Word: hitchcocked
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...shot, that of a strangled rape victim, expired, with eyes bulging and her tongue hanging out). Ignore all those metaphysically-minded Frenchmen who treat even the man's stinkers with respect, and forget the cultists who enshrine his purely technical skills and elevate them to levels of high art. Hitchcock is a popular craftsman, and what matters to him are the tricks which make audiences respond with pleasure. Judged appropriately, by the box-office tallies, Frenzy may be the first film of any worth made by Hitchcock since Psycho...
...HITCHCOCK doesn't work with the aspirations of an artist, and I think any of his real achievements may be racked up as happy accidents. There is a thin line in entertainment between sensual indulgence and out-and-out voyeurism; an artist transcends these categories by the necessities of his statement or his vision, but the showman has to rely on his taste, and when Hitchcock has consciously worked on the level of a thrill-show con-man--as in The Birds--he's been at his worst...
...Hitchcock's best films, he sincerely sees the world as peopled with fearful venal masses and one or two innocent individuals who manage to rise above their values and are beaten down for it; because of the accuracy of troubled social backgrounds the audience is engaged sympathetically. The wronged heroes of The 39 Steps, The Lady Vanishes and now Frenzy are trapped by histories of international war and British impotence. The first two innocents were caught up in pre-World War II subterfuge; Dick Blainey of Frenzy is a ripe Jimmy Porter figure, an RAF squadron leader (when could...
Frenzy. A surprise from the supposedly declining Hitchcock. A virtuosic mix of suspense with apt characterization and subliminal social comment, set, thank God, in London, the director's home town. For once, the audience cheers when the hero doesn't kill his enemy. CINEMA...
...Nobody," Hitchcock claims, "has a sense of humor any more," and he has quit playing practical jokes on his friends. But he relishes them in retrospect. Once, he remembers, he served a dinner in which everything on the table, from meat to butter, was dyed blue. Another time he put place cards of non-guests behind each plate, so that no one was sure that he was in fact invited. Now, fortunately perhaps for everyone, he confines his rather special sense of humor to the screen...