His Last Bow: Hitchcock's 'Family Plot'(1976)
Alfred Hitchcock is well known for cranking up the time honoured rules and norms that have sustained Classical Hollywood Cinema since its origin. Although he composed Family plot (1976), his last offering,
in the mould of a classical Hollywood narrative- it evertually unfolded as a conglommeration of fragments with the name of Hitchcock all over them. Here we shall discuss one of the crucial components of the Classical Hollywood narrative, namely symphony/harmony, and how it is geared when Hitchcock is on the wheel.
in the mould of a classical Hollywood narrative- it evertually unfolded as a conglommeration of fragments with the name of Hitchcock all over them. Here we shall discuss one of the crucial components of the Classical Hollywood narrative, namely symphony/harmony, and how it is geared when Hitchcock is on the wheel.
While responding to an earlier scene or sequence, classical narrative endorses symmetry as a strategy, to keep the chain of causality intact. All questions posed gain satisfying answers, and the end appears as a neat closure, yielding no further signs of discrepancy. Critics like Raymond Bellour, Robin Wood, Michael Walker and others have credited Hitchcock for bringing to classical narrative his trademark sleight of hand, intensification a notch higher. Robin Wood in his essay on Blackmail, Hitch's first sound film in 1929, highlighted two basic principles of 'classical realist narrative': 1. '...to reinforce and validate the patriarchal order and its subordination of women.' 2. '...symmetry (especially of the beginning and end-"the end answers the beginning") and closure(the resolution of all the narrative threads and moral issues, the restoration of order, the reaffirmation of a set of values, embodied in a system of rewards and punishments of which marriage and death are, respectively, privileged instances)'. He also argues that the distinction between these two is too feeble to sustain, eventually disappearing and tying symmetry and closure inevitably to the reestablishment of patriarchy. The transgression/ perversion in the very beginning dislodges the moral compass of the film's world, sets the narrative in motion, and leads toward a climax, a tug of war between the good and the bad, or the relatively good and the bad, only to reclaim the realm for the right one. The end is there to ad(/re)dress the beginning, hence the parallel between the end and the beginning. But Wood also insists that symmetry never mimicks the earlier order. It reshapes it. We sense that something has been perceptibly rearranged and reoriented. Wood claims that "many actual narrative can be argued to work in this way. Many more, in which closure appears complete are characterized by irony or dissonance that makes possible for the spectator a critical distance." In Family Plot, I shall argue, this critical distance has been achieved by quantitatively escalating the signposts of semblance, between two couples who are at the centrepiece of the narrative. I will return to this point afterwards.
Inspired by a Victor Canning novel called Rainbird Pattern and scripted by Ernest Lehman(North by Northwest), Family Plot is plotted around a missing heir on whom the riches of Rainbird family is to be bestowed. Madam Blanche, a fraudulent psychic assures aging Julia Rainbird to find this once disowned and then adopted nephew of hers for a handsome reward of ten thousand dollars. She sets out with her conman cab-driver boyfriend to locate this inheritor, namely Eddie Shoebridge and give him the good news. Here comes the Macguffin. We know who Eddie Shoebridge is, we know he is a crooked criminal who has killed his adoptive parents and faked his own death to live a new life of debauchery and crime. Therefore, imminent in the quest of Blanche and her boyfriend is a fatal end (which fortunately is averted). Like Psycho we have here a prehistory of Eddie Shoebridge's (now Arthur Adamson) violence that is possibly oedipal in nature. We have a couple as detectives who are after a misleading clue or in this case, a violent truth of which they have no prior knowledge. And most importantly the knowledge is withheld from the investigating couple by the director himself and disclosed to the audience from the very beginning. This is the typical Hitchcockian narrative system Bellour alludes to in his essay on Psycho. But where Family Plot turns away from generic Hitchcocjian tropes is that it does not have a guilty woman at the centre, whose sexuality would be the source of violence and who has to be subdued to bring back equilibrium, rather the opposite. The female lead Blanche Tyler, played jovially by Barbara Harris, is closer to Vera Miles' character in Psycho rather than Janet Leigh's Marion Crane in terms of how she mobilizes the narrative. Jonathan Rosenbaum called Trouble with Harry, a clearcut gem in Hitchcock's otherwise bloodstrewn oevre, "an oblique commentary on – and critique of – his more “official” classics". Same can be argued for Family Plot, that it selfconsciously critiqued gender relations in Hitchcock's erstwhile canonical outputs. I shall try and discuss how the narrative of Family Plot approximates this shift in its form.
In symmetrical canvas of Family Plot's narrative Hitchcock weaves two couples and their trajectory quite deftly. The four principals are presented equally in the promotional trailer, without privileging a single one or two than the rest. Hitchcock's own voice described their deviousness in an ironic business-as-usual manner ('There is a medium in the family plot, she is a fake'(Blanch Tyler); 'There is a thief in the family plot' (Eddie Shoebridge/Adamson);'There is a kidnapper in the family plot' (Shoebridge's partner in crime, Fran); 'There is even a conman in the family plot' (George Lumley)) without any hint of where they stand in the moral spectrum of the story. Hitchcock himself professed to a press conference that what appealed to him was not the 'kidnapping and all' but the 'plot structure' which he described as 'a triangle without a base', the two sides, two unrelated elements rising to meet at the apex, which is concomitant with the climactic showdown between the two couples. The impending meet between the two and its impact are foreshadowed in the end of the first sequence when Fran crosses the path of Blanche and George. The semblance between the two is forged by staging of the characters (they are often framed in two shots within a motor vehicle, driven by the male partner) and dialogue (both have natural grasp over innuendos).
The fact that both have one dominant partner and they are not of same sexual category is important here in validating the opposition that is present between the beginning and the end. I have chosen these two sequences to elucidate that Hitchcock's last film, a minor according to many, allows a female dominant to gain control over the narrative in the end and invert the gender equation that existed in the beginning of the film.
The first sequence (fragment of a sequence) begins after Adamson and Fran has returned collecting a diamond as ransom. We see them in their posh interior, interacting in the kitchen. As the conversation goes on, Eddie goes outside the room. The next shot shows him unpacking the jewel, admiring it without voicing his admiration and then approaching toward the stairs. We switch back to the kitchen, follow Fran who is oblivious of where Eddie has hidden the jewel. When she askes about it, Eddie as if acknowledging the spectator's presence, replies,"Where everyone can see it." And the camera in a dolly-and-crane shot swoops on to the chandeliar dominating the middle of the frame. As it comes closer, we discover the coveted object hanging amid crystals by means of a mere cellotape. The narrative opens up its leeways to the spectator, disclosing the secret that is known only to Eddie and nobody else in the diegetic world of the film. This gesture makes the spectator a close confederate of the narrator who will now taunt the former by not foretelling how the jewel would be discovered by two bumbling amateurs. Eddie has the upper hand now, and will do so up until the encounter in the end. His female counterpart is kept ignorant of where the diamond is.
The second sequence comes in the end. After Blanche has been rescued by George and the two culprits have been trapped in their own cage for good, the former two discuss about the prospect of reward, and as George mentions the diamond, Blanche suddenly moves into a trance state, goes upstairs from the basement, and apparently guided by her otherworldly alter-ego, she traces the diamond on the chandelier. George, dumbfounded at first, manages to acknowledge her as a genuine psychic and leaves temporarily to call the police and Mrs Rainbird. Camera frames Blanche Tyler in a medium-close shot and follows her sqautting on the stairs. Then she looks through the camera to the audience and winks.
It is a castrating gesture, and I will elaborate why so. Although we knew beforehand where the diamond was hidden, it is not sure how she came to know it. She might have overheard the other two talking about it, but it is not on screen. What we have is speculation, for want of knowledge. Suspense thriller revolves around the promise of offering explanation, unwinding of all knots. But Blanche's sweet little gesture communicated to us nothing but her domineering over the closure, a closure that is incomplete, summing up the narrative only partially. On the other hand the scene is a total reversal of the earlier sequence where the male superior between the other couple has concealed the truth from his female minion, whereas here the female psychic possesses power/knowledge that outwits her male counterpart. We also need to keep in mind that it was her eyes that gave her away as a fake (in the eyes of the audience) in the first seance sequence.
Therefore it can be discerned that with a single gesture of mystification Hitchcock is attempting to knit a number of threads that have come before, and to force a hierarchy among the characters of the film in terms of intelligence and wit. That it has beeen achieved skillfully by employing symmetrical allusions, parallels and oppositions, is quite evident from this analysis.
Inspired by a Victor Canning novel called Rainbird Pattern and scripted by Ernest Lehman(North by Northwest), Family Plot is plotted around a missing heir on whom the riches of Rainbird family is to be bestowed. Madam Blanche, a fraudulent psychic assures aging Julia Rainbird to find this once disowned and then adopted nephew of hers for a handsome reward of ten thousand dollars. She sets out with her conman cab-driver boyfriend to locate this inheritor, namely Eddie Shoebridge and give him the good news. Here comes the Macguffin. We know who Eddie Shoebridge is, we know he is a crooked criminal who has killed his adoptive parents and faked his own death to live a new life of debauchery and crime. Therefore, imminent in the quest of Blanche and her boyfriend is a fatal end (which fortunately is averted). Like Psycho we have here a prehistory of Eddie Shoebridge's (now Arthur Adamson) violence that is possibly oedipal in nature. We have a couple as detectives who are after a misleading clue or in this case, a violent truth of which they have no prior knowledge. And most importantly the knowledge is withheld from the investigating couple by the director himself and disclosed to the audience from the very beginning. This is the typical Hitchcockian narrative system Bellour alludes to in his essay on Psycho. But where Family Plot turns away from generic Hitchcocjian tropes is that it does not have a guilty woman at the centre, whose sexuality would be the source of violence and who has to be subdued to bring back equilibrium, rather the opposite. The female lead Blanche Tyler, played jovially by Barbara Harris, is closer to Vera Miles' character in Psycho rather than Janet Leigh's Marion Crane in terms of how she mobilizes the narrative. Jonathan Rosenbaum called Trouble with Harry, a clearcut gem in Hitchcock's otherwise bloodstrewn oevre, "an oblique commentary on – and critique of – his more “official” classics". Same can be argued for Family Plot, that it selfconsciously critiqued gender relations in Hitchcock's erstwhile canonical outputs. I shall try and discuss how the narrative of Family Plot approximates this shift in its form.
In symmetrical canvas of Family Plot's narrative Hitchcock weaves two couples and their trajectory quite deftly. The four principals are presented equally in the promotional trailer, without privileging a single one or two than the rest. Hitchcock's own voice described their deviousness in an ironic business-as-usual manner ('There is a medium in the family plot, she is a fake'(Blanch Tyler); 'There is a thief in the family plot' (Eddie Shoebridge/Adamson);'There is a kidnapper in the family plot' (Shoebridge's partner in crime, Fran); 'There is even a conman in the family plot' (George Lumley)) without any hint of where they stand in the moral spectrum of the story. Hitchcock himself professed to a press conference that what appealed to him was not the 'kidnapping and all' but the 'plot structure' which he described as 'a triangle without a base', the two sides, two unrelated elements rising to meet at the apex, which is concomitant with the climactic showdown between the two couples. The impending meet between the two and its impact are foreshadowed in the end of the first sequence when Fran crosses the path of Blanche and George. The semblance between the two is forged by staging of the characters (they are often framed in two shots within a motor vehicle, driven by the male partner) and dialogue (both have natural grasp over innuendos).
The first sequence (fragment of a sequence) begins after Adamson and Fran has returned collecting a diamond as ransom. We see them in their posh interior, interacting in the kitchen. As the conversation goes on, Eddie goes outside the room. The next shot shows him unpacking the jewel, admiring it without voicing his admiration and then approaching toward the stairs. We switch back to the kitchen, follow Fran who is oblivious of where Eddie has hidden the jewel. When she askes about it, Eddie as if acknowledging the spectator's presence, replies,"Where everyone can see it." And the camera in a dolly-and-crane shot swoops on to the chandeliar dominating the middle of the frame. As it comes closer, we discover the coveted object hanging amid crystals by means of a mere cellotape. The narrative opens up its leeways to the spectator, disclosing the secret that is known only to Eddie and nobody else in the diegetic world of the film. This gesture makes the spectator a close confederate of the narrator who will now taunt the former by not foretelling how the jewel would be discovered by two bumbling amateurs. Eddie has the upper hand now, and will do so up until the encounter in the end. His female counterpart is kept ignorant of where the diamond is.
The second sequence comes in the end. After Blanche has been rescued by George and the two culprits have been trapped in their own cage for good, the former two discuss about the prospect of reward, and as George mentions the diamond, Blanche suddenly moves into a trance state, goes upstairs from the basement, and apparently guided by her otherworldly alter-ego, she traces the diamond on the chandelier. George, dumbfounded at first, manages to acknowledge her as a genuine psychic and leaves temporarily to call the police and Mrs Rainbird. Camera frames Blanche Tyler in a medium-close shot and follows her sqautting on the stairs. Then she looks through the camera to the audience and winks.
Therefore it can be discerned that with a single gesture of mystification Hitchcock is attempting to knit a number of threads that have come before, and to force a hierarchy among the characters of the film in terms of intelligence and wit. That it has beeen achieved skillfully by employing symmetrical allusions, parallels and oppositions, is quite evident from this analysis.
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