments in Gayness: "Suspicion"

Team Experience is celebrating Gay Pride with their favorite moments in gay cinema history... Here's Deborah Lipp (from the great TV site 'Basket of Kisses') with an unusual choice... 

Happy Gay Pride Weekend Everyone!

My favorite gay cinematic moment is not a gay movie, not a gay scene, not explicitly erotic, not much of anything. I love it for the electrifying presence of gayness in a movie from 1941. I am speaking about Alfred Hitchcock's Suspicion.

I've almost never seen this movie mentioned when discussing gayness in movies, not even when discussing gayness in Hitchcock movies. People talk about homoeroticism in Strangers on a Train or the mad lesbian love of Mrs. Danvers for Rebecca, but Suspicion is overlooked.

Johnnie (Cary Grant) and Lina (Joan Fontaine) visit Johnnie's friend Isobel, a writer of murder mysteries. Also attending dinner is Phyllis. Based on their familiarity and the way they serve dinner, it is obvious the two women live together. Moreover, while Isobel ("Izzy") dresses as a British lady should, Phyllis ("Phil" to her partner) is in a man's suit and tie, with a man's hairstyle 

And this is what's so glorious. Phil and Izzy aren't dangerous. They're not villains. They're not the subject of a joke, nor exaggerated, nor horrifying. They simply are. A butch/femme couple, in 1941, relaxing at home, entertaining a straight couple, chatting about books. Fifty years later, Basic Instinct inspired protest from the LGBT community, because it was still almost impossible to see gays and lesbians in a movie unless they were killers or crazy, suicidal or deranged or tragic or pornified, or—best case scenario—the wacky sexless neighbor.

Phil and Izzy are just an ordinary gay couple. They're not in the movie because they're gay, and their gayness is never mentioned. That they're butch/femme—probably the least-represented type of queer couple in the media—just adds to my pleasure.

I love Phil and Izzy so much.