Alfred Hitchcock's Frenzy

The Last Masterpiece

Raymond Foery

After an unparalleled string of artistic and commercial triumphs in the 1950s and 1960s, Alfred Hitchcock hit a career lull with the disappointing Torn Curtain and the disastrous Topaz. In 1971, the depressed director traveled to London, the city he had left in 1939 to make his reputation in Hollywood. The film he came to shoot there would mark a return to the style for which he had become known and would restore him to international acclaim.

Like The 39 Steps, Saboteur, and North by Northwest before, Frenzy repeated the classic Hitchcock trope of a man on the run from the police while chasing down the real criminal. But unlike those previous works, Frenzy also featured some elements that were new to the master of suspense’s films, including explicit nudity, depraved behavior, and a brutal act that would challenge Psycho’s shower scene for the most disturbing depiction of violence in a Hitchcock film.

In Alfred Hitchcock’s Frenzy: The Last Masterpiece, Raymond Foery recounts the history—writing, preproduction, casting, shooting, postproduction, and promotion—of this great work. While there are other books on the production of an individual Hitchcock film, none go into as much detail, and none combine a history of the production process with an ongoing account of how this particular film relates to Hitchcock’s other works. Foery also discusses the reactions to Frenzy by critics and scholars while examining Hitchcock’s—and the film’s—place in film history forty years later. Featuring original material relating to the making of Frenzy and previously unpublished information from the Hitchcock archives, this book will be of interest to film scholars and millions of Alfred Hitchcock fans.

Rowman & Littlefield Publishers

Pages: 202 • Trim: 6⅜ x 9

978-1-4422-4181-7 • Paperback • January 2017 • $34.00 • (£25.00)

978-0-8108-7756-6 • eBook • May 2012 • $32.00 • (£25.00)

Subjects: Performing Arts / Film / History & Criticism, Performing Arts / General, Performing Arts / Individual Director

Alfred Hitchcock's Frenzy

The Last Masterpiece

Paperback

eBook

Summary

After an unparalleled string of artistic and commercial triumphs in the 1950s and 1960s, Alfred Hitchcock hit a career lull with the disappointing Torn Curtain and the disastrous Topaz. In 1971, the depressed director traveled to London, the city he had left in 1939 to make his reputation in Hollywood. The film he came to shoot there would mark a return to the style for which he had become known and would restore him to international acclaim.

Like The 39 Steps, Saboteur, and North by Northwest before, Frenzy repeated the classic Hitchcock trope of a man on the run from the police while chasing down the real criminal. But unlike those previous works, Frenzy also featured some elements that were new to the master of suspense’s films, including explicit nudity, depraved behavior, and a brutal act that would challenge Psycho’s shower scene for the most disturbing depiction of violence in a Hitchcock film.

In Alfred Hitchcock’s Frenzy: The Last Masterpiece, Raymond Foery recounts the history—writing, preproduction, casting, shooting, postproduction, and promotion—of this great work. While there are other books on the production of an individual Hitchcock film, none go into as much detail, and none combine a history of the production process with an ongoing account of how this particular film relates to Hitchcock’s other works. Foery also discusses the reactions to Frenzy by critics and scholars while examining Hitchcock’s—and the film’s—place in film history forty years later. Featuring original material relating to the making of Frenzy and previously unpublished information from the Hitchcock archives, this book will be of interest to film scholars and millions of Alfred Hitchcock fans.

Details

Rowman & Littlefield Publishers

Pages: 202 • Trim: 6⅜ x 9

978-1-4422-4181-7 • Paperback • January 2017 • $34.00 • (£25.00)

978-0-8108-7756-6 • eBook • May 2012 • $32.00 • (£25.00)

Subjects: Performing Arts / Film / History & Criticism, Performing Arts / General, Performing Arts / Individual Director

Author

Raymond Foery is professor of communications at Quinnipiac University and founder of their media production program. He also founded and edited a New York arts journal, The Downtown Review.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments
Prologue: Over the Atlantic and Down the Thames
Chapter One: Hitchcock in 1970: The Lion in Waiting
Chapter Two: Property Values: The Hitchcock Standards and the First “Frenzy”
Chapter Three: Working with Writers: Hitchcock and the Preparation of the Scenario
Chapter Four: Working with Another Sleuth: Hitchcock and Anthony Shaffer
Chapter Five: Brief Inter-title: Looking for a Lost London
Chapter Six: Cattle Calls: Ruminating over a Cast
Chapter Seven: The 13-week Production: Mornings and Afternoons on the Set
Chapter Eight: Shooting the Signature Sequences, Part I: Hitchcock as a Master of Montage
Chapter Nine: Shooting the Signature Sequences, Part II: Hitchcock as the master of Mise-en-scene and the Moving Camera
Chapter Ten: Brief Inter-title: Looking for a Lost Partner OR “Hitchcock in Love”
Chapter Eleven: Adventures in Post-production
Chapter Twelve: Releasing the Film: Creating a Frenzy around Frenzy
Chapter Thirteen: Critical Acclaim and Box-office Redemption
Chapter Fourteen: The Response from the Academy
Chapter Fifteen: Hitchcock and Women; Hitch and His Women
Chapter Sixteen: Forty Years Later
Postscript: Becoming Sir Alfred
Appendix A: Frenzy Cast and Crew
Appendix B: Frenzy Scene List
Works Cited
About the Author

Reviews

After a string of flops and in need of a hit, Alfred Hitchcock returned to his native London in 1971 to make Frenzy, his darkest film since Psycho....After Torn Curtain and Topaz performed so poorly, Hitchcock was in a professional slump and desperate for material that excited him. Arthur La Bern’s 1966 novel Goodbye Piccadilly, Farewell Leicester Square, detailing the exploits of a serial killer in London who raped and murdered young woman à la a modern-day Jack the Ripper, was just such a book. Goodbye soon became Frenzy, with a screenplay by playwright Anthony Shaffer. Like many of the best Hitchcock films, Frenzy features a man on the run trying to clear his name, as well as a murder, though the strangulation of Babs Milligan with a necktie is more brutal than most Hitchcock deaths. Shooting in London represented the first time the director had returned for more than a holiday since 1939, and he took full advantage, staging several outdoor scenes. While Foery’s shot-by-shot analysis of the Frenzy shooting schedule does grow tedious, it offers more new insights than the chapters devoted to rehashing Hitchcock’s mastery of montage and mise-en-scene.
— Publishers Weekly

Raymond Foery’s Alfred Hitchcock’s Frenzy is an almost obsessively detailed history of the movie: its genesis, its casting, its filming, and its cultural impact...If you’re a film buff you’ll probably be delighted with Foery’s microscopic look at the film’s 13-week shooting schedule. This isn’t your typical “making-of” book, but it is a rigorous and enlightening look at the filming of Hitchcock’s neglected masterpiece.

— The Chronicle Herald

Frenzy (1972) was Hitchcock’s second-to-last film, and his last great one. This ruthlessly detailed book examines the production of the film with a microscopic eye, chronicling the 13-week shoot virtually hour by hour, noting how many times the director filmed a scene, how many takes he printed, how many reshoots he did, how many setups he completed in a day, and what time the crew started work and finished for the day (and, sometimes, what time they broke for lunch). It’s the kind of hyperdetailed analysis that will appeal to Hitchcock completists and rabid film buffs....Frenzy is one of Hitch’s least-written-about films, and students of the director’s oeuvre—and film students in general—should benefit from this comprehensive...look at the film’s genesis, production, and reception.
— Booklist

As a whole, The Last Masterpiece provides an engaging snapshot of Hitchcock’s creative brilliance. The book also offers an absorbing insight into an intriguing – not to mention highly disturbing – film.

— Screening The Past

“A new book throws fresh light on the director’s darkest work”

“In Alfred Hitchcock’s Frenzy: The Last Masterpiece, Raymond Foery exhaustively charts the production of the film that helped restore his fortunes and flagging spirits”

“Hitchcock, as Foery reminds us, had always been far less interested in the basic textual content of a story than in how that story was to be realised cinematically.”

— Irish Times

Professor Foery provides a systematic look at the development, filming, and reception of Hitchcock’s next-to-last film. The book is well-researched, filled with copious notes and references, as well as correspondence and selections from the screenplay and shooting scripts
— The Mystery Review

Alfred Hitchcock's Frenzy

The Last Masterpiece

Raymond Foery

Alfred Hitchcock's Frenzy

The Last Masterpiece

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