The Moment of Psycho

I just finished reading David Thomson's The Moment of Psycho How Alfred Hitchcock Taught America to Love Murder. Not only great insight in to Hitchcock as a director, businessman and human being, but also America as a society on the verge of recognizing something it was but would not want to admit.

The Hollywood of 1960 still had some of trappings of the Golden Age, but also had a censorship office that was nothing as to what it had been in 1930s and 1940s, was losing viewership to television, and the lions of the earlier age were going toothless, if not dying on the plain.

America was on the edge of a decade that would see unrest through the assisnation of a president, the expansion of and reaction to civil rights and the smouldering then burning war in Vietnam.

And to begin that decade in American film, we had an Englishman telling us the story of an American Beauty trapped in despair, with her one apparent attempt at salvation ending in a shower and not in the arms of her "lover." It is also the story of a man trapped in the horrors of his own mind, with props that brought those horrors to "reality." And when the two meet, well, you know the rest of the story.

Psycho, Vertigo, and the Birds would influence later works by later directors, including Roman Polanski, Francois Truffaut and Brian DePalma. And yet, Psycho and the Birds met with sharp critical disdain in the hands of American Film critics at the time of their release. In filming the shower scene, Hitchcock padded the film footage to willingly make sacrifices for the production code office, who would object to a toliet even merely show on screen, let alone flushed. And violence, outside of war movies, was just as dirty as sex in the eyes of some code reviewers. So, in 1960 Hollywood still felt the need to have moral guardians.

Meanwhile, on Television, in something as buttoned-down as the news, violence, real graphic violence, began to be common place: how many times was the Zapruder film shown in slow motion? And by the end of the decade, the napalm of Vietnam and a summary execution of a supposed Viet Cong Agent by a Vietnamese Military Official would bring death and violence into the small box in front of the TV tray as news was watched over Swanson's Saulisbury Steak and Potatoes.

And the Code Office was worried about glimpses of moleskin and chocolate syrup.

Michael Sheen: monsters and statesmen

After just watching Twilight: New Moon, it struck me that Michael Sheen is noted by Independent/Art House film viewers for his role as Tony Blair in The Queen with Helen Mirren as Queen Elizabeth; on the other hand, horror and younger fans may know him more for his role in the Underworld Series as Lucian and his role of Aro Volturi in the Twilight Series.

Sheen's Tony Blair received accolades, although at the awards ceremonies his role was overshadowed by Mirren's Elizabeth. Sheen had practice for the playing Blair in TV Production The Deal and in a later production, The Special Relationship, reprised the role for a third time.

In Underworld, Sheen plays Lucian, the leader of the Werewolves; in Twilight, he plays the leader of the Volturi Clan. I must admit though his Aro Volturi is sinister, he also, has a bit of the foppish, evil twit, c.f. the Black Adder.

Although, he has many years of acting ahead of him, I think that we see a foreshadowing of another versatile versatile Welshman, Anthony Hopkins. For as Hopkins can play Lechter, Hitler, and Nixon, he can also play Jack Lewis, Burt Munro and John Quincy Adams. After all, it is only acting.

Patricia Neal: Proving F. Scott FitzGerald Wrong

With the news of the death of Patricia Neal, I was reminded of many things: her Oscar winning role as Alma in Hud, her marriage to Roald Dahl and her recovery from a stroke that had left her speechless and paralyzed.

A Southern Girl, who came to the Stage and Screen via Northwestern and her own sheer will, Neal's Breakout role was as Dominique Francon in King Vidor's direction of Ayn Rand's The Fountainhead. In real life, she began an affair with her leading man in The Fountainhead, Gary Cooper. The affair ended with heartbreak, when Cooper would not leave his wife and Neal terminated a pregnancy.

Neal next married Roald Dahl; later admitting that she didn't love him but dearly wanted children. She would have 5 children with Dahl, but their life was marked with death and disability. A son would suffer a traumatic head injury and a daughter would die at seven. Neal herself would suffer a massive stroke which seemingly would cut short her 15 year, Oscar winning career on film and television. In part she was a trooper(and in part Dahl was a bulldog), but she learned to walk and talk again. In 1968 she staged her comeback in The Subject was Roses, which led to her being nominated for an Academy Award. Her co-stars, Jack Albertson and Martin Sheen, won an Oscar and a received a Golden Globe nomination for their roles.

After The Subject was Roses she created the role Ma Walton, was portrayed by the actress Glenda Jackson in The Patricia Neal Story (Dahl was played by Dirk Bogarde) and was a fierce advocate for paralysis victims. Her own Tony Award, the first ever presented, was lost and she was presented with a "new" award by Billy Irwin in 2006.

Ms. Neal: Old Hollywood and Broadway, solid television performer and a damn stubborn woman.