Greeted with derision by most critics when it first appeared, 'Frenzy' has recently done the rounds of UK TV. I remember seeing it on its original release, and thinking then that if Hitchcock wanted to parade some kind of screen confession about his ingrained misogynism, he couldn't have found a nastier little vehicle to do so.But Time alters perspective, and so what was nauseatingly bad in 1972 might, all these years later, be worthy of upward re-evaluation.Might. . . but not. 'Frenzy' is dross. The dross of an ageing director who desperately wanted to exploit the artistic freedom of 70s movie making without seeming to realise that freedom imposes its own obligations -- notably, the need to bring integrity to one's work.There's none here. And not much evidence of the earlier directorial brilliance, either -- the switch from spine-tingling implicit to odious explicit is neither shocking nor, for a supreme stylist, stylish: it's just banal (the prolonged murder scene is precisely that: prolonged, without pace, without reason, without purpose other than the cheapest of directorial desires to appear as contemporary an artiste as, say, that other acclaimed practitioner of cheap sleaze, Michael Winner).And it goes from bad to worse, with dialog that defies any human provenance (not least in the ludicrous diversion into the Home Life of Our Dear Wooden Inspector, and his wife's cooking).Perhaps the scene that best sums up 'Frenzy' (and endures as the most explicit indictment of Hitchcock's persona) is the clunking exchange between two lawyers in a bar, where they discuss the serial killings and then agree that at least the women had a good time first by being raped.I remember my revulsion at that scene back in '72, and it's still undimmed, because this wasn't Hitchcock being clever, or sardonic, or trying to make some universal point (big themes, big truths, were not Hitchcock's forte, nor personal preference.) It was just Hitchcock, allowing a reflection of his own distorted mirror on life to shine through the texture of the movie.Calling 'Frenzy' Hitchcock's last great masterpiece is to betray little if any understanding of just what Hitchcock actually achieved in the way of cinematic trickery, cinematic thrills, and dazzling cinematic mastery.'Frenzy' is therefore now what it always was: a cheap, nasty, and ham-fisted movie that did no service to any of those involved, or to the memory of a film-maker who really was, in his Hollywood days, one of the greatest there has ever been.
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