Stanislaw Barszczak, A black horse,
4. Alfred Hitchcock on the set
In May 1963 The Museum of Modern Art publishes Peter Bogdanovich’s 48-page The Cinema of Alfred Hitchcock as part of their Hitchcock film retrospective /see, http://zakka.dk/euroscreenwriters/interviews/alfred_hitchcock.htm/ This is rare interview with Alfred Hitchcock. Peter Bogdanovich interviews Alfred Hitchcock in his office. I quote the interview because it shows Hitchcock character perfectly. I have all my butt, and the dead man was killed again, he also said in this interview, I think. Peter Bogdanovich (Serbian: born July 30, 1939) is an American director, writer, actor, producer, critic and film historian. He is part of the wave of “New Hollywood” directors, which included William Friedkin, Brian De Palma, George Lucas, Martin Scorsese, Michael Cimino and Francis Ford Coppola. His most critically acclaimed and well-known film is the drama The Last Picture Show (1971). I am referring here to Hitchcock’s authentic but very rewritten statements. The legendary interview from 1963. PB: You never watch your films with an audience. Don’t you miss hearing them scream? AH: No. I can hear them when I’m making the picture. PB: Do you feel that the American film remains the most vital cinema? AH: When we make films for the United States, we are automatically making them for all the world, because America is full of foreigners. It’s a melting pot. Which brings us to another point. I don’t know what they mean when they talk about “Hollywood” pictures. I say, “Where are they conceived?” Look at this room, you can’t see out the windows. We might just as well be in a hotel room in London, or anywhere you like. So here is where we get it down on paper, Hitchcock said. Now where do we go? We go on location, perhaps; and then where do we work? We’re inside on a stage, the big doors are closed, and we’re down in a coal mine: we don’t know what the weather is like outside. Again we don’t know where we are, only within our film, within the thing we’re making. That’s why it’s such nonsense to talk about locale. “Hollywood.” That doesn’t mean anything to me. If you say, “Why do you like working in Hollywood?” I would say, because I can get home at six o’clock for dinner. PB: How would you define pure cinema? AH: Pure cinema is complementary pieces of film put together, like notes of music make a melody. There are two primary uses of cutting or montage in film: montage to create ideas, and montage to create violence and emotions. For example, in Rear Window, where Jimmy Stewart is thrown out of the window in the end, I just photographed that with feet, legs, arms, heads. Completely montage. I also photographed it from a distance, the complete action. There was no comparison between the two. There never is. Barroom fights, or whatever they do in westerns, when they knock out the heavy or when one man knocks another across the table which breaks, they always break a table in bars, they are always shot at a distance. But it is much more effective if it’s done in montage, because you involve the audience much more, that’s the secret to that type of montage in film. And the other, of course, is the juxtaposition of imagery relating to the mind of the individual. You have a man look, you show what he sees, you go back to the man. You can make him react in various ways. You see, you can make him look at one thing, look at another – without his speaking, you can show his mind at work, comparing things – any way you run there’s complete freedom. It’s limitless, I would say, the power of cutting and the assembly of the images. PB: How do you work when you are shooting? AH: Well, I never look through the camera, you know. The cameraman knows me well enough to know what I want–and when in doubt, draw a rectangle and then draw the shot out for him. You see, the point is that you are, first of all, in a two-dimensional medium. Mustn’t forget that. You have a rectangle to fill. Fill it. Compose it. I don’t have to look through a camera for that. First of all, the cameraman knouws very well that when I compose I object to air, space around figures or above their heads, because I think that’s redundant. It’s like a newspaperman taking a still and trimming it down to its essentials. They have standing instructions from me–they never give any air around the figures. If I want air, I’ll say so. Now, you see, when I’m on the set, I’m not on the set. If I’m looking at acting or looking at a scene–the way its played, or where they are–I am looking at a screen, I am not confused by the set and the movement of the people across the set. In other words, I follow the geography of the screen. I can only think of the screen. Most directors say, “Well, he’s got to come in that door so he’s got to walk from there to there.” Which is as dull as hell. And not only that, it makes the shot itself so empty and so loose that I say, “Well, if he’s still in a mood – whatever mood he’s in – take him across in a close-up, but keep the mood on the screen.” We’re not interested in distance. I don’t care how he got across the room. What’s the state of mind? You can only think of the screen. You cannot think of the set or where you are in the studio – nothing of that sort. PB: What is your technique of working with actors? AH: I don’t direct them. I talk to them and explain to them what the scene is, what it’s purpose is, why they are doing certain things–because they relate to the story–not to the scene. The whole scene relates to the story but that little look does this or that for the story. As I tried to explain to that girl, Kim Novak, “You have got a lot of expression in your face. Don’t want any of it. I only want on your face what we want to tell to the audience–what you are thinking.” I said, “Let me explain to you. If you put a lot of redundant expressions on your face, it’s like taking a piece of paper and scribbling all over it–full of scribble, the whole piece of paper. You want to write a sentence for somebody to read. They can’t read it–too much scribble on the face. Much easier to read if the piece of paper is blank. That’s what your face ought to be when we need the expression.” Take The Birds. There is not one redundant expression on Hedren’s face. Every expression makes a point. Even the slight nuance of a smile when she says, “What can I do for you, sir?” One look says, “I’m going to play a gag on him.” That’s the economy of it. PB: You’ve said that your pictures are finished before you set foot on the set – that is, once the script is completed. What is your working process with the writers? AH: In the early days – way, way back in the English period, I would always work on a treatment with a writer who would be a plot maker, or story man. I would work weeks and weeks on this treatment and what it would amount to would be a complete narrative, even indicating shots, but not in the words of long-shot or close-up. It would have everything in it, all the details. Then I used to give it to a top writer to dialogue it. When he sent in his dialogue, I would sit down and dictate the shots in a complete continuity. But the film had to be made on paper in this narrative form. It would describe the film, shot by shot, beginning to end. Sometimes with drawings, sometimes without. I abandoned this method when I came to America. I found that American writers wouldn’t go for that sort of thing. I do it verbally now, with the writer, and then I make corrections and adjustments afterwards. I work many weeks with him and he takes notes. And I describe the picture for the production designers as well. Marnie has all been finished as far as the layout of the picture, but there’s no dialogue in it. I would say I apply myself two-thirds before he writes and one-third after he writes. But I will not and do not photograph anything that he puts in the script on his own, apart from words. I mean any cinematic method of telling it – how can he know? On North by Northwest, Ernie Lehman wouldn’t let me out of the office for a whole year. I was with him on every shot, every scene. Because it wasn’t his material. PB: I’ve heard a story about your having been put in jail by your father at an early age. Did this have any particular effect on your development, do you think? AH: It could have – I must have been five when I was sent along with a note to the chief of police, who read the note and promptly put me into a cell and locked the door for five minutes; and then let me out, saying, “That’s what we do to naughty little boys, you see.” What effect that had on me at the time I can’t remember, but they say psychiatrically if you can discover the origins of this or that, it releases everything. I don’t think it released me from a natural fear of the police. PB: What influence, if any, do you think the Jesuit schooling has had on your work? AH: The Jesuits taught me organization, control, and to some degree, analysis. Their education is very strict, and orderliness is one of the things that come out of that, I suppose. Although my orderliness is spasmodic. I remember when I was at the age of eighteen or nineteen I was a senior estimator at an electrical engineering firm, and the requests for estimates used to come in, and I was kind of lazy so I’d pile them up on my desk and they’d go up to a big pile. And I used to say, “Well, I’ve got to get down to this,” and then I polished them off like anything. And used to get praised for the prodigious amount of work I’d done in that particular day. That lasted until the complaints began to come in about the delay in answering. That’s the way I feel about working. Certain writers want to work every hour of the day: they’re very facile. I’m not that way. I want to say, “Let’s lay off for several hours, let’s play.” And then we get down to it again. I’m sure the Jesuits did not teach that. As far as any religious influence, at the time I think it was fear. But I’ve grown out of religious fear now. I think I have. I don’t know. I don’t think the religious side of the Jesuit education impressed itself so much upon me as the strict discipline one endured at the time./Bogdanovich names all of Hitchcocks films and they discuss each one/… refers to the film The Thirty-Nine Steps (1935) PB: in all your chase films, why do you have the hero fleeing from both the police and the real criminals? AH: One of the reasons is a structural one. The audience must be in tremendous sympathy with the man on the run. But the basic reason is that the audience will wonder, “Why doesn’t he go for the .police?” Well, the police are after him, so he can’t go to them, can he? PB: Isn’t it his sense of guilt that makes him so fervent? AH: Well, yes, to some degree. In Thirty-Nine Steps maybe he feels guilt because the woman is so desperate and he doesn’t protect her enough, he’s careless… Refers to the film The Lady Vanishes (1938) PB: The Lady Vanishes is one of your least complex films. Do you agree? AH: It is a very light film. Of course, it doesn’t make sense. Why didn’t they send the message by carrier pigeon? The story is inspired by that legend of an Englishwoman who went with her daughter to the Palace Hotel in Paris in the 1880’s, at the time of the Great Exposition. The woman was taken sick and they sent the girl across Paris to get some medicine, in a horse-vehicle, so it took about four hours, and when she came back she asked, “How’s my mother?” “What mother?” “My mother. She’s here, she’s in her room. Room 22.” They go up there. Different room, different wallpaper, everything. And the payoff of the whole story is, so the legend goes, that the woman had Bubonic plague and they daren’t let anybody know she died, otherwise all of Paris would have emptied. That was the original situation and pictures like Lady Vanishes were all variations on it… Regarding Rebecca (1940) PB: Wasn’t Rebecca the first film in which you experimented with a tracking camera as 10. opposed to the use of montage? AH: Pretty well, yes. But only because we were going around a big house. I don’t think it was really right, because after all, the eye must look at the character. It must not be conscious of a camera dollying unless you are dollying or zooming in for a particular purpose… As concerns Rope (1948) PB: Do you consider Rope one of your most experimental films, technically? AH: Only because I abandoned pure cinema in an effort to make the stage play mobile. With a flowing camera, the film played in its own time, there were no dissolves, no time-lapses in it, it was continuous action. And I thought it also ought to have a continuous flow of camera narrative as well. I think it was an error technically because one abandoned pure cinema for it. But when you take a stage play in one room, it is very hard to cut it up… As regards Rear Window (1954) PB: The critic on The Observer called this a horrible film because a man was looking out a window at other people. I thought that was a crappy remark. Everyone does it, it’s a known fact, and provided it is not made too vulgar, it is just curiosity. People don’t care who you are, they can’t resist looking. Isn’t there something sympathetic about the murderer in his confrontation scene with Stewart? AH: Well, the poor man. It’s the climax of peeping tomism, isn’t it? “Why did you do it?” he says. “If you hadn’t been a peeping tom, I would have gotten away with it.” Stewart can’t answer. What can he say? He’s caught. Caught with his plaster down… /Here the inner world of the author is more certain than what he sees, I would emphasize it/ … For the movie Vertigo (1958) PB: Isn’t Vertigo about the conflict between illusion and reality? AH:Oh, yes… For the movie Psycho (1960) PB: Do you really consider Psycho an essentially humorous film? AH: Well, when I say humorous, I mean it’s my humor that enabled me to tackle the outrageousness of it. If I were telling the same story seriously, I’d tell a case history and never treat it in terms of mystery or suspense. It would simply be what the psychiatrist relates at the end. PB: In Psycho, aren’t you really directing the audience more than the actors? AH: Yes. It’s using pure cinema to cause the audience to emote. It was done by visual means designed in every possible way for an audience. That’s why the murder in the bathroom is so violent, because as the film proceeds, there is less violence. But that scene was in the minds of the audience so strongly that one didn’t have to do much more. I think that in Psycho there is no identification with the characters. There wasn’t time to develop them and there was no need to. The audience goes through the paroxysms in the film without consciousness of Vera Miles or John Gavin. They’re just characters that lead the audience through the final part of the picture. I wasn’t interested in them. And you know, nobody ever mentions that they were ever in the film. It’s rather sad for them. Can you imagine how the people in the front office would have cast the picture? They’d say, “Well, she gets killed off in the first reel, let’s put anybody in there, and give Janet Leigh the second part with the love interest.” Of course, this is idiot thinking. The whole point is to kill off the star, that is what makes it so unexpected. This was the basic reason for making the audience see it from the beginning. If they came in half-way through the picture, they would say, “When’s Janet Leigh coming on?” You can’t have blurred thinking in suspense… For the film The Birds (1963) PB: In The Birds, as in a lot of your films, you take ordinary, basically average people, and put them into extraordinary situations. AH: This is for audience identification. In The Birds, there is a very light beginning, girl meets boy, and then she walks right into a complicated situation: the boy’s mother’s unnatural relationship to him, and the school teacher who’s carrying a torch for him. This girl, who is just a fly-by-night, a playgirl, comes up against reality for the first time. That transmits itself into a catastrophe, and the girl’s transition takes place. PB: What do you feel the picture is really about? AH: Generally speaking, that people are too complacent. The girl represents complacency. But I believe that when people rise to the occasion, when catastrophe comes, they are all right. The mother panics because she starts off being so strong, but she is not strong, it is a facade: she has been substituting her son for her husband. She is the weak character in the story. But the girl shows that people can be strong when they face up to the situation. It’s like the people in London, during the wartime air raids. PB: Isn’t the film also a vision of Judgment Day? AH: Yes, it is. And we don’t know how they are going to come out. Certainly, the mother was scared to the end. The girl was brave enough to face the birds and try to beat them off. But as a group they were the victims of Judgment Day. For the ordinary public – they got away to San Francisco – but I toyed with the idea of lap-dissolving on them in the car, looking, and there is the Golden Gate Bridge – covered in birds… PB: Aren’t there a lot of trick-shots in the picture? AH: Had to be. There are 371 trick-shots in it, and the most difficult one was the last shot. That took 32 different pieces of film… And you would have to spend some money on it. /end of the interview/ Here are some thoughts by Hitchcock:” Puns are the highest form of literature… Ideas come from everything. Fear isn’t so difficult to understand. After all, weren’t we all frightened as children? Nothing has changed since Little Red Riding Hood faced the big bad wolf. What frightens us today is exactly the same sort of thing that frightened us yesterday. It’s just a different wolf. This fright complex is rooted in every individual…There is no terror in the bang, only in the anticipation of it…Give them pleasure /see, the people/. The same pleasure they have when they wake up from a nightmare…What is drama but life with the dull bits cut out…The length of a film should be directly related to the endurance of the human bladder…If I won’t be myself, who will?…Always make the audience suffer as much as possible…I’ve never been very keen on women who hang their sex round their neck like baubles. I think it should be discovered. It’s more interesting to discover the sex in a woman than it is to have it thrown at you, like a Marilyn Monroe or those types. To me they are rather vulgar and obvious…I’m a writer and, therefore, automatically a suspicious character…There is a distinct difference between “suspense” and “surprise,” and yet many pictures continually confuse the two. I’ll explain what I mean…We are now having a very innocent little chat. Let’s suppose that there is a bomb underneath this table between us. Nothing happens, and then all of a sudden, “Boom!” There is an explosion. The public is surprised, but prior to this surprise, it has seen an absolutely ordinary scene, of no special consequence. Now, let us take a suspense situation. The bomb is underneath the table and the public knows it, probably because they have seen the anarchist place it there. The public is aware the bomb is going to explode at one o’clock and there is a clock in the decor. The public can see that it is a quarter to one. In these conditions, the same innocuous conversation becomes fascinating because the public is participating in the scene. The audience is longing to warn the characters on the screen: “You shouldn’t be talking about such trivial matters. There is a bomb beneath you and it is about to explode!”…In the first case we have given the public fifteen seconds of surprise at the moment of the explosion. In the second we have provided them with fifteen minutes of suspense. The conclusion is that whenever possible the public must be informed. Except when the surprise is a twist, that is, when the unexpected ending is, in itself, the highlight of the story…I can’t read fiction without visualizing every scene. The result is it becomes a series of pictures rather than a book… We seem to have a compulsion these days to bury time capsules in order to give those people living in the next century or so some idea of what we are like. I have prepared one of my own. I have placed some rather large samples of dynamite, gunpowder, and nitroglycerin. My time capsule is set to go off in the year 3000. It will show them what we are really like… I’m a typed director. If I made Cinderella, the audience would immediately be looking for a body in the coach… I have a feeling that inside you somewhere, there’s somebody nobody knows about…T.V. has brought murder back into the home where it belongs…In feature films the director is God; in documentary films God is the director…Suspense is like a woman. The more left to the imagination, the more the excitement. … The conventional big-bosomed blonde is not mysterious. And what could be more obvious than the old black velvet and pearls type? The perfect ‘woman of mystery’ is one who is blonde, subtle and Nordic. … Although I do not profess to be an authority on women, I fear that the perfect title [for a movie], like the perfect woman is difficult to find… In The Birds (1963), the Rod Taylor character, an innocent man, finds his world under attack by vicious birds, and struggles to free himself from a clinging mother (Jessica Tandy). The killer in Frenzy (1972) has a loathing of women but idolises his mother. The villain Bruno in Strangers on a Train hates his father, but has an incredibly close relationship with his mother (played by Marion Lorne). Sebastian (Claude Rains) in Notorious has a clearly conflictual relationship with his mother, who is (correctly) suspicious of his new bride Alicia Huberman (Ingrid Bergman). Norman Bates has troubles with his mother in Psycho. Hitchcock heroines tend to be blondes. Hitchcock appears briefly in most of his own films. For example, he is seen struggling to get a double bass onto a train (Strangers on a Train), walking dogs out of a pet shop (The Birds), fixing a neighbour’s clock (Rear Window), as a shadow (Family Plot), sitting at a table in a photograph (Dial M for Murder), and missing a bus (North by Northwest). Hitchcock returned several times to cinematic devices such as suspense, a spectator in tension, the audience as voyeur… In a 1963 interview with Italian journalist Oriana Fallaci, Hitchcock was asked how in spite of appearing to be a pleasant, innocuous man, he seemed to enjoy making films involving suspense and terrifying crime. He responded: “I’m English. The English use a lot of imagination with their crimes. I don’t get such a kick out of anything as much as out of imagining a crime. When I’m writing a story and I come to a crime, I think happily: now wouldn’t it be nice to have him die like this? And then, even more happily, I think: at this point people will start yelling. It must be because I spent three years studying with the Jesuits. They used to terrify me to death, with everything…” Hitchcock once commented, “The writer and I plan out the entire script down to the smallest detail, and when we’re finished all that’s left to do is to shoot the film… I have a strongly visual mind. I visualise a picture right down to the final cuts. I write all this out in the greatest detail in the script, and then I don’t look at the script while I’m shooting. I know it off by heart, just as an orchestra conductor needs not look at the score … When you finish the script, the film is perfect. But in shooting it you lose perhaps 40 percent of your original conception. In Writing with Hitchcock, a book-length study of Hitchcock’s working method with his writers, author Steven DeRosa noted that, “Although he rarely did any actual ‘writing’, especially on his Hollywood productions, Hitchcock supervised and guided his writers through every draft, insisting on a strict attention to detail and a preference for telling the story through visual rather than verbal means. While this exasperated some writers, others admitted the director inspired them to do their very best work. Hitchcock often emphasized that he took no screen credit for the writing of his films. However, over time the work of many of his writers has been attributed solely to Hitchcock’s creative genius, a misconception he rarely went out of his way to correct. Notwithstanding his technical brilliance as a director, Hitchcock relied on his writers a great deal.” While Hitchcock did do a great deal of preparation for all his films, he was fully cognizant that the actual film-making process often deviated from the best-laid plans and was flexible to adapt to the changes and needs of production as his films were not free from the normal hassles faced and common routines utilised during many other film productions… Hitchcock became known for his alleged observation, “Actors are cattle”. He once said that he first made this remark as early as the late 1920s, in connection to stage actors who were snobbish about motion pictures. However, the actor Michael Redgrave said that Hitchcock had made the statement during the filming of The Lady Vanishes (1938). Later, in Hollywood, during the filming of Mr. & Mrs. Smith (1941), Carole Lombard brought some heifers onto the set with name tags of Lombard, Robert Montgomery and Gene Raymond, the stars of the film, to surprise the director.[152] Hitchcock said he was misquoted: “I said ‘Actors should be treated like cattle’.” For Hitchcock, the actors, like the props, were part of the film’s setting, as he said to Truffaut. I have a strongly visual mind. What is new in presenting a person here: a preference for visualizing rather than verbal means. Hitchcock wants to contact the audience at all costs. He made the permissible changes to the scenario, but retained the details. He often used the same actors in many of his films. Several actors who worked with him gave fine, often brilliant performances and these performances contribute to the film’s success. His influence helped start a trend for film directors to control artistic aspects of their films without answering to the film’s producer. The imaginary invention of climbing in creating art is as important as climbing in the mountains, the modern mountaineers understood that /see, mountain climbing extreme by Arnold Messner/. Hitchcock had health problems. On January 12, 1957 feeling unwell, Hitchcock is confined to bed. For a few days still in pain, Hitchcock is admitted to the Cedars of Lebanon hospital, where he undergoes surgery for a navel hernia. He is also diagnosed as suffering from colitis. Then on March 9, 1967 Hitchcock is rushed to the Cedars of Lebanon hospital, where he is operated on to remove obstructing gallstones on March 11th. He spends the rest of March in hospital. On January 18, 1968 Hitchcock attends the funeral of his longtime physician, Dr. Ralph Tandowsky. In September 1974 Hitchcock suffers a heart attack and is fitted with a pacemaker at the UCLA hospital. So, with his health failing in early April, Hitchcock takes to bed at his Bel Air home.
Epilog
Somehow Hitchcock experiencing the world by the quantity of individuum is most important, his experience first. And the audience knows more like a hero. Unlimited watching the world here, hanging technique, see suspense. The audience is always the same, does not change. He wished us, good luck watching people. Nightmares are vivid in our life always. This told us the suspense genius, a quarter of an hour before the main hour of the day, the most important in the reception of photos to a new movie by the audience is. This is Hitchcock moronic logic, film idea, film reflection, reflexive light. Black and white birds were always, they can attack us in this era. Failing health reduced Hitchcock’s output during the last two decades of his life. Biographer Stephen Rebello claimed Universal “forced” two movies on him, Torn Curtain (1966) and Topaz (1969). Both were spy thrillers set with Cold War-related themes. The first, Torn Curtain (1966), with Paul Newman and Julie Andrews, precipitated the bitter end of the twelve-year collaboration between Hitchcock and composer Bernard Herrmann. Herrmann was sacked when Hitchcock was unsatisfied with his score, and replaced with British composer John Addison. Topaz (1969), based on a Leon Uris novel, is partly set in Cuba. Both received mixed reviews from critics. On the Hitchcock holiday they traveled to Cuba, Marrakesh in Morocco, Lake Como in Italy, St. Moritz, Switzerland, The Palace Hotel. Last time in December 1975. Alfred Hitchcock first visited St. Moritz during the filming of The Prude’s Fall (1924) and returned there with Alma Reville on their honeymoon in December 1926, where they stayed at the Palace Hotel. From then onwards, they often returned to spend their Christmas vacation at the hotel and to celebrate their wedding anniversary. The highest summit in the Eastern Alps, the Piz Bernina, lies a few miles south of the town. The town is a popular destination of the upper class and international jet set, as well as being one of the most expensive ski resorts in the world. Hitchcock was often asked by the press if he intended to ski whilst on holiday. In December 1954 he responded, “I hope not. No, definitely no. I’ll watch some skiing but I just like sitting in my room at the hotel and looking at the snow.” During their Christmas 1966 holiday, he replied, “I am a devotee of winter sports from a distance.” When John Russell Taylor visited Hitchcock following the publication of Hitch: The Life and Times of Alfred Hitchcock in 1978, he asked the director about his future plans and the possibility of enjoying a retirement: As Hitch said, “What would I do, sit at home in a corner and read?” But he had begun to cut down on all activities outside the preparation of the next film. Virtually ever since their marriage, Hitch and Alma had gone back for their wedding anniversary to their honeymoon hotel in St. Moritz. But now there was Alma’s health and the cessation of direct flights, which entailed a tiresome and expensive stopover in Paris, to consider. And, as Hitch pointed out, these days he did nothing in St. Moritz but sit by a window and observe the snowy scene outside. “So, I thought I might just as well get the scene painters at Universal to paint a large snowy backdrop to hang outside my window in Bel Air.” To promote his films in the fifties Hitchcock undertook long journeys. In November1955 The Hitchcocks tour Asia to promote The Trouble with Harry, visiting India, Japan, Thailand and Hong Kong. On December 3, 1955 Concerns start to grow after the aircraft the Hitchcocks are travelling on from India to the Far East fails to arrive in Singapore. There are fears that it may have crashed into the Bay of Bengal. The Hitchcocks were due to be the guests of Singaporean businessman Loke Wan Tho, who had organised a cocktail party and formal dinner. Still no news had arrived the following day and Loke commented to the press, “I am completely baffled.” In 1960 year Hitchcock had been in the Hotel in Sydney, Australia. Partway through the interview, he accidentally kicked his shoe off and is later photographed retrieving it from beneath a chair. In May1964 The Hitchcocks spend 2 months in Europe on vacation, occasionally giving interviews and attending special events held in their honour. Amongst the many cities and places visited are: London, Villa D’Este at Lake Como, Rome, Vienna, Munich, Paris, the French Riviera, Belgrade, Dubrovnik and Zagreb. In his professional career he returned willingly to the British Isles and to Paris. In 1972 year Hitchcock returned to Britain to make his penultimate film Frenzy. After two espionage films, the plot marks a return to the murder thriller genre, and is based upon the novel Goodbye Piccadilly, Farewell Leicester Square. The plot centres on a serial killer in contemporary London. For the first time, Hitchcock allowed nudity and profane language, which had previously been taboo, in one of his films. He also shows rare sympathy for the policeman on the case and his comic domestic life. Family Plot (1976) was Hitchcock’s last film. It relates the escapades of “Madam” Blanche Tyler, played by Barbara Harris, a fraudulent spiritualist, and her taxi driver lover Bruce Dern, making a living from her phony powers. William Devane, Karen Black, Katherine Helmond, and Cathleen Nesbitt co-starred. It is the only Hitchcock film scored by John Williams. While Family Plot was based on the Victor Canning novel The Rainbird Pattern, the novel’s tone is more sinister and dark than what Hitchcock wanted for the film. Screenwriter Ernest Lehman originally wrote the film with a dark tone but was pushed to a lighter, more comical tone by Hitchcock. Near the end of his life, Hitchcock had worked on the script for a projected spy thriller, The Short Night, collaborating with James Costigan, Ernest Lehman and David Freeman. Despite some preliminary work, the screenplay was never filmed. This was caused primarily by Hitchcock’s seriously declining health and his concerns for his wife, Alma, who had suffered a stroke. In 1976 year The Hollywood article goes on to say, “Mr. Hitchcock said he was an unabashed Francophile. In October 1978 actor Barry Foster pays Hitchcock a visit. Bill Ingram resigns from Technicolor to set up Simba Film Ltd, “to buy and sell theatrical and television product”. In December 1978 writer David Freeman begins working with Hitchcock on the script of The Short Night. On May 8, 1979 Hitchcock’s old friend Victor Saville, who had recently attended the director’s AFI Lifetime Achievement Award, dies. Several sources regard Saville’s death as a contributing factor to Hitchcock deciding to abandon any attempt to make The Short Night and to shut down his bungalow office at Universal. In August this year Ingrid Bergman pays Hitchcock a final visit ,”He took both my hands and tears streamed down his face and he said, ‘Ingrid, I’m going to die,’ and I said, ‘But of course you are going to die sometime, Hitch … we are all going to die.’ And then I told him that I, too, had recently been very ill, and that I had thought about it, too. And for a moment the logic of that seemed to make him more peaceful.” On December 31, 1979 Hitchcock becomes Sir Alfred Hitchcock in the Queen’s New Year Honours List, receiving an honourary knighthood. He had previously declined a CBE in 1962. In January 1980 too infirm to travel to London to receive his honourary knighthood directly from Queen Elizabeth II, the British Consuls-General of the United Kingdom to Los Angeles, Thomas Aston, makes a formal presentation to Hitchcock at his office at Universal in front of the press. When asked, “What does a knight do?”, the director replies, “The first obvious thing he does, is go out into the night.” In March Hitchcock checks into Cedars of Lebanon hospital for diagnostic tests. With his health failing in early April, Hitchcock takes to bed at his Bel Air home. On April 29. 1980 Alfred Hitchcock dies of renal failure at 9:17am at his Bel Air home. On June 3, 1980 A requiem mass is held at Westminster Cathedral in London for Alfred Hitchcock. Amongst the attendees are Sidney Bernstein, Ingrid Bergman, Ann Todd, Elsie Randolph, Anna Neagle, Joan Harrison, Barry Foster and George Perry. On June 29. 1980 in an article published in the Boston Globe, composer John Williams spoke about working with Hitchcock on Family Plot (1976), “I wasn’t excited about that particular picture, but I wanted to work with Hitchcock, and it turned out to be his last film. He didn’t want any thick, heavy scoring. ‘Just remember this,’ he said to me, ‘murder can be fun.’“ Hitchcock died aged 80 in his Bel Air home of renal failure on 29 April 1980. While biographer Spoto wrote that Hitchcock “rejected suggestions that he allow a priest … to come for a visit, or celebrate a quiet, informal ritual at the house for his comfort”, Jesuit priest Mark Henninger wrote that he and fellow priest Tom Sullivan celebrated Mass at the filmmaker’s home; Sullivan heard Hitchcock’s confession. He was survived by his wife and their daughter. Lew Wasserman, board chairman and chief executive officer of MCA Inc. and previously Hitchcock’s longtime agent, stated: I am deeply saddened by the death of my close friend and colleague, Sir Alfred Hitchcock, whose death today at his home deprives us all of a great artist and an even greater human being. Almost every tribute paid to Sir Alfred in the past by film critics and historians has emphasized his continuing influence in the world of film. It is that continuing influence, embodied in the magnificent series of films he has given the world, during the last half-century, that will preserve his great spirit, his humour and his wit, not only for us but for succeeding generations of film-goers. Hitchcock’s funeral Mass was held at Good Shepherd Catholic Church in Beverly Hills on 30 April 1980, after which his body was cremated and his remains were scattered over the Pacific Ocean on 10 May 1980. On July 6, 1982 Alfred Hitchcock’s wife Alma Reville dies of natural causes at her Bel Air home. fin
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