Shutter Island and the Hitchcock tribute (Guardian)

[there are obviously spoilers here for those who haven’t seen the film]
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It’s fair to say Martin Scorsese is king of the film nerds; every movie he has ever made is packed with references and allusions to earlier masterworks, everything from The Red Shoes to King of Kings. He has outdone himself with his new film, Shutter Island: he has taken the Hitchcockian atmosphere of murderous insanity and run with it, shoehorning in one Hitchcock bit after another.

Scorsese has form in this area: a couple of years ago, he shot a promo film for a Spanish cava-maker which took the shape of a very smart fake documentary; in it he claims to have discovered a “lost” Hitchcock script, which he then takes it upon himself to shoot. Have a look at it online at bit.ly/eEuz; it’s almost a pitch document for Shutter Island on its own.

In the spirit of Hitchcock homage, here’s a new game: when you watch Shutter Island – which is released tomorrow – every time you spot a Hitchcock reference, shout out the title of the film Marty pinched it from. Shutter Island could become the new Rocky Horror Picture Show if we put our minds to it. Trust me, you’ll be the most popular person in the cinema. Try these as a starter:

• For no real reason, Scorsese sticks his camera right under a showerhead. Water streams either side of the camera, then gurgles down the drain. Fortunately, no one gets stabby. “Psycho!”

• Leonardo DiCaprio peers over a hair-raising clifftop drop and decides he has got to get down somehow. Cue him scrambling down to the shoreline and hanging off the rock face – just like Cary Grant on Mount Rushmore. “North by Northwest!”

• A gun follows its target, fixed to the bottom of the camera. It’s kind of like a video game, you might think – if you were a 15 year old. But Leo Carroll did it first, threatening to shoot Ingrid Bergman before turning it on himself. “Spellbound!”

• Sometimes it feels like Shutter Island is one long thunderstorm. A hurricane’s a-coming, rain batters down, lightning flashes across the sky. Fortunately, Hitchcock once made a film where the heroine – Tippi Hedren – had a pathological fear of the things. One bit, where a tree smashes through a wall, is a straight lift. “Marnie!”

• DiCaprio grabs a gun and trudges fearfully up a very, very tall building. In Shutter Island it’s a lighthouse, rather than a Californian mission, and DiCaprio isn’t overcome by acrophobia. But this is Jimmy Stewart Mk 2. “Vertigo!”

• Shutter Island has its own creepy Nazi-type figure; man-in-the-shadows Max von Sydow, whom we first see lurking mysteriously in Ben Kingsley’s gracious living room. Scorsese got the idea for introducing him via the back of his head from Cary Grant moodily watching a couple dancing. “Notorious!”

There have got to be more. Hitchcock buffs all over the planet are presumably engaged in the internet equivalent of a nuclear arms race to identify every single reference. Time to stand back and let the real obsessives take over.