Gave them a second chance and they improved.

Gave them a second chance and they improved. Apr 11, 2017 15:54:15 GMT Doghouse6 likes this

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Post by Salzmank on Apr 11, 2017 15:54:15 GMT

Apr 9, 2017 5:56:12 GMT joekiddlouischama said:

Apr 8, 2017 16:55:01 GMT Doghouse6 said:

Thanks for your reply. What I was unsure of was whether it was the specific surprise element you found to be the most significant departure from Hitchcock's more typical construction, or the broader one of the film being essentially a whodunit, something the director made a point of saying he avoided. But he wasn't above inserting the occasional surprise mid-plot (Frenzy, Vertigo, Foreign Correspondent, Rebecca, for instance) or as a climactic revelation (Psycho, Stage Fright, Spellbound, among others).

Hitchcock certainly inserts surprise in the middle of Vertigo, but he still lets the audience in on the secret long before Jimmy Stewart's protagonist learns of it, thus rekindling the suspense. He really balances surprise and suspense beautifully—and daringly—in that film. (Some viewers, however, find Scotty Ferguson's naivete and failure of recognition implausible. For me, it works because Hitchcock cast the right actor for the role.)

Psycho offers a climactic revelation, but in terms of the film's visceral experience, one could argue that it is beside the point. I suppose that a full-fledged "surprise" would have been to not reveal (or strongly suggest) that Norman Bates was his "mother" until the very end.

Exactly. I wrote something similar above.

I find it interesting that he didn't have to reveal the twists early in these. I think the fact that he did adds to his repeated concept of the negation of surprise and emphasis on suspense. The source material for Vertigo, for example, reveals the twist at the very end of the book--something that Hitch decided not to do by adding the "letter-writing scene." (In fact, interestingly, even though he came up with the concept for the scene, he then had second thoughts about it, according to the Wikipedia article and to Patrick McGilligan's A Life in Darkness and Light.)

With Psycho the book, too, if I'm not mistaken, the twist isn't so hinted at as it is in the scene with the sheriff in the film.