A.H. Well, I agree with you that many directors are conscious of the over-all atmosphere on the set, whereas they should be concerned only with what’s going to come up on the screen. As you know, I never look into the view finder, but the cameraman knows very well that I don’t want to have any air or space around the actors and that he must follow the sketches exactly as they are designed for each scene. There’s no need to be concerned over the space in front of the camera if you bear in mind that for the final image we can take a pair of scissors to eliminate the unnecessary space.
Another aspect of the same problem is that space should not be wasted, because it can be used for dramatic effect. For instance, in The Birds, when the birds attack the barricaded house and Melanie is cringing back on the sofa, I kept the camera back and used the space to show the nothingness from which she’s shrinking. When I went back to her, I varied that by placing the camera high to convey the impression of the fear that’s rising in her. After that, there was another movement, high up and around her. But the space at the beginning was of key importance to the scene. If I’d started, at the outset, right next to the girl, we’d have the feeling that she was recoiling in front of some danger that she could see but the public could not. And I wanted to establish just the Contrary, to show that there was nothing off screen. Therefore, all of that space had a specific meaning.
Some directors will place their actors in the decor and then they’ll set the camera at a distance, which depends simply on whether the actor happens to be seated, standing, or lying down. That, to me, seems to be pretty woolly thinking. It’s never precise and it certainly doesn’t express anything.
F.T. In other words, to inject realism into a given film frame, a director must allow for a certain amount of unreality in the space immediately surrounding that frame. For instance, the close-up of a kiss between two supposedly standing figures might be obtained by having the two actors kneeling on a kitchen table.
A.H. That’s one way of doing it. And we might even raise that table some nine inches to have it come into the frame. Do you want to show a man standing behind a table? Well, the closer you get to him, the higher you must raise the table if you want to keep it inside the image. Anyhow, many directors overlook these things and they hold their camera too far away to keep that table inside the image. They think that everything on the screen will look just the way it looks on the set. It’s ridiculous!
You’ve raised a very important point here, a point that’s fundamental. The placing of the images on the screen, in terms of what you’re expressing, should never be dealt with in a factual manner. Never! You can get anything you want through the proper use of cinematic techniques, which enable you to work out any image you need. There’s no justification for a short cut and no reason to settle for a compromise between the image you wanted and the image you get. One of the reasons most films aren’t sufficiently rigorous is that so few people in the industry know anything about imagery.
The excitement of this sequence from Rear Window is heightened by Hitchcock’s editing.
F.T. The term “imagery” is particularly appropriate, because what we’re saying is that it isn’t necessary to photograph something violent in order to convey the feeling of violence, but rather to film that which gives the impression of violence.
This is demonstrated in one of the opening scenes of North by Northwest, in which the villains in a drawing room begin to manhandle Cary Grant. If you examine that scene in slow motion, on the small screen of the cutting room, you will see that the villains aren’t doing anything at all to Cary Grant. But when projected on theater screens, that succession of quick frames and the little bobbing movements of the camera create an impression of brutality and violence.
A.H. There’s a much better illustration in Rear Window when the man comes into the room to throw James Stewart out of the window. At first I had filmed the whole thing completely realistically. It was a weak scene; it wasn’t impressive. So I did a close-up of a waving hand, a close-up of Stewart’s face and another one of his legs; then I intercut all of this in proper rhythm and the final effect was just right.
Now let’s take a real-life analogy. If you stand close to a train as it’s speeding through a station, you feel it; it almost knocks you down. But if you look at the same train from a distance of some two miles, you don’t feel anything at all. In the same way, if you’re going to show two men fighting with each other, you’re not going to get very much by simply photographing that fight. More often than not the photographic reality is not realistic. The only way to do it is to get into the fight and make the public feel it. In that way you achieve true realism. F.T. One method of unrealistic shooting to get a realitic effect is to set the decor behind the actors into motion.
A.H. That’s one way to do it, but it isn’t a rule. It would entirely depend upon the movements of the actors. As for myself, I’m quite satisfied to let the pieces of film create the motion. For instance, in Sabotage, when the little boy is in the bus and he’s got the bomb at his side, I cut to that bomb from a different angle every time I showed it. I did that to give the bomb a vitality of its own, to animate it. If I’d shown it constantly from the same angle, the public would have become used to the package: “Oh well, it’s only a package, after all.” But what I was saying was: “Be careful! Watch out!”
F.T. To get back to that train you mentioned a while back, in North by Northwest, there’s a scene in which the action takes place inside the train, but you show the whole of the train from the outside. To do that you didn’t set your camera on the outside, in the fields, but you attached it to the train so that it was entirely dependent on it.
A.H. Planting the camera in the countryside to shoot a passing train would merely give us the viewpoint of a cow watching a train go by. I tried to keep the public inside the train, with the train. Whenever it went into a curve, we took a longshot from one of the train windows. The way we did that was to put three cameras on the rear platform of the Twentieth Century Limited, and we went over the exact journey of the film at the same time of the day. One of our cameras was used for the long shots of the train in the curves, while the two others were used for background footage.
F.T. In your technique everything is subordinated to the dramatic impact; the camera, in fact, accompanies the characters almost like an escort.
A.H. While we’re on the subject of the camera flow and of cutting from one shot to another, I’d like to mention what I regard as a fundamental rule: When a character who has been seated stands up to walk around a room, I will never change the angle or move the camera back. I always start the movement on the close-up, the same size close-up Í used while he was seated.
In most pictures, when two people are seen talking together, you have a close-up on one of them, then a close-up on the other, then you move back and forth again, and suddenly the camera jumps back for a long shot, to show one of the characters rising to walk around. It’s wrong to handle it that way.
F.T. Yes, because that technique precedes the action instead of accompanying it. It allows the public to guess that one of the characters is about to stand up, or whatever. In other words, the camera should never anticipate what’s about to follow.
A.H. Exactly, because that dissipates the emotion and I’m convinced that’s wrong. If a character moves around and you want to retain the emotion on his face, the only way to do that is to travel the close-up.
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F.T. Before talking about Psycho I would like to ask whether you have any theory in respect to the opening scene of your pictures. Some of them start out with an act of violence; others simply indicate the locale.
A.H. It all depends on what the purpose is. The opening of The Birds is an attempt to suggest the normal, complacent, everyday life in San Francisco. Sometimes I simply use a title to indicate that we’re in Phoenix or in San Francisco. It’s too easy, I know, but it’s economical. I’m t
orn between the need for economy and the wish to present a locale, even when it’s a familiar one, with more subtlety. After all, it’s no problem at all to present Paris with the Eiffel Tower in the background, or London with Big Ben on the horizon.
F.T. In pictures that don’t open up with violence, you almost invariably apply the same rule of exposition: From the farthest to the nearest. You show the city, then a building in the city, a room in that building. That’s the way Psycho begins.I
A.H. In the opening of Psycho I wanted to say that we were in Phoenix, and we even spelled out the day and the time, but I only did that to lead up to a very important fact: that it was two-forty-three in the afternoon and this is the only time the poor girl has to go to bed with her lover. It suggests that she’s spent her whole lunch hour with him.
F.T. It’s a nice touch because it establishes at once that this is an illicit affair.
A.H. It also allows the viewer to become a Peeping Tom.
F.T. Jean Douchct, a French film critic, made a witty comment on that scene. He wrote that since John Gavin is stripped to his waist, but Janet Leigh wears a brassière, the scene is only satisfying to one half of the audience.
A.H. In truth, Janet Leigh should not have been wearing a brassière. I can see nothing immoral about that scene and I get no special kick out of it. But the scene would have been more interesting if the girl’s bare breasts had been rubbing against the man’s chest.
F.T. I noticed that throughout the whole picture you tried to throw out red herrings to the viewers, and it occurred to me that the reason for that erotic opening was to mislead them again. The sex angle was raised so that later on the audience would think that Anthony Perkins is merely a voyeur. If I’m not mistaken, out of your fifty works, this is the only film showing a woman in a brassière.
A.H. Well, one of the reasons for which I wanted to do the scene in that way was that the audiences are changing. It seems to me that the straightforward kissing scene would be looked down at by the younger viewers; they’d feel it was silly. I know that they themselves behave as John Gavin and Janet Leigh did. I think that nowadays you have to show them the way they themselves behave most of the time. Besides, I also wanted to give a visual impression of despair and solitude in that scene.
F.T. Yes, it occurred to me that Psycho was oriented toward a new generation of filmgoers. There were many things in that picture that you’d never done in your earlier films.
A.H. Absolutely. In fact, that’s also true in a technical sense for The Birds.
F.T. I’ve read the novel from which Psycho was taken, and one of the things that bothered me is that it cheats. For instance, there are passages like this: “Norman sat down beside his mother and they began a conversation.” Now, since she doesn’t exist, that’s obviously misleading, whereas the film narration is rigorously worked out to eliminate these discrepancies. What was it that attracted you to the novel?
A.H. I think that the thing that appealed to me and made me decide to do the picture was the suddenness of the murder in the shower, coming, as it were, out of the blue. That was about all.
F.T. The killing is pretty much like a rape. I believe the novel was based on a newspaper story.
A.H. It was the story of a man who kept his mother’s body in his house, somewhere in Wisconsin.
F.T. In Psycho there’s a whole arsenal of terror, which you generally avoid: the ghostly house . . .
A.H. The mysterious atmosphere is, to some extent, quite accidental. For instance, the actual locale of the events is in northern California, where that type of house is very common. They’re either called “California Gothic,” or, when they’re particularly awful, they’re called “California gingerbread.” I did not set out to reconstruct an old-fashioned Universal horror-picture atmosphere. I simply wanted to be accurate, and there is no question but that both the house and the motel are authentic reproductions of the real thing. I chose that house and motel because I realized that if I had taken an ordinary low bungalow the effect wouldn’t have been the same. I felt that type of architecture would help the atmosphere of the yarn.
F.T. I must say that the architectural contrast between the vertical house and the horizontal motel is quite pleasing to the eye.
A.H. Definitely, that’s our composition: a vertical block and a horizontal block.
F.T. In that whole picture there isn’t a single character with whom a viewer might identify.
A.H. It wasn’t necessary. Even so, the audience was probably sorry for the poor girl at the time of her death. In fact, the first part of the story was a red herring. That was deliberate, you see, to detract the viewer’s attention in order to heighten the murder. We purposely made that beginning on the long side, with the bit about the theft and her escape, in order to get the audience absorbed with the question of whether she would or would not be caught. Even that business about the forty thousand dollars was milked to the very end so that the public might wonder what’s going to happen to the money.
You know that the public always likes to be one jump ahead of the story; they like to feel they know what’s coming next. So you deliberately play upon this fact to control their thoughts. The more we go into the details of the girl’s journey, the more the audience becomes absorbed in her flight. That’s why so much is made of the motorcycle cop and the change of cars. When Anthony Perkins tells the girl of his life in the motel, and they exchange views, you still play upon the girl’s problem. It seems as if she’s decided to go back to Phoenix and give the money back, and it’s possible that the public anticipates by thinking, “Ah, this young man is influencing her to change her mind.” You turn the viewer in one direction and then in another; you keep him as far as possible from what’s actually going to happen.
In the average production, Janet Leigh would have been given the other role. She would have played the sister who’s investigating. It’s rather unusual to kill the star in the first third of the film. I purposely killed the star so as to make the killing even more unexpected. As a matter of fact, that’s why I insisted that the audiences be kept out of the theaters once the picture had started, because the late-comers would have been waiting to see Janet Leigh after she has disappeared from the screen action. Psycho has a very interesting construction and that game with the audience was fascinating. I was directing the viewers. You might say I was playing them, like an organ.
F.T. I admired that picture enormously, but I felt a letdown during the two scenes with the sheriff.
A.H. The sheriff’s intervention comes under the heading of what we have discussed many times before: “Why don’t they go to the police?” I’ve always replied, “They don’t go to the police because it’s dull.” Here is a perfect example of what happens when they go to the police.
F.T. Still, the action picks up again almost immediately after that. One intriguing aspect is the way the picture makes the viewer constantly switch loyalties. At the beginning he hopes that Janet Leigh won’t be caught. The murder is very shocking, but as soon as Perkins wipes away the traces of the killing, we begin to side with him, to hope that he won’t be found out. Later on, when we learn from the sheriff that Perkins’ mother has been dead for eight years, we again change sides and are against Perkins, but this time, it’s sheer curiosity. The viewer’s emotions are not exactly wholesome.
A.H. This brings us back to the emotions of Peeping Tom audiences. We had some of that in Dial M for Murder.
F.T. That’s right. When Milland was late in phoning his wife and the killer looked as if he might walk out of the apartment without killing Grace Kelly. The audience reaction there was to hope he’d hang on for another few minutes.
A.H. It’s a general rule. Earlier, we talked about the fact that when a burglar goes into a room, all the time he’s going through the drawers, the public is generally anxious for him. When Perkins is looking at the
car sinking in the pond, even though he’s burying a body, when the car stops sinking for a moment, the public is thinking, “I hope it goes all the way down!” It’s a natural instinct.
F.T. But in most of your films the audience reaction is more innocent because they are concerned for a man who is wrongly suspected of a crime. Whereas in Psycho one begins by being scared for a girl who’s a thief, and later on one is scared for a killer, and, finally, when one learns that this killer has a secret, one hopes he will be caught just in order to get the full story!
A.H. I doubt whether the identification is that close.
F.T. It isn’t necessarily identification, but the viewer becomes attached to Perkins because of the care with which he wipes away all the traces of his crime. It’s tantamount to admiring someone for a job well done. I understand that in addition to the main titles, Saul Bass also did some sketches for the picture.
A.H. He did only one scene, but I didn’t use his montage. He was supposed to do the titles, but since he was interested in the picture, I let him lay out the sequence of the detective going up the stairs, just before he is stabbed. One day during the shooting I came down with a temperature, and since I couldn’t come to the studio, I told the cameraman and my assistant that they could use Saul Bass’s drawings. Only the part showing him going up the stairs, before the killing. There was a shot of his hand on the rail, and of feet seen in profile, going up through the bars of the balustrade. When I looked at the rushes of the scene, I found it was no good, and that was an interesting revelation for me, because as that sequence was cut, it wasn’t an innocent person but a sinister man who was going up those stairs. Those cuts would have been perfectly all right if they were showing a killer, but they were in conflict with the whole spirit of the scene.