Hitchcock/Bunuel

[dave jenkins]

Reportedly, when asked once who his favorite filmmakers were, Hitchcock replied that, besides himself, the only other director he found interesting was Luis Bunuel. In 1972, when Bunuel visited Hollywood, Hitchcock was one of a party invited to a lunch honoring Don Luis. During that affair, Hitchcock entertained the honored guest by providing an in-depth analysis of a scene from Bunuel's Tristana. Don Luis was, apparently, impressed.

Both men, near contemporaries, raised Catholic, made films that share certain motifs, ideas, pre-occupations. The different ways in which they approach this common material would make for an excellent program at one of our artsy-fartsy rep cinemas (if such places still exist). Were I curating such a program, I would arrange to have films shown in the following pairs:

Vertigo - That Obscure Object of Desire

Rope - Viridiana

The Birds - The Exterminating Angel

Marnie - Tristiana

Notorious - Belle de jour

Psycho - The Diary of a Chamber Maid

The first pairing, Vertigo with TOOoD, occurs for obvious reasons: the theme in both is male sexual obsession; Hitchcock uses one actress to play two roles; Bunuel uses two actresses to play one. Of course, Hitchcock's film is a tragedy, Bunuel's a comedy, but both stories are presented in a very caustic mode. To my mind, Vertigo is the most devastating film ever made. I also think TOOoD is the funniest film I know.

The second set naturally occurs because there is a rope motif in both films.

The Birds and TEA go together because both are about society toffs suddenly and inexplicably afflicted by fantastic occurrences. In the first film there are un-motivated bird attacks; in the second, a group of dinner guests are unable to leave a dining room although there is nothing physically preventing them from doing so. The problems cease suddenly and for no apparent reason. Neither occurrence is ever explained.

Marnie and Tristana are stories of women who manipulate the men in their lives. The women are also, to some extent, the victims of their victims.

Notorious and Belle de jour are both concerned with the idea that good things can come from prostitution.

Psycho and The Diary of a Chamber Maid both involve a sex killing.

Undoubtedly, we could go on and on making pairs. These films seem to speak to each other, and the conversation is worthy of our attention. At any rate, if I had to make my way to the proverbial desert island, and after I finished putting my Leone discs in my suitcase, there would still be plenty of room for works by Hitchcock and Buñuel. If there was any room after choosing from the works of those worthies, I'd then think about who also I could bring along (Herzog?).

[stanton]

Very interesting.
I read about Hichcock's interest in Bunuel, but never thought about real existing connections in their films.

[noodles_leone]

 

[Dust Devil]

Thanks for sharing!

[T.H.]

Interesting take, and I never realized the similarities between the two directors. Though I will say that Bunuel is someone that I appreciate less as I get older and Hitch more.

I really only like Viridiana and The Exterminating Angel, his work is too politically/intellectually dominated for my liking.

[dave jenkins]

My favorite is That Obscure Object of Desire. I watch it 2 or 3 times a year. The ultimate Old Goat meets the Ultimate Coquette. Perfect premise, perfect execution. The political stuff is all in the background.

That Obscure Object of Desire could be an alternate title for Vertigo. At the end of that film, it will be remembered, Scottie stares into the abyss below (and without vertigo). In the dark he can only look down on nothingness--the essence of Madeleine, a woman who never existed.  No object could be more obscure.

[T.H.]

That Obscure Object of Desire could be an alternate title for Vertigo. At the end of that film, it will be remembered, Scottie stares into the abyss below (and without vertigo). In the dark he can only look down on nothingness--the essence of Madeleine, a woman who never existed.  No object could be more obscure.

I think you have to nominate yourself for the Ebert award for Feb.

[dave jenkins]

I think you have to nominate yourself for the Ebert award for Feb.

The Feb. award already went out. But thanks, I'll put myself up for March.

Rope vis-a-vis Viridiana

The rope in Rope (really a cord) is present from the opening scene: it's the murder weapon. It gets tossed in the trunk with the body of the murdered man. Later we see that, incriminatingly, it is hanging out the side of the trunk; Phillip notices this and freaks out. Brandon chides Phillip for indulging in unchecked emotion and pulls the rope free. He then walks toward the kitchen, swinging the object carelessly, like a child's plaything (he holds the strand doubled), and finally deposits it in a kitchen drawer. The rope returns much later as the means for tying together a stack of books being given to the dead man's father: Brandon's final joke.

The rope in Viridiana is a jump rope that we first see being used by the maid's daughter while Don Jaime (Fernando Rey) looks on. The rope was a present from the man to the girl; presumably, it gives the old pervert a chance to look at the child's legs as she skips. After Viridiana arrives, Don Jaime observes his niece and the maid's daughter using the rope to skip together, skipping doubled. The jump rope is what Don Jaime uses to hang himself. The little girl reclaims the rope and is seen skipping again. Later, after Viridiana has started her community for the downtrodden, one of the bums acquires the rope to use as a belt to hold up his trousers. During the climax of the film, this same bum attempts to rape Viridiana, and we see very clearly that he unties the rope around his waist before making the attempt.

The associations of the rope with sex and death in Bunuel's film are obvious. Sex is also connected to the murder weapon in Rope. After the killing, Brandon lights and enjoys what seems to be a post-coital cigarette. At Phillip's prompting, he talks about how he felt while the murder was taking place: Brandon derived particular satisfaction from the moment the murdered man's body went limp. Thus death spasm and orgasm are conflated. Brandon and Phillip are, of course, homosexuals; the murder of David, the victim, is a way for the two to experience a three-way with an unwilling heterosexual partner. Despite Brandon's intellectual justification for the crime, the murder is very much a homosexual rape. The rope, the means of the assault, is therefore a substitute for the male member. The movie could have been called Flagellum or Dick. Some have argued that Hitchcock's use of masked and unmasked cuts to create the illusion of a film made from a single take is apposite for a film called Rope:  the film itself is a continuous celluloid strand. By general consensus, Hitchcock was a heterosexual who sublimated his desires in order to make films. On this view, then, Rope is Hitch's (2400 meter) cock.

[dave jenkins]

Psycho and The Diary of a Chamber Maid both involve a sex killing.

When I put those two together I had not yet seen The Criminal Life of Archibaldo de la Cruz. Now that I have I think it is better to pair Psycho with TCLoAdlC. Both films deal with a main character who is a sex killer--that is, motivated by sex (in Norman's case, when he is attracted to a woman Mother steps in and removes the temptation). Actually, in Bunuel's film, Archie is only a wannabe sex killer; circumstances conspire against him.

It's not just that the films treat the same subject, the films themselves have certain details in common. Both men are drawn to female attire, and in fact, both at times have worn their mother's clothes. Both films have an extended dispose-of-the-body scene (the one in Bunuel seemingly a parody of such scenes). Both films have a scene where a significant mechanical device is dumped into a body of water and, for a moment, appears as though it won't fully submerge. In TCLoAdlC Archie comes upon an insect and is tempted to crush it with the tip of his cane: he resists the urge. This rhymes nicely with the bit at the end of Psycho where Norman, who has completely lost himself in his Mother persona, notices the fly in his cell as he concludes his "wouldn't hurt a fly" monologue.

The amazing thing about the two films is that Archibaldo de la Cruz was released five years before Psycho. It is as if Don Luis both anticipated and parodied Hitchcock's film long before Hitchcock had even made it. This bit of telepathy would surely have delighted the surrealists in the 30s.

[cigar joe]

Interesting