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Hitchcock Mountain
TOoP/Bruce:
A long time ago, I started a thread called "Hitchcock Mountain" and I chose to have it taken down. But some of you have remembered it (particularly dly64 and Front-Ranger), and at least a couple of others have asked me to consider reposting it. I have waited to repost until well after the Collector's Edition of the DVD was released, partly because I wanted to see what would be included with the DVD as extras, and partly because I thought it best to let "BbM" mellow a bit and let everyone who cared about it enjoy it's triumph, before my attempt to deconstruct it. I felt that my deconstruction of the film was something a film lover might enjoy (and a Hitchcock fan might enjoy), but that perhaps it was too much information to hand over to trolls who delight in spoiling things for others. (SPOILER ALERT: If you do not enjoy having films dissected, you are advised to turn away now.)
I have compiled many threads about this film. It is a somewhat obsessional activity for me. (IMDB users may recognize me as "True_Oracle_of_Phoenix".) One curious factoid I came upon in my archiving of many threads was this fragment of an interview with Ang Lee while he was promoting "The Hulk":
--- Quote --- Interview: Ang Lee
"Hulk"
Posted: Wednesday June 18, 2003 11:51 AM
Author: Paul Fischer
Location: Los Angeles, CA
http://www.darkhorizons.com/news03/ang.php
Paul Fischer: Is Hitchcock an influence?
Ang Lee: Yeah I love him. He is one of my heroes that has done all the weird stuff disguised in popular films and he did it so well and I do admire him although when I do the same thing I have to update it. similar take on Freud and stuff can look too simple today. I like to have a different angle. But yeah, he is my hero.
--- End quote ---
And so, in Brokeback Mountain the bent Freudian imagery that frames the world of Hitchcock is newly transformed by Ang Lee and the authors into the strangely bent Christian iconography and symbolism that frames the world of Brokeback Mountain and its themes of impossible love, loss, sacrifice, and redemption. Ang Lee was once quoted as having said something to the effect that he enjoyed putting movie genres in a blender. Echoes of Hitchcock, Antonioni, and Bergman all live on in Brokeback Mountain.
Where to start?
The mailbox?
Number 17?
"Number 17" is a none-too-well-known 1932 film directed by none other than Alfred Hitchcock! http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0023285/ It is an early work from when he lived in the UK, well before his mature Hollywood period. Curiously enough, it was written by ALMA Reville, the woman Alfred Hitchcock would later marry. People have speculated about the significance of the Number 17 on Ennis's mailbox. Is this an inside joke from Ang Lee about some of his inspiration for Brokeback Mountain? If so, it is certainly a joke worthy of his idol Mr. Hitchcock (not unlike Hitchcock's final movie "Family Plot" in which a character literally winks to the camera at the end of the movie). Alma - Hitchcock - Number 17. And what about Jack's father in Lightning Flat? "He's going in the family plot." "Family Plot" - perhaps another Hitchcock allusion?
Curious? Very...
Alfred Hitchcock enjoyed bawdy jokes. He was infamous for a joke that slipped past the censors in "Shadow of a Doubt" http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0036342/ Young niece Charley wears a ring her Uncle has given her. She notices that inside the ring there are engraved the initials "BM" - a common euphemism for "bowel movement". Hitchcock again hinted at this joke years later in his classic "Psycho" - Bate's Motel. (Strangely enough, the title "Brokeback Mountain" again echoes this joke, and to avoid the "BM" reference, many people - including myself - initialize the movie as "BBM" or "BbM" instead.) in "Shadow of a Doubt", Young Charley will wear the ring her Uncle has given her to communicate to him in a key scene that she understands exactly who and what he is - and that she wants him to leave her family's house and never come back. Similarly in BbM, Alma jr. wears bluebird earrings in her final scene and many have speculated that it communicates in a similar way an equally important but entirely different message - she understands exactly who and what her father is - and that she loves her father, and very much wants him to be a part of her life. In Hitchcock fashion, the cliche is inverted (something old becomes new, and a ring that was borrowed from SoaD, becomes earrings that are blue as she invites her father to her wedding). (The "BM" reference continues in "BetterMost Beans" and comes full circle in the name of this fansite!)
Hitchcock stayed with the genre of the suspense thriller, although he occasionally tried out romance and comedy. Ang Lee prefers to mix things up. The interesting thing is, once you let go of the idea of what a Hitchcock film should be, you find that Ang Lee, Annie Proulx, and the writing team of Ossana and McMurtry have mixed up some rather interesting Hitchcock elements in a film that is not a typical suspense film.
(To be continued...)
Front-Ranger:
This is so very interesting. Thank you for bringing this up. We need to remember that Ang Lee is not only a master filmmaker but also a film scholar with a bachelor's and master's degree in film.
Please continue with your deconstruction!!
TOoP/Bruce:
About the names in Brokeback:
--- Quote ---Ennis named after a baseball player?
by stonewall_gunther (Tue Nov 28 2006 10:19:00 )
I was wondering if anyone knew if Ennis was named after the 50's baseball player, Del Ennis? Delmer Ennis played from 1946 to 1959, and had 7 100 RBI seasons so was a star player though not quite Hall of Fame caliber. He played mostly in Philadelphia, and St. Louis at the end. The name seems a bit too close to be coincidental. Was the writer of Brokeback a Phillies fan? Or is there some other significance to the name Delmar Ennis, and perhaps both coincedentally were named for this other reason?
Re: Ennis named after a baseball player?
by True_Oracle_of_Phoenix (Tue Nov 28 2006 10:23:27 )
UPDATED Tue Nov 28 2006 10:33:42
Don't know the answer, but just thought I'd add this:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Del_Ennis
Re: Ennis named after a baseball player?
by loreleib (Tue Nov 28 2006 14:27:30 )
I don't know is just a coincidence or not, but there are two towns named Ennis and Alma about ten minutes away from each other in east Texas. Maybe the author had been there before?
Re: Ennis named after a baseball player?
by greylocke5 (Tue Nov 28 2006 14:50:49 )
"Ennis" is taken from the Scottish word "innis", which means "island." del mar - is Spanish - it means "of or in the sea." Ennis del Mar = island in the sea.
Hence, the name fits the character.
Re: Ennis named after a baseball player?
by loreleib (Tue Nov 28 2006 14:57:59 )
I knew that. For some reason this post just reminded me of that. I've driven through Ennis, Texas plenty of times and just a little while after seeing this movie for the first time, I realized there was a town named Alma near it. I didn't know before because Alma isn't right off the the interstate. I wonder if Annie Proulx knew about those two towns...
Re: Ennis named after a baseball player?
by JPJenny (Tue Nov 28 2006 15:30:36 )
UPDATED Tue Nov 28 2006 15:32:58
Hi, stonewall_gunther,
Interesting!
Annie Proulx graduated university in Maine around 1950 so maybe she knew.
This may not be relevant but Annie said the following in an interview:
“For me, metaphors come in sheets of three or four at once, in floods, and so metaphor use often concerns selection rather than construction. There are private layers of meaning in metaphor that may be obscure to the reader but which have—beyond the general accepted meanings of the words—resonance for the writer through personal associations of language, ideas, impressions. So the writer may be using metaphor to guide the reader and deepen the story, for subtle effects but also for sheer personal pleasure in word play.
So I think it’s possible. No?
Another thing that came to my mind:
In the film Jack says “I doubt there’s a filly that can throw me.”
But he gets thrown (fall in love) by a Phillie, Delmar Ennis = Ennis Delmar.
--- End quote ---
Ennis Delmar a play on the name of baseball player Del Ennis? And a place in Texas http://www.google.com/maps?q=Ennis,+TX&sa=X&oi=map&ct=title (near Alma http://www.google.com/maps?q=Alma,+TX&sa=X&oi=map&ct=title )? And it means Island in the Ocean? Maybe. (This website lists it as a variant of "Angus" which means "One choice" http://www.thinkbabynames.com/meaning/1/Ennis which gives it yet another interesting shade of meaning.)
The quote from Annie Proulx about metaphors coming in sheets of three and four is also very interesting. http://www.missourireview.org/content-index.php?genre=Interviews&title=Interview+with+Annie+Proulx Some people have speculated that the names Alma and Lureen may have been lifted (with slight modifications) from a character played by Donna Reed in "From Here to Eternity" (Alma Burke/Lorene) http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0045793/.
Of additional interest to Hitchcock fans, LURENE Tuttle's name is in the cast of "Psycho" as the character "Eliza Chambers" http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0878354/. Her name can be found in the opening credits.
The name Aguirre is a Basque name that means "open meadow" and it is possibly related to the Spanish word for eagle "aguila". http://www.ancestry.com/learn/facts/Fact.aspx?fid=10&yr=0&ln=Aguirre
Jake Gyllenhaal once said in an interview that Annie Proulx wrote him a note that said the name "Twist" was a reference "to the strength of thighs and butt muscles that a bull rider has to have in order to stay on the bull." http://movies.about.com/od/brokebackmountain/a/brokeback112905.htm (I would also like to note, that a plot "Twist" is the name of a sudden and unexpected plot development, such as can be found in Hitchcock movies!)
While I have no way of knowing what Ms. Proulx was thinking when she made up these character names, it does make for an interesting mix of ephemera. Answers that seemed simple, no longer seem quite so simple once one starts to consider the many possible layers of meaning that Annie, Larry, and Diana may have included here.
(To be continued...)
TOoP/Bruce:
(Reposted from the original thread)
1. Regarding his movie "Lifeboat" Hitchcock once said that with a good script, a movie could be made shot from inside a closet. BbM is movie pretty much shot from within a metaphorical closet, and key scenes are played either in a closet, or standing in front of one.
2. In an age of simplistic morality, sexual ambiguity and moral ambiguity are intrinsically linked. This is recurring theme of several Hitchcock films including "Notorious", "Rope", and "Psycho." In BbM, the tragic heroes do the things that society expects of men, but still find no way to be whole people. Compartmentalized, they are failures at being gay, and failures at being straight. Both are basically good and decent men who do they best they can to live up to social expectations and get their needs met. We are sympathetic to the predicament they are in, and find ourselves complicit in their adulteries because we want them to be together.
3. Transference of guilt. Ennis's father transfers guilt to Ennis by taking him to view the murdered body of "Old Earl." Through Ennis the evil of that murder is transfered in ways that disrupt the lives of everyone who loves him. Alma's shocked silence having watched her husband kissing another man can also be viewed as transference of guilt.
4. Cliche inversion. "Psycho" turned "mother love" on its head. It is now hard to think of the term "mama's boy" without thinking of Norman Bates. In Bbm, Proulx and Lee charge openly into hostile homophobic territory with masculine characters who can barely articulate the feelings they share for each other. So too does Brokeback Mountain reveal the previously obscured homo-erotic subtext of many westerns and buddy films.
Hitchcock often exploited cliches in his films by inverting them - his blondes aren't dumb, villians are sympathetic, good people do bad things, etc.
Likewise, Brokeback also inverts many cliches. Lurreen is blonde but not dumb - she has a successful business woman, Alma witnesses her husband kissing another man but says nothing about it for years, tough guys can be gay, Joe Aguirre witnesses two guys "horsing around" but keeps his thoughts about it to himself and never mentions it when he talks to Jack about his sick uncle, a gay guy might only be attracted to one man rather than many, Jack doesn't push Ennis harder for the relationship he really wants because it would risk losing Ennis, Jack's father may have been angry with Ennis because Ennis didn't come to live on the farm with his son...
A cliche as used by Hitchcock, is not something to avoid, but rather something to exploit. A cliche brings with it a set of expectations which can be manipulated and exploited. Every successful movie is capable of becoming the next cliche to exploit. The secret is in the construction. Use the cliche to establish expectation. Move plot elements forward in the script to take the audience by surprise. The reunion kiss scene is a good example of a cliche. The expected drama about Ennis deceiving his wife to be with Jack takes a sudden turn and the expections with that cliche collapse. Now the drama is about how long Alma will put up with this situation before she has had enough and vents her anger on Ennis.
Brokeback Mountain exploits cliches by using them, then thwarting expectations based on them. Its overwhelming success and people's familiarity with it has now made it a new cliche waiting to be exploited. At some point, someone will doubtlessly rearrange some of its familiar plot elements and use them to exploit the audience's expectations to make a new story. Hitchcock did this routinely with his own films, and his films have a number of familiar visual and plot elements running through them in but in different combinations - "Self-plaigerism is style!" he once quipped.
5. The icy blonde whose self-imposed veneer of composure masks untold sexual repression. In Hitchcock this part is always female. In BbM, Ennis and Lureen are both remote blondes who are both sexually aggessive and emotionally unavailable. Freud says there are no coincidences, and we also find that Jack's father is also sexually aggressive (in the short story) and completely emotionally unavailable. The haunting look of devastation on Heath Ledger's face also recalls another Hitchcock quote, "Blondes make the best victims. They're like virgin snow that shows up the bloody footprints."
(to be continued...)
TOoP/Bruce:
There are some early visual parallels in BbM to Hitchcock's use of the "new American west" in his films North by Northwest and Psycho. While not typically thought of as "westerns", both of these films do in fact make use of Hitchcock's view of postcard western America and "highway culture." (during Hitchcock's signature cameo appearance in "Psycho", he can be seen wearing a cowboy hat). The long empty highways of Brokeback Mountain are similar terrain to the long empty highways of NbNW.
An early shot in Psycho is of the signpost for Phoenix. An early shot in Brokeback is of the signpost for Signal. Aside from what these names literally mean, both carry a symbolic meaning. Phoenix is in mythology a bird that dies in a pyre and is reborn from its ashes (Mother reborn as Norman). A Signal is a message that is sometimes spelled out in code, an alert to the attraction that binds Ennis and Jack. Both signs are symbolically charged names and heavy with portent of events to follow.
In the scene where Ennis and Jack first meet, a comparison can be made to a visually similar scene in NbNW where Cary Grant waits by the side of a highway and a stranger waits on the other side. The humerous element of the truck is to be found in both films as well (Jack's truck has the extra wheels spin as he parks, Cary Grant steals a similar truck with a refrigerator on the back). Brokeback is not a copy of this scene, but the elements of the scene have elements of similarity. Jack's peak into the mirror at Ennis somewhat resembles Norman's erotic peak through the wall in Psycho. The humor of Jack shaving also brings to mind a humerous shaving sequence in NbNW when Cary Grant uses the lather to disguise himself at the train station. Jack uses shaving to disguise the true nature of his peak into the mirror.
This scene combines several Hitchcock elements (long silence, attraction and tension between two characters, and understated humor) and Ang Lee demonstates early in Brokeback his mastery of the visual language of Hitchcock.
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