Week 9 Lecture: Music and Art in Hitchcock

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Week 9Lecture Music and Art in Hitchcocks
films Screening Vertigo (1957)
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Readings

• Readings Cohen, T. Volume 2 Cohen Volume 2 Part
  III Jump Cuts Time machine pp 107 - 137 Matrixide
  pp 138-168
• Recommended Readings Sloan, J., Hitchcock The
  Definitive Bibliography (pp. 289-295)
• White, S. "Vertigo and Problems of Knowledge in
  Feminist Film Theory" (Allen pp279-307)
• Hitchcock "On Music in Films" (1934) (Reader)

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Origins Genre

• A psychological thriller Film noir/Drama
• The film is an adaptation of the French novel
  Sueurs froids dentre les morts (Cold Sweat
  From Among the Dead) by Pierre Boileau and Thomas
  Narcejac ScreenplayAlec Coppel and Samuel A.
  Taylor

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Actors

• James Stewart - Scottie" Ferguson
• Kim Novak - Madeleine Elster Judy Barton
• Barbara Bel Geddes - Marjorie "Midge" Wood
• Tom Helmore - Gavin Elster

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Jimmie Stewart (1908-1997)

• James Maitland Stewart popularly known as Jimmy
  Stewart. Parents of Scottish origin, Alexander
  M. Stewart and Elizabeth Ruth Jackson, in Indiana
  Penn. He was the eldest of three children (two
  younger sisters, Virginia and Mary) and father a
  prosperous hardware store owner. Also military
  career in USAF rose to rank of Brigadier General

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Jimmy Stewart

• Jimmy Stewart was named by the AFI the third
  greatest male star of all time . He is one of the
  most represented stars with five films on the
  list of the top 100 films and is one of the most
  represented stars with ten films on the list of
  400 nominees. Alfred Hitchcocks Vertigo 9
  Frank Capra's Its a Wonderful life 20 Capras
  Mr. Smith Goes to Washington 26 George Cukor The
  Philadelphia Story 44 and Hitchcocks Rear
  Window 48

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AFI Top ten Actors

1. Humphrey Bogart Katharine Hepburn
2. Cary Grant Bette Davis
3. James Stewart Audrey Hepburn
4. Marlon Brando Ingrid Bergman
5. Fred Astaire Greta Garbo
6. Henry Fonda Marilyn Monroe
7. Clark Gable Elizabeth Taylor
8. James Cagney Judy Garland
9. Spencer Tracy Marlene Dietrich
10. Charles Chaplin Joan Crawford

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Kim Novak (1933-

• Kim Novak (Feb 13 1933) was born Marilyn Pauline
  Novak in Chicago Illinois a Roman Catholic of
  Czech extraction (cw. Annie Ondra in Hs
  Blackmail). Her father was a railroad clerk and
  former teacher her mother also was a former
  teacher, and Novak has a sister.

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Some Locations

• Madeleine jumps into the sea at Fort Point
  underneath the Golden Gate Bridge.
• Coit Tower appears in many background shots
  Hitchcock once said that he included it as a
  phallic symbol

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Locations

• The Mission San Juan Bautista where Madeleine
  falls from the tower, is a real place, but the
  tower had to be matted in with a painting using
  studio effects.
• The gallery where Carlotta's painting appears is
  the California Palace of the Legion of Honor in
  San Francisco. The Carlotta Valdes portrait was
  lost after being removed from the gallery, but
  many of the other paintings in the background of
  the portrait scenes are still on view
• showing its age is a replica of one that can
  still be found at Muir Woods.

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• Muir Woods National Monument is in fact
  represented by Big Basin Redwoods State Park
  however, the cutaway of the redwood tree
• At Mission Dolores for many years tourists could
  see the actual Carlotta Valdes headstone featured
  in the film (created by the props department).
  Eventually, the headstone was removed as the
  mission considered it disrespectful to the dead
  to house a tourist attraction grave for a
  fictional person.

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• The McKittrick Hotel was a privately-owned
  Victorian mansion from the 1880s at Gough and
  Eddy Streets. It was torn down in 1959 and is now
  an athletic practice field for Sacred Heart
  Cathedral Preparatory School.
• The sanatorium is 351 Buena Vista East, formerly
  St. Joseph's Hospital, now Park Hill
  condominiums. It looks much the same from the
  outside the best view is from the Corona Heights
  neighborhood park.
• The Empire Hotel is a real place but is now
  called the York Hotel at 940 Sutter Street.
  Judy's room was created but the flashing green
  neon of the "Hotel Empire" sign outside is based
  on the actual hotel's sign (it was replaced when
  the Hotel was re-named).
• Ernie's Restaurant (847 Montgomery St.) was a
  real place in Chinatown, not far from Scottie's
  apartment. It is no longer operating.

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Vertigo

• Robin Woods Hitchcock's Films (1968), which
  calls the film Hitchcock's masterpiece to date
  and one of the four or five most profound and
  beautiful films the cinema has yet given us.
• Release in 1996 of a restored print to great
  acclaim

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Vertigo Rankings

• 2005, Vertigo came in second (to Goodfellas) in
  British magazine Total Films book of the top 100
  films of all time and 2nd in Sight and Sound
  list.Vertigo is 9 on the AFI list. The film has
  been deemed culturally significant by the
  United States Library of Congress and selected
  for preservation in the National Film Registry

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• Vertigo has been described as an intense
  psychological study of a desperate, insecure
  man's twisted psyche (necrophilia) and loss of
  equilibrium. It follows the troubled man's
  obsessive search to end his vertigo (and deaths
  that result from his 'falling in love'
  affliction) and becomes a masterful study of
  romantic longing, identity, voyeurism, treachery
  and death, female victimization and degrading
  manipulation, the feminine ideal, and fatal
  sexual obsession for a cool-blonde heroine.
  Hitchcock was noted for films with voyeuristic
  themes, and this one could be construed as part
  of a trilogy of films with that
  preoccupationRear Window (1954)Vertigo (1958)
• Psycho (1960)

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Cinematic techniques

• Hitchcock used two simultaneous devices to
  achieve the effect and create an approximation of
  the disoriented psychological state of the Jimmy
  Stewart character - the camera both tracks away
  from the subject while also zooming towards it.
  The simultaneous, opposing movements - a forward
  zoom and a reverse tracking shot - also represent
  the attraction and repulsion that the main
  protagonists experience in their relationships.
  The camera effect is used in this scene, and in
  the first mission stairwell sequence.

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Week 10

• Lecture Surveillance through two Rear Windows
• Screenings Rear Window (1954) Alfred Hitchcock
  Ross Bleckner Rear Window (clips) (1999)
• Readings Cohen Vol 2 Part IV The Black Sun 8
  Prosthesis of the Visible pp169-190

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Recommended readings

• Readings Cohen Vol 2 Part IV The Black Sun 8
  Prosthesis of the Visible pp169-190
• Modleski, T. "The Master's Dollhouse" Rear
  Window
• Stam, R and Pearson, R., "Hitchcock's Rear
  Window Reflexivity and the Critique of
  Voyeurism" (Reader)
• Belton, J. The Space of Rear Window" (reader)

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http//www.youtube.com/watch?vzC5UhVwcIyg

• Rear Window Origins
• Cornell Woolrichs short story It Had to be
  MurderJohn Michael Hayes (screenplay)

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Cast

• James Stewart...L. B. Jefferies Grace Kelly...
  Lisa Carol Fremont
• Wendell Corey... Detective Lt. Thomas J. Doyle
  Thelma Ritter...Stella , Insurance company nurse
• Raymond Burr... Lars Thorwald
• Judith Evelyn..Miss Lonelyheart
• Ross Bagdasarian... Songwriter
• Georgine Darcy... Miss Torso
• Sara Berner... Wife living above Thorwald

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Cast continued

• Frank Cady... Husband living above Thorwald
• Jesslyn Fax...Sculpting neighbor with hearing aid
• Rand Harper...Newlywed man
• Irene Winston..Mrs. Anna Thorwald
• Havis Davenport...Newlywed woman
• Marla English.. Girl at songwriter's party

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Heat wave

• During a heat wave, normally itinerant news
  photographer L.B. Jefferies (James Stewart) finds
  himself confined by a broken leg to a wheelchair
  in his Greenwich Village apartment.  Each day,
  and often into the night, he has little to do but
  gaze out his rear window at the activities of his
  neighbours in the surrounding apartments. 

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• Jeffs main visitors are his fiancée Lisa
  Fremont (Grace Kelly), a high-fashion model and
  Stella (Thelma Ritter), an insurance company
  nurse who provides him with therapeutic massages. 

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Heat Wave Plot device

• More than a plot device explaining why everyone
  has their windows open, the heat wave intensifies
  a crisis for which it also serves as a metaphor
  for vulnerability.
• windows open, the heat intensifies a crisis for
  which it also serves as a metaphor

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Jeff I wonder if it's ethical to watch a man
with binoculars and a long focus lens. Do you, do
you suppose it's ethical even if you prove that
he didn't commit a crime?Lisa I'm not much on
rear window ethics.Jeff Of course, they can do
the same thing to me, watch me like a bug under a
glass if they want to.
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• Lisa Jeff, you know, if someone came in here,
  they wouldn't believe what they'd see.Jeff
  What?Lisa You and me with long faces, plunged
  into despair because we find out a man didn't
  kill his wife. We're two of the most frightening
  ghouls I've ever known. You'd think we could be a
  little bit happy that the poor woman is alive and
  well.

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Character Parallelism

• Hitchcock scholars (Mulvey, Modleski, Woods et.
  al.), have discussed the way the relationship
  between Jeff and Lisa parallels the lives of the
  neighbours they are spying upon. Many of these
  points are considered in Tania Modleskis The
  Women Who Knew Too Much.

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POV

• Almost the entire film is shot from inside
  Jeff's bedroom, and most of the point of view
  (POV) shots are his. However, at key points in
  the movie this rule is broken usually as a dual
  or triple POV shot, but also with single POV
  shots of detective Doyle, Stella, and Lisa.

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Hs Cameo

• Alfred Hitchcock appears in one of his most
  inventive cameo appearances as the man winding
  the clock in the songwriter's apartment as he is
  playing the composition that he is working on
  during the course of the film.

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Art references

• Seven lively arts
• Painting, sculpture, dance, music, theatre,
  opera, literature, photography and, of course,
  film.
• Pets The dog who knew too much.

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Themes

• Surveillance, ocular ethics, doubling, uncanny.
• Everyone needs to lovesomeone.
• The fine art of murder
• Symbolic relationship between spectator and
  screen.
• The wrong man becomes the right man
• Suspicion suspense
• The violability of the fourth wall

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literary influences Source Kenn Mogg,

• E.T.A. Hoffmanns classic tale of the uncanny
  The Sandman (Hitchcock owned several editions
  of Hoffmann), H.G. Wellss 1894 short story
  Through a Window (Hitchcock owned a set of
  Wellss complete works), and Aldous Huxleys
  famous 1922 short story loosely based on the
  then-current Armstrong murder case, The Gioconda
  Smile. 

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Hoffmans Sandman

• The relevance of Hoffmanns tale may be seen
  from even a partial synopsis.  The student
  Nathanael becomes fixated on a house opposite his
  own occupied by Professor Spallanzani and his
  beautiful daughter called Olympia.  Watching
  the house through binoculars, the student quite
  loses interest in his regular girlfriend, Klara. 
  One day, he goes to the house and at last
  encounters Olympia - who turns out to be just a
  life-size doll.

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Freuds The Uncanny

• Also the basis of the ballet 'Coppélia' (1870). 
  The tale is also the main subject of Freuds
  famous essay The Uncanny unheimlich , in which
  he alludes to Spallanzani as a potentially
  castrating father-figure.

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In Jeff's rear window world, each story is
resolved. Miss Torso is reunited with her
military boyfriend. Miss Lonelyhearts hooks up
with the songwriter, whose music prevents her
from committing suicide. The Thorwalds apartment
is being repainted. The childless couple gets a
new dog. The sculptress finishes her work,
Hunger. The newly-weds are beginning to have
marital strife. Life goes on..
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Trivia

• Principal photography was completed by January
  1954, having taken approximately eight weeks. 
  The overall budget scarcely exceeded 1,000,000. 
  Following its world premiere at New Yorks Rivoli
  Theater on 4 August 1954, the film and its
  performances were hailed by critics and public
  alike.  'Time' thought it possibly the second
  most entertaining picture (after The 39 Steps)
  ever made by ... Hitchcock.  By May 1956, it had
  grossed 10,000,000.

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Homage to Rear Window

• In 1998, Christopher Reeve (Superman) as the
  paraplegic architect Jason Kemp appeared in a
  remake of Rear Window that retained the original
  title, but had the main character completely
  paralyzed instead of just having a recently
  broken leg (due to Reeve's real life condition).
  The Lars Thorwald character is replaced by an
  English sculptor thus racking up the art/murder
  connection.

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Other homages to Rear Window

• Brian De Palma paid homage to Rear Window with
  his movie Body Double (which also added touches
  of Hitchcock's Vertigo). The 2001 film Head Over
  Heels starring Freddie Prinze Jr., in which a
  young woman falls for a man she believes she saw
  commit a murder, closely follows the plot of Rear
  Window, as well as the 2007 film Disturbia -
  although in this film, there is no accident, and
  the suspect has no wife. Marcos Bernstein's The
  Other Side of The Street (2004 also makes a
  reference to Rear Window.

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Woody Allen's Manhattan Murder Mystery, in which
Allen and his wife suspect an elderly neighbor of
murdering his wife and are forced to investigate
for themselves when no one else takes their
concerns seriously, could also be said to owe a
debt to Rear Window.
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• Many animated series, including Tiny Toon
  Adventures, Rocket Power and The Simpsons, Bart
  of Darkness" is heavily influenced by the movie,
  with Bart breaking his leg and coming to the
  belief that he witnesses Ned Flanders killing his
  wife.
• Rocko's Modern Life Home Movies, and The Venture
  Bros. Pay homage to Rear Window in different
  ways. Robert Zemeckis' What Lies Beneath is
  another film that pays tribute to this film and
  other Hitchcock features.

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And most recently