EW #5: Psycho (1960)

Anthony Perkins as Norman Bates in Psycho.

I should mention up front that I am quite favorably biased toward this film; it is one of my all-time favorites.

It is impossible to discuss Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho without first discussing Michael Powell's Peeping Tom (1960); the two are closely related cinematic doppelgangers. Peeping Tom was released in Great Britain several months before Psycho's U.S. release, and what happened to Powell's film proved a valuable lesson for Hitchcock. Peeping Tom depicts several weeks in the life of a cameraman / serial killer named Mark, whose murders are depicted in shocking first-person point-of-view. The film's opening moments consist of just such a disturbing sequence; Peeping Tom provides a prototype for the lengthy, handheld, first-person murder sequence that opens John Carpenter's Halloween eighteen years later. Adding to its gruesomeness -- and unlike Psycho -- Peeping Tom is shot in color.

It turns out that the British public, and especially the press, was not ready for such an explicit indictment of the close connections between cinematic voyeurism, desire, and murder in April 1960. Peeping Tom was roundly condemned by the London press and director Powell was blacklisted.*

Carl Boehm as Mark Lewis, protagonist of Peeping Tom and 

an important precursor to Norman Bates.

Hitchcock, preparing to premiere Psycho in the United States in June 1960, observed what happened to Powell as a result of Peeping Tom's disastrous critical reception, and made a key decision that there would be no press screenings for Psycho. Powell's film had made clear to Hitchcock that he needed to get his own very similar film in front of paying audiences before the critical establishment had a chance to condemn it for its provocative shower sequence, (relatively) sympathetic portrayal of a serial killer, and -- gasp! -- the first-ever depiction of a flushing toilet in a Hollywood film.

Of course, Hitchcock's release strategy for Psycho, which included lobby posters urging filmgoers to keep the film's narrative twists secret and a mandate that no exhibitor allow anyone into a screening of the film after it had begun, were also part and parcel with his general flair for showmanship and his interest in delivering maximum thrills to his audiences. However, the British reception of Peeping Tom also factored into Hitchcock's decision to enact these measures, and in many ways Powell's equally frightening and masterful film deserves kudos for "taking the hit" with the British public on Psycho's behalf.

Regarding Psycho, there isn't much I can say about this enormously influential film that hasn't already been said by smarter writers. Psycho is probably the most-written-about English-language film of the sound era.** It has been claimed as the first slasher horror film, or at least the structural prototype for that enduring subgenre. It also represents the apotheosis of Hitchcock's career-long obsession with point-of-view: the opening sequence alone, in which the camera pans over a Phoenix cityscape and then tracks into a window to find Marion Crane trysting with her lover Sam, implicates the viewer in an act of sexually charged voyeurism more explicitly than does any previous Hitchcock work. Then, when Psycho switches our onscreen point of identification from Marion Crane to Norman Bates about thirty minutes in, it revolutionizes the thriller genre and changes the rules for cinematic identification and point of view from this point forward. The first-person point-of-view camera work that pervade influential slashers Black Christmas (1974) and Halloween (1978) are made possible via the example and influence of Psycho. 

Vera Miles as Lila Crane, one of the great Hitchcockian female detectives.***

The film itself is an utter delight. While some critics, Robin Wood among them, claim that only the first twenty-five minutes of Psycho (up to and including the shower scene) is worthy of true "masterpiece" status and that the second half loses focus, I contend that the whole damn thing hangs together beautifully. It is true that once Marion (Janet Leigh) leaves us, her narrative function is taken over by a diffuse ensemble including boyfriend Sam (John Gavin), sister Lila (Vera Miles), and private detective Arbogast (Martin Balsam), all of whom pale in comparison to Perkins as Bates. That Bates is the most interesting character left alive at that point is Hitchcock's whole purpose, but I can see where the lack of a clear "good guy" (or gal) would be off-putting for some viewers.

Simon Oakland as Psycho's much-maligned psychiatrist.

It is also true of Psycho that the psychiatrist scene near the end does slightly impede the momentum of the film's last seven minutes or so. Yet I think the psychiatrist scene is necessary for setting up the penultimate shot of Norman/Mrs. Bates in the asylum, and that makes it all worth it. Not to mention that Hitchcock gets in one last dig with the film's true final shot: Marion's car being dragged up out of the swamp. The film begins and ends with Marion.

In any case, Psycho is doubtless the Hitchcock film I have watched the most number of times, and alongside Vertigo (1958), Shadow of a Doubt (1943), The Birds (1963), Rope (1948), and Frenzy (1972), it probably stands as my favorite Hitchcock film. It definitely belongs on Entertainment Weekly's -- or anyone's -- list of "All-Time Greatest Films." I might even bump it up a few slots to #2 or #3.

Bonus Afterthought: Two different behind-the-scenes dramatizations of Hitchcock's late career, The Girl (dir. Julian Jarrold) and Hitchcock (dir. Sacha Gervasi) were released in 2012. Although some critics find something to enjoy in the factually inaccurate and emotionally lackluster Hitchcock, I must cast my lot with those who find it to be the cinematic equivalent of a badly-shaped piece of dung. I normally like Anthony Hopkins, but his performance in Hitchcock feels phoned-in and misses Hitch's real-life deliberate speech mannerisms. The whole film is a shoddy affair from tip to tail, very badly done, and I cannot recommend it. By contrast, The Girl is flat-out excellent. Toby Jones plays a much more interesting and convincing Hitchcock than Hopkins does and the film is far better made than Hitchcock on all fronts. Plus The Girl puts forth a provocative thesis: it assumes that Hitch was erotically interested in The Birds' leading lady Tippi Hedren and that he actually made inappropriate moves on her. While that has never been concretely established, I think some lecherous tendencies probably existed in Hitchcock and I like the film's willingness to explore that dark side of him, connecting it to how he treated the (post-Grace Kelly) platinum blondes in his films. I recommend The Girl to anyone; it is artfully shot, energetically acted, well-scripted, and well-paced, especially compared to the much more predictable and dull Hitchcock.

Toby Jones as Alfred Hitchcock and Sienna Miller as Tippi Hedren 
in HBO's excellent The Girl.

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* From A Very British Psycho (1997, dir. Chris Rodley), a documentary found on the Criterion Collection DVD of Peeping Tom. This documentary reveals that Powell's career in England ended due to Peeping Tom and that he emigrated to Australia soon after its release.
** A short list of key scholarly titles about Hitchcock and Psycho includes Tania Modleski's The Women Who Knew Too Much, Robin Wood's Hitchcock's Films Revisited, Deutelbaum and Poague's A Hitchcock Reader, Kaja Silverman's The Subject of Semiotics, Stephen Rebello's Alfred Hitchcock and the Making of Psycho, and one chapter in Alexander Doty's Flaming Classics.
*** See also Young Charlie in Shadow of a Doubt, Lisa Fremont in Rear Window, Barbara Morton in Strangers on a Train, and the second Mrs. de Winter in Rebecca for more examples of this type.  

Overlooked Directors: Jake Kasdan

The talented Mr. Jake Kasdan.

Jake Kasdan, the son of famed 1980s Hollywood screenwriter (The Empire Strikes Back, Raiders of the Lost Ark, Return of the Jedi) and director (Body Heat, The Big Chill, Silverado, Grand Canyon) Lawrence Kasdan, has established a stellar track record directing quality television comedies and wonderfully sharp mid-budget films since the late 1990s. Let's run down a short list of the younger Kasdan's must-see directorial triumphs:

Ben Stiller and Bill Pullman in Zero Effect, Jake Kasdan's directorial debut.

Zero Effect (1998) is a wonderful detective story / comedy, which I have been told is a loose adaptation of the Sherlock Holmes story "A Scandal in Bohemia" -- a fact I did not recognize since I am unfamiliar with that specific Holmes tale. But whether or not you are familiar with the source material, this is a delightful, well scripted and well acted buddy film that pairs eccentric genius detective Darryl Zero (Bill Pullman) with his uptight, long-suffering assistant Steve Arlo (Ben Stiller). These two have great comic chemistry together, and as usual, Kasdan finds time for some truly poignant character moments in between all the twisted plotting and zany antics. After The TV Set this is my second-favorite Jake Kasdan film.

The stellar cast of Freaks and Geeks.

Freaks and Geeks (five episodes, 1999-2000) -- Kasdan was a consulting producer on the series as well as director of several episodes including the pilot and the terrific "Beers and Weirs" episode. Freaks and Geeks is, quite simply, one of the finest "dramedies" ever aired on television, painting a squirmingly hilarious portrait of many of the serious trials and tribulations high schoolers endure. It also captures the historical moment in which it is set -- the year 1980, before "the 1980s" as we know them now truly set in -- perfectly (yes, I remember 1980). And while much of the credit for the series' brilliance goes to creator Paul Feig, executive producer Judd Apatow, the entire writing team, and the stellar cast, Kasdan was surely a key player in the success of many key episodes -- including the penultimate (and possibly his best) one "The Little Things" -- and the series as a whole.

Jack Black stars opposite Colin Hanks in Orange County.

Orange County (2002) is perhaps a lesser work by the younger Kasdan, as it lapses into some overt sentimentality atypical of the director's work. It also provides a fairly thankless role for Schuyler Fisk as Ashley, our protagonist Shaun's (Colin Hanks) girlfriend. She is too perfectly and consistently supportive of Shaun to be completely believable, and therefore comes off as a bit two-dimensional (where's the conflict?). But despite these relatively minor niggles, there is much to enjoy here, including Jack Black's turn as Shaun's slacker brother Lance, and a happy ending that does -- sentimentality aside -- feel earned.

Sigourney Weaver in Jake Kasdan's satirical masterpiece The TV Set.

The TV Set (2006) is Kasdan's masterpiece, a razor-sharp satire of the television industry with standout performances by the entire cast, including David Duchovny, Sigourney Weaver, Ioan Gruffudd, and Judy Greer, among others. Based loosely (I presume) upon the real-life trials of Judd Apatow during his years on Freaks and Geeks and other programs, this hilarious film depicts show creator Mike Klein's (Duchovny) attempt to get his TV pilot The Wexler Chronicles produced and picked up for broadcast by a network helmed by mercenary executive Lenny (Weaver). The latter's performance alone is worth watching the movie for, as she takes the kind of cutthroat character she played in 1988's Working Girl and ramps it several more notches, into truly "unhinged" territory. Also noteworthy is Fran Kranz as talentless actor Zach Harper, the other major foil to Klein's plans and visions for his precious pilot. An overlooked gem, The TV Set is literally one of my all-time favorite movies and I simply cannot recommend it highly enough.

David Duchovny stars as The TV Set's Mike Klein, 

an onscreen proxy for real-life writer / producer Judd Apatow.

In short, if you only check out one Jake Kasdan film, make The TV Set the one.

"The Beatles" as they appear in Walk Hard.

Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story (2007), while not my favorite Kasdan film, is surprisingly funny and enjoyable given its premise, and sits head and shoulders above other similar "fake biopic" style comedies like Talledega Nights and Anchorman. If you have given this film a pass due to its promotional materials, you may be denying yourself some delightful comedy fun here. But I wouldn't prioritize seeing this above seeing The TV Set or Zero Effect.

Coming soon: Jake Kasdan's next directorial feature is Sex Tape starring Jason Segel and Cameron Diaz, due out in 2014.

Darryl Zero sez: "Check out these movies . . . they're devilishly funny!"

Review: American Hustle (2013)

The cast of American Hustle, who are inconsistently directed 
in this sprawling mess of a film. 

I finally saw David O. Russell's American Hustle, a week after it was snubbed in all categories at the Academy Awards, and to be blunt, I was mostly underwhelmed. I really enjoyed a few of the performances, especially Christian Bale's, but I thought the film was extremely uneven and, despite a few glimmers of genuine fun, mostly quite boring. In my view, Hustle is another entry in the "my post-Huckabees career sucks" phase of Russell's tumultuous directorial trajectory, and herein I will attempt to briefly explain why.

See, I am a huge fan of Russell's pre-2010 work; while his 1994 debut Spanking the Monkey isn't for everybody, I think Flirting with Disaster, Three Kings, and especially I Heart Huckabees are all just terrific. I would even call Huckabees a contemporary dark-comic masterpiece, surely Russell's most compelling and wickedly enjoyable film to date.*

Yet as this article documents, Russell seems to have been severely humbled and discouraged after Huckabees failed to hit big in 2004, and nowadays, in order to keep working in Hollywood, he has "fully accepted the ideology of an increasingly risk-averse industry that making unconventional, brazenly original work is somehow patently offensive and selfish." This seems to square with how Silver Linings Playbook and American Hustle both strike me: as slightly offbeat yet extraordinarily conventional, even formulaic films that lack any of the remarkable, genre-mashing freshness of Russell's earlier work. For example, Linings is a totally by-the-numbers, male-centered romantic comedy with an unbalanced weirdo as its male lead -- if you like that film, you'd probably be better off seeing Punch-Drunk Love or even Safety Not Guaranteed -- and Hustle is a tonally disorganized mess trying to be a crime film. Don't get me wrong, I can find things to enjoy in Russell's recent movies. It is obvious that the man still cares about what he does, and that he can surely direct individual scenes very capably. It's just that he isn't pushing himself very hard or reaching very far artistically anymore, and that lack of risk-taking or striving seems to be causing him to go a little stir-crazy within the narrow narrative and generic parameters he has now accepted for himself.**

So, American Hustle. I frankly could not tell if this film was supposed to be a "real" heist film or a parody of one. Unlike Martin Scorsese's GoodFellas, to which this film owes an obvious debt, Hustle fails to blend its moments of comedy with its moments of gravitas with much effectiveness or consistency. For example, the character of Carmine Polito (Jeremy Renner) is mostly played straight, and Bale treats Irving Rosenfeld, his own somewhat humorous yet likable character, with some nuance, but Richie DiMaso (Bradley Cooper) is a ridiculous caricature of an FBI agent that seems to be visiting the Hustle set from an entirely different (comedy) movie. It is impossible to accept his feelings as real because every moment involving him -- comedic or faux-tragic -- is overplayed to the point of parody. This is not Cooper's fault; it is in the script or (more likely since so much of the film was improvised) the direction.

In short, in terms of tone, Hustle is a convoluted mess. The crowning moment of failure for me, the moment I knew the whole thing was broken, is when an extraordinarily iconic actor strongly associated with the 1970s gangster genre shows up in a cameo. Without spoiling things by naming him, I will simply state that his appearance is so distractingly inappropriate that I became totally convinced at that point in the proceedings that Russell had indeed intended to make a parody film but had simply not made it funny enough to make its parodic intent consistently clear throughout.

 Amy Adams and Christian Bale give the two best performances in Hustle, allowing for occasional moments of wackiness within otherwise believable characterizations.

Unfortunately, though, I don't think parody is what was intended, as the performances by the film's two leading ladies seem to indicate. Amy Adams' Sydney is especially believable and relatable, and, along with Bale's and Renner's characters, really grounds this movie -- to the extent that something this uneven and inconsistent can be grounded. Jennifer Lawrence's Rosalyn is an extreme character as written, but is played well, and should have been the most batshit-crazy element in an otherwise more lived-in set of performances. But unfortunately, Cooper's Richie out-histrionicizes Rosalyn at practically every turn, and that imbalance, combined with too-excessive "1970s" mise-en-scene and several pointlessly heavy-handed musical montages, contribute to the overall feeling of over-the-top incomprehensibility here. What this film really needs is some toning down of the acting and set design, and a couple more editing passes. Trapped somewhere inside the bloated American Hustle we were given is a really delightful 90- to 100-minute heist film parody, and that is a movie I would really like to see.***

Did I enjoy some moments in American Hustle? Yes, for sure, especially when Bale was onscreen. But were there at least as many moments of baffling incomprehensibility, careening shifts in tone, and outright boredom as there were enjoyable ones? Yes.

Do I want the David O. Russell who made I Heart Huckabees back? You bet.

UPDATE 3/5/2016: Look, even Amy Adams hates this movie!

UPDATE 7/2/2016: Film Crit Hulk shares my disdain for American Hustle, arguing that "THERE IS ALMOST NO REAL CHARACTER SEQUENCING OR MEANING OR IMPORT OR THEMATIC COHESION OR DIRECT PURPOSE TO MOST OF THE SCENES IN AMERICAN HUSTLE." His insightful piece outlines director David O. Russell's mid-career about-face in much greater detail than I could, calling the disappointing second half of Russell's career a "FALLRISE" -- "THE WORD FOR A FILMMAKER WHO HAS FALLEN FROM THE NOBLE, EMBATTLED GRACES OF PURE ARTISTRY AND IS WHOLLY REWARDED FOR IT." Hulk concludes that Russell's recent work "FEELS LIKE A WORLD CHAMPION CHESS PLAYER THROWING A GAME TO A 10 YEAR OLD." Sad but accurately said!

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* To be fair, I haven't yet seen Russell's 2010 film The Fighter, so cannot judge it for myself or factor it into this sweeping claim.
** I recognize the irony of calling a man like Russell -- known for his extreme intensity on set in the early days -- "stir-crazy" now that he has noticeably mellowed in terms of his process. What I mean here is that he has gone artistically stir-crazy, he is eating his own tail and losing focus now that he is no longer pushing himself creatively.
*** For example, much as I enjoyed them in and of themselves, every single scene with Louis CK should have been cut from Hustle, as those scenes did practically nothing to move the film forward and only contributed to the out-of-place ridiculousness of Cooper's FBI agent character.