Original subtitles

Good evening, friends.

Would you all please examine the tops of your television sets and see if one of

you doesn't find a goldfish bowl with a crack in it?

Thank you.

Try and get your fingers in there.

Fight hard to do it. And then the fingers get weaker and weaker as that

tightens and tightens and the fingers go away.

Same time as you thresh your head backwards and forwards.

That's a whole action.

Let's start, Mr. Hitchcock, by discussing this whole business of

audiences. Do you find that audiences are...

are frightened by different things now from the things that frightened them

you started, what, 30 years ago, 35 years ago, making films? No, I wouldn't

so, because after all, they were frightened as children. You have to

that it's all based on Red Riding Hood, you see.

Nothing has changed since Red Riding Hood.

So what they're frightened of today are exactly the same things they were

frightened of yesterday.

You've nothing to stay for.

You've nothing to live for, really, have you?

Torture the heroine, Hitchcock would often say.

A simple piece of advice that goes back to the earliest days of cinema.

Why don't you?

You all right? All well.

Making us all very happy once more.

Excuse me. I want to go to bed.

Pain again, darling?

Sorry.

May I help you, my lady?

Some hot water, maybe?

I think I'll take the shortcut.

Johnny!

Johnny!

Johnny!

François Truffaut, the film director who most admired Hitchcock...

said that his murders were filmed like love scenes and his love scenes like

murders. Slowly.

And slowly.

Let the hands drop.

Eyes begin to stare.

Let the eyes stare.

Open, open.

Open.

I'll cut it.

There is only one master of suspense.

From the American Film Institute, Hitch.

With our great respect.

In 1979, the American Film Institute paid tribute to Alfred Hitchcock with

Life Achievement Award.

He was 80 years old. He was to die a year later.

He made 53 films in all. He'd worked in the movies for more than half a century,

a career that spanned the whole history of cinema.

Before he came to Hollywood in 1939, he'd already directed 24 films in

His father, William Hitchcock, ran a greengrocer's shop in the east end of

London. Alfred was brought up as a strict Roman Catholic, sent to a Jesuit

school where he claims he learned his first lessons in suspense.

At college, the method of punishment was rather a

dramatic thing. I felt that if one had not done one's

prep...

The form master would say, go for three.

Well, going for three, that was a sentence.

And it was a sentence as though it were spoken by a judge.

And it would be, the sentence then would be carried out by another element,

which would mean a special priest in a special room with the help of a

strop. And the awful part about this thing to, say, a little boy of ten was

that having been sentenced, it was up to him whenever he should

take it.

He could

take it at the first morning

break.

lunchtime, mid -afternoon or the end of the day.

And always it was deferred until the end of the day.

a grave error in having a bomb from which I'd extracted a great deal of

suspense.

And I had the thing go off, which I should never have done, because they

the relief from their suspense.

Clock going, the time for the bomb to go off is such a time, and I drew this

thing out and attenuated the whole business.

then somebody should say, oh, my goodness, look, there's a bomb.

Pick it up, throw it out the window. Bang!

But everybody's relieved.

I made the mistake. I let the bomb go off and kill something.

Bad technique.

There were no such mistakes in the classic of his English period, The 39

with Robert Donat.

Hitchcock plays games with the form of the adventure thriller.

and with the audience's expectations.

Darling, how lovely to see you.

Don't mind having a free meal in there.

I was desperate. I'm terribly sorry. I had to do it. Look here, my name's

They're after me. I swear I'm innocent. You've got to help me. I've got to keep

free for the next few days.

Well, you should have been passing in the last few minutes.

This is the man you want, I think.

When we first just know... Wait here and tell me his name is Hanny.

Is your name Hanny? No.

Are you coming in, sir?

Are they right along?

An uncommonly unattractive young man was how Hitchcock described himself in his

early 20s.

He had left school at 14, drifted into various office jobs he didn't like,

including working in an engineering firm.

He went to evening classes at the University of London, read a lot, was

passionate about the music hall and the cinema.

He joined the newly formed Film Society, which played for the first time foreign

films to small groups of enthusiasts.

At the age of 20, he got a job in an American film company based in London,

famous players Lasky in Islington. It later became Paramount.

He began by designing title cards for the silent movies.

One day he heard that a young British producer, Michael Balkan, had bought the

rights to a West End play but didn't have a writer to adapt it for the

I said, I'll write it.

So they said, well, what do you know about writing? So I said, well, I've

in the editorial department for...

couple of years at Paramount and that gave me a contact with the writers so I

tried my own hand at writing the script and here is a sample so they looked at

it and I got the job and then my friend who was going to be the art director on

the picture he said he couldn't come he had another job so what are we going to

do for an art director I said I'll do the art direction and I said all I need

a draftsman so I did so that's how I started in feature production.

The film, set partly in Paris and partly in England, was called Woman to Woman.

It was a big success, and it starred Clive Brook.

Thanks to Michael Balkan, Hitchcock began directing his own films.

In 1927, he made The Ring, a boxing story which he'd scripted in two weeks.

Set in his own east end of London, it astonished audiences and critics with

powerful imagery and realistic atmosphere.

By 1928, Hitchcock was regarded as one of the outstanding directors of the

silent era, and in that year he began to shoot Blackmail.

In the opening sequence, Hitchcock establishes a day in the life of a young

London detective, played by John Longdon.

He'd almost finished Blackmail as a silent movie when he was given the

shoot the final reel in sound with synchronised dialogue.

I remember the evening when the first sound film came from the lab, the

first day's rushes.

The whole studio and all the big shots all went down to Madame Tussauds Cinema

to hear the first day's work.

And there was a lot of bumps and scratches.

and noises as the film started on.

And then the voices. It was a little scene in Scotland Yard. And the voices,

mouths began to open, and no sound came out except a... And that was the end

of the evening. We all went home.

Miss Andra, you asked me to let you hear your voice on the talking picture.

But, Heath, you mustn't do that.

Why not?

Well, because I can speak well.

Do you realize the squad van will be here any moment? No, really. Oh, my God,

I'm terribly frightened.

Why? Have you been a bad woman or something?

Well, not just bad, but... But you've slept with men.

Oh, no!

You have not. Come here. Stand in your place. Otherwise, it will not come out

right, as the girl said to the soldier.

That's enough.

Well, Annie Andre, Nancy, with a...

Czech accent.

She couldn't possibly continue, but too much had been photographed.

So I got another young actress, whose name was Joan Barry, to sit on the

side with her own mic.

And Annie Under the Czech girl just mouthed her words so that they both

synchronized.

Please give it to me.

All right, come around.

Come on. Please, please.

Come on, Alice.

There it is.

That's silly, Alice.

That is silly.

Annie Ondra plays the girlfriend of the detective.

She's been picked up by an artist who has lured her to his studio with less

honourable intentions.

An innocent girl becomes a murderer. The detective finds out and conceals it

from his superiors. These are the kind of contradictions and moral conflicts

that Hitchcock relished and played up in all his films.

While he was making Blackmail, a still young and energetic Hitchcock had played

a characteristic trick on his producers.

He'd gone behind their backs and secretly re -shot not just the final

most of the key sequences in the film with synchronised sound.

And from the start, he'd begun to experiment with the dramatic

the new sound process.

I mean, it's one thing to buy chocolates out of ours, but it's quite another to

stick a knife into a gentleman.

I must say, I feel the same way about that, too.

A good, clean, honest whack over the head with a brick is one thing.

There's something British about that.

But knives... No, knives is not right.

I must say, that's what I think and that's what I feel.

Whatever the provocation, I could never use a knife.

Now, mind you, a knife is a difficult thing to handle.

I'm in any knife.

Knife.

Knife.

Knife. Alice, cut us a bit of bread, will you? Knife.

Knife. Knife.

Knife. Knife.

Knife. Knife.

Knife.

Yeah,

you would have been more careful.

Might have cut somebody with that.

The author of Blackmail became Hitchcock's regular screenwriter

1930s, Charles Bennett.

In the morning I used to get up and pick up Hitch in Cromwell Road, where he

lived, at ten o 'clock, exactly.

And he would be sitting on the curb, waiting for me, with Joan Harrison, who

our secretary, sitting on the curb beside him.

And sometimes it was raining a day.

but it didn't make any difference and then we would go to the studio where we

would discuss the script and things like that and what was going on and what i

was doing with it and that kind of stuff and then at about one o 'clock

everything would stop and we'd go to lunch always at the mayfair

hotel right there and have a wonderful lunch

And then come back, and at that point, Hitch would

usually go to sleep in the office, and I would do a little work, and

possibly doze off too slightly, I don't know. But eventually, about five o

'clock, we would go back to Hitchcock's flat in Cromwell Road,

where we would start having nice cocktails for the evening.

and talk more and more and more about the script. And I think more work was

on the script in the evening over cocktails than any other time.

And they shared a sense of the absurd. Even the earliest Hitchcock films are

full of apparently irrelevant comic vignettes.

But I can't understand, madam, one of my best songbirds.

It sang all day before you purchased it. Perhaps in a few days it will settle

down. Nothing won't make it settle down. I've tried always.

Whistling to it, clapping me hands, frying bacon, no use. It just sits there

makes me look silly.

Not the bird's fault, I assure you, madam.

Isn't it?

I'll have my two and nine, please, and there's your bird back.

I want a canary for company.

Perhaps I can make him sing.

You sure it was him? Listen again.

Did you see, Colton?

Of course you did.

There's a good boy. Now, don't forget, plenty of watercress and you must

to him. Me whistle? Perhaps you'd like me to sit in the cage and him do the

housework.

The moment we sat down for these white ladies' script conferences,

he'd used to put on a hurry music record.

We used to play this all the time. We were working the film out.

So I could hardly call it confidence.

I mean, more often than not, I literally would finish under the table.

And sometimes the maid, Gladys, used to come in and join in.

She was fairly high by that time, too.

He was so ridiculous sometimes, too.

But in those days, he was...

working out of the Austrian, so was I, and he had this enormous car, and

of having the windows closed, he had them glued down so that nobody could

them, because he hated fresh air.

There was a pop of handcuffs, and one night, just before we finished shooting,

Hitch, Babette, little pop man, called Fred, I forget what his name was really,

that he wouldn't...

Have the handcuffs locked on him and stay all night in the studio.

Bet him ten pounds.

But he agreed and did stay all night handcuffed in the studio.

But before being left alone there, he'd be given by Hitch quite a strong

laxative in his tea.

So I won't go into what the results were. I can only imagine them and be

for wretched Fred.

But Hitchcock had his problems.

He was in constant conflict with most of his producers.

One studio even tried to stop the release of one of his finest pictures,

Who Knew Too Much.

They thought he was too arty and too complicated.

They wanted conventional thrillers, stage plays shot on film.

Hitchcock, in his turn, regarded them as ignorant philistines.

Yes, I'm quite certain that Hitchcock's success was in spite of the producers

and certainly not because of them.

Hitch had an arrangement by which he would be shooting a scene as he wanted

shoot it, but the same props man, his props, his bekeeping cave used to

rush in and say, they're coming, they're coming, then Hitch would then pretend

to be shooting the scene as they wanted it.

Hitch was getting with me to work on a film, a conventional film, which neither

of us wanted to do.

Anyway, we had to do it.

It's like the pictures, isn't it?

Too much for my liking.

And, uh, say, from the very start, Hitch meant it to be a burlesque, a stand -up

of those sort of films.

As from the beginning, we just went to make fun of the whole thing and go,

to the producers who'd given us anything because we didn't want to do it, you

see. But nevertheless, some pretty good ideas did come up in it.

But they were, by the way, never anything to do with the construction or

plot or anything like that.

It just went from moment to moment.

To Hitchcock's disappointment, the element of parody in Number 17 was

missed by the critics. It was reviewed as a conventional thriller.

Later, he admitted himself that it was carelessly made.

It's a film that goes from moment to moment, from one favourite device to

another. Chance encounters, couples tied together, technical tricks, and some

virtuoso chase sequences.

Hitchcock's delight in embellishing and transforming a storyline with his own

idiosyncratic touches caused continual problems for his writers.

You construct a story perfectly, and then somebody says, well, this is a

lovely shot, lovely thing, I'd get into it, this little angle, and you're faced

with the fact of, how the hell do you alter the story to get this in? And this

was a great problem with Hitch.

Hitchcock added a heroine to John Buchan's 39 Steps. The original story is

man alone on the run, pursued by both police and spies.

Oh, it's a whole flock of detectives.

He ensured his characters would remain linked together by adding a now familiar

device. What about him? I'll soon fix that.

There, miss, now you're a special constable. What's the idea? As long as

stay, he stays.

Yes, and as long as I go, you go. Come on.

Stop them.

They've got to wait.

Come on.

The scene in 39 Steps where Robert Donat is handcuffed to

Madeline Carroll, and Hitch had the key, but he said he didn't.

Go and see the prop man. She wanted to go to the ladies' room. Well, he was

totally relentless, you see, about that. I mean, it just went on all day.

They were handcuffed together. He'd never let them go.

It was a long scene, you know.

So it was Donat going into the ladies' room with Madeline Carroll.

And that, Hitches, was Hitches' idea of a practical joke.

My shoes and stockings are sold. I think I'll take them off. It's the first

sensible thing I've heard you say.

Can I be of any interest to you?

No, thank you.

All right.

Here, hold him. Oh, yeah.

I think he was looking always to lighten the atmosphere. You know, I mean, for

instance, I mean, you get into a very difficult situation with him, you know,

very difficult situation where you've got a problem, you know. How are you

to do it? You see, and he'd... Me in particular, you know, I take everything

heart very much, though, you see.

And he'd let it go to a certain point when he realised the tension was too

you know.

It's only another movie hour.

It wasn't intended to mean that he was indifferent about the movie, but that he

wanted me to realize, you know, that it wasn't the end of the world.

That was, you know, just a problem that had to be solved.

He was a thinker, and he had, you know, he had one subject, and that was movies,

you know, so that he was, you know, streets ahead of everybody.

I mean, ideas were coming away from him all the time. Did you hear what Hitch

said today? It used to be the cry quite often.

Hitchcock invented new ideas and he borrowed and adapted from filmmakers he

admired. This opening scene from Rich and Strange, 1932, is choreographed in

style of the early French cinema, in particular the films of René Clair.

As the sequence progresses, Hitchcock begins to add comic touches of his own.

The scenario for Rich and Strange was written by Hitchcock's regular script

continuity girl, Alma Revel.

In 1926, they married.

Their professional collaboration continued.

An incident in the Folies Bergères on their honeymoon trip to France inspired

them to make a film comedy about the adventures of a newly married couple

travelling abroad.

There were these fellows with tuxedos. I said, where is the dancing place? He

said, oh, this way.

And he took us outside the theatre into a taxi. I said, where are we going? Oh,

he said, it's round the corner.

And we eventually found ourselves in an elegant whorehouse.

Oh, my dear, the curtain got up too soon. Then I slipped.

We were sort of put into the position of the couple in the film.

We were two innocents abroad, and they took us into a room and showed a

demonstration of two girls copulating, you know.

And we were astonished. I said, you realize where we are?

And she was astonished, you know, and we soon got out of it.

Let's get out of here. I don't like it. Why not?

Somebody just pinched me.

Where?

You know where.

My mother was a continuity girl.

But they did everything. They didn't just do the continuity.

I mean, they did dialogue. They did, you know, sat it on them. conferences

script conferences on the production you know it was it was quite a job in those

days and she was excellent at it and it went on uh then they started working

together and then continued working together and she really although she

screen credit on very few she worked with him on every picture she was the

person who he relied on to tell him the truth we have a very average home

life i should say

Most days, even non -working days, we go to bed early, around 9 .30, and we wake

early. Hitch wakes about half past six, and he gets home at night, we have

dinner. Then read for a while, before you know it, it's 9 .30 and time for bed

again.

He was always a performer, in public as well as in private. The celebrated

personal cameos that became a feature of every Hitchcock film had started early

on.

And so the unmistakable outlines of Hitchcock himself became part of the

peculiarly English fabric of his pictures.

By his mid -thirties, Hitchcock's fame had spread to America.

The 39 steps had had a surprise success in New York, full houses and fulsome

praise from the critics for this most British of spy thrillers.

Nine Steps is an organization of spies collecting information on behalf of the

Foreign Office of...

Take it easy now.

Take it easy.

All right.

Get the girls on straightaway.

The girls in the doctor right away.

Mr. Memory, what was the secret formula you were taking out of the country?

I think it's an interest that many English people have.

After all, they all have the most, how shall we call them, literate crimes.

in this country, whereas everywhere else they just shoot and run, you know.

Here they're nicely done with arsenic or bathtubs and that sort of thing.

But by 1938, the charm of making British pictures was wearing thin.

Hitchcock had begun to look to America.

He said, well, can you imagine, we're going down towards Gravesend on the

estuary, he said.

Mizzling with rain, he said, the sky was grey, the rain was grey, the mud was

grey, I was grey. He said, when I got to my hotel, he said, there was a telegram

from Selznick.

David Selznick was the most powerful independent producer in Hollywood.

He offered Hitchcock a two -year contract, and in 1939, England's leading

director, plus his family, set sail for America.

He was not yet 40.

He took his home movie camera with him. These are Hitchcock's own shots of

Hollywood Boulevard.

His regular screenwriter, Charles Bennett, had already moved to America.

Hollywood was a strange place from a British point of view in those days.

The British colony was dominated by Orby Smith, and then there were all the

Ronald Colemans and the Cary Grants. I mean, all these people were Robert

Stevenson's. They were all the British colony.

And Hitch...

It would have nothing whatever to do with it. He wasn't a bit interested in

British colony.

It was a very tight colony headed by Ronald Coleman and his wife, Benita

Hume, Herbert Marshall, Basil Rathbone, Cedric

Hardwick, the British consul at the time, Eric Clough.

and many others, the Nigel Bruce's.

And I don't think Hitchcock was acceptable until he was a great success,

then, of course, they were clamouring to have him. And dear old Hitch, they

would say, I'm not sure he went too much after that.

Hitchcock's first American film turned out to be all British. The story, the

leading actors, and, of course, the director.

It was a full -blown romantic drama.

But partly through Selznick's influence, the film concentrated more on the

psychology of the characters and their situation than the pure suspense of the

story.

How could I ask you to love me when I knew you loved Rebecca still?

Whenever you touched me, I knew you were comparing me with Rebecca.

What is the mystery of Rebecca? What dread secret is hidden within the silent

walls of Manderley?

It's not only in this room.

It's in all the rooms in the house.

I almost hear it now.

Do you think the dead come back and watch the living?

Hitchcock would have a large pad of drawing paper beside him, and he would

draw the visual effect that he wanted me to have, whether it was cowering in a

chair, dimly lit, or just maybe one eye peeking out, that kind of thing. For

instance, he said, Now, you're a naive bride. Carry your handbag.

because you would do that in an hotel, but you wouldn't do it in your own

but you wouldn't know that as this unschooled child that you're playing.

Things like that he gave me.

Rebecca had elements of a sinister fairy story about it.

As the newly married Mrs. de Winter, Joan Fontaine finds her life

by the haunting presence of Rebecca, the first Mrs. de Winter.

Mrs. De Winter?

Oh, I'm afraid you've made a mistake. Mrs. De Winter's been dead for over a

year.

Oh, I mean... Oh.

That was the house telephone, madam.

Probably the head gardener wishing instructions.

Did you want to see me, Mrs. Danvers?

Mr. De Winter informed me that his sister, Mrs. Lacey, and Major Lacey are

expected for luncheon.

I'd like to know if you approve of the menu.

Oh, well, I'm sure it's very suitable. Very nice indeed.

You'll notice, madam, that I've left a blank space for the sauce.

Mrs. De Winter was most particular about sauces.

Let's have whatever you think that Mrs. De Winter would have ordered.

Thank you, madam.

When you've finished your letters, Robert will take them to the post.

My letters?

Oh, yes, of course. Thank you, Mrs. Danvers.

He'd take me aside and say, kid, we're going to do it this way now. I want you

to do it this or that.

And don't do anything.

Just think this.

China cupid, sir.

Oh, dear, that's one of our treasures, isn't it?

Well, tell Mrs. Danvers to get to the bottom of it somehow and tell her I'm

it wasn't Robert. Very good, sir.

Why do they come to me with these things? That's your job, sweetheart.

Maxim, I wanted to tell you, but I forgot.

The fact is...

I broke the china cupid. You broke it? Now, why on earth didn't you say

something about it when Fritz was here?

I don't know. I didn't like to. I was afraid he'd think me a fool.

Well, he's thinking much more of a fool now. You'll have to explain to him and

Mrs. Danvers.

Oh, no, Maxim. You do it. I'll go upstairs. Don't be such a little idiot,

darling. Anybody would think you were afraid of them.

The films that followed Rebecca, Foreign Correspondent and Suspicion, also had

English themes.

And it was only in 1943, four years after his arrival in America, that

turned his camera on the American landscape for a totally American story.

He brought in Thornton Wilder, author of Our Town, to prepare the storyline for

the film that became Shadow of a Doubt. As in the later Psycho, the central

character is the villain.

Uncle Charlie is a psychopath who charms and then strangles rich widows for

their money.

At the start of the film... Police investigators are closing in on him, and

decides to flee to his sister's family in the small town of Santa Rosa.

There, he casts a spell over an adoring favorite niece, also called Charlie.

She was played by an Oscar -winning young actress, Teresa Wright.

He was very intrigued by the innocence, the combination of the innocence of the

small American town as against the...

corruption of the uncle's life and this element being brought into the town

let alone the personal element of what happened to the family and the mother

so on the intriguing thing of this the young girl's love

instilled by her mother no doubt but also the fascination that he held for

because you opened up with her on the bed saying

I'm bored with this town. Nothing ever happens. I wish something would happen

this town.

Of course, something did, much more than she'd ever dreamed. But in her wildest

dreams, she wouldn't have imagined Uncle Charlie to be as exciting a person as

he seemed to her when he first arrived.

I mean, she'd heard about him from her mother and grew to love him because of

that, and she was named after him. There was this whole mystique of a tie

between us.

What's the matter, Charlie?

What's wrong?

Gradually, the girl, almost a woman, comes to suspect that her elegant Uncle

Charlie is the mystery killer wanted by the police.

I want to talk to you. You're hurting my arm again.

Don't come in here with me.

I can't. I've never been in a place like this. Go on in.

It's a murder story underpinned by powerful feelings of thwarted love.

In the key confrontation, trusting innocence and the power of evil come

face. As always in Hitchcock, they seem inextricably linked together. Why did

you bring me in here?

What does it matter where we are?

You see, the world today is, you know, full of brutality.

And... But more than that, it's

kind of... It's developed into brutality with a smile.

Oh, Charlie, now, don't start imagining things.

How could you do such things?

You're my uncle, my mother's brother.

We thought you were the most wonderful man in the world.

Most wonderful and the best. Charlie, what do you know?

I'm sorry I was so long. They're also busy.

Whose is it?

Ain't it beautiful?

I'd just die for a ring like that.

Yes, sir, for a ring like that, I'd just about die.

I love jewelry.

Real jewelry.

You notice I didn't even have to ask if it was real. You can tell.

I can.

Bring me another brandy.

Is it out?

Sit down.

You think you know something, don't you?

You think you're the clever little girl that knows something.

There's so much you don't know.

So much.

What do you know, really?

You're just an ordinary little girl living in an ordinary little town.

You wake up every morning of your life and you know perfectly well that there's

nothing in the world to trouble you.

You go through your ordinary little day.

And at night you sleep your untroubled, ordinary little sleep filled with

peaceful, stupid dreams.

And I brought you nightmares.

But our evil and our good are getting closer together

today.

That the hero is no longer tall with a perfect profile

or flaxen hair.

And the villain doesn't kick the dog anymore.

He's a charmer. In fact, we've reached the point in today's sophisticated

era that you can barely tell one

from the other.

In Notorious, Ingrid Bergman and Cary Grant, working for the FBI, confront the

charming face of evil.

Claude Rains plays an ex -Nazi who's taken refuge in South America.

Bergman has had to marry him in order to infiltrate his organisation.

She knows that the locked wine cellar holds a vital clue.

I'm surprised Mr Devlin's coming tonight.

And Hitchcock weaves together the deceptions of spying and loving.

or have him any false impression of within a minute.

Darling.

It's not that I don't trust you. When you're in love at my age, every man who

looks at you, woman, is a menace. And forgive me for even talking about it.

He was the master of the situation.

He was the master of the vignette. He was the master of the small moment, the

master of the short story.

And he always knew about those. He always knew what he wanted to do with

He did not have so much of an overall view of the story he was

going to tell.

That's why he often got into trouble, you see.

He never saw it in terms of a completely linear thing.

He thought... And when he talked to you about a picture, when he would say

he was about to do a new picture and he wanted to tell you about it, he never

told you the story.

He told you scenes, his favorite scenes.

And so it became, for him, it was like a mosaic.

When he finally got the entire mosaic put together, then you saw the story.

Now, if you didn't have a good writer, there were going to be pieces missing in

that mosaic.

Five good scenes in a movie, and you've got a movie out.

All you've got to do is fill in the spaces.

George Roy Hill said to me, I picked that up from Hitch, he said, he's

absolutely right.

Hitch said four, he said, I say five.

It was just that.

difference but i mean that's you know another director like mike nichols every

time i went into mike nichols office to talk to him about the movies i was

working on with him he'd be have a movie over there with hedgecock's pictures

you know going through and stopping it and seeing where the cutting was they

deferred to hedge all of them

Vintage sand.

Because of these things that we found them. Help me find a bottle of wine with

the same label as these others. It isn't really sand, is it?

I think it's some kind of metal ore.

The MacGuffin is the thing that the spies are after but the audience don't

And I thought of the idea they were collecting samples of uranium -235.

from which the future atom bomb would be made.

So the producer said, oh, that's a bit far -fetched. What atom bomb?

I said, well, it's the both sides are looking for it. We read of the Germans

experimenting with heavy water.

Of course they want the atom bomb.

I said, look, if you don't like uranium -235, let's make it industrial

diamonds.

But it makes no difference. It's what we call the MacGuffin.

It's called the MacGuffin because the story goes that two men are in an

train, and one says across to the other, he says, excuse me, sir, what is that

strange -looking package above your head? He said, that's the MacGuffin.

He said, what's that for? He said, that's for trapping lions in the

Highlands. So the other man said, but there are no lions in the Scottish

Highlands. He said, then that's no MacGuffin.

Confusion and disorder were for the screen.

While he was working, Hitchcock insisted on calm and order.

He surrounded himself with a group of trusted technicians and writers with

he worked again and again. His shooting was pre -planned down to the last

detail. Everything is decided on paper.

I do not improvise after the picture's finished or

very much while the picture is being made.

A little bit is permissible.

But if you don't make your picture on paper ahead of time with all the desired

effects, if you cannot visualize or hear, then this would be like a musician

composing with a full orchestra in front of him.

So he's got his blank music and saying, flute, give me a note, will you please?

And the flute gives him, thank you very much, and he writes it down.

There's the comparison. I think the film should be made on paper ahead of time.

And he always tried, wherever possible, to recast the same stars.

They bring something immediate to the film, for one thing. You don't have to

explain a great deal. If you have Cary Grant, you don't explain him. He is.

This is a kind of existential arriving at the whole problem of acting, maybe.

But he did require that they were professionals, that they were good at

job. I was always amazed at the performances he got out of

people because you never saw him work at that.

Somehow it was just the fact that he set the scene correctly, set the cameras

correctly, knew how they ought to move, and every move that they made he had

correctly gauged in his mind.

He could get more sex appeal into a scene than any... I mean, you could

ten movie stars today nude and put them all in bed and they wouldn't be nearly

as exciting as...

Gray Skelly in a silk blouse talking to James Stewart in rear window

or Ingrid at any point in the picture. I mean, it was

so real. It was so... And I think it's because he did

establish this tie between people. It was this undercurrent, this

tie.

And that is much more intriguing than just bodies in a heap.

What?

Maybe the fact that you don't love me.

Hello?

Palace Hotel?

Coming, thanks.

T .R. Devlin. Any messages for me?

When I don't love you, I'll let you know.

You haven't said anything.

Actions speak louder than words.

There is?

Good. Read it to me, please.

Prescott wants me over right away.

Did he say what about it?

No.

Maybe it's our assignment.

Probably.

Bergman had a wonderful sensuality. You could almost see it bubbling up inside

of her.

Do you want me to bring anything back with me?

Yes. What about a nice cup of wine?

Let's have a drink.

Whereas Kelly had that cool, tall grace.

The grace of grace.

And the sensuality was not as marked.

But it was in her eyes.

It was in her smile.

It seemed like a more intellectual quality, but had appeal to Hitchcock

much. I don't believe in stamping the woman with the word sex all over her.

I think it should be discovered in the course of our getting acquainted with

her. And it's more interesting for this thing to be not apparent.

In other words... We don't have to have the sex hanging round her neck like

baubles all over.

I think there should be a certain mystery about it.

But why is she always blonde?

I think that's traditional.

I think that dates back to Mary Pickford. If you remember, tradition of

cinema is that the hero was always a dark man and the heroine was always a

blonde. I think it's the...

simplification of identification, really.

In our first conference, he said to me, one of my

problems is that

Grace Kelly is going to do the picture, and she's too stiff.

She's too controlled. She's too quiet.

And I'd like this girl to be interesting somehow and spend some days with her

and see, you know, get to know her and see what you can do. When I met Grace

Kelly, she was a delightful, wonderful, impish, beautiful person, full of good

humor and everything. But when she was on the set... Of course, her part

required her to play certain things.

She acted.

She became an actress. In other words, she lost some of her naturalness. So

after meeting her, I tried to put that into the script.

Anything else bothering you?

Mm -hmm.

Oh, yeah.

Reading from top to bottom.

Lisa.

Fremont. Is this the Lisa Fremont who never wears the same dress twice?

Only because it's expected of her.

It's right off the Paris plane.

You think it'll sell?

Well, that depends on the quote. Let's see, now, is the airplane ticket over?

Throughout the entire film, James Stewart, playing a photographer with a

leg, never gets out of his wheelchair, never leaves his room.

They ought to list that dress on the stocking chain.

Now, rear window.

Although the film is in one room and the man is in one position, actually it's

one of the most cinematic films I've made because it demands his look, what

sees, and his interpretation.

It's all visual.

Now, if I'm up there with a method actor and says, well, I don't know whether

I'd look there.

I'm sunk. I can't make the picture.

Stuart keeps waking during the night.

Suspicious scenes are taking place in the apartment opposite.

He brought out the importance of reaction.

He brought out the importance of the moves you make, of the kind of move and

intensity of the movements.

And I always remember he would come up every once in a while and he would say,

Jim, he always called me Jim. He said, Jim, the scene is tired.

And I knew exactly what he meant.

I knew exactly what he meant because in your effort to get it, that

intense thing that he wanted.

you were just taking too long at it. And it was, as he said, tired.

The entire action at Rear Window is confined to this one set.

Hitchcock never moves outside the claustrophobia of the Tenement Square.

He said, you know, film doesn't need a vast moving canvas. You don't have to

have, well, I suppose in the modern, you don't have to have car crashes and

explosions to make a film. You need to know what you want to say and be able to

say it with film.

And he said, you could make a film in a closet if you had the proper story.

He was fascinated by the idea of making a film in one take.

And out of that came Rope, which was made essentially to look like it was in

take.

Actually, it was in several reels, but the appearance was in one take.

Unfortunately, in Rope, I believe that people were rather more...

in the idea that it was made in one take than the rather interesting

psychological study that it presented.

How would you get David out of the way? Well, let me see.

At the appointed time, David would arrive. I'd walk slowly out of the room

the hall and greet him.

Tell him how fine he's looking and so forth.

And take his hat.

And I'd bring him in here.

Make some small talk to put him at his ease.

Probably offer him a drink.

Then he'd sit down.

Yes. I'd try to make it all very pleasant, you understand.

Philip would probably play the piano.

Now, as I recall, David was quite strong.

He'd have to be knocked out.

So I'd move quietly around behind the chair and hit him on the head with

something.

The body would fall forward on the floor.

Then where would you put him?

Well,

uh, well, let me see.

The sound department, after a couple of days' work, came to him

and said the rolling...

of the walls, which he had on rubber wheels so that it would cut out the

Even with the rubber wheels, this was too much, and they couldn't accept it as

the background noise.

We didn't faze Mr. Hitchcock one thing. He said, well, that's very simple. What

we'll do, we'll do one shot for the camera, and then we'll take the camera

open up all the walls, and let the cast...

go through their stuff for this take just for the sound and had maybe 10,

15 mics all over the place so that nothing moved.

And at first we said this is impossible because we couldn't possibly do

it the same twice in a row, which wasn't true because we had become

so well up on the lines.

because of this way he had of doing the picture, that we did it once for

camera and then started and did the thing again for sound.

The technique overwhelmed the story, and Rope wasn't a success.

But as he moved into the 50s, Hitchcock would reach the peak of his powers with

masterpieces of suspense and adventure thrillers, each of them a perfect

marriage of technical brilliance with character and storyline.

In the 60s and 70s, his apparently faltering skills at blending these

ingredients become the major argument about the art of Alfred Hitchcock.

Even the writers who worked most closely with him have different views.

He relied on suspense and stars to sell his pictures

when basically he should have been concerned...

with the script more than anything. And where the script was good and blended

with the stars were his biggest successes.

Rebecca is an example.

Rebecca, of course, the producer was David Selznick, who...

was very wise cinematically, not in suspense, but in all filmmaking, and

the balance that a good film needed.

Hitch's films were frequently unbalanced to the suspense side, to the device

side, and not to the characterization or dialogue side.

He was always everybody in a film.

Part of his greatness is the fact that he was all his characters in the film,

and he was also the camera.

There has never been a director like him. Never in the history of films. I go

way back. I mean, as an observer.

And Hitchcock is the only man I can think of who actually was

the camera.

It was his instrument, and he was its instrument, and they were one.

From Young and Innocent, 1938, this is a vintage moment of Hitchcock.

In this ballroom lurks the villain.

Here's one small physical characteristic that will give him away.

Every man who plays in the band is wonderful too.

I've got to give credit where credit is due.

But when it comes to make that music up, make you give it all it's got, I'm

right here.

to tell you, mister, no one can like the drummer man.

In Omnibus next week, we continue this profile of Alfred Hitchcock, from the

achievements of the 50s and 60s to the problems and struggles of his later

career.