Alfred Hitchcock’s Notorious (1946): Nazis! We Hate Those Guys!

Believe it or not, my first experience with Notorious was when I saw, not Sir Alfred Hitchcock’s intense 1946 romantic thriller, but rather a 1992 made-for-TV retread starring John Shea (Missing) and Jenny Robertson (Bull Durham), because the video rental folks didn’t have the original version at the time!  Really?  Really?!  Please!  I remember my dear late mom and me having a better time fun poking fun at the dull, witless script!  What were they thinking with their silly attempts to “improve” upon it?  It’s like those wackos in H.P. Lovecraft’s supernatural stories about the evil monster Cthulu, whose followers always think the beast will be their best buddy after they summon it, only to be stunned when the monster lays waste to the villains.  It just goes to show that when it comes to classic movies, film fans must accept no substitutes! 

Screenwriter Ben Hecht (Spellbound; His Girl Friday) introduces us viewers to the beautiful but troubled Alicia Huberman (Ingrid Bergman from Casablanca; her Oscar-winners Gaslight and Murder on the Orient Express) has been a party girl and a heavy drinker for some time.  In fact, she’s only been along for the ride in life ever since her father was convicted of treason and collaborating with the enemy.  Since then, Alicia broke family ties with her disgraced father, and made booze her constant companion, aside from partying.  After another one of her parties, Alicia chats up a potential conquest, a handsome stranger.  When Alicia speeds way past the speed limit without the cop him giving him a summons,  she realizes the handsome stranger is a Fed, one T.R. Devlin (Cary Grant, who also worked with Hitchcock on  Suspicion and North by Northwest), and boy, is she furious when she discovers he’s a Fed!  Dev doesn’t let Alicia’s wildcat antics bother him—it’s just lights out for Alicia!  The next morning, she wakes up at Dev’s place with a splitting headache, a glass of milk (always popular in Hitchcock movies), and bittersweet news:  Alicia’s father has died by his own hand.  Even Alicia herself is surprised at her own unexpected sorrow for her late father: “I don’t know why I should feel so bad.  When he told me a few years ago what he was, everything went to pot.  I didn’t care what happened to me.  But now I remember how nice he was he once was, how nice we both were, very nice. It’s a very curious feeling, as if something had happened to me and not to him.  You see, I don’t have to hate him anymore, or myself.”

Make a note of that, Crime-stoppers!

From there, Alicia and Dev work with spymaster Paul Prescott (Louis Calhern of Duck Soup; The Asphalt Jungle) and his Washington colleagues, who send her and Dev to infiltrate the Nazi scum in Rio (by the sea-o)!  Don’t let their suave clothes and good manners fool you—they’re no-goodniks, no matter how sensitive and dashing they look underneath it all!  With Alicia sobering up, both she and Dev succumb to each other’s magnetism and they can’t help falling in love with each other, in spite of the fact that they both have more issues than a Hudson’s News stand!   Dev can be a prickly pear in any case, considering his serious trust issues where women are concerned.  In fact, sometimes Notorious feels like a version of The Lost Weekend with sexier stars!  But when Alicia and Dev do let their hair down, those scenes are among the hottest, most romantic scenes on film; I’m surprised the film stock didn’t simply burst into flames!  Notice how cold Dev acts when Prescott mentions how their main target, Alexander Sebastian (Oscar nominee Claude Rains from The Invisible Man; Casablanca) acts toward Dev when Prescott mentions Alicia’s long-ago “hunger” for Alicia when he was in love with her.  Tsk, tsk, Devlin sure isn’t being very business-like!   What would James Bond say?

Emile freaks out when it seems he’s got the wrong
bottle of wine at dinner.  Maybe he’d prefer a nice Ripple?
Or maybe cement shoes? 

Alicia makes contact with Alex, thanks to the old runaway horse trick, and suave Alex and Alicia pick up where they left off, while Dev acts like a jealous lover instead of the cool spy-type guy he needs to be on this assignment.   It’s amazing any work gets done at all with these two, especially when jealous Alex takes the next big step: marrying Alicia!   Prescott thinks it’s a swell idea; now it’ll be even easier for the new Mrs. Sebastian to keep her eyes and ears on the Nazi scum, to Prescott’s delight and Devlin’s passive-aggressive frustration!   Frankly, Devlin is especially in danger of shooting himself in the foot, perhaps literally!  Someone needs to give those crazy kids a time out, or maybe just a smack in the head!  No doubt it must annoy Dev no end that Alex is so suave and attentive to his lovely new wife.  Too bad Alex is both a Nazi and an insecure older man trying to keep his new bride happy.  Sheesh, where’s Ingrid Bergman in another romantic Hitchcock thriller when you need her:  Dr. Constance Petersen from Spellbound! 

A key moment in the film!

Instead of a honeymoon, our sexy spies throw a party to celebrate the newlyweds, with their old pal Dev keeping their eyes and ears open.  They hit pay dirt when Dev accidentally knocks over a wine bottle that’s actually “vintage sand!”  In fact, it's actually metal ore; that’s one way to perk up a honeymoon, as well as giving Dev and Alicia an opportunity for some romance, by George!  But  jealous Mama Sebastian (the regal, superb Leopoldine Konstantin) has Alicia’s number, and it’s gonna come up snake-eyes unless Dev stops acting like a jealous dolt and saves Alicia so that, as Grant said in North By Northwest: “You and I are going to do a lot of apologizing in private!”

Ingrid Bergman gives one of her very best performances as Alicia, juggling danger and romance in a relationship that’s complicated, to say the least!  Dev can be glacial or sizzlingly romantic at the blink of an eye.  The “Good Guys” essentially force Alicia to prostitute herself by marrying her off to suave Alex.   The hell of it is that Alex, an old friend of her father’s, is far more loving and romantic than Dev, despite his insecurity about his beautiful young wife, especially with Alex’s Mother-in-Law From Hell.  In any case, this sure tosses a monkey wrench into Alicia’s sizzling yet stormy romance with Dev!  It’s one of the most adult movies Hitchcock ever made; despite Bergman and Rains seemingly sleeping in separate beds, this film was quite adult for its era.  It’s not only a crackerjack espionage thriller, but also a moving, disturbing look into the dark recesses of the human heart.

For goodness sakes, hasn’t
Bing Crosby ‘s horse come in yet? 

In Robert A. Harris & Michael S. Lasky’s book The Films of Alfred Hitchcock (Citadel Press, 1976), Hitchcock realized he and co-author Ben Hecht  (Spellbound; His Girl Friday), had turned out to be ahead of their time when they decided to make uranium metal ore Hitchcock’s MacGuffin, a.k.a the item that makes our heroes hot and bothered, suspense-wise!  Indeed, Hitchcock used the uranium gambit even before it was used at Hiroshima!  Nobody was supposed to know about its powers, or that it would be used in an atom bomb for the movie.  In fact, producer David O. Selznick thought it was such a preposterous idea that instead of producing Notorious himself, Selznick sold the package to RKO (including Duel in the Sun).  Apparently even having the term “uranium” in the script was scaring the producers!  I was amazed by the visuals of Director of Photography Ted Tetzlaff (My Man Godfrey; The More the Merrier), especially that long shot at the party that ends on the key in Alicia’s hand—wow!

 Can't you fix it for me? For old times' sake? 

Hitchcock’s talented daughter Patricia Hitchcock O’Connell was a triple threat herself, having co-starred in her father’s films;  Stage Fright was her debut); then Strangers on a Train; (for which she deserved an Oscar nomination, if you ask me); Psycho; and many appearances on TV's Alfred Hitchcock Presents as she eventually became a producer.  I was lucky enough to interview Pat (if I may be so bold) in 1990 for Video Review, and she explained:  “My father was really able to do all the things he enjoyed doing artistically and technically.   He also used brilliant actors down to the smallest parts, like the Germans—especially Leopoldine Konstantin as Alex Sebastion’s mother…The only problem was that because of the politically sensitive plot about making a bomb out of uranium, my family was followed by the FBI for months.”  How’s that for cinematic realism?

The whole cast is absolutely stellar, including the always-suave Rains, terrific in a complex role that requires him to be believable not only as a suave lover and villain, but also a doting yet jealous and insecure husband of a lovely young wife, as well as being a villain, and having to put up with a domineering mother to boot;  to quote North by Northwest, I'm beginning to think Rains was underpaid!  I think his Best Supporting Actor Oscar nomination was richly deserved.   (I understand Rains was quite the romantic lover in real life!)   At times, I almost felt sorry for Alex, knowing Alicia was just stringing him along and coping—and even worse, he has to put up with The Mother From Hell, too, always a staple in Hitchcock’s wicked little arsenal!   With a forbidding matron of a mom like Mme. Leopoldine Konstantin as Alex’s mother, it’s no wonder Alex is still under Mama’s thumb despite his suave manners.  I must admit that the first time I watched the climactic love/rescue scene with Alicia and Dev’s “pillow talk,” in which Dev rescues Alicia from an agonizing death from slow poison had seemed a little corny at first.  But when I watched it again after all this time, now with a fresh outlook, I found it touching my heart!  Roy Webb’s swoony score is excellent, yet sometimes I wish I could somehow build a time machine or Way-Back Machine or the like, so that Hitchcock could have met and worked with Bernard Herrmann earlier in his career!

Claude Rains was only 5' 6" tall, a good three inches shorter than Bergman.  They were able to hide the difference when everyone was moving about, and in scenes where they stood next to each other, he just stood on a small platform.  But when he was moving and Ingrid stood still, they had to rely on strategically-placed ramps he'd walk up as he approached.  Watch how much taller he gets as he walks towards the camera here!

 

Steve Martin used footage from Notorious in his comedy Dead Men Don't Wear Plaid.  Here's how two scenes from very different parts of the film were stitched into one very differently-toned one!

Part 2 of 2 - Movies That Need Remaking: How STILL OF THE NIGHT Could Have Been a Quality Hitchcock Pastiche

The maddening thing about Still of the Night (SotN) is that there were so many things director/co-writer Robert Benton and company could have done to make SotN a truly exceptional thriller as well as an affectionate salute to Alfred Hitchcock. If by some bizarre twist of fate, some producer gave me unlimited money and resources to remake SotN as the sleek, suspenseful thriller it could have been, here are the changes I’d make:

1.)    More emotion, please! What SotN desperately needs is more warmth, urgency, wit, passion—in short, more emotion! The cast tries hard, but the combination of aloof direction and a script with more emphasis on set pieces than characterization leaves them (and the audience) cold as a corpse in the Antarctic. Even the Spartan art direction, with its muted color scheme of blues and the occasional earth tone, adds a distinct chill to the emotional climate; more about that shortly.

2.)    Fill in those plot holes! For instance, I know Con Edison bills are high in NYC, but doesn’t anyone in this movie ever turn on their lights? How did Gail Phillips (Sara Botsford) get from Manhattan to Glen Cove so darn fast? (Was North by Northwest’s Roger Thornhill driving?) Speaking of Glen Cove, would a fiercely private person like the enigmatic, easily spooked Brooke Reynolds (Meryl Streep) really have a big sign outside her house with her last name on it for all to see? For that matter, would she allow her name to be listed in the Manhattan White Pages, where Sam finds out her address? Which brings us to….

3.)    Fewer “idiot plot” devices, please! Most of SotN’s “idiot plot” devices (as coined by Roger Ebert and Gene Siskel back in the day) involve our love-struck hero Dr. Sam Rice. Since Sam was played by Roy Scheider—who I’d always liked because he came across as tough, suave, sensitive and sensible all at once—the actions the script required of him seemed that much sillier. The things Sam must do simply because it’s in the script include sitting alone in a dim, creepy basement laundry room when a killer’s on the loose (with the lights going out to boot); sneaking into Brooke’s office during the auction (“This is dumb,” Sam mutters to himself. No argument from me!); and after dark, following a woman across the street who he thinks might be Brooke, never mind that the distance and her scarf render her unrecognizable. But Sam has to follow this mystery woman despite his better judgment so he can tail her to Central Park at night, so his coat can be stolen, so the mugger can wear it, so the killer can kill the mugger thinking he’s Sam…c’mon, that’s just lazy writing! And many of these idiot plot devices wouldn’t have been necessary if the script had….

4.)    More scenes with Sam and Brooke together, deepening their emotional bond and adding some much-needed romantic sizzle. Whenever Hitchcock made a romantic thriller in which one of the lovers seemed to be up to no good, among them The Lodger, Spellbound, Suspicion, Notorious, and North by Northwest, he made sure he threw the lovers together at every opportunity, leaving audiences titillated and terrified at the same time. Until SotN’s denouement, the so-called romantic leads are in surprisingly few scenes together, only kissing two or three times, tops.

For crying out loud, Sam and Brooke don’t even have a real date over the course of the film. The auction doesn’t count, as Brooke is working and thus separated from Sam. A friend scored me the novelization of SotN, and there was actually more romance and sex between Sam and Brooke in the book than in the movie; they should have filmed that! If I was in charge of a remake, I’d give the lovebirds more “getting to know you” time. For example, we find out Sam once wanted to be a Major League baseball player. How about a scene with him taking Brooke to a ball game? Let’s have fun with this; maybe Sam and his therapist pals play ball every weekend in Central Park. It’d be a great opportunity for humor (Brooke had a privileged upbringing; maybe she could call on her polo skills) and revealing banter as our protagonists get more comfortable with each other. Another opportunity for suspense: someone (Gail?) could follow Sam and Brooke after the game. Maybe Brooke panics when she sees something that reminds her of being nearly murdered by her dad, such as Delacorte Castle. A little heartfelt yet tastefully-rendered sex couldn’t hurt, and I don’t mean Sam’s comfy psychiatrist couch. One evening, Sam could sub for Brooke’s masseur, one thing can lead to another….

5.)    Better foreshadowing! If Benton and Newman had their hearts set on Gail being the killer, they should have given her more scenes and therefore more foreshadowing. Make Gail a three-dimensional character, not just a plot convenience. Drop more hints about Gail’s relationship with that cad Bynum, since it turns out that philandering Bynum had dumped Gail for Brooke, setting jealous Gail off on her murder spree. Why don’t male filmmakers think women can handle broken romances without turning violent? Anyway, Gail and Brooke could be out on their lunch break on payday and run into Sam, who’d accompany Brooke to the bank while “Greenbacks” declines; psychiatrist Sam could offer to cure her bank phobia. Gail could even run into our happy couple on the street and chat, maybe after following them in the park: “Oh, I was just on my way from lunch at the Boathouse, and I couldn’t help noticing your exciting ball game…”

6.)    Hell yes, we want Jess! Benton and company should have given the indomitable Jessica Tandy more screen time. SotN’s coldness thaws beautifully every time Tandy is onscreen. I would have loved to see Tandy and Streep share a scene or two; think of the give-and-take in Spellbound with loving but worried psychiatrist heroine Ingrid Bergman, her kindly old mentor Michael Chekhov, and tormented amnesiac hottie Gregory Peck.

7.)    A little less conversation, a few more visuals! Remember that long monologue wherein we learn Brooke’s shattering secret? Meryl Streep’s intense emoting was superb as always, but since film is a visual medium, this scene still cried out for more visual interest. (Granted, the sight of the luminous young Streep might be enough visual interest for fans.) In the film, it’s just Streep standing against the starless night sky, smoking, crying, and occasionally gesturing. If Streep’s monologue was indeed the result of a new last-minute ending as mentioned in Part 1, that would explain it. If I could remake SotN, I’d opt for a new scene, maybe even a suspenseful flashback or prologue, that would show—not just tell—what happened in Florence. Brooke’s big speech might even be kept in the scene as a voiceover.  More foreshadowing throughout the film would give this part of the plot more momentum and impact. For instance, let’s see those pictures of young Brooke (a.k.a. the little girl in Bynum’s dream) and her family at various points in SotN. Maybe Sam could see them during a little tête-à-tête at Brooke’s place in one of those hot new romantic scenes from Suggestion #4.

Sam and mom solve murders the family way!

8.)    Color SotN’s world! Speaking of visual interest, the usually capable Mel Bourne could have dressed up his sets a bit. No one in SotN seems to have heard of primary or pastel colors. Okay, Streep wore a dark blue dress toward the end of the movie, but that’s about it. Even the occasional bloodstains are invariably seen in dim light, so they could have used chocolate sauce a la Psycho for all I know. Were these dark colors intended to show off Streep’s shiny Hitchcock blonde tresses? Benton and company used similarly stark art direction in Kramer Vs. Kramer (except for the pastel sky in young Justin Henry’s bedroom), which helped dry out some of that sentimental tale’s overly soap-opera-ish elements. But if you’re aiming to emulate Hitchcock, you’ve got to go for his visual sense as well, and he usually provided plenty of eye appeal with handsome and colorful sets, costumes, and locations, except in his glorious black-and-white films, of course.

9.)  Lighten up, Meryl! To be fair, it’s hard to tell how much of leading lady Meryl Streep’s jumpiness could be attributed to her character Brooke Reynolds, Streep’s acting style, or Robert Benton’s direction. I wouldn’t be surprised if the most likely culprit was Benton and Newman’s script; Bynum has a line about how *ahem* “tense” Brooke is, and Sam wonders about it himself. Or maybe it is all those cigarettes. But seriously, the end result is that Brooke comes across as so afraid of her own shadow that she not only gets on one’s nerves, but any mystery buff worth his/her hemlock knows she can’t possibly be the killer; she’s just too obvious a suspect. It’s a relief when she finally smiles!

Yes, I know I should probably be using all this time, space, and ink to write more of my own stories instead of going into all this detail about a 28-year-old movie (I’m editing my first novel now). It’s just that I hate to see a project with such potential turn out so disappointingly. Even as is, SotN has enough glimmers of gold (hard to see through all those dark colors and dim lighting, but they’re there) to put a little ache in my thriller-loving heart. Well, who knows, maybe there really is some parallel universe where The Beatles filmed Joe Orton’s Up Against It, Winona Ryder played Mary Corleone in The Godfather: Part III…and Still of the Night turned out to be a crackerjack romantic suspenser after all. Anyone got a time machine they’re not using? I’ll bring it back in one piece, I promise!

For the record, if a SotN remake was green-lit today and I was in charge, I’d cast Adrien Brody as Sam, Nicole Kidman as Brooke, and as a tip of the hat, Meryl Streep as Grace. Any fun dream-casting choices you’d like to share? Don’t be shy!

Part 1 of 2 - Movies That NEED Remaking: How STILL OF THE NIGHT Could Have Been a Quality Hitchcock Pastiche

(Caution! Still of the Night Spoilers Ahead!)

With Alfred Hitchcock having long since gone to that big movie set in the sky, it seems like every filmmaker and his Aunt Lillian have tried their hand at a Hitchcock pastiche, hoping to catch lightning in a bottle.  Sometimes they’ve even succeeded, with such stylish entertainments as Stanley Donen’s Charade and Arabesque, Brian DePalma’s Dressed to Kill, and Mark Robson’s The Prize, the latter borrowing liberally and gleefully from Ernest Lehman’s North by Northwest screenplay.
You don’t need to slavishly imitate Hitchcock to make a quality suspense film inspired by The Master of Suspense, unless you’re doing so for the purposes of affectionate spoofing, as with Mel Brooks’ High Anxiety, Danny DeVito’s Throw Momma from the Train, or even D.J. Caruso’s Disturbia.  But you do need a director and writer with a real sense of the theatrical, even a gonzo touch. Failing that, make sure your characters are as engaging as all get out. Your audience has to identify with your protagonists—which, of course, does not have to mean they must be squeaky-clean goody-two-shoes types. The characters Cary Grant and James Stewart played in Hitchcock’s films weren’t always 100% lovable. Even the characters played by the bewitching Grace Kelly and Ingrid Bergman were complicated women, not just window dressing.  Hitchcock had a knack for tapping into the dark side of his glamorous stars.

That’s why it frustrates me when a promising suspense story, especially one that goes out of its way to evoke Hitchcock’s style, misses the mark. Of all the unsuccessful off-brand Hitchcock wannabes I’ve seen and found wanting, the one that disappointed me most was Robert Benton’s 1982 Hitchcock salute, Still of the Night (SotN). I wanted to like it, really I did; it came so close! To paraphrase North by Northwest, it could tease a moviegoer to death without half-trying. The trouble was that it stopped trying, or at least didn’t quite try hard enough. Despite a great cast and several promising moments, SotN had too many promises and not enough moments.

No one will be seated during the
Weird Guitar-Shaped Shadow in the
Elevator scene!

For those who may not remember that far back, SotN was directed and co-written—with David Newman—by Robert Benton, fresh off his Oscar-winner Kramer Vs. Kramer. Benton also made one of my favorite films of the late 1970s, The Late Show.  SotN’s original, more pulse-pounding title was Stab, but it didn’t fly with preview audiences. The way I heard the story, Stab supposedly began life as a slasher movie spoof that would reunite Benton with his Late Show leading lady Lily Tomlin, but it evolved into a straight-faced Hitchcock tribute re-teaming Benton with Kramer…’s Meryl Streep. SotN had a helluva cast going for it; Streep was joined by one of my favorite actors, Roy Scheider, as well as The Birds star and future Oscar-winner Jessica Tandy, not to mention such fine character actors as Josef Sommer, Joe Grifasi, and Sara Botsford. Plenty of talented people behind the camera with Benton and Newman, too, including director of photography Nestor Almendros, production designer Mel Bourne, and composer John Kander, whose piano-heavy main title theme has always been one of my favorites. To top it all off, SotN was filmed in and around New York City. Those who know me well can attest that I’m a sucker for New York-set films, especially when the filmmakers go to the trouble of actually filming on location!

Bynum's recurring nightmare. Little kids with eyeballs
painted on their eyelids: Instant Creepy!

The film starts promisingly in classic Hitchcock style: after a simple but elegant opening credit sequence showing the phases of the moon, the film opens in, appropriately enough, the still of the night on a quiet midtown Manhattan street. (Yes, even midtown Manhattan streets can be relatively quiet if it’s late enough.) A car thief attempts to ply his trade, discreetly trying the handles of each parked car. He finally finds one that’s unlocked, and opens the door—but his triumph is short-lived as a bloodied corpse falls out. See, folks, crime doesn’t pay! 
From then on, the viewer gets to play “Name That Hitchcock Flick” as The Master’s familiar beloved tropes parade across the screen. The dead man is George Bynum (Sommer), a bigwig at the auction house Crispin’s, and a patient of psychiatrist Dr. Sam Rice (Scheider). You can tell Sam is a decent, down-to-earth guy because he likes baseball and insists on treating a financially-strapped patient gratis. After Bynum’s murder, Sam has a visitor: Brooke Reynolds (Streep), a soignée, aristocratic blonde. Unlike Hitchcock’s usual cool, unflappable blonde ice maidens with hidden fires, poor Brooke is a jumpy bundle of nerves. Maybe the nicotine from her ever-present cigarettes is getting to her. Maybe it’s the fact that Brooke and her boss, the married Bynum, were having an affair; Brooke claims she dropped by so Sam could give Bynum’s widow a wristwatch he’d left at their love nest. Or maybe Brooke’s so nervous because NYPD Detective Vitucci (Grifasi) is on the lookout for an aristocratic blonde who, according to witnesses, was arguing with Bynum a few hours before he was murdered.

Sam goes over his notes/flashbacks on his therapy sessions with Bynum. We see that Brooke’s reputation preceded her. Seems that Bynum, another chain-smoker, was a sleaze in gentleman’s clothing. (In fact, all the smokers in SotN have terrible emotional problems. Were Benton and Newman trying to give audiences some kind of anti-smoking message?) Turns out Bynum had discussed Brooke with Sam at length during their sessions, with tales of mysterious goings-on in her apartment (“She moved into the building behind mine, which I find very significant,” Bynum intones dramatically. Sheesh, everybody’s a therapist!). Shades of Rear Window as Bynum sees Brooke’s window across the way and spots her stripping before a portly gent (sorry, fans, this dude is Asian, not British). Bynum hints that he’s learned a terrible secret about Our Miss Brooke. Need I say it involves murder?

"Sam, your collar needs
my lipstick on it. Come here, you
big sexy psychiatrist you!"

This ominous hint is accompanied by one of the film’s highlights, a dream sequence (you can never have too many Spellbound homages, I always say!) in which Bynum finds himself trapped in a big old house at night. There, a small green box slips through his fingers, and a little blonde girl with a bleeding teddy bear and unnerving stare terrorizes Bynum without saying a word. Bynum even tauntingly implies that Sam himself has become obsessed with Brooke. Score one for Bynum: against his better judgment, Sam finds himself falling in love with the gentle, fragile Brooke, and it seems the feeling is mutual. That makes Sam all the more determined to prove Brooke isn’t the killer. Quiet, methodical Sam becomes an increasingly obsessed amateur sleuth, snooping around in Brooke’s drawers (in her desk at work, smarty, though snooping in the other type of drawers might have added more sizzle to the story), and following her around Manhattan on a trail leading him to Central Park—and a mugger. Sam gives the creep his coat in hopes of leaving the park alive. He does, but the mugger isn’t so lucky. Detective Vitucci points out that the pattern of the dead mugger’s wounds is the same as Bynum’s. Sam’s gonna need more than a new coat to get out of this mess!

Brooke looks less and less like Ms. Right as Vitucci deduces that the killer is a woman. With the help of his spunky mom and fellow therapist Dr. Grace Rice (Tandy), Sam decodes Bynum’s dream. Sam isn’t the happiest of campers when the dream evidence seems to prove that Bynum must have been afraid of a jealous woman. Grace asserts that this woman “seems childlike and innocent but is capable of extreme violence.” Sam walks in on a naked Brooke during one of her meetings with the Asian man. Turns out he’s only her masseur, treating her chronic back problems. As Brooke mmms and oohs over his magic hands and Sam somehow manages to maintain a gentlemanly demeanor, she invites him to an auction at Crispin’s that night. While Brooke fields bids, Sam swipes her keys, goes through her desk, and finds pictures of Brooke and clippings from an Italian newspaper about a man’s suspicious death. Now it’s Brooke who’s the unhappy camper when she walks in on Sam and the clippings. Still, when Vitucci arrives with a bartender who can I.D. Brooke as the lady who’d quarreled with Bynum, Sam goes north by northwest, bidding on a Jim Dine painting in order to pass Brooke a warning note on his receipt.

Brooke flees so fast, even Sam doesn’t know where she went, until Brooke’s coworker Gail Phillips (Botsford), who’d given him a tour of Crispin’s earlier in the film, reveals that Brooke probably went to her Glen Cove weekend home. Sam arrives to find an upset Brooke sitting in the dark, smoking. She still feels betrayed after the way Sam went through her desk. The increasingly fed-up Sam gives her the ol’ “Come to Jesus” talk in my favorite bit of SotN dialogue:

“Now listen to me! On account of you, I’m an accessory to something—I don’t know what. I’m withholding evidence. I’m obstructing justice. I’m gonna get my license revoked if I’m not thrown into jail first. And on top of that, I’ve just spent fifteen thousand dollars for a painting I don’t even like!”

Relieved, Brooke falls into Sam’s arms. As they embrace, she finally spills her guts—no, not literally! For a movie almost titled Stab, SotN doesn’t have much bloodshed (or suspense, I’m afraid, but more on that in a moment). Brooke’s subsequent lengthy monologue could have come off like a speech in an student actor’s handbook, but Streep performs it quite poignantly and made me feel for her.

Brooke explains that the man in the Italian newspaper was her father. Papa married alcoholic Mama for her wealth and moved to Florence with young Brooke after Mama’s demise. In a note among her personal effects, Mom revealed that Pops was a charming but dangerous schemer who’d do anything for the money Brooke inherited. Daddy Dearest brought Brooke to a bell tower, never a safe place for any Hitchcock character. When he found out about the incriminating note and tried to push her to her death, she leapt aside in time for Bad Dad to take the fall. Despite surviving the murder attempt, Brooke has been racked with guilt (and cigarette coughs?) ever since Bynum found out and held the guilty secret over her head, hence her nervous loner nature.

SotN gets a much-needed jump-start when Brooke finally turns on the lights, and Sam realizes that this is the house in Bynum’s dream, which he proceeds to recount to his beloved. Brooke has a different interpretation of the green box in the dream. Her Crispin’s coworker Gail has a bank phobia (nowadays, who could blame her?), and she carries her entire cashed paycheck around with her, leading Bynum to nickname her “Greenbacks”! Sam tries to call Vitucci with this info, but the knife in the detective’s back makes it awfully hard to reach his beeper. Yes, Gail was the killer after all, and now that she’s bumped off poor Vitucci, she’s on her way to Glen Cove to kill Brooke. Looks like it doesn’t pay to make friends with your coworkers, either!

The climax takes us viewers into slasher territory as Brooke runs from a knife-wielding Gail while Sam lies unconscious from a stab wound. “Jump!” Gail growls as she pins Brooke against her balcony overlooking the surf. Luckily, Sam regains consciousness before Gail gets too into her Mrs. Danvers routine, startling the murderess into conveniently falling over the side. Brooke tries to save Gail by grabbing her sleeve a la Saboteur, but perhaps Gail’s Crispin’s salary wasn’t enough to buy really well-made clothes. Sleeve rips, Gail plummets to her death, and the movie ends on a lingering shot of a weeping Brooke and an exhausted Sam embracing as the theme song timidly starts up again.

"How many times do I have to tell you:
there's nobody named 'George Kaplan' here!"

To paraphrase the old NYNEX Yellow Pages commercial, SotN could have been beautiful in the right hands; unfortunately, in this case, Benton didn’t seem to have the right hands.  I could have forgiven the killer’s identity coming out of left field if only the film had more life of its own. All too often, I got the feeling that Benton figured all he had to do was trot out the Hitchcock homages, and the nostalgic audience would be so enthralled that they’d add the spark and emotion themselves. If only it were that easy!

It seemed to me as if Benton and Newman, stuck for an ending, happened to peer over somewhere in the middle of the screenplay and, snapping their fingers, said “Hey, Gail doesn’t have much to do. Let’s make her the killer!” Since then, however, I’ve been told by usually reliable sources that on an awards show, Streep had jokingly spilled the beans before the film’s release, revealing that Brooke was indeed the killer. Oops! Back to the drawing board, er, editing room!

Next Time: Part 2, in which I suggest what I'd do if I had the money and clout to remake Still of the Night!