Early on in his new book, “How to Watch a Movie,” film critic David Thomson breaks down 2014’s epic Gatorade commercial starring D🔯erek Jeter, calling the spot “one of the most artful pieces of moviemaking” of last year.
Thomson is in 🔯no way comparing Jeter to Hitler. Rather, he points to the filmmaking techniques and creative ingredients used by the commercial’s director and Riefenstahl to make people appear regal, or even holy, on film.
“The sunlight, the hallowed black and white, the motion, the accumulation of music and the crowd, and the strangely meek persona of these gods — the ingredients are similar,” Thomson writes. “In so much of what we see now, the sacred has been infiltrated by commercialism, propagaಌnda and the way history has turned into fiction.”
Thomson, author of “A Biographical Dictionary of Film” and many other books on the subject, takes a molecular approach to film, breaking it down to its basic elements and using examples from throughout the medium’s history. His goal, in the process, is to educate the reader in how these elements manipulate viewer attention, with chapters on shots, edits, sound, story and the many off-screen factors — from the identity of the actors and filmmakers to the amount of money spent — thaꦿt affect our screen-watching experience.
One of the many films he discusses is Alfred Hitchcock’s “Psycho.” So many aspects of the film are secoꦿnd nature to us now, including the general creepiness of 𒆙Anthony Perkins and the infamous shower scene. But Thomson shows us how a greater knowledge of film can make “Psycho” an even richer experience
By 1960, black and white was already half out the door in Hollywood. Hitchcock’s decision to film “Psycho” as such was a creative call that fed its 🐷sense of danger.
“The black and white is more harsh than rich. It’s a little abrasive on the eye, not comforting or beguiling,” Thomson writes. “This would be a different film in color. [Janet Leigh] would h💦ave real skin. Arizona and California would have to acquir🅰e the hues of desert, forest, mountains and sunlight. Nature would creep into the film, and life would be a little gentler.”
Thomson spends two pages breaking down Leigh’s casting, demonstrating the specificity of what an individual actor — as well as the public’ღs knowledge of that actor — brings to a role, and how different casting choices can alter the tenor of a film.
In Leigh’s case, he demonstrates how several of herꦍ contemporaries would have changed the character of Marion ꦫCrane, the secretary who makes a quick and ultimately fatal decision to commit a crime.
“Grace Kelly — too smart, too witty, hardly fit for Phoenix or a secretary’s job, hardly prepared to settle for the occasional lunchtime sex session; Audrey Hepburn, maybe, interesting, a victim to be sure, but she’s not quite sexual or common enough . . . above everything, could anyone bear to see Audrey hacked to pieces in the shower?ไ ‘Psycho’ deals in cruelty, but there are limits.”
Of Anne Bancroft, Thomson notes that 𝕴she’s “odder, brunette, not really starry, and she could bring out the irrational neurotic qualities in Marion. We might have no doubt about Bancroft: Marion Crane would be the psycho.”
Later in the film, knowle💫dge of camera manipulation makes clear how Hitchcock sought to build the movie’s fear factor.
“As the film advances, it becomes apparent that the framing 🌼of the photography is intense and claustrophobic. If you go through ‘Psycho’ shot by shot, you can point to the exact remorselessness with which Hitchcock visualizes the action and oppresses Marion,” Thomson writes.
“He treats her as a kind of target, or victim in the making. A reinforcement of this🍎 a💜re those scenes where she is driving, compelled to look straight into the camera, while being grilled by voices on the soundtrack. The headlights of other cars serve as a version of the third degree.”
Ultimately, Hitchcock’s manipulations﷽ make us “accomplices in the film” — and making us so, according to Thomson, is “Hitchcock’s most cunning and intimate skill” — so that “we can feel for the victim and the killer at the same time.”
The book i🦹s filled with juicy tidbits for film lovers, from noting how Fred Astaire insisted his dance scenes always be shot with the dancers fully visible from head to toe, to how in “The Godfather,” during the infamous scene where Michael Corleone kills Sollozzo and McCluskey in the Italian restaurant, the film’s sound designer contributed to𒅌 the feeling of calamity.
“As Michael emerges from the lavatory and kills his enemies, the noise of a train rises by a factor of three or four. The loco now seems to be hurtling through the room,” he note🍷s. “You can argue, reasonably, that the sound of the train is a measure of Michael’s trepidation and our suspense.”
All o꧑f this, Thomson believes, is a window into something much larger than film, while remaining an indicatಌor of why film has such a tremendous hold on us.