| Patrick Clifford |
Family Plot plays in glorious 35mm at the Trylon Cinema from Friday, May 1st, through Sunday, May 3rd. For tickets, showtimes, and other series information, visit trylon.org.
In the 1976 film Family Plot, the word plot refers to a piece of land where a family is seemingly buried. The family who owns the plot is the Shoebridge family. Both details say very little about the “storyline” definition of plot. But Family Plot is a film by Alfred Hitchcock. The Master of Suspense. Plots are for mischief and misdirection.
Hitchcock. What a great name. 2 syllables. 2 percussive words, jammed together like a poem. 2 other names (Rainbird and Shoebridge) central to Family Plot share this poetic rhythm. All 3 names—Hitchcock, Rainbird, Shoebridge—are fun to say. Fun to hear. They even sound like they may have a fun story behind them.
Family Plot’s story revolves around four main characters: A pair of couples after the same thing—an easier life through easier money. Each couple follow separate plot lines that just so happen to be on a collision course. Hitchcock makes it clear from the outset that his players are literally actors. They practice deception in one way or another, and they seem to get off on dishing it out in varying degrees. Maybe they even represent all the ways the director enjoys pulling the strings and keeping his audience in the dark as well.
At this point in his career, Hitchcock knew how easily he could play us, especially where death is involved. He’d proven he could fool us and terrify us, make us believe, and make us wonder. He could get us to care about the puppets so much that we don’t even see the strings. And in Family Plot, he reveals that murder can and should be fun, for the audience and for Hitchcock.
This was my first time viewing Family Plot, and if it weren’t for the Trylon’s programming, I honestly wouldn’t have known it existed. Which is a shame. Cause it’s as much fun to discover this Hitchcock movie as it is to get toyed with while watching it. I can’t possibly tell you what happens. Like Hitchcock, I realize that hiding information is sometimes more beneficial than sharing it. But I can give you a few clues that Hitchcock really enjoys messing with our heads.
From the get-go, Hitch and screenwriter Ernest Lehman introduce murder and death to the story through conversational wordplay. Blanche the psychic, played brilliantly by Barbara Harris, confesses that voicing her psychic medium character ‘Henry’ is “murder on her throat.” Later in the story, when it appears she is about to be murdered for knowing too much, she pleads to her assailant that she “won’t breathe a word to anyone.”
Hitchcock also uses music to allude to death, insisting to musical score director John Williams that the music should suddenly stop when the film cuts to an open window a character has just escaped through. He wanted the audience to feel that the character had possibly left through the window in more ways than one.
Hitchcock’s camera and editing always put us on the edge of our seats. In Family Plot, he seems okay with possibly making us laugh when we get there. In one over-the-top scene, Bruce Dern and Barbara Harris find themselves driving down a swerving California freeway and discovering their brake line has been cut. The high-speed footage and cuts continue to ramp up from dangerous to ludicrous to downright hilarious.
Even Hitchcock’s famous cameo (a signature in all his films) seems to tread lightly and playfully on death. In the scene, Hitchcock appears in unmistakable silhouette through the windowed door of the Registrar of Births & Deaths. He seems to be arguing with an administrator. Perhaps he’s trying to convince the administrator that he’s not actually dead yet.
Family Plot was Alfred Hitchcock’s 53rd film. And his last. He knew what he was doing, and what he liked about it: controlling uncertainty. Uncertainty for the characters in the story and the ones watching it. Because no matter how a story turns out, it turns out we all love getting our heads buried in it.
Edited by Olga Tchepikova-Treon