The house of the farmer who’s killed by the birds is an exact replica of an existing farm up there: the same entrance, the same halls, the same rooms, the same kitchen. Even the scenery of the mountain that is shown outside the window of the corridor is completely accurate. The house that’s used at the end of North by North west is the miniature of a house by Frank Lloyd Wright that’s shown from a distance. We built part of it for the scene in which Cary Grant circles around it.
F.T. I’d like to talk about that long sequence with Cary Grant in the cornfields which starts long before the plane appears overhead. The scene is completely silent for some seven minutes; it’s a real tour de force. In The Man Who Knew Too Much there is a ten-minute scene showing the concert at Albert Hall with no dialogue, but that scene is sustained by the cantata music and by the anticipation of an incident we’re expecting. I believe the old way of handling this sort of thing was to accelerate the montage by using shorter and shorter cuts, whereas in North by Northwest all of the shots are of equal duration.
A.H. Here you’re not dealing with time but with space. The length of the shots was to indicate the various distances that a man had to run for cover and, more than that, to show that there was no cover to run to. This kind of scene can’t be wholly subjective because it would go by in a flash. It’s necessary to show the approaching plane, even before Cary Grant spots it, because if the shot is too fast, the plane is in and out of the frame too quickly for the viewer to realize what’s happening. We have the same thing in The Birds when Tippi Hedren is attacked in the boat. If the gulls are made to fly in and out of the picture in a flash, the audience might think it’s just a piece of paper that flew into her face. By doing that scene subjectively, you show the girl in the boat, you see her watching the dockside, and suddenly something hits her head. But that’s still too fast. So you have to break the rule of the point of view. You deliberately abandon the subjective angle and go to an objective viewpoint, by showing the gull before it strikes, so that the audience might be fully aware of what is happening. And we apply that same rule in North by Northwest, so as to prepare the public for the threat of the plane dive.
F.T. I believe the accelerated tempo is used in many pictures to get around a technical difficulty or to patch things together in the cutting room. Frequently, when the director hasn’t shot sufficient footage, the editor makes do by using the outtakes of various shots and editing them as short takes, but it’s never really satisfactory. They often use that technique, for instance, to show someone being run over by a car.
A.H. You mean that everything happens too quickly.
F.T. In most pictures, yes.
A.H. I had a car accident, as the basis for a trial, in one of my recent television shows. What I did was to use five shots of people witnessing the incident before I showed the accident itself. Or rather, I showed five people as they heard the sound of it. Then I filmed the end of the accident, just as the man hits the ground after his motorcycle has turned over and the offending car is speeding away. These are moments when you have to stop time, to stretch it out.
F.T. I see. Now, let’s go back to the scene in the cornfield. The most appealing aspect of that sequence with the plane is that it’s totally gratuitous—it’s a scene that’s been drained of all plausibility or even significance. Cinema, approached in this way, becomes a truly abstract art, like music. And here it’s precisely that gratuity, which you’re often criticized for, that gives the scene all of its interest and strength. It’s deliberately emphasized by the dialogue, when the farmer, who’s about to get into the bus, points to the oncoming plane and says to Cary Grant, “Look, here comes a crop-dusting plane.” And then he adds, “That’s funny, there are no crops to be dusted!” And he’s right, of course; that’s the whole point: there’s nothing to be sprayed! How can anyone object to gratuity when it’s so clearly deliberate—it’s planned incongruity? It’s obvious that the fantasy of the absurd is a key ingredient of your film-making formula.
A.H. The fact is I practice absurdity quite religiously!
F.T. Since that scene doesn’t serve to move the action forward, it’s the kind of concept that would simply never occur to a screenwriter; only a director could dream up an idea like that!
A.H. I’ll tell you how the idea came about. I found I was faced with the old cliché situation: the man who is put on the spot, probably to be shot. Now, how is this usually done? A dark night at a narrow intersection of the city. The waiting victim standing in a pool of light under the street lamp. The cobbles are “washed with the recent rains.” A close-up of a black cat slinking along against the wall of a house. A shot of a window, with a furtive face pulling back the curtain to look out. The slow approach of a black limousine, et cetera, et cetera. Now, what was the antithesis of a scene like this? No darkness, no pool of light, no mysterious figures in windows. Just nothing. Just bright sunshine and a blank, open countryside with barely a house or tree in which any lurking menaces could hide.
You’ll remember my theory about using chocolate in Switzerland and windmills in Holland. Well, in that spirit, as well as because of my feeling for free fantasy, I thought up a scene for North by Northwest, but we never actually made it. It occurred to me that we were moving in a northwesterly direction from New York, and one of the stops on the way was Detroit, where they make Ford automobiles. Have you ever seen an assembly line?
F.T. No, I never have.
A.H. They’re absolutely fantastic. Anyway, I wanted to have a long dialogue scene between Cary Grant and one of the factory workers as they walk along the assembly line. They might, for instance, be talking about one of the foremen. Behind them a car is being assembled, piece by piece. Finally, the car they’ve seen being put together from a simple nut and bolt is complete, with gas and oil, and all ready to drive off the line. The two men look at it and say, “Isn’t it wonderful!” Then they open the door to the car and out drops a corpse!
F.T. That’s a great idea!
A.H. Where has the body come from? Not from the car, obviously, since they’ve seen it start at zero! The corpse falls out of nowhere, you see! And the body might be that of the foreman the two fellows had been discussing.
F.T. That’s a perfect example of absolute nothingness! Why did you drop the idea? Is it because it would have made the scene too long?
A.H. It wasn’t a question of time. The real problem was that we couldn’t integrate the idea into the story. Even a gratuitous scene must have some justification for being there, you know!
* * *
I. Scottie Ferguson (James Stewart), who, due to acrophobia (fear of heights), has resigned from the San Francisco police force, is asked by Gavin Elster (Tom Helmore), a former friend, to shadow his wife. Madeleine (Kim Novak), whom he describes as a suicidal neurotic.
The former detective gradually falls deeply in love with the woman he is trailing. He saves her life when she attempts to drown herself but, because of his phobia, is unable to prevent her death when, some time later, she throws herself from the top of a church steeple. Overwhelmed by guilt feelings, Scottie has a nervous breakdown. With the help of an old girl friend, Midge (Barbara Bel Geddes), he returns to a normal life.
One day, on the street, he encounters the living image of his dead love, who claims she is Judy Barton and maintains she has never seen him, or heard of Madeleine. He is attracted to the girl but puzzled by the uncanny resemblance. The truth is that Judy is Madeleine, who, at the time of their former meeting, was not Elster’s wife but his mistress. Her supposed death was part of a carefully planned hoax to get rid of the real wife, with the two accomplices staging the killing in such a way that the helpless detective would swear he has witnessed Mrs. Elster’s suicide.
When Scottie finally becomes suspicious, in an attempt to make Judy confess, he takes her back to the tower and forces himself to accompany her to the top, only to see the terrified young woman acciden
tally trip and this time really fall to her death.
II. Here, then, is the broad outline, rather than the synopsis, of North by Northwest. The hero of the story is an imaginary agent created by a U.S. intelligence agency. Though he doesn’t exist, he has been given an identity via the name Kaplan, a suite in a luxurious New York hotel, and a set of fine clothes. When an enemy espionage group mistakenly identifies advertising executive Cary Grant as Kaplan, he becomes a target for pursuit and is trapped in a web of circumstances so incredible that he cannot turn to the police. The harrowing nightmare is compounded by his perplexity over the confusing behavior of Eva Marie Saint, who works with the spies. After a series of adventures alternating between the ludicrous and the terrifying, the spies are exposed and the mystery is cleared up. Eva Marie Saint turns out to be an undercover agent for the U.S., and the picture winds up on a romantic note for the hero and the lovely adventuress.
* * *
IDEAS IN THE MIDDLE OF THE NIGI IT ■ THE LONGEST KISS IN SCREEN HISTORY ■ A CASE OF PURE EXHIBITIONISM ■ NEVER WASTE SPACE ■ SCREEN IMAGERY IS MAKE-BELIEVE ■ “PSYCHO” ■ JANET LEIGH’S BRASSIèRE ■ RED HERRINGS ■ DIRECTING THE AUDIENCE ■ HOW ARBOGAST WAS KILLED ■ A SHOWER’STABBING ■ STUFFED BIRDS ■ HOW TO GET MASS EMOTIONS ■ “PSYCHO”: A FILM-MAKERS FILM
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13
FRANÇOIS TRUFFAUT. Mr. Hitchcock, this morning you mentioned that you had had a bad night and indicated that you were probably disturbed by all of the memories that our talks have been stirring up these past several days. In the course of our conversations we’ve gone into the dreamlike quality of many of your films, among them Notorious, Vertigo, and Psvcho. I’d like to ask whether you dream a lot.
ALFRED HITCHCOCK. Not too much . . . sometimes . . . and my dreams are very reasonable.
In one of my dreams I was standing on Sunset Boulevard, where the trees are, and I was waiting for a Yellow Cab to take me to lunch. But no Yellow Cab came by; all the automobiles that drove by me were of 1916 vintage. And I said to myself, “It’s no good standing here waiting for a Yellow Cab because this is a 1916 dream!” So I walked to lunch instead.
F.T. Did you really dream this, or is it a joke?
A.H. No, it’s not a gag; I really had a dream like that!
F.T. It’s almost a period dream! But would you say that dreams have a bearing on your work?
A.H. Daydreams, probably.
F.T. It may be an expression of the unconscious, and that takes us back once more to fairy tales. By depicting the isolated man who’s surrounded by all sorts of hostile elements, and perhaps without even meaning to, you enter the realm of the dream world, which is also a world of solitude and of danger.
A.H. That’s probably me, within myself.
F.T. It must be, because the logic of your pictures, which is sometimes decried by the critics, is rather like the logic of dreams. Strangers on a Train and North by Northwest, for instance, are made up of a series of strange forms that follow the pattern of a nightmare.
A.H. This may be due to the fact that I’m never satisfied with the ordinary. I’m ill at ease with it.
F.T. That’s very evident. A Hitchcock picture that didn’t involve death or the abnormal is practically inconceivable. I believe you film emotions you feel very deeply—fear, for instance.
A.H. Absolutely, I’m full of fears and I do my best to avoid difficulties and any kind of complications. I like everything around me to be clear as crystal and completely calm. I don’t want clouds overhead. I get a feeling of inner peace from a well-organized desk. When I take a bath, I put everything neatly back in place. You wouldn’t even know I’d been in the bathroom. My passion for orderliness goes hand in hand with a strong revulsion toward complications.
F.T. That accounts for the way you protect yourself. Any eventual problem of direction is resolved beforehand by your minute predesigned sketches that lessen the risks and prevent trouble later on. Jacques Becker used to say, “Alfred Hitchcock is undoubtedly the director who gets the least surprises when he looks at the rushes.”
A.H. That’s right. I’ve always dreamed of the day I wouldn’t have to see the rushes at all! And since we’re back to dreams, I’d like to digress a moment to tell you a little story.
There was a movie writer who always seemed to have his best ideas in the middle of the night, and when he woke up in the morning, he never remembered them. So one day the man had a brilliant idea. He said to himself, “I’ll put a paper and pencil beside my bed, and when I get the idea, I’ll write it down.” So he went to bed and, sure enough, in the middle of the night he awoke with a terrific idea. He wrote it down and went back to sleep. When he awoke the next morning, he’d forgotten the whole thing, but all of a sudden, as he was shaving, he thought to himself, “Oh God, I had a terrific idea again last night, and now I’ve forgotten it. But wait, I had my paper and pencil; that’s right, I wrote it down!” So he rushed into the bedroom and picked up the note and read what he’d written: “Boy meets girl!”
F.T. That is funny.
A.H. There’s some truth to the story, you see, because you have what seems to be a really great idea in the middle of the night, but when you think it over in the cold light of dawn, it’s pretty awful!
F.T. I see we’re not getting anywhere with this discussion on the impact of dreams on your work. At any rate, you don’t seem to be too interested in this angle.
A.H. One thing for sure: I never have any erotic dreams!
F.T. And yet love and even eroticism play important roles in your work. We haven’t talked about that yet. After Notorious you were regarded not only as the master of suspense, but also as an expert on physical love on the screen.
A.H. I suppose there is a physical aspect to the love scenes of Notorious. You’re probably thinking of the kissing scene between Ingrid Bergman and Cary Grant.
F.T. As I remember it, the publicity blurbs described it as “the longest kiss in screen history.”
A.H. As a matter of fact, the actors hated doing it. They felt terribly uncomfortable at the way in which they had to cling to each other. I said, “I don’t care how you feel; the only thing that matters is the way it’s going to look on the screen.”
F.T. I imagine the reader will want to know why these two professionals were so ill at ease during this scene. To be specific, there was a close-up on their two faces together as they moved across the whole set. The problem for them was how to walk across, glued to each other in that way, while the only thing that concerned you was to show their two faces together on the screen.
A.H. Exactly. I conceived that scene in terms of the participants’ desire not to interrupt the romantic moment. It was essential not to break up the mood, the dramatic atmosphere. Had they broken apart, all of the emotion would have been dissipated. And, of course, they had to be in action; they had to go over to the phone that was ringing and keep on embracing throughout the whole call and then they had to get over to the door. I felt it was indispensable that they should not separate, and I also felt that the public, represented by the camera, was the third party to this embrace. The public was being given the great privilege of embracing Cary Grant and Ingrid Bergman together. It was a kind of temporary ménage à trois.
The idea not to break up that romantic moment was inspired by the memory of something I witnessed in France several years earlier. I was on the train going from Boulogne to Paris and we were moving slowly through the small town of Etaples. It was on a Sunday afternoon. As we were passing a large, red brick factory, I saw a young couple against the wall. The boy was urinating against the wall and the girl never let go of his arm. She’d look down at what he was doing, then look at the scenery around them, then back again at the boy. I felt this was true love at work.
F.T. Ideally, two lovers should never separate.
A.H. Quite. It was the memory of tha
t incident that gave me an exact idea of the effect I was after with the kissing scene in Notorious.
F.T. Your mention of the actors’ irritation when they don’t understand what the director is aiming at raises an interesting point. Many directors, I think, will shoot a scene within the context of the whole setting rather than solely in the context of that frame, which ultimately is what appears on the screen. I often think of that, especially when I look at your pictures, which makes me realize that great cinema, pure cinema, can stem from an establishing shot that may seem completely absurd to the cast as well as to the crew.
A.H. Absolutely. For instance . . .
F.T. The long kissing scene in Notorious is one illustration; another is the embrace between Cary Grant and Eva Marie Saint in the train coach in North by Northwest. Their bodies glide along the panel, making two complete turns as they kiss each other. On the screen it’s absolutely perfect, yet it must have seemed completely illogical during the shooting.
A.H. Yes, they rotate against the wall. There, again, we applied the same rule of not separating the couple. There’s just so much one can do with a love scene. Something I wish I could work out is a love scene with two people on each side of the room. It’s impossible, I suppose, because the only way to suggest love would be to have them exposing themselves to each other, with the man opening his fly and the girl lifting her skirt, and the dialogue in counterpoint. Something like: “What are we going to have for supper tonight?” But I suppose that would come under the heading of out-and-out exhibitionism. Anyway, we used that counterpoint dialogue in Notorious, where they talk about a chicken dinner and who is going to wash the dishes, while they’re kissing.
F.T. Can we go back a little? I think that I interrupted you just as you were about to say something about the realism of the frame and the mood on the set.