Frenzy (Hitchcock, 1972): BFI Southbank, NFT1, 8.35pm
This great, late Alfred Hitchcock film, introduced by season curator Karina Longworth, is part of the 'You Must Remember This presents: The Old Man is Still Alive' season at BFI Southbank. Many great directors of Hollywood’s Golden Age, from the 1930 to ’50s, radically changed course in the later years of their career – a theme that runs through the new season of the podcast You Must Remember This and this BFI season. The men behind undeniable classics like It’s a Wonderful Life, My Fair Lady, Sunset Boulevard, Gigi and Psycho, attempted – or were forced – to engage with massive changes in technology; shifts in attitudes towards race and gender, and a new generation of studio executives and audiences who could be sceptical that an ‘old man’ had anything to offer in a world obsessed with burning down the past and starting fresh. Some railed against the new ‘degenerate’ cinema made by, in Billy Wilder’s phrase, ‘the kids with beards’ and tried to preserve the status quo; others attempted to make films that confronted the generation gap and a transformed society.
Tonight’s film will be introduced by season curator Karina Longworth.
Full details of the season can be found here.
Chicago Reader review: This turned out to be Alfred Hitchcock’s penultimate film (1972), though there’s no sign of the serenity and settledness that generally mark the end of a career. Frenzy, instead, continues to question and probe, and there is a streak of sheer anger in it that seems shockingly alive. The plotting combines two of Hitchcock’s favorite themes: the poisoned couple (Marnie, The Man Who Knew Too Much) and the lone man on the run (North by Northwest, Saboteur); its subjects are misogyny and domestic madness. Dave Kehr
Here (and above) is the trailer.
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