One Paragraph Movie Review: Frenzy

One hundred and sixty-third film: Hitchcock’s ‘Frenzy’. Oh LORD what a great movie. This is a murder mystery that is no mystery at all because we’re shown the killer’s identity quite early, but every single scene bubbles with symbolism or intent or subtle malice or humour or despair or, in a fairly gratuitous number of examples, nipples. I didn’t want to stop watching its jaunty crawl through 70s London, save for one scene when a bar attendant gossiping about the murders mentions that the victims are raped first, to which her customer replies “Well I suppose it’s nice to know that every cloud has a silver lining”. MISTER Hitchcock. That is NOT a good thing to say. Everything else is sublime though, including the staggering skill required to juxtapose properly horrible attack scenes with the humour of a detective’s wife experimenting with European cookery. Happily the wrongly-accused leading man is brooding and handsome, although when he pleads with his girlfriend to trust him by saying “Do I look like a sex murderer to you?” I was forced to shout IT’S THE SEVENTIES, EVERYBODY DOES at the screen. Finally, when the magnificent ride is over, the final line of “Mr Rusk, you’re not wearing your tie” is perfection icing on a glorious, if at times sexist, cake. Four and four fifths squashed boxes of grapes out of five.