The Great Alfred Hitchcock Rewatch: From Rope to I Confess

Hello and welcome to the fifth installment of the Great Alfred Hitchcock rewatch!  Today we are finishing out the 1950s and headed into the 1940s.  The movies that we're talking about today are four movies that you might not have heard of and one that you probably have.

Previous Installments

Intro Post

The Final Five Movies

The Wrong Man to The Birds

Dial M for Murder to The Man Who Knew Too Much

Here are the movies that we'll be talking about today, and as usual we'll be discussing them in the order that I saw them, which is reverse order:

Rope (1948)

Under Capricorn (1949)

Stage Fright (1950)

Strangers on a Train (1951)

I Confess (1953)

We have left the Greatest Hits stage of Hitchcock's career and we're in an experimental period.  Hitchcock had been a very popular Hollywood director in the 1940s, but this is when he started his own production company and took a bit of time to experiment with new techniques and story telling methods.  There is no gain without a little pain, so there will be some turbulence along the way.  But the bumps led to the Greatest Hits period and includes the flawless Strangers on a Train, so it all paid off.

It is also time for us to leave the world of color behind.  On today's list only Under Capricorn and Rope are in color.

Spoiler rating for this post: It's time for some spoilers!  I talked about the differences between the book and the movie for Strangers on a Train and gave away one detail about Stage Fright.  I put the spoiler talk between lines of 🚨🚨🚨 so that you can skip these sections if you don't want to know.  Anything not between the 🚨🚨🚨 lines is rated medium low for spoilers.  I also linked to a technical video on Rope that has full spoilers.

I Confess (1953)

General plot summary and trivia

We're in Montreal, and the movie opens on the aftermath of a murder of a man named Villette.  The killer is Otto Keller, who is a handyman at a nearby church.  Keller leaves the scene of the crime wearing a priest's cassock.  He returns to the church where he works and lives on site, and goes to the chapel.  Father Logan, a young priest, sees him there and Keller asks to make a confession.  They step into the confessional, and Keller tells Father Logan that he was discovered during a robbery and unintentionally killed Villette.  The scene abruptly cuts to Keller telling his wife about the crime, and saying that Logan told him to return the money that he stole.  Mrs. Keller is very concerned that Father Logan will turn Keller in to the police, but Keller reminds her of Catholicism 101: a priest cannot tell anyone what he heard in the confessional.

The next day Logan goes to Villette's house and finds a crowd of people outside saying that Villette was murdered.  A blonde woman comes up to Logan and says to him "we're free".  Meanwhile witnesses say that they saw a priest leaving the house the night before.  The police come up with a list of priests who were unaccounted for that night, and it stands out which one was at Villette's house the morning after.  The police start following Logan, who meets up with the blonde again.  They recognize her as Ruth, the wife of a prominent politician.

Everyone gets hauled in for questioning and the back story comes out.  Logan and Ruth were in a relationship before the war, which was before he became a priest.  His war experiences deepened his religion and decreased his interest in Ruth so he stopped writing to her.  She married the politician, and when he came home, they met up again out in the country.  A very convenient rainstorm came up, and they had to spend the night together in the only shelter available, which was a gazebo.  The next morning Villette found them.  Afterwards Ruth went back to her husband and Logan became a priest, and years later Villette figured out who they were and started blackmailing them.  Oh hey, the police now have a prime suspect!

Logan of course knows who the murderer is, but he can't say anything since he is under the seal of the confessional.  

I Confess was a passion project for Hitchcock and also for Joseph Breen, who was the head of the movie censorship board.  Both men were Jesuit Catholics, and they were both very concerned about getting the details correct.  Censorship at the time had a bigger role than just taking the naughty stuff out, it was also focused on portraying religion and institutions in a respectful light.  

For censorship reasons, two key plot points had to be changed.  In the play that the movie was based on, Logan and Ruth were being blackmailed because they had a child together during Logan's pre-priest days, and Breen was clear that there would be no priest kids on his watch, so the child was dropped from the story.  The play also had Logan being killed by Keller at the end, which was another no go for the censors. 

What I think of the movie

• Before: meh
• After: meh, but very close to a like

There is a lot to like about I Confess.  In addition to the whole concept of "what happens in the confessional stays in the confessional", Logan's character is dead on.  He is a good looking man who wasn't always a priest, but he is a priest now and he has no doubt in his faith or in his role.  He pays dearly for keeping the silence, but he never wavers.

There is an interesting technique where important moments of the story that involve Logan are told from the POV of other people.  It fits with the theme that Logan cannot speak, and it seems that he isn't represented in these conversations.  We stay in the confessional just long enough for Keller to tell Logan about the crime, but the aftermath of Logan telling Keller to return the money is told by Keller to his wife.  It raises the question: did Logan tell Keller to give back the money and not be bothered about the murder, or did he tell Keller to return the money and turn himself into the police but Keller decided not to follow that part of the advice?  The other place where this shows up is when the relationship between Logan and Ruth is recounted.  The story of the relationship is told entirely by Ruth, and it's an idealized view where everything is in soft focus, slow motion, and with soft lilting music.  It brings up the question if the relationship was really that great.

The things to dislike about I Confess is that there isn't much of a plot to back up the terrific setup, and the story is weakened by the censorship cuts.  Without the child, there is no reason for the two former lovers who are now married/in the priesthood to meet or to have a connection.  The motive for the blackmail is laughable - Villette is going to tell everyone that he knows Logan and Ruth spent the night together years ago with no proof?  A little more time in the writers' room could have fixed these issues, and it's too bad that didn't happen.

Is there a MacGuffin? No

Does anyone get handcuffed in the movie?  No

Is there a Wrong Man theme?  Big time

Is it set in/filmed in the Bay Area?  No, but in lieu of that it was filmed on location in Montreal so the setting should be familiar to anyone who knows the city.  As an added bonus, Ruth's husband is a politician so the Montreal Legislative building makes an appearance in the movie! 

Does a character have Mommy Issues?  No

Are there elements of the movie that are similar to other Hitchcock movies?  Yes!  The wrong man theme is a frequent Hitchcock subject, going all the way back to 1926's The Lodger.  There is a very similar feel of hostility when the lead character in The Lodger is caught by the crowd and when the police release Logan into a crowd outside the courtroom with no protection.

Looking forward, I Confess is a close cousin to The Wrong Man.

Actors of note, left handed actors, and actors that were frequent Hitchcock fliers: 

• Montgomery Clift as Father Logan, who is one beautiful man.  If you get nothing else out of this post I hope you will watch a Montgomery Clift movie.
• Dolly Haas as Keller's wife.  I didn't know that name before this movie, and now I'm obsessed.  She was a German actress who rarely worked after her marriage in the 1940s, but she was a friend of the Hitchcocks and agreed to do them a solid.  The big deal for me is that she is part of one of my favorite art stories of all time.  Her husband was Al Hirshfield, who was an illustrator for the New York Times and was famous for embedding the name of his daughter, Nina, in his drawings.  Dolly is Nina's mom!

Is this movie OK to show to middle school aged kids? Yes content wise, no for boredom issues.  However, Guillermo del Toro would disagree with my assessment.  I Confess was the first Hitchcock movie that he ever saw when he was a child, and it made an impression on him:

Rate the Hitchcock cameo!  Meh.  I could have used more.  He is shown walking the streets of Montreal very early in the movie just before the body is discovered.

Strangers on a Train (1951)

General plot summary and trivia

[For folks who have read the book...I'll get into the differences between the book and the movie in a minute.  For now just go along with what I'm saying about the movie, which is different than what you read in the book.]

Guy Haines is a professional tennis player/minor celebrity who is going into politics and wants to marry a senator's daughter except that he is already married to a very unlikeable lady who won't give him a divorce.  Bruno is a rich dude with a daddy who wants him to work for his living like everyone else and has threatened to cut off his allowance.

One day Guy and Bruno, who are strangers, meet on a train and strike up a conversation.  Except that Bruno has done his homework and knows about Guy's lady problems and steers the conversation in a certain direction.  Namely that Guy would be better off without his wife, and Bruno would be better off without his dad.  How about a little criss-cross - if Bruno were to murder Guy's wife and Guy was to murder Bruno's dad then neither would be suspected of the crime.  The only problem is that Guy is not on board with this fabulous idea.

Bruno keeps after Guy, but Guy just won't get off the stick and tell him to go ahead with murdering his wife, so Bruno acts on his own initiative to get things going.  Now he just has to get Guy to hold up his end of the bargain and murder his father.

What I think of the movie

• Before: love it
• After: love it

Strangers on a Train is top tier Hitchcock.  It's suspenseful, but it's also a ton of fun.

Before we go any further, let's talk about the differences between the movie and the book.  This is where we're going to do outright spoilers, so if you don't want that, skip over the 🚨🚨🚨 and the italic bullet points.

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• Let's start with a shocker.  The phrase "criss cross" which is so important in the movie is never used in the book.
• Book Guy is an architect, Movie Guy is a tennis player turned politician.
• Book Anne is a fashion designer.  Movie Anne is a senator's daughter.
• Book Guy lives in Texas, and the train of the title goes all over the country.  The action in the movie is on a commuter train on the east coast.
• Book Bruno is pretty much identical to Movie Bruno.
• In the book Miriam (Guy's wife) has a miscarriage.
• In the book Guy eventually kills Bruno's dad.  In the movie something else happens, which I won't give away even in a spoiler section.  It's a jaw dropping, oh so good moment of the movie.
• In the book, Bruno dies in an accident, leaving Guy alone to wallow in his guilt.  The book ends with the police finally figuring things out and showing up to arrest Guy, who simply says, "Take me."
• In the movie Bruno hatches a revenge plot against Guy, which does not go according to plan.  Bruno dies and Guy is completely exonerated and presumably free to live happily ever after as a politician married to a senator's daughter.
• Guy spends a lot of the movie playing tennis, which of course was not a part of the book.

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The question now is: which is better, the book or the movie?  I'll be the first to admit that the book is more logical and believable, but the movie is just so fun.  The way that Hitchcock executes the book's themes and the actor who plays Bruno put the movie in first place.  Of course, I recommend that you check out both the movie and the book and draw your own conclusion.

Is there a MacGuffin? No

Does anyone get handcuffed in the movie?  No

Is there a Wrong Man theme?  No

Is it set in/filmed in the Bay Area? No  

Does a character have Mommy Issues?  Yes!  As an added bonus, we have our first case of Daddy Issues!

Are there elements of the movie that are similar to other Hitchcock movies?  Strangers was an original for Hitchcock, but I feel like he must have been working on Dial M for Murder at the same time, since both stories share tennis players and proxy murders.

Adhoc tracking point: does the movie have implied gay or lesbian characters? Big time!  Bruno's obsession with Guy is glaring, and in return Guy seems to be a little transfixed by Bruno.

Actors of note, left handed actors, and actors that were frequent Hitchcock fliers: 

• Farley Granger is Guy, and this was his second of two Hitchcock appearances.
• Robert Walker is Bruno, and he absolutely makes the movie.  The only reason that you don't know the name is that he died shortly after the movie was made.  If you are looking for a sad story, take a look at his bio on IMDB.
• Leo G. Carroll is Guy's girlfriend's father the senator.  We saw him previously in North by Northwest, and we'll be seeing him again in our Hitchcock journey.  He doesn't get much to do here, but it's always good to have him around.
• Pat Hitchcock as Guy's girlfriend's sister!  She is Hitchcock's daughter, and we previously saw her in Psycho.  This was her second of three Hitchcock movies, and her biggest role.

Is this movie OK to show to middle school aged kids? Absolutely.

Rate the Hitchcock cameo! Love it!  He gets on the train with a cello at the same time that Guy is getting off the train.  This is one of many Hitchcock cameos where he carries a musical instrument.

Stage Fright (1950)

General plot summary and trivia

We're in London, and the movie starts with Eve and Jonathan speeding out in the country in Eve's car.  Eve is a student at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts (RADA), and Jonathan is a stage actor.  As they drive we go into a flashback where Jonathan recounts the events of his day to Eve so that both she and we can learn the reason why they're on the run.  He currently has a small part in a play staring the great actress Charlotte Inwood.  Jonathan is kinda but not really seeing Eve, and he kinda has a thing going on with Charlotte.  Earlier that day Jonathan was at home when Charlotte turned up at his house wearing a blood stained dress.  She told Jonathan that her husband found out about them, and they had an argument where he hit her and so she hit him back with the fire poker in self defense and killed him.  She is in a daze and can't figure out what to do next, and oh by the way they have a performance that night and the show must go on.  Jonathan goes to Charlotte's home to get a clean dress, and while he's there he ransacks the room where the husband's body is to make it look like a robbery gone wrong.  He is seen leaving Charlotte's house, so he is now the prime suspect and Charlotte has been all too happy to throw him under the bus.

Eve takes him to hide out with her dad, who is an eccentric but lovable character who lives on a boat.  Jonathan shows them the blood stained dress, and her dad observes that the blood isn't a splatter but was dabbed on the dress, so it seems like Charlotte may have been lying about what happened.  Dad also takes Eve aside and asks her what we've been wondering, if Jonathan is really worth all the trouble.  Eve says that he is, so dad has her back.

Well, someone needs to do something, so Eve steps up and puts her acting skills to practical use.  She goes undercover as Charlotte's maid in order to get the evidence that will prove Jonathan innocent.  Along the way she buddies up with Smith, who is one of the detectives on the case.  The only problem is that Charlotte is looking pretty innocent and Jonathan is looking pretty guilty, so Eve needs to up her game to unmask the killer.  She finds more than she bargains for in the process.

What I think of the movie

• Before: Love it
• After: Love it

Stage Fright isn't one of Hitchcock's better known movies, and that's a shame.  It has great actors in general and MARLENE DIETRICH in particular.  She had a long and spectacular career, and was at the age where everyone else in her position would have retired or stepped down to supporting roles because this was long before 50 was the new 30.  Marlene didn't do what everyone else did.  Her role is supporting in name only.  She steals the show but graciously makes room for Eve to share their scenes.  The story is fun, and there is an unusual-for-the-time plot device (which Hitchcock later said that he did not like, but between you and me I don't know what he's talking about - I love it).

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The unusual-for-the-time plot device is that the opening flashback is a lie.  Jonathan is guilty as sin, but that's only part of the story.  We believe him for as long as Eve believes him.

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Is there a MacGuffin? No

Does anyone get handcuffed in the movie?  No

Is there a Wrong Man theme?  Yes

Is it set in/filmed in the Bay Area?  No

Does a character have Mommy Issues?  No

Are there elements of the movie that are similar to other Hitchcock movies?  Not really.  We're on new turf here.

Actors of note, left handed actors, and actors that were frequent Hitchcock fliers: 

• Jane Wyman is Eve.  You may have heard of her as the first Mrs. Ronald Regan.  One of the reasons cited for the divorce is that he was uncomfortable with her success and wanted her to step back.  Just sayin' she made the right decision to ditch the marriage and stick with her career.
• Marlene Dietrich rules as Charlotte!
• Michael Wilding is Smith.  If you've seen a list of Elizabeth Taylor's ex-husbands then you've seen his name before.  He was husband #2.  We'll be seeing his name again in this post.
• I don't recognize the names, but there are a ton of familiar faces in the small parts.  Hitchcock helped himself to the best of the best of the great British character actors.
• Pat Hitchcock is one of Eve's classmates.  She was a student at the RADA at the time, and her dad hired her and her friends to play acting students.  This was her first of three appearances in her dad's movies.
• Alma Reville has a writing credit.  We haven't seen that name before, but we are very familiar with her work.  She was Mrs. Alfred Hitchcock/Pat's mom and was involved in all of his projects.

Is this movie OK to show to middle school aged kids? Yes

Rate the Hitchcock cameo! Love it!  Eve is walking down the street rehearsing as she's preparing to go undercover as the maid, and he walks past her and reacts to her talking to herself.

Under Capricorn (1949)

General plot summary and trivia

We're in 1830s Australia.  Sam came to Australia from Ireland as a convict, but he's served his sentence and has made it big in business so he has a lot of power.  His wife Henrietta is an alcoholic.  Charles is a young man who just arrived in Australia and knew them many years ago in the old country and senses that there is something else besides their tragic past that is making their lives a mess today, and that at least part of the problem is their shady housekeeper.  He gets to the bottom of what's wrong, but since they are "under Capricorn" they still have a heap of trouble to get through.

What I think of the movie

• Before: Don't remember it, but I think it was good
• After: I hate this movie

From the beginning, I found myself scratching my head and continually checking IMDB that this was in fact an Alfred Hitchcock movie.  All I can think is that he must have had a bunch of PTO to use up and had someone else fill in for him.  It's a sad story, and the moral is that it sucked to be Irish or Australian in the early 1800s.  I don't recommend watching this for any other reason than Hitchcock completism purposes.

Is there a MacGuffin? No

Does anyone get handcuffed in the movie?  No

Is there a Wrong Man theme?  No

Is it set in/filmed in the Bay Area?  No

Does a character have Mommy Issues?  No

Are there elements of the movie that are similar to other Hitchcock movies?  The housekeeper evokes Mrs. Danvers in Rebecca.  Other than that, nothing is even close, and that's a good thing.

Actors of note, left handed actors, and actors that were frequent Hitchcock fliers: 

• Joseph Cotton, who we will be hearing from again when we get to Shadow of a Doubt.  He was an amazing actor, but he must have felt the same way about the movie as I do, because he spends every scene looking like he's being embalmed.
• Ingrid Bergman, in the last of her three Hitchcock movies.  She never gave a bad performance in her life, which is especially to her credit here in a movie that does her no favors.  If you know anything about Bergman, you are familiar with her gorgeous Swedish accent, and for some reason someone thought it would be a good idea to have her do an Irish accent.  She pulls it off, but it's unsettling.  One reason cited for the failure of this movie is that she had a major scandal around the time this movie came out (she got pregnant and left her husband for director Roberto Rossellini, which is something that you Did Not Do in 1949.  After that kid she had twin girls, one of whom you know as Isabella Rossellini, so things worked out).  She did not work in Hollywood again for many years, and I think it's fair to ask if it was because of the scandal or because of this movie?
• Michael Wilding from Stage Fright is Charles.

Is this movie OK to show to middle school aged kids? If they like super weird and boring movies then sure.

Rate the Hitchcock cameo! Meh, he shows up in the background a few times early in the movie.  Why bother?

Rope (1948)

General plot summary and trivia

Brandon and Phillip are rich college kids who live in a splashy Manhattan apartment and have been studying Nietzsche and the Perfect Murder theory.  The movie opens with them in the act of putting theory into practice by strangling their inferior classmate, David, with the titular rope.  David dies, and they put his body in a large chest in the center of their living room and the rope ends up in various places throughout the course of the movie.  Brandon is thrilled with their accomplishment and is having the best day of his life, but Philip seems to be having a harder time with the killing.

What does one do after they've committed the perfect crime?  Well, duh, they have a dinner party to which they invite the murder victim's parents, his fiancee, another one of their friends who used to date the fiancee, and their favorite professor, Rupert.  They know that Rupert will be so impressed when he finds out that they've been living their best Nietzsche lives, and they regret not inviting him to be in on it.  

The party is a success.  The food is served on top of the big chest in the living room, and Brandon and Phillip act as surprised as everyone else that David never shows up, since that's so unlike him.  The only problem is that Rupert can tell that something is wrong, and he keeps asking them unsettling questions.  Hmmm, is Rupert really that much of a Nietzsche fan?

Rope was inspired by the real life Leopold and Loeb murder case in the 1920s and uses a bold "live action single take" style where the story happens in real time in the apartment and the camera moves with the actors.  At the time a reel of film was only 10 minutes long so the entire shoot was painstakingly planned in 10 minute increments and a lot of clever work was done to get make the cuts virtually unnoticeable and to get the camera to move.  Just to up the ante, this was Hitchcock's first color movie.

Normally I like to keep the videos that I link to under five minutes, but I thought this 10 minute video on the technique was really good, so here is my recommendation if you want to see more.  The video is full spoilers, but IMO there is nothing that could spoil the genius of Rope.

What I think of the movie

• Before: like it
• After: like it, very close to a love

Rope gets its fair share of criticism that the single take method makes the movie feel like a stage play.  I disagree: it's just my opinion, but I think he nailed it.  The movie takes place in one location and the action is people talking at a dinner party, but the story moves and the tension builds as Rupert figures out what is going on.

Is there a MacGuffin? No

Does anyone get handcuffed in the movie?  No

Is there a Wrong Man theme?  No

Is it set in/filmed in the Bay Area? No  

Does a character have Mommy Issues?  No

Are there elements of the movie that are similar to other Hitchcock movies?  This feels very much like a test run for Rear Window with the depictions of apartment life.

Adhoc tracking point: does the movie have implied gay or lesbian characters? There is nothing implied about it.  This was before you could say that someone was gay, so the movie uses a "show don't tell" approach.  The killers in the real life murder that inspired the movie were gay, the actors who play Brandon and Philip were gay, and there are a few mannerisms and a side comments to fill in the rest.

Actors of note, left handed actors, and actors that were frequent Hitchcock fliers: 

• James Stewart as Rupert, in his first Hitchcock movie!  He wasn't a silver fox yet, so he sports gray streaks in his hair so that we get the point that he is older and wiser than Brandon and Phillip.
• Farley Granger as Phillip, the less enthusiastic of the two murderers.  We previously saw him as Guy in Strangers on a train.
• The maid was also in Marnie as the office cleaner.

Is this movie OK to show to middle school aged kids? Yes

Rate the Hitchcock cameo! It's alright.  He walks down the street in the first shot of the movie, and then his silhouette is used on a neon sign in the background. There are limited options for a cameo in a single setting movie, so he did what he could.

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There you go, our latest batch of five movies!  Let me know which ones you have seen and what you think!

Here is where we will be going next time.  Our destination is1940s Hollywood and another Golden Age of Hitchcock Hits.

Shadow of a Doubt (1943)

Lifeboat (1944)

Spellbound (1945)

Notorious (1946)

The Paradine Case (1947)