Hitchcock Overrated? Dear Ben Shapiro….

Ben Shapiro’s recent list of the ten most overrated directors has kicked up quite the controversy: Disparaging blog posts (including one from myself) and more than 300 (mostly negative) comments from Big Hollywood’s lovely readers took Mr. Shapiro to task for, amongst other things, daring to label Alfred Hitchcock as the most overrated director of all time.

My problem with the list wasn’t so much the subjective nature of it. Taste is personal, and our likes and dislikes are informed by our life experiences. If he had made a list of critically acclaimed directors that he didn’t much care for, well, that would’ve been different. But by framing his list as an assault on the auteur theory and a discussion of which directors have been unduly praised, Mr. Shapiro changes the game. Furthermore, by placing Alfred Hitchcock at the top of that list – a man who directed a half-dozen of the greatest films in the history of the American cinema, helped reinvent the language of cinema and is one of the most widely imitated directors in the history of filmmaking – Mr. Shapiro’s list mutates from purely subjective to (at least partially) objective, and opens him up to some serious criticism.

Let’s leave aside the quality of his choices for a moment, however, and take a look at the actual criticism: It is dedicated mostly to his feelings and largely bereft of any discussion of the actual filmmaking these directors have done during their time in Hollywood. Consider his take on Ridley Scott, for example. Blade Runner is “bizarre” and “massively overpraised.” Thelma and Louise is “liberal tripe.” And, my favorite: Alien is “slow.”

Alien is too slow? I guess I can see his point: I mean, why would you want to slowly build tension and create a sense of horrific claustrophobia by indulging in little things like “character development” or “spatial understanding” when you can just blow stuff up real good? Why waste two hours on Alien when you can pick up Aliens vs. Predator: Requiem on Netflix, am I right? And, briefly, being “liberal” is no more a signifier of quality than being “conservative.” There are good liberal films and terrible conservative films, and vice versa.

Then there’s his criticism of Michael Mann, which comes down to four words: “All style, no substance.” Beyond being a cliched, lazy takedown of Mr. Mann – the skilled director behind the tense thrillers Heat, The Insider, Manhunter and Collateral – it ignores the fact that style is the substance when he is the director in question. There is, simply, no filmmaker working today with a better intuitive grasp of the setpiece. I would ask Mr. Shapiro to grapple with the central dilemma of Mann’s body of work – “Does Mr. Mann’s astonishing technical skills and amazing visual dexterity overwhelm his sometimes-stilted scripting?” — rather than glibly dismiss such a skilled technical force with four little words.

The treatment of Martin Scorsese isn’t much better: The brilliant Italian-American’s finest films are derided as “gross” because they make the author want to “take a shower.” Well, okay, but that’s kind of the point: Goodfellas and Raging Bull are movies that deal with distinctly unpleasant people living a distinctly unpleasant lifestyle. If those movies make you feel a little dirty, it means that Scorsese’s done his job right. And, again: No discussion of Scorsese’s storytelling skills or technical prowess or impact on the field of filmmaking at large. It’s just a gut reaction.

So, objectively speaking, there’s not that much “there” there? Subjectively speaking, I only have one strong objection: Alfred Hitchcock.

It’s hard to say just how wrongheaded Mr. Shapiro is in this regard. Hitch was a hit with audiences and critics; he made at least a half-dozen of the most influential films in the history of Hollywood; he is one of the most-copied filmmakers of all time and one of the most-referenced. It’s literally impossible to understand broad swathes of American (and international) cinema without at least a basic knowledge of Hitchcok’s oeuvre. If we want to get lowbrow for a second, there are more than a dozen Simpsons episodes that are seriously damaged without having seen the rotund Brit’s greatest hits. That’s more than half of a season!

Seriously, though, dismissing Hitchcock in the manner that Mr. Shapiro did is unfathomable. He writes, for example, that “Notorious is the same movie as Rebecca.” To quote a friend of mine, the Rightwing Film GeekVictor Morton, “wtf does that even mean? Is Olivier in the Rains role or the Grant role? IDIOTIC!!” (We were on Twitter, so you’ll have to excuse the brevity.) What Mr. Shapiro’s disdain mostly comes down to is his distaste for slowly developing action: Anyone who reaches for the remote to speed Rear Window up and eliminate that delicious tension has a taste that is, shall we say, unrefined.

And you know what? That’s fine! If Mr. Shapiro had simply said “Hey, I don’t like Hitchcock,” I wouldn’t have thought much more than “My, my that poor boy has terrible taste.” I certainly wouldn’t have reeled off almost 1,000 words in response. I can appreciate, if disagree, with the fact that he doesn’t jibe with the great film critic Manny Farber, who admired Hitchcock for “filling his movies with what he is really interested in, and what is interesting to an audience – the use of the camera to tell more about people and a situation than that a muddle arose and was straightened out at the end.”

But to say that Hitchcock is overrated? It’s not just egregiously silly: It’s objectively incorrect.