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Opening Shots Of The Lady Vanishes(1938) Versus Psycho(1960)

posted 3 years ago by ecarle (14979)
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Warner Brothers has put one new 2020 movie(Wonder Woman 1984) and will put all of its 2021 releases same day theaters and "HBO Max," a somewhat new streaming service.

Director Christopher Nolan protested: "Now some of our best movies will debut on one of the worst streaming services." (Paraphrased.)

I get Mr. Nolan's anger(exactly how will superstar directors like Nolan and superstar actors got the big percentage paydays they can get from movie theater distribution.)

But I disagree with him about HBO Max.

The channel is a bit light on the "original productions"(series, etc) but it is an absolute treasure trove of "movies from our past" -- from the silents through the 2010s, with wonderful trips to those decades I personally love -- the 50's through the 90s. HBO Max has a "Turner Classic Movies" section with Citizen Kane and North by Northwest in possibly permanent display(as part of a collection called "Film School 101."

And the channel is flooded with foreign classics from the 40's, 50's, 60s. I've done The Wages of Fear(a Clouzot movie from a book that Hitchcock wanted to film but didn't buy in time) and I'm looking to try Ikiru. They've even got Battleship Potemkin on there.

Anyway, they also have The 39 Steps and The Lady Vanishes and other Hitchcock films from the 30's and I tried The Lady Vanishes the other night and it was "educational":

It had been decades since I last saw The Lady Vanishes, and I forgot about the opening shot:

Black and white. The camera is high over the snowy mountains and valley of -- eh, I can't remember -- the Swiss Alps?. Anyway, the camera slowly pans left to right, left to right, and down -- from the mountains to the valley below, over and past a waiting train, over and past some tiny , moving people, then left over to a car driving up to a mountain lodge, left and over to the lodge itself, towards a window in the lodge...and then through that window and into the lodge itself, a reception room with people in it.

Sound familiar?

Yep, its the opening shot of Psycho -- 22 years early.

I suppose that a "harrumphing" critic (like Pauline Kael) could say "you see, Hitchcock just copies his old shots and gives us nothing new." Hitchcock puckishly addressed the issue by noting "self plagarism is style." I like that one because we Hitchcock fans LIKE to see some of the same motifs turning up from picture to picture...especially if they WORK. "From the farthest to the nearest" Truffaut said to Hitchcock about the opening of Psycho, "that's how a lot of your films open."

I'm hard pressed to catalog them. The Lady Vanishes(here.) Rope(but just from one street scene and directly over to an apartment window and murder most foul.) Frenzy(from high above the River Thames and down to a riverside political speech.) Topaz rather cheats the idea, given us a static shot of a crowd of Soviets watching a military parade with titles: "Somehwere in this crowd is a Russian official who is disturbed by this show of force. He will take action." Or something like that.

Am I missing any other skyline "farthest to nearest" shots in Hitchcock? Vertigo opens with a sweeping view of a chase across the San Francisco skyline, but not a "farthest to nearest" camera move.

Anyway, "The Lady Vanishes" and "Psycho" match up pretty directly -- high overhead shot slowly lowering, left to right, left to right, down, down down and into a window.

But with these differences:

The Lady Vanishes, made in 1938 for a British studio lacking American studio budgetary size, and "trapped in its era" uses "toy sized" models for much of this scene. The train looks like a toy. The sole car that we see is CLEARLY a little plastic toy evidently being pulled by a string to move left to right. And the "mountain lodge" is a toy model building(with its "window" being a rather nifty bit of technical mattework -- a process shot not unlike the shot of the Bates Mansion outisde of Cabin One after Marion's murder.

I wondered: did 1938 movie audiences actually BELIEVE that they were looking at a real train, a real car, a real lodge -- or did they see right through these little toys and think -- "well, that's the best can be done, I'll just get into the story." (This ties into my comments elsewhere about how I met some young people who didn't know that Arbogast's fall was done in front of a process screen; they "bought it, as is" as a real fall.)

And I remembered this: I first saw The Lady Vanishes on local Los Angeles TV in 1968, well launched into my "Hitchcock jones" (having seen Rear Window, Vertigo, North by Northwest, and The Birds, and having HEARD about Psycho) and I remember thinking this: "Boy, this movie looks PRIMITIVE. Its too old for me." And that was only 30 years after its release. Like the distance back to Silence of the Lambs from today.

[–] ecarle (14979) 3 years ago

While the opening shot of "The Lady Vanishes" may be locked into 1938 and seriously compromised by all those fake little toy models in it; the similarly structured opening shot of "Psycho" holds up magnificently 61 years later. I'm not sure how 1960 audiences experienced it -- did it just seem like a "standard" opening skyline shot? -- but I'd like to believe that they found the shot rather bleak and sad and ominous and PROFOUND(particularly with Bernard Herrmann's bleak, sad, ominous and profound music.)

Today --and for a few decades now -- the opening skyline sweep over "Phoenix, Arizona"(as spelled out in titles) has a DIFFERENT feeling: nostalgia. Aching, painful nostalgia. Nostalgia for a Phoenix that has long since been razed to the ground(maybe three buildings still stand from that 1959 shot) -- and born again as a Phoenix should be. Nostalgia for a far less populated, far more innocent America (even as this movie would rip that innocence wide open.) Nostalgia for the fifties and particularly for that dramatic "50's/60s cusp" as one fairly calm decade shifted into a decade that was gonna rock and roll us all.

In both The Lady Vanishes and Psycho, this opening "farthest to nearest" moving shot says something portentious(if a bit easy): "God-like, we sweep over and down and through a window and find people whom fate will today select out for a life-changing adventure." This was more "powerful stuff" in Psycho because "God"(Hitchcock) is choosing among the many buildings and many windows of a modern city (the pickings are more slim in The Lady Vanishes -- one lodge.) And also because when the camera in Psycho goes down and through that window...it finds a half-clad, sexy couple , post-coitus. We are in forbidden, private territory(and hardly for the only time in Psycho.)

[–] ecarle (14979) 3 years ago

I suppose the opening Psycho shot made manifest the tag line: "There are a million stories in the Naked City, and this is one of them." Sheriff Chambers himself, John McIntire, starred in that TV series, made around the same time as Psycho, and it had been a movie in the late forties.

ANY movie with a sweeping shot of a city -- or even a static one -- or ANY movie with a scene simply shot from a high place looking down at a city, summons up that realization that all of our "up close and personal, private lives" are played out as tiny creatures within the much larger frame of the city or town in which we live. The movies have exploited shots like this for years -- Psycho just did it with a bit more classic, bleak focus.

And actually, The Lady Vanishes cannot have this same effect -- because the "down, down, down, left to right, left to right" camera sweep is NOT over a large city. It is over a small place -- a village perhaps, but largely unseen. A train is introduced(the story will take place on it). And -- and this is not matched in Psycho -- when we go through that window, we will meet a GROUP of people, who will meet their fates as a group -- some will live and some will not(its a little bit like a disaster movie -- the "disaster" is Nascent Nazis.) Thus "The Lady Vanishes" has a different type of story to tell than Psycho -- a hit in its own time, and I might add, a "template" for one of the great gimmicks in movies: "They won't believe me!" Our heroine meets a little old lady who ...disappears. And nobody believes she existed. (See: Flightplan, with Jodie Foster.)

The sweeping opening camera shots in "The Lady Vanishes" and "Psycho" are, thus, not the POINT of their movies...just the introdution to them.

[–] ecarle (14979) 3 years ago

PS. Among the toy train, the toy car, and the toy lodge in the opening shot of The Lady Vanishes are "toy PEOPLE." By the stopped train. But they MOVE. Some sort of animation - and in every way predessors of all those "fake tiny animated people" in Titanic, Gladiator, and Poseidon(2006.) Hitchcock was there first.

[–] swanstep (2656) 3 years ago

I first saw The Lady Vanishes on local Los Angeles TV in 1968

The HD/Blu-ray restoration of The Lady Vanishes has really made it look like a new film compared to the muffled and scratched prints that were around when I was a kid in the '70s. Ditto The 39 Steps. LA TV in the '60s may have had a pretty good copy for the time but I'd bet the one you just saw is was lots clearer with much better sound and so on. The sfx shots may be slightly more exposed by the new clarity but they were actually pretty good for the time so have a certain quaint charm I find.

***I met some young people who didn't know that Arbogast's fall was done in front of a process screen; they "bought it, as is" as a real fall.***
It's always looked real to me too! But, heck, I'm from the Star Wars generation that was always completely happy to accept Yoda, Chewbacca, R2D2, etc. as completely real (even though I knew they were all either puppets or people in suits). It's a weird alchemy that sells fanciful shots or characters as 'real enough'. I know very well when an effect or shot isn't working or something just doesn't convince, but the converse experience (which isn't a million miles away from the magic of good acting) when the "real enough" bar is cleared is common at least if you're open to it. Some people *do* manage to talk themselves of having a good time by not entering into the spirit of things that'll allow stuff to be "real enough" for them.

[–] ecarle (14979) 3 years ago

The HD/Blu-ray restoration of The Lady Vanishes has really made it look like a new film compared to the muffled and scratched prints that were around when I was a kid in the '70s. Ditto The 39 Steps.

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We live in a miracle time of movie restoration, don't we?

Psycho, too. I've pointed out that there is(well, was) a clip from a 1972 Dick Cavett show of the Arbogast murder which looked scratchy and blurry and old(and sounded tinny) and made the 1960 Psycho only 12 years later look and sound ancient. Today , the print is all cleaned up, pristine with great stereo sound.

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LA TV in the '60s may have had a pretty good copy for the time but I'd bet the one you just saw is was lots clearer with much better sound and so on. The sfx shots may be slightly more exposed by the new clarity but they were actually pretty good for the time so have a certain quaint charm I find.

This HBO Max print was clean and clear...but the models at the beginning still looked like models. Again causing me to wonder: did 1938 viewers simply ACCEPT them as models? Or were they innocents who were actually fooled?

Its funny how I have that memory of The Lady Vanishes from 1968. I think I was still a "developing child"(mentally) and I had found the Hitchcock films on NBC and CBS to be smooth, modern, polished. The Lady Vanishes(on local KTLA Channel 5)...just seemed old to me. But I had started "collecting" Hitchcock movies and I watched it all the way through. It is a lot of fun...a real template movie for a certain sort of suspense. But it was lacking Bernard Herrmann and Technicolor.

I'll also say this. The "Psycho" clip on Dick Cavett may have look old and tattered, but I remember when I finally saw the film in 1970, I was surprised at how clean the images were and how rich the soundtrack was(weirdly, its the scene with the highway cop that I remember most clearly as looking and sounding good.)

[–] ecarle (14979) 3 years ago

***I met some young people who didn't know that Arbogast's fall was done in front of a process screen; they "bought it, as is" as a real fall.***
It's always looked real to me too!

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Good for you! In some ways, the close-up shot looks rather like a lot of Hitchcock: rather three-dimensional, with Arbogast's head rather "projected" out in front of the image of the staircase behind him so that it looks more like focus trick than a process shot.

And hey: who among us can say WHAT a man looks like falling down the stairs from that POV. Have we been there? No.

A stroll through the internet looking a still frames of that close-up are instructive. It doesn't look "fake" at all, and there is this weirdly humorous bit: while some of the "freeze framers" choose to freeze on the famous shot of Balsam in shocked horror(bugged out eyes, mouth , nostrils) OTHER freeze framers choose to freeze the frame a few frames earlier -- before Arbogast reacts in shock. The blood is on his face but he looks only mildly surprised. On screen, the "jump" from mildly surprised to horrified shock is less than a second. On the internet page...he can look mildly surprised forever.

[–] ecarle (14979) 3 years ago

But, heck, I'm from the Star Wars generation that was always completely happy to accept Yoda, Chewbacca, R2D2, etc. as completely real (even though I knew they were all either puppets or people in suits).

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Exactly. Its called "suspension of disbelief" in some quarters, but I think it is more than that: you WANT to believe those characters and that world, so you joyfully accept the effects.

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It's a weird alchemy that sells fanciful shots or characters as 'real enough'.

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Real enough. Yep, that's it.

I might add that while the Psycho HOUSE was used in many a TV series(Thriller, The Alfred Hitchcock Hour, Night Gallery), it never looked as moody and creepy and formidable as it did in the Hitchcock film. And some of this was because he instructed Saul Bass to help him make the house "creepier." Storm clouds floating behind it. The "busyness" of the shot of Arbogast climbing the hill to it. And importantly -- the camera angles on the house.

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[–] ecarle (14979) 3 years ago

I know very well when an effect or shot isn't working or something just doesn't convince, but the converse experience (which isn't a million miles away from the magic of good acting) when the "real enough" bar is cleared is common at least if you're open to it. Some people *do* manage to talk themselves of having a good time by not entering into the spirit of things that'll allow stuff to be "real enough" for them.

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"Talking themselves out of having a good time" applies, I think, to Arbogast's fall. Every shot OTHER than that shot is perfect and real, why suddenly decide: "Oh, this is fake..its ruined." GO with it. "Hey, that's a fun way to show a fall."

In the "Making of Van Sant's Psycho" DVD documentary, there's a funny bit where "Arbogast 1998"(William H. Macy) is shown Balsam's fall on a DVD player. He rather smirks and says to a man next to him, "Oh, you like that effect, hmm?" Macy clearly doesn't. The other guy says "Well, its not real, its expressionism, its as if he is floating into oblivion..." and Macy just sort of shakes his head, "yeah, OK.' Macy didn't believe in his own fall! Also funny in this scene is that Macy watches the DVD with the famous "slash of blood" on his forehead already. Unlike the Bosco chocolate syrup in the original, Macy has a deep bloody gash via make-up, and he just leaves it on his head as he talks calmly. Funny. (And a clue: in the movie, Macy's face is slashed three times -- the other two are CGI effects.)

[–] tsrts (315) 3 years ago

I remember the first time that I watched Lady Vanishes.
During the opening shot, I was expecting the camera to pull out to reveal a miniature village. Back then, audiences didn't mind an obvious miniature set as an establishing shot.
https://youtu.be/i6noV4ZgtHA?t=83

[–] ecarle (14979) 3 years ago

tsrts...thank you for sharing the actual shot.

Looking at it, it is certainly impressive in its movement and its sense of descending(as so always in Hitchcock) from a "God's eye" view.

Something I really try to imagine is how -- to a 1938 audience -- a shot like that may have been JUST as exciting to experience as the opening shot of Psycho. More to the point, how an audience could experience The Lady Vanishes or The 39 Steps with the same sense of excitement as later generations might react to, say, Goldfinger or Star Wars or Die Hard. Just because the movie looks old to us NOW doesn't meant it was an all-encompassing thriller THEN.

But this -- in the 30's, I do believe that The 39 Steps and The Lady Vanishes were viewed in the US as "small foreign films" -- almost indie films, and perhaps taken as a bit more "B" than polished American studio product. One of the reasons Hitchcock crossed the Atlantic was to get access to Hollywood studio production values. Hitchcock's British films might be rather like Boxcar Bertha for Martin Scorsese or Dementia 13 for Coppola or Reservoir Dogs for QT.

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"During the opening shot, I was expecting the camera to pull out to reveal a miniature village."

That's a good point. Much as a modern audience makes adjustments for the not-very-real qualities of CGI (I saw Wonder Woman 1984 awhile back, and the lady in question looks like a cartoon some of the time) or a 1958 audience made adjustments for the bell tower in Vertigo....1938 audiences might very well have "expected and accepted" a miniature village in the opening shot of The Lady Vanishes.

Meanwhile, whether he was repeating himself or not(and he didn't, all that much) a very strong part of the Hitchcock Touch is that profound feeling one gets when his camera moves like it does at the start of The Lady Vanishes or Psycho. "In this place, at this time, these people were about to see their lives change...' Gets you every time.