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Frenzy
1972 Crime / Drama / Thriller
Review
By the early 1970s, Alfred Hitchcock was regarded as a filmmaker who
was past his prime. His last three films of the 1960s – Marnie, Torn Curtain and Topaz
fared badly at the box office and were generally ill-received by the
critics. All that changed when Frenzy
was released in 1972. Not only was the film a huge hit, both in
America and the UK, but the reviews it received were almost universally
favourable. At the age of 72, Hitchcock had made a spectacular
return to form.It is easy to see why Frenzy was such a popular film. It has many of the key thematic elements of Hitchcock’s previous great films. There is the innocent man unjustly accused of murder (The Wrong Man / North by Northwest) and the likeable character who turns out to be a psychotic killer (Psycho). There is a liberal dose of that famous Hitchcock black humour, which not only makes the film more entertaining but also heightens its darkness and brutality. And the way in which the film is directed, shot and edited has the precision and ingenuity that is recognisably that of Hitchcock at his near-best. Frenzy was the first film which Hitchcock made in England since Stage Fright in 1950. The busy Covent Garden location allowed the director to reacquaint himself with his humble origins – he grew up in this part of the world, his father being an East London greengrocer. The nostalgia element of the film is hard to miss. The London it portrays is not the real city seen by a contemporary Londoner, but the somewhat idealised version of someone returning to England after many years. For what was a comparatively low budget production, Hitchcock eschewed big name actors in favour of established character actors and rising talent. The cast list is one of the most surprising of any Hitchcock film, including Jon Finch, Barry Foster and Alec McCowen as the leads, with Anna Massey, Jean Marsh, Billie Whitelaw and Bernard Cribbins in supporting roles. The performances are generally good, although the characterisation is marred by some stilted and unconvincing dialogue. Barry Foster has by far the best part and so it is hardly a surprise that his contribution is the most memorable. His portrayal of Rusk combines an avuncular charm with a spine-tingling sense of menace; he may be the villain, but he is also the character the audience most identifies with. Frenzy was popular but it was also controversial on account of the level of violence it depicts. This was the only one of Hitchcock’s films to be given an R certification. Even today, the sequence in which Barbara Leigh-Hunt is raped and murdered is shocking, not just because of what it portrays, but also because of the way in which the sequence is shot and edited – as a frenzied montage of very brief shots. This flurry of images recreates in the mind of the spectator not just the visual objective horror of what is happening but also its subjective impression, the extreme emotional trauma experienced by both the killer and his victim as the drama is acted out in an orgy of carnal brutality. This is Hitchcock at his most extreme and his most technically brilliant. The film’s other famous sequence is the one in which Barry Foster frantically attempts to recover an incriminating tie pin from one of his murder victims whilst travelling in the back of a lorry loaded with potatoes. Whilst this has some of the shock value of the earlier rape scene, this is played in a completely different way, as an outrageous piece of black comedy. Hitchcock’s love of the macabre has never been so evident nor as skilfully realised as it is here. Frenzy was to be Hitchcock’s last great film. He made one further film on his return to California, Family Plot, but this was not an unqualified success and is regarded as a lesser work. What is remarkable is not that Hitchcock had such a long and productive career (53 full-length films over 54 years), but that he made so many films that were both critically and commercially successful. Hitchcock liked to entertain, but he also knew how to make great cinema, and therein lies the secret of his longevity. © James Travers 2008 Write a review for this film...User Comments
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Director:
Alfred Hitchcock
Starring: Jon Finch, Barry Foster, Alec McCowen, Barbara Leigh-Hunt, Anna Massey Synopsis
In London a serial killer is at large. The victims are all young
women who have been raped and strangled with a necktie.
Meanwhile, former RAF man Richard Blaney is having difficulty fitting
back into civilian life. Having lost his job as a pub barman, he
looks up his ex-wife Brenda, who now runs a successful matrimonial
agency, and vents his frustration on her. The next day, Brenda is
found dead in her office, apparently another victim of the necktie
rapist. When he discovers that the police suspect him of the
killing, Blaney decides to go into hiding with his girlfriend
Babs. Unfortunately, Blaney’s friend Bob Rusk has other plans for
Babs...
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