Breakdown

Hitchcock, of course, understood exactly how to create suspense. His typical explanation involved a bomb under the table: if it explodes out of nowhere, then that's surprise. If the audience knows that the bomb is under the table but not when it will go off, that's suspense. Thus, the secret for mastering suspense was to allow the audience to know something that the film's characters didn't – for, whatever we may know, we are absolutely helpless to do anything. Hitchcock occasionally transferred the elements of this director/audience interaction to his own characters, as we see in 'Rear Window (1954),' in which Jimmy Stewart sits immobile and helpless in his apartment. "Breakdown" (Season 1, Episode 7) was the second episode of "Alfred Hitchcock Presents" to be personally directed by the host, and, tellingly, it's also the best of the series so far. Hitchcock once again utilises the premise of a central character who, like the audience, is powerless to influence the events of the story.

Joseph Cotten plays William Callew, a callous businessman with little regard for human emotion. After a long-time employee weeps uncontrollably after losing his job, Callew unsympathetically condemns his lack of self-control. However, poetic justice is about to ensue. After becoming involved in a ghastly car collision with a truck of chain-gang prisoners, Callew wakes up paralysed from head to toe, but conscious enough to thinking logically. The fleeing prisoners offer hope of rescue, but instead – believing him to be dead – seize the opportunity to loot his clothing. Despite regaining slight movement in a single finger, nobody seems to recognise that Callew is still alive, and he seems destined to be buried that way. Hitchcock uses point-of-view shots to powerful effect, and Cotten – though not called upon to do much in the way of acting – delivers a creepy monotone voice-over that communicates his overwhelming paranoia. Though a lesson is proposed by the conclusion, its presence seems to be tongue-in-cheek, with Hitchcock spelling out the necessity of a "moral" in his introduction.

Hitchcock traverses the macabre into pure existential terror. The stasis of the camera combined with the sparse mise-en-scene imprisons the spectator in the director's subjective and absolute control. This episode is a primer on minimalist horror and also reveals Hitchcock's internal mechanisms, which we now know were not just idiosyncratic but transgressive.

"Breakdown" is a famous but very, very, very disturbing installment of "Alfred Hitchcock Presents". It also received an Emmy Award for its editing.

When the story begins, you see that Willam Callew (Joseph Cotten) is a rich but very hard man. He's humorless and when he has an older employee fired, he complains to his friend that the man should essentially take it and stop whining...and not be so emotional.

A bit later, Callew is driving home and a horrible accident occurs. Many folks are killed and he's completely paralyzed from head to toe. He cannot talk nor close his eyes and by all appearances he is dead. But he is alive and you hear Callew's voice as he talks to himself. This continues for about 80% of the episode...and when they wheel him into the morgue, it's quite disturbing! Does he stand a chance of anyone noticing that he isn't dead....just very, very badly injured.

This is well made...no doubt about it. But it's also very disturbing and something that some might just want to pass on because of it.

All you need to know about this episode of the Alfred Hitchcock Presents show going in are these three things: 1) Hitchcock directed it, 2) Joseph Cotten is the star (formerly of Uncle Charlie in Shadow of a Doubt), and 3) most of this episode takes place after a car crash, which has left Cotten's character for all intents and purposes dead... but not really. What happens in this tale of mortal desperation is that Cotten's character - kind of unlikable at the start but not an awful person - is in a tight spot inasmuch that he's paralyzed, but not dead. Hitchcock and his editor make great use of narration here, which is a tricky aspect in a visual medium but works here because it's all about the intensity of this man's thoughts, which are lucid. It's a really tragic tale, when you think about it, but made absolutely gripping by the stakes and danger of life vs death.

How it finally gets resolved is kind of touching, if, for some, may seem kind of sappy. But Cotten really sells it with his voice and even his face and eyes, frozen as they are, because of how his character is set up and the follow-up happens. This is the kind of material that the Twilight Zone would go for years later, and I mean that as a compliment. It's among Hitch's best work in the 50's, for TV or film.

In one of the first episodes of the "Alfred Hitchcock Presents" TV series, we once again get to see - and feel - all of his irony and mastery at keeping us in an almost painful state of suspense for thirty (in this case LONG) minutes - but he also gives us a VERY unusual lesson in morals; and in the most unusual way, too...

The beginning of the whole story has got a special meaning: a heartless businessman on holiday has just given one of his oldest employees the sack without any warning, and the desperate man calls him on the phone, begging him and crying - and yet, all he does is make fun of his 'childish' behavior, remarking that there was no need for him to cry like a baby... BUT a little while later, he finds himself in a VERY desperate situation as well: after an accident, he's stuck behind the wheel of his luxury limousine, looking like he was dead - and he can't move, he can't talk, he can't give a sign of life; and so they take him to the morgue...

This has DEFINITELY got a touch of Edgar Allan Poe, and it's REALLY chilling to 'live' those dreadful hours (even 'crammed' into a 30-minute TV episode); but it also contains a PRETTY clear social and moral lesson... Joseph Cotten is simply EXCELLENT in a quite unusual role; and Hitch's directing is, to say the least, more breathtaking than in many of his most famous movies!