Frenzy, as even its title suggests, is something like a late Psycho. Not only does it follow a sexual abuser killing young women and his attempts at keeping up the facade of normalcy, but the parallels extend to the formal level as well. For one, the plot is so constructed that (for the viewer) doubts as to who the killer is hardly arise, shifting the tension on the actual murder sequences and, partly, on the final resolve brought about by the second, weaker, male character. In both films, the accent is furthermore on graphic violence, only slightly diffused by artful camera direction, enabling Hitchcock to shock audiences and induce a lurid sense of "it could happen to you", so typical of pulp fiction but equally of Hitchcock. This becomes most evident in the much talked-about receding shot where the apartment in which a crime is committed becomes just another anonymous spot in the big city maze, the "place near you", and is furthermore emphasised in the dexterous connecting scenes where, quite literally, pub talk is left to speculate on the killer's motives, with either the real or the presumed perpetrator standing by. In hindsight, Hitchcock's decision to use a cast of nobodies proves a wise one, as it greatly contributes to paint a near realist picture of life in a popular London district, notwithstanding delusive claims that the city was, by that time, all colours and swing. Admittedly, this is Hitchcock's London, but then Antonioni's, for instance, the film epigone of 60s London, is by no means exclusive of other, grayer realities, here used to the right effect. And while Frenzy has evident flaws, which prevent it from keeping you riveted to your seat, it has enough classic moments to draw from. In this line of thought, the famous strangulation episode must rank high in Polanski's list of all-time favourite rape/murder scenes, while the black humour of the potato/corpse tête-à-tête, from today's viewpoint, has a distinct whiff of Tarantino comedy. More conventional, and by all accounts more facetious than Psycho, Frenzy is an all-too-savvy compendium of all the ropes used in Hitchcock's previous films, a synthetic chart of the language he created and left up for grabs for generations of filmmakers to come.
Review of Frenzy
