Cinema
Minor Hitch
Ian Cameron
There are two schools of thought about Alfred Hitchcock. The majority view is still that he can be splendidly entertaining but is regrettably prone to over-reach himself by tackling subjects that demand the attentions of more responsible souls. Behind this view lurks the outmoded assumption that art is much too serious to be entertaining while entertainment is aiming too low to aspire to the level of Art.
For the past twenty years, though, the idea has been gaining ground that Hitchcock is among the cinema's very greatest directors whose work merits closer consideration than most films which have more obviously set their sights on being Art. The image that Hitchcock has carefully fostered of himself as a mischievous old cove, who can be relied on to divert you with his cinematic pranks, must then be seen to some extent as a disguise to lure suitably massive audiences into sharing a vision that can be
unpalatably bleak. Yet Hitchcock the artist is inseparable from Hitchcock the entertainer: identification and suspense, which are the stuff of entertainment, are also the essential materials of Hitchcock's art, the means of both manipulation and communication. The partisans of this assessment admire Hitchcock films like Under Capricorn and Mamie which are more con-. ventionally seen as big yawns.
The extent to which Hitchcock's latest, Family Plot (Empire and elsewhere. . A certificate), has been relished by, the majority of critics signals that it is a lightweight work. After the two viewings recommended by the advertising. I have nothing more substantial to report than the memory of' some very enjoyable hours in the cinema. It is always a pleasure to watch the way Hitchcock films move, and Family Plot has some of' the smoothness that distinguished North by Northwest, which was also written by Ernest Lehmann, whose intervening work away from Hitchcock is evidence enough that the virtues of these two pictures stem essentially from their director.
One of Hitchcock's main thematic preoccupations, guilt, is hardly to be found in Family Plot except in the elderly Miss Rainbird (Cathleen Nesbitt) who wants to find the illegitimate son that she had made her sister give away some forty years before. To do so in secrecy, she enlists the help of a fake medium. Madame Blanche (played by Barbara Harris with a degree of bravura that Hitchcock rarely allows in his performers). 'My jaw is locked.' Blanche assures Miss Rainbird. and immediately sets about exciting her boyfriend Lumley (Bruce Dern), with the ten big ones that will be the financial reward for success.
Hitchcock's favourite plot mechanism, coincidence, is used to introduce the other main characters. The cab which Lumley is driving almost runs down a black-coated figure, and the action moves off at right angles with her as she collects a large diamond as a kidnapping ransom from surprised government agents who were expecting their traitor to be a man. She is Fran (Karen Black), the partner of Adamson (William Devane) who is collecting diamonds through a series of perfect kidnappings. He is also Miss Rainbird's longlost nephew, who had changed his identity after arranging a fire which consumed his foster parents. By another coincidence, the next kidnapping victim is a bishop who as a parish priest had baptised the nephew.
Adamson, who has noticed Lumley in the cathedral while he is snatching the bishop. wants him and Blanche killed on the mistaken assumption that they are trying to collect the reward for identifying the kidnappers. They are after the nephew to collect a different reward and assume, just as wrongly, that he will be glad to hear he is inheriting the Rainbird millions.
Hitchcock plays on the similarities and contrasts between the two couples, between the enterprise of the small-timers and the hubris of the master criminal. Sex is in
volved in the operations of both couples but where Blanche is showing a straightforward keenness to get Lumley on her water bed, the commission of their crimes seems to be an essential part of the relationship between Adamson and Fran. Hitchcock heroes are often rewarded for doing the right thing for the wrong reasons: here Blanche and Lumley will not collect for finding Miss Rainbird's nephew (who is likely to be a disappointment to the old lady) but for trapping the kidnappers. Blanche, who has been 'as psychic as a dry salami', develops psychic powers which take her to the diamonds, and clearly the extra cash which will accrue from this is less important to her than the revelation that she is genuinely gifted.
Along the way, there is a good helping of expertly devised if rather mild thrills, including a nice set piece with a twisting road, a jammed accelerator and no brakes, inconveniences Which are compounded for Lumley by having to wrestle with the hysterical Blanche. This is very minor Hitchcock, elegant and relaxed rather than enthralling, but still enlivened by nimble dialogue, and by a masterly sense of the absurd.
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