Alfred Hitchcock&#039;s Frenzy

Raymond Foery

doi:10.5771/9780810877566

Summary

After an unparalleled string of artistic and commercial triumphs in the 1950s and 1960s, Alfred Hitchcock hit a career lull with the disappointing Torn Curtain and the disastrous Topaz. In 1971, the depressed director traveled to London, the city he had left in 1939 to make his reputation in Hollywood. The film he came to shoot there would mark a return to the style for which he had become known and would restore him to international acclaim.

Like The 39 Steps, Saboteur, and North by Northwest before, Frenzy repeated the classic Hitchcock trope of a man on the run from the police while chasing down the real criminal. But unlike those previous works, Frenzy also featured some elements that were new to the master of suspense’s films, including explicit nudity, depraved behavior, and a brutal act that would challenge Psycho’s shower scene for the most disturbing depiction of violence in a Hitchcock film.

In Alfred Hitchcock’s Frenzy: The Last Masterpiece, Raymond Foery recounts the history—writing, preproduction, casting, shooting, postproduction, and promotion—of this great work. While there are other books on the production of an individual Hitchcock film, none go into as much detail, and none combine a history of the production process with an ongoing account of how this particular film relates to Hitchcock’s other works. Foery also discusses the reactions to Frenzy by critics and scholars while examining Hitchcock’s—and the film’s—place in film history forty years later. Featuring original material relating to the making of Frenzy and previously unpublished information from the Hitchcock archives, this book will be of interest to film scholars and millions of Alfred Hitchcock fans.

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Bibliographic data

Copyright year: 2012
ISBN-Print: 978-1-4422-4181-7
ISBN-Online: 978-0-8108-7756-6
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield, Lanham
Language: English
Pages: 188
Product type: Book Titles

1. Contents No access
2. Acknowledgments No access
3. Prologue: Over the Atlantic and Down the Thames No access
Chapter 1. Hitchcock in 1970: The Lion in Waiting No access Pages 1 - 6
Chapter 2. Property Values: The Hitchcock Standards and the First “Frenzy” No access Pages 7 - 12
Chapter 3. Working with Writers: Hitchcock and the Preparation of the Scenario No access Pages 13 - 18
Chapter 4. Working with Another Sleuth: Hitchcock and Anthony Shaffer No access Pages 19 - 31
Chapter 5. Brief Intertitle: Looking for a Lost London No access Pages 32 - 35
Chapter 6. Cattle Calls: Ruminating over a Cast No access Pages 36 - 46
Chapter 7. The Thirteen-Week Production: Mornings and Afternoons on the Set No access Pages 47 - 68
Chapter 8. Shooting the Signature Sequences, Part I: Hitchcock as a Master of Montage No access Pages 69 - 82
Chapter 9. Shooting the Signature Sequences, Part II: Hitchcock as the Master of Mise-en-Scene and the Moving Camera No access Pages 83 - 98
Chapter 10. Brief IntertitleLooking for a Lost Partner; or, “Hitchcock in Love” No access Pages 99 - 102
Chapter 11. Adventures in Postproduction No access Pages 103 - 110
Chapter 12. Releasing the Film: Creating a Frenzy around Frenzy No access Pages 111 - 118
Chapter 13. Critical Acclaim and Box-Office Redemption No access Pages 119 - 127
Chapter 14. The Response from the Academy No access Pages 128 - 135
Chapter 15. Hitchcock and Women, Hitch and His Women No access Pages 136 - 143
Chapter 16. Forty Years Later No access Pages 144 - 152
Postscript: Becoming Sir Alfred No access Pages 153 - 156
Appendix A: Frenzy Cast and Crew No access Pages 157 - 158
Appendix B: Frenzy Scene List No access Pages 159 - 166
Appendix C: The Entire Continuity Sheet for September 8, 1971 No access Pages 167 - 170
Appendix D: Frenzy Final List of Sequences No access Pages 171 - 174
Works Cited No access Pages 175 - 180
Index No access Pages 181 - 186
About the Author No access Pages 187 - 188