Final exam: 2 sequences from Frenzy

Larry emailed me to confirm that you can write anything you want on that neon yellow sheet so long as it pertains only to Part IV: an outline for the Hitchcock essay is perfectly acceptable, and so are detailed notes on scenes from the movie that you have reviewed online.

Hint, hint!

Familiarize yourself with the editing and camera work in Frenzy, and compare it to similar editing and camera work from the other movies we’ve seen. The more detailed your evidence, the more powerful your essay.

There are two sustained sequences from Frenzy on YouTube:

The aerial establishing shot of London:

The potato truck sequence:

In addition, one Hitchcock aficionado has uploaded 8 particularly brilliant shots or short sequences that come between the murder of Babs and the apprehension of Rusk.

Now, imagine comparing Hitchcock’s editing of Rusk’s flashback to the Babs murder:

…to his editing of the shower sequence in Psycho:

In what specific ways has his technique changed? What does that change tell us about Hitchcock’s development as a director and editor?

I do not know what the formal wording of the essay question for Part IV will be, but Larry has said in lecture that it would be something like “How do the content and technique of Frenzy relate to Hitchcock’s earlier work?” This means you will want to write both about similarities and differences, with that little voice in the corner of your mind always asking Why is this similarity important? Why is this difference important? How does this analysis of Hitchcock’s penultimate film give us a more detailed sense of his achievement?

Email from Larry: Bringing Frenzy notes into the final exam

You can bring your FRENZY notes into the exam–but there can be no other notes (for any other part of the exam) written on the FRENZY page. You must use only the page distributed in class, and you will be expected to hand in your FRENZY notes with the exam. If there are notes for another part of the exam on the page of FRENZY notes, you won’t get credit for the exam.

Some (belated) notes about Essay 4

The Essay 4 average (37.5) was a tiny bit lower than the average for the first three essays (39.9), but if you compare Essay 4 to the first-draft average (34.7) there’s a noticeable improvement. This is great news! You’ve let a little Larry into your brain and you listen to it when it chirps questions at you—I hope it chirped aplenty as you wrote Essay 5.

Another possible explanation for the 2-point difference is that Essay 4 asked you to write about art forms you’re less likely to have written about before: even when you don’t know exactly what to say about “The Letter from Home,” several years of literary education have at least taught you how to write about it.

Casual movie-watchers are less likely to question genre conventions: if you know that a thriller is going to be suspenseful, why would you analyze how music contributes to that suspense? But this is what the essay prompt asked you to analyze: precisely how can music be suspenseful? Certainly we’re not held in the same kind of suspense when we listen to the Symphonic Dances from West Side Story: why should we be terrified when we hear a few violins playing high quick notes?

When you write analytical essays, try to approach every issue as though you were a child learning the material for the first time. Why have certain conventions solidified the way they have? How do artists’ choices respond to the aesthetic problems they face? What other options does the artist have and why did s/he choose the one that wound up on the screen—why, in other words, did we see Miriam strangled through her glasses and not her bracelet or shoes?

A strong Hitchcock essay

One of your classmates agreed to let me post this exemplary answer to Essay 4, Part 1. This is a model of artistic analysis and argumentation, though its phrasing can be at times unclear. Numbers in brackets refer to annotations detailed below the essay:

Cross Cutting Suspense

The five given Hitchcock movies convey the impression of suspense by using chiaroscuro and action shots that imitate what a person does when being pursued. [1] In the suspenseful scenes, the camera focuses on the person in danger and then switches to the object of that danger.  This imitates the frantically alternating scope of a person being chased who looks at where he or she is going and the pursuer.  The erratic camera motion conveys the sentiment of fearful flight to the viewer, and strengthens the viewer’s connection to the character and thus the viewer feels the same anticipating suspense that the character feels. [2]

The manifestation of this theme in 39 Steps is the train chase scene roughly thirty minutes into the movie.  The camera first focuses on the pursuing police as they board the train.  After five seconds, the camera focuses on Richard.  Another five seconds into the sequence, the camera focuses on the approaching police who are now on the train and this trend continues in the sequence thus until Richard escapes. [3] Like Richard, the audience is looking back at the police and at the various locations he attempts to hide and they share in Richard’s suspense.

In North by Northwest, the final ten minutes of the movie feature the same camera technique of rapid alternating between the pursued and the pursuer.  As Thornhill and Eve descend the perilous Mount Rushmore, the camera alternates focus between the couple and the pursuing spies.  Hitchcock changed the pace of this camera trick partially.  Because this point of the movie also serves as the set up for the permanent romantic relationship between Thornhill and Eve, it is essential that the camera focuses on the two of them to emphasize their growing romantic relationship.  Therefore, in order to achieve both of these objectives, the shot remains focused on Thornhill and Eve longer than it was focused on Richard in the train chase scene in 39 Steps. [4]

Psycho uses this technique in order to build suspense deceive the viewer into thinking that Marion is the main character.  In the used car dealership the focus switched between Marion and the pursuing police officer.  While Marion is not physically moving, anywhere the same sentiment of suspense is conveyed by the alternating camera focus.  The rate of cross cutting  is the same as the comparatively more kinetic scene in 39 Steps so it is even more disturbing because the audience is given a very manic attention to a danger that is not apparent which illustrates the neurotic behavior of an insane person’s mind. [5]

Hitchcock uses the alternating shots technique to help make the general point in The Birds.  The general point in The Birds is that humanity’s ignorance of the damage it is doing to nature may come back to haunt it. [6] The jungle gym scene conveys this idea as well as builds suspense.  The focus at the beginning of the scene is the woman however; the humans are not the protagonists of The Birds.  The camera peers at the jungle gym showing a single crow. The woman is oblivious to the danger the audience sees because she is too concerned smoking her cigarette.  The suspense silently augments, along with the number of crows, behind the woman until the birds begin to chase her and the children.  Here the suspense was to help establish dramatic irony which is relevant since human ignorance is the main idea in The Birds.

Strangers on a Train feature a sequence that most directly shows this technique as a means to develop suspense. [7] The tennis scene already is set on a suspenseful pretense since the plot is approaching the climax.  The tennis scene itself mirrors the conflict between Guy and Bruno.  The camera shifts between Guy and his opponent and Guy and Bruno’s situation.  The double competition awareness doubles the suspense because the audience is concerned with two contests.  The tennis match is a metaphor for the race between Bruno and Guy to be proven not guilty.

Alfred Hitchcock employs the film technique of alternating camera’s focus in order to imitate the human instinct of looking forward and back while being chased. [8] By being conscious of basic human psychology, Hitchcock can tap into the survival instincts that make people anxious and scared.  Thus, he can use psychology to create fictional stories that are as scary as a real danger.

Annotations:

1. This is an almost perfect first sentence. The author answers the question (“How does Hitchcock create suspense?”) with terms that lead into the lengthier analysis that follows. (That said, there isn’t reference to chiaroscuro later in the essay, so I’m not really sure why that’s there.)
2. The thesis statement at the end of the introduction predicts the result of the essay’s analysis and foreshadows the conclusion. It also suggests another layer of analytical work that the reader should expect.
3. The essay dives into its analysis with virtually no discussion of context: because the reader is familiar with the text in question, little setup work is needed. Notice, also, that the analysis is extremely focused: the analyst counts the number of seconds that pass for each shot.
4. The analysis of North by Northwest occurs entirely as a comparison with the analysis of The 39 Steps. By focusing on comparison, the author can highlight significance differences.
5. The analysis of Psycho goes a step further than the analysis of North by Northwest and The 39 Steps by introducing a new theory of suspense: the role of viewer sympathy in Hitchcock’s evocation of suspense. This sort of ramping-up helps your reader move from comparatively simple ideas to comparatively sophisticated ideas: this essay naturally builds from a set of simple readings to a set of increasingly sophisticated readings of these movies.
6. In the fourth body paragraph, the author begins to connect the camera techniques Hitchcock uses to the meaning of his movies: the cross-cutting that simply helped heighten suspense in the analysis of the preceding three films now helps uncover the thematic meaning of The Birds.
7. Although this essay is broadly chronological, it chooses to end with Strangers on a Train because this movie is, according to the author, the clearest demonstration of Hitchcock’s use of cross-cutting. In the same way that the essay builds from simpler to more sophisticated ideas, it also builds toward the clearest possible demonstration of its sophisticated argument.
8. Now that the essay has laid out its examples, it seeks to generalize a theory that helps explain these examples. As predicted by the introduction, these theories are generally psychological.

Email from Larry: Essay 4 due date postponement

Because of the difficulty of finding access to the Hitchcocks, we’ll postpone getting Essay #4 in till Tuesday morning at discussion.

Email from Chris: Our Hitchcock movies, online

• The 39 Steps
• Strangers on a Train
• North by Northwest (divided into 4 parts)
• Psycho (click on “Play” next to “Watch full”)
• The Birds (divided into 3 parts)

Re-watching this week’s movies

If you would rather not wait to review the movies we watched this week—and I have no idea what the schedule is for making them available online—you have a few options. Your main choice, I think, is to get the movies from the University libraries:

• The 39 Steps (Memorial Library room 443)
• North by Northwest (College Library)
• Psycho (College Library)

(The University libraries do not have Strangers on a Train or The Birds.)

If you’re willing to pay to rent the movies, you might try Four Star Video (315 N. Henry St., just off State St.): I’ve never been there, but Larry goes there all the time, and most likely rented all the Hitchcock we saw this week from them… this might mean that he still has those movies checked out, but it’s worth giving them a call.

The free and easy but comparatively ineffective route is to look for clips and stills through Google. Certain more famous sequences are likely to be online, but this dooms you to writing about the same moments that everyone else will be writing about. If you focus on a slightly more difficult technique, e.g. composition or deep focus shots, you might still be able to write something new even by working with freely-available material.

Finally, remember that your grade comes from your analysis of scenes rather than from your exact recall of the scenes themselves.

Points and grading for essay 4

Because essay 4 is split in two uneven parts, the score will be as well:

• Part I (Hitchcock analysis) = 2½ pages = 35 points
• Part II (Bourne analysis) = 1 page = 15 points

In both parts I am grading for thoughtful analysis. What technical details do you observe in these artworks, and why are those details important?

Here are links to previous posts on this essay:

• Larry’s advice about part I (Hitchcock)
• Some strategies for writing part I
• How to craft part I as an argument
• Notes on part II (Bourne)

Email from Larry: Essay 4, part I

I also have two posts on this part of essay 4, one discussing the big picture and one looking at strategies and approaches. Please read through and digest all these suggestions about approaching the essay, and don’t hesitate to email me if you have any questions.

1. Since we couldn’t see FRENZY today, please instead use THE BIRDS for Essay #4.

2. To prepare for writing Essay #4, Part I, I’d do the following:

• Reread the directions for the essay on the class handout.
• Choose your sequences. Watch each one at least three times, taking solid notes on what’s happening. (Remember: A sequence has a beginning, middle, and end; it can consist of shots or scenes or both; it generally lasts between five to ten minutes, and it often starts with a change in location and ends with something big happening. A perfect model of the sequence is thus the airplane sequence in NBNW.)
• Your primary job is NOT to describe what happens in the sequence–that is, not to list everything that goes on. (Assume we already know.) You’ll need to include some description, but the focus of the essay is an argument: We want you to come up with an argument that you state as a thesis sentence.
• The thesis sentence should do the following: Make a claim based on something you’ve observed in all five sequences.

Since you’re discussing similarities and differences, BE SURE TO SAY WHAT KIND OF SIMILARITIES OR DIFFERENCES YOU’RE LOOKING AT.

That is, a bad thesis would say “There are many similarities [or differences] in the five sequences.” A good thesis would say what KIND of similarities or differences you’ve observed. And it would turn that statement into an argument that you have to prove.

Here’s a thesis based on similarities: “Hitchcock uses subjective point-of-view shots in all five sequences because in each he wants us to experience the main character’s fears.”

Here’s a thesis based on differences: “Although danger threatens the main character in all five sequences, Hitchcock employs more subjective point-of-view shots for women because he sees women as more prone to emotional extremes.”

Note that word “because”: When you plug it into a thesis, you automatically have to answer “why”–which you then do in the body of the essay.

For this essay, please put the word “because” into your thesis statement.

Again: For this essay, please put the word “because” into your thesis statement.

If your thesis examines similarities, before the end of the essay you should also discuss differences. Likewise, if your thesis examines differences, before the end of the essay you should also discuss similarities.

One final request: DO NOT write an introduction; your first sentence should be your thesis statement. And DO NOT write a conclusion that just sums up your essay.

————

For more on how to write a thesis and shape the beginning, middle, and end of your essay, see the first chapter of WHAT WE OWE THE READER.

Rethinking Essay 4, Part I

Larry will probably send out an email explaining the Hitchcock essay later today or tomorrow, but I wanted to get some thoughts out there as well.

An earlier post lays out an approach to the Hitchcock essay. I’d like to rethink point #6, which asks you to

Make a stab at a big analytical argument: what do these techniques teach us about Hitchcock the artist? Hitchcock the psychologist? Hitchcock the commercialist? Hitchcock the social critic? (These movies stretch from just after the rise of Hitler to just before the fall of Saigon: he has a lot of history on which to comment.)

That is somewhat sloppily phrased. Here’s what I mean: you should treat this essay as a formal analysis.

A formal analysis asks you to do two things:

• Accrue data from closely analyzing a sequence, scene, or shot
• Use that data to make an argument

The trick is finding an argument to make. Here are several approaches you might consider:

1. Analyze a specific technique as it appears in all 5 films

Example: you might look at extreme long shots in all 5 movies. Ideally you would be able to find pictures of each shot to compare.

• How does Hitchcock compose them?
• How do these shots contribute to suspense? (Remember to define for yourself what suspense means: what, specifically, is being suspended?)
• How did Hitchcock’s use of these shots change over his career? How does an extreme long shot from 1935 differ from an extreme long shot from 1963?

In the conclusion paragraph of your essay, then, you would argue something like this: extreme long shots are important to Hitchcock’s development of suspense because X. (Maybe because they make the audience uncomfortable—we don’t know what we are supposed to be looking at. Maybe they limit the speed of a movie, or they limit its chaos—maybe extreme long shots suggest a kind of order, or at least a kind of context.)

An A analysis will connect Hitchcock’s technique to some bigger argument. For example, you might begin your essay by asking “How does suspense work? How can an audience that knows full well it is about to be tricked by a director—an audience that has paid to be tricked—still be tricked?” In your conclusion, then, you would argue that the technique you have analyzed helps explain the basic workings of suspense: “Because the extreme long shot fools us into believing ourselves part of some larger landscape, Hitchcock manages to trick an audience into suspending their disbelief and, hence, into believing his stories.”

(If you write on the extreme long shot you will need to come up with your own conclusion, of course.)

You could easily approach this question by using any of a number of techniques that appear in all 5 of the movies:

• Voyeuristic shots (including the audience’s voyeurism)
• Subjective point-of-view shots
• Shots using deep focus
• Shots with unbalanced composition

2. Analyze a specific sensation produced by all 5 films

Don’t pick a sensation that is too obvious, e.g. tension. If you pick a more subtle sensation, this approach will reward careful analysis.

Example: You might examine one moment from each movie when the viewer is made to sympathize with the bad guy and ask, “How—and why—does Hitchcock produce this sensation in the viewer?”

Larry has argued, for example, that the moment Marian Crane’s car seems to stick in the bog in Psycho we begin to sympathize with Norman Bates. How does Hitchcock accomplish this? How does his technique change over time?

As with the shot-analysis argument, the sensation-analysis argument would have to conclude by explaining why Hitchcock used this technique. How does it help explain what suspense is, for example? Or how does it explain what Hitchcock thinks movies are for?

3. Look at the politics of Hitchcock’s films

Think about the eras in which these films appeared: what was happening in 1935 (The 39 Steps)? 1951 (Strangers on a Train)? 1959 (North by Northwest)? 1960 (Psycho)? 1963 (The Birds)? How does Hitchcock use his films to comment on social and political changes in the world around him?

To write a political analysis of these films you would still need to examine shots, scenes, and sequences as a way to prove your point. If you want to argue for a critique of the Cold War in Strangers then you will need to point to a scene that makes that critique. (Perhaps the senator’s party, where politicians and their wives mingle with murderers.)

Your conclusion would argue something like this: “Hitchcock seems to have believed that movies bore such-and-such a relationship to politics”—perhaps movies shape politics, or obey politics, or act as a kind of gadfly that pesters the existing social order. Did the relationship between Hitchcock’s movies and the political world change over time?

4. Explore changes in Hitchcock’s philosophy of suspense

This is the most intellectually demanding of the formal analyses I list here, but if you can take on this question in 2 or 3 pages then you will be ready for pretty much anything we can throw at you.

Hitchcock was a master artist. Like all masters, he had deeply-seated beliefs about how art works. And, like all long-lived artists, his beliefs changed over time.

Think first about The 39 Steps: what was that suspense for? What was Hitchcock trying to change about his audience and about the world? How did he think suspense worked? And how can we see his philosophy of suspense exemplified in one shot, scene, or sequence?

Then start comparing movies: how is Strangers on a Train demonstrate a new style and philosophy of suspense? Why did Hitchcock make that change?

Your goal, in the conclusion, is to describe the arc of Hitchcock’s development—you want to write a sort of biography of his mind.