Alfred Hitchcock's Frenzy (1972)

It's been interesting and somewhat disconcerting to take the TCM/Ball State Hitchcock course and watch again many of the films.  What does Hitchcock have to say?  Is it more than that the world is full of terrors and psychopaths, spies, guilty women and falsely accused men?  Is he saying more and doing more than just "putting the audience through it?"

Hitchcock's films have always given me pleasure, as much for the way they solve technical problems as anything else, e.g., it was many years after Rope (1948) before anyone tried to make another film with just one continuous shot.  I first saw Frenzy when it was released in 1972 and thought it an interesting attempt by Hitchcock to go back to his English roots while making an R-rated film with violence and nudity.  Even so, the most powerful scene in the movie is a murder we don't see, as the camera tracks down the stairs and into the oblivious crowd while the murder is taking place.  This is after Hitchcock has portrayed the murder victim, played by Anna Massie,  as a sympathetic character and friend of the wrongly accused.  There is little humor of the sort found in Hitchcock's British film The Lady Vanishes (1938), where the humor is intrinsic to the characters.  What little attempt at humor there is in Frenzy is confined to a detective's wife trying to make gourmet meals for him when he just wants bangers and mash.

The Hitchcock course has, quite rightly, emphasized his collaborators.  Even Hitchcock has mentioned that Vertigo and Psycho depend for their effectiveness on Bernard Herrman's scores, and Hitchcock used the same editor (George Tomasini), cinematographer (Robert Burks) and production designer (Robert Boyle) many times.  Hitchcock's films without these collaborators are different, just as his films at Universal (Torn Curtain 1966, Topaz 1969) are different from his films at Paramount (Rear Window, 1954 and Vertigo, 1958).  Unfortunately not even Truffaut could get Hitchcock to discuss much beyond the technical issues in his films, though there is no doubt he coaxed many moving and beautiful performances from his actors.