Hitchcock and Halloween

I have never really liked outdoor decorations celebrating Halloween, but one display in my neighborhood recently caught my eye because it was clever:  Three skeletons with hard hats and shovels in their hands were digging, so to speak; and the display said to me "Skeleton Crew."

This visual pun would have amused Alfred Hitchcock, about whom I've been reading lately.  He was a complicated man with a controversial reputation despite his stellar career as one of our greatest filmmakers.

I have always been attracted to Hitch, as he was called, because of his wry, deadpan, often irreverent humor.  Watching again his TV shows from the 1955-65 period, I am struck by his understated wit and gift for silliness.   His comic introductions to these often masterful short tales of murder and mayhem turn them into original entertainments. It's as if he winds us up with a bit of suspense, then releases us from the tension.

When asked why he never made comedies, he replied, "Why, all of my movies are comedies."

Hitch's best movies--which for me include Psycho, Notorious, North by Northwest, Strangers on a Train, and Rear Window (but not Vertigo)--show his talent for combining the macabre with a Halloween-like trick, as if to tell the viewer that the crime and madness is, after all, a bit of a joke--sadistic perhaps but nonetheless an experience akin to riding on a roller coaster, where people enjoy screaming in terror because at some level they know they're at an amusement park.

Hitchcock's combination of romantic comedy with the thriller is a hallmark of his 50-plus movies, or at least the best of them, and highlight his delight in ambivalence, that sense of uncertainty that he instills in his audiences. The worst of his films, like "The Paradine Case," lack the quality that makes his 1946 classic "Notorious" such a pleasure to watch as Ingrid Bergman and Cary Grant carry on under the watchful gaze of ex-Nazis in Argentina--and of the viewer, who is, as always, turned into a voyeur of sorts.

But if you want to celebrate Halloween with Hitchcock, why not see "Psycho" again and enjoy being tricked? Or at least watch Mrs. Danvers in "Rebecca."