Music serves as either a counterpoint or a comment on whatever scene is being played.—ALFRED HITCHCOCK (Gottlieb 2003)
Partially, this ironic contrast was a way for Hitchcock to make it easier for his audiences to experience such traumatic events. He once said: We want to amuse them, not depress them (Gottlieb).
At the same time, using happy diegetic music during a murder scene is part of the teasing game that he plays with his audiences. It’s a coy way for him to indicate that, once again, we are part of this practical joke that he’s playing on us. This makes his presence as director in the story more active in our minds as we watch, and it provokes reflexivity. (See chapter 7.)
Plus, inappropriately fun music alerts the audience of the lonely, helplessness of the situation—that none of the bystanders have noticed the tragedy. Either they are so self-absorbed that they are unaware of their surroundings, or they simply don’t care. This sense of helplessness is a key ingredient in the complex recipe of suspense.
DIALOGUE AS MUSIC
Human speech can be musical as well, and often Hitchcock treated dialogue as if it were music. Dialogue has always been something which Hitchcock treated as merely sounds emanating from the mouths of his characters, whereas the story was revealed visually in other ways—by a glance, a close-up on an object, a reaction, etc. Despite this visual emphasis, the speaking rhythms of the characters were very important. In fact, he would coach his actors on the emphasis of every line and every pause.
There is a fascinating transcript from one of Hitchcock’s actor meetings with Tippi Hedren on The Birds (1963) that I encourage everyone to read through. It’s published in Dan Auiler’s Hitchcock’s Notebooks, pp. 389–413. Among other things, it reveals Hitchcock’s philosophy on dialogue. He treats dialogue like music, planning out every pause, hesitation, and where the pacing should slow down or speed up to crescendo. Some lines are acted less emotionally to create contrast with emotional ones, some whispered, some frantic. He coached Hedren on when to purse her lips, when to use the punch line of a joke to hide a change of subject, and other variations of rhythm and emphasis.
While actors shouldn’t spend a lot of energy being self-conscious about their speech patterns, this transcript certainly provides an eye-opening look into the importance of this dance between facial expressions, speech, and hidden secrets.
SUGGESTED VIEWING
North by Northwest (1959)—some versions of the DVD allow you to watch with a music-only audio track without dialogue.
FURTHER READING
Auiler, Dan 2001. Hitchcock’s Notebooks: An Authorized and Illustrated Look Inside the Creative Mind of Alfred Hitchcock, Harper Collins, New York.
Bays, Jeffrey 2014. Between the Scenes, Michael Wiese Productions.
Bouzereau, Laurent 2001. Plotting Family Plot, documentary, Universal Studios Home Video.
Gorbman, C 1987. “Why Music? The Sound Film and its Spectator,” in Unheard Melodies, Indiana University Press, Indianapolis, pp. 53–69.
Gottlieb, Sidney 1995. Hitchcock on Hitchcock: Selected Writings and Interviews, University of California Press, USA.
Gottlieb, Sidney 2003. Alfred Hitchcock Interviews, University Press of Mississippi, Jackson, p. 46.
Pallasmaa, J 2001. The Architecture of Image: Existential Space in Cinema, Rakennustieto, Helsinki, p.119.
Smith, Jeff 1999. “Movie Music as Moving Music: Emotion, Cognition, and the Film Score,” in Passionate Views: Film, Cognition, and Emotion, Ed. Carl Plantinga and Greg Smith, John Hopkins University Press, Baltimore and London, pp. 147–167.
Truffaut, François 1986. Hitchcock / Truffaut with the collaboration of Helen G. Scott, Paladin, London, p. 222.
SUSPENSE MYTH NO. 4
SUSPENSE IS BUILT BY A MUSICAL SCORE
Perhaps surprisingly, Hitch believed that music only got in the way of tense moments of crisis. It is no coincidence that with his first sound film, Blackmail, he pioneered the use of silence as a dramatic device: By keeping that film’s murder scene sans score, he accentuated the fact that the victim’s screams go unheard.
A lack of music brings foreboding reality to the forefront. You hear everything the characters hear—every footstep, every creak. The small details of background become part of the tension, bringing you closer into the moment.
Hitch made entire films without musical scores (The Birds is a famous example) and most of his murder scenes were music-less. He tended to use music in the more comedic parts of his films, but once a crisis breaks out, music disappears in favor of stark realism.
CHAPTER 12
INNER THOUGHTS ALOUD
What is it? Why is everything so fuzzy? It’s like, like dust on my eyes. How could that be? Hey, I can’t close them. I can’t, I can’t move. Anything. I can’t feel. I’m paralyzed. But maybe, maybe if I concentrate. No. No, it won’t work. I can’t move. I’m. Wait a minute. Wait a minute now. It won’t do any good to get in a sweat. I’m alive at least.
THOSE ARE THE INNER THOUGHTS of William Callew (played by Joseph Cotten) in Hitchcock’s TV episode “Breakdown” (1955), heard clearly via voice-over.
When your protagonist must remain quiet, or is unable to speak, an effective tool is to reveal their inner thought process in real time through a stream of consciousness voice-over. We hear a live rendition of their random thoughts as the scene plays out, often with a slight echo effect to indicate that it is not heard by anyone else. This immediately makes the character’s presence subjective in a way not possible with pure visuals.
A contemporary example of this is on an episode of the TV show Seinfeld when Elaine (Julia Louis-Dreyfus) is standing on a subway train among a crowd of New Yorkers. The lights go off and we hear her thoughts giving commentary on the situation, revealing her wishes, fears, and opinions of the people around her. In this instance, it is used for comic effect, but directors like Hitchcock have been able to prove its power in a dramatic context, as in the above example in “Breakdown.”
Hitchcock’s use of the stream of consciousness voice-over was a lot more prevalent in his TV works, but he did use it on occasion in his feature films. Psycho (1960), for example, uses a version of these inner thoughts while Marion Crane is driving with the stolen money. She imagines the voices of other people talking about her.
Since Alfred Hitchcock Presents—and the spinoff series Suspicion—utilized a lot of writers from radio, like Francis Cockrell, this technique naturally came with the territory. It may be that Hitchcock viewed TV as a more personal and intimate medium than cinema, where the viewer is watching on a small screen in the privacy of their living room. Whatever the reason, stream of consciousness is common in his twenty works of TV, like “The Case of Mr. Pelham,” “Mr. Blanchard’s Secret,” “Four O’Clock,” “Dip in the Pool,” and the aforementioned “Breakdown.”
THE ULTIMATE IN SUBJECTIVITY
The beauty of the stream of consciousness technique is that when the voice-over is added to a shot of the actor’s face, it provides instant access to the character’s thoughts. It allows an unfettered evaluation of their logic, their plans, and their perceived roadblocks and consequences to achieving those plans.
It also has the effect of speaking aloud the audience’s thought process while watching a film. You can easily imagine that a person watching this scene from “Four O’Clock” (1957) would be thinking in very much the same way as Paul when he hears the gas man pull up outside:
That’s right out front I think. Across the street. Yes. It’s a man. Sounds like a man. He’s coming in. Come on. Come on in. It’s not locked. Oh no. Those two kids must have locked it after they tied me up. They slipped the catch. Why did they have to leave? Why couldn’t she be here. The one man who would have to bring her down that would be sure to see me. Why don’t they come back? Come back. They could still come back. Drive up in front right now. He’d see them, he’d wait. There’s still time. Oh Fran. Come back, come back. Please do. Drive up in fr
ont and stop. He’ll get out and make you let him in. Please come home. Please come now. You can save me. Don’t you see it’s the only way—it’s the only way I can live.
Paul is tied up and gagged in the basement, desperate for the gas man to see him. His inner thoughts drive the suspense and urgency of the scene, and emote his desperation for his wife to come home and open the door for the gas man. Since it’s very similar to what the audience is thinking, it allows the connection between viewer and protagonist to grow stronger.
During the above narration we see the gas man’s shadow through the window, approaching the door. As the man gives up and walks away, we feel the same helplessness Paul does. If only the gas man would find out. It provokes the audience to want to step in and interfere, if only we had that power.
CAMERA TREATMENT TO MATCH
What do you do with the camera while the voice-over is playing? In “Four O’Clock,” Hitchcock uses a few tracking shots around Paul’s face to make it aesthetically dynamic while the voice narrates. The scenes are cut normally with point-of-view sequences to display the progression of the scene from Paul’s perspective. Essentially, Paul is framed and treated as if he’s actually speaking. The only difference being an emphasis on his eyes, which have sole emotive power in the shot.
A TV episode like “Breakdown,” on the other hand, is more complicated because William cannot move his eyes at all. His state of paralysis negates any usage of true point-of-view or emotive eyes for any length of time, as William is permanently staring into the sky at a fixed position. “Breakdown” shows Hitchcock experimenting with camera orchestration (see chapter 6), compiling various distances and angles from William’s face. For a scene that is about a motionless man in an unmoving surrounding, it is a highly creative camera treatment that calls upon the subjective nature of the voice-over.
Figure 12.1. Hitchcock used his camera like a musical instrument, creating rhythms of emphasis through shot proximity. In “Breakdown,” this orchestration adds emotional depth to an immobile, paralyzed protagonist. “Breakdown,” Alfred Hitchcock Presents, ©1955 NBCUniversal.
What we find is that wide shots are used when the voice-over gets vague, but extreme close-ups are saved for those lines of dialogue that make an important point. He even uses extreme close-ups of William’s mouth as his thoughts become panicked. When William considers his surroundings, Hitchcock cuts back to wide shots of the scene.
The choice of angles Hitchcock uses are quite varied, fragmenting the scene from all perspectives and distances (fig. 12.1). Sometimes we see William from the side, sometimes from behind, from below, and even from above. This resulting montage is reminiscent of a Picasso cubist painting, where various perspectives of the subject are cut and diced abstractly onto the flat canvas.
SUGGESTED VIEWING
Alfred Hitchcock Presents, “Breakdown,” Season 1, Episode 7 (1955)—an entire episode using the stream-of-consciousness narration technique.
Suspicion, “Four O’Clock,” Season 1, Episode 1 (1957)—We hear Paul’s inner thoughts through much of the film.
Seinfeld, “The Subway,” Season 3, Episode 13 (1992)—Elaine’s thoughts are heard aloud while she is standing on the subway.
PART FIVE
SHARPEN THE CLARITY
CHAPTER 13
CARVING A CLEAR PATH OF AUDIENCE BELIEF
SUSPENSE REQUIRES AN ABSOLUTE, unquestionable clarity of understanding of the events on screen. As the trusted storyteller, you must make the story easy for the viewer to grasp every step of the way. Clarity forces the events to become potent and hyper-present. It gives you that raw emotional investment that keeps your viewers hanging on for more.
What is drama, after all, but life with the dull bits cut out.—ALFRED HITCHCOCK (Truffaut)
We’ve all at some time in our lives had to endure a bad storyteller—someone that rambles, talks in riddles, or never reaches the point.
The first thing clarity does is get everyone on the same page. Often our perception of a story is based on our mood at the time. Psychological studies have shown that audiences who watch a movie actually emulate the emotions of the movie. Where individuals may all be in different moods going in, by the end of the movie everyone is feeling the same way. As the storyteller you want this unification to happen as early as possible. With clarity, everyone is in sync and feels and experiences the movie in the same way, rather than just casually dipping in and out of interest.
Secondly, clarity removes boredom. When a storyteller creates a narrative that is too difficult to understand or relate to, they force the audience into mental fatigue. Make the audience struggle to think and they’ll switch off. Hitchcock said, “You can’t have blurred thinking in suspense” (Bogdanovich).
BINARY OPPOSITIONS
For centuries the great storytellers knew that opposites make things easier to understand. Think about a chessboard. Because the squares of the chessboard are alternated white and black, it’s easy to determine at a glance where each player can move. A solid white chess board would be hard to follow. Entirely white pieces on a white board would be a disaster!
This means: No two characters should look alike. Make use of different hair colors. And no similar-looking characters should dress alike. If two men of the same height and age are wearing the exact same color suit, the audience is going to get confused. You don’t want them struggling to keep track of characters—this will eat up all their mental energy (Gottlieb).
If all your female characters are blondes with the exact same makeup style and the same voice—they might as well be one character. Half of your audience might be able to keep track, but the other half will not.
One of the fatal things in suspense is to have a mind that is confused. If the audience is confused they won’t emote. Clarify, clarify, clarify.—ALFRED HITCHCOCK (Bogdanovich)
This goes for location choices from one scene to the next, too. Locations should be starkly different (see my book Between the Scenes for more on this.) Audiences tend to compartmentalize the story based on the location of each scene, so make sure the geography of your film is changing and progressing, painting an easy mental map to follow.
SIMPLICITY OF THINKING
Even if you have a complex, intellectual story where the characters are entwined in an elaborate conspiracy, you should shift the focus of the storytelling toward the simplistic in order for suspense to be felt.
The easiest way to simplify a scene is to turn the focus to suspense objects. Suspense objects are objects in a scene that are followed by the camera (see chapter 5). They have the advantage of being visual, and therefore can provoke the audience’s memory quite easily. The audience can easily track where the objects are and anticipate how they will affect the story when they’re moved around.
This is a lot like computer adventure games of the 1990s, putting the game player into a setting and waiting for them to look for clues. The player clicks every object they find in the scene and can either “look” at it to get more information about it, or “grab” it to use it for later. Soon the player may be able to combine two objects they collected into a tool which can be useful to advance the story. Or, the player may be able to give the object to another character in order to develop trust. In the game environment, objects become a way for the player to interact with the narrative.
Similarly, in your movie, objects can bring the viewer closer into your narrative, making them feel like they can affect the story. While they can’t actually affect the story, they can feel on the verge of being able to do so. This makes them more susceptible to suspense.
Pare your complex cerebral story down into simple objects. When this isn’t possible, find a trivial subject of focus in the scene rather than the dramatic. (See more in chapter 15.)
CLEAR PATH OF BELIEF
Not only should your plot be clear, present, and simple, the viewer should be led along a path of belief about what’s ha
ppening at every moment. It’s almost like structuring a maze for a mouse. Your plot can zigzag, include dead ends and red herrings, but there should be only one exit.
Being clear doesn’t necessarily mean being honest. You can mislead the audience on purpose, take them on wild goose chases, and play on their skepticism.
Because you’ve grabbed strict control over the material and made it simple and easy to follow, you can trick the audience into believing a certain reality about the story. Then you can build in a skeptical character to make us question that reality. You can also change that reality at any time.
Take the example of Hitchcock’s TV episode “Mr. Blanchard’s Secret” (1956), which we examine in my Hitch20 docu-series. Babs has created a conspiracy theory about the neighbor being missing or dead. We follow her logic until it is temporarily disproven—the neighbor shows up at the door, alive. The conspiracy changes from being murdered to being hidden; the husband keeps her locked up at home because he’s embarrassed by her. Then this is disproven. The conspiracy changes again, and we follow along her theory that the neighbor is a kleptomaniac and has stolen a vase.
What makes this entertaining is that the viewer is constantly falling for it. We’re led into the fiction, and then we see it isn’t true. Each time we realize we’ve been fooled, we’re still ready to believe the next conspiracy. Hitchcock’s clear path makes us need the conspiracy to be true in order to find closure on the story.
Suspense With a Camera Page 13
