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Hitchcock
Suspense, Humour and Tone
Susan Smith
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Hitchcock
Suspense, Humour and Tone
Susan Smith
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About This Book
Susan Smith's treatment of the works of the most subtle of all film-makers analyses the key elements of suspense, humour and tone across the whole of the director's career. Arguing that all three are central to our viewing experience, the book demonstrates how Hitchcock's masterly integration of those elements is the key to his success as a film-maker. Examining in detail such films as Sabotage, Notorious, Rear Window, Psycho, Shadow of a Doubt, Rope and The Birds, amongst many others, the book discusses the idea of the director as saboteur and the importance of 'the avoidance of cliché' in Hitchcock's narrative.
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Chapter 1
A cinema based on Sabotage
Looking back upon his English film Sabotage (1936) in later years, Hitchcock frequently took the opportunity to criticise his handling of its central bomb scene. The episode concerned begins with Verloc, the saboteur, sending Stevie, his wifeâs younger brother, out on a mission to deliver a package that, unknown to the boy himself, contains a bomb that the viewer has been forewarned is due to go off at a quarter to two in the afternoon. Continually hindered in his attempts to reach his destination due to the crowds that have gathered to watch the Lord Mayorâs Show, the boy eventually manages to board a London bus where he sits, happily befriending a puppy belonging to a fellow passenger. Following a protracted suspense sequence that repeatedly foregrounds the hands of a clock moving to the allotted time, the scene ends with the bomb exploding, killing Stevie along with all the other occupants of the bus. On discussing the scene with Truffaut, Hitchcock criticised his decision to let the bomb go off and kill the boy (an act which Truffaut, in a shared consensus of uneasiness over the incident, also describes as âclose to an abuse of cinematic powerâ):1
I made a serious mistake in having the little boy carry the bomb. A character who unknowingly carries a bomb around as if it were an ordinary package is bound to work up great suspense in the audience. The boy was involved in a situation that got him too much sympathy from the audience, so that when the bomb exploded and he was killed, the public was resentful.2
Similarly, during a television interview with Huw Weldon, Hitchcock proceeded to make the following claim:
I once committed a grave error in having a bomb, from which I had extracted a great deal of suspense, . . . I had the thing go off, which I should never have done. Because they needed the relief from their suspense â clock going, the time for the bomb to go off at such and such a time. And I drew this thing out and attenuated the whole business. Then, somebody should have said âOh, my goodness! Look, thereâs a bomb! Pick it up and throw it out of the windowâ. Bang! But everybodyâs relieved. But I made a mistake. I . . . let the bomb go off and kill someone. Bad technique. Never repeated it.3
Hitchcockâs tendency to dismiss this famous sequence has probably contributed, one suspects, to the surprising critical neglect suffered by Sabotage over the years. The directorâs high-profile media stance towards the bomb scene â consisting of disapproval of his own film-making approach together with a rather apologetic attitude towards the audience â functions like an extra-textual tonal influence that seeks to contain or âdefuseâ this filmâs more subversive elements. But Hitchcockâs tendency to construe the bomb scene as simply a miscalculation on his part is very much challenged, I would argue, by the deliberate, coherent way in which the filmâs rhetorical strategies set about implicating the directorâs film-making approach with the act of sabotage.
The final moments leading up to the bomb explosion.
This preoccupation is made possible by the strategy of housing the filmâs main sabotage plot within a London cinema,4 for it is this setting which provides the necessary foundation for what becomes, I think, one of the most fascinating self-reflections upon the nature of Hitchcockâs own cinema. The title of this chapter therefore refers not just to Verlocâs use of the Bijou cinema as a base for his subversive political activities but also, more importantly, to the filmâs attempt to define Hitchcockâs cinema as one itself founded, in its approach to its audience, upon the notion of sabotage. This is suggested right from the outset when the film addresses us directly using the following dictionary definition of the word sabotage, an extreme close-up of which remains on screen as the filmâs actual title and Hitchcockâs name, among others, are superimposed:
sÇ·botage sĂ -bo-tarj. Wilful destruction of buildings or machinery with the object of alarming a group of persons or inspiring public uneasiness.
In offering us what is, in effect, a definition not only of its main plot activity but also of its own title, the film seems at pains to stress its intentions with regard to the bomb explosion right from the outset, with the phrase âwith the object of alarming a group of persons or inspiring public uneasinessâ serving as a coded acknowledgment of its wish to disrupt and disquiet its ownâpublicâ by this cinematic act of âwilful destructionâ. Looking beyond the film itself, this definition of sabotage also reads as a seminal metaphor for the kind of disruptive filmic strategies meted out by Hitchcockâs later cinema, most radically of all in Vertigo and Psycho (more on which in Chapter 2).
The metafilmic significance of Sabotageâs title consequently explains the filmâs concerted strategy of stressing the disruptive impact of Verlocâs activities upon his own cinema patrons rather than upon the cityâs general inhabitants (whose initial response, by contrast, is simply to laugh off the inconvenience). Verlocâs initial act of depriving his audience of light provides a particularly apt analogy for the way in which Hitchcock often plunges his audiences into darkness, both literally and metaphorically. One thinks, especially, of the disorientating effect of the train tunnel sequence at the beginning of Suspicion and the moment during the opening scene in Psycho when the camera makes its transition from the bright, sunny outdoors to inside a Phoenix hotel room. At the end of Sabotage, Verlocâs audience is disrupted once again when the threat of yet another bomb explosion (this time within the cinema itself) forces the police to order the auditorium to be evacuated in the middle of a screening.
In his dual role as cinema proprietor and saboteur, Verloc therefore serves as a rather compelling, complex surrogate for Hitchcock. At the beginning of the film, he is even shown trying to wash away the traces of his crime in a way that anticipates Hitchcockâs later attempts to absolve himself of his cinematic act of violence. Hitchcockâs recognition of the need to retain a bond with his film audience similarly finds voice in Verlocâs attempt to appease his angry customers by offering to refund their money on the grounds that âIt doesnât pay to antagonise the publicâ (a tactic supported by Mrs Verloc who refers to them flatteringly as âall regular patrons and good friendsâ). But the analogy between saboteur and film-maker is illustrated most vividly of all during Verlocâs visit to the zoo when, having just expressed reluctance to carry out the bombing mission assigned to him by his chief (âI wonât be connected with anything that means loss of lifeâ protests Verloc), this seemingly reluctant saboteur then proceeds to project an imagined scenario of blowing up Piccadilly onto one of the aquarium tanks which thus becomes transformed (via his subjective point of view) into a movie screen. In doing so, it is as if Verloc is drawn irresistibly, against his conscious wishes, to indulge in a fantasy of power on a scale that even outstrips what actually happens later on and in a way that suggests the cinema proprietorâs desire to usurp the role of film-maker. Both Verloc and Hitchcock, then, would seem to engage in spoken acts of denial that are at odds with their cinematic impulses and aspirations.
An explosive form of cinema: Verloc (Oscar Homolka) imagines blowing up Piccadilly.
If Hitchcockâs retrospective expressions of regret at having allowed the boy to be killed and his insistence that it was only a miscalculation on his part are countered by the filmâs more subversive strategies, then Verlocâs own remorse at causing Stevieâs death (âI didnât mean any harm to come to the boyâ) is similarly undercut by the suggestion that this act may in fact be unconsciously willed on the saboteurâs part. In explicit terms, of course, Verloc is motivated by his need to meet his pressing financial commitments as provider for both his wife and her younger brother. This is made clear during his visit to the zoo aquarium when he initially resists the bombing assignment, only to accede due to economic imperatives (his agent having already withheld the fee due to him from his previous sabotage of Londonâs electricity supplies). But the possibility that the bombing mission may serve, on a deeper level, as a way of ridding himself of such responsibilities (rather than merely fulfilling them) is suggested by the way that the bomb is delivered to him hidden away in a cage containing two canaries, the symbolic significance of which would seem to allude to the emotionally entrapping, potentially destructive nature of the Verloc marriage. With this analogy in mind, the Professorâs euphemistic written reminder to Verloc about when the bomb is due to explode (âDONâT FORGET THE BIRDS WILL SING AT 1.45â) becomes a rather fitting allusion to the way in which such marital tensions will eventually find release in violent form.5
Verlocâs gesture of giving the caged canaries to Stevie is particularly significant for it is this surrogate son who provides the tenuous, ambivalent link between the married couple. On the one hand, he enables Verloc to exert control over his wife by using acts of kindness towards Stevie as a form of emotional blackmail (âYouâre terribly good to him. . . . If youâre good to him, youâre good to me. You know thatâ, Mrs Verloc tells her husband with a hint of both puzzlement and resentment). Yet ultimately he forms a kind of (sexual) barrier or impediment between the couple for, as long as Mrs Verloc has Stevie, it is implied, the issue of their having a child of their own is evaded. Verlocâs âinadvertentâ blowing-up of Stevie can therefore be read, on this level, as unconsciously willed, fulfilling a wish to be rid of the surrogate son that his acts of kindness otherwise attempt to deny and repress. His ambivalence towards Stevie is perfectly embodied in his âgenerousâ gift of the cage of canaries that had earlier been used to carry the bomb hidden away in its tray. Verlocâs joking remark that Stevieâs double errand (involving delivery of the film tins and bomb package) will âkill two birds with one stoneâ accordingly assumes a much deeper level of significance for it refers to how the boyâs task enables the male protagonist to carry out not only his official sabotage duties but also an even more private, hidden agenda. In view of the parallels invited between the caged birds and the married couple, moreover, Verlocâs joke about killing two birds with one stone points to an even deeper desire on his part to rid himself not only of Stevie but of his marriage altogether.
Stevie (Desmond Tester) receives Verlocâs gift of the cage of canaries.
The filmâs other main saboteur is the Professor6 and it is this figure who, in his role as the bomb-maker âwho makes lovely fireworksâ, serves to implicate the film-maker with the material source of the sabotage function itself. This is hinted at during Verlocâs visit to the Professorâs bird shop when the sound of a cockerel crowing loudly twice in the backyard, as the Professor takes his visitor to his living quarters at the rear, gestures towards Hitchcockâs own authorial presence in the background and in a way that seems to symbolically proclaim the directorâs involvement with sabotage as an implied assertion of film-making potency. The Professorâs role as surrogate father towards his granddaughter also links him directly to Verloc, the bomb-makerâs shouldering of such responsibilities in a much more openly grudging way serving to make explicit (as the following exchange demonstrates) what was only implied in the other saboteurâs case:
Professor: There you are. No father, no discipline. What can you expect?
Verloc: Is the little girlâs father dead?
Professor: I donât know. Might be. I donât know. Nobody knows. My daughter would like to know too. But there you are. Itâs her cross and she must bear it. We all have our cross to bear. Hmm?
The Professorâs desire to blow up his surrogate child is suggested during the same scene when he admits to having hidden away his granddaughterâs toy doll in the cupboard containing the bomb-making substances, only to then nearly drop this stand-in of her along with one of the jars of explosives, his subsequent self-rebuke (âSlap me hard. Grand-dadâs been very naughtyâ) thereby constituting a double admission of guilty desire on his part. The Professorâs role as Hitchcockâs agent as well becomes even more evident during the bomb scene itself when his coded message to Verloc about the time for the explosion is appropriated by the film-maker as his own direct, suspense-inducing warning to the viewer (who is then confronted with an extreme close-up of it superimposed across the entire frame of the shot). But the closest analogy between sabotage and cinema ultimatel...