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The Times (07/Sep/2008) - The genius of Alfred Hitchcock, the man who knew so much

(c) The Times (07/Sep/2008)

The genius of Alfred Hitchcock, the man who knew so much

Interviews by Sally Kinne

PATRICK BARLOW - Adaptor of The 39 Steps for the West End stage

The original idea was to adapt the John Buchan book. Then I watched the Hitchcock film, which I had never seen, and I thought it was a completely brilliant piece of screenwriting and storytelling. The structure is cast-iron, and Hitchcock absolutely made it his own. There is not one moment where you think, “That’s a bit slack.” It’s full of iconic cinema moments, but it was Hitchcock who invented all the brilliant things: Mr Memory, the Forth Bridge, the women. There are no women in Buchan’s book at all.

Hitchcock is not just a master of atmosphere, he’s a natural master of the cinema in the choices he makes. I learnt so much - when he brings that character in, when he kills someone off. I can’t stand these modern thrillers where they seem to leave the audience’s understanding of the story as their last concern, and you are thinking, “Who the ..? What’s he ..?” Hitchcock wants you to know. He sets characters up very clearly. I’ve worked on so many soul-destroying projects as a writer where people don’t know what they want, but keep bringing in other people. Hitchcock just knew what would work. A genius.

STEPHEN FREARS - Director

I remember seeing North by Northwest in the late 1950s, and it was incredible: the landscape, the colour, the sophistication of the material. But Notorious was the film I came to love. The story is phenomenal; it’s incredibly sexually complex, and it has a brilliant series of set pieces. You start to realise what you can do in any scene, how to set it in a more interesting way. I don’t think any of that came naturally to me. I had to learn it, and I eventually came to appreciate how brilliant a man he was.

When I made Dangerous Liaisons, the shot of Glenn Close and John Malkovich coming downstairs is absolutely based on the ending of Notorious. Hitchcock realised that, when people come downstairs, they bounce when they hit the next step, and he must have flattened the staircase so it absorbed the bumps. In Liaisons, by the final take, John was carrying Glenn [to get the same effect].

It’s very peculiar making films. You have to reduce ideas into technical, precise images. Hitchcock seems to have done that brilliantly. He was a storyboard artist, a graphic artist - he drew every film. I’m totally opposed to it, because it’s a way of avoiding looking at what is in front of you, but he did it. He is the only person I know who could draw the film and it worked.

JAMES HAWES - Director of the BBC’s forthcoming The 39 Steps

The film gives a whole new energy to what we call the romantic thriller. He managed to create something almost Bond-like, with real comedy for the hero, as well as irony and real drama. I came across an article that said Bond could never have existed without Buchan and The 39 Steps and Hitchcock’s North by Northwest, which is absolutely a modern version of The 39 Steps, almost beat for beat. I’m trying to be very aware of the legacy. I’ll be tipping my hat to him.

JAMIE THRAVES - Director of Cry of the Owl, based on a Patricia Highsmith novel

I’ve been a fan of Hitchcock since I was about eight, though it was his books I was in love with at first. (Well, I thought they were his books: Alfred Hitchcock and The Three Investigators. No author’s name appeared on the front cover, and his name was in bolder type.) My real appreciation of Hitchcock didn’t occur until I began an art foundation course. I joined a film-studies class, and the tutor was a Hitchcock nut. We watched a stack of his movies, and Hitchcock quickly became my first film hero.

Shadow of a Doubt is one of my favourites. The moment that always gets me is when “Charlie”, the niece, approaches her house, and Joseph Cotten, her Uncle Charlie, is waiting for her on the porch - and she knows he is the Merry Widow Murderer. Hitchcock employs his famous point-of-view tracking shot as Teresa Wright (Charlie) moves closer to him. When I become Charlie, I always want to turn and run.

Hitchcock never seemed to be short of clever ideas. He clearly brainstormed every moment and came up with the best and most interesting solutions for every scene, every inch of the frame, in fact. He was great at picking brilliant collaborators, too - Ernest Lehman, Bernard Herrmann, Saul Bass. His films are so beautifully orchestrated, choreographed like dance, but never stiff, always fluid. I find the performances consistently rich and full of life. He has this special way of making you aware of his creativity, but he never sacrifices your involvement with either character or story.

ANNA MASSEY - Actress, directed by Hitchcock in 1972’s Frenzy

I worked with quite a few legends of that era - Michael Powell, John Ford, Hitchcock - and what they had in common was phenomenal focus. They knew exactly what they wanted, the size and length of every shot. Hitchcock never did more than one take, but he did really long takes, so there was a tension that spread from the actors to the crew. Good direction is like an x-ray - they know what they want to such an extent, you would never have said, “Can we go again?”

All directors are control freaks. Hitchcock wasn’t a control freak in his direction (it’s not true he didn’t like actors, he made you feel very free), but he was absolutely in charge of your look - your make-up, hair, clothes, even the gloves.

I liked him very much. He was a complicated man. His way of putting you at ease before a take was to tell smutty jokes, and he was full of the most extraordinary neuroses. But he coped with them. He had a wonderfully successful life.

BHARAT NALLURI - Director

My next film, The Tourist, is a modern-day classic Hitchcock story about a wronged man thrown into the centre of a big plot, trying to prove his innocence. I’ll be screening North by Northwest to the cast and crew. That’s the one I watch over and over again. The thing I love is the sexuality he always brings, these really sexy females, but in a very subtle way.

I use him as my film-maker’s bible. I’m always quoting snippets like “Kill your babies” - I used it only the other day about one of those beautiful shots you wait ages to get, then you realise it doesn’t drive the plot or any of the characters at all.

Part of Hitchcock’s genius was his deployment of shots. In Vertigo, he made famous one of the now most overused shots in film-making, to create the feeling of vertigo: the dolly reverse zoom. Spielberg uses it in Jaws, when we see the shark for the first time and he tracks in on the police chief on the beach. You track in while the lens zooms out. It’s a characteristic technique for showing fear. Scorsese does it in Goodfellas. I’ve done it many, many times. Every young film-maker does. And in Strangers on a Train, you see the murder reflected in the glasses on the ground. That’s a hugely cinematic, extraordinary moment. Nobody else was doing anything like that. It was so modern.

Hitchcock was a very commercial film-maker who was acutely aware of his audience. He always put them first. That’s his biggest influence on me. His genius was that he could elevate any genre to another level and put across a point of view, yet deliver popular entertainment to a big audience. That’s where I want to be.

Ten Hitch trademarks

  • THE CAMEO - Hitchcock popped up in 37 of his 52 surviving films. In Lifeboat, he was in a newspaper ad for the “Reduco obesity slayer”
  • THE VERTIGO EFFECT - The camera zooms in while simultaneously tracking out to simulate the effect of vertigo
  • A SAUL BASS SEQUENCE - Bass created titles for Vertigo, Psycho and North by Northwest, and they became iconic
  • THE BLONDE IN PERIL - Hitch said: “They make the best victims. They’re like virgin snow that shows up the bloody footprints”
  • A LANDMARK CONCLUSION - From the British Museum in The Lodger to Mount Rushmore in North by Northwest
  • GALLOWS HUMOUR - In The Trouble with Harry, Harry’s body is repeatedly buried, exhumed and reburied
  • MOTHER PROBLEMS - Notably Cary Grant’s in North by Northwest, not forgetting Norman/Norma Bates in Psycho
  • THE ‘MACGUFFIN’ - A plot device that advances the story but is otherwise unimportant, viz the money Marion steals in Psycho
  • THE ‘WRONG MAN’ THEME - So central to Hitchcock’s concerns (The 39 Steps, North by Northwest), he used it as a title
  • BATHROOMS - Psycho’s “shower scene” is one of the most famous in cinema. It’s just one example of Hitch’s lavatorial obsession
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