Inglourious Saboteurs: Tarantino Rips a Page from the Hitchcock Playbook

Take a look at this post from the assistant moderator of the Alfred Hitchcock Geek Facebook fan page, Elisabeth Karlin. It's the first of what I hope to be many more insightful blog items! -- J.G.

By Elisabeth Karlin

Alfred Hitchcock is easily the most quoted director in filmdom. Few other directors have not at one time or another cut a snippet from his playbook. Brian DiPalma draws on the Master so much that his oeuvre is a virtual glossary of the Hitchcock vocabulary.

At the other end of the spectrum, there's Quentin Tarantino -- the director who most likes to quote from filmmakers past. Yet, ironically, there's barely a whiff of Hitch among his acres of allusions. With Inglourious Basterds, Tarantino's 2009 epic of Nazis and Nazi killers, Hitchcock at last gets his due from the man who loves movies. And how.

Inglourious Basterds is a riot of vintage winks and nods to everything from The Battleship Potemkin to The Breakfast Club. But no film is as dramatically evoked as Hitchcock's 1936 Sabotage. Though some of these allusions might be open to interpretation, there is no doubt that Tarantino had Sabotage on the brain--he even treats us to a morsel of the film itself, the crucial scene of Stevie boarding the bus, to illustrate the dangers of combustible film.

Beyond that very literal reference, the most compelling evidence of Tarantino's Hitchcockian frame of mind are the parallels between his heroine Shoshann Dreyfus (Melanie Laurent) and Sabotage's Mrs. Verloc (Sylvia Sidney.) Both women are proprietors of movie theaters and they share an air of plaintive sorrow, gravity and loneliness that comes from impossible grief. (Sabotage opened in the U.S. under the soapier but apt title of A Woman Alone)

Fearing for their own safety, Shoshanna and Mrs. Verloc, both saddled with major cases of survivor's guilt, must hide an enormous burden of anger heaped with anguish as they watch their enemies, Landa and Verloc, respectively, sit down to dine with audacious fussiness. Landa won't eat his strudel without cream and Verloc gripes about his brown vegetables.

While Shoshanna carefully plans her revenge, Mrs. Verloc seizes an impromptu but also murderous solution. Nevertheless, both stories barrel toward their inexorable conclusions amid similar moments of, shall we say, explosive, civic hoopla--Sabotage has its "Lord Mayor's Day" and Basterds has the premiere of "A Nation's Pride." They end in sabotage -- the fiery destruction of, in both cases, a movie theater.

In both films the movie theater is used as a cover for sabotage. The theaters themselves are embodiments of the Hitchcockian motif of shifting identities (as are many of the characters in both films.) And in both we are taken to the other side of the screen (the Verlocs actually live behind the screen.) The theatetr in Hitchcock has always been a place where we sit in the dark and face our anxiety so it is telling that it is behind the screen where, in both films, the explosions ignite and audiences are sent screaming and running for the exits.

In Sabotage a bomb in a birdcage goes off. In the film within the film of Basterds, Zoller demolishes his enemies from a structure known as a "bird's nest." And in a strange case of who's quoting who--Hitchcock gives us a clip of the disturbing cartoon "Who Killed Cock Robin?"--A sequence that comes off as quintessential Tarantino.

It's not only Sabotage that gets the Tarantino salute. Other Hitch references abound--a cigarette stubbed out in food (see To Catch a Thief), a glass of milk and an unrecognizable Rod Taylor (The Birds' Mitch Brenner to you) as Winston Churchill. And with Tarantino's sly penchant for cinematic name mash-ups (e.g. Emmanuelle Mimieux) it's hard not to consider Lt. Archie Hickox as a homonymous evocation of Hitch coupled with Cary Grant (nee Archie Leach.)

Finally, there's Basterd's strangling death scene of spectacular blonde Bridget Von Hammersmark. With the life being throttled out of her, she gropes helplessly with nothing in reach she can use to save herself. The writhing beautiful blonde with a cast on her leg becomes Grace Kelly and James Stewart rolled into one. Once Bridget is extinguished, her murderer goes to the telephone. As he picks up the receiver we see right next to the phone, there on the desk, a pair of scissors. And then he dials M.

THE LADY VANISHES - Hitchcock's Most Political Film?

Another article on Alfred Hitchcock's The Lady Vanishes has just hit the street, or, at least, the Internet. In an article in the Guardian, Matthew Sweet states: "The Lady Vanishes is one of the least analysed pictures in the Hitchcock canon; critics have always preferred to pick over the railway-bookstand Freudianism of his American films. When Eric Rohmer and Claude Chabrol wrote their pioneering study of the director, they concluded that the film "requires little commentary". The critic Geoffrey O'Brien has argued: "The Lady Vanishes is the film that best exemplifies Hitchcock's often asserted desire to offer audiences not a slice of life but a slice of cake." Watching the film again, in a bright new print struck by the British Film Institute, that seems to me to be an unsupportable position. The Lady Vanishes is the most political film that Hitchcock ever made. It is a parable about Britain during the appeasement years."

I agree with Sweet’s otherwise dismissive article on Hitchcock that The Lady Vanishes is an often overlooked masterpiece. But I can’t join him in his assertion that that the movie was "the most political film that Hitchcock ever made." That’s an ignorant statement. Foreign Correspondent (1940), for instance, is essentially a propaganda piece (made for general distribution), whereas, he also made two more bona fide propaganda pieces, Adventure Malgache and Bon Voyage (both 1944) to support the war effort in France. Sabotage (1936) might his "most political" British film. Other Hitchcock films could be cited as being deeply political.

Other observers have commented that Hitch's films are merely personal dramas that take place against a political or wartime backdrop. The implication is that the wartime setting is merely background scenery and that it has little to do with the dramatic story. I don't think that's quite accurate. I'd say that the romantic dramas in his films are inextricably (in the most profound sense of the word) linked with their political subplots. Topaz (1969) is fundamentally a "statement film" about the Cold War and its corrosive effects on the individuals who participated in it. The same goes for Torn Curtain (1966). Notorious (1946) likewise examines the effect that WWII patriotism had on the people working to avert its disastrous outcomes. The beauty of Hitch’s films is that they work so profoundly well on both the personal and the political level.

In fact, one of the primary themes of Hitch films is that there's a bit of good in the bad guys and a bit of bad in the good guys. That very theme brings the personal and political together and implies that "all is one" – personally, politically, ecumenically (to borrow from Johnny Depp). (C.f. North by Northwest and Thornhill's complaint that `maybe you should begin learning how to lose a few Cold Wars' – a political conclusion based on Thornhill's personal experience.)

What was Hitchcock's Greatest British Film?

To accompany the recent Criterion Collection release of The Lady Vanishes, there has been a flurry of journalism over what turned out to be Alfred Hitchcock's last British movie. In a Slate article titled "The Lady Vanishes — Hitchcock’s First Hitchcock Film," Nathaniel Rich asserted that it's Hitch’s best British film. It is, indeed, superb moviemaking. A perfect film that works as cream-puff entertainment (if that's all you want) but which is also stuffed much deeper insights — a balance of which Hitch was master. (The shooting of Todhunter, mentioned in the Slate article, is one of my favorite moments in the movie: Hitch makes us laugh at another's misfortune — and then wipes the grin right off of our face.)

Rich cites such virtues as its immaculate timing, delicacy, and danger as evidence for its greatness. Absolutely. The Lady Vanishes is also, possibly, the slickest of his British films. But these are mostly professional considerations, pointing to his accomplishment at mastering the craft of film. Technique is important, but sometimes skillfulness can actually distract from an art form’s artfulness.

I prefer works that go for broke and hence might have a rough texture. They're the ones that thumb their nose at conventions and morals (and often the box office), because the artists behind them have stepped through the veil of accepted paradigm to see something that no one else sees. Case in point: Vertigo, Hitch's most sublime film. Yet, for all of its layers of depth and brilliant craftsmanship, some of the dialogue and the situations don't hold up too well. Such is the nature of fevered audacity. You have to be a little crazy to make bold artistic moves, and that hint of insanity becomes part of the fabric of the finished product. Based on that criteria, I don’t think The Lady Vanishes was his "best" movie — and it certainly wasn’t the first "Hitchcock" film – that is, it didn’t, delve, as Rich states, "more deeply than ever before into the anxieties and secret terrors of prewar English society."Although it’s a tough call, I think the honor of Best Film from Hitch’s British Period goes to Sabotage.

Sabotage was originally released as The Woman Alone in the United States.

Sabotage is just about the most disturbing movie he made until Psycho years later. (It’s the one in which he bombs young Stevie and his dog to death.) It's also passionately at work on many levels, many of them groundbreaking. Unlike The Lady Vanishes, Sabotage isn't for everybody. It's coarse, even sadistic. But I think that's one of its virtues. It deals with the acts of political sabotage (what we would now call terrorism) that were then being wreaked upon England during Britain’s "appeasement" years prior to World War II. It delves very deeply — and with urgency — into "the anxieties and secret terrors of prewar English society."

Stevie on the bus just before he and the puppy on the seat next to him are blown to pieces.

With its death of Stevie and its ambivalent characterization of terrorists, Sabotage reminds me of Hitch's comments about another controversial masterpiece, Rear Window, in which he stated that "no amount of moral consideration could have prevented me from making this." It's a movie that is as relevant in the post-9/11 world as it was in 1936.

If we were to take a vote, I'd say that Sabotage is his greatest British film.

Enjoyment of Fear/Fear of Enjoyment

Why Hitchcock Makes Me Want to Quit Going to Movies

By Joel Gunz

What holiday is celebrated with more creative gusto than Halloween? Each year sees an effort to outdo the previous year's celebration by creating freakier, tweakier, and just plain creepier costumes and yard decorations. A person's GQ (ghoul quotient) ranking is calculated by measuring the square inches of skin covered in body paint and subtracting the amount that is covered by thrift store fabric swatches. The results can be truly scary.

After discovering that people want to feel afraid, Alfred Hitchcock made millions off of this impulse. In an article entitled "The Enjoyment of Fear," he wrote:

"Millions of people every day spend huge sums of money and go to great hardship merely to enjoy fear…. The boy who walks a tightrope or tiptoes along the top of a picket fence is looking for fear, as are the auto racer, the mountain climber, and the big-game hunter."

The director identified two distinct kinds of fear: suspense and terror. Suspense is the prolonged feeling of anxiety that accompanies a sense of impending doom, whereas terror is a sudden feeling of fear. To illustrate these two types of fear, he pointed to the two kinds of explosives used during World War II -- the suspense-provoking buzz bomb and the terror-inducing V-2.

"The moments between the time the [buzz bomb's] motor was first heard and the final explosion were moments of suspense. The V-2, on the other hand, was noiseless until its moment of explosion. Anyone who heard a V-2 explode, and lived, experienced terror…. On the screen, terror is induced by surprise; suspense, by forewarning."

Hitchcock wrapped up his analysis with the following:

"Suspense and terror cannot coexist. To the extent that the audience is aware of the menace or danger to the people it is watching -- that is, to the extent that suspense is created -- so is its surprise (or terror) at the eventual materialization of the indicated danger diminished."

2. Fear of Enjoyment
C. S. Lewis also pointed out two related experiences that cannot coexist. Citing S. Alexander's theories set out in "Space, Time and Deity," Lewis stated that one cannot "enjoy" something and "contemplate" it at the same time. He explains it this way:

"These are technical terms in Alexander's philosophy; 'Enjoyment' has nothing to do with pleasure, nor 'Contemplation' with the contemplative life. When you see a table, you 'enjoy' the act of seeing and 'contemplate' the table…. In bereavement, you contemplate the beloved and the beloved's death and, in Alexander's sense, 'enjoy' the loneliness and grief." ¹

Thus, Alexander's theory is roughly equivalent to Hitchcock's. Terror is the experience or "enjoyment" of fear, whereas suspense is the "contemplation" of it.

When I go to a wine tasting event and "enjoy," say, a Yamhill County Pinot Noir, my attention is directed outward to the wine. On the other hand, when I "contemplate" the wine, such as when someone asks me to describe what I am tasting and I say, "Wow. The nose is redolent of Bing cherries and dried figs," in that moment I am not thinking about the wine per se, but of its effect on me -- its aroma, flavor, etc. Hence, contemplation of that wine is directed inward, back to me, away from the Pinot Noir.

That's why, as Lewis says, "enjoyment" and "contemplation" cannot occur at the same time. We can oscillate back and forth between the two, but they cannot coexist. And, sadly, wine tastings are all too often about "contemplation" and not "enjoyment." And, whether one has read Lewis or not, most people see that sort of anti-enjoyment for what it is: egocentrism.

It's easy to confuse the "contemplation" of pleasure with "enjoyment" - just as it is easy to confuse suspense with terror. Think of that wine aficionado who goes to a wine tasting, talks up a storm about a Pinot's virtues (or, worse, lack thereof), and goes away thinking he "enjoyed" some wine, when, at best, he "enjoyed" his consumption of it. In a fundamental way, that individual has passed up an opportunity to truly live. As Lewis would say, he is looking at the by-product of an experience and confusing it with the experience itself. While everyone scoffs at wine snobs, the fact is we've all made the same sort of mistake.

On the other hand, the opposite experience is likely to occur at the movies. One engages in fantasy, surrendering so completely to the images flickering on the screen that the experience resembles one of uninterrupted "enjoyment." The audience sits mute and passive before that barrage of images and sound forms, submitting to the inexorable loop of film clicking through the projector. It enters a state of seeming "enjoyment," with that whirling strip of celluloid² never letting up even for a moment to allow for "contemplation."

That's why when a movie calls up feelings that are too intense (usually, it's some form of fear), viewers may force themselves into the "contemplative" mode, which allows them to remember that "it's only a movie." That transition, however, doesn't occur easily - it's literally like trying to wake from a bad dream.³ This is what makes Hitchcock's cameos so interesting: They "pinch" the audience for a moment, allowing us that breath of "contemplation," reminding us that "it's only a movie."

The problem here is that movies are not real experiences any more than a desert mirage is a real oasis. When two characters kiss in a movie, what we actually experience is not a real kiss but flickering light patterns that look like kissing. (The famous love scene between Ingrid Bergman and Cary Grant in "Notorious" [1946], as moving as it may be, cannot escape the harsh reality that those two actors are dead.) It's just a movie, an ersatz experience of "enjoyment." But the audience responds as if it IS real, and is thus as deluded as if in a dream.

Compounding matters, film, unstoppable in the projection booth, circumvents the "contemplation" phase, which acts as a bulwark against such delusions.⁴

When people talk about being fully "present," or in "The Moment," they are often trying to express that state wherein contemplative pleasure is displaced by a state of connectedness to another thing (i.e.,"enjoyment"). It defies interpretation because it is opposed to "contemplation." It just IS. They are moments in which one gets to rub shoulders for a short time with Reality. Abraham Maslow called them "peak- experiences." C. S. Lewis simply called it "Joy." Eastern philosophers and others call it "at-onceness".⁵

But here's the rub: Maslow warned against seeking peak-experiences through artificial means, such as drug abuse or casual sex, for it can lead to pathological behavior.⁶ "Instead of being 'surprised by joy,' he says, "'turning on' is … hustled into being, and can get to be regarded as a commodity."⁷ This leads to a selfish pursuit of these experiences -- the opposite of outward-directed at-oneness.

Film, by virtue of its artificiality, could be added to that list of commodified experiences. Think of the "chick flick," the "feel good" movie, and other screen genres that are as tailored for specific kinds of psychological results as a designer drug. Audiences buy into the movie as if it were real. But they are deluded.

Hitchcock was sharply aware of the delusional nature of film. One of the final scenes in Sabotage (1936) takes place in the auditorium of a movie theater. The audience is laughing at the onscreen violence of the Walt Disney cartoon "Who Killed Cock Robin?" Even Mrs. Verloc (Sylvia Sydney) disengages from "contemplating" her bereavement over the loss of her brother Stevie (Desmond Tester) to join in the laughter, but the mass delusion is only faux "enjoyment.".

Stevie had been killed by a bomb concealed in a film can supposedly bearing a movie ironically entitled "Bartholomew the Strangler." Audiences had built up sympathy for the little boy, and when the suspense - or, contemplation of fear -- regarding whether or not he would dispose of his lethal cargo before the detonator went off ended in his death, audiences were scandalized. Critics pilloried the director. And the movie was less than successful at the box office.

What went wrong?

In his article, Hitchcock spoke of an "implied guarantee given the audience that it shall not 'pay the price' for its fear."

"The pleasant fear sensation experienced by a roller-coaster rider as the car approached a sharp curve would cease to exist if he seriously thought for one minute that the car might really fail to negotiate the curve."

Of course, movie audiences are completely safe, and they know that any violence on screen is just a fiction. So they transfer that sense of implied safety to those characters with whom they identify. Hitchcock continues:

"As the audience's sympathy for a character is built up, that audience assumes that a sort of invisible cloak to protect the wearer from harm is being fitted. Once the sympathies are fully established and the cloak is finished, it is not … fair play to violate the cloak and bring its wearer to a disastrous end…. Under this set of circumstance, [Stevie] was protected by his cloak from premature explosion of the bomb. I blew him up anyway."

So Hitchcock broke a dramaturgical rule. Still, the resulting outrage of the audience and critics appears incongruent with the fact that it was "just a movie." In other words, why all the hoopla? Because that "invisible cloak" rule hinges on the audience imputing a kind of conditional reality to the characters onscreen. To audiences, Stevie wasn't just a flickering black-and-white shadow. He was, in their mind, a real flesh-and-blood little boy. Hitchcock summoned his prodigious storytelling skills to make it so. And then he annihilated that construct.

As film critic Anthony Lane puts it, "It is impossible to tell, with Hitchcock, where fear ends and fantasy begins; indeed, the two are twisted together for strength, like the cords of a rope."⁸

Like a heavyweight boxer picking a fight in a barroom, Hitchcock overreached with his abilities in Sabotage, taking advantage of his audience's submissiveness to truly terrorize them. He disregarded the fact that people go to movies to escape reality. Instead, he threw reality right back in their face.

Retreating into the darkness of the theater to engage in the make-believe "enjoyment" of a film also entails retreating from opportunities to "enjoy" genuine experiences -- and the opportunities for "contemplation" that go along with them. No wonder media-saturated societies are also observed avoiding self-reflection at all costs.⁹

Hitchcock's dictum that the audience "shall not 'pay the price' for its fear" may not be entirely accurate. The audience does, in fact, pay a price. The price of enjoyment of fear is paid with a fear of enjoyment.

Looking at it that way, no wonder I feel an increasing desire to step away from the warmth of my DVD player and feel the chill of the real world. Thanks, Hitch.

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Joel Gunz's column for The Anvil usually has something to do with Alfred Hitchcock, film philosophy, and stuff like that.

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1. Surprised by Joy: The Shape of My Early Life,C. S. Lewis, 1955. Quotes are taken from The Essential C. S. Lewis, page 44, 45 and thereabout.

2. Or whatever they make film out of these days.

3. Fantasy of that intensity doesn't occur as strongly in live theater, for example, because the audience has a direct relationship with the characters -- and the actors who portray them. An actor can even "break character" and turn to the audience in an "aside" without interrupting the flow of the play. The audience, in fact, needs to work to maintain the illusion that the events on stage are real. When "Our Town" is performed on a bare stage, and the stage manager keeps interrupting the show to provide commentary, we easily step in and out of the fantasy, shifting from enjoyment to contemplation. As such, live theater exists by group consensus. The audience participates by joining with the actors in creating the illusion of a fictional world. Film, on the other hand, does all the work itself. The audience merely has to show up and turn its cell phones off to be swept away to a fictional world of the filmmakers' creation.

4. Maybe that's why childhood is considered to be a time of bliss. Lacking an appreciation for the concept "it's just a movie," children don't have the capacity for "contemplation" that adults have; as a result, they have a period of uninterrupted "enjoyment."

5. I'm starting to approach the margins of my knowledge here, but here's my understanding of this terra that is, for me, not-so-cognita: the terms "at-oneness" and "at-onceness" are both in use, and convey (I think) slightly different shades of meaning. "At-oneness" (so I've heard) has to do with a feeling of being "at one" with another entity. It's like the state an artist goes into while drawing a picture of an apple. The rest of the world deliquesces into a fog of non-existence as his world becomes that apple. Conversely, "at-onceness" seems to be more inclusive. It's the state of being "at one" with Life, The Universe and Everything - all at once. The space/time/causality nexus all gets rolled up into one timeless moment. Sort of like Jack's apartment in Three's Company. As a drummer, I sometimes have that experience when I'm in a solid groove with a band. It occurs when I'm running on all eight cylinders. The song seems to go on forever. I forget all about myself, the beat, the trumpet player who cut into my solo last night, whatever. The music flows right through me, and I am scarcely aware of it. In a single moment it is over, and all I can do is grin like a dope. It's a hit-or-miss phenomenon that musicians often describe as a gift.

6. Religions, Values, and Peak-Experiences, Abraham Maslow, 1970, preface, page x.

7. Maslow also says: "Spontaneity (the impulses from our best self) gets confused with impulsivity and acting out (the impulses from our sick self), and there is then no way to tell the difference." In contrast to most Hollywood films that follow a canned plot exposition, Hitchcock's famous plot twists serve to create the illusion of spontaneity. But, again, it's just an illusion. The audience has (impulsively) chosen to get those thrills and twists and turns, selecting a Hitchcock movie over, say, an MGM musical for the night's entertainment.

8. The New Yorker, Alfred Hitchcock August 16, 1999.

9. See Four Arguments for the Elimination of Television, Jerry Mander, 1977.

Joel Gunz

Was it a Dream?

I've been reading C. S. Lewis' memoir "Surprised by Joy", and it's got me thinking about Hitchcock and the movie experience in general. Lewis reached an important milestone on his spiritual journey when he read "Space, Time and Deity," which explains S. Alexander's theory of "Enjoyment" and "Contemplation." Essentially, Alexander maintains that one can't Enjoy something and Contemplate it at the same time. Further, he asserts that Enjoyment has nothing to do with pleasure, and that Contemplation has nothing to do with the contemplative life. It's our confusion of these states of being that causes so much trouble. Here's my interpretation of why:

When I desire, say, a milkshake, my thoughts and attentions are directed outward to that beverage. I turn my attention away from my Self. On the other hand, when I contemplate purchasing that milkshake, I am not thinking about the milkshake per se, but of its effect on me – the flavor, texture, coolness, etc. Hence, pleasure is connected to Contemplation, and is directed inward, back to me, away from the milkshake. That's why, as Lewis says, Enjoyment and Contemplation cannot occur at the same time. We can oscillate back and forth between the two, but they cannot coexist.

The mistake that most people make is that we confuse the Contemplation of pleasure with Enjoyment. Lewis compares this with looking at the swell of ocean waves that continue even after the wind has passed. The weather may be calm, but because the water is choppy, we may erroneously conclude that the weather is bad. We are looking at the by-product and confusing it with the activity itself.

This whole process has gotten me thinking about the nature of movies. When I go to movies, I engage in a fantasy. In fact, when the movie calls up feelings that are uncomfortably intense (an increasingly rare phenomenon), I have to remind myself that "it's only a movie." Fantasizing of that caliber doesn't occur as strongly in live theater, for example, because the audience has a direct relationship with the characters – and the actors who portray them. An actor can even "break character" and turn to the audience in an "aside" without interrupting the flow of the play. The audience, in fact, must work to maintain the illusion that the events on stage are real life.

When "Our Town" is performed on a bare stage, and the Stage Manager keeps interrupting the show to provide commentary, we easily step in and out of the fantasy, shifting from Enjoyment to Contemplation. But that doesn't happen at the movies. In a movie house, the audience is mute and passive before the intense mirage of images before it, and it submits to the inexorable "Will" of the film clicking through the projector. By engaging with a projected image in this way, the audience enters a state of fantasy (Alexander's "Enjoyment" phase), and that whirling strip of celluloid doesn't let up even for a moment to allow for Contemplation. (This why Alfred Hitchcock's cameos are so interesting: they "pinch" the audience for a moment, allowing us a breath of Contemplation, reminding us that "it's only a movie." I wouldn't be a bit surprised if Hitch had read Alexander's theories.)

The problem here is that movies, unlike plays, are not a real experience. By comparison, when stage actors kiss, they're REALLY kissing. But when two characters kiss in a movie, what we experience is flickering light patterns that look like kissing. (The actors who performed the kiss might now be dead.) It isn't a real experience. It's just a movie. But the audience responds as if it IS real, and is thus as deluded as a hallucinating acid freak. Or in a dream. Film circumvents the Contemplation phase, which normally acts as abulwark against such delusions. (Maybe that's why childhood is considered to be just such a time of bliss – because children don't have the capacity for contemplation that adults have they have a period of uninterrupted Enjoyment. They don't even have a concept of "it's just a movie.")

When people talk about being fully "Present," or in "The Moment," I think they're trying to express that state wherein Contemplative pleasure is displaced by a connectedness to an other thing - Enjoyment. It is literally an "asensual" experience. It defies interpretation because it is opposed to Contemplation. It just IS. As a drummer, I sometimes have that experience when I'm in a solid groove with a band. Others get it by meditating. It's occurs when I'm running on all eight cylinders. The song seems to go on forever. I forget all about myself, the beat, the trumpet player who cut into my solo last night, etc. The music flows right through you, and you're scarcely aware of it. In a single moment it's over, and all you can do is grin like a dope. It's a hit-or-miss phenomenon that musicians often describe as a gift.

It's a feeling of connectedness that Abraham Maslow calls a "peak experience", and that C. S. Lewis calls "Joy". If I understand them correctly, Ken Mogg (and others) call it "at-onceness". Hitchcock tried to achieve it with "pure film."

But here's the rub. Maslow warned against seeking peak experiences through artificial means, such as drugs or sex, for these lead to selfish pursuit of these experiences – the opposite of outward-directed at-onceness. Film, by virtue of its artificiality, could be added to that list of ersatz experiences. (I'm thinking of "chick flick", "feel good" and other movie types that are as tailored for sensory manipulation as designer drugs. Just as Hitch foresaw.) Audiences buy into the movie as if it were real. But they are deluded. I think Hitchcock was keenly aware of the delusional nature of film, and he constantly played on it - sometimes compassionately, sometimes sadistically. I'm thinking of the movie theater scenes in "Sabotage", in which the audience gazes at the screen with deer-in-the-headlights raptness. Even Mrs. Verloc disengages from Contemplation over the loss of her brother to join in the mass delusion.

"Was it real, Johnnie? Or was it a dream?"

Joel Gunz