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Psycho: Deadpan

posted 3 years ago by ecarle (14979)
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The comic actor Charles Grodin passed away this week, and some writers on his death(including me, around here) have made sure to note that his comedy style was "deadpan."

I like deadpan comedy. I like deadpan movie direction. I like deadpan lines.

Uh oh. If you write the same word over and over...it can take on a life of its own. Deadpan.

Some merged definitions:

"Marked by an impassive matter-of-fact manner, style or expression...saying something amusing while affecting a serious manner.."

So definitely a "manner," often coupled with "comedy."

Examples are better.

Hitchcock at his best was a deadpan EVERYTHING. He was a deadpan host on his TV series who spoke his sentences...deadpan. He often affected a deadpan expression in publicity photos..such as a cover shot for the Thanksgiving issue of Los Angeles magazine where he sat behind a cooked turkey with much too big a butcher's knife in it.

But Hitchcock was also a deadpan DIRECTOR.

I don't think there is a more deadpan sequence in movies than the crop duster scene in North by Northwest.

Hitchcock's shoots the build-up deadpan. Grant as a tiny speck in a giant landscape. Closer: Grant standing by the side of the road. Deadpan. Grant's various expressions as he looks around and various cars and trucks drive past. And the great deadpan moment when another man is dropped off across the road and Grant and the man just stand there.

The deadpan continues through Grant's growing curiosity and concern about that plane coming at him -- and EVEN WHEN this sequence explodes into chase action -- Hitchcock's style is still deadpan. Example: Grant hiding in the cornfield as the plane glide over it once -- and then AGAIN glides over it spraying insectiside.

One becomes a Hitchcock fan for a lot of reasons, but I think that love of deadpan is one of them. Hitchcock takes a deadpan attitude towards his characters, and that's cool. WE feel cool watching it.

Psycho has its share of deadpan.

Janet Leigh's reactions through much of the first half hour are deadpan. When the odious Tom Cassidy finally walks away from her desk, Janet gives him a deadpan look of mild contempt. Anne Heche in the remake scrunches up her face in disgust and overacts -- NOT deadpan.

The ominous highway cop who questions Marion by the side of the road is "extreme deadpan." The shots and cuts of his impassive, slightly scary robot-face are...deadpan.

California Charlie may evidence some distress at his "high pressure" car buy customer(Marion), but his manner is rather "rural small town deadpan."

Anthony Perkins as Norman Bates is conceived in various terms -- shy, nervous, stammering, boyish, cute -- but often in the film, his lines and reactions are deadpan, as in this bit of dialogue:

Sam: Living alone here would drive me crazy.
Norman: That would be a rather extreme reaction, don't you think?

Norman anchors the "great deadpan scene" in Psycho: the close-up on his face as he chews Kandy Korn(not for the last time, looking somewhat bird-like in his gulping) and watches Marion's car sink in the swamp. He is interested but impassive and when that car STOPS sinking...Norman's distress is communicated in just the slightest change in expression -- he stops chewing for a moment -- and then a worried turn of his head to see if any possible witnesses are "out there"(a new customer in the dead of night.") Then the car sinks, and a small satisfied smile appears. Deadpan.

It is Hitchcock -- not Perkins -- who goes deadpan when assembling all the precise shots of Norman cleaning up the bathroom and moving Marion's corpse to the car trunk after the shower murder. "Hmm..." Hitchcock seems to be saying calmly "let's see how this young man handles the details of this challenge." Mop the tub of blood, swipe the floor of blood..wash the blood off your hands. Collect Marion's things -- don't forget that belt on the dresser....the earrings. And that newspaper...

It is not that Psycho is WITHOUT emotion. There is emotion in Marion's parlor talk with Norman(two lonely, beaten-down people connect -- and they are beautiful people, too.) There is emotion in Norman's interrogation by Arbogast -- Norman gets tense and stammers, he raises his voice on occasion -- but mainly the tone is deadpan on Arbogast's side. He asks his questions quietly, calmly and with a certain warmth.

The deadpan characters of Psycho -- Marion, Norman, Arbogast -- finally LOSE their deadpan when "the moment of truth" arrives: a killer with a great big knife for Marion and Arbogast(they scream in death's agony); exposure in the fruit cellar for Norman(his face contorts and his head snaps back and forth and he screams without screaming, suggests greater pain than he feels.)

[–] ecarle (14979) 3 years ago

Still, the movie around these victims is very deadpan as is Hitchcock's attitude.

Except at the end.

Yep...the famous psychiatrist scene. I daresay that Dr. Richman(Simon Oakland) is NOT a deadpan character. He talks loudly, he struts about, he points for emphasis....perhaps one reason people don't much like that scene is that the character messes with Hitchcock's MOOD. (Deadpan.) But he sort of had to...people in movie theaters were still screaming and babbling over the fruit cellar climax, he had to make himself heard.

Hitchcock's next two movies had their share of deadpan...but also (I say) too MUCH emotion.

The Birds has a lot of hysteria in it. That cauterwailing woman in The Tides (I think you're EVIL!) Lydia screaming at Mitch under siege in the house("If your father was alive, he'd know what to do!") Kathy throwing up. Everybody running around in the house with nowhere to go. Its just not cool. Its just not deadpan.

Except at the very end. That's a bunch of deadpan birds hanging out by the hundreds around the Brenner house. Especially the cool crows on the porch fence.

Marnie, too, focusses for movie-length on Tippi Hedren's neurotic and brittle title character, who sometimes reverts to " a little child" in moments of sleeping nightmare. Marnie ain't deadpan.

But there's plenty of deadpan elsewhere in Hitchcock. I daresay that Rear Window's STYLE -- all these quiet POV shots of the neighbors and silent shots of Stewart looking -- are deadpan. Cary Grant's silent and knowing movements around Monaco in To Catch a Thief are deadpan, too. And all the more funny.

You could say that Hitchcock's visual STYLE was deadpan. The way the soundtrack stays silent as the movie CUTS from here, CUTS to there, CUTS back to here. Hitchcock's cool attitude is expressed through his camera and his cutting.

[–] ecarle (14979) 3 years ago

Briefly to actors:

Is there a more deadpan star in Hollywood history than...Cary Grant? His deadpan powers the crop duster scene but also the courtship of Eva Marie Saint. To Catch a Thief is a masterpiece in deadpan comedy AND deadpan romance (Grant goes from quietly disparaging Grace Kelly to passionately kissing her...but SHE kisses Grant first and his reaction after the door closes on him, is one of the great deadpan moments in movies.)

Jimmy Stewart was "Mr. Emotion" in his movies, but Hitchcock deadpanned him down in Rear Window and in the early "watching " silent scenes in Vertigo.

Paul Newman came to Hitchcock and Torn Curtain as a very handsome young man who too often "mugged" and overacted (as in The Prize, a thriller with an Ernest Lehman script)...but when Hitchcock got Newman, he put him through the paces of a serious Hitchcock thriller(mediocre maybe, but still HITCHCOCK) and Newman deadpanned down for Hitch. In Newman's next movie -- the Western Hombre -- Newman was so damn deadpan he was almost dead.

Outside of Hitchcock world, perhaps my favorite deadpan actor was ...Walter Matthau. Look at him underplay against all those kids in The Bad News Bears. Watch his deadpan jokey romance of Carol Burnett in Pete 'n Tillie, and of Glenda Jackson in House Calls.

[–] ecarle (14979) 3 years ago

On the serious side, Matthau is magnificently deadpan as a bank robber "sympathetic bad guy" in Charley Varrick. Varrick never reacts to anything. He just chews gum and thinks -- and WHAT he thinks pays off later as bad guys kill each other off and he gets away clean.

And yet: I was just watching 'The Taking of Pelham 123" the other night, and Matthau rose to the occasion. He is NOT deadpan for most of the movie -- he's desperately and with great emotion, negotiating over a radio system with the terrorist(Robert Shaw) holding a subway car hostage and threatening to kill passengers(and actually killing them). But come the film's coda, Matthau is back on Deadpan Master mode (versus Martin Balsam as a remaining crook) and the film ends with one of the great deadpan moments in movie history.

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Leaving where I came in. I'd say that Psycho has three great deadpan characters in Marion(first seen), then Norman, then Arbogast, and that goes a long way to keeping Psycho cool. But Hitchcock's direction is the deadpannest of them all and...

...so is his infamous six minute Psycho trailer -- without a moment of footage from the movie itself -- in which Hitchcock gives us a tour of the Bates house and Bates motel and never really loses his TV host deadpan, even WHEN saying things like "...all cleaned up now...you should have SEEN the BLOOD."

Magnificently deadpan.

PS. "Anti-deadpan" actors include: Jim Carrey(ugh), Jerry Lewis(UGH), Robin Williams( though he would "go deadpan" in some roles to show he was capable of it) and Rod Steiger.

I wish I could be more authoritative about deadpan actresses. But women can be so warm or angry.

That said, Janet Leigh is deadpan in Psycho; Eva Marie Saint is deadpan in NNXW. Not so, Kim Novak in Vertigo or Julie Andrews in Torn Curtain.

Outside of Hitchcock, maybe Glenda Jackson comes to mind as deadpan. But she's from a long time ago. Diane Keaton?

[–] telegonus (727) 3 years ago

Lots of good stuff here, on Hitchcock, Psycho, North By Northwest and actors in general.

Deadpan masters: Malcolm Atterbury, Norman Leavitt (interchangeable as to type, and on the small screen, especially on Hitchcock's shows, when you see one, the other is usually near at hand). Dabbs Greer is a good fit for those two as well. Strother Martin, with a strong, starrier fellow player, can be quite laid back.

Much of the cast lineup of the 1951 sci-fi classic The Thing From Another World act in deadpan mode, notably star player Kenneth Tobey and "Scotty" actor Douglas Spencer. Both are masterful, with Spencer particularly good at being agitated behaviorally and deadpan in delivery. Also, needless to say, Robert Cornthwaite's Dr. Carrington, even when going mad he seems focused somehow.

Also an excellent deadpan: Robert Young, when the material is good, as in Crossfire, in which he magnificently underplayers the "histrionics" of fellow players Roberts Ryan and Mitchum, and damn near steals the show from them. On the other hand, soon to be murder victim Sam Levene plays warm and likable, which makes his character's death feel like a deep loss for the remainder of the film. He was the opposite of deadpan.

Gregory Peck was excellent as deadpan Gen. Savage in the 1949 movie 12 O'Clock High. He didn't overdo it, though, and when the scene demanded it, he could roar. We got more of that in Cape Fear many years later, but in that one he had to be more engaged, as Robert Mitchum's beyond death deadpan outclassed him in charisma and, in some strange way, amiability. Mitchum's menace was so low key as to make his mere presence a relief from the central melodrama the main story in that movie was.

[–] Martoto (4178) 3 years ago

Henry Jones is arguably a deadpan performance as the coroner in Vertigo.

[–] ecarle (14979) 3 years ago

Henry Jones is arguably a deadpan performance as the coroner in Vertigo.

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Indeed...a deadpan, droning manner with more than a touch of snobbery towards a cop "from that great city to the north."

[–] jay440 (107) 3 years ago

Also deadpan are those daringly long-held camera shots of that approaching cropduster, so slow and inexorable, approaching from a distance, then terrifyingly swift as it reaches him, Hitchcock playing with perspective. The celebrated shot in Lawrence of Arabia (which came out three years later) of Omar Sharif's approach on camel to the watering hole is shot the same way, with this distant speck of a threat coming across a vast, empty desert vista, slowly getting nearer and nearer as Lawrence and his guide watch in tense anticipation.

Cary had a great deadpan in NxNW, but even he had some stiff competition in that classic film:
https://the.hitchcock.zone/wiki/1000_Frames_of_North_by_Northwest_(1959)_-_frame_964

Frenzy is not deadpan much at all (not even the corpses) except for a few moments here and there with Chief Inspector Oxford ("Discretion is not traditionally the strong suit of the psychopath.").

Still, nobody beat Hitchcock at this game, "sitting there like a Buddha" as one actor described his on-set demeanor.

[–] ecarle (14979) 3 years ago

Also deadpan are those daringly long-held camera shots of that approaching cropduster, so slow and inexorable, approaching from a distance, then terrifyingly swift as it reaches him, Hitchcock playing with perspective.

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Yes...there is a deadpan comic rhythm to the plane's approach, but an expert cinematic sense of cutting and lenses that makes the scene dangerous as well as funny...towards Grant.

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The celebrated shot in Lawrence of Arabia (which came out three years later) of Omar Sharif's approach on camel to the watering hole is shot the same way, with this distant speck of a threat coming across a vast, empty desert vista, slowly getting nearer and nearer as Lawrence and his guide watch in tense anticipation.

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Yes. I think that Lean's wide-screen shots and editing rhythms are different from Hitchcock's (as well as his more "serious" subject matter) but here is an example of "probable influence" by Hitchcock on Lean. Both the crop duster scene and this desert scene are about "wide open spaces" and the insignificance of man...not to mention both scenes have death in them.

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[–] ecarle (14979) 3 years ago

Cary had a great deadpan in NxNW, but even he had some stiff competition in that classic film:
https://the.hitchcock.zone/wiki/1000_Frames_of_North_by_Northwest_(1959)_-_frame_964

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Ha! That's my boys. You can't get much less expressive than that...well, maybe Lady Liberty in Saboteur. With all these people crawling around them in life or death struggle, these icons...just can't be bothered.

Note in passing: North by Northwest and Rushmore get all the attention, but one film earlier -- in Vertigo -- Hitchcock set a scene near yet ANOTHER great American monument: The Golden Gate Bridge(looking beautiful and gigantic as it dwarfs the haunted Madeleine.) But in Vertigo, the monument is used for background, not action. It would take almost 30 years for the Golden Gate Bridge to get a "North by Northwest" action climax on it...in the otherwise so-so Roger Moore Bond movie, "A View to a Kill." Bond fights the bad guys up there, emptying out of a "Black Sunday" like blimp to add to the "giganticism" of that climax.

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[–] ecarle (14979) 3 years ago

Frenzy is not deadpan much at all (not even the corpses)

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Ha..well, its called "Frenzy" (which is the opposite of deadpan) and those corpses really EMOTE...tongues sticking out(a medical fact that turns into black comedy), eyes bulging in terror even in death...

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except for a few moments here and there with Chief Inspector Oxford ("Discretion is not traditionally the strong suit of the psychopath.").

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That's a great line, and Oxford IS a deadpan character and he gets the film's final, great deadpan line: "Mr. Rusk...you're not wearing your tie."

Interesting and not quite believeable. Barry Foster who played Rusk, noted that Hitchcock directed both himself and Alec McCowen DOWN to deadpan for that final moment.

On the first take, Foster said, he hung his head down in shame upon being caught and Oxford BARKED the line: "Mr. Rusk! You're not wearing your tie!"

Hitchcock called for a second take, and gently persuaded Foster NOT to lower his head("a serial killer has no shame") and for McCowen to underplay his final line. My thing is this: I can't see that final line NOT being deadpan. I cannot picture it being "barked." But I guess it could be.

As for Foster, he doesn't lower his head, but he doesn't say anything, either. He just sputters and looks sort of embarrassed...its an odd final look -- hardly Norman Bates in his cell.

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Still, nobody beat Hitchcock at this game, "sitting there like a Buddha" as one actor described his on-set demeanor

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Ha, yes. I daresay that the deadpan Hitchcock probably inspired the deadpan performances of his actors.

[–] ecarle (14979) 3 years ago

Norman anchors the "great deadpan scene" in Psycho: the close-up on his face as he chews Kandy Korn(not for the last time, looking somewhat bird-like in his gulping) and watches Marion's car sink in the swamp.

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I return to note that not only are PERKINS' reactions deadpan...the POV shots of the car sinking are deadpan. Its a "deadpan car," slowly sinking...stopping..then sinking again. Very humorous even given the horror of Marion's corpse in the trunk.

And in this day and age where CGI and Silcon Valley can do ANYTHING in movies, one wonders about the low tech precision of the sound of the car slurp-slurp-slurping and then disappearing beneath the water with a pop, pop, POP. How did Hitch's team get that SOUND? Psycho is a great movie to LISTEN to....(those casaba melon knife stabs, as well.)

Meanwhile, there is definitely one character in Psycho who is NOT deadpan: Lila. She's a bundle of emotion from the first moment we meet her -- alternately raging at the others for their inaction and fearing the truth about Marion's disappearance. Lila is the emotional core of Psycho -- the person who CARES. Though even she is reduced to deadpan during the psychiatrist speech. The emotion has been drained out of her.

[–] ecarle (14979) 3 years ago

Lots of good stuff here, on Hitchcock, Psycho, North By Northwest and actors in general.

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Thank you, Telegonus...and welcome. Your visits always are...

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Deadpan masters: Malcolm Atterbury,

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Ah...the most deadpan fellow OTHER than Cary Grant in the crop duster sequence...before the action begins.

Atterbury has one of the greatest "deadpan frissons" in movie history AND Hitchcock history:

Atterbury: That's funny.
Grant: What?
Atterbury: That crop duster's dusting crops where there ain't no crops.

Beauty, eh?

But he's good in the early stretch of talk too:

Grant: Hot day.
Atterbury: Seen worse.

Grant: Then your name's not George Kaplan...
Atterbury: Can't say it is, 'cause it isn't.

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Atterbury returns just two films later as the Sheriff in The Birds(a man who makes Deputy Sheriff Al Chambers look like J. Edgar Hoover.)

Upon seeing all the dead sparrows in the Brenner house, Atterbury picks one up:

Atterbury: That's a bird, alright.

Heh.

I was surprised, by the way, to see Atterbury in the 1962 film Advise and Consent playing an intelligent and savvy US Senator(from a Midwestern state, natch.)

And some time ago, Telegonus , I recall you offering Malcolm Atterbury as good casting had Arbogast been cast as described in Robert Bloch's novel: a tall, tan, taciturn Texan in a Stetson hat that covered his eyes with shade.

[–] ecarle (14979) 3 years ago

CONT:

Deadpan masters: Malcolm Atterbury, Norman Leavitt (interchangeable as to type, and on the small screen, especially on Hitchcock's shows, when you see one, the other is usually near at hand).
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Hmm...I had to look up a photo of Norman Leavitt and --- yeah, I remember THAT guy -- a bit less
"handsome" and well-aged as Atterbury but...yes.

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Dabbs Greer is a good fit for those two as well. Strother Martin, with a strong, starrier fellow player, can be quite laid back.

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Here I think you are brushing against some actors who were perhaps best in rural or Southern role...but, yes.

I believe Dabbs Greer's final screen appearance was to play "Tom Hanks as an old man"(after Hanks in make-up was found lacking) in The Green Mile(1999). Well, MAYBE his last appearance. This was "no win": Hanks filmed the old man scenes and they were dumped; Greer is in the movie and did not convince AS Hanks. They needed that CGI....

Greer got roles on TV(Little House on the Prarie, I think) and "serious films," but I recall him in two Saturday horror staples: House of Wax(as the handsome young cop's older sidekick cop) and "IT The Terror Beyond Space"(an early "Alien.")

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[–] ecarle (14979) 3 years ago

Much of the cast lineup of the 1951 sci-fi classic The Thing From Another World act in deadpan mode, notably star player Kenneth Tobey and "Scotty" actor Douglas Spencer. Both are masterful, with Spencer particularly good at being agitated behaviorally and deadpan in delivery. Also, needless to say, Robert Cornthwaite's Dr. Carrington, even when going mad he seems focused somehow.

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Several things at work, here. Howard Hawks produced -- and maybe directed -- The Thing, and it has his deadpan, fast-talking "men in groups with one woman" thing (see: Rio Bravo; Only Angels Have Wings.) Also, most of the characters are military men and expected to remain calm even in the face of a blood sucking carrot man.

As for Robert Cornwaithe, he is a man I actually knew just a little bit when I was in college in LA. I knew some young aspiring actors and they took classes with him and sometimes them, him and me would end up at the same table for coffee. A nice man.

[–] ecarle (14979) 3 years ago

Also an excellent deadpan: Robert Young, when the material is good, as in Crossfire, in which he magnificently underplayers the "histrionics" of fellow players Roberts Ryan and Mitchum, and damn near steals the show from them. On the other hand, soon to be murder victim Sam Levene plays warm and likable, which makes his character's death feel like a deep loss for the remainder of the film. He was the opposite of deadpan.

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Hmm..I have not seen Crossfire in a long time. Its seems logical that Young could deadpan well against Ryan...but against...Mitchum?( So deadpan in many movies that he seemed to maybe be asleep and joked so himself -- "They just paint eyeballs on my closed eyelids.")

I don't recall Sam Levine as the victim, but certainly those who play nice and warm in thrillers sometimes hurt too much when they get killed. Martin Balsam's Arbogast isn't mean or cruel, but he isn't exactly warm, either. It makes for a certain "neutrality" when he is so horribly killed. Meanwhile, when Walter Matthau's likeable private eye gets killed in "Mirage" -- it hurts.

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[–] ecarle (14979) 3 years ago

Gregory Peck was excellent as deadpan Gen. Savage in the 1949 movie 12 O'Clock High. He didn't overdo it, though, and when the scene demanded it, he could roar. We got more of that in Cape Fear many years later, but in that one he had to be more engaged, as Robert Mitchum's beyond death deadpan outclassed him in charisma and, in some strange way, amiability. Mitchum's menace was so low key as to make his mere presence a relief from the central melodrama the main story in that movie was.

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I much prefer the original Cape Fear to the remake, despite some affection for DeNiro's hillbilly menace in the remake. Mitchum OWNS Cape Fear as a villain, but Peck (unlike smarmy, shaky Nick Nolte in the remake) comes out swinging with righteous anger. One of Peck's best lines to Mitchum is: "I've seen the worst before, but you are the lowest... the DREGS. I can't stand breathing the same air as you!" and walks off.

Speaking of two stars and deadpan.

I read somewhere that when cool Steve McQueen finished a particular scene with an over-emoting Dustin Hoffman in "Papillon," after "Cut" was called, McQueen growled at Hoffman: "LESS!" Take that as you will.

Or Billy Wilder keep asking Jack Lemmon to tone it down, take after take, until this:

Lemmon: If I take it down any lower, I will be doing nothing.
Wilder: That's the idea.

I dunno, though. I like deadpan, but I ALSO sometimes like "over the top" flamboyance: Richard Boone, Robert Preston...Al Pacino, Jack Nicholson.

It depends.

[–] ecarle (14979) 3 years ago

Deadpan check-in: Bill Murray in Broken Flowers.

I re-watched this movie the other night and checked some old reviews. One said: "Bill Murray Expertly Deadpans his Way Through Broken Flowers."

Indeed he does. One other critic noted that the role in the new movie "tracked deadpan" with Murray's Oscar nominated work in "Lost in Translation" and was Oscar-deserving in itself.

These films were indiefilms and rather "late career work" for Murray, but he's always in demand for such stuff and he's indeed very good at it.

Back when Murray was a superstar -- Caddyshack, Stripes, Tootsie, Ghostbusters -- he alternated deadpan AND way over the top verbal comedy ("BLOWN UP, sir!") The over-the-top stuff has faded in Murray's old age, but the deadpan is precise -- it can make you laugh sometimes, it can move you sometimes(sometimes Murray in his quietude can feel very SAD...and that connects with our sadness.)

In Lost in Translation, Murray plays -- a big movie star(think: Bruce Willis) -- stuck in a hotel in Tokyo and feeling lost and adrift. In Broken Flowers, Murray heads out on a quest that a lot of us older men must at least THINK about...seeking out all his former girlfriends(there are no wives) in search of a possible son he has learned about.

CONT

[–] ecarle (14979) 3 years ago

The gag in "Broken Flowers" is that Murray is a lifelong bachelor and "ladies man." It is believable because his character is rich from computers and...you can be a ladies man if you do that. His encounters with all the women in his life( and couple of their new men) are interesting, and Murray controls it all with deadpan small reactions. Murray evidently considered this his best performance and one critic noted that Murray "can do more with a simple eyebrow raise" than most actors. Its why he's still a star.

Segue: with re: raising an eyebrow. I've been reading a book about Cary Grant and he said he enjoyed going to movie theaters to watch audiences laughing at his films. "It was very satisfying to see an entire audience laugh when I raised an eyebrow." So...eye-brow raising can make you a big star. John Belushi raised it to an art in Animal House.

I'm starting to think that 80% of our greatest stars...are deadpan.