Lost in Seattle

Amy and I finally watched Hitchcock’s Spellbound the other night after Netflix delivered it, like, a month ago. Thank goodness for no late fees!

I’m not that crazy about a lot of Hitchcock, and I have to say that this was not a favorite (despite a really cool dream sequence designed by Salvidore Dalí). Ingrid Bergman is an icy psychiatrist working at a mental hospital. Gregory Peck plays the new hospital director, Anthony Edwardes. Or is he who he says he is? As usual, with Hitchcock, the “mystery” is merely a pretext for some psychological exploration. It’s pretty quickly, and unceremoniously, revealed that Edwardes is not Edwardes but an amnesiac who thinks he killed Edwardes but can’t remember. Bergman, however, falls in love with him and cannot believe he’s a murderer, so she sets about trying to help him recover his memory and figure out what really happened. The pop-psychoanalysis is pretty hokey, as are the overly-earnest performances (except Michael Chekhov as Dr. Brulov, who is wonderful).

But Hitchcock’s films always get me to thinking about film in general. Hitchcock is loved by us Film Studies types precisely because his films are often more about the process of filmmaking and film-watching than about whatever the plot is. Since much of Film Studies is [rather ludicrously] derived from [mis-readings of] psychoanalysis, I can see how this film in particular must have gotten my former colleagues all hot and excited.

What was interesting to me, however, was to think about how the the film, if it were made today, would suffer from a narrative problem due to modern technology. This is a line of thought I had just started to pursue when I was still in my MA program, but never really got an opportunity to explore in depth.

The gist of my interest is this: a primary element in basic narrative is the hero overcoming an obstacle (how to get from point A to point B; how to win the girl; how to escape from a situation; how to solve a riddle; etc.). Technology is focused on solving problems. Think about the novel/film “Around the World in 80 Days.” With the advent of the airplane (modern technology) the entire central drive of the story is moot. Eighty days becomes 80 hours (now even fewer), and that’s not particularly interesting.

As technology solves more and more problems, narratives have three ways to go: set the film in a different time period; turn inward and focus on the personal and do away with external obstacles altogether; or introduce convoluted plot elements that neutralize the offending technology.

An example of this third approach is one of my favorite comedies, Midnight Run. The film is about a bounty hunter (Robert De Niro) who has to escort a timid criminal (Charles Grodin) across country to collect his bounty. The writers have to eliminate the simple solution of air travel right away, or else the film would last about 20 minutes. They do so in a humorous scene where Grodin freaks out onboard an airline due to aerophobia, and DeNiro is chided for bringing a fugitive on board without proper credentials. They are kicked off the plane, therefore, for not one but two reasons, and then must make their way across country by other means — which opens up tons of comic opportunities. The solution is brilliant because it serves the double function of helping establish character: Grodin as meek and terrified; and DeNiro as a scofflaw.

For another example in an older “road picture,” It Happened One Night, air travel is eliminated for financial reasons — the hero and heroine are both broke. Their financial states are intrinsic to the story — they are not merely tacked on for convenience — and they factor into every scene later on. The measure of a good film, in my opinion, is whether it can convincingly neutralize any technology that would otherwise automatically solve the problems of its narrative.

A classic case of this is the cell phone. Imagine Die Hard (another one of my favorites, and one I forgot to list as overlooked on my earlier post about Time’s Top 100 Movies list) if it were made today and Bruce Willis (and every hostage in the Nakatomi Tower for that matter) had a cell phone. In order for the whole half-hour plot point in which John McClane is trying to get ahold of the police to work, the writers would have had to come up with some convincing way to get cell phones out of the picture (I can’t imagine what) or the audience would just sit there thinking “Why doesn’t he (or someone else) just call 911 on their cell phone?”

What got me thinking along this vein with Spellbound was that the whole reason Gregory Peck is able to impersonate “the famous” Dr. Edwardes (however briefly) is that none of the other psychiatrists in the hospital have ever seen a photograph of him. This was a little hard to believe, even for 1945, but it would have been laughable today. Edwardes was the author of several esteemed books of psychoanalysis; today, his books (and his inevitable web site) would have been plastered with his photograph, and it’s likely his colleagues would have all met him at various conferences, etc. Interestingly, the charade is revealed via a telephone call from Edwardes’ secretary. This time, technology serves the plot.

When I was a student, I just couldn’t communicate this particular interest to my faculty committee, and I couldn’t articulate to them why I felt it was important. For now, it’s just something I keep in the back of my mind when I’m judging the movies I watch.