Frenzy (1972, Alfred Hitchcock) (Patreon)

77/100

Third viewing, last seen 1999, which means it's the first time I've heard Jay-Z's voice in my head at the end: "You crazy for this one, Hitch!" Right from the jump, he's fucking with our heads: Ron Goodwin's score, accompanying the opening credits as they're superimposed over a traveling shot heading down the Thames toward Tower Bridge, rings with brassy pomp and circumstance befitting a refined costume drama, making it all the more ghastly when a woman's nude corpse immediately washes ashore. (Titling the film Frenzy is rather sporting, actually. Retaining La Bern's Goodbye Piccadilly, Farewell Leicester Square would have been doubly misleading.) That discomfiting blend of decorum and sadism persists throughout, with the former arguably making the latter harder to stomach; part of what's uniquely horrifying about Brenda Blaney's rape and murder, in particular, are her increasingly hopeless efforts to bargain her way through it, as if Rusk's cheery façade were real and he could be reasoned with, placated, survived. There's a fascinating push-pull at work here, as Hitchcock delights in the freedom to expose women's bodies (for purposes of degradation more than titillation, though it's likely that the two went hand-in-hand for him to some degree) but also feels compelled to e.g. have Brenda tug her bra back up, affording her some semblance of dignity in her final moments. That impulse achieves tremendous power when the camera not only declines to enter Rusk's apartment along with poor doomed Babs but feels compelled to flee the building entirely, as if ensuring that we can't even hear any screams or sounds of struggle. (Earlier, Hitch had not only held for a small eternity outside Brenda's office, as we awaited her secretary's inevitable scream upon discovering the body, but also choreographed a couple of extras walking by to overhear the scream, shrug in bewilderment, and continue on.) Kinda wonder whether that inspired Scorsese, four years later, to pan away from Travis being rejected over the phone and instead stare down an empty hallway—it's pretty much the same too-painful-to-witness flourish. 

What's more, for all its deliberate ugliness, Frenzy is—for me, at least—just as frequently "fun," in its sordid way. Not having read La Bern's novel, I don't know how much Shaffer diverged from it, but certainly the dialogue's crisply combative tenor very much recalls Sleuth, as do the carefully constructed plotting and the absence of any truly sympathetic protagonist. Jon Finch's obstreperous, aggrieved, seedy-looking Blaney ranks dead last among Hitchcock's many innocent men on the run, in the sense that he's guilty of just being a colossal prick (even when—especially when—he's in the right); Dick's the kind of barely sufferable "hero" I perversely cherish, someone you're perfectly happy to watch get put through the wringer. Revealing Rusk as the killer right off the bat is a bold move, which Barry Foster rewards with magnificently controlled, grotesquely smooth shadings that seem to prefigure Ted Bundy, albeit in more of a bluff, working-class mode than Bundy affected. (The lengthy sequence in which Rusk retrieves his monogrammed tie pin compels us to temporarily identify with a serial killer, even as it ups the ante on treating a woman's body with appalling disdain.) Alec McCowen twice delivering extensive exposition while valiantly struggling not to retch at his wife's latest gourmet meal probably isn't to every taste (just like her cooking!), but I find his forbearance endlessly hilarious and appreciate that her instincts about the case prove sounder than do his*. Truth is, I don't feel terribly conflicted, despite recognizing that Hitchcock gives his dark side more rein than was strictly necessary. Frenzy's unsavory aspects are memorable and easy to analyze, and hence got the lion's share of my attention, but movies from which I'd warn away delicate viewers don't get much more conventionally entertaining. 

* For efficiency's sake, Hitchcock cuts straight from Blaney's arrest to his conviction and sentencing, which has the (unintended, I assume, but maybe I'm not giving the film enough credit) residual effect of making Chief Inspector Oxford look like something of an idiot. Blaney had undoubtedly been pointing to Rusk as the real killer all along; why does this suddenly register only when he shouts it yet again as he's dragged back to prison after the verdict comes in? They find evidence against Rusk the moment they start looking for it; seems like dereliction of duty not to have done so previously, even with such a strong circumstantial case against Blaney.