In an appendix to his 1984 essay ‘Toward a Theory of Film Suspense’ which first outlined his moral framework, Carroll acknowledges that ‘there are some ambiguous and troublesome counterexamples to it, clustered especially in the work of Alfred Hitchcock’ (1984/1996, p. 111). If it is true that viewers root for outcomes based on morality, rooting for immoral outcomes should be impossible. And yet there exist cases in which openly immoral rooting appears to occur. Carroll goes on to cite two scenes that purportedly produce an intense hope for immoral outcomes in many viewers (though notably not in himself). The first scene, which I shall refer to as ‘Bruno and the Lighter’, comes from Hitchcock’s Strangers on a Train (1951).
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Charismatic psychopath Bruno (Robert Walker), is disgruntled that the protagonist, Guy (Farley Granger), has not fulfilled his end of what he takes to be an implicit agreement. After meeting on a train as pure strangers, Bruno suggests they could swap murders, committing the crime on each other’s behalf in order to avoid providing any obvious motive. Bruno has already strangled Guy’s selfish ex-wife, who had been holding off on a divorce just to prevent his happy marriage to a woman he truly loves.
But Guy denies a deal was ever made, believed Bruno was only kidding when they first met, and refuses to return the favour by murdering Bruno’s father. To enact revenge for this perceived slight, Bruno plans to plant Guy’s monogramed cigarette lighter at the scene of his ex-wife’s death to frame him for her murder.
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Although aware of Bruno’s evil plan, Guy, a fading tennis pro already under suspicion, is stuck playing in a tournament under close observation by two detectives eager for evidence of his guilt.
But as Bruno steps off the train near the carnival, convinced of his plan’s imminent success, he is accidentally knocked by a passerby, – –
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– – causing him to fumble the precious cigarette lighter. It falls from his hand – –
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According to Carroll’s moral theory of suspense, when the lighter drops into the drain, viewers should express relief, as Bruno’s goal to frame Guy for murder is surely immoral. However, many viewers instead report expressing distress at this unexpected turn of events. ‘Oh no…’, I find my own inner voice gasping. And when Bruno desperately reaches down through the grate into the drain soon after, these feelings grow stronger.
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His fingers feel around for the lighter on a ledge of the dark drain.
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But it slips from his fingers and falls to the bottom far below. ‘Oh, no!’, I cry out inside.
Frustrated, Bruno kneels on the curb and reaches down through the grate as far as humanly possible, arm extending, fingers closer and closer to the key item in his evil plan.
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When witness to this I am on the edge of my seat for what seems like an eternity. Bruno’s fingers are only inches away from success. But when he finally manages to secure the lighter, I am relieved. Such an expression typically occurs at the successful avoidance of
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an undesired outcome. And thus Carroll’s claims about morality as the guiding principle for desired and undesired outcomes seem to hit a pothole, as my response is consistent with a desire that Bruno retrieve the lighter.
The second Hitchcock scene Carroll cites as a potential challenge to his moral structure of suspense, which I shall call ‘The Tie-Pin in the Potato Truck’, is from Frenzy (1972).
After raping and strangling his latest victim, the ‘Neck-Tie Murderer’, Bob Rusk (Barry Foster), hides the corpse in a hessian sack in the back of a potato truck at Covent Market.
But as he relaxes in his bachelor pad across the road waiting for the truck to return the load of unsold potatoes to the farm, he notices his signature jeweled ‘R’ tie-pin is missing.
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Realising the victim (Anna Massey) must have clutched it as she tried to fend him off, – –
– – Rusk races back to the potato truck before it leaves for the farm, the tie-pin on the corpse connecting him directly to her rape and murder. A darkly comic sequence unfolds as the charming psychopath searches for her body amongst a pile of identical sacks, – –
– – his mission complicated when the truck starts up and drives off to do its delivery – –
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– – and a series of unfortunate events including a sneezing fit from the dust and a pocket knife snapped in two trying to prise open the corpse’s rigid fingers to free the tie-pin.46 As with ‘Bruno and the Lighter’, ‘The Tie-Pin in the Potato Truck’ scene is difficult to define because its morality is foreign to standard Hollywood set-ups. Nevertheless, it seems clear to me that I am rooting for the killer to retrieve the incriminating evidence throughout, even though it will allow him to avoid arrest, continue raping and murdering, and will likely lead the victim’s innocent lover and ostensible protagonist, Blaney (Jon Finch), who is already under suspicion, to be jailed for Rusk’s disturbing deeds. My predilection for an ‘immoral’ narrative outcome is illustrated when the driver stops the truck to check on sacks mysteriously spilling out the back all over the road due to Rusk’s anxious search.
Under Carroll’s moral structure, I should hope the sex-killer is caught red-handed with his latest victim. Instead, I fear he will be discovered and hope he can hide in the shadows.
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This desired narrative outcome appears consistent with the relief I express when Rusk avoids detection and when, minutes later, he finally retrieves his tie-pin and escapes. In contrast to my experience, Carroll (1984/1996) claims only that to have responded with laughter at Rusk’s comic struggle to find the body and prise his tie-pin from the stiffened corpse whilst bouncing around the moving truck. He reports finding the sequence
a hilarious, surreptitiously obscene, and sustained exercise in black humor. In this case, my laughter interferes with any feeling of suspense on my part. But it is likely that others have responded differently (Carroll 1984/1996, p. 117).
I am one of these ‘others’. Like Carroll, I also find the sequence amusing. Alongside the black comedy, however, I experience suspense and concern for the killer and his quest. In stating that ‘my laughter interferes with any feeling of suspense on my part’, it reads as if Carroll feels laughter and suspense cannot – or frequently do not – co-exist. Such a claim seems unsustainable. Suspense has been associated with comedy since the likes of Harold Lloyd, Charlie Chaplin, and Buster Keaton. Although viewers howl with laughter when Hrundi V. Bakshi (Peter Sellers) is involved in a series of sustained exercises in potential public humiliation in Blake Edwards’ The Party (1968), they would also seem to gasp when yet another thing goes wrong, just as in ‘The Tie-Pin in the Potato Truck’ sequence. Indeed, it would seem difficult not to laugh and be anxious at the same time as Rusk is put through the ringer trying to retrieve the evidence, bouncing around in the dark with an uncooperative corpse on the back of a dusty old potato truck dressed up in his sharp suit and French-cuffed shirt.
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Hampered by his self-confessed lack of suspense when watching these two troublesome Hitchcock scenes outlined above,Carroll struggles to explain away these instances in his original article (1984). According to Martin Rubin, ‘Carroll finally accounts for these deviations by classifying Hitchcock as an original and even subversive artist who defines himself against the established norm’ (1999, p. 33). But any attempt to explain away the issue by posing Hitchcock as a master magician is clearly inadequate, for it is no explanation at all. Even if these enigmatic moments of immoral suspense and side-taking were born of Hitchcock’s heaven-sent brilliance, we still need to know exactly how and why the magical effect actually works. Surprisingly, despite the questions they still seem to pose for his moral theory of suspense, Carroll has remained largely silent on these two scenes in the thirty years since he flagged them as ‘troublesome counterexamples’ (1984/1996, p. 111).