Strangers on a Train Photo Recreations

I decided to take four key moments and shots that I love from the film and recreate them in a somewhat interpretive sense. I used my family as the actors and then set up each shot as accurately as I could to the original images, though I decided to take some artistic liberties with the editing.

Guy (Farley Granger, left) has broken into Bruno’s father’s room to inform him about the troubled nature of his son. He, however, is unexpectedly confronted by Bruno (Robert Walker, right) himself, wielding a pistol.

Bruno (center), now effectively stalking Guy (off-screen), watches patiently during one of Guy’s tennis matches, never taking his eyes off of him, the only head not moving back and forth.

Bruno, during a party, looks over at Barbara Morton (Pat Hitchcock, center), and is immediately reminded of the one he murdered, Miriam (Kasey Rogers), envisioning Miriam’s pair of broken glasses upon Barbara’s face.

Bruno (left), after following Miriam (right) through an amusement park, manages to find her alone in a small clearing and strangles her, as seen through the lens of Miriam’s glasses.

Psycho Photo Recreations

With this photo project, I wanted to try and make my own interpretations of several key scenes and moments from Psycho, some of which I took a modern spin of (especially with what I had available). I decided to build the shots I took around the full scenes, implying both the beginning and ending results of these scenes, showing movement, action, and expression in faces to try and give the viewer a full sense of what’s occurring in the scene. I also attempted to convey the vibe of the film: chilling, bathed in shadow and mystery, horror, and twisted logic. 

Norman Bates (Anthony Perkins) seen dressing up as his mother to kill Marion Crane (Janet Leigh) as she takes a shower, resulting in the famous “shower murder” scene.

Marion Crane is stopped on the side of the road by a highway patrol officer (Mort Mills). He becomes suspicious of her, and investigates what she’s doing.

Norman Bates, now in police custody, completes the mental transformation into his mother as he gives his final “she wouldn't hurt a fly” speech of the film.

An overhead shot that shows private investigator Milton Arbogast (Martin Balsam) investigating the Bates’ home, only to be confronted and killed by Norman Bates posing as his mother.

Too Close to the Sun: Misguided Passion in Damien Chazelle’s Whiplash and Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein

By Quinn Topper Marcus

In 2014, Damien Chazelle took the cinematic world by storm with his directorial debut: Whiplash, the tale of young, passionate student drummer Andrew Neiman. On paper, Whiplash is the classic teacher-student film about the discovery of self. However, Chazelle flips the classic trope, crafting a scintillating exercise in tension where the teacher is not an inspiration, but a violent, manipulative egomaniac hungry for the idea of cloning Charlie Parker, the pinnacle of jazz. It’s not just a story of Andrew coming into his own, but of the verbal and mental torture caused by his professor: Terrence Fletcher, a man who sought to mold a god out of a scrawny, awkward jazz student. 

Nearly 200 years earlier, Mary Shelley wrote Frankenstein, a novel about a crazed, self-important scientist (Victor Frankenstein) seeking to build a creation that transcended the very laws of nature. Little did Victor know his creature would develop a mind of immense curiosity and become aware of its own existential dread and the means to which it came to be. What these two stories have in common is not just humble beginnings from both writers, but the themes involved in both tales. In both cases, Chazelle and Shelley write characters who succumb to obsession, violence, and vengeance against each other. All it takes is a spark of misguided passion.

Chazelle’s Terrence Fletcher and Shelley’s Victor Frankenstein are juxtaposed to showcase malignant ambition bred from maddening passion. Victor and Terrence both have similar goals. Victor wishes to “break through” (32) the laws of the natural world while Terrence seeks to push beyond humanity’s capabilities musically. Both care very little about their ultimate creation, what they truly desire is the glory that comes with discovering such a marvel. These are two men who see the basic laws of nature as moldable. In short: Terrence and Victor believe they are gods. The obsession springs from the fact that for years, both have been tirelessly working towards their crazed ideology. Victor is self-aware of the “wreck” (32) he’s turned himself into during his two years, but allows himself to suffer in the name of his driving purpose: “a new species [that] would bless me [Victor] as its creator and source” (32). He works away in his lab, depriving himself of “rest and health” (35), closing himself off from his friends and family, and ironically finding only disgust in what he has conceived, as stated here: “I beheld the wretch–the miserable monster whom I had created” (35).

 Although Terrence’s goal is not one of a scientist, his goal of training his own Charlie Parker is equally ambitious. His eagerness and undying loyalty to his cause are what connects him to Victor the most. Terrence’s tactics towards his discovery are often violent. He runs his classroom with an iron fist, cursing his students for their mistakes, and even driving one of his most “beautiful” (61) students (Sean Casey) to hang himself out of anxiety and depression. His conscious awareness of how he is affecting his own students and sheer lack of empathy is what’s most terrifying about Terrence. Similar to Victor’s reaction to his creation, Terrence has an aggression-fueled approach to his latest pupil and victim: Andrew Neiman. He threatens Andrew with violence, verbally abuses, and drives Andrew to the point of near-insanity; all for his self-important quest for musical excellence. Worst of all, Terrence advocates that he is justified in his endeavors to become the man who “made Charlie Parker” (88). 

Chazelle’s Andrew Neiman and Shelley’s creature both represent wide-eyed passion misdirected into fiery rage. First, we have Victor Frankenstein’s creature, built from the body parts of the deceased; an unnatural, disproportionate horror. At least, that’s what Shelley makes us believe through Victor’s eyes. When we first meet the creature, we experience Victor’s shock, the terror he undergoes before abandoning his own creation; leaving it to wander the Earth in search of itself. The creature describes its findings as a “wide field of wonder and delight” (84). As it lives vicariously through a family he comes across, learning about language, history, and what it means to be human, we discover that the creature is a being of great curiosity and intelligence. It finds appreciation in the smallest aspects of our world: in the warmth of the sun, the sound of the birds, and in feelings it can’t quite place. The creature discovers a passion for the natural world that gives it nothing but “happiness and affection” (164). 

Trouble arrives when the creature makes an attempt to socialize with this family he’s encountered and has kept himself hidden from, an act that is met with immediate violence. It’s only when the creature becomes aware of the effect it’s “hideously deformed” (85) appearance has on humans that it decides to blame it’s now torturous existence on not just humanity, but his creator: Victor. As proclaimed by the creature: “you [Victor] had endowed me with perceptions and passions and then cast me abroad an object for the scorn and horror of mankind” (pg. 100). With this new fiery rage, the creature begins its own quest, no longer of discovery, but of vengeance against the one cursed him to exist as an “unhappy wretch.”

Whiplash opens with a shot of Andrew practicing his drums, a passion fueled by determination and 13 years of practice, but one that remains more of a hobby to him than a potential career. Once Terrence Fletcher notices the slightest ounce of potential in Andrew, he pounces upon it, manipulates and pushes him, metamorphosing Andrew into the image of drumming perfection. The cost: Andrew’s well-being. At first, Fletcher’s interest in Andrew provides a newfound spark for this passion, as described here: “Andrew is stuck in place for a moment. Then, eyes wide -- is this really happening?” (18) However, once Andrew becomes immersed in Fletcher’s torture-chamber of bitter competition, his passion turns into an unhealthy infatuation. Soon enough, he breaks up with his girlfriend, claiming that drumming would get in the way of their relationship. He begins to pull away from his family, and suggests that he prefers “to feel hated and cast out. It gives me purpose” (52). A near-death experience involving a car accident on the way to a concert is what propels Andrew’s inevitable despair once Fletcher kicks him from the band. He walks into the concert covered in blood, hand broken, body bruised from the collision. This is the moment Andrew becomes his own monster. As the creature did, Andrew turns to a loathsome vengeance against his own creator, anonymously suing Fletcher for the mental abuse he inflicts upon his students. Andrew confesses to his father “he ripped me apart…” (36) and the saddest part of his early realization is that it doesn’t stop Andrew from pursuing this dark path.

The main point of contrast between Chazelle and Shelley’s characters comes towards the end, where each character learns different lessons about their misguided passions. To begin, let’s find the main points of divergence in the conclusions of Andrew and the creature. Shelley writes a miserable finale for her character, after losing his creator and not having a soul on the Earth to love him, we see the creature ready to give up. It’s a song of woe for the creature as it realizes that it no longer has a purpose on the planet now that its thirst for vengeance has been quenched by Victor’s death. So, in the presence of another man, R. Walton, the creature vows to disappear in this passage: “I shall die, and what I now feel be no longer felt. Soon these burning miseries will be extinct” (166). 

Meanwhile, Andrew undergoes a final transformation into the drummer Fletcher always wanted, a seemingly hopeful but misleading end for Andrew. At the end of the film, we see Andrew tricked by Fletcher one last time, given the wrong music for one of the most prestigious concerts in the world. After making a fool of himself and walking off stage, Andrew storms back on as a final act of vengeance against his creator, or so it seems. Andrew performs a drum solo beyond anything we’ve seen him do throughout the film, as it reads in the script: “all limbs moving in a sustained frenzy, sweat splashing, mouth open, eyes blazing, the whole set vibrating, then shaking, looks like it’s about to explode…” (102). He’s become the manifestation of perfection. He’s touched that boundary that Fletcher had been attempting for years to cross, and as they smile at each other in the final moments of the film, what’s initially viewed as a hopeful triumph for master and student collapses into a more ominous truth. 

In an interview on the film’s ending, Chazelle reveals his take on where Andrew and Terrence arrive next: “Fletcher will always think he won and Andrew will be a sad, empty shell of a person and will die in his 30s of a drug overdose. I have a very dark view of where it goes.” Suddenly, the crushing weight of reality sets in, and the realization arrives that only one victor exists in Whiplash; Terrence Fletcher. After all, Fletcher is only proven correct in his methods. Sure, Andrew will likely perish in his adult life due to stress, but will Fletcher ever care, or will he be satisfied by the perfect drum solo that he taught? Andrew will always be known as Fletcher’s puppet and Fletcher will continue to bask in the spoils of creating such a player, and when Andrew is gone, he’ll move onto his next victim. 

Victor meets an end not so conquering. After a treacherous pursuit of his creature, Victor finds himself aboard the ship of R. Walton, exhausted, and quickly falling ill. Here, we see Victor paying for his ambition and mistakes. In the attempt to play god, Victor loses his life. However, before the fateful moment, before his final failure of being unable to kill what he created, Victor tries to redeem himself and pass the torch to Walton. In Victor’s dying moments, his final speech is as follows: “Walton! Seek happiness in tranquility and avoid ambition, even if it be only the apparently innocent one of distinguishing yourself in science and discoveries. Yet why do I say this? I have myself been blasted in these hopes, yet another may succeed.” (162) Victor is acknowledging the nature of his failures and errors he’s made, and almost tells Walton to not fall down the same rabbit hole of obsession. Then again, the phrase “another may succeed” implies that Victor believes his quest isn’t complete and someone else must take his place in extinguishing what he swore to destroy. As Walton has been one of the only real friends to him, and he’s the only one present for his demise, Victor is subtly commanding Walton to complete what he started. One last selfish act from Victor, a man who saw so much, but was so blind to the malicious truths of his actions.

Master and slave, creator and created. The journeys of Victor and his creature, Terrence and Andrew, all intertwine to showcase the terrible effects of when one loses sense of self, replaced by an ill-intentioned purpose. Shelley and Chazelle each take their two damaged leads and create anti-heroes consumed by blind rage and vengeance towards one another. With Victor and Terrence, we observe the journey of two ambitious men, propelled by delusions of transcendence beyond what is capable of nature and humanity, disregarding their experiments in the process. 

As for the experimented upon, Andrew, and the creature, what is witnessed is two lost souls with a humble curiosity for what they love. For Andrew, it’s his drums, for the creature: the world. Here Chazelle and Shelley tragically touch upon how Victor and Terrence manipulated and molded them into monsters that would soon seek to destroy their own makers. With these characters, we discover that there’s a fine line between what we consider passion and obsession, training and torture, nature and nurture. They each meet a fairly dark ending. Terrence smiles upon the success of his evil methods, Andrew achieves perfection with the price of a foreshadowed life of pain, regret, and likely premature death. The creature vows to disappear from the earth, and Victor, in his dying breath, passes the torch of his mad thirst for vengeance onto another. 

They are all cursed from the beginning to the end, miserable wretches that are punished for their ways. Even Terrence, the only one affirmed for his actions, never learns from his errors, and likely never will. He’ll continue to be seldom satisfied, eternally searching for his Charlie Parker. Passion has the power to change the world, obsession is the force that brings these characters to their knees. They each flew too close to the sun and were burnt to a crisp; only ashes left behind.

Alfred Hitchcock’s Intensifying of Life and Cinema

By Quinn Topper Marcus

I remember first being introduced to Alfred Hitchcock’s work as a kid. I remember my parents describing his movies as “the director who always puts a twist in there somewhere.” I recall enjoying North by Northwest, Psycho, and Rear Window (the three I started with) but I never returned to them for years and largely set them aside in my head. I was only 10 or so at the time and I don’t think I could fully grasp the effect Hitchcock had on cinema as a whole. However, now that I’m 17, with a much more expansive palette of films, read the interviews, and discussed and analyzed his movies, I think I better understand and admire Hitchcock’s body of work. 

I certainly believe in Truffaut’s statement that Hitchcock intensified cinema. I think coming to terms with that requires one to be well-viewed in terms of movie watching. There are so many obvious ways that Hitchcock set trends and genre conventions for horror movies, thrillers, mysteries, and action films. His influence on cinema is impossible to ignore and so many filmmakers today have made attempts to emulate his style; Martin Scorsese once even said in an interview that he took massive inspiration from Hitchcock’s work. I like the idea that Hitchcock and Truffaut briefly touched upon in their interview that Hitchcock wasn’t necessarily just remaking the same movie over and over, but rather trying to decipher a specific theme throughout several movies. With that in mind, one could connect the majority of Hitchcock’s works; obsessed with sex, love, death, murder, justice, and sometimes the synergy of all five. 

Perhaps that’s what Truffaut is getting at when he says Hitchcock intensified life as well. Hitchcock persisted in his exploration of his favorite themes, conveying a twisted worldview, his distrust in law enforcement, and his conflating of sex and death to be the same. He was trying to tell his audience something about the way he perceived life. A more literal interpretation of Truffaut’s statement would probably touch upon Hitchcock’s impact as a person and as an entertainer in the eyes of the public. There is value in this interpretation, as Hitchcock had an impact on many people in his life, inspired other filmmakers, and continues to make his presence known throughout the history of film. However, I think Hitchcock intensified life by putting the audience in his shoes, in telling these stories that fascinated him, that he was drawn to because in some way he connected to the material. He wanted to toy with the audience, play with their minds, manipulate them into thinking one person’s a hero, and then redefining the term ‘hero’ altogether. Or, getting audiences to identify with a killer, to very briefly root for someone as evil as Norman Bates. 

Hitchcock’s filmography could be seen as one massive psychological test of his audiences’ humanity, of the deepest, darkest desires he believes are within all of us. Maybe not, perhaps all of it was a practical joke. Hitchcock mentioned plenty of times that he loved practical jokes, so maybe his movies were just a bit of irony, and the punchline was always the audience's reaction. Either way, Hitchcock opened up new doors for cinema, and put his perspective of life in the spotlight, intensifying both life and cinema along the way. As for his most monumental or memorable achievements, I think there are multiple that deserve that title. 

The most obvious for me has to be Vertigo, which I believe to be his finest work. Vertigo stands apart from the rest of his filmography as his most stunning thematic and structural work, featuring what might be James Stewart’s best performance of his career. I feel as though Hitchcock’s entire mission as a filmmaker culminated with this film. The film features Hitchcock’s most hypnotic visual storytelling, conveying themes of longing, obsession, loss, and the male gaze. I felt myself transfixed to the screen the whole time and was taken on Hitchcock’s most twisted journey of audience identification, featuring a hard-hitting reveal roughly halfway through. The way Vertigo’s structure and Jimmy Stewart’s performance complement each other to tell this tragic narrative of a man spiraling into obsession over a woman is so well constructed, and easily elevates Vertigo to what is likely my personal favorite of his works.

 Rope speaks to Hitchcock’s mastery of the camera. Here, Hitchcock is fully experimenting with the idea of the ‘perfect murder,’ taking a very theatrical and confidently poised approach to shooting this film. He lets the actors do their excellent work, and gradually slithers the camera throughout the film, letting the tension build to what is Hitchcock’s most riveting climax; the confrontation between Jimmy Stewart’s character and the killers. The film is a flawless example of Hitchcock’s skill as a filmmaker. He makes his presence known with the camera, turning the camera into something of a character itself, a fly on the wall that’s purely there to observe the suspense. 

Rear Window, yet another Stewart-Hitchcock collaboration, sees Hitchcock’s most critical examination of his role as a director and a filmmaker. He explores the most voyeuristic tendencies of directing and the act of observing people in general, examining humans’ inner tendencies to pry into the lives of others. The work could be seen as Hitchcock’s most meta, as one reading sees him using Stewart’s character as an extension of himself as a filmmaker, drawn to the bizarre, to crime, killings, women, and the lives of everyday people. 

Psycho is another easy candidate for Hitchcock’s strongest achievements, serving (next to Vertigo) as his darkest film. Norman Bates, arguably the most terrifying villain of Hitchcock’s whole filmography, already gives Psycho the edge over many of Hitchcock’s works. However, Psycho is also perhaps the best example of Hitchcock’s toying with the audience. He effectively turned the audience into a character in the film, forced to identify with multiple people throughout the movie, including Norman Bates himself right after the famous ‘shower murder’ scene. The use of perspective in Psycho is marvelous, both times I watched it, the signature twist of Janet Leigh’s death remained effective, and her murder remains one of the best-directed sequences of Hitchcock’s career. The camerawork and editing are gorgeous in Psycho as well, both of which are deliberately crafted to obscure the mystery of Norman Bates’ identity from the audience, and the results are stunning to watch. 

Lifeboat is a massively underrated Hitchcock film, providing one of his more theatrical works that uses its premise to explore human nature brilliantly. The central concept of having a group of survivors stranded in a lifeboat, most of which are American or British, forced to rely on the most qualified member of the boat: a German, makes for some very intense scenes. The film was released during WWII, and seeing members of the Allied forces placing their trust and survival in a German’s hands (who ultimately does betray them) was riveting to watch. The film acts almost as an experiment, one that decodes just how far people are willing to trust one another, and what humans will do to each other to survive. I’d say it ranks amongst Hitchcock’s major achievements for its simplicity. The film is certainly the tightest film Hitchcock has made; both in pacing and runtime. Lifeboat also manages to get the best ensemble work from a cast out of any of Hitchcock’s movies. There isn’t a weak link in the cast, and it's a nice step forward for Hitchcock to see him cast what was his first major African-American role with Canada Lee. The German man played by Walter Slezak is also one of Hitchcock’s most deceptively evil villains. The wildest aspect of his character is that American audiences were watching allied forces teaming up with a German to survive, a premise that must have been mind-boggling to experience at the time. 

One more underrated Hitchcock film I’d consider an achievement is The Lady Vanishes, which has slowly crawled its way up my list of favorites. The final film of Hitchcock’s British period, The Lady Vanishes is Hitchcock’s best representation of what he meant when he said movies are “slices of cake.” With its release in 1938, England was on the brink of war, and the film served as an ominous telling for what was to come. The Lady Vanishes is almost a warning sign of a film, drenched in this subtle paranoia about the war to come. However, Hitchcock somehow manages to produce what is his most heartfelt and spirited adventure. There’s something oddly whimsical about the film, as the central romance between Margaret Lockwood and Michael Redgrave is played as if two children are out to investigate a crime scene. There’s so much humor and joy put into the film, and as Hitchcock was beginning to get older, one can’t help but feel as if The Lady Vanishes served as his personal goodbye to youth. Here, Hitchcock says farewell to young love, and the feeling of fantasy, ecstatic happiness, and the wide-eyed passion that comes with it. He also parts ways with British cinema’s charm and whimsy, getting the most out of his signature comedic style with his characters, particularly the duo of Charters and Caldicott. The Lady Vanishes is such a colorful project from Hitchcock, emotionally, and thematically, seamlessly blending the dread of a coming war with this strange mystery on board a train. I consider it one of Hitchcock’s finest works for how much it signifies childlike delight for the art form of cinema, giving the audience a true “slice of cake” of a Hitchcock film.

I could name many more of Hitchcock’s films that hold significance in his vast body of work, these five are just a piece of what he managed to accomplish throughout his career. Of course, not all of his films are perfect, but to make a statement that all he did was remake the same project over and over would be overlooking the fundamental versatility of Hitchcock as a director. He touched so many different genres throughout his career, made anti-war films, horror films, espionage thrillers, mysteries of all kinds, twisted romances, comedies, the list goes on and on. During this class, my appreciation for his style and impact on cinema has grown immensely, and I do believe that Hitchcock’s filmography deserves special recognition in the history and evolution of film as an art form. 

One memory I hold close to my heart from my experiences with Hitchcock was my first viewing of North by Northwest. I was around 10 at the time, and I remember being thoroughly entertained by the film, but also greatly inspired. North by Northwest was one of the films that got me into cinema in the first place. The scene where Cary Grant runs for his life from an actual plane, opening fire on him in an open field as he darts for cover in a nearby cornfield was one of the most memorable and critical sequences that developed my love for the movies. As I watched works of Hitchcock’s I’d never seen, and rewatched ones I saw long ago, I once again felt that same undeniable passion and hunger to make something as powerful and striking as that.