FRENZY (1972) *** Not to be original or anything, most of my favorite Hitchcock films are the ones where he shows off a lot, lingering on a telephone or putting a lightbulb in a glass of milk. Where everyone looks astonished, all the time. Of course dilettante's like myself tend to think that he sustains suspense in those pictures with uncomfortably idiosyncratic shots. Maybe, but so how does he do it here? I'm not sure. I will say that it's not quite at the same levels as some of his greatest stuff, but he apparently does it largely with pacing, I think, with revealing so much (the serial murderer/rapist is unmasked very early) that you wonder what he's going to do next. Because he's Hitchcock, and so trading on his proven ability to surprise you a lot. Yes, partly, but the film works…the suspense rises independently of that. An innocent man in the legal system isn't new turf for the great director ( The Wrong Man may be my all-time favorite Hitch), but no one works it better, or as in this case more thoroughly. He just keeps ploughing and turning things up, admittedly through a series of coincidences (never happens in real life, right?). But when he can't resist showing off….the backwards shot, the face of a bar patron as the protagonist comes out of the phone booth…it's obvious that he could have done Hitchcock shots forever, he was on to working on something else. The use of silence for one thing, he uses it for his heavy amplification.
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