The Birds - ITV 3 now

[Groucho]

I don't think you get it.

I really don't care whether Louise Brooks slept with Pabst and whether it was good. I also still fail to see how this is relevant to an appreciation of the movie.

You do have an arrogant tendency to use biographical guesswork about the private life of people to support your arguments, and this seriously puts me off your posts. I remember you hoisting a similar argument about García Lorca and Dali, correct me if I'm wrong. I am not a fan of Dali (I love García Lorca) but really (a) what gives you the right to analyse the private life of someone you don't even know, and (b) what on earth does your half-baked analysis of a person's private life have to do with their work?

No, you don't discuss the attitudes of a director in a straight-forward biographical way. You attempt a full-blown analysis of what you think went on in their mind, and you pepper it with gossipy details as if to strengthen your argument. This bothers me big time.

No, you are not discussing them as directors. You have just written something that sounds like it's straight out of Hollywood Babylon, you mention the words sexual and desire a few times, and you present the outcome as a director's outlook. Can you please point me to a few examples of Hitchock's reactionary attitude towards women, in his films?

About Lulu and Pandora -- different people can see all sorts of things in a movie. It is blatantly clear that our views differ enormously and I doubt we are going to agree any time soon.

Anyway, I'm off to watch the rest of Messiah of Evil now.

I can't remember saying anything about Dali and Lorca. Maybe I did. I don't like Dali much, but I appreciate what I do know about Lorca.

No, it doesn't sound if we are going to agree, but I'm not sure why you seem quite so het up about it.

 

[Groucho]

OK here is a text book feminist critique of psycho

On the other hand, from a woman's perspective it's one of the most
misogynistic of films--an absolute textbook case of a film totally built
around voyeurism and one woman, Marion Crane, subjected to every possible
kind of demeaning male gaze from that of a lecherous, rich old man, to the
menacing police officer behind his huge, impenatrable shades, to the beady
staring eyes of Norman Bates' stuffed birds, to the literal voyeruism of
Norman getting aroused by peering through a hole in the wall as Marion
disrobes. (To do so he has to remove from the wall a scene of Biblical
voyeurism Susanna at her bath being spied on by the Elders). And to cap
off the misogyny, in the end Norman doesn't eve get the blame for the
carnage he commits, it's his Mother who has to take the rap.

You can't simply dismiss such a view. For one thing the character, Marion Crane, is not developed much beyond her being there as a victim. When Hitchcock directed women he often merely told them where to stand etc. OK different directors have different styles, but he does often seem to have treated his women actors as dolls, in much the same way as Kim Kovak's character is dressed up by James Stewart's in Vertigo.

 

[Leica]

OK here is a text book feminist critique of psycho
[...]
You can't simply dismiss such a view. For one thing the character, Marion Crane, is not developed much beyond her being there as a victim. When Hitchcock directed women he often merely told them where to stand etc. OK different directors have different styles, but he does often seem to have treated his women actors as dolls, in much the same way as Kim Kovak's character is dressed up by James Stewart's in Vertigo.

Sorry if I appear het up, I've been re-painting a ceiling at home and it takes too long! Two coats of undercoat and one coat of paint later, just want to get done with it already.

The author of the text you quoted seems to narrow-mindedly define misogynism film as having a man look at or spy on a woman. This is an echo of the so-called male gaze theory, which was aimed at a handful of Hitchcock movies.

One issue I have with the theory about the male gaze in cinema is that it fails to take into account the fact that the audience can identify with a multitude of characters, or that women also watch films and identify with characters regardless of their gender. It also takes for granted that Hitchcock identifies with that male gaze because he is a man -- when it would just as well be possible that Hitchcock identified with a woman.

Not all women in Hitchcock films are victims, the majority aren't. In fact most of Hitchcock's films are based on one or more female characters. There are so many wonderful, fascinating, complicated and strong women in Hitchock. Two of my favourites are Nurse Agnes in The Man Who Knew Too Much of 1934, and Alida Valli in The Paradine Case. And I dare you to watch any of the Ingrid Bergman and Tippi Hedren movies and say that they are just standing dolls in them.

 

[Groucho]

Sorry if I appear het up,....Tippi Hedren movies and say that they are just standing dolls in them.

I don't entirely disagree in that I think the quote I happened upon views things a little one dimensionally.

I do think we have a very different approach to film interpretation though, even though we like a lot of the same films; Lynch, Hitchcock. (Though there are exceptions - the later Elvis films for e.g. ) I do have a soft spot for Freud (as well as Marx).

I don't spend a lot of time reading film theory and my posts are often not the result of some deeply considered point of view, but passing remarks.

 

[Leica]

I don't entirely disagree in that I think the quote I happened upon views things a little one dimensionally.

I do think we have a very different approach to film interpretation though, even though we like a lot of the same films; Lynch, Hitchcock. (Though there are exceptions - the later Elvis films for e.g. ) I do have a soft spot for Freud (as well as Marx).

I don't spend a lot of time reading film theory and my posts are often not the result of some deeply considered point of view, but passing remarks.

I don't spend any time reading film theory. I try to form an opinion based on some stuff I know, and mainly what I see. Freud got a few things wrong but he also made an awful lot of useful observations. He was a very good and engaging writer and was also very perceptive in his essays on literature, he would probably have interesting things to say about films too.

Theory is only good when it is based on experience (not my words) and this is where many critics fail.

The basic tools for understanding things are out there already, they are not complicated, and they are not always to be found in books.

I don't always want to explain why I like certain things, and I'm terrible with words. But I sometimes want to defend what I like when it comes under fire.

Passing remarks are fine with me

Just don't mention Elvis or argue that October was terrible because a certain historical personality did not get enough screen time (JOKE)