Director: Alfred Hitchcock
Starring: Jon Finch, Barry Foster, Alec McCowen
This review by Matthew Kitsell
A look at Hitchcock’s last great movie
The 1960s found the career of Alfred Hitchcock starting to decline. Following the major successes of Psycho (1960) and The Birds (1963), the 60’s for Hitchcock became more problematic. Relying too much on very obvious back projection and unconvincing studio approximations of major cities, Hitchcock’s remaining ‘60s films, Marnie (1964), Torn Curtain (1966) and Topaz (1969), though fitfully entertaining, lack the pace, spirit, spark and vitality of his greatest work. Compared to the work of ultra-hip, ultra-modern new directors like Antonioni and Godard, Hitchcock’s films were starting to look and sound old-fashioned and outdated.
Frenzy (1972), Hitchcock’s penultimate film, has the old magic in spades, however, and now looks like the last brilliant gesture from the 72 year-old director. Frenzy is an exceptionally gripping thriller, containing some of Hitchcock’s most audacious and inventive film-making. It is also, all the way through, deliciously nasty. Frenzy inevitably evokes memories of Hitchcock’s classic run of British thrillers from the 1930s. Though made at the start of the ‘70s, Frenzy’s portrait of London seems almost anachronistic, a ‘30s-ish London filled with smoky boozers and chirpy cockneys. The seedy atmosphere, however, is more reminiscent of films like Michael Powell’s infamous Peeping Tom (1960) than The 39 steps.
Frenzy revisits Hitchcock’s favourite theme of an innocent man on the run from the authorities, but subverts it viciously. Former RAF pilot Richard Blaney (Jon Finch) is the prime suspect in the police manhunt to catch London’s infamous serial killer, “the necktie murderer”. Unlike his ‘30s counterpart, Richard Hannay from The 39 steps, however, he is neither charming nor witty. He has a filthy temper, is appallingly rude to everyone (including his concerned, well-meaning ex-wife), drinks to excess and though we find out early on that he is not guilty of the killings he certainly seems capable of them. His suave alter-ego (and best friend) is Bob Rusk (played by Barry Foster in a brilliant, icy performance), a jovial Covent Garden porter who happens to be the real killer. In a typically Hitchcockian touch, we find ourselves liking the gregarious Rusk far more than the bitter Blaney. In fact, it seems as though Hitchcock lost interest in the Blaney character to an extent during filming, which may account for Finch’s merely adequate performance. The third major player is the super-cool, utterly dependable Detective Inspector Oxford (Alec McCowen), the man in charge of the case. These three characters circle each other warily, as “Sleuth” writer Anthony Shaffer’s plot tightens and twists towards the brilliantly suspenseful final scene (and killer final line), when all three come together for the first time.
The film has that lovely, magical early ‘70s quality that is unique to British films of this period. The most memorable scene (and first major set-piece) is probably the first murder. Nothing else in Hitchcock’s canon quite matches it for sheer angry intensity; it is unnerving and protracted to the point of extreme discomfort. Hitchcock was clearly reveling in the new-found freedom of early ‘70s cinema, following the collapse of the Hays Production Code (this is the only Hitchcock film to bear an “18” certificate).
For Hitchcock scholars, there is a theme running through the film equating food with sex and death. Food is everywhere: much of the action takes place in Covent Garden food market, where Bob Rusk (the killer) works as a porter; a female victim’s naked body is dumped inside a lorry full of potatoes (initiating a set-piece that is both tremendously exciting and grimly amusing); Inspector Oxford is more terrified of his wife’s cooking than any of the horrors he might encounter in his professional life (a very funny series of scenes involving Vivien Merchant as Mrs Oxford) ; Blaney’s wife’s final gesture of kindness to her former husband before she is killed is to treat him to a first class dinner.
Following this, Hitchcock’s final film, “Family Plot” (1976), looks and plays like an American made-for-TV movie. Frenzy is Alfred Hitchcock’s last great film, and certainly his most compellingly vicious.
