Vale Ken Mogg - Ken's close friend Inge Pruk's tribute delivered at the funeral.

Editor's Note: There have been two earlier tributes to Ken Mogg published recently. You can find the tributes by Peter Tammer  and by Freda Freiberg & Michael Campi if you click on the names. Thanks to Gordon Dunlop who passed me a copy of this tribute by Inge. Sorry about the repeat of the photo which shows Peter, Inge and Ken but its all I've come across. If you type Ken's name into the blog search engine (top left where the letter "b" is showing) you should find links to a host of original pieces that he wrote about Hitchcock's films and much more.

Ken’s Eulogy

 

First of all I would like to issue a number of apologies. Barbara Creed, Peter Tammer, Miles Izzo and Craig Arthur have all said they are sorry they could not be here today.

 

My name is Inge Pruks.

I have known Ken since Monash University days, which is 60 years ago.

I suppose I should have something sensible to say about Ken after all these years, but as with all of us, Ken was a complex human being and difficult to sum up in just a few words. Each of us will have their own idea of Ken.

Ken lived like a hermit. But that did not mean he was anti-social, far from it. He had many overseas correspondents with whom he would exchange regular emails, and they were not always related to Hitchcock. Like the old Monash friend in England who would talk about his poetry collections and ask for Ken for his advice. Or the girl in the US, who wrote fiction and would ask Ken to buy her self-published booklets to see her through some hard times.

 There were the many Hitchcock scholars and aficionados who corresponded regularly. He had friends in the United States, Hungary, Syria, England, New Zealand, and France. Besides emails, they would also exchange copies of rare DVD’s which they could not find in their own country. Ken would worry when there was a long silence, and would rejoice when they emailed him, and the conversation would start again. He would get up at odd times of the night to check his emails, according to the world clock times of when people got up around the globe. That was Ken’s virtual world.

 

But his real world friends here in Melbourne were important to him as well. His spirits would lift when he could look forward to going out and sharing a meal with a dear friend. Or even just a coffee. Or an unexpected phone call from someone who hadn’t been in touch for a while. Or plan a trip to Kyneton to see a good friend. He would enjoy his regular Grow meetings every week and would come back re-energised. For a hermit, he was very sociable indeed.

 

Ken was generous, with his money, with his resources and his time. He was happy to make copies of films for his friends, or photocopy articles and mail them out. Friends would often ask him to read over manuscripts of all kinds, and Ken would give his full attention to the editing task. He would spend time verifying the smallest details. Overseas students might contact him too, and Ken would spend a lot of time answering their questions. With money, he thought nothing of helping a friend overseas, paying for a cat’s dental work. Only yesterday I received an email from this friend who still has his cat Bootsie: It is her birthday on Tuesday.  She will be 17.  She is only still here because of Ken's kindness - paying for the removal of her rotten teeth which were slowly poisoning her.   Ken would regularly contribute to worthy causes, such as the Lort Smith Animal Hospital, the RSPCA, the Leprosy Mission, and Box Hill Hospital.

 

Ken was very intelligent, a true wordsmith, and ready to cope with the new technology. He was one of the first to set up a regular online blog more than 15 years ago. He had originally created a paper publication called The MacGuffin, which he typed up himself. You could buy a subscription and he would mail it out to you. But he could see that he’d reach a far wider audience if he went online, so he set up his blog, which he wrote up every Sunday night. Furthermore, he told me he had originally set up the blog under the auspices of Mensa, because that way he could get the blog for free. So Ken must have sat through the difficult Mensa IQ test to be able to access their services. But he never bragged about that, he was always more interested in ideas.

 

His passion for Hitchcock is of course legendary. But he did tell me once that it had been a toss-up between Renoir and Hitch. I suppose he could see that the language barrier might hamper him eventually as Ken did not speak French, so Hitchcock won the day.

 

Ken gave his whole life to Hitchcock. He ferreted out what were Hitch’s favourite foods, which paintings were hanging on his walls, his favourite reading matter, -- (it appears he had a complete set of Dickens, and as Ken did his Hons English thesis on Dickens I guess he felt an affinity),  what music the Master liked, and what were his favourite movies. In 1977 it was ‘Smokey and the Bandit’, so of course Ken recorded it and watched it, trying to get into the skin of Hitchcock, to see what made him tick.

 

Whatever Ken touched, it had to have a Hitchcock connection. This extended to movies, photos, paintings, short stories, and obscure actors and actresses who may or may not have been screen tested for a part.  Sometimes a film NOT made by Hitchcock would be more interesting than those he had made, as was the case for Mary Rose, a play by JM Barrie of Peter Pan fame. Thus it was that Ken would then embark on a study of JM Barrie.

Ken was very kind to animals and birds, feeding magpies, rescuing crows and a stray cat would always be welcome at Ken’s place. At one stage he had 3 cats, Kitty, Smiler and his favourite, Stalker. Like the pied piper, Ken would go for midnight walks around the block, with his 3 cats following him. He was able to shift the 3 cats quite easily when he moved from East Melbourne to Box Hill North, but Ken himself missed the inner city, where he could walk anywhere or easily catch a tram. Box Hill North seemed a bit more remote and isolated. Ken’s life changed quite a bit after that move.

Ken was a strict vegetarian, although he did eat fish. He would be rather annoyed with his online order if they sent him tuna instead of salmon, because he was ideologically against the way tuna is farmed. I remember certain telephone calls when Ken would be literally weeping because he’d heard that an elephant or a bear was being tortured and in chains. He never wept for human beings, no matter how badly they were being treated. His Buddhism had taught him to not feel too emotionally attached to human beings. And I guess that was a lesson that helped him get through life.

 

Ken would be immovable whenever he took a position on anything, whether it be on film or on life. His routine was unusual, to say the least, eating his evening meal at midnight, and napping during the day. And his stance on linking Schopenhauer to Hitchcock would never waver. His thick Schopenhauer volumes are neatly annotated with exclamation marks and thin vertical pencil lines. Others would groan when he tried to show how a Hitchcock movie exhibited elements of Schopenhauer. But Ken would be undeterred. He’d just open the next thick volume of Will and Representation and continue his search for the ideal quote.

 

Ken did become more isolated during the Covid years. For various practical rather than ideological reasons, Ken did not get vaccinated. So he spent almost 3 years completely isolated at home, on his own. He felt that his lungs were so compromised that he could not afford to get Covid, so he avoided going out.  He ordered everything online, but this also meant that he missed urgent medical appointments and so life slowly became more difficult for him.

 

Ken’s knowledge of the cinema was encyclopaedic. The same goes for his knowledge of cricket, which I haven’t even touched on. Even outside of the Hitchcock arena Ken was a mine of information. He was an innovator in the field of blogs, and always stood firm for what he believed in.

 

He was a good friend. And I will miss him very much.

It was a privilege to have known him.

Thank you. 

Vale Ken Mogg - A Film Scholar of Renown - Freda Freiberg and Michael Campi pay tribute

 

Ken (r) with friends Peter Tammer and Inge Pruks

Ken Mogg died recently. When his death became known Melbourne film-maker Peter Tammer posted these thoughts. Following Ken's funeral Melbourne cinephiles and friends of Ken Freda Freiberg and Michael Campi have also compiled some thoughts to remember the life of a quite unique and dedicated Australian scholar.

FREDA FREIBERG

I first met Ken at Coburg Teachers' College, where we both taught film in the English Department in the early 1970s, under John C. Murray. John was one of the pioneers of film studies in Victoria and we were all indebted to him for our initial training in teaching film. We were nearly all graduates of Monash or Melbourne University, where film was considered  a “Mickey Mouse” subject, not worthy of teaching at university at that time. It was taught at RMIT - not yet a university then – and  at Coburg as a result of action by enthusiasts of film who put it on the syllabus within the English or Art departments.  I had a BA with majors  in English and Philosophy from Melbourne University in the 1950s (then the only Uni in Melbourne) and a DipEd from Melbourne University in the 1960s followed by five years teaching English (language and literature) in government high schools;

Ken had an Honours degree from the English department at Monash where he was in the first intake of students. His thesis was on Dickens. So we shared a familiarity with, and love of English Literature and philosophy as well as film. Ken had joined the film club at Monash; I was an early member of the Melbourne Film Festival, attending annually from 1956  to the present day, and joined the club in Melbourne set up by the film enthusiasts who were involved with the Festival. Ken became a strong follower of the German philosophers Nietszche and Schopenhauer later in life, and found their ideas more useful to the study of Hitchcock than Freud and Marx and the trendy French theorists that were favoured by the academics who subsequently failed to support him. I too abandoned my academic studies because of lack of support so could sympathize with Ken and admired him for following his own path..

When I started teaching film at Coburg, I also enrolled in a course of Japanese studies at Melbourne University and decided to specialize on Japanese cinema. This interest was also shared by Ken, who was particularly interested in Ozu, one of the great Japanese filmmakers.  When I first befriended him, Ken had wide interests in film directors – including Orson Welles, Stanley Kubrick and Robert Bresson – but in later years he became exclusively occupied with Hitchcock, which could become tedious. However, despite his obsession with Hitch and his love of the entire Hitch oeuvre, he put up with volatile criticism from me – because, as a feminist, I found some of his films offensive to women, especially The Birds, and I didn’t like his treatment of some female actors. Surprisingly, my criticism did not spoil our friendship. We continued to meet regularly at my house or his, for walks, talks, meals and films, until the pandemic stopped everything. 

In his final year, Ken stopped writing on Hitchcock and spent his time doing crossword puzzles. He was already in poor health. In my old age, I too have stopped writing and spend my life doing crossword puzzles (and playing Scrabble). We communicated frequently by phone, until the end. I had organized to visit him last Tuesday with my son, but sadly it was not to be, it was too late.

I’d like to end with an anecdote:

My granddaughter Tash is studying “Rear Window” for VCE English. Her teacher used Ken’s  book, ‘The Alfred Hitchcock Story” as a reference for class notes last week. What a shame that I couldn’t tell Ken!          

MICHAEL CAMPI

Ken Mogg will be remembered as one of Australia's most intrepid researchers and writers on the topics which most dominated his life and thoughts: the films of Alfred Hitchcock and the works of philosophers Schopenhauer and Nietzsche. 

 

Ken's interest in the cinema began no later than the early 1960s when he started studying an arts degree at Monash University. It was in 1963 that I and some other film lovers undertaking tertiary studies would meet to share our enthusiasms and ideas as well as watching films together at Monash or Melbourne University campuses at various film society screenings.  A few of this small group wrote articles or programme notes for university film societies to which they belonged. Sometimes we saw films together in the city or suburban theatres.  As Ken didn't drive, there were times when we enjoyed a film or two at one of Melbourne's many drive-in cinemas of the time: two Hitchcock films come to mind SHADOW OF A DOUBT for example and NORTH BY NORTHWEST.  

 

At that time Ken's interest in the cinema was a broad one. He liked most of the available work from the French New Wave directors. We watched Agnes Varda's CLEO FROM 5 TO 7 in a Monash lecture theatre one day together with another film friend keen to see this praised film even without english subtitles. Ken was also keen to explore the careers of more established French masters like Georges Franju and Jean Renoir or LA RONDE, the one film available by Max Ophuls at that time. 

 

Ken was very much involved in the publication of the programme notes for the Monash Film Group.  It was approaching the time that he undertook his Honours degree on the work of Charles Dickens, a central figure of 19th century English literature. This period fascinated Ken, perhaps because Alfred Hitchcock was born in the final days of the Victorian era. Already, the work of Hitchcock held a very deep fascination for him and remained his paramount research for the rest of his life. Other filmmakers he held in high regard were Robert Bresson, Orson Welles and Stanley Kubrick while he very much liked the work of the Japanese masters Ozu and Mizoguchi. 

 

Both Bresson and Hitchcock were from Roman Catholic families. Ken considered the influences of their religious beliefs on their films, sometimes making comparisons between them. 

 

Ken would be most interested in overlapping areas of investigation.  For example one of the most significant composers for Hitchcock's later films was Bernard Herrmann who had also written for Orson Welles' first groundbreaking films some years earlier.  Herrmann was also the composer for Robert Stevenson's 1943 film of Charlotte Brontë's JANE EYRE  (which featured Orson Welles in the cast) and had created an opera based on Emily Brontë's WUTHERING HEIGHTS. Both of the original 19th Century English literary works interested Ken.  When the first LP recording of Herrmann's opera based on WUTHERING HEIGHTS appeared in 1971, Ken was in the small group who listened to it in my home. 

 

In the mid-1960s, some discussion sessions were held at either Melbourne or Monash universities, sometimes on Hitchcock or other cinema topics.  I believe Ken was responsible for organising some of the Monash events. 

 

In those student days and for a few years after, I remember long conversations, principally about the cinema, when I visited him at the Mogg family home in Caulfield on some Sunday afternoons before Ken moved to shared accommodation with mutual friends of the time such as Alan Finney, who had lived initially close to the Mogg family in Caulfield before Alan moved to an apartment in Queensberry St., Carlton. Later, around the early 1970s, Ken shared a large house with another film enthusiast and teacher Doug Ling and other Melbourne University friends in Flemington Rd. where apparently Ken showed his enormous enthusiasm for Kubrick's relatively new 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY by playing the film soundtrack frequently. Around the late 1960s, maybe at a time that Ken was living away from telephone communication, he could be reached on Saturday mornings at his part-time job at wine merchants close to the city. It's hard to imagine those days when some households didn't even have a landline. 

 

As one of our most rigorous researchers, Ken would follow every trail leading to and from his specific subject at the time. For example he would read all the original works that interested his favourite filmmaker, whether Hitchcock had produced a film from the books or not.  As with adaptations of literary works, Hitchcock's final film versions might vary considerably from the original source. Considering the reasons for these changes would delight Ken's agile and enquiring mind.  

 

For many years Hitchcock had wanted to make a film based on J. M. Barrie's play MARY ROSE, a work that fascinated if not obsessed him through his filmmaking life but which Hitchcock was unable to transfer to the screen.  Ken often spoke of MARY ROSE and why Hitchcock might have been so fascinated by it. There was a huge regret that the film had never eventuated. It seemed a palpable absence in both Hitch's and Ken's lives. 

 

By the early 1970s, my work in the health profession, family commitments and being involved in several film screening organisations simultaneously caused some changes in social networking so that I saw Ken much less for many years. At this point Freda Freiberg's friendship with Ken began. 

 

During the following years of intellectual considerations, Ken committed his ideas to the written page, producing the magazine The MacGuffin, from 1990. As a printed periodical, it appeared for almost thirty issues after which these writings of Ken's could be read on his website HitchInfo.net to which Ken added regularly his very considered writings until the start of 2022.  

 

In 1999, with Freda's encouragement, Ken succeeded in having "The Alfred Hitchcock Story," a handsome volume, published in the UK by Titan and revised in 2008. The book gained much praise for its coverage of all of Hitchcock's films.  He was apparently disappointed with the U.S. edition. 

 

Despite the depth of Ken's thoughts and publications, he was not appreciated by some of the academic world and yet was hailed by others. He mentioned communicating with a vast number of other Hitchcock enthusiasts all over the world. After Hitchcock's death in 1980, Ken's fascination not only remain undiminished but perhaps was intensified. He remained steadfast in following any leads to further define Hitchcock's mastery and enquiries. In the four decades since then, so many books on Hitchcock have been published or writings have appeared on line. At one point Ken mentioned to me rather wearily that he felt a huge burden each time new writings appeared as he felt it was expected of him to read everything that was made public on his favourite filmmaker. He felt under pressure as many people looked to him for opinions on these new publications. 

 

Through the decade or so leading up to the start of 2020, Ken and I would share our thoughts on many topics, cinema, some common musical interests and books that he had been reading. We arranged regular meals at restaurants in Melbourne's eastern suburbs. He was always on time, very prepared with notes written on cards, sometimes with a DVD or an article he had prepared for me. Often these generous gifts were unannounced and not always about cinema.  He was always most interested in my many overseas journeys during this period and would sometimes give me a travel programme he'd recorded from television relating to a place I had been to or one that was on the short list for the future. He was genuinely interested in what I, my close friends and my family were doing. Ken really enjoyed salmon and vegetables on those restaurant occasions, topped off with a glass of wine and maybe a shared dessert. As he was always quite thin, he was unconcerned about the sugar factor. We met usually around 6 or 6.30 so that he might drop into a local supermarket before he returned home, some distance from transport. 

 

The last time we saw a film together was just over ten years ago.  He'd been invited to a preview of HITCHCOCK with Anthony Hopkins playing the Master.  On that morning at 9am, Ken, myself and two young film writers were the audience for one of the first screenings of the film. I was very touched that Ken had asked me if I would accompany him to the preview. 

 

In the two or three years before Ken stopped going out at the start of the pandemic, our regular meal conversations could be more concerned with world affairs and his political interests which seemed to sharpen even more from 2016.

 

As has been reported elsewhere, from the start of 2020, Ken remained at home not allowing visitors because he felt his health was compromised after some previous hospitalisations. 

 

A week ago, I saw the new documentary on the life of Patricia Highsmith whose novel STRANGERS ON A TRAIN became one of Hitchcock's most popular films. Early in the film there are clips from the Hitchcock's film and rather automatically I made notes of them to let Ken know what was included before suddenly realising it was already several days too late to share them.  I do hope that somehow in recent months, he had found his own way to see this film. 

 

 

Vale Ken Mogg - Peter Tammer's tribute to one of Australia's finest film scholars

 Vale Ken!

(Reprinted from Peter's Blog The Friends of the Armchair Traveller)

A farewell to muffin@labyrinth

Last week I received this sad note from Inge, a close friend of Ken Mogg:

Dear Peter,

Just a sad note that our friend Ken Mogg passed away yesterday, 2nd Feb
2023.

He had been in and out of hospital with breathing problems, was  not
eating properly,
and had gone into a care home just recently, maybe a week or so ago.
His sister rang me and said he had passed away peacefully yesterday.

I hope you are well.

Love -- Inge.

Ken and Inge made the effort to attend a screening when some of

my films were shown at the AFW workshop some years ago.

(Photo taken by Bill Mousoulis) 

So many years have passed since I first met Ken at film screenings at the Bughouse in Carlton, the MUFS screenings and Melbourne Film Festival screenings in the late sixties. 


We got to know each other better when we shared an office for about a year at Melbourne State College, 1974.


We shared a great enthusiasm for the works of many directors but foremost was our love and admiration for Hitchcock. In those early days I sensed Ken was more avid than I, but we were only getting to know each other. He assisted me greatly when I arranged screenings of a number of Hitch’s movies at the Bughouse for our students, a sort of mini film festival, I think we showed seven films over a few weekends, courtesy of Gordon who owned that theatre and was the projectionist.


Then I left Melbourne State College. We went down our separate pathways! There was a long hiatus in our friendship which only started up again about 2009. 


Between 2009 and today we exchanged thousands of emails and sent each other copies of films and books we loved. The ratio was more from Ken to me rather from me to him… he was extremely generous to me. Sometimes I would mention a title of a book or film I loved, and what do you know… a copy would arrive in the mail a few days later! I mentioned to Ken a film I had not seen for many years, “Rogue Male” with Peter O’Toole in the leading role, from the novel by Geoffrey Household. Coming all the way from London and totally unexpected a brand new copy of that novel arrived in my letterbox about ten days later.


Today, I want to concentrate on just a few instances from our many exchanges. I have chosen two films which we both considered masterpieces by Hitchcock, but which are not his best known works.

I had first encountered “The Wrong Man” with Henry Fonda and Vera Miles at a MUFS festival many years before and decided to include it in the festival I was arranging for the students at Melbourne State College. I mentioned to Ken that Godard had written a superb monograph about this film and as he usually did, Ken discovered that old review from Cahiers du Cinema and gave it to me.

Many years later we exchanged thoughts about this film via email. Here’s a response I received from Ken in 2012:


Dear Peter -

I looked at the three bits of THE WRONG MAN you advocated. All of them very impressive.


1. The finger-printing (at about the 38½' mark in my DVD copy). This segment seems to derive from the processing-of-the-criminal early in BLACKMAIL - a remarkable sequence that Bill Krohn feels may have influenced Lang's M. Both those early films imply an impersonal dimension in their respective blown-up images of fingerprints. TWM picks up on the 'impersonality' but handles it in a small-scale way that is moving. The key is Manny's impassive face, even as he co-operates in his own immolation.


2. The handcuffing and the trip to gaol (at about the 51' mark in my DVD copy). Again Manny's stunned face is the crux. Re the prison van, you may think of the lines from 'The Waste Land': 'Sighs, short and infrequent, were exhaled,/ And each man fixed his eyes before his feet.' Remarkably, that passage comes immediately after, 'Under the brown fog of a winter dawn,/ A crowd flowed over London Bridge, so many,/ I had not thought death had undone so many' - which, mutatis mutandis, seems the inspiration for two passages in NxNW (the crowd, shot in washed-out colour, flowing down the subway at the start of the film; and the 'visual quote' of the Everett Shinn mural in the Oak Bar showing a foggy New York of bygone days, another 'Unreal City' not unlike the present one, the film implies).


3. Final scene in the sanatorium between Manny and Rose (and a nurse) (at about the 1hr40½' mark in my DVD copy). Very affecting. Manny (literally at one point) reaches out to Rose but is rebuffed. Rose remains immured for now in her sense of an implacable, overwhelming injustice that is not personal ('It's nothing you've done'). The last shot (frame-capture attached) before Manny retreats with the nurse back out into the corridor runs a long 47", implying the finality of the moment for now (the film is ending). It includes (n.b., no cut) Manny's backing-off remark, 'I guess I was hoping for a miracle'. Yet the mood is never less than poignant and affecting. Special note relevant to editing ... At least two elements of this scene may be said to pre-echo PSYCHO. (1) Rose clutches herself throughout, as Marion does in part of the PSYCHO 'parlour' scene. (2) When the nurse enters in the left background at the start of the shot, saying, 'Your husband is leaving now, Mrs Balestrero', it's startling, like the entrance of 'Mother' in the left background when Marion is in the shower, facing the camera. Only, of course, instead of the staccato passage that then follows (PSYCHO), we have the long-held single shot I've described (TWM). This is relevant to editing precisely because it only goes to show how much at Hitchcock's mercy (like the rest of us) the editor is, because the ultimate effect/affect is a combination of innumerable elements that Hitchcock controls and pre-plans - editing is only one of many elements. The editor (again like the rest of us) may feel he/she is pretty much free to respond to the scene, but that response is actually, and largely invisibly, dictated by the director, a very charming and benevolent person but a dictator nonetheless!


(n.b., Marion, you could say, clutches herself primarily for warmth - ironic in the context of the film which becomes progressively chilly - although what she is warming herself against may, in part, be given a 'psychological' interpretation. In Rose's case, her self-clutching is more indicative of her withdrawal inwards, such that her psychiatrist had earlier said that she was 'on the other side of the moon someplace'.)


(n.b., too, Rose in this near-final scene of TWM, just described, is in a near-equivalent position to Norman in the penultimate scene of PSYCHO, and is depicted not dissimilarly. Norman 'wears' a blanket for both warmth and to suggest his withdrawn state; and, like Rose, he 'converses' in a seemingly direct and cogent way ('They're probably watching me now') while his actual distance from present reality is patent.)


Am I moving towards some sort of overview of how editing may 'work' in Hitchcock, and be seen by him? I'm not sure, but I must hope!


Later.

Metta - KM



The next film I wish to raise in this context was “I Confess”. We both held this film in very high regard.

In our exchanges which took place over a few weeks, Ken shared many of his discoveries about the sources for the script and he also introduced me to his friend Dr. Ted Price. Now I had become entangled in an infernal triangle. 


The deep knowledge which these two shared on all of Hitchcock’s work and many other great directors was far beyond my limited capacity… they were bookworms whereas I am not. They were scholarly as I am not.


Between the two of them I was introduced to so many thoughts and judgments of which I was totally unaware that it was like being back at University, except that it was my private university with two fine teachers at my disposal.

One email gives a sample of Ken’s thoughts on “I Confess”:

Dear Peter -

On 2/10/2015 10:12 PM, you wrote:

"Some films do not stand up well after numerous viewings, but I'm pleased to tell you [I CONFESS] is still a very rich experience for me. Despite the fact that I am not at all religious and have left Catholicism and its trappings way behind me, the dim distant past, the film still, works for me quite well, very well indeed."

Thank you so much for this observation, your email as a whole, and your several other emails lately that I have not responded to. 


On I CONFESS. I have long thought that Father Logan (Monty Clift) was using his obligation re the sanctity of the confessional to shield him from having to open up to Larrue (Karl Malden) about his relationship with Ruth Grandfort (Anne Baxter). And this is confirmed in a book I have just looked at, by Richard Blake, S.J., on six Catholic directors. Here's Blake:


As Larrue drags Logan into the case and questions him about Ruth, Logan extends the boundaries of the seal beyond its legitimate scope. He uses it to avoid answering potentially embarrassing questions about his relationship with Ruth. In his refusal to cooperate with the authorities, he is using the seal to manipulate Larrue, just as Keller had used it to manipulate him. (p. 62)


Had you noticed that? And, speaking of the murderer Keller (O.E. Hasse), how much sympathy do you feel for this refugee, with his wife Alma (Dorothy Hasse), from Germany? The couple are clearly very isolated in French Quebec, a long way from their home; and even at the end, I find the shambling figure of Keller to be quite affecting as he and Logan face off (Larrue looking on, with armed policemen ready to fire) in a hotel ballroom in front of a stage that offers the trapped man no escape. Yes, I know that Keller has been shifty all along, at least since his attempted robbery that went fatally wrong; and now, at the end, he has just shot his wife and is threatening Logan. (The talk between Keller and Logan is about their both being 'lonely'.) Yet I find this comment by Blake to be, well, one-sided, inadequate:


Keller, the German refugee, inevitably reminds audiences of the dozens of cold-blooded, calculating Nazi spies that populated American screens during the war and postwar periods. He is guilty, and the film does nothing to arouse sympathy for him. (p.61)


True, or not? One last observation for now. Blake seems so set on running down Logan (and also Ruth) for not being perfect, that he seems to me to miss a couple of things. Logan, who was awarded the Military Cross for outstanding bravery, clearly is a figure of the highest rectitude, which Hitchcock expresses by repeatedly giving him an unwavering forward motion (leading to that expressive moment when he literally bumps into the sacristan, i.e., Keller, in the church, and simply out-faces him). This is contrasted with the moral decline of Keller, planting evidence (a bloodstained cassock) and almost taunting Logan to keep silent (as Keller knows the priest is bound to do) - yet somehow I still see Keller as a person, not just a figure of evil. (I wish Blake had allowed this.) Also, re Ruth, had you noticed something (not noted by Blake): until nearly the very end, when Logan is exonerated (and Ruth turns to her husband, saying, 'Take me home, Pierre'), she seems to secretly harbour the romantic notion that, just possibly, Logan had still loved her so much that he had indeed murdered the blackmailer Vilette to protect Ruth's reputation?


(Similarly, in THE WRONG MAN, Rose has a moment when she must face up to - or anyway voice - how she suspects Manny may indeed have held up the Associated Life office. She tells him: You could be guilty, you could be.')

So big thanks again for your email, Peter, including this bit:

"I love the intelligence Hitch brings to his films, regardless of the choice of themes, the content, the people he hired to work with on different occasions, including writers, actors, composers. His films are very rich and densely packed, intricate, many faceted. And "I Confess" is no exception."

Looking forward to your answers to the couple of questions I've posed above!

I hope you're well.

Good cheer - KM


The two emails I have chosen give you a glimpse of the many faceted mind of our friend Ken. They both show how wide-ranging his research was, how interrelated his complex observations of films were and a sense of his endless enquiry. I always felt that his emails were too complex and dense for me to take apart and concentrate on individual themes in response.

Another film I owe much thanks to Ken for was “The Man Who Knew Too Much” , the original version, 1934. I basically knew nothing about this film until Ken sent me a copy and I really loved it. But there are so many exchanges on so many films. And books! And politics! And octopuses! 

When Ken discovered that I was fascinated by the intelligence of octopuses he sent me copious notes which he had researched to assist me with any writing I might have done about those astonishing creatures. Sadly I have not followed up his fine research with any fine writings on the subject, but we did swap a lot of information at the time.


And then there was Schopenhauer. Well Ken tried very hard to get me engaged in the work of “Schop”. But he failed in this endeavour. I was into philosophy when I was at Uni, and shortly after that. I had read quite widely but not wide enough for Ken, because I had overlooked Schop. This was very sad for Ken because he had placed Schopenhauer on the highest pedestal and I seemed unable or unwilling to come to the party, or to genuflect at his altar. We can’t all be readers of everything, can we? There’s too much on offer and we must make choices, but on this matter I disappointed Ken and there was nothing I could do about it. 


We had much more luck with cricket! We both had a long and abiding delight in following this wonderful colonial game which the Brits had gifted to us, spread throughout their colonies, between all the ravaging and savagery and plantations and ripping off of artefacts which were dutifully sent to museums in the British Isles. When our adored leading cricketers were caught in the act of ball tampering in South Africa Ken and I were utterly dismayed, as were so many Australians… it was a huge shock to us that our heroes could be so stupid and unsportsmanlike. 


The range of subjects we covered was much wider and far more extensive than I have mentioned… I can only give you a glimpse. I don’t want to waste any of your time or of my own fading energy on our altercations over the years concerning Trumpo the clown or the brilliant strategical mind of Putin!


It’s too demanding for me to syphon through more than two thousand email exchanges between us over the past 14 years, so I hope these few examples of Ken’s responses will indicate something of the breadth and depth of Ken’s interests, the different perspectives he drew on in assessing each film. But it was not only in the case of Hitchcock’s films that Ken offered such powerful judgement. This leads me to his efforts in working with Dr.Ted Price who he introduced to me about ten years ago. 

https://www.sensesofcinema.com/2013/book-reviews/back-to-freud-superbitch-alfred-hitchcocks-50-year-obsession-with-jack-the-ripper-and-the-eternal-prostitute-a-psycho-analytic-interpretation-by-theodore-price/

Ken also assisted Dr. Ted greatly with some other projects. Dr. Ted had written some notes for his students on the film “The Passenger” by Antonioni. Both Ken and I shared a love of this film and we both thought Dr. Ted should refine his “student notes”, get them into better shape for an article for publication. NOT AN EASY TASK! Dr Ted was getting very grumpy and didn’t think it needed improvement, but Ken persisted and worked him round. He also arranged for the revised piece to be published in Senses of Cinema. This might sound like a small effort, but it took many months to achieve the final result. My part in this process was trivial, I merely supported Ken in his endeavours to get Dr. Ted to make the necessary changes, and thankfully Ken won the day!

 

https://www.sensesofcinema.com/2015/feature-articles/michelangelo-antonioni-the-truth-about-the-passenger/

Once again by being involved in this endeavour I learned more about the film than I could ever have imagined.

These few examples are merely additional to what others will have to say about Ken’s life work in  thinking and writing about cinema. I was so pleased to be able to send his paper on Vertigo to Geoff Gardner just before I gave Facebook the flick. Because Geoff took this on there are copies of the Vertigo piece and other items by Ken on Film Alert 101.

http://filmalert101.blogspot.com/2020/12/considering-alfred-hitchcocks-vertigo.html


http://filmalert101.blogspot.com/2021/06/hitchcocks-trouble-with-harry-ken-mogg.html

Because of Ken having introduced me to Dr. Ted, I was able to introduce Dr. Ted to Geoff and that resulted in Geoff posting some fine articles by Dr. Ted:

http://filmalert101.blogspot.com/2017/08/federico-fellini-secret-meaning-of-his_10.html

http://filmalert101.blogspot.com/2017/09/the-truth-about-limelight-dr-theodore.html

As you can see, for me it was like mixing in the big league trying to keep up with these guys. I’m a simple film buff, not at all serious when you compare my lazy ways with their scholasticism and their considered thoughts on so many works by so many directors.


I hope that any friends who would like to add their own personal recollections to this valedictory will take the opportunity.

Vale Ken,

Peter Tammer

On Hitchcock - Ken Mogg contemplates a film set in colonial Australia - UNDER CAPRICORN (1949)

This film … is the story of a face, that of Ingrid Bergman. 

     -      Eric Rohmer & Claude Chabrol, Hitchcock

 ‘I’ve done him wicked wrong, so many, many times.  Wrong to love him, wrong to marry him.  I was my brother’s murderer, and he paid for it.’  She halted.  ‘No children.’

    -      Lady Henrietta Flusky, in Helen Simpson, Under Capricorn

 

THERE IS MUCH TO remark in this lovely 1949 Alfred Hitchcock film set in colonial Australia in 1831 – it is full of incident.  Most such incidents come from the novel and, if anything, Hitchcock and his Canadian adapter, Hume Cronyn, have respected them a little too uncritically.  The film’s scenarist was the Scottish playwright James Bridie.  It’s likely that both director and collaborators felt themselves insufficiently on top of their material to make many changes, a standpoint that never suited Hitchcock.  Nonetheless, though the film was a commercial flop, it was well-received in Australia.¹  

(click to enlarge and for slideshow)

One can see why.  The film’s evocation of the penal colony of New South Wales, utilising location–paintings (with matted-in movement, above) and convincing street sets (below), is first-rate: the Art Director was Thomas Morahan working with a team of six assistants, including two ‘draughtsmen’.  Historical research was also painstaking.  I recall reading a publicity squib in some popular magazine that proudly affirmed that ‘there are no cobwebs on the wine bottles in Under Capricorn’ because the spider that spins such things had not yet been introduced to Australia.  The film’s researchers gave special attention to visual matters.  The design of Samson Flusky’s residence outside Sydney, ‘Minyago Yugilla’/‘Why weepest Thou?’, where he lives with his alcoholic wife, Lady Henrietta (Ingrid Bergman), scheming housemaid Milly (Margaret Leighton), and staff, has a wide turreted front resembling work by Francis Greenway (1777-1837), the most important architect in the young convict colony: Greenway was himself an ex-convict, like both Flusky (Joseph Cotten) and Milly in the film. The panoramic views of Sydney and its harbor we see at the start of the film seem based on oils done by Conrad Martens (1801-78) - in the style of Claude Lorraine and J.M.W. Turner - painted soon after he arrived in the colony in 1835.     

       

“…on a moviola…”

For my part, I have only pleasant memories of my first encounter with Hitchcock’s film.  I had learnt that a 16mm television print existed, held by the ABC at its then headquarters in Gore Hill, Sydney.  Some kind people arranged that I might view the print after hours on a moviola.  So, one night, high in the ABC’s tower block, with the lights of Sydney twinkling on several sides, I sat down to treat myself to this ‘new’ (to me) Hitchcock, a historical re-creation of early Sydney itself.  The experience felt almost mystical, and the colour print was superb!  I don’t recall many particulars of that viewing, but no doubt Jack Cardiff’s cinematograhy and the emotive score by Richard Addinsell were strong factors in why I was so moved.  Not to mention that the film felt so different from your run-of-the-mill Hitchcock – whatever that is – even allowing for Hitchcock’s incredible ability to create the unexpected from film to film.  The fact that top French critics saw Under Capricorn  as a masterpiece suddenly seemed to me very palpable and self-evidently right!  

Michael Wilding as Charles Adare

Possibly the original audiences and reviewers couldn’t grasp where the film was heading: one English review complained that you had to wait until the last reel before there were any thrills.  That’s maybe true, but the underlying theme of ‘rehabilitation’ is powerful enough. If Lady Hattie needs rehabilitating from her alcoholism, caused by too heavy a burden of guilt – probably less for accidentally killing her brother than for having brought her husband into disrepute as the alleged murderer, and possibly for her inability to perform as a wife and give him children – Flusky himself, with his stable boy background, can barely unlearn his class-inculcated ‘inferiority’ in order to take pride in his real achievement - far exceeding what Society knows. (‘Society’ is a major target of Under Capricorn’s scorn.)  Into this sorry situation enters the Hon. Charles Adare (Michael Wilding), a young man²newly arrived from Ireland, whose own reputation as a ne’er-do-well had determined his departure for Australia.  Charles’s rehabilitation during the course of the film is no less complicated than that of Lady Hattie and her husband.  Entering into danger – he finds himself falling in love with Hattie – he must finally detach himself and return home, but only after a noble act of defying the law for the sake of both Fluskys.  In consequence, he ‘grows up’ with a new inner strength and his own scepticism towards Society.  The Attorney-General, Mr Corrigon, tries to intervene (telling the Governor, ‘Your Excellency, it isn’t as simple as that!’) but the Governor (Cecil Parker), hitherto the film’s figure of fun, won’t be drawn – we may infer that he, too, has attained a new level of humanity.  Indeed, a villain of the film, after the murderous Milly, is Corrigon, the mouthpiece of a blind Law.  (There are echoes of the film’s position in later Hitchcock movies, such as Marnie, where Marnie scoffs at the word ‘legal’, and the weight of the movie is solidly behind her.) 

Ingrid Bergman as Lady Henrietta

“…between husband and wife…”

The source of Under Capricorn’s considerable pathos  is the ‘great gulf fixed’ between husband and wife, who have always loved each other.  Who, or what, can remove it?  Ironically, it proves to be Milly’s scheming and the outsider Charles’s role as a catalyst. ‘The Lord moves in mysterious ways’ as Milly says, using another Biblical phrase.  This, too, is a beautiful concept, in which everyone has a God-given role whether they know it, and acknowledge it, or not.  But as I say, it isn’t particularly cinematic. Before the denouement, Flusky complains that events seem to go ‘on and on and on’, and the shape of the film rather bears him out – unfortunately.  Milly thinks she knows God’s plan.  After she is found out, she defends herself by saying, ‘I know the Lord’s way when I see it’, and claims that she couldn’t just stand by and let Flusky ‘sacrifice’ himself.  These days, we might interpret that to mean that she considers him sex-starved, and feels the same way herself.  The film, though, invites a less-blunt reading.  Further, it carries a strong criticism of Milly’s presumption that prompts her to slowly poison Lady Hattie so that she may have Flusky herself.  In this, the film comes close to echoing the lesson of Rope (1948) in which Rupert denounces its two ‘thrill-killers’ by asking rhetorically, ‘Did you think you were God?’ 

Joseph Cotten as Samson Flusky

At times, in watching Under Capricorn, it does feel like the audience is simply required to be entranced by Ingrid Bergman’s face.  Not quite your usual Hitchcock movie - no thrills until the last reel!  Of course, that’s a facile yardstick in this case.  I know of no other film quite like this one: a sui generis example of a work that sets its own rules for appreciating its many moods.  And undoubtedly it has scenes that work beautifully in their own way.  True, Helen Simpson’s novel provides most of them. For example, the scene in which Adare makes a ‘mirror impromptu’ from the glass of a verandah door by holding his dark jacket behind it, so that Hattie may appreciate her still radiant beauty, comes from early in the novel (Book One, x).  His dashing gesture marks him as the film’s young hero who has what it takes to redeem him from Society’s estimation of him.  Similarly, shortly afterwards, watched by Flusky, he shinnies up a tree to reach Hattie’s room in which she has locked herself because she despairs at her drunken condition (cf. Book One, xi).  Michael Wilding is equal to the demands of his role.³  Even the pay-off to this scene, in which Milly arrives and finds the door locked – making Adare look compromised – comes from the novel.  None of these incidents, and several others, are particularly Hitchcockian, something which seems to have disappointed the film’s original audiences.⁴

“…the bare feet of Lady Hattie…’

Likewise, film students studying Hitchcock may have difficulty in knowing what to make of Under Capricorn.  That was all the more reason why I enjoyed teaching it!⁵  Some of its stylistic coups could be easily demonstrated.  Early in the film, Adare accepts an invitation to dine at Flusky’s house with most of the bigwigs of the colony.  All of them, however, arrive without their wives, making lame excuses like, ‘I’m sorry, my wife was detained at the last moment’.  Eventually, Flusky summons them to a long dining table where they seat themselves at their appointed places.  Quickly aware that there is a space vacant between each guest (where the wives had been anticipated to sit!), Flusky is equal to the occasion and in a gruff voice instructs the guests, ‘We needn’t sit here like a row of milestones!  Move down to this end of the table.’  Note that, as yet, the audience hasn’t been told the exact reason for the wives’ absence, nor for why Lady Hattie herself is also absent.  It will be dramatically disclosed in a moment.  Since the guests arrived in the dining room, Hitchcock’s camera has been following the action in a single take, i.e., devoid of cuts.  The re-seating of the guests prompts the camera to slowly sweep from the far end of the table to its head, until it stops on Flusky in close-up.  The low babble of conversation suddenly ceases, and the sound of scraping chairs is heard – and now, finally, there’s a cut, showing the bare feet of Lady Hattie (below) who has entered the room behind her husband in order to place her hands on his shoulders.  ‘Please be seated, gentlemen!’ she tells them.

What Donald Spoto called Hitchcock’s genius is surely encapsulated in this remarkable sequence which incorporates so much –coordinating visuals and sound and motion and, eventually, a cut - into a seamless whole that makes the film’s central point about Lady Hattie’s need for rehabilitation.  A Hitchcock screenwriter once expressed his astonishment at how the director could discuss the outlines of a scene or succession of scenes one day, and return the next with everything fully blocked out, down to the smallest detail. It only remained for the humbled screenwriter to add dialogue!

“….holding an audience in suspense…”

Nor did Hitchcock ever forget – seemingly – what had worked in a previous film (his own or someone else’s) and seek to improve on it.  This was another sort of creative challenge that he welcomed, like the challenge of carrying a film in his head or the challenge of holding an audience in suspense. Michael Walker (‘Hitchcock’s Motifs’, 2005) reminds his readers of the considerable emphasis on keys in Notorious (1946), a motif which is then extended in Under Capricorn where it expresses the ‘power of the keys’ wielded by the ruthless Milly.  She wears them hanging from her waist, ‘like a badge of office’ as Walker puts it, and is extremely reluctant to turn them over to the true mistress of the house, Lady Hattie.  At one point, she even threatens to use them as a literal weapon against Hattie, who has finally understood what Milly is up to: feeding Hattie’s alcoholism and scheming to have Flusky herself.  When a humiliated Milly shapes to hit Hattie with the keys, Flusky intervenes, and tears them from her grasp.  In Walker’s words, ‘This robs Milly of her symbolic power; defeated, she flees downstairs and out of the film’.

But, as indicated, there are several further twists before the film’s resolution, involving Adare’s wounding by Flusky and then Adare’s flirting with the facts, to save Flusky from the gallows and frustrate Corrigon (though the Governor senses that something is amiss, saying, ‘I’ll have you know I don’t believe a word of it!’).  Note, though, that scenarist/playwright James Bridie had a reputation for writing weak Third Acts, which probably wasn’t helped by his work on Under Capricorn.  On the other hand, some of the film’s extended  monologues are absolutely wonderful, and notably the one where Hattie tells Adare the film’s backstory: how she and Flusky had eloped to Gretna Green and how her brother Dermott had followed her there and was about to shoot Flusky, so that Hattie seized his pistol and shot him instead.  If Hitchcock was bound to make one ‘picture of people talking’ – just to show that it could be done with a master filmmaker helming it – Under Capricorn proved both of his points: a top director could still make something of such an exercise, with his master-touch constantly evident, and yet there’s something depleted about such a talkie form passed off as ‘the movies’.

Nonetheless, my love and admiration for Hitchcock’s filmmaking was certainly not diminished after I watched Under Capricorn; nor, reader, should yours!

Notes

1.  Howard Maxford, The A-Z of Hitchcock (2002), p. 271.  I might add that Alma Hitchcock was heartbroken by the generally cool reception the film received on its initial release – she saw how fine a movie it is.        

2.  In the novel, Adare is ‘only twenty’.  See Book Two, vi.

3.  An appreciative Hitchcock would cast Wilding in his next film, Stage Fright, as the capable young Detective Inspector Wilfred Smith, aka ‘Ordinary’ Smith (because of his surname) .

4. I might also mention such other incidents from the novel as: (1) the amusing scene in which Flusky’s three cooks compete to please him, serving up eggs in varying degrees of runniness (cf. Book One, xvi); and (2) the Governor’s Ball, where an uninvited Flusky arrives and embarrasses Lady Hattie who has been escorted there by Adare (cf. Book Two, i).  Likewise, the film makes use of motifs from the novel, such as (1)  Lady Hattie’s resumed embroidery, a sign that her rehabilitation has begun under Adare’s tutelage (cf. Book One, ix); and (2) the tune that Adare frequently whistles to encourage her progress, namely, the nursery rhyme ‘Here we go gathering nuts in May’.  Granted, this isn’t quite the same thing as the tune in the novel which had been played by the mischievous band to farewell the unpopular previous Governor, ‘Over the Hills and Far Away’ - and which is heard again among parts of the crowd when the new Governor arrives (Book One, iii). In the film, some wag calls out ‘Sing us a song, guv'nor!” and he murmurs to Adare “Not a very warm welcome!’ 

5.  I felt bound to offer my best pointers, as the ABC had made their print available to us, no doubt unofficially.  I suspect that the print was due to be shortly returned overseas – I’m not sure where.  For a while, there was doubt about the film’s ownership.  Nowadays, I note that there are some good DVDs and a Blu-Ray of Under Capricorn listed online, one including a commentary by a film historian and with footage of remarks by Claude Chabrol

********************

Editor's Note: This is the seventh essay by Hitchcock scholar Ken Mogg to have been published on Film Alert 101.

The other essays can be found if you click on these links.

The Man Who Knew Too Much

Vertigo

Vertigo's Cinema Sources

Hitchcock's methods

I Confess

Rope