1. MARNIE [5]
Terrifying.
2. THE BIRDS
Before watching, I remarked of this film that it's unlike any other I've seen. This is still true now, but to an even greater extent than I realized. There's just no describing the singular sense of dread Hitchcock creates, despite all the constituent parts seeming explicable. In his adherence to strict non-diegetic silence, he imports some of Antonioni's radical uncertainty to the Hollywood horror film, an improbable effect that destabilizes every moment of the THE BIRDS from beginning to end. We never have any clue how we're supposed to react, and are thus prompted to pay close attention to the character dynamics as well as Hitchcock's framing. His mise-en-scene gains greater significance in the absence of music.
While visual and narrative patterns do emerge, THE BIRDS is riven with dark crevasses that lead nowhere. It remains unknowable to the extreme, even while being cinematically legible moment-to-moment. Any confusion that results is by design, and Hitchcock leaves so many questions unanswered. Who is Mitch, this recessive man whose gravity has trapped so many people in orbit? What is the root of Melanie's obsession with him, and why is she so comfortable lying to everyone she meets? What else is she hiding?* What really happened to her mother? The strangeness of this story defies any attempts to make sense of it, all these curiosities leading to oblivion when pursued. As with the eternal question of why the birds attack, there are simply no answers. THE BIRDS is like a perfect sculpture, shaped with utmost skill, yet masking a void at its core. A proverbial House of Leaves, terrifyingly larger on the inside than its outside suggests. And, as David Bordwell observed of Preminger's DAISY KENYON, it is an unprecedented use of classical Hollywood continuity to create something absolutely alien. We will probably never see anything like it again.
At the same time, THE BIRDS has to be considered an evil film, one built openly upon the torment of its incredible lead actress. Although I think Tippi Hedren's performance in this film is truly, astoundingly great, there can be no defending Hitchcock or the methods he used to get it from her. At the height of his powers as an industry figure, it seems he finally found the victim he'd been waiting for all these years. The isolation, predation, and humiliation acted out upon Hedren by Hitchcock shows just how crucial the Great Man role was to his abuse. He forbade his *entire crew* from speaking to Hedren without permission, allowing only himself that 'privilege.' Several crew members found this arrangement disagreeable, and just as many objected to Hitchcock's treatment of his star. Yet all those countless objections were swallowed, and a film that should've been halted for criminal acts of harassment was ultimately completed; released nationwide; and appraised as an immense, unsurpassable masterpiece in the half-century or so that followed. Decades of complicity, of which I am not exempt, have contributed to the minimizing of Hedren's mistreatment. Every attempt to acknowledge THE BIRDS' artistic merit launders the ugliness that fueled its creation. I can't deny the effect this film has on me, just as I cannot deny the accounts Tippi Hedren has given of her experience making it. And I don't know what to make of this paradox, how to reconcile these antinomial truths. I really don't know.
*So much of MARNIE is present in this film, and so many hints at Melanie Daniels' inner turmoil seem to predict the expressionistic freakout of that subsequent work. I can only assume Hitchcock's obsession with Hedren gave rise to their next collaboration, and while that film is perhaps even more important to me than THE BIRDS, it too is heavily shadowed with the exploitations enacted by Hitchcock.
3. VERTIGO
Transfixed by images, bewitched into reconstructing them. (So, another watcher’s movie.) Still learning my way through Madeleine’s section, but once Judy’s begins in earnest there’s no looking away.
4. PSYCHO
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