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Hitchcock Mountain

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TOoP/Bruce:
The sequence in Joe Aguirre's trailor has a claustrophobic quality that could be compared to the check in room at the Bate's Motel.  The drinking at the bar in Signal might draw a slight comparison to the initial drinking scene in Strangers on a Train, but the comparison of those scenes is of less importance. 

The longer wordless scenes of life on the mountain where the eyes tell most of the story is very much a Hitchcock technique, to be found in many of his films.  It is a feature of particular interest in Vertigo, where Scotty silently watches Madeleine as she goes about her day, seemly oblivious to being watched.  In a similar fashion to Vertigo, the mountain looms over Jack and Ennis rather like the Golden Gate Bridge.  Both represent more than location.  They are mute witness to the events that unfold beneath them.  The impassive object as a witness is also an important Hitchcock element - examples include the eyeglasses that fall to the ground in SoaT, the showerhead in Psycho, and the Golden Gate Bridge in Vertigo.)  Ennis watches after Jack in a similar wordless way to how Scotty watches Madeleine..  Hitchcock started out as a silent film director and was once quoted as saying, "Dialogue should simply be a sound among other sounds, just something that comes out of the mouths of people whose eyes tell the story in visual terms."  Even when the sound is turned off, the faces of the characters Ennis and Jack strongly communicate the things their words do not. 

Ennis finding the sheep dead in the field after tent scene one begins another Hitchcock reference.  Ennis's backstory contains many of the same features as the backstory of the amnesiac "Dr. Edwards" in Spellbound - death, blood, things that are white, fences, and loss of a brother.  While there are some differences in the two stories, they share several elements, and those elements return to haunt both "Dr. Edwards" and Ennis in a way as to leave them both with very damaged identities. 

Tent scene 2 uses a horizonal rotational embrace in a similar way to Hitchcock's vertical sleeper car embrace in NbNW.  The rotation adds a bit of interesting visual movement to a scene that is essentially static if it didnt' happen.

Joe Aguirre's stony and impassive face as he observes the "happy tussel" scene serves a similar dramatic purpose to the police officer who pulls over Marion Crane in Psycho.  His conversation with Jack serves a similar dramatic function to the police officer's conversation with Marion Crane.  It helps to build dramatic tension.

The fight on the mountain between Ennis and Jack as they descend from camp returns to elements of the backstory of Spellbound - snow, white (sheep), blood, and fences.  In Spellbound, "Dr. Edwards" carries with him the guilt of having accidentally killed his brother on a slide as he collides with him while playing, propelling his bother forward and impaling him on an iron fence.  Ennis's backstory involves his brother as well from who he will become estranged.  The fence element and the snow element carry over between both films.

Back at Jack's truck, Ennis symbolically tries to repair his damaged relationship with Jack by fixing his truck. In Psycho, Marion puzzles how to undo the damage she has done by adding up the figures for the money she has stolen and spent.

Jack and Ennis part and go their separate ways. .

Jack's truck pulls away from Ennis and Jack watches recede in his rearview mirror  This scene parallels in a scene that recalls Marion Crane leaving the policeman who stands by the side of the road. It is one of several "down the drain" scenes leading up to the toilet flushing in Psycho. This second mirror scene brackets and close their Brokeback Mountain experience.  The mirror scenes "bookend" the Brokeback experience.  (Mirrors also play an important part in Psycho, a subject I will return to later.)

Ennis's scene in the alley can be compared to the shower scene in Psycho:

Ennis ducks into an alley / Marion steps into the shower.

Ennis begins to wretch and pound the wall. Marion showers to wash away her guilt.

Both are joined by a second figure.

Marion is observed by the silent witness of the shower head above / in the sky above Ennis, an image of Jack in the clouds drives away.

Marion screams at her intruder/ Ennis yells "what the fuck are you looking at" at his.

Marion is savagely attacked/Ennis implodes.

Marion's face is framed from maximum emotion; Ennis's is almost completely concealed.

In both films the second figure takes off.

Marion dies at the base of the toilet. An elegant visual montage mixes blood and water as her life force goes down the drain in an elegant photo-lap dissolve. 
 
In the alley after Brokeback, Ennis's life-force also slips away "down the drain" as the sound clip of "forgive us our trespasses" swirls in similar audio "lap dissolve."

Marion dies by the base of a toilet.  The promised romance of Brokeback Mountain dies with his marriage to Alma.

Act One ends

Totally different stories told with a similar technique.

TOoP/Bruce:
Haunted by Geometry...

Marion Crane is linked with circles.  Circles follow her in the lights of the car, wheels, the hole that Norman peeks through, a toilet bowl, a shower head, the drain as it lap dissolves with her wide open eye.

Ennis Delmar is haunted by a kind of geometry as well.  It is interesting to note how many times when he is not on the mountain with Jack that he is pictured with rectangles: the door of Aguirre's trailer, walking down the street to the bar in Signal, the alley, the door of the church as he gets married, all leading up to a phone booth and two closets.

Complex parallel contructions exist in both Brokeback and Psycho as well.  The backgrounds of several key scenes in Psycho are played against mirrors which reflect the actors in the foreground.  Here the parallels are literal and provide a strange tension between foreground and background. 

Mirrors serve as bookends to the time Ennis and Jack spent on the mountain, and a number of parallel visual constructions in Brokeback serve to link scenes together - the carved horses at the beginning and end of the movie, the touching of shoulders at two key scenes, the stars on the swingset where Ennis and Alma's children play and the stars on the large store sign outside the store where Lureen works.  Here the parallels are more symbolic and serve to connect lives separated by distance and events separated by time.

Front-Ranger:

--- Quote from: bjblakeslee on March 29, 2007, 03:34:16 pm ---...and the stars on the large store sign outside the store where Lureen works.
--- End quote ---

Do you mean Alma rather than Lureen? Thot Lureen worked in an office.

These are amazing insights! I was just thinking of something last night...the scene where Alma is viewed framed by the rectangle of the kitchen window, framed by the rectangle of the nursery window where Ennis cradles Jenny in his arms! That is an eerie scene! Also, I'm drawn to the snowy scene outside the window as Ennis and Alma argue by the sink...

TOoP/Bruce:

--- Quote from: Front-Ranger on March 29, 2007, 04:29:02 pm ---Do you mean Alma rather than Lureen? Thot Lureen worked in an office.

These are amazing insights! I was just thinking of something last night...the scene where Alma is viewed framed by the rectangle of the kitchen window, framed by the rectangle of the nursery window where Ennis cradles Jenny in his arms! That is an eerie scene! Also, I'm drawn to the snowy scene outside the window as Ennis and Alma argue by the sink...


--- End quote ---

Clarification:  The store sign I refer to is visible in the scene where Jack takes Bobby for a spin on the tractor on the farm equipment store lot.  Lureen's office is in a farm equipment sales store where Jack is apparently a salesman.  The stars on the swingset parallel and link the scene to the stars on the sign in the scene that follows: Ennis with his children; Jack with his son.    (Credit to ClancyPants for picking up on that detail...)

TOoP/Bruce:

In Brokeback, Ennis slides down a hillside with Alma wearing blue. The Hitchcock reference here is Spellbound. In Spellbound, Dr. Edwards is not what he seems. He is actually an amnesia patient of Dr. Edwards who has been murdered and he has taken on Dr. Edwards identity. In a dream flashback, we see him on a slide on a winter day, going down, down, down. He accidently collides with his brother at the bottom of the slide and his brother is accidently knocked forward and impaled on an iron fence.

Ennis (having lost his spiritual brother) dresses in Jack's blue clothing, taking on his identity by wearing emblematic clothing. Jack and he parted to go down the mountain (it snowed before they left and went down the mountain together) where they separate violently (loss of brother and violent collision). Additionally, we see the visual motif of the fence in the scene with the death of Earl. Later it will be repeated in a key scene.

The fireworks scene is included because it is an emblematic moment from Hitchcock used to express sexual climax, is here inverted to demonstrate Ennis's repression leading to explosive rage.

The reunion scene can be compared to Psycho, when Norman discovers what "Mother" has done to Marion.  Norman recoils to the right hand of the screen and covers his mouth speechless. Alma seems to suffer a similar shock when she sees her husband kissing another man.  Both Alma and Norman apparently blot this memory out.

The establishing shot of the motel that Jack and Ennis go to strongly echos the establishing shot of the Bates motel. The scene that follows echos the first scene of Psycho.

In a river, Ennis and Jack jump together returning to an echo of Vertigo when Scotty and Madeliene jump into San Francisco Bay.

Some people have criticized Psycho for having a sluggish second act, and Brokeback is constructed similarly. It has the job of tying together a powerful first act with an even more powerful second act. It needs to maintain dramatic tension by cross-cutting stories (Lila/Norman for Psycho; Jack/Ennis for BbM). The complex rhythms and constructions between the two are actually very intricately constructed.

Jack drives to meet Ennis after hearing of his divorce echos Marion's thrill of stealing $40,000 and taking off. The white truck that passes in the background behind Jack, echoes the similar passing of vehicle behind Marion Crane when she is exchanging cars at the used car lot.

In Mexico, Rodrigo Prieto - Brokeback's cinematographer - has a Hitchcocklike cameo as the male prostitute.

We see a reference to director Ang Lee's movie "The Ice Storm" when Jack is searching for his blue parka.

The humor of the Thankgiving dinner scenes echo the labored dinner comedy of Frenzy.   Ennis attacks Alma at the kitchen sink after Alma confronts him about his relationship with Jack -- "Jack Nasty!" she hurls at him.  There is a similarity in a scene in Frenzy, when a psychologist confronts her patient with her suspicions that he is the "necktie murder" and when she realizes who he really is she blurts out -- "Necktie!"  There is an eerie similarity in the horizontal tableaux of a street scene after Ennis picks a fight with with the man in the truck, to the street scene in Frenzy during an unseen rape/murder that occurs off camera. 

 Earlier in the film when the boys come down from the mountain, a fly lands on Aguirre's face, but he swats at it.  In the scene with the confrontation be the river, a fly lands on Ennis's face and he doesn't swat it. Toward the end of Psycho, a fly also lands on Norman Bates' face.

We return to the Vertigo theme with the time-distortion flashback, but the circular motion used there can't be used because its needed in another plot point. Time shifts, day becomes night, the clothes change, and Jack's moustache is dramatically necessary so the viewer can visually sort it out. (Many people seemed to miss the cues that this is a flashback, and thought at first that it was an editing error.  A second viewing is usually all that is necessary to reread the scene correctly.)  A signature camera move defines this scene with the camera "weighing" Ennis in Jack's mind, and it's timing and subtlety recall Hitchcock's masterful and economic use of the "eye of God" signature camera move during climactic scenes.

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