(16) Bates Motel (2013-) for sleepless nights

Bates Motel, TV show (2013).

If you are not looking forward to a good night's sleep, but instead, seek for some sleepless nights, then stop by and read on.

New, successful and captivating TV show Bates Motel is already confirmed for a second season and if you missed the first season on your TV screens, go and get the first season's box set. You have to watch it, you have to see it! It is not a remake of Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho or Robert Bloch's novel Psycho it is a prequel to Psycho set in modern times, which occasionally pays homage to "the good old films" from Hitchcock's Psycho era. It is a story of how Norman Bates became Hitchcock's iconic psycho.

Many thought that this show would not work, that it should not work, that Bates Motel shouldn't exist, but the executive producer from Lost, Carlton Cuse, and the writer of Friday Night Lights, Kerry Ehrin, somehow succeeded, even so much that it makes you wonder why TV producers didn't come up with this idea sooner?

Freddie Highmore from Tim Burton's Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (2005) and August Rush (2007), the little chocolate loving and guitar playing boy has grown up and becomes Norman Bates, alongside the exceptional Vera Farmiga starring as Norman's all loving mother, Norma Louise Bates. A lovely addition to both of them is Norman's half-brother Dylan, played by Max Thieriot. The cast is fantastic for this show, Highmore fearlessly steps into Anthony Perkins' shoes and captures the essence of Norman Bates, the chemistry between Farmiga and Highmore is so deep and indisputable, that sometimes it tricks the viewer into believe that the relationship between Norman and Norma is normal and perfectly sane. However Thieriot's character Dylan is there to remind us how insane and wrong it all is. I would say that out of all the characters, Dylan is the only rational one, but despite this fact, it is still quite easy to relate to all of the characters, there is nothing paranormal about them, nothing that would alienate them from the viewer, despite all the horror they go through and inflict.

The picturesque village and lovely landscape shots reminds me of David Lynch's created TV show Twin Peaks. Both shows inhabit a little picturesque village full of dark secrets, weirdoes and, obviously, high crime rate. I just hope that Bates Motel won't go down the path of extra-terrestrial creatures, the spiritual world and backwards speaking midgets (don't get me wrong, I love Twin Peaks), I just hope that Bates Motel will strongly hold its foot in this world. Although, from Hitchcock's Psycho you know who is the psycho, still after every episode you want to see the next one and the next one... Suspense and horror is there to keep you awake for few nights and to keep you coming back for the next episode.

---SPOILER ALERT---

Burns: But all she really ever wanted was home.

Bruce: Well, I'll try to give her one.

Burns: I know you will, Bruce. Are you going to live with your mother?

Bruce: Just for the first year,

Burns: That'll be nice. A home with mother. A real honeymoon.

The opening dialogue of Bates Motel is from His Girl Friday (1940) (read about it on my blog here), and with these lines opens up the world of Norman and Norma Bates and the line "That'll be nice. A home with mother.", will stay and echo in the viewer's mind all throughout the first season.

The story immediately sets off, mother and her son moves to the house that overlooks the notorious motel in the beautiful village of White Pine Bay. All the craziness starts, threats, attack, a rape scene, murder, a manga book, Asian sex slaves, a mysterious man from room number 9, a murdered police officer, fields of pot, a burned man in a car, a burned man hung, an eye for an eye and a hand for a hand... A lot happened in the first season, almost too much. If the first episodes kept a bit of mystery with controlled pace, in which the viewer could keep a track on who is involved in what story line, then starting from episode 3 or 4 it just all started to boil over, it seemed a bit too much. However by the end of the season the show found its footing again, and luckily, also found conclusions for a few cases, at least the Asian sex slave case, although we never get to know what happened to the girl after she ran into the woods.

In spite of the quick pace and many twists and turns, Bates Motel still delivers engrossing tales, for example, the viewer gets to know how and when Norman's black outs start to appear, we all know, that Norman's black outs don't lead to anything good. Furthermore we get to know how and why Norman fell in love with taxidermy. After all, there are loads of stuffed birds in Psycho (watch the short clip from Psycho below). In Bates Motel, when Norman's dog Juno gets hit by a car, he says that it feels disrespectful to bury Juno, so he goes to Emma's father to learn taxidermy, so in some ways he can keep Juno.

Furthermore, we get to know Norman's infamous mother better. Despite all the burned men and severed arms, Norma's rape scene, in my mind, will stay as the most horrific scene of all. Norma's rape scene aroused a weird mix of feelings, fear, shock, sympathy, disgust, repulsion, and somewhere far, far back in my head a tiny voice was saying that she deserved it, because of what she is doing and will do to Norman. Then, in the last few episodes of the season we get to know that Norma's brother raped her during her childhood, then the rape scene starts making more sense, her need to be in control of everything and to know everything makes sense and all of a sudden, she doesn't seem as such a monster who is ruining Norman's life, instead she becomes more human. Norma is simply a ruined human being. Because she doesn't know how to exist in this world, she also doesn't know how to let Norman live in this world. 

So in the end, despite all their wrong doings, you feel sympathy for the characters, you understand them, you still know that what they are doing is wrong, even evil, but somehow it seems the only way they can exist.

I loved it! I loved the first season, it had its pros and cons, but I am positively surprised how well it all turned out.

P.S. To answer the question whether Norman killed his teacher or not, I am on the side of the argument that says he did. He has his black out, we hear the key phrase: "You know what you have to do, don't you?". And the next thing he is running away and she is on the floor dead.

Well, I might be terribly wrong, but we won't know till the second season, will we?

(11) Rope (1948): Hitchcock's remarkable achievement

http://hitchcockwiki.wordpress.com/category/films/rope-1948/

Alfred Hitchcock's Rope (1948) is often regarded as a mistake, not only by audiences and critics, as David Thomson claims, Rope is "flawed by unwieldy or wrongheaded situations", but also by the master of suspense himself, as Hitchcock puts it: "As an experiment, Rope may be forgiven." However, I personally loved the film, whether this is because of my love of the stage and the reality that mistakes are more apparent on the stage, I don't know, however I enjoyed it immensely.

Rope, which originally was a play staged in London in 1929, provided Hitchcock with many technical challenges, it was his first Technicolor film, the first film where he was also a producer, moreover Hitchcock also wanted to see whether it was possible to make a film without cutting and editing, he wanted to create a film with a continuous action, designed to take place in real time. Hitchcock showed that it is possible, that film can be just like a play - a curtain opens and a play starts, a curtain closes and a play ends. Hitchcock wanted to make it as a stage production, only for the cinema:

I undertook Rope as a stunt ... The stage drama was played out in the actual time of the story; the action is continuous from the moment the curtain goes up until it comes down again. I asked myself whether it was technically possible to film it in the same way. The only way to achieve that, I found, would be to handle the shooting in the same continuous action, with no break in the telling of a story that begins at seven-thirty and ends at nine-fifteen. And I got this crazy idea to do it in a single shot. (Hitchcock by Truffaut)

A film sequence is divided into five to fifteen seconds long shots, therefore the film that runs one hour and thirty minutes will have around six hundred shots. In some Hitchcock films there might be as many as a thousand shots, for example, "there were thirteen hundred and sixty shots in The Birds." Whereas in Rope each shot runs from four to ten minutes, that is, "the entire film roll in the camera magazine, and is referred to as a ten-minute take. In the history of cinema this is the only instance in which an entire film has been shot with no interruption for the different camera setups." Therefore, Rope only has as many as eleven shots. That is an admirable achievement and Hitchcock went through a great trouble to achieve this continuous action.

A representation in LOOK magazine of the shot sequences in Rope. http://www.fulltable.com/vts/s/si/r.htm

Rope was Hitchcock's first Technicolor film. In 1948 if you filmed a Technicolor film, that meant less mobile camera movements, thus lighting couldn't be adjusted to each scene as it was done by the Americans in 1920. Hitchcock used a dolly for the camera and every single movement was mapped out well beforehand, plus the set of the film was the one that moved, "Walls are being moved and lights are being raised and lowered", everything was set on silent rails and furniture was mounted on rollers, so it could be moved around. Even clouds outside the window were moved slowly to indicate time passing. I can imagine that the whole set of Rope resembled a massive doll's house, where Hitchcock was the master of the house and dolls.
It took ten days of rehearsals with the cameras, the actors and the lighting, after that there were eighteen days of shooting, nine days of which were for the retakes, because of 'the too orange sunset', so the last five reels were done all over again. One mistake meant re-taking of the whole reel, re-shooting roughly ten minutes of the film.
Besides the continuous action, the moving set and all the problems with color, on top of that Hitchcock managed to create a direct soundtrack for the film, which is remarkable, and it was never done before neither in Europe nor in Hollywood. As Truffaut puts it, Hitchcock reached "the painstaking quest for realism. The sound track of that picture is fantastically realistic ... toward the end ... one hears the noises gradually rising from the street." Which really was the case! Hitchcock gathered a group of people who would talk about the shots, the scene which appeared at the end of the film, and the microphone was put six stories high, so it would coincide with the apartment in the film. Moreover, in order to create the sound of police sirens  coming towards the apartment Hitchcock "made them to get an ambulance with a siren. ... placed a microphone at the studio gate and sent the ambulance two miles away...". That's how Hitchcock created the soundtrack for Rope.
Doubtless, Rope was technically a remarkable and admirable achievement, it might imply that Hitchcock sometimes was more interested in technique and filming process than the meaning of the film and importance of the story. Rope mightn't be Hitchcock's most suspense building film, but nevertheless it still 'brutalizes our nerves' with its story about two young homosexual men, who Hitchcock wanted initially to be played by Cary Grant and Montgomery Clift, who murder their college friend as an intellectual challenge in order to commit the perfect crime.

P.S. As many of you might know Hitchcock enjoyed making brief cameos in his films. So, where can you find Hitchcock's cameo in Rope?

He appears in the opening credits, however his profile also appears on the red neon sign outside the window. Quite a colourful appearance for his first Technicolor production. Hitchcock said: "My cameo appearances were ... reminding the audience, it's only a movie." All together the master appeared in 39 films. Which reminds me of 39 Steps to Hitchcock, if you want to delve deeper into Hitchcock's wit and are spellbound by his work as I am, then take this BFI created step-by-step journey through his life and work, that made Hitchcock the cinema's master of suspense.

Rope (1948) - 00:55:22 - http://www.ifc.com/fix/2012/11/alfred-hitchcock-cameos

Rope (1948) will also be available on Blu-ray, pre-order now on Amazon here, it will be released on June 4, 2013.