Saturday 6 March 2021

Frenzy (1972 Alfred Hitchcock)

 Yes, well reviewed here. As a quail is featured, it's timely to insert this:

It's very unlike his films of the fifties and sixties in that it doesn't feature lots and lots of different camera set ups and changes of view, indeed, it displays some of his longest takes. So I agree that he's bouncing back European (particularly French) cinema at them, but then adding these bravura moments of sound, which still it seems no one knows how to do. (It has a very created soundtrack - it seems like all the Covent Garden stuff is ADR for example, but it then allows him this complete control).

Great acting from Anna Massey, Barry Foster, Alec McGowan, Billie Whitelaw, Bernard Cribbins, Vivien Merchant; with Jon Finch, Clive Swift, Michael Bates, Jean Marsh. Photographed by 'Gil' Taylor, edited by John Jympson, not bad score by Ron Goodwin.

Based on the novel 'Goodbye Piccadilly, Farewell Leicester Square' by Arthur La Bern, who had written It Always Rains on Sunday. With that incredibly nasty rape / murder, the black humour of some of the later episodes (the body in the potato truck, the ending) manages to be hilarious.


Sure I recognise her?


Finch made the mistake of publicly suggesting Hitch wouldn't be up to the job, then started moaning about the lines. When he did so Hitch made a point of stopping filming and finding Anthony Shaffer to pronounce on it, and treating him coldly.

Hitch was at Cannes with it, from where this is taken:

Variety

(It wasn't in competition, though Images (Susannah York won), Slaughterhouse-Five (Jury Prize) and Solaris (Grand Prix Spécial du Jury) were.)


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