Posted on 04/30/2017 3:47:40 PM PDT by NYer
On April 29, 1980, the world lost a great storyteller when Alfred Hitchcock, the “Master of Suspense,” died in his Bel Aire home at the age of 81. His repertoire included more than 50 films in the suspense genre – films such as “The Birds,” “Psycho,” “North by Northwest” and others.
The 2012 film “Hitchcock”, which purported to tell the director's life story, gave little attention to his faith. Instead, it spotlighted Hitch's alleged behind-the-scenes discord with his wife of 54 years, screenwriter Alma Reville, and his domineering approach to actors on the set of his films. Two biographies – by Patrick McGilligan (in 2004) and Peter Ackroyd (in 2016) – did little to unpack the spiritual side of Hitchcock's life.
McGilligan wrote of his family of origin, in Alfred Hitchcock: A Life in Darkness and Light:
The Hitchcocks were staunchly Catholic, but they showed irreverence for everything, including Catholicism. The Hitchcocks had a number of priests in the family; relatives or not, clergymen were in and out of the home, drinking, singing, laughing, and making mischief.
Ackroyd recounted a story about how Hitchcock kept his feet firmly planted in reality: He smashed a once-used tea cup every morning after breakfast, to remind himself of the frailty of life.
But throughout his youth, Hitchcock was immersed in Catholic faith. Raised as a Catholic, he was sent to Salesian College in Battersea, and to the Jesuit grammar school at St. Ignatius College in Stamford Hill, London. His wife Alma converted to the Catholic faith before their marriage in 1926, and the couple were married in a Catholic ceremony in London's Church of the Immaculate Heart of Mary, more commonly called Brompton Oratory.
(Excerpt) Read more at ncregister.com ...
Catholic ping!
Didn’t he ruin Tippi Hedren’s career because she wouldn’t go out with him?
I could be wrong.
Very possibly as Ms Hedrin has made that statement on TCM interviews about her career.
No you are not wrong. Tippi Hedren and her daughter complained loud and long about Hitch’s obsession with her and how, when she got married and he took the hint, he sent her a Barbie with a noose around its neck and lost all interest in MARNIE...
I went to Catholic school with Hitch’s granddaughters; Hitch was also Jesuit influenced if not trained (now I understand how weird this is) and there was a lot of Jungian/Jesuit/pagan freakiness in his films. SHADOW OF A DOUBT comes to mind but then his perversion shone through in the unwatchable FRENZY.
Glad he got communion at the end. He needed forgiveness.
**Weighing one’s life with its share of wounds suffered and inflicted in such a perspective, and seeking reconciliation with an experienced and forgiving God, strikes me as profoundly human. Hitchcock’s extraordinary reaction to receiving communion was the face of real humanity and religion, far away from headlines … or today’s filmmakers and biographers.**
Great article.
http://archive.li/UPAI2#selection-2951.0-2955.43
“”Tom said, “Hitch, this is Mark Henninger, a young priest from Cleveland.”
“Cleveland?” Hitchcock said. “Disgraceful!...
One of Hitchcock’s biographers, Donald Spoto, has written that Hitchcock let it be known that he “rejected suggestions that he allow a priest . . . to come for a visit, or celebrate a quiet, informal ritual at the house for his comfort.” That in the movie director’s final days he deliberately and successfully led outsiders to believe precisely the opposite of what happened is pure Hitchcock.””
You’ve left me with some reading to do. :)
I appreciate it.
Never saw Frenzy. Think Jung was a shrink whose ideas may have had a following.
I thought Hitchcock was more, or less into occultism circa 1940 and had connections with Aleister Crowley?
“Frenzy” was a good movie, which featured working actors as opposed to celebrities (similar to the underrated “Topaz”). It was made after he returned to England, fed up with the difficulties of working with “star” actors, and more like his early pre-American works (though he could be more explicit).
: )
Don’t get me wrong, Hitch = Genius.
VERTIGO especially; just voted best American film ever made, I believe.
When I read Donald Spoto’s Hitch Dark Side of Genius, I almost got sick.
i’m spending 3 dollars on your advice :)
That’s why you gotta win your contest. :-P
ROFL!!
Thanks brother!!
I can’t cheat FR either. Too many people know where to look to see who won!! :) jk
Oh, by the way, you might be able to get a free copy of the DVD for rent from your local library. You might also look to getting a copy of “Topaz” as well, if you haven’t already seen it. It’s curious, if only because it features one of our favorite actors (who played Dean Vernon Wormer in “Animal House”, John Vernon), as a Fidel Castro-like dictator. John Forsythe (of “Dynasty”) is also in it, along with a criminally underused Roscoe Lee Browne in a nifty role.
These are different from his Hollywood fare, but still good in their own right. His last completed film, if you haven’t seen it, is “Family Plot”, which has him return to Hollywood, and is closer to a comedy (with Bruce Dern, Barbara Harris, William Devane, Karen Black and future “Cheers” star Nicholas Colasanto).
This story supports the common belief, among strict Protestants, that there is little to no connection between Catholic faith and Christian living.
Strict Protestant thinking or not, it's pretty indisputable that for a great many "religious" people there is a disconnect between what one refers to oneself as and how one lives the life that is supposed to match that label. It's certainly not only Catholics who have that problem.
And, as a non-Catholic Christian, I know Catholics who are every bit as committed to Christ and living holy, God pleasing lives as non-Catholics I know and vice versa. Jesus already warned that the "church" would contain wheat as well as tares/weeds. I expect He will be able to tell them apart.
What was in the book that was that bad?
Donald Spoto intimated that the manner of death in FRENZY was Hitch’s personal sexual perversion.
These Elites, especially Jesuit trained/tortured Elites as Hitchcock apparently was, are anti God and anti Christ from the get-go. Sick that some of Hitch’s own understandings of the sick side of things got into his films...
It’s very weird that the actress Vera Miles will not and has never talked about what happened to her with Hitch.
Or not. (Sssshhh!)
Strict Protestant thinking or not, it's pretty indisputable that for a great many "religious" people there is a disconnect between what one refers to oneself as and how one lives the life that is supposed to match that label. It's certainly not only Catholics who have that problem.
Ain't that the truth.
Televangelists also come to mind.
There will be wolves in sheep's clothing in any local church. Soon as God starts to move somewhere, the enemy is right at His heels trying to undermine it.
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