Final Exam based on Psycho and Marnie

The final exam question was challenging. I did the best I could not knowing if I understood the question correctly.

Here is the question:

CINE 23A FILMS OF ALFRED HITCHCOCK

FALL 2016 FINAL

Choose 2 of the following Hitchcock films we’ve explored in the second half of the semester:

Rear Window; Psycho; Vertigo; Marnie; The Birds; Rope;

Choose 2 themes and elements from the list below and explore them in a 4 full page, double spaced (minimum) analysis inclusive of story, camera, mise en scene, editing, acting, use of color, symbology, psychology, sets and other elements essential to filmic storytelling to explore the trajectory of Hitchcock’s later career:

• Changing identities

• Criminal Behavior

• Changing point of view

• Attraction vs. repulsion

• The wrong man/woman

• Spectators/voyeurism

• Corruption

• Moral ambiguity

• Chaos vs. order

• Identity and relationship politics

• Dubious/problematic relationship between parent and grown child

• Sexual symbolism/fetish

• Innovative narrative structure

Your paper should be MLA formatted with a Works Cited/Bibliography including the films, class texts and any other sources referenced or reviewed even if you don’t quote from them.

Cine 23a Final Exam

The two themes of changing identities and criminal behavior are two of the many motifs Alfred Hitchcock has explored during the trajectory of his career. The themes have evolved over the years and it can be seen comparing older films to Psycho (1960, Paramount) and Marnie (1964, Universal).

Criminal behavior is a theme that Hitchcock has used since the beginning of his career. In earlier years Hitchcock had criminal behavior involving espionage and war. In The Thirty-Nine Steps (1935) there is the killing of Anabelle and tracking down to kill Hannay so that a message can be taken out of the country through Mr. Memory. In The Lady Vanishes (1938) Miss Froy is kidnapped in order to be murdered so as to stop her hidden political message memorized in a tune. In Notorious (1946, Selznick, RKO) Alicia Huberman is being killed to protect the secret of uranium ore the Nazi’s were sourcing in Brazil.

In Psycho (1960, Paramount) and Marnie (1964, Universal) the criminal activity is very personal coming from a dark psychological place. There isn’t a global event but a personal tragedy that creates a psychological reason for the individual committing these crimes.

In the film Psycho (1960, Paramount), Norman when young committed matricide and lost his sanity to the point of having a dual personality. He incorporated his mother’s critical voice and spoke out loud in her condemning tone to himself and dressed up like her. An example of Norman’s split personality happened when he receives a new lodger, Marion Crane, to his motel. He is attracted to her but knows in his mother’s part of his brain that she would not approve of it. He has an argument in his mother’s voice from the house where she says, “As if men don't desire strangers. Oh, I refuse to speak of disgusting things because they disgust me. Do you understand, boy? Go on, go tell her she'll not be appeasing her ugly appetite with my food or my son. Or do I have to tell her, because you don't have the guts? Huh, boy? Do you have the guts, boy? Norman: Shut up! Shut up!”

He then dresses up as his mother and kills the woman in the shower dressed as his mother. Mother doesn’t approve of a female stranger so she must be vanquished. The Mother-side repeatedly stabs her in the shower. The Norman-side then cleans up her mess and disposes of Marion and the evidence.

The shower stabbing scene “took a full week to complete, using fast-cut editing of 78 pieces of film, 70 camera setups, and a naked stand-in model (Marli Renfro) in a 45-second impressionistic montage sequence, and inter-cutting slow-motion and regular speed footage” (Dirks).

In the film Marnie (1964, Universal), there are deep psychological scars from Marnie’s past that led her into criminal activity. To save her prostitute mother from a sailor/client beating her, Marnie killed him with a fireplace poker. In her grown up years that caused her frigidity against men and kleptomania. She had a pattern that she repeated. She would work at a job until she had the chance to steal money from them. She would then move to a new town and do the same.

As she did when she was young, she feels a pathological need to protect her mom and so she sends money back to her mom after stealing it. Another theory about compulsive theft is that it is “a substitute for mature love” (Spoto 382). Mark Rutland in the film says “When a child – a child of any age – can’t get love, it takes what it can get, any way it can get” (Spoto 382).

Due to the blood that soaked the sailor during the stormy night, Marnie has phobias against the color red and stormy nights. These phobias were shown through clever cinematography in the film. An example is shown one weekend afternoon when Marnie works at the Rutland office with Mark. The clouds were grey when she walks in. The storm begins as they start working. The storm escalates and the lightning blinds the room, it’s as if we are seeing it subjectively through Marnie’s eyes. Then perhaps subjectively or really, the lightening begins having a red tone the color that traumatizes her. She yells, “The colors, stop the colors”. He replies, “What colors?” A branch breaks through the window and she gets into an altered state and become entwine in each other’s arms and he kisses her. He perceptively asks her after the storm, “What is it about colors that disturbs you?” She doesn’t understand and says, “colors? what colors?” Her prior trauma had transported her back to a her original crime in youth.

Changing identities is a theme used in Hitchcock films. In The Thirty-Nine Steps (1935) Hannay has to change identities to protect himself from being discovered while he is on the run. In Notorious (1946, Selznick, RKO), Alicia Huberman changes her identity from a Nazi daughter to an American spy. In Vertigo (1958, Paramount), Judy Barton changes her identity to Madeline in order to con Scottie.

In the film Psycho (1960, Paramount) and Marnie (1964, Universal), their changes in identity again go deeper than the earlier pictures. Their various identities are due to their deep psychological problems.

In Psycho (1960, Paramount), the police psychiatrist explains how he became his mother. Summarized, “Norman had an incestuously possessive and jealous love for his mother, so he poisoned both her and her lover after he discovered them in bed together ten years earlier. To wipe clean and obliterate the unbearable, intolerable crime of matricide from his conscience and consciousness, a remorseful, devoted and loyal Norman developed a split personality” (Dirks).

One scene where we finally see the two personalities is towards the end of the film when Norman dressed as his mother tries to kill Marion’s sister Lila. The Mise-en-scène in the fruit cellar is simple but effective: The mother in an arm chair, a light bulb and a door. Lila is in the cellar because she is hiding from Norman. She had come into the house to try to find and talk to Norman’s mother. She finds her in the cellar with her face towards the wall. When Lila taps on her back the chair slowly turns around and we see that it is his mother’s corpse. As Lila screams her hand hits the light bulb. We then start to hear the shrieking, stabbing-like music from the shower scene as Norman enters with a knife. Sam rescues Lila and we see Norman dressed as his mother, but the wig and dress start to slowly fall off. It is a nice touch to physically reveal Norman as the two people in one.

These are some cinematography notes that Janet Leigh wrote in a behind the scenes book about the making of Psycho. “The scene in which the mother is discovered required a complicated coordinating of the chair turning around, Vera Miles (as Lila Crane) hitting the light bulb, and a lens flare, which proved to be the sticking point. Hitchcock forced retakes until all three elements were to his satisfaction” (Leigh 87).

Spoto also notes, “Lila’s hand hits a suspended light bulb, and as we gaze at Mother’s empty eye sockets the swinging bulb cast shadows that give the illusion of eyes darting back and forth in mockery (Spoto 320).

Marnie’s everyday personality is a woman who loves horses and is a dutiful daughter, although a liar and a thief. She changes her identity each time she goes to a new job. She adopts a new personality by changing her hairstyle, social security, name and clothing. She also reverts to her frightened childhood self when there is a psychological trigger of knocking, storms or the color red. These signals were all present on the night the sailor was murdered and they haunt her.

An example of her reversion to her childhood self is shown cinematographically in interwoven flashes of red colored objects that frighten her and trigger a regression. These scenes are delivered in pure cinema without words or dialogue to tell the story in the scene. We see this when Marnie accidentally spills red ink on her blouse while working the screen also tints red. “Red dots are present on a horse rider’s shirt when Mark takes Marnie to the race track” (Mata). it causes her to want to escape. When on a hunt with Mark’s family, one of the rider’s has a red jacket. It causes her to ride away frantically and too quickly on her horse. “This sighting of the color red and her loss of control lead to the death of her horse” (Mata). She shoots the horse and afterwards says “There, there” as was spoken the night of the killing of the sailor. She has reverted back to that night again.

Through these examples we see that Hitchcock’s themes continued yet changed to more complex psychological thrillers. The crimes or changes of personality are based on psychological trauma. One understands the characters at the end of the films when the psychosis is revealed. This understanding of the troubled personalities and the psychological background is what changes in Hitchcock’s themes through his career. We get to know the characters that have various identities and commit criminal activities because we have followed their traumatic story. It gives us a sense of understanding and compassion toward them more so than in the earlier pictures.

  Works Cited

Dirks, Tim. “Psycho(1960).” AMC Filmsite. http://www.filmsite.org/psyc3.html . Accessed 8 Dec. 2016

Dirks, Tim. “Greatest Movie Plot Twists, Spoilers and Surprise Endings.” AMC Filmsite. http://www.filmsite.org/greattwists34.html . Accessed 8 Dec. 2016.

Leigh, Janet, and Christopher Nickens. Psycho: Behind the Scenes of the Classic Thriller. New York: Harmony Books, 1995. Print. pg 87-88.

Mata, R. “HitchcockCinema.” http://www.oocities.org/vogler10/marnie.html. c2000. Accessed 8 Dec. 2016.

Spoto, Donald. The Art of Alfred Hitchcock: Fifty Years of His Motion Pictures. New York: Anchor Books, 1992. Print.

Your FINAL: A

Feedback from Denah about my final. I had asked her if my use of pure cinema was correct.

"I don't see any issue with your use of pure cinema here discussing Marnie. One of the issues with Hitchcock and his use/reference of "pure cinema" is that it changes a bit through the years (like many things with him!). I always like to focus on the earlier manifestation and idea that it is communicating information to the viewer by purely visual means, that is - not reliant on dialogue or monologue."