Review of Frenzy (1972) by Alissa F — 21 Jun 2004

This is one of those Hitchcock movies that seems to express his questionable perceptions of women, (He refused to look at his wife while she was pregnant, claimed the sight made him nauseated). The one rape scene shown is very peculiar. When I first saw it I thought he was letting the darker side of his feeling towards women through in this movie, and there definetly is that element present, like when a cop is talking about the fact that the strangler was also raping his victims and says something to the effect of "at least they're getting something out of it" - disgusting. However, getting back to the peculiarity of the rape scene, The rapist so obviously is not even having any contact with the woman. He is shown from the shoulders up and he looks like he's standing for a screen test and making rapist expressions. His body is almost immobile. Same thing with the woman, she's shaking her head and making faces like she's got diahreea (I can never spell that correctly) but is pretty motionless. They are cut to seperately and don't appear in the same frame while the rape is happening. Very disconnected and awkward. I thought, "Isn't Hitchcock better than that? That was odd". But, immediatley after the rape she gets strangled and then the film regains it's motion and you see them together and struggling and moving together while she's suffocating, so much more like it's really happening. So I thought Hitchcock must have had that dichotomy there on purpose. He was trying to show thta the rape wasn't a sexual event but a detached violation of sorts. He made it, the rape, seem less personal to the killer than the strangulation. One of the cops says later that the killings aren't about the sex act but that the killer probably really got off from the killing. We all know this stuff from abnormal psychology and the hundreds of movies with rape and muder but the way Hitchcock directs the scene here is unique. I hope it just wasn't a case of the censors saying "no body thrusting or movements of any kind". It was 1972, not 1952.

I found the scenes with the cop/detective and his wife with her cooking class dinners amusing. I also liked the feel of the 1970's London streets and markets that are continually present.

My favorite part of the movie though is when the camera follows the killer and a women into a building and up the stairs to his room, the door closes behind them, the camera goes out the way it came - backward down the steps, the building is quiet, the camera keeps moving out of the building then is out the door and street sounds are heard again as the camera continues back enough to show the upstairs windows of the building, end scene.

Hicthcock visually tells stories so well.