alr

Frenzy

Screening on Film
Directed by Alfred Hitchcock.
With Jon Finch, Barry Foster, Barbara Leigh-Hunt.
US, 1972, 35mm, color, 116 min.

The London of Frenzy is seamy, barren and inescapably misogynistic – hardly the nostalgic treatment one might expect of Hitchcock’s first feature set in England since Stage Fright. The film’s plot hearkens all the way back to The Lodger – a man stands wrongly accused for a brutal series of sex crimes – only here the innocent man is coldly unlikeable and the potential for violence seemingly limitless. Hitchcock reveals the true identity of the necktie killer early in the film, the better to situate his crimes in a full range of abject appetites. Controversial for its prolonged murder-rape sequence, Frenzy’s disturbing quality finally rests with its relentlessly macabre humor. The colorful cast of supporting roles includes a police inspector and his wife spinning out various murder plots over dinner – a cinch for Hitchcock and his lifelong co-scenarist Alma.

Part of film series

Read more

The Complete Alfred Hitchcock

Current and upcoming film series

Read more

Psychedelic Cinema

Read more

Fragments of a Faith Forgotten: The Art of Harry Smith

Read more
sepia photo of Artie Freedman in silhouette with a video camera at show

Boston Punk Rewound / Unbound. The Arthur Freedman Collection

Read more

The Yugoslav Junction: Film and Internationalism in the SFRY, 1957 – 1988

Read more

From the Jenni Olson Queer Film Collection

Read more
a mausoleum that looks like a miniature Spanish cathedral, next to a variety of others, against an evening sky

The Night Watchman by Natalia Almada

Read more
a double-exposed image that includes a 16th century Russian man being fed grapes by another amid decadent decor

Wings of a Serf

Read more
a close-up of a Bissau-Guinean woman wearing a scarf on her head and looking directly at the camera with a slight smile

Le Dépays + Sans soleil

Read more
Peter Sellers wearing a large hat with "ME" embroidered on it, and gripping a Pilgrim-like collar

Carol for Another Christmas