A.H. I thought so. You see, when a director has been let down by the critics, when he feels that his work has been passed on too lightly, his only recourse is to seek recognition via the public. Of course, if a film-maker thinks solely in box-office terms, he will wind up doing routine stuff, and that’s bad, too. It seems to me that the critics are often responsible for this attitude; they drive a man to make only so-called public-acceptance pictures. Because he can always say to himself, “I don’t give a damn about the critics, my films make money.” There is a famous saying here in Hollywood: “You can’t take a review to the bank!” Some magazines deliberately select critics who don’t care about films, but are able to write about them in a condescending way that will amuse the readers. There’s an American expression; when something’s no good, they say, “It’s for the birds!” So I pretty much knew what to expect when The Birds opened.
F.T. Napoleon claimed that the best defense was attack. Wouldn’t it have been possible to steal their thunder through some slogan in the advance promotion?
A.H. It’s not worth the effort. I was in London during the Second World War when a picture by John Van Druten opened. It was called Old Acquaintance, and it co-starred Bette Davis and Claude Rains. The critics of two London Sunday papers both used the same tag line at the end of their reviews. What do you think it was? “Auld acquaintances should be forgot.” In other words, even if the picture had been good, they just couldn’t resist that line.
F.T. Well, in France they do the same whenever a film title ends with the word “nuit.” Les Portes de la Nuit is automatically labeled Les Portes de l’Ennui, and Marguerite de la Nuit is invariably referred to as Marguerite de l’Ennui. Even if the picture is fascinating, there are bound to be puns around the word “ennui.” Incidentally, one play on words I rather like is your own saying: “Some films are slices of life. Mine are slices of cake.”
A.H. I don’t want to film a “slice of life” because people can get that at home, in the street, or even in front of the movie theater. They don’t have to pay money to see a slice of life. And I avoid out-and-out fantasy because people should be able to identify with the characters. Making a film means, first of all, to tell a story. That story can be an improbable one, but it should never be banal. It must be dramatic and human. What is drama, after all, but life with the dull bits cut out. The next factor is the technique of film-making, and in this connection I am against virtuosity for its own sake. Technique should enrich the action. One doesn’t set the camera at a certain angle just because the cameraman happens to be enthusiastic about that spot. The only thing that matters is whether the installation of the camera at a given angle is going to give the scene its maximum impact. The beauty of image and movement, the rhythm and the effects—everything must be subordinated to the purpose.
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I. The same story was filmed by Carlo-Rim, in 1951, as the sketch on gluttony in the picture Seven Capital Sins.
II. Fritz Lang’s The Spy, made in 1928, also showed a book breaking the impact of a bullet, but in the Lang picture the life-saving book was not the Bible.
Hitchcock appears as a press photographer outside the court in Young and Innocent.
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“THE SECRET AGENT” ■ YOU DON’T ALWAYS NEED A HAPPY ENDING ■ WHAT DO THEY HAVE IN SWITZERLAND? ■ “SABOTAGE” ■ THE CHILD AND THE BOMB ■ AN EXAMPLE OF SUSPENSE ■ “THE LADY VANISHES” ■ THE PLAUSIBLES ■ A WIRE FROM DAVID O. SELZNICK ■ THE LAST BRITISI I FILM: “JAMAICA INN” ■ SOME CONCLUSIONS ABOUT THE BRITISH PERIOD
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5
FRANÇOIS TRUFFAUT. In 1936 you made The Secret Agent. John Gielgud played Ashenden, an intelligence agent who is assigned to go to Switzerland to kill a spy and by mistake kills an innocent tourist instead. Robert Young played the real spy, who is accidentally killed at the end of the picture when a train blows up. I only saw the picture once and my recollection of it is not too clear. Wasn’t it taken from a Somerset Maugham novel?
ALFRED HITCHCOCK. It’s taken from two of Maugham’s Ashenden adventure stories and also from a play by Campbell Dixon that was based on the series. The spy plot is a combination of “The Traitor” and “The Hairless Mexican,” and we took the love story from the play. There were lots of ideas in the picture, but it didn’t really succeed and I think I know why. In an adventure drama your central figure must have a purpose. That’s vital for the progression of the film, and it’s also a key factor in audience participation. The public must be rooting for the character; they should almost be helping him to achieve his goal. John Gielgud, the hero of The Secret Agent, has an assignment, but the job is distasteful and he is reluctant to do it.
F.T. You mean his assignment to kill a man.
A.H. That’s right. Therefore, because it’s a negative purpose, the film is static—it doesn’t move forward. Another thing that’s wrong with the picture is that there was too much irony, twists of fate. You may remember that when the hero finally agrees to do the killing, he botches the job by killing the wrong man. From the public’s point of view, that was bad.
Percy Marmont’s dog warns of the death of his master.
Filming the chase in the chocolate factory.
Madeleine Carroll, John Gielgud, Robert Young (dead) and Peter Lorre, after the train wreek at the end of the Secert Agent (1936).
F.T. I remember. And later on the villain dies accidentally, but before dying, he shoots the hero. Here’s one Hitchcock picture that doesn’t have a happy ending.I
A.H. In some cases the happy ending is unnecessary. If you manage to get a solid grip on the audience, they will follow your reasoning. Providing there is sufficient entertainment in the body of the film, people will accept an unhappy ending.
One of the interesting aspects of the picture is that the action takes place in Switzerland. I said to myself, “What do they have in Switzerland?” They have milk chocolate, they have the Alps, they have village dances, and they have lakes.
All of these national ingredients were woven into the picture.
F.T. That’s why the spies have their headquarters in a chocolate factory! You apply the same principle in To Catch a Thief. The action is played out against the background of the Carlton Hotel at Cannes and the flower market in Nice, and the chase sequence is shot on the Grande Corniche.
A.H. I use this approach whenever possible, and it doesn’t merely apply to the background. Local topographical features can be used dramatically as well. We use lakes for drownings and the Alps to have our characters fall into crevasses.
F.T. I’ve always enjoyed the way you make dramatic use of your protagonists’ professions. In The Man Who Knew Too Much, James Stewart plays a doctor, and he behaves like one throughout the whole picture. His line of work is deliberately blended into the action. For instance, before telling Doris Day that their child has been kidnaped, he makes her take a sedative. It’s a nice detail. But let’s get back to The Secret Agent.
In their book about you, Claude Chabrol and Eric Rohmer point out an innovation in this picture that reappears time and again in your later work: the villain is attractive, distinguished, has good manners; he’s actually very appealing.
A.H. Certainly. The introduction of the villain is always something of a problem, and this is especially true in melodrama because, even by definition, melodrama is passé and it has to be brought up to date. That’s why in North by Northwest, where the villainous James Mason is competing with Cary Grant for the affection of Eva Marie Saint, I wanted him to be smooth and distinguished. The difficulty was how we could make him seem threatening at the same time. So what we did was to split this evil character into three people: James Mason, who is attractive and suave; his sinister-looking secretary; and the third spy, who is crude and brutal.
F.T. It’s all the more ingenious in that it justifies the romantic rivalry between Mason and Grant. It also adds the element of homosex
ual rivalry, with the male secretary clearly jealous of Eva Marie Saint.
Right after The Secret Agent, in that same year, in fact, you made Sabotage. It’s based on a Joseph Conrad novel that happens to be entitled The Secret Agent. The coincidence often leads to confusion in your screen credits.
A.H. Well, in America it was called The Woman Alone. Have you seen the picture?
F.T. I saw it a little while ago. I must admit that in the light of its reputation, I found it rather disappointing.
However, the exposition is first rate. First, there is a close-up of a dictionary definition of the word “sabotage,” then a close-up of an electric light bulb. Next, there’s a long shot of a lighted street; then we’re back to the light bulb, which suddenly goes out. In the darkened powerhouse someone discovering traces of sand says, “Sabotage!” Back to the street, where a man is peddling lucifer matches. As two nuns pass by, there is the sound of demoniacal laughter. And now, you introduce Oscar Homolka, who is on his way home. In the house he goes over to the sink to wash his hands, and as he rubs them together, a little sand can be seen drifting to the bottom of the washbasin.II The thing that’s basically wrong with the whole picture is the characterization of the detective.
A.H. Well, Robert Donat was supposed to play the detective, but Alexander Korda refused to release him. The actor we got wasn’t suitable, and I was forced to rewrite the dialogue during the shooting. But aside from that, I made a serious mistake in having the little boy carry the bomb. A character who unknowingly carries a bomb around as if it were an ordinary package is bound to work up great suspense in the audience. The boy was involved in a situation that got him too much sympathy from the audience, so that when the bomb exploded and he was killed, the public was resentful. The way to handle it would have been for Homolka to kill the boy deliberately, but without showing that on the screen, and then for the wife to avenge her young brother by killing Homolka.
F.T. Even that solution, I think, might have been resented by the audience. Making a child die in a picture is a rather ticklish matter; it comes close to an abuse of cinematic power.
A.H. I agree with that; it was a grave error on my part.
F.T. At the beginning of the picture you show how a child behaves when he is by himself; he does all sorts of things that are normally forbidden, slyly tasting the food, accidentally breaking a plate and hiding the pieces in a drawer. And by virtue of a dramatic law that favors the adolescent, all of these things endear the boy to us. The same thing is true for the personage of Verloc, but for another reason—probably because Oscar Homolka is plump. Generally speaking, chubby people are regarded as being kindly and rather lovable. And so when the detective begins to flirt with Verloc’s wife, the situation is rather distasteful. The audience is for Verloc and against the detective!
A.H. I agree with you, but that was really a matter of casting. John Loder, who played the detective, simply wasn’t the right man for the part.
John Loder and Oscar Homolka in Sabotage (1936).
F.T. Perhaps, but there’s something else I object to here, as well as in some of your other pictures. Wherever you have a romantic relationship between the heroine and the policeman, I find the situation rather hard to swallow—it’s contrived. And it’s occurred to me that the reason these situations somehow strike a false note is that you are not particularly fond of the police yourself.
A.H. I’m not against the police; I’m just afraid of them.
F.T. Aren’t we all? Anyway, the fact is that in your pictures the cops always seem to turn up after the event; they never get things straight, and the hero, or hero-villain as the case may be, is always well ahead of them. So that even when the cop is supposed to be “the good guy,” or rather, the romantic hero, he’s not always as convincing as he should be, perhaps because of your own halfhearted approach.
One instance is the policeman in Shadow of a Doubt. Whereas the script requires him to compete, in terms of stature, with Uncle Charlie, he strikes one as being such an ordinary sort of fellow that it somehow spoils the ending for me.
A.H. I see what you’re getting at, but I assure you that it’s again a matter of casting. This is true of Sabotage as well as Shadow of a Doubt. In both pictures the roles of the detectives were not sufficiently strong to attract important actors. The real problem is that the names of the actors cast in these parts are listed after the main title.
F.T. What you’re saying is that the secondary characters are more difficult to cast because their parts often call for more acting skill than the starring roles.
The scene immediately before the murder in Sabotage. To follow the cutting of the murder scene, see here.
A.H. Exactly.
F.T. The best scene in Sabotage is during the meal, toward the ending, when, following her brother’s death, Sylvia Sidney decides to kill Oscar Homolka. Before this there are several visual incidents that evoke the dead child. Then, as she stabs her husband, she utters a little cry of pain, so that the scene almost suggests suicide rather than murder. It’s as if Homolka were allowing himself to be killed by Sylvia Sidney. Prosper Mérimée staged Carmen’s death on the same dramatic principle, with the victim thrusting her body forward to meet the slayer’s fatal stab.
A.H. We had a problem there. You see, to maintain the public’s sympathy for Sylvia Sidney, her husband’s death had to be accidental. And to bring this off, it was absolutely essential that the audience identify itself with Sylvia Sidney. Here, we weren’t trying to frighten anyone; we had to make the viewer feel like killing a man, and that’s a good deal tougher.
This is the way I handled it. When Sylvia Sidney brings the vegetable platter to the table, the knife acts as a magnet; it’s almost as if her hand, against her will, is compelled to grab it. The camera frames her hand, then her eyes, moving back and forth between the two until suddenly her look makes it clear that she’s become aware of the potential meaning of that knife. At that moment the camera moves back to Verloc, absently chewing his food as on any other day. Then we pan back to the hand and the knife.
The wrong way to go about this scene would have been to have the heroine convey her inner feelings to the audience by her facial expression. I’m against that. In real life, people’s faces don’t reveal what they think or feel. As a film director I must try to convey this woman’s frame of mind to the audience by purely cinematic means.
When the camera is on Verloc, it pans to the knife and then back again to his face. And we realize that he, too, has seen the knife and has suddenly become aware of what it may mean to him. Now the suspense between the two protagonists has been established, and the knife lies there, between them.
Thanks to the camera, the public is now actually living the scene, and if that camera should suddenly become distant and objective, the tension that’s been created would be destroyed. Verloc stands up and walks around the table, moving straight toward the camera, so that the spectator in the theater gets the feeling that he must recoil to make way for him. Instinctively, the viewer should be pushing back slightly in his seat to allow Verloc to pass by. Afterward, the camera glides back toward Sylvia Sidney, and then it focuses once more on the central object, that knife. And the scene culminates, as you know, with the killing.
F.T. The entire scene is utterly convincing! Someone else might have ruined the whole thing merely by changing the angles when Verloc rises to his feet, and placing the camera at the back of the room for a full shot before going back to the close shot. The slightest mistake, like the sharp pulling back of the camera, would dissipate all of that tension.
A.H. That would ruin the whole scene. Our primary function is to create an emotion and our second job is to sustain that emotion.
When a film has been properly staged, it isn’t necessary to rely upon the player’s virtuosity or personality for tension and dramatic effects. In my opinion, the chief requisite for an actor is the ability t
o do nothing well, which is by no means as easy as it sounds. He should be willing to be utilized and wholly integrated into the picture by the director and the camera. He must allow the camera to determine the proper emphasis and the most effective dramatic highlights.
F.T. This neutrality you expect from your actors is an interesting concept. The point is clearly made in some of your more recent pictures, like Rear Window or Vertigo. In both films James Stewart isn’t required to emote; he simply looks—three or four hundred times—and then you show the viewer what he’s looking at. That’s all. By the way, were you satisfied with Sylvia Sidney?
A.H. Not entirely. Although I’ve just told you that the screen player should not emote, I must admit that I found it rather difficult to get any shading into Sylvia Sidney’s face, yet on the other hand she had nice understatement.
F.T. I think she’s quite beautiful. Still—and it isn’t kind to say this about a woman—she looks a little like Peter Lorre, perhaps because of her eyes. What’s your feeling on the whole about Sabotage?
A.H. I would say that it’s somewhat sabotaged! Aside from a few scenes, including those we’ve been talking about, it was a little messy. No clean lines about it. The picture after that was The Girl Was Young.
F.T. You mean Young and Innocent?
A.H. In America it was released as The Girl Was Young. It was an attempt to do a chase story with very young people involved. The point of view is that of a young girl who is bewildered when she becomes involved in murder with the police and all the rest. One of the many ways in which we used youth in this picture was to build up a suspense episode around a children’s party.