Family Plot is a 1976 film directed by Alfred Hitchcock, his final completed film. It stars Barbara Harris, Bruce Dern, William Devane and Karen Black. The film was screened at the 1976 Cannes Film Festival, but wasn't entered into the main competition.[1]
Plot
The story involves a fake psychic, Blanche Tyler (Harris), and her con artist taxi driver boyfriend, George Lumley (Dern), who attempt to locate the nephew of a wealthy and guiltridden old woman, Julia Rainbird (Nesbitt). Julia, one of Blanche's clients, was responsible for her now-deceased sister giving up a boy for adoption years earlier and now wants to make him her heir. She will pay $10,000 if he is found.
However, the nephew and prospective heir is now a successful jeweler in San Francisco known as Arthur Adamson (Devane), who has a secret and lurid past, having apparently murdered his adoptive parents and faked his own death. With his girlfriend Fran (Black), he has successfully kidnapped an assortment of millionaires and dignitaries, returning them when the ransom, a valuable gemstone, has been delivered, each of which they hide in their chandelier.
When Arthur learns that Blanche and George are pursuing him, he suspects the worst, putting their lives in danger.
Production
This comedy/thriller was adapted for the screen by Ernest Lehman, based on the novel The Rainbird Pattern (1972) (ISBN 0-441-70393-3) by Victor Canning. Lehmann wanted the film to be sweeping, dark and dramatic but Hitchcock kept pushing him toward lightness and comedy. Lehman's screenplay earned him a 1977 Edgar Award from the Mystery Writers of America.
The novel on which the film is based had earlier been rejected by Ernest Lehman, to whom it had been submitted as a potential project for him to either produce and/or direct. Hitchcock's other collaboration with the screenwriter, North by Northwest (1959), was followed by several aborted projects. Lehman had incurred the director's anger by declining an offer to write the screenplay for No Bail For the Judge, a London set thriller intended to star Audrey Hepburn, Laurence Harvey and actor John Williams. Although Hitchcock eventually had a fine screenplay and pre-production (location scouting and costumes) was at an advanced stage, the film was never made; Hepburn became pregnant and Hitchcock turned to another project, Psycho (1960), instead.
Hitchcock, who often liked to specify the locales of his films by using on-screen titles or by using recognisable landmarks, deliberately left the story's location unspecific, using sites in both San Francisco and Los Angeles. The chase scene in the movie, which writer Donald Spoto called a spoof on car chases prevalent in films at the time, was filmed on the extensive Universal backlot. The restaurant used in the film was also built on the backlot and was shown on studio tours in 1975.
Alfred Hitchcock's cameo is a signature occurrence in most of his films. In Family Plot he can be seen (38 minutes into the film) in silhouette through the glass door of the Registrar of Births and Deaths.
The film was the only Hitchcock production to be scored by John Williams, a rising staff composer at Universal who had recently scored Jaws.
Following Family Plot, Hitchcock worked on the script for a projected spy thriller, The Short Night. His declining health prevented the filming of the screenplay, which was published in a book on Hitchcock's last years. Universal chose not to film the script with another director, although it did authorize sequels to Hitchcock's Psycho.
An advertisement for this film can be seen in the 1993 comedy film Dazed and Confused, when characters pass a drive-in movie theater.
Cast
Hitchcock considered such actors as Burt Reynolds and Roy Scheider (for Adamson), Al Pacino (for George), Faye Dunaway (for Fran) and Beverly Sills (for Blanche) for the film. High salary demands were partly responsible for his turning to other actors. Although Liza Minnelli was among the stars recommended to Hitchcock, he was especially delighted to work with Barbara Harris as the medium. He had previously tried to hire her for other film projects.
Hitchcock had earlier worked with Bruce Dern on episodes of Alfred Hitchcock Presents and on Marnie (1964), in which he had a brief role in a flashback playing a doomed sailor.
William Devane was Hitchcock's first choice for the role of nefarious jeweler Arthur Adamson, but Devane was unavailable when the film went into production. Hitchcock finally settled on Roy Thinnes as Adamson and shot several scenes with him. When Devane became available, Hitchcock fired Thinnes and re-shot all of his scenes. Later, Thinnes confronted Hitchcock in a restaurant and asked the director why he was fired. Hitchcock simply looked at Thinnes until the actor left. Some shots of Thinnes as the character (from behind) remain in the film.
References
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