Family Plot
Short description
Blanche Tyler makes her living as a spiritualist, performing readings for clients while her boyfriend George Lumley, an out-of-work actor who drives a taxi, helps her get by. When the wealthy Julia Rainbird hires Blanche to track down a nephew she gave up years earlier and now wants to name as her heir, the couple see a chance at a large payment. Their search leads them to Arthur Adamson, who presents himself as a jeweller but is in fact involved in kidnapping people for ransom, working alongside his partner Fran. The pair's arrival complicates matters for Adamson, and the two sides are soon working against each other as Blanche and George try to collect what they were promised.
Alfred Hitchcock directed and produced the film, from a screenplay by Ernest Lehman, the forty-second of the forty-three films credited to Hitchcock in chronological order and the one that followed Frenzy in 1972. Barbara Harris and Bruce Dern play the couple at the centre, with Karen Black and William Devane as the criminals, and Cathleen Nesbitt as the elderly woman who sets the search in motion. The credited cast runs to twenty-nine performers.
Made for a budget of four million dollars, the film took thirteen million worldwide. On IMDb it holds 6.8 out of 10 from around twenty-seven thousand votes, and on TMDB it also sits at 6.8 from roughly five hundred votes, while a critics' rating of 7 out of 10 from forty reviews places reviewers slightly above the general audience.
What's left behind the scenes
- As a promotional stunt to promote the film, Hitchcock held a press conference in specially made cemetery sets. The names of the invited journalists were "carved" on the tombstone mockups.
- Alfred Hitchcock’s cameo – Hitchcock’s silhouette is visible through a glass door with the inscription “Births and Deaths Registry.”
- "Family Plot" was the last, 53rd, film by the great Hitchcock.
- Hitchcock planned for Burt Reynolds or Roy Scheider to play Adamson. He also intended to invite Al Pacino or Jack Nicholson, Faye Dunaway, and Beverly Sills or Liza Minnelli for the roles of George, Fran, and Blanche, but considered these actors too “expensive” for his project.
- The screenplay was initially written under the title "One Plus One Equals One." The film entered production under the title "Deception."
- “Family Plot” is one of ten films based on the works of Victor Canning. In the US, the book was released as “Family Plot,” while its original title, under which it was first published in England, was “The Rainbird Pattern.”
- The final shot of the film, in which Blanche winks at the camera, is an improvisation by Barbara Harris, left in the picture by Hitchcock.
- Filming took place in Los Angeles and San Francisco.
Auditions in India
Casting calls in USA
Castingi w Polsce
Кастинги в Україні
