🎬 #177 Hitchcock X Scorsese
Until recently, the last time I saw Cape Fear was when I was essentially a kid and then you just think of it as a scary man trying to scare a family and get the Dad. But when you see it again so many years later - the man is even more scary, and you see all the theatricality and visual drama - the archness of it all. And you see just how jacked De Niro got for the role of Max Cady and how Scorsese is channeling Hitchcock for the remake of the 1962 original.
Happy viewing,
Bry
FILM: CAPE FEAR
1991 Dir Martin Scorsese
2 hours 8 mins
Not only do we have Saul and Elaine Bass designing the opening titles, we’ve got Scorsese and Hitchcock composer Bernard Hermann’s original score from the 1962 version updated by Elmer Bernstein. Just a few key elements that make this feel like the spirit of Hitchcock is never far from the frame. Add to which, the suspense, the intensity - the darkness of ex-prisoner ‘Cady’ set free to seek revenge on the lawyer who represented him and who he blames for the last 14 years of his life behind bars. All elements that could be from Hitchcock thriller.
Even the theatricality I mentioned - which Scorsese uses to up the ante reminded me of how Hitchcock approaches things. We have a shot of Cady lazing on the Bowden’s high perimeter wall - smoking a cigar while the frame behind him fills with the sparkle of fireworks. Everything is too crisp to be captured for real - and this adds to the heightened reality of it all, as Cady will later say ‘I made myself more than a man’ and Scorsese is making reality much more than reality.
He relies of split diopters to keep Bowden [played by Nick Nolte] and his wife [played by Jessica Lange] in sharp focus at the same time in the same frame, he stages the key scene in the film in a Hansel and Gretal style house - a set in the school’s drama department where Cady has lured Bowden’s daughter [played by Juliette Lewis]. You might think a cosy cottage ala the previously mentioned fairy tale - or one that brings to mind Little Red Riding Hood, might be a bit on the nose. But it fits perfectly within the theatricality - the ‘more than’ feeling that the rest of the film exudes. It’s so on it works and the scene keeps you on the edge of your seat, it’s a truly wild seduction. Playing into the touchstone ideas of the innocent wanting the bad man - the idea of being drawn to the very thing that may destroy you. This Scorsese X Hitchcock is a collab that must be seen again.
* Available for a small rental fee on Apple and Amazon in the US and UK. Available to stream on Netflix in the UK.
Fact: Robert Mitchum and Gregory Peck who starred in the original have small roles in the remake. Bonus - and it’s the last theatrical film Gregory Peck ever appeared in.