Throughout his last years, Alfred Hitchcock stoked tentative plans for a final film, The Short Night. Concerning the hunt for a double agent, it was doomed by a decline in both his health and that of his wife Alma. This might not have been a great loss. While the thought of his illustrious career at least technically continuing into the 1980s is enticing, the Cold War wasn't one of his best subjects. (Torn Curtain is kind of a snooze, for one.)
So Family Plot stands as Hitch's last roll of the dice. It's a contrasting work with its predecessor, the London-based horror thriller Frenzy. That film dealt with violence, dysfunction, and a weirdly asexual kind of sexual assault in a fallen world. It revisited the stomping grounds of his earliest films, but the title also suggested it was a cousin of Psycho. Only with a less likable killer and a hero who was also not-too-sweet.
Family Plot has a different tenor. It's lighter and more relaxed, despite the presence of some sinister schemes. The story brings in grand old mystery touchstones like fake psychics, rare jewels, lost heirs, secret passages. In giving his audience what they wanted, Hitchcock entertained the idea that what they wanted might be a surreal mishmash of Agatha Christie book covers. It sounds like I'm making fun, but it actually is rather entrancing to watch.
It's been reported that he wanted Jack Nicholson to play the main villain, Arthur Adamson, but that Nicholson was still in the midst of Cuckoo's nest when they were to start filming. As is often the case, it's hard to determine whether this is true. In the event, William Devane is more restrained in the role, but fun to watch in his own way.
2 comments:
A bit of serendipity here reading your post about Alfred Hitchcock the same day your fine Christmas card arrived. Wonderful little book too - a pair of quirky geniuses, eh?
Now I've read the plot outline it does seem a shame he never got around to making 'The Short Night', perhaps instead of 'Frenzy' or 'The Birds' (neither of them movies I liked). Hitchcock has always been among my top five film directors, although mostly for his earlier films rather than the later ones. I was surprised to learn that his wife, Alma, acted as editor and scriptwriter on a number of our favorites, i.e. 'The 39 Steps', 'Sabotage', 'The Lady Vanishes' and a number of others. They met in London in the 20s at a time when Alfred had been hired as an art director at a film company and Alma, after spending years there visiting her father (production manager), working as a tea lady and then being allowed a job as assistant to a film editor. There were no film schools in those days and it's hard even now to imagine Chaplin, Kurosawa, Kubrick, John Ford and any number of great directors ever sitting in a film class.
Apparently, Hitchcock had the script for 'The Short Night' as a film he'd like to make for eleven years and never did get around to making it for a number of reasons, among them being contracted to direct a couple of other spy thrillers that didn't do so well, 'Torn Curtain' and 'Topaz'.
I can't remember having seen 'Frenzy' although I may have done, but 'Family Plot' I just recall as not being up to his early standards. That's no surprise as he'd been in bad health for a while and was getting very old. From what I understand now after reading about their life-long collaboration it sounds as though Alma's stroke took a final toll on Hitch.
Here's a picture of the two of them taken on their wedding day in 1926.
Nice post and thank you. :)
A quirky pair of geniuses indeed. I don't know that I was thinking of what they had in common with each other, beyond being something you might like. But they do share some common ground.
I think I bailed on Frenzy the first time I tried watching it. Then I came back to it and liked it. The guy who's supposed to be the hero--the one played by Jon Finch--is unpleasant to be around, no doubt about it. If there's a character to sympathize with it's the old inspector trying to solve the case.
Hitch, Kurosawa, Fritz Lang, Frank Capra, etc. You're right, none of them came out of anything resembling film school. And there are good and great directors who have studied film formally. But it shouldn't be the only way to get into the profession. Well, credentialism has gone pretty crazy in a lot of areas.
As I said, I didn't like Torn Curtain. Hitchcock and Paul Newman didn't really seem to enjoy working with each other, either. Topaz I haven't seen yet. Might someday. Maybe he could have done better with The Short Night, if his heart were really in it.
Oh, I do love that wedding picture of him and Alma Reville. He already looked like the man who'd later host Alfred Hitchcock Presents, just with a little more hair and more color in it. Yeah, she was a writer on some of his early films as well as doing some editing and generally being his artistic advisor. They had a fruitful partnership as well as a (mostly) happy marriage.
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