Sunday, May 11, 2008
Alfred Hitchcock's first rule of directing was to treat actors like cattle -- and even in his own cameos, he was no sacred cow.
Aug 11, 1999 | The appeal of some of the recurring elements in Alfred Hitchcock's 53 films -- Bernard Herrmann's scores, Edith Head's clothes, the modernist blonds, all those hotel rooms and trains -- share a kind of lurid glamour. Watching "To Catch a Thief," "Vertigo" and "Rebecca" from this end of the century, it's shocking how shocking they are, how sexy -- sexual. From "Psycho's" opening post-coital scene in that cheap hotel to "Rope's" not-so-subtle homosexual buzz, Hitchcock's films are resolutely adult. Except for one glaringly childlike device: the director's own cameos. The cameos are eye candy, empty calories that nonetheless bring on a sugar high, and bliss, albeit temporary.
Why is that? Why is it so pleasurable, just when you're embarking on an evening of murder, to spy a round old Englishman flicker on the screen for less time than it takes to chew a Junior Mint? Take the problematic "Marnie," for example: Right before the viewer is thrown into such unsettling topics as repressed memory and marital rape, Marnie, played by the peculiar Tippi Hedren and described by the boss she's just ripped off as having "evil features, good teeth," marches down a hotel corridor with a bellboy -- at which point Hitch pokes his head out of his room as if checking whether the coast is clear. It is practically the only truly light-hearted moment in this heavy-handed, heavy-hearted film.
The Hitchcock cameos are fundamentally about pleasure. Just for kicks, they do not move the stories along. It's tempting to say they're not symbolic, that they're meaningless, and yet I think symbolism is the root of their appeal. Directors in general and Hitchcock in particular are inherent control freaks. They are the overseers, the bosses, the chiefs. Hitchcock wasn't just a commanding figure, he had a commanding physical presence. He was, in every sense of the word, huge. Part of the joy of the cameos is how inconspicuous he is on screen. Frequently, he's a bit of a boob. In "North by Northwest" he misses his bus. In "To Catch a Thief" he sits on a bus next to Cary Grant, who sits next to a bird cage. Could the man not drive? In the cameos, Hitch always plays a random everyman, frequently in transit to some no-doubt mundane routine.
A lot of other directors cast themselves in bit parts in their own films. But Hitchcock's wry humility -- no lines in no time -- is not the rule. Take a survey of most director cameos and the common thread is this: Directors are bossy. They spend all day, every day, telling actors what to do, and this impulse spills over onto the screen. The purest example is Francis Coppola's turn as a television documentary director in "Apocalypse Now." As Captain Willard (Martin Sheen) runs past Coppola's TV crew mid-battle, there are explosions and gunfire demanding his attention and yet Willard is only mesmerized by Coppola's camera. "Just go by like you're fighting!" Coppola screams at him, directing the war. "Don't look at the camera! It's for television!"
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