Hitchcock

  F.T.  The better the villain, the better the picture . . . that’s an excellent formula! It’s true that the reason why Notorious, Shadow of a Doubt, and Strangers on a Train were so great is that Claude Rains, Joseph Cotten, and Robert Walker were your three best villains.

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  I. Since Alfred Hitchcock deals solely with the technical aspects of Rope, a brief description of the story is sufficient for our purposes. All of the action takes place on a summer evening in a New York apartment. Two young homosexuals (John Dall and Farley Granger) strangle a college friend just for the thrill of it and conceal his body in a chest in the very room in which his parents and fiancée are expected for a cocktail party. Among the guests is their former college professor (James Stewart). As the party is in progress, their attempt to impress their mentor leads them to disclose bits of truth which he eventually pieces together. Before the evening is over, he will discover the body and turn the two young men over to the police.

  II. Alfred Hitchcock’s description of Rope as a stunt calls for an explanation to those readers who are unfamiliar with shooting techniques. As a rule, a film sequence is divided into shots that last between five to fifteen seconds. A film that runs an hour and a half will average six hundred shots. Occasionally—and this is particularly true of the highly precut Hitchcock pictures—there may be as many as a thousand shots; there were thirteen hundred and sixty shots in The Birds.

  In Rope each shot runs to ten minutes, that is, the entire film roll in the camera magazine, and is referred to as a ten-minute take. In the history of cinema this is the only instance in which an entire film has been shot with no interruption for the different camera setups.

  III. The action of Under Capricorn is set in Sydney, Australia, in 1830. The governor’s nephew, Charles Adare (Michael Wilding), newly arrived from England, is invited to dinner by Sam Flusky (Joseph Cotten), a former convict who is now the wealthy husband of Charles’s cousin, Henrietta (Ingrid Bergman).

  There, he finds himself in a strange household. Henrietta has become an alcoholic. The shrewish housekeeper, Milly (Margaret Leighton), who is secretly in love with her master, terrorizes the young woman. Charles undertakes to restore his cousin’s self-confidence and subsequently falls in love with her.

  At a brilliant ball the jealous husband, inflamed by the housekeeper’s lagolike intrigues, provokes a row in which Adare is wounded. Henrietta then admits to her cousin that she is guilty of the crime for which her husband had been convicted.

  The confession leads Adare to renounce his love, but before leaving the country, he discovers that Milly has been administering slow poison to her mistress and succeeds in exposing her.

  Hitchcock in I Confess (1952).

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  SPECTACULAR COMEBACK VIA “STRANGERS ON A TRAIN” ■ A MONOPOLY ON THE SUSPENSE GENRE ■ THE LITTLE MAN WHO CRAWLED ■ A BITCHY WIFE ■ “I CONFESS” ■ A “BARBARIC SOPHISTICATE” ■ THE SANCTITY OF CONFESSION ■ EXPERIENCE ALONE IS NOT ENOUGH ■ FEAR OF THE POLICE ■ STORY OF A “MENAGE À TROIS”

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  10

  FRANÇOIS TRUFFAUT.  Well, this brings us to 1950, when your situation is anything but brilliant. It’s very much the same as in 1933, when, right after Waltzes from Vienna, your prestige was re-established by The Man Who Knew Too Much. Now again, the consecutive failures of Under Capricorn and Stage Fright will’be followed by a spectacular comeback via Strangers on a Train.

  ALFRED HITCHCOCK.  You might say that I again applied that old “run for cover” rule. For your information, Strangers on a Train wasn’t an assignment, but a novel that I selected myself. I felt this was the right kind of material for me to work with.

  F.T.  I’ve read it; it’s a good novel, but there must have been lots of problems in adapting it to the screen.

  A.H.  There were—and that raises another point. Whenever I collaborate with a writer who, like myself, specializes in mystery, thriller, or suspense, things don’t seem to work out too well.

  F.T.  You’re referring to Raymond Chandler?

  A.H.  Right; our association didn’t work out at all. We’d sit together and I would say, “Why not do it this way?” and he’d answer, “Well, if you can puzzle it out, what do you need me for?” The work he did was no good and I ended up with Czenzi Ormonde, a woman writer who was one of Ben Hecht’s assistants. When I completed the treatment, the head of Warner’s tried to find someone to do the dialogue, and very few writers would touch it. None of them thought it was any good.I

  The beginning of Strangers on a Train—the meeting of Guy and Bruno (Farley Granger and Robert Walker).

  F.T.  I’m not at all surprised; it’s often occurred to me that had I read the story, the chances are I wouldn’t have cared for it. Here is a case where you really have to see the picture. As a matter of fact, I think that the same story made by someone else wouldn’t have been any good at all. Particularly when you consider the many Hitchcock emulators whose attempts at the thriller genre have been disastrous.

  A.H.  It’s been my good fortune to have something of a monopoly on the genre: nobody else seems to take much interest in the rules for that form.

  F.T.  What rules?

  A.H.  I’m talking about the rules of suspense. That’s why I’ve more or less had the field to myself. Selznick claimed I was the only director whom he could trust completely, but when I worked for him, he complained about what he called my “goddamn jigsaw cutting.” I used to shoot the one piece of film in such a way that no one else could put the pieces together properly; the only way they could be edited was to follow exactly what I had in mind in the shooting stages. Selznick comes from the school of film-makers who like to have lots of footage to play around with in the cutting room. Working as I do, you’re sure that no one in the studio is going to take over and ruin your film. That’s the reason I won out in the argument over Suspicion.

  F.T.  One senses that control in your pictures; it’s obvious that each shot has been made in a specific way, from a specific angle, and to run for a specific length of time. The only exceptions, possibly, are courtroom scenes or scenes that require crowds.

  A.H.  That’s inevitable, it can’t be helped. That’s what happened with the tennis match in Strangers on a Train, and it shows the risk in overshooting material. There’s too much footage for you to handle by yourself; you turn it over to the cutter to sort it out, but you never know what’s been left unused. That’s the risk.

  F.T.  One of the best things in Strangers on a Train is the exposition, with the follow shots on feet going one way and then the other. There are also the crisscrossing rails. There’s a sort of symbolic effect in the way they meet and separate, and that’s also true of the direction arrows in I Confess. You often open your pictures on a symbolic note.

  A.H.  The direction arrows exist in Quebec; they use them to indicate one-way streets. The shots of the rails in Strangers on a Train were the logical extension of the motif with the feet. Practically, I couldn’t have done anything else.

  F.T.  Why not?

  A.H.  The camera practically grazed the rails because it couldn’t be raised; you see, I didn’t want to go higher until the feet of Farley Granger and Robert Walker bump together in the railroad car.

  F.T.  That’s what I mean. That accidental collision of the two men’s feet is the point of departure for their whole relationship, and the concept is sustained by deliberately refraining from showing their faces up to that point. In the same light the separating rails suggest the idea of divergent courses—two different ways of life.

  A.H.  Naturally, there is that as well. Isn’t it a fascinating design? One could study it forever.

  F.T.  In several of your pictures, I’ve noticed, you will enhance a surprise situation with an additional twist; in other words—and I’m not thinking only of Psycho—you will use a bit of trickery to create a small suspenseful diversion so that the surprise th
at comes immediately afterward is even more startling.

  A.H.  What do you have in mind?

  F.T.  Well, in Strangers on a Train, Farley Granger agrees to kill Robert Walker’s father, although, in fact, he really intends to warn the old man against his son. So Granger breaks into the house at night; the father’s room is upstairs. Now, if he simply tiptoed up the staircase, the public would try to figure out what’s going to happen next, and they might even guess that upstairs Granger will find Bruno instead of his father. So you dispose of that anticipation by creating a suspenseful diversion in the form of a huge dog in the middle of the staircase. In this way the question becomes: Will the dog let Farley Granger get by without biting him or won’t he? Isn’t that right?

  A.H.  Yes, in that scene we first have a suspense effect, through the threatening dog, and later on we have a surprise effect when the person in the room turns out to be Robert Walker instead of his father. I remember we went to a lot of trouble getting that dog to lick Farley Granger’s hand.

  F.T.  I believe you used a trick shot there. Isn’t the image slowed down?

  A.H.  Yes, I think that’s so.

  F.T.  One of the most remarkable aspects of the picture is the bold manipulation of time, the way in which it’s contracted and dilated. First, there’s Farley Granger’s frantic haste to win his tennis match, and then Robert Walker’s panic when he accidentally drops Granger’s lighter in a manhole. In both these scenes, time is tightly compressed—like a lemon. Then, after Walker gets to the island, you let go, because he can’t proceed with his plan to frame Granger in broad daylight. So when he asks one of the men in the amusement park, “At what time does it get dark around here?” everything is decompressed. Real-life time takes over while he waits for nightfall. That dramatic play with time is really stunning.

  On the other hand, I have some reservations on the final scene, when the carrousel runs amok, though I understand the reason for it. I guess you needed a paroxysm, is that it?

  A.H.  That’s true. After so many colorful parts, it seems to me it would have been poor form not to have, at this point, what musicians refer to as a coda. But my hands still sweat when I think of that scene today. You know, that little man actually crawled under that spinning carrousel. If he’d raised his head by an inch, he’d have been killed. I’ll never do anything like that again.

  F.T.  But when the carrousel breaks . . .

  A.H.  That was a miniature blown up on a big screen. The big difficulty with that scene was that the screen had to be angled differently for each shot. We had to move the projector every time the angle changed because many of the shots of the merry-go-round were low camera setups. We spent a lot of time setting the screen in line with the camera lens. Anyway, for the carrousel breakdown we used a miniature blown up on a big screen and we put live people in front of the screen.

  F.T.  There’s a certain resemblance between the situations of the heroes of Strangers on a Train and A Place in the Sun. I couldn’t help wondering whether the Patricia Highsmith novel was influenced by Theodore Dreiser’s An American Tragedy.

  From left to right: Patricia Hitchcock, Farley Granger, Ruth Roman and Leo G. Canoll.

  Bruno, pretending to strangle a society lady, is troubled by Patricia Hitchcock’s glasses.

  Bruno strangles Guy’s wife.

  He begins to strangle the woman in earnest.

  The murder is reflected in the victim’s glasses.

  A.H.  It’s quite possible. As I see it, the flaws of Strangers on a Train were the ineffectiveness of the two main actors and the weakness of the final script. If the writing of the dialogue had been better, we’d have had stronger characterizations. The great problem with this type of picture, you see, is that your main characters sometimes tend to become mere figures.

  F.T.  Algebraic figures? You’ve just raised what I believe is the key dilemma for all directors: a strong film situation involving dull characters, or else the characters are subtle, but the situation in which they move is a static one. All your movies, I think, are hinged on strong situations, and Strangers on a Train is actually mapped out like a diagram. This degree of stylization is so exciting to the mind and to the eye that it’s fascinating even to a mass audience.

  A.H.  I was quite pleased with the over-all form of the film and with the secondary characters. I particularly liked the woman who was murdered; you know, the bitchy wife who worked in a record shop; Bruno’s mother was good, too—she was just as crazy as her son.

  F.T.  The only flaw, to my mind, is the film’s leading lady, Ruth Roman.

  A.H.  Well, she was Warner Brothers’ leading lady, and I had to take her on because I had no other actors from that company. But I must say that I wasn’t too pleased with Farley Granger; he’s a good actor, but I would have liked to see William Holden in the part because he’s stronger. In this kind of story the stronger the hero, the more effective the situation.

  F.T.  Yet, since Granger was appealing in Rope and not particularly appealing in Strangers on a Train, I assumed this was intentional, that you meant him to be seen as an opportunistic playboy. By contrast, Robert Walker gives a rather poetic portrayal; he’s undoubtedly more attractive. There is a distinct impression that you preferred the villain.

  A.H.  Of course, no doubt about it.

  F.T.  In many of your pictures—and Strangers on a Train is a case in point—there are, aside from coincidences and implausibles, many elements that are arbitrary and unjustified. And yet, in the light of a cinematic logic that is strictly personal, you impose them in such a way that once they’re on the screen, these are the very elements that become the film’s strong points.

  A.H.  The cinematic logic is to follow the rules of suspense. Here we have one of those stories that automatically bring on that old complaint: “But why didn’t he tell the police all about it?” Don’t forget that we’ve clearly established the reasons for which he can’t go to the police.

  F.T.  There can be no argument about that. This picture, just like Shadow of a Doubt, is systematically built around the figure “two.” Here again, both characters might very well have had the same name. Whether it’s Guy or Bruno, it’s obviously a single personality split in two.

  A.H.  That’s right. Though Bruno has killed Guy’s wife, for Guy, it’s just as if he had committed the murder himself. As for Bruno, he’s clearly a psychopath.

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  F.T.  I understand you’re not too happy with your next picture, I Confess. The scenario belongs pretty much to the same family as that of Strangers on a Train. In fact, almost all of your films center on an interchangeable killing, with one character who has committed the’ crime and another who might just as well have been guilty of it. I know that you were rather surprised when the French critics pointed this out to you in 1953, and yet it is a fact that almost all of your films actually tell the same story. I Confess is another variation on the same motif, and I’m curious to know how the original, a rather mediocre play called Nos Deux Consciences, and written by Paul Anthelme in 1902, reached you in the first place.

  A.H.  Louis Verneuil sold it to me.

  F.T.  I suppose he told you the story before you bought the property?

  A.H.  Yes, he did.

  F.T.  Well, he told it to you because he thought it would appeal to you, isn’t that so?

  A.H.  I imagine it is.

  F.T.  Louis Verneuil might have tried to promote one of his own plays or he might have told you about any one of the many others he knows about. What I’m trying to bring out is that the story he happened to single out closely resembles your other films.

  A.H.  What he said was: “I’ve got a story in mind that might interest you.” Most of the material submitted to me is generally all wrong for me. An agent will say, “I’ve got a property that’s ideal for you,” and’generally, it turns out to be a gangster story, something about pro
fessional criminals, or a whodunit, the kind of material I never touch. Anyway, Verneuil came along with this play, and I guess he must have done a good sales job, because I bought it! Now, when I buy a story, that doesn’t mean I’m taking on the theme as well. They tell me the story, and if the subject is suitable and the situation lends itself to what I want, the theme of the film will be worked out later on.

  F.T.  That’s a rather peculiar approach, but since it works, I guess it’s logical. You must have run into some ticklish problems in trying to reconcile the criminal and religious elements in the screenplay.II

  A.H.  As a matter of fact, it was difficult, and the final result was rather heavy-handed. The whole treatment was lacking in humor and subtlety. I don’t mean that the film itself should have been humorous, but my own approach should have been more ironic, as in Psycho—a serious story told with tongue in cheek.

  F.T.  That’s an interesting distinction because it’s generally misunderstood by the critics. When the content of a film is funny, they will go along with you, but when you handle a serious subject in a humorous way, they don’t always see what you’re driving at. The Birds is a case in point: The material is serious but your approach to it is ironic.

  A.H.  As a matter of fact, whenever we’re working out a screenplay, we’ll often say, “Now, wouldn’t this be a funny way to kill him off?”

  F.T.  That’s why, in your films, the potent elements are neither solemn nor offensive. Of course, to enjoy making terrifying films is bound to suggest a form of intellectual sadism, and yet it can also be quite wholesome.III