Just Do It: Notes on Incitement with Reference to the Case of Danvers Vs de Winter

Joan Fontaine as Mrs de Winter and Judith Anderson 

as Mrs Danvers in Hitchcock's Rebecca (1940) [a]

 

 

I. 

 

As a provocateur, I'm naturally interested in the concept of incitement, which is usually seen negatively and in contradistinction to the more seductive-sounding idea of enticement. 

 

Those with a background in the law will be quick to point out that to incite is, in legal terms, to actively encourage another person to commit a criminal act, whether or not that person carries such out. 

 

Interestingly, incitement now seems to be taken more seriously - to be seen as more sinful - than the deed itself [b]. In other words, it's as if thinking and communicating evil thoughts were more grievous than actually doing bad things. After all, sticks and stones may break our bones, but it's hurty words that cause emotional damage.

 

Such moral logic explains the current obsession with so-called hate speech and why some people are now investigated by the police for non-crime hate incidents when actual criminals are being let out of jail early or not being prosecuted at all. 

 

The rationale seems to be if the police intervene before a criminal act has taken place and actual harm caused, then that has to be a good thing. But if in practice that means curtailing free speech and locking people us for what they post online, that's highly debatable.

 

Having said that, speech is a type of action, of course, and I'm not denying that incitement can be malevolent and trolls who encourage others - particularly individuals in a vulnerable state - to serious self-harm or suicide probably deserve to have their speech curtailed (if not to be branked, indeed). 

And that includes Mrs Danvers, the head housekeeper at Manderley and a woman morbidly devoted to the memory of her adored mistress Rebecca ...

 

 

II. 

 

Arguably, the most disturbing scene in Daphne de Maurier's brilliant novel Rebecca comes in chapter eighteen on the morning after the costume ball, when Mrs de Winter decides to confront Mrs Danvers. 

 

At first, the former, having overcome her fear of the latter, has the advantage. But that soon changes, as the angry colour returns to the dead white face of Mrs Danvers and she begins to rant and rave like a mad woman; "her long fingers twisting and tearing the black stuff of her long dress" [c]. 

 

There's nothing Mrs de Winter can do but watch with fascinated horror; the sight of Mrs Danvers dry sobbing with mouth open making her shudder and feel physically ill. Growing increasingly insane, the latter advances towards the former, backing her towards the open window, and gripping her arm. 

 

"'It's you that ought to be lying there in the church crypt [...] It's you who ought to be dead [...]'", she hisses. [276]

 

The young Mrs de Winter recalls and narrates the scene of incitement for us:

 

"She pushed me  towards the open window. I could see the terrace below me grey and indistinct in the white wall of fog. 'Look down there,' she said. 'It's easy, isn't it? Why don't you jump? It wouldn't hurt, not to break your neck. It's a quick, kind way. It's not like drowning. Why don't you try it? Why don't you go?'

      The fog filled the open windows, damp and clammy, it stung my eyes, it clung to my nostrils. I held on to the window-sill with my hands.

      'Don't be afraid,' said Mrs Danvers. 'I won't push you. I won't stand by you. You can jump of your own accord. What's the use of your staying here at Manderley? You're not happy. Mr de Winter doesn't love you. There's not much for you to live for, is there? Why don't you jump now and have done with it? Then you won't be unhappy any more.'" [276]  

       

 

III,

 

That's certainly incitement to suicide; cleverly expressed as a series of rhetorical questions. Fortunately, however, Mrs de Winter doesn't jump (she's not so much saved by the bell as by a flare or rocket sent up by a ship in distress). 

 

And interestingly, not only does she not want to get the rozzers involved and wish to press legal charges against Mrs Danvers, she doesn't even ask her husband to sack her, having decided that the latter has lost her power over her: "Whatever she said or did now it could not matter to me or hurt me. I knew she was my enemy and I did not mind." [327] 

 

I'm not sure if that's Christian forgiveness born of a spirit of love, or if this refusal to take her enemy seriously and not only forgive but forget wrongs done to her is a sign of a more aristocratic nature [d]. Either way, it's admirable and I wish more people were like this in a world in which there is a growing tendency to criminalise conduct in the name of legal moralism. 

 

 

Notes

 

[a] To watch this scene on YouTube, click here.

 

[b] Incitement falls into that category of crimes known as inchoate; i.e., ones that prepare the way for, further, or encourage a crime. Just as one can be convicted of conspiracy, so too can one be convicted of incitement (for example, using words and images to stir up hatred against others that may lead to violence against them). 

      In the UK, incitement was abolished as an offence under the common law of England in 2008, but was replaced with three new statutory offences of encouraging or assisting crime under the Serious Crime Act (2007).

 

[c] Daphne du Maurier, Rebecca (Virago Press, 2003), p. 271. Future page references given in the post are to this edition of the novel. 

 

[d] In the first essay (§10) of his Genealogy of Morals (1887), Nietzsche writes that to be incapable of taking one's enemies seriously for very long is the sign of strong, full natures in whom there is an excess of the power to forget. 

 

 

Memories of Manderley 2: On Pyrexia and Obsessive Love Disorder

Mrs Danvers (Judith Anderson) displays the see-through nature 

of Rebecca's nightdress to the new Mrs de Winter (Joan Fontaine) 

in Rebecca (dir. Alfred Hitchcock, 1940)  

 

 

I. 

 

Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley ... [a], whereas, as a matter of fact, I had simply rewatched Hitchcock's Academy Award winning adaptation of Daphne du Maurier's Rebecca on TV [b]. 

 

Anyway, it was enough to make me want to return to the original novel and offer not so much a commentary or critical review, but a series of reflections on those inhuman and sometimes monstrous aspects that particularly interest ...

 

 

II.

 

Love, our idealists might argue, is the least monstrous and most human of all things; a unique feature of our evolutionary history. Other creatures may experience empathy and sexual attraction, but there is little evidence of love in anything resembling the spiritual sense as we know it. 

 

But of course, as the second Mrs de Winter comes to recognise, love is also a kind of fever; something that causes us to act queerly; i.e., in a confused and frenzied, often violent manner behind the palm trees. Sometimes, it may even result in a crime of passion - just ask Maxim de Winter. 

 

Not that he likes to speak about about such things or recall past events: "All memories are bitter, and I prefer to ignore them." [42] But, despite claiming to have never loved Rebecca, it's obvious she was the one who got him hot under the collar and who, when she put her arms around him, gave him a fever that was so hard to bear (in the mornin' and all through the night) [c].

 

 

III. 

 

Rebecca: she was dead, of course, "and one must not have thoughts about the dead" [63]. 

 

And yet, how can one not say something about the ghostly Rebecca, with her enduring beauty and unforgettable smile ... So brilliant in every way! It would be impossible to cut her name out of this series of posts, no matter how sharp a pair of scissors one possessed. And the past - even if reduced to ash - can never just be blown away.

Rebecca is present by her absence throughout the novel and at the end of the book, her corpse itself manages to intrude back into world of the living, determining events and threatening to have an objects revenge upon Maxim de Winter.  

 

Je Reviens is not merely the name on a boat - or a French-speaking terminator's catchphrase - it's Rebecca's posthumous promise. 

 

But if she was the "most beautiful creature" [151] that Frank Crawley [d] ever saw in his life, one doubts Rebecca would still look so lovely after all those months beneath the waves (although I've heard it said that there's nothing more ravishing than a corpse) [e].

IV. 

And if one must speak of Rebecca, one must also speak of her devoted representative on earth: the malevolent Mrs Danvers; "someone tall and gaunt, dressed in deep black, whose prominent cheek-bones and great, hollow eyes gave her a skull's face, parchment-white, set on a skeleton's frame" [74].

It's often said that cold hands are a sign of a warm heart. But not in the case of Mrs Danvers; she was cold of heart as well as hand, and cold too of voice and manner. Her dark eyes "had no light, no flicker of sympathy" [81].

 

The only time she becomes animated is when she recalls the first Mrs de Winter - particularly of course if she happens to be (fetishistically) admiring her dead mistress's handmade underwear [f] or the delicate sheer nightdress, that was so soft and light to the touch [g].     

 

 

Notes

 

[a] This is the famous opening line of Daphne du Maurier's, bestselling 1938 gothic novel Rebecca, which tells the story of an unnamed young woman who (somewhat impetuously) marries a wealthy widower (Maxim de Winter) whom she meets on a trip to Monte Carlo. All seems to be going swimmingly until they return to his estate in Cornwall and she realises that both Maxim and his household at Manderley are haunted by the memory and ghostly presence of his late wife (Rebecca). 

      It's a fantastic novel which has been adapted numerous times for stage and screen. Here, I am reading the Virago Press edition of 2015 and all page numbers given in the text refer to this edition. 

 

[b] Rebecca (1940), directed by Alfred Hitchcock, starred Laurence Olivier as Maxim de Winter and Joan Fontaine as the anonymous young woman who becomes his second wife. It was Hitchcock's first American project and was a critical and commercial success, nominated for eleven Oscars - more than any other film that year - it picked up two, including Best Picture. 

      Despite certain changes made to keep the censors happy, it was a fairly faithful adaptation of Daphne du Maurier's novel and she was happy with the result. To watch a 1940 trailer for the movie on YouTube, click here.

 

[c] I'm paraphrasing lines here from the song 'Fever', written by Otis Blackwell (under the name John Davenport) and Eddie Cooley. It was originally recorded by American R&B singer Little Willie John for his debut album - also entitled Fever (1956) - and released as a single in April of that year. However, Peggy Lee's 1958 version - with rewritten lyrics and a new arrangement - became the best known version (and her signature song): click here to play on YouTube. 

      Interestingly, the second Mrs de Winter also confesses to a "fever of fear" [135] - a stab of sickness in her heart; a sweat of uncertainty, whenever she worried about saying the wrong thing to her husband, or reflected on those things that disturbed her, such as spiderwebs, rat holes, and the clamour of the sea. This is not the kind of fever born of erotomania that Peggy Lee sings about, although lovers too might display similar signs and symptoms of hypersensitivity, neurosis, and abnormality. 

[d] Frank Crawley is the manager of the Manderley estate; loyal to Maxim and trusted by the second Mrs de Winter. 

 

[e] The corpse of a loved one, inasmuch as it has startling physical presence, unleashes mixed feelings; of fear, of repulsion, but also - as evidenced for example in Wuthering Heights (1847) - of desire. It both seizes and seduces and is in that (quite literal) sense ravishing. 

      Bataille explored this in his work, although the phrase - 'She made a ravishing corpse' - is one taken from a 1926 novel by Ronald Firbank; Concerning the Eccenticities of Cardinal Pirelli (see chapter VIII).   

 

[f] In contrast, the second Mrs de Winter's underclothes were, by her own admission, nothing special: "As long as they were clean and neat I had not thought the material or the existence of the lace mattered." [152]

 

[g] The full perviness of this is picturized in Hitchcock's film, despite the censors doing their best to ensure that Rebecca adhered to the Motion Picture Production Code that strictly enforced the morality of US films made between 1934 and 1968. 

      Joseph Breen may have been a censor-moron (and a vile antisemite), but he wasn't mistaken to recognise the queer nature of Danny's fascination with Rebecca's physical attributes and her clothing (particularly her see-through nightie), insisting that such obsessive love disorder be toned down in the final cut. 

      The astonishing (and disturbing) scene between the second Mrs de Winter (played by Joan Fontaine) and Mrs Danvers (played by Judith Anderson) in  Rebecca's bedroom can be watched on YouTube: click here.        

 

 

Those who wish to read part one of this post on natural chaos and Maxim de Winter's floraphilia, can do so by clicking here. 

 

 

Memories of Manderley 1: On Natural Chaos and Maxim de Winter's Floraphilia

Top: Manderley in ruins (chaos reigns)

Bottom: Maxim de Winter (uxoricide and floraphile)

 

 

I. 

 

Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley ... [a], whereas, as a matter of fact, I had simply rewatched Hitchcock's Academy Award winning adaptation of Daphne du Maurier's Rebecca on TV [b].  

 

Anyway, it was enough to make me want to return to the original novel and offer not so much a commentary or critical review, but a series of reflections on those inhuman and sometimes monstrous aspects that particularly interest ...

 

 

II. 

 

"The pyramids will not last a moment, compared with the daisy", says D. H. Lawrence [c]. And neither will Manderley - despite the second Mrs de Winter's claim that time "could not wreck the perfect symmetry" [2] of its grey stone walls.

 

In chapter one of Rebecca, we are given a memorable description of the way that nature reaffirms itself and vegetation triumphs over the iron and concrete world of man when given the opportunity to do so. Trees, "along with monster shrubs and plants" [1], had "thrust themselves out of the quiet earth" [1].     

 

The well-ordered paths and drive way were now "choked with grass and moss" [2] and once highly cultivated plants prized for their floral splendour had, with no human hand to tend them or impede their growth, gone wild; "rearing to monster height without a bloom, black and ugly as the nameless parasites that grew beside them" [2].

 

The rhododendrons, for example, "stood fifty feet high, twisted and entwined with bracken, and they had entered into an alien marriage with a host of nameless shrubs, poor, bastard things that clung about their roots as though conscious of their spurious origin" [2-3] [d]. 

 

Nettles were everywhere: "They choked the terrace, they sprawled about the paths, they leant, vulgar and lanky, against the very windows of the house" [3]. 

 

Chaos reigns, as Von Trier's shamanic fox would say [e].   

 

 

III. 

 

There are, of course, worse things than chaotic nature; the fat-fingered vulgarity of Mrs Van Hopper, for example; the cold, superior smile of Mrs Danvers; and the "despondency and introspection" [26] that so bedevil poor Maxim de Winter following the death of his wife. 

 

Nobody likes a snob. Nobody likes a bitter and obsessive woman. And nobody likes a man "hemmed in by shadows" [26] and weighed down by guilt and fear.

 

Indeed, one almost wonders why the unnamed young heroine of Rebecca falls for de Winter, especially as she senses almost immediately that perhaps "he was not normal, not altogether sane" [31]; that he was one of those men who had trances and obeyed the strange laws and "tangled orders of their own subconscious minds" [31].

  

Still, at least de Winter is something of a floraphile. He may never have loved Rebecca, but he loves the spring flowers at Manderley; the daffodils "stirring in the evening breeze, golden heads upon lean stalks" [32] and the many-coloured crocuses - golden, pink, and mauve - that so quickly droop and fade. 

 

But most of all he loves the bluebells that "with their colour made a challenge to the sky" [33]. But these he would never have in the house:

 

"Thrust into vases they became dank and listless, and to see them at their best you must walk in the woods in the morning, about twelve o'clock, when the sun was overhead. They had a smoky, rather bitter smell, as though a wild sap ran in their stalks, pungent and juicy. People who plucked bluebells from the woods were vandals; he had forbidden it at Manderley." [33]

 

But if he hated to see wild flowers stuck in vases or stuffed into jam-jars on windowsills, he didn't mind having specially cultivated blooms for the house; roses, for example, which he said looked better picked than growing:

 

"A bowl of roses in a drawing-room had a depth of colour and scent they had not possessed in the open. There was something rather blowzy about roses in full bloom, something shallow and raucous, like a woman with untidy hair. In the house they became mysterious and subtle. He had roses in the house at Manderley for eight months in the year." [33]   

  

His sister, who, like mine, "was a hard, rather practical person" [33], used to complain about the smell of so many flowers. But Maxim didn't care: "It was the only form of intoxication that appealed to him." [33]  

 

One can forgive a man many crimes - maybe even murder - if he gives himself so completely to the heady world of flowers. 

 

 

Notes

 

[a] This is the famous opening line of Daphne du Maurier's, bestselling 1938 gothic novel Rebecca, which tells the story of an unnamed young woman who (somewhat impetuously) marries a wealthy widower (Maxim de Winter) whom she meets on a trip to Monte Carlo. 

      All seems to be going swimmingly until they return to his estate in Cornwall and she realises that both Maxim and his household at Manderley are haunted by the memory and ghostly presence of his late wife (Rebecca). It's a fantastic novel which has been adapted numerous times for stage and screen. 

      Here, I am reading the Virago Press edition of 2015 and all page numbers given in the text refer to this edition.   

 

[b] Rebecca (1940), directed by Alfred Hitchcock, starred Laurence Olivier as Maxim de Winter and Joan Fontaine as the anonymous young woman who becomes his second wife. 

      It was Hitchcock's first American project and was a critical and commercial success, nominated for eleven Oscars - more than any other film that year - it picked up two, including Best Picture. Despite certain changes made to keep the censors happy, it was a fairly faithful adaptation of Daphne du Maurier's novel and she was happy with the result. To watch a 1940 trailer for the movie on YouTube, click here.    

 

[c] D. H. Lawrence, Sketches of Etruscan Places, in Sketches of Etruscan Places and Other Italian Essays, ed. Simonetta de Filippis (Cambridge University Press, 1992), p. 36.

[d] The narrator - i.e., the second Mrs de Winter, could of course be describing herself her.

 

[e] I'm referring here of course to the famous talking fox in Lars von Trier's 2009 film Antichrist - about which I have written here.  

 

 

Those interested in part two of this post on pyrexia and obsessive love disorder, should click here.  

Name That Tune

Tom O'Connor and his two lovely assistants host another edition of 

Name That Tune (Thames Television, 1976-1988)

 

 

Question 1: Can you name the theme tune used for the American TV series created, hosted and produced by Alfred Hitchcock, which aired on CBS and NBC between 1955 and 1965?

 

Yes Tom, I can name that tune: it's a short piece by the 19th-century French composer Charles Gounod, known in English as Funeral March of a Marionette. 

 

The piece was originally written for piano in 1872 and then orchestrated in 1879, which is how we best know it, largely thanks to Hitchcock (and his long-time musical collaborator Bernard Herrmann, who suggested it to him and re-arranged the theme in 1964).

 

Tom Huizenga describes the action of Marche funèbre d'une marionnette thus:

 

"Frenetic strings depict dueling marionettes. A bold cymbal crash brings one of them to his death. A moment of doleful music slowly gives way to a surprisingly perky march, the main melody sung by the clarinet. The marionettes process with the corpse but the music turns almost cheerful. A few of the puppets, seemingly tired of tramping, duck into a tavern for refreshment. They fall back in line just before Gounod's march reaches its destination." [1] 

 

Prior to Hitchcock's adoption of the tune for his hugely popular TV series - which is still shown today - Gounod's piece was used to accompany several films in the late 1920s, including a silent short starring Laurel and Hardy (Habeas Corpus, 1928) and Harold Lloyd's first talkie, Welcome Danger (1929). 

 

It is believed that Hitchcock first heard it in the silent romantic drama directed by F. W. Murnau: Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans (1927), one of the first feature films with a synchronized musical score and sound effects. 

 

Hitchcock loved the tune so much that he even selected it as one of his choices on the BBC radio show Desert Island Discs in 1959.

 

 

Question 2: Can you name the theme tune used for the American TV sitcom created by and starring Larry David, which has aired on HBO for 11 seasons, beginning in October 2000? [2]

 

Yes Tom, I can name that tune: it's a piece by the Italian composer Luciano Michelini, entitled Frolic, written for a little-known Italian movie La bellissima estate (1974).

 

Larry David first heard it, however, being used in a TV commercial for a bank and loved the lighthearted, comic quality of a mandolin played over a sola tuba's steady oompah-oompah. For David, the tune informs the audience not to take what happens in the show too seriously - it's intended to be funny [3].

Perhaps unsurprisingly, the Curb signature tune has now become a popular online meme and used as background music in videos showing people in socially awkward situations or failing at some task in an embarrassing manner. Alas, the makers rarely have David's comic genius.  

 

Incidently, it might also be noted that Curb Your Enthusiasm has a rich and varied musical score, orchestrated by Wendell Yuponce; scenes are often punctuated, for example, with instrumental arrangements of songs from Gilbert and Sullivan's Mikado and Bizet's Carmen. 

 

Larry himself has even been known to whistle Wagner [click here] and enjoy singing songs from the Bernstein and Sondheim musical West Side Story [click here].

 

 

Notes

 

[1] Tom Huizenga, 'Marches Madness: Puppets and a Funeral' (5 March, 2013), on the NPR website: click here.

 

[2] The series was developed from a one-hour special - Larry David: Curb Your Enthusiasm - which was broadcast on 17 October, 1999. David and his producers at HBO originally envisioned it as a one-off mockumentary. 

[3] Click here to watch Larry being interviewed on stage (alongside other cast members), talking about the tune and why he likes it.

 

 

Click here to play the signature tune to Alfred Hitchcock Presents (Marche funèbre d'une marionnette, by Charles Gounod). 

 

Click here to play the signature tune to Curb Your Enthusiasm (Frolic, by Luciano Michelini). 

 

And click here for a special treat - the opening sequence and theme from a mid-1980s episode of Name That Tune, with Lionel Blair hosting (having replaced Tom O'Connor in 1984).

 

Readers with excellent memories will recall an earlier post from Feb 2013, in which I discuss some of my favourite theme tunes: click here. 

 

 

All Aboard! On D. H. Lawrence and Trains

Ian McKellen as D. H. Lawrence and Janet Suzman 
as Frieda Lawrence aboard a train in Priest of Love 
(dir. Christopher Miles, 1981)

I.

To be honest, I would probably associate trains more with the cinema than with literature; I'm thinking of Hitchcock's films for starters and, of course, the Lumière brothers' L'arrivée d'un train en gare de La Ciotat (1895).

Having said that, I can recall several novels featuring trains and/or railway stations as a prominent motif: Tolstoy's Anna Karenina (1878) would be one example; as would Zola's psychological thriller La Bête humaine (1890). Then there's Graham Greene's Stamboul Train (1932) and, of course, Agatha Christie's Murder on the Orient Express (1934) ...

But one author whom I wouldn't immediately think of in relation to trains, is D. H. Lawrence. And yet, as two recent essays by Lawrence scholars have shown, trains are actually quite a crucial and recurrent feature of his work ...


II.

According to Indrek Männiste, "one of the most idiosyncratic ways in which Lawrence realizes the cantus technicus in counterpoint is his frequent use of the train trope” [183].

He explains:

"While the more sensationalist drama of Victorian times focused mainly on the dangers of rail travel and its shock elements, Lawrence uses trains synecdochally as the ambassadors of modernity, and plays them out, as always, as threatening on a more metaphysical plane. Trains are described habitually as intruders on nature and as estranging to certain characters." [183]

Indeed, trains – along with cars and buses and other motor vehicles – force the countryside itself to retreat into its own isolation, making it evermore mysteriously inaccessible. As Lawrence notes in a late essay: "People have more 'joy-rides and outings [...] but they never seem to touch the reality of the country-side' (LEA, 15-16)." [185]

And yet – to deploy my own adversative conjunction if I may – trains play a positive role in Lawrence’s fiction too ...

Helen Baron demonstrates how they "occur frequently in his novels, stories, and poems" [191], often advancing the plot, heightening the drama, or helping him reveal things about his characters. She also explores "the variety of ways that Lawrence subtly focused on trains […] to coerce – overtly or subliminally – the reader’s feelings and responses” [191].

So, for all his siderodromophobia, it's possible that Lawrence was a secret locomotive lover after all and one thinks of his poem 'Kisses in the Train', in which, as Baron notes, the erotic element is intensified by being set on a speeding train. The opening two stanzas of the poem read:

I saw the Midlands
      Revolve through her hair;
The fields of autumn
      Stretching bare,
And sheep on pasture
      Tossed back in scare.

And still as ever
      The world went round,
My mouth on her pulsing
      Throat was found,
And my breast to her beating
      Breast was bound.  

Notes

Indrek Männiste, 'Poetics of Technology: D. H. Lawrence and the Well-Tempered Counterpoint', in D. H. Lawrence, Technology, and Modernity, ed. Indrek Männiste, (Bloomsbury, 2019), pp. 175-189.

Helen Baron, 'Trains in D. H. Lawrence's Creative Writing', in D. H. Lawrence, Technology, and Modernity, ibid. pp. 191-202.

D. H. Lawrence, 'Kisses in the Train', Poems Vol. I, ed. Christopher Pollnitz, (Cambridge University Press, 2013), pp. 83-4. 

For my review of D. H. Lawrence, Technology, and Modernity, see The Lawrentian, ed. David Brock, (Autumn Edition, 2020). For a revised extract from this review in the form of a post on Torpedo the Ark, click here.   

Notes on 'The Birds' by Daphne du Maurier

Cover to the Virago 2004 edition

Illustration by Jamie Keenan

For many people 'The Birds' (1952) is Daphne du Maurier's greatest short story.

Whilst I'm not sure I'd agree with this critical assessment, it would be foolish to deny its genius, or its appeal for those of us who like the idea of humanity's vulnerability in the face of a malevolent natural world in which - if we did but realise it - even our feathered friends hate us and dream of revenge.

As Patrick McGrath rightly points out, whilst some suggestion is made that freak weather conditions are possibly to blame for the sudden violent behaviour of the birds, the real power of the story resides "in the reader's suspicion that there exist other, less narrowly scientific explanations, rooted perhaps in cosmic punishment for humanity's sins".

In other words, it's the ambiguity of the story - particularly concerning the avian aggression - that makes it so disturbing; the horror of people pecked to death by a thousand tiny beaks is never described in detail by du Maurier. (In fact, she tells us more of the little corpses of robins, finches, wrens, sparrows, and blue tits than she does of farmer Trigg and his wife, Jim the cowman, or the village postman, who all fall victim to the birds.) 

This ambiguity is continued to the very end of the tale: Nat Hocken, sheltering with his wife and children in the kitchen of his little cottage, eating soup with bread and dripping, decides to smoke his last cigarette, like a condemned man who is reconciled to his fate: "He reached for it, switched on the silent wireless. He threw the empty packet on the fire, and watched it burn."

But as he listened to the sound of the birds relentlessly pecking at the windows and doors, he also, rather philosophically, wondered "how many million years of memory were stored in those little brains, behind the stabbing beaks, the piercing eyes, now giving them the instinct to destroy mankind with all the deft precision of machines".

That's a lovely way to end a tale; revealing yet again du Maurier's dark, inhuman brilliance. No wonder Hitchcock loved her so ...*

Notes

Daphne du Maurier, 'The Birds', in The Birds and Other Stories, (Virago Press, 2004).

Patrick McGrath, 'Mistress of menace', The Guardian (5 May 2007): click here to read online.  

* Interestingly, du Maurier didn't like Hitchcock's 1963 adaptation of 'The Birds'. To be fair, the latter did abandon everything in the original story except the title and the central idea of birds inexplicably attacking human beings. But as he once said, his job was to create cinema, not remain faithful to every detail on the written page of a book.    

Reflections on the Death Mask (With Reference to the Case of L'Inconnue de la Seine)

 L'Inconnue de la Seine (c. late-1880s) 
A favourite pin-up of necrophiles

I. How Even the Dead Can Continue to Make an Impression

Napoleon, Nietzsche, Alfred Hitchcock, James Joyce, and Malcolm McLaren have at least one thing in common: they all left behind them a death mask, which, for those who don't know, is a post-mortem portrait sculpted from a wax or plaster impression made of an individual's face shortly after their passing (either with or without their permission).

Although such masks have a long tradition, I suspect that most modern people find them a bit creepy and would happily consign them to some dark corner of the uncanny valley out of sight. But, even today, we find them displayed in libraries, museums, and art galleries.

Dead kings, politicians, philosophers, poets, and even notorious outlaws including Ned Kelly, have all been commemorated in this manner. One of the most famous death masks, however, is that of an unidentified teenage girl known as L'Inconnue de la Seine ...


II. The Unknown Woman of the Seine

At the end of the 19th century, the mask of a pretty young suicide fished out of the Seine became a must-have fixture on the walls of fashionable people's homes and inspired numerous literary works. The story goes that a pathologist working at the Paris Morgue was so enchanted by her serene beauty that he felt compelled to immortalise her features.  

Rilke and, later, Albert Camus both compared her eerily joyful expression to the enigmatic smile of the Mona Lisa, whilst, in The Savage God (1972), Al Alvarez notes that L'Inconnue was the erotic ideal for an entire generation of girls in the pre-War period who morbidly based their look on hers.

And, amusingly, the face of the world's first CPR training mannequin - known as Resusci Anne and designed by a Norwegian toy maker - was modelled after this unknown adolescent corpse (thus adding a darkly perverse element to the already slightly queer act of administering the kiss of life to a rubber doll).


Note: 

Anyone interested in having a death mask - or a memorial sculpture - made of themselves or a loved one (which can be cast in a variety of materials, including marble and bronze), should contact the British sculptor Nick Reynolds, who is renowned for his work in this field and has produced masks of, amongst others, the film director Ken Russell, actor Peter O'Toole, and his own father, Bruce Reynolds, mastermind of the Great Train Robbery: click here. 

On Fast Food and Film Theory

Everyone knows what an Egg McMuffin is: a delicious combination of egg, bacon and melted cheese inside a toasted English muffin, it's Herb Peterson's great contribution to culinary culture.

But not everyone knows what a MacGuffin is ...    

A MacGuffin is a plot device, commonly used in films (not least of all by Hitchcock, who popularised the term), that often takes the form of a desired object of apparent value and significance to those who know its secret, but mysterious and meaningless to those who don't. This object can pretty much be anything; a person, a place, an event, or a Maltese falcon and it doesn't matter why it matters - just so long as it sets up a story and then drives the action along.    

In other words, the nature of the MacGuffin is immaterial and completely contingent. Whereas the nature of the Egg McMuffin is - in its key ingredients at least - essentially fixed and non-exchangeable; it can't be an Egg McMuffin without the griddle fried egg and toasted English muffin.

Yes, the medallion of back bacon can be replaced with a sausage patty - and I'm also prepared to regard the slice of processed cheese as optional - but, if you remove the egg and serve what's left inside between two slices of toast (or even a crumpet posing as a muffin), then, as far as I'm concerned, you've not only ruined breakfast, but fundamentally misunderstood Herb Peterson's fast food take on Eggs Benedict.         

On Sexual Apathy and the Case of Richard Hannay in The 39 Steps

Pamela looks at Hannay as she removes her stockings - 

but he only has eyes for his sandwich.

Commentators often note the frigidity of Hitchcock blondes, but it's the seeming sexual indifference of Richard Hannay, played by Robert Donat, that surprises and interests most in the famous bedroom scene from Hitchcock's The 39 Steps (1935).

True, he invites Pamela, played by Madeleine Carroll, to take off her skirt - an invitation she declines (I shall keep it on thank you!) - but he shows very little desire when she does decide to remove her wet stockings. His offer of assistance is more polite than pervy.

And even when his hand (fastened to hers) brushes against her legs, it does so in an involuntary and strangely limp manner that renders one of cinema's most erotically charged and kinkiest scenes strangely chaste at the same time. Ultimately, Hannay seems far more interested in his sandwich - Thank God for a bite to eat - and getting a good night's rest than in Pamela's bare limbs and feet.

Now, this could be because he's really very tired and hungry, having been on the run from foreign agents trying to kill him and policemen looking to arrest him for a murder he didn't commit for several long days.

But even at the opening of the film when a mysterious beauty asks him to take her home with him, Hannay makes no attempt at seduction. Rather, he cooks her fish in a manly manner, as A. L. Kennedy puts it (non-euphemistically), and then beds down on the couch; again, more concerned with sleep than in exploiting the opportunity for a sexual liaison.

Is this chivalry, or is it a sign of something else? I don't know.

I'm going to assume however - since I hate to pathologise - that Hannay is a true gentleman and not suffering from any form of sexual dysfunction; albeit a gentleman who appears to enjoy the company of women more than bedding them and who, one suspects, if obliged to eventually make love to them looks forward most of all to lighting up a post-coital cigarette.

On Women and Fish in The 39 Steps

Lucie Mannheim as Annabella Smith and Peggy Ashcroft as Margaret

in Hitchcock's The 39 Steps (1935)

Starring a very dashing Robert Donat as Richard Hannay and an ice-cold and elegant Madeleine Carroll as Pamela, Hitchcock's The 39 Steps is a masterclass in how to construct a compelling cinematic narrative in which melodrama seamlessly combines with screwball comedy.

Obviously, the most memorable of all scenes is that in which Pamela - whilst still handcuffed to Hannay and unsure whether he’s an innocent man desperate to clear his name, or a sadistic murderer on the run - awkwardly removes her wet stockings. It remains an unsurpassed moment of kinky delight that lovers of film and fetish have cherished for over 80 years.

However, there are two other scenes and two supporting performances that I’m also very fond of, each involving a vulnerable woman - and a fish.

The first takes place in Hannay’s London flat when he cooks a haddock for Annabella, the mysterious spy played by Lucie Mannheim, a Jewish actress forced into exile from her native Germany by the Nazis. As one who knows what it is to genuinely fear for her future and have to flee and to hide, she plays the part with real conviction and makes Hannay's ironic remark about persecution mania cruelly apt.

The second scene, which parallels and reverses elements of the above, unfolds in the crofter’s cottage. Hannay charms the young wife, Margaret, played by Peggy Ashcroft, who asks him if it’s true that all the ladies in London paint their toenails, before cooking him a fish for supper and then helping him escape from the police in the middle of the night, thus vicariously fulfilling her own desire to flee the loveless existence to which she's been doomed by marriage to an older man (played by John Laurie).

Both these women seek out and desperately require Hannay's help. They are, in a sense, as caught up in circumstances beyond their control as he is. And yet Hannay is unable to save either of them; Annabella is murdered and Margaret abandoned to a life of rural misery and domestic violence.

Only Pamela refuses to be bullied or victimised by any man. She may be dragged all over the Scottish moors by Hannay, but she never loses her sangfroid. Say what you like about Hitchcock blondes, but they're never going to allow themselves to be done up like kippers ...  

Of Birds and Blondes (and One Fat Film Director)

 

The recent spate of attacks by crows on young blonde women jogging in a South London park, has once again highlighted the fascinating relationship - marked by corvid animosity - between a highly intelligent species of bird and a type of human being often unfairly portrayed as attractive and fun-loving, but not so smart.

Predictably, but, in this case, quite legitimately, the news media that covered this story all made reference to Hitchcock's 1963 classic, The Birds, a film loosely based on Daphne Du Maurier's short novel of the same name and deeply ingrained in our cinematic memory and cultural imagination. 

Of course, the events in Eltham Park don't quite match the full horror of what unfolds in Bodega Bay, but it's always perversely pleasing to recall Tippi Hedren making her film debut and being pecked to pieces for the sadistic pleasure of director and audience alike. 

Hedren, a former fashion model, was one of a number of so-called Hitchcock blondes, famed for their ice-cold innocence and Nordic beauty. When asked why he preferred to cast such women in lead roles, Hitchcock replied in a somewhat creepy manner that it was because bloody footprints are best seen against virgin snow.

Hedren portrayed the character of Melanie Daniels to perfection and Hitchcock was full of praise for his new protégé and plaything, noting her slightly glib humour and jaunty confidence, her sharpness of expression and attractive throw of the head. 

As for the actress, she initially found everything on set fascinating and wonderful. But she would later describe the week spent filming the final frenzied attack scene as the worst of her life. 

Before shooting, Hitchcock had assured her that only mechanical birds would be used. Hedren found herself, however, in a tiny bedroom having prop men in thick protective clothing fling dozens of live gulls and crows directly at her. Admittedly, their beaks were held shut with rubber bands, but their wings and feet were free to beat and to scratch. When one of the birds gouged her cheek, narrowly missing an eye, Hedren understandably burst into tears and collapsed, dizzy with fear and exhaustion. 

When a doctor recommended that she be given a week to rest and recover, Hitchcock protested. Angered and outraged by this, her physician was moved to ask whether the director wanted to kill his leading lady. Hitchcock's silent response to this is, I suppose, open to interpretation. But what is for sure, is that Hitchcock certainly wanted to possess and intimidate Hedren and ultimately the real horror of this tale lies in the abuse of a young woman by a fat man with power, not by a few angry birds.


Note: thanks to Maria Thanassa for bringing the story of the crow attacks in Eltham Park to my attention and suggesting that it might make the basis for an interesting post on this blog.        

The Case of Leopold and Loeb

The shocking case of Leopold and Loeb continues to haunt the cultural (and criminal) imagination - not least of all when one has just re-watched Hitchcock's 1948 film, Rope, which was an adaptation of Patrick Hamilton's 1929 play of the same title, inspired by their sorry tale.
    
For those unfamiliar with the case, the salient facts are these: Nathan Leopold and Richard Loeb were highly gifted students at the University of Chicago, from extremely privileged backgrounds. In an attempt to demonstrate their intellectual and moral superiority, they set out to commit the perfect crime. This involved the kidnap and murder of fourteen year-old Bobby Franks in May 1924. 

Leopold, born in 1904, was the son of a wealthy Jewish family who had emigrated from Germany. A child prodigy with an outrageous IQ who spoke several languages fluently, he had by the time of the murder already completed his undergraduate degree at Chicago with honours and was planning to study law at Harvard. His partner in crime - and lover - Richard Loeb, born in 1905, was also exceptionally bright. Despite this, he was regarded by his tutors as lazy and overly interested in pulp fiction. 

Although the two boys knew each other whilst growing up in the same affluent neighbourhood, their relationship only really blossomed at the University of Chicago; particularly after discovering that they shared a mutual love of crime stories and an interest in the philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche. Leopold was particularly fascinated by the latter's concept of the Übermensch and imagined himself as someone destined to pass beyond good and evil. In a letter to Loeb, he wrote that superior individuals are, on account of certain inherent qualities, exempted from the laws which govern the lives of ordinary men.

Putting theory into practice, the two friends engaged in a series of petty crimes in order to demonstrate their contempt for and rejection of bourgeois society. Emboldened by their success at evading capture, they progressed to ever more serious acts, including arson. Disappointed, however, with the lack of media coverage they felt their crimes deserved, they decided to up the stakes in order to capture public attention and confirm their status as superior individuals: thus the killing of Bobby Franks, a second cousin of Loeb's described by Leopold as a 'cocky little son of a bitch'.

Unfortunately, the so-called crime of the century was solved by police in just a matter of days. Leopold and Loeb were arrested and both confessed during interrogation (although each blamed the other for delivering the fatal blows to the head of the young victim with a chisel). Both men also declared that they were motivated by a sense of philosophical investigation; this was murder as an intellectual exercise or moral-aesthetic experiment - as justifiable, said Leopold to his lawyer, as the killing of a beetle by an entomologist.

At the end of their month long trial, both were sentenced to life imprisonment for the murder, plus an additional 99 years for the kidnapping. The two maintained their intimate relationship behind bars until Loeb was brutally slashed with a razor in the showers by another inmate, James Day, in January 1936. Although taken directly to the prison hospital, his life couldn't be saved. Leopold was allowed to wash his friend's body as a final act of affection.     

Following this incident, Leopold went on to become a model prisoner and he made many significant contributions to improving conditions at Stateville Penitentiary before his release in 1958. He then went on to become a model citizen, working in healthcare and social services and studying bird-life as he searched for a halo in Puerto Rico. He died in 1971, aged 66.

The Franks murder has since inspired many works of fiction, film, and theatre. I think what really interests about the case of Leopold and Loeb is also what most depresses: when you strip away the lavender trappings and philosophical pretension all you are left with is a rather squalid act that demonstrates what Hannah Arendt famously termed the banality of evil. In other words, for all the sensational and transgressive aspects of murder, it results finally in a feeling of numbness and terminal boredom.

One might have hoped and expected something else, something more, from such gifted young men. Why do so many self-confessed Nietzscheans disappoint?