Stanislaw Barszczak, A black horse,
Foreword
Alfred Joseph Hitchcock (13 August 1899 Leytonstone – 29 April 1980 Bel Air, California, U.S.) was an English film director and producer. He pioneered many elements of the suspense and psychological thriller genres. He had a successful career in British cinema with both silent films and early talkies and became renowned as Britain’s leading filmmaker. Hitchcock moved to Hollywood in 1939 and became a U.S. citizen in 1955. Alma mater: Salesian College, St Ignatius’ College. Spouse Alma Reville (m. 1926; his death 1980). Children Patricia Hitchcock. Hitchcock became a highly visible public figure through interviews, film trailers, cameo appearances in his own films, and the ten years in which he hosted the television programme Alfred Hitchcock Presents (1955–1965). Hitchcock’s stylistic trademarks include the use of camera movement that mimics a person’s gaze, forcing viewers to engage in a form of voyeurism. In addition, he framed shots to maximise anxiety, fear, or empathy, and used innovative forms of film editing. His work often features fugitives on the run alongside “icy blonde” female characters. He directed more than fifty feature films in a career spanning six decades and is often regarded as one of the most influential directors in cinematic history. His first thriller, The Lodger: A Story of the London Fog (1927), helped shape the thriller genre in film. His 1929 film, Blackmail, is often cited as the first British sound feature film, while Rear Window (1954), Vertigo (1958), North by Northwest (1959) and Psycho (1960) are regularly ranked among the greatest films of all time. He was the second son and the youngest of three children of William Hitchcock (1862–1914), a greengrocer and poulterer, and Emma Jane Hitchcock (née Whelan; 1863–1942). As I mentioned Mister Hitchcock was raised as a Roman Catholic, and sent to Salesian College, Battersea, and the Jesuit grammar school St Ignatius’ College in Stamford Hill, London.
- From 5 minutes at the police station to ‘Winter’s Grace’
Alfred Joseph Hitchcock (was born on 13 August 1899 Leytonstone, now part of the London Borough of Waltham Forest, England- died on 29 April 1980 Bel Air, California, U.S.) was an English film director and producer. His parents were both of half-English and half-Irish ancestry. He often described a lonely and sheltered childhood that was worsened by his obesity. Around age five, Hitchcock recalled that to punish him for behaving badly, his father sent him to the local police station with a note asking the officer to lock him away for five minutes. This incident implanted a lifelong fear of policemen in Hitchcock, and such harsh treatment and wrongful accusations are frequent themes in his films. Alfred was only an average. So, in the autumn of 1910, Alfred Hitchcock, aged 11, begins studying at St. Ignatius College, a Jesuit Catholic secondary school in Stamford Hill, London. Next year Hitchcock continues his education at St. Ignatius College and receives a distinction in mathematics. In July 1913 Hitchcock graduates from St. Ignatius College and enrols at the London County Council School of Marine Engineering and Navigation, located on the High Street, Poplar, London, to study draughtsmanship and advertising design. From May 1914 he was watching the Scala Theatre, managed by Graham Cutts. Following his studies at the London County Council School of Marine Engineering and Navigation, Hitchcock begins working for W.T. Henley’s Telegraph Works Company Ltd on Bromfield Street, London, where he is initially employed in the sales department. On December 12,1915 Alfred Hitchcock’s father, William Hitchcock, dies from chronic emphysema and kidney disease. In this year also 16 year-old Alma Reville enters the film trade, securing a job as a film cutter at the London Film Company. Although educated in engineering, Hitchcock soon realises that he doesn’t want to become an engineer and so enrols on a evening course at Goldsmiths College to study art. The course leads to his appreciation of fine art and to a deeper interest in theatre and film. During this period, Hitchcock increasingly seeks out new plays and films. During 1916, Hitchcock sees the stage play “Who is He?”, based on the 1913 book The Lodger by Marie Belloc Lowndes. He will go on to adapt the book into a film and a radio play. With the First World War entering it’s third year, 18-year-old Hitchcock is declared “unfit for military service” (C3) and so continues to work at W.T. Henley’s Telegraph Works. Unable to join the army, he instead signs up for the Royal Engineers and takes part in evening and weekend exercises, including marches around Hyde Park. In March 28,1917 Hitchcock’s cousin Charles James Hitchcock dies from injuries sustained whilst fighting in Egypt. He had served as a Private in the 3rd County of London Yeomanry (aka the “Sharpshooters”) and the Machine Gun Corps, and had also fought in Gallipoli and Palestine. He is buried at Beersheba War Cemetery. In late 1917, Hitchcock requests to be transferred from the sales department at W.T. Henley’s Telegraph Works to the advertising department and by early 1918 he is in his new post where his responsibilities include helping to design the company’s sales brochures and advertising materials. In July 1919 the US film company Famous Players-Lasky announces that it plans to open studios in the UK and development work begins in October 1919 at a new studio complex in Islington, London. Islington Studios are officially opened in May 1920. Settled into his new role in the advertising department, Hitchcock becomes the editor of a new in-house magazine for W.T. Henley’s Telegraph Works – The Henley Telegraph. While working at Henley’s, Hitchcock began to dabble in creative writing.The initial issue, dated 1st of June 1919, includes a contribution from Hitchcock entitled “Gas”. The September 1919 issue of The Henley Telegraph contains a contribution from Hitchcock entitled “The Woman’s Part”. John Maxwell founds Wardour Films Ltd with £50,000…His first piece, “Gas” (1919), published in the first issue of The Henley Telegraph, tells of a young woman who imagines that she is being assaulted one night in London- only for the twist to reveal that it was all just a hallucination in the dentist’s chair induced by the anaesthetic… Hitchcock was a film fan from his teenage years, and in 1919 began his film career at the age of twenty, working as a title card designer for the London branch of the American firm Famous Players-Lasky, the production arm of Paramount Pictures, at Islington Studios. In time Balcon’s company a new firm took the name Gainsborough Pictures. Hitchcock worked in the company. His rise from title designer to film director took five years. During this period, he became an unusual combination of screenwriter, art director, and assistant director on a series of five films for Balcon and director Graham Cutts. “The Blackguard” by Graham Cutts (German: Die Prinzessin und der Geiger, 1925), was produced at the Babelsberg Studios in Potsdam, where Hitchcock observed part of the making of F. W. Murnau’s film The Last Laugh (1924).He was impressed with Murnau’s work and later used many techniques for the set design in his own productions. In a book-length interview with François Truffaut, Hitchcock also said that he was influenced by Fritz Lang’s film Destiny (1921). He was likewise influenced by other foreign filmmakers whose work he absorbed as one of the earliest members of the “seminal” London Film Society, formed in 1925. Hitchcock’s first few films faced a string of bad luck. His first directing project came in 1922 with the aptly titled Number 13, filmed in London. The production was cancelled because of financial problems; the few scenes that had been finished at that point have been lost. Michael Balcon gave Hitchcock another opportunity for a directing credit with The Pleasure Garden (1925), a co-production of Gainsborough and the German firm Emelka, which he made at the Geiselgasteig studio near Munich in the summer of 1925. The film was a commercial flop. Next, Hitchcock directed a drama called The Mountain Eagle (1926), possibly released under the title Fear o’ God, in the United States. This film is lost. Hitchcock’s luck changed with his first thriller, The Lodger: A Story of the London Fog (1927), a suspense film about the hunt for a Jack the Ripper type of serial killer in London. Released in January 1927, it was a major commercial and critical success in the United Kingdom. Following the success of The Lodger, Hitchcock hired a publicist to help strengthen his growing reputation. On May 13, 1929 the Duke and Duchess of York visit the British International Pictures studios, where they meet with Alfred Hitchcock and watch a scene from Blackmail being rehearsed… On 2 December 1926, Hitchcock married his assistant director, Alma Reville, at the Brompton Oratory in South Kensington, London. Alma was to become Hitchcock’s closest collaborator, but her contributions to his films (some of which were credited on screen) Hitchcock would discuss only in private, as she was keen to avoid public attention. In 1928, Hitchcock and Alma purchased a house named ‘Winter’s Grace’, situated on Stroud Lane, Shamley Green, in Surrey. The building was originally a Tudor farmhouse dating from the 16th century. The Hitchcocks lived most weekdays at 153 Cromwell Road in London, whilst spending their weekends in Shamley Green entertaining guests. Their only child, daughter Patricia, was born on 7 July of the same year. Hitchcock began work on his tenth film, Blackmail (1929), when its production company British International Pictures (BIP) decided to convert its Elstree facility to sound, and to utilise that new technology in Blackmail. It was an early “talkie” feature film. Blackmail began the Hitchcock tradition of using famous landmarks as a backdrop for suspense sequences, with the climax of the film taking place on the dome of the British Museum. In 1933, Hitchcock was once again working for Michael Balcon at Gaumont British. His first film for the company The Man Who Knew Too Much (1934) was a success and his second The 39 Steps (1935) was acclaimed in the UK.Hitchcock released two espionage thrillers in 1936, Sabotage, loosely based on Joseph Conrad’s novel about a woman who discovers that her husband, a London cinema owner, is an agent terrorist, and Secret Agent. Hitchcock’s next major success was The Lady Vanishes (1938), a fast-paced film about the search for kindly old Englishwoman Miss Froy (Dame May Whitty) who disappears while on board a train in the fictional country of Bandrika.The Guardian called the film “one of the greatest train movies from the genre’s golden era”, and a contender for the “title of best comedy thriller ever made”. Hitchcock was lauded in Britain, where he was dubbed “Alfred the Great” by Picturegoer magazine. Additionally, his reputation was beginning to soar overseas by the end of the 1930s, with a New York Times feature writer stating: “Three unique and valuable institutions the British have that we in America have not. Magna Carta, the Tower Bridge and Alfred Hitchcock, the greatest director of screen melodramas in the world.” On 6 August 1930 Hitchcock is one of 300 guests attending a luncheon ceremony to honour pilot Amy Johnson at the Savoy Hotel, London. The Hon. Esmond Harmsworth presents Miss Johnson with a cheque for £10,000. The other attendees from the world of British cinema are listed as Brian Aherne, Noel Coward, Annie Croft, Gwenn ffrangeon-Davis, Maurice Evans, Jean Forbes-Robertson, Nancy Heath, W.H. Heath, Lupino Lane, Charles Laughton, Frank Lawton, Auriol Lee, Alison Leggett, Ivor Novello, Mabel Poulton and Glen Byam Shaw.
- American Universal Studios and “Cornwall Ranch”
David O. Selznick signed Hitchcock to a seven-year contract beginning in March 1939, and set to end in 1946, which brought the Hitchcocks to Hollywood. The suspense and the gallows humour that had become Hitchcock’s trademark in his films continued to appear in his American productions. The working arrangements with Selznick were less than ideal. Selznick suffered from constant financial problems, and Hitchcock was often displeased with Selznick’s creative control over his films. Selznick, the big producer, lent Hitchcock to the larger studios more often than producing Hitchcock’s films himself. Selznick made only a few films each year, as did fellow independent producer Samuel Goldwyn, so he did not always have projects for Hitchcock to direct. Goldwyn had also negotiated with Hitchcock on a possible contract, only to be outbid by Selznick. Hitchcock was quickly impressed with the superior resources of the American studios compared with the financial limits that he had often faced in Britain. The Selznick picture Rebecca (1940) was Hitchcock’s first American film, set in a Hollywood version of England’s Cornwall and based on a novel by English novelist Daphne du Maurier. The film stars Laurence Olivier and Joan Fontaine. The story concerns a naïve (and unnamed) young woman who marries a widowed aristocrat. She goes to live in his huge English country house, and struggles with the lingering reputation of his elegant and worldly first wife Rebecca, who died under mysterious circumstances. The film won Best Picture at the 13th Academy Awards.The statuette was given to Selznick, as the film’s producer. Hitchcock was nominated for the Best Director award, his first of five such nominations, but did not win…In August 1940 the Hitchcocks bought the 200-acre (0.81 km2) Cornwall Ranch in the Santa Cruz Mountains, “Heart o’ the Mountains” estate in Scotts Valley, California and this becomes the family’s second home and weekend retreat. The ranch became the holiday home of the Hitchcocks. Their primary residence was an English-style home in Bel Air which was purchased in 1942. During the Second World War Hitchcock worked in America, sailing his wife Elma to America, sometimes he visits Europe. On August 14, 1942 for her birthday, Alfred presents Alma with a new handbag. Inside is a gold key to the front door of their new home, 10957 Bellagio Road. In June 1947 The Hitchcocks celebrate their daughter Patricia’s high school graduation with a lavish party at their Bellagio Road house. Among the guests are Alida Valli, Whitfield Cook, Hume Cronyn, Jessica Tandy, Arthur Laurents, Farley Granger, Cary Grant and Ingrid Bergman. On December 6, 1947 to celebrate the imminent start of filming on the first Transatlantic Pictures production, Rope, Hitchcock hosts a party at his Bellagio Road home. Among the guests are Sidney Bernstein and his wife, Arthur Laurents, Whitfield Cook, John Hodiak, Ingrid Bergman and Cary Grant. On November 2,1948 The Hitchcocks host a dinner at their Bellagio Road home for Whitfield Cook and Hume Cronyn, whilst listening to the results of the election – Harry Truman is reelected. As for professional work there were additional problems between Selznick and Hitchcock, with Selznick known to impose restrictive rules on Hitchcock. At the same time, Selznick complained about Hitchcock’s “goddamn jigsaw cutting”, which meant that the producer did not have nearly the leeway to create his own film as he liked, but had to follow Hitchcock’s vision of the finished product. Hitchcock’s second American film was the thriller Foreign Correspondent (1940) with its plot set in Europe, based on Vincent Sheean’s Personal History and produced by Walter Wanger. It was nominated for Best Picture that year. Hitchcock, along with many other British subjects, felt uneasy living and working in Hollywood while their country was at war; his concern resulted in a film that overtly supported the British war effort. The movie was filmed in the first year of the Second World War and was inspired by the rapidly changing events in Europe, as fictionally covered by an American newspaper reporter (portrayed by Joel McCrea). The film mixed footage of European scenes with scenes filmed on a Hollywood backlot. It avoided direct references to Nazism, Nazi Germany, and Germans to comply with Hollywood’s Production Code censorship at the time. Hitchcock’s films were diverse during the 1940s, ranging from the romantic comedy Mr. & Mrs. Smith (1941), to the courtroom drama The Paradine Case (1947), to the bleak film noir Shadow of a Doubt (1943). Suspicion (1941) marks Hitchcock’s first film as a producer as well as director. It is set in England, and Hitchcock used the north coast of Santa Cruz, California for the English coastline sequence. This film is the first of four projects on which Cary Grant worked with Hitchcock, and it is one of the rare occasions that Grant was cast in a sinister role. Grant plays a penniless dishonest con-artist whose actions raise suspicion and anxiety in his shy young English wife (Fontaine). Saboteur (1942) is the first of two films that Hitchcock made for Universal during the decade. Hitchcock was forced to use Universal contract player Robert Cummings and Priscilla Lane (a freelancer who signed a one-picture deal with Universal), both known for their work in comedies and light dramas. Breaking with Hollywood conventions of the time, Hitchcock did extensive location filming, especially in New York City, and depicted a confrontation between a suspected saboteur (Cummings) and a real saboteur (Norman Lloyd) atop the Statue of Liberty. Shadow of a Doubt (1943) was Hitchcock’s personal favourite of all his films and the second of the early Universal films. It is about young Charlotte “Charlie” Newton (Teresa Wright), who suspects her beloved uncle Charlie Oakley (Joseph Cotten) of being a serial murderer. Hitchcock again filmed extensively on location, this time in the Northern California city of Santa Rosa during the summer of 1942. Working at 20th Century Fox, Hitchcock adapted a script of John Steinbeck’s, which recorded the experiences of the survivors of a German U-boat attack in the film Lifeboat (1944). The action sequences were shot in a small boat in the studio water tank. While at Fox, Hitchcock seriously considered directing the film version of A. J. Cronin’s novel about a Catholic priest in China, The Keys of the Kingdom, but the plans for this fell through. In 1944 Hitchcock stated: “I felt the need to make a little contribution to the war effort, and I was both overweight and over-age for military service. I knew that if I did nothing, I’d regret it for the rest of my life.” From late June to late July 1945, Hitchcock served as “treatment advisor” on a Holocaust documentary which used footage provided by the Allied Forces. It was produced by Sidney Bernstein of the British Ministry of Information, and was assembled in London. The film-makers were commissioned to provide irrefutable evidence of the Nazis’ crimes, and the film recorded the liberation of Nazi concentration camps. The film was originally intended to be broadcast to the Germans following World War II, but the British government deemed it too traumatic to be shown to the already-shocked post-War population. The full-length version of the film German Concentration Camps Factual Survey was completed in 2014, and was restored by film scholars at the Imperial War Museum. Hitchcock worked for Selznick again when he directed Spellbound (1945), which explores psychoanalysis and features a dream sequence. For added novelty and impact, the climactic gunshot was hand-coloured red on some copies of the black-and-white film. The original musical score by Miklós Rózsa makes use of the electronic theremin. Notorious (1946) followed Spellbound. Notorious stars Hitchcock regulars Bergman and Grant, and features a plot about Nazis, uranium and South America. McGilligan writes that Hitchcock consulted Robert Millikan of the California Institute of Technology about the development of an atomic bomb. Selznick complained the notion was “science fiction”, only to be confronted by the news stories of the detonation of two atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in Japan in August 1945. On August 17, 1946 according to newspaper reports, Hitchcock was one of many Hollywood notables dining at Lucy’s on Melrose Avenue, Los Angeles, when two armed men entered and beat up former convinct James Utley who was seated in the restaurant. Hitchcock continues to work, he formed an independent production company with his friend Sidney Bernstein called Transatlantic Pictures, through which he made two films, his first in colour and making use of long takes. With Rope (1948), Hitchcock experimented with marshalling suspense in a confined environment, as he had done earlier with Lifeboat (1944). It features James Stewart in the leading role, and was the first of four films that Stewart made with Hitchcock. It was inspired by the Leopold and Loeb case of the 1920s. Under Capricorn (1949), set in 19th century Australia, also uses the short-lived technique of long takes, but to a more limited extent. He again used Technicolor in this production, then returned to black-and-white films for several years. Transatlantic Pictures became inactive after these two unsuccessful films, however, Hitchcock continued to participate in the production and ownership his own films for the rest of his life. Hitchcock filmed Stage Fright (1950) at studios in Elstree, England where he had worked during his British International Pictures contract many years before. He matched one of Warner Bros.’most popular stars, Jane Wyman, with the expatriate German actress Marlene Dietrich and used several prominent British actors, including Michael Wilding, Richard Todd and Alastair Sim. This was Hitchcock’s first proper production for Warner Bros., which had distributed Rope and Under Capricorn, because Transatlantic Pictures was experiencing financial difficulties. His film Strangers on a Train (1951) was based on the novel by Patricia Highsmith. In it, Hitchcock combined many elements from his preceding films. He approached Dashiell Hammett to write the dialogue, but Raymond Chandler took over, then left over disagreements with the director. ‘I Confess’ (1953) was set in Quebec with Montgomery Clift as a Catholic priest. “I Confess” was followed by three popular colour films starring Grace Kelly. Dial M for Murder (1954) was adapted from the stage play by Frederick Knott. With Dial M, Hitchcock experimented with 3D cinematography, with the film now being available in the 3D format on Blu-ray.Then Hitchcock moved to Paramount Pictures and filmed Rear Window (1954), starring James Stewart and Kelly again, as well as Thelma Ritter and Raymond Burr. Stewart’s character is a photographer (based on Robert Capa) who must temporarily use a wheelchair. Out of boredom, he begins observing his neighbours across the courtyard, and then becomes convinced that one of them (Raymond Burr) has murdered his wife. Stewart tries to convince both his policeman buddy (Wendell Corey) and his glamorous model-girlfriend (Kelly, whom screenwriter John Michael Hayes based on his own wife), and eventually he succeeds. As with Lifeboat and Rope, the principal characters are depicted in confined or cramped quarters, in this case to Stewart’s small studio apartment overlooking a large courtyard. From 1955 to 1965, Hitchcock was the host of the television series titled Alfred Hitchcock Presents. While his films had made Hitchcock’s name strongly associated with suspense, the TV series made Hitchcock a celebrity himself. His irony-tinged voice and signature droll delivery, gallows humour, iconic image and mannerisms became instantly recognisable and were often the subject of parody. Hitchcock also appears as a character in the popular juvenile detective book series. At the height of Hitchcock’s success in 1956, he was also asked to introduce a set of books with his name attached. The series was a collection of short stories by popular short-story writers, primarily focused on suspense and thrillers. In 1955, Hitchcock became a United States citizen. The oath made on April 20. 1955. His third Grace Kelly film To Catch a Thief (1955) is set in the French Riviera, and pairs her with Cary Grant. He plays retired thief John Robie, who becomes the prime suspect for a spate of robberies in the Riviera. It was Hitchcock’s last film with Kelly. She married Prince Rainier of Monaco in 1956, and ended her film career. Hitchcock then remade his own 1934 film The Man Who Knew Too Much in 1956. This time, the film starred James Stewart and Doris Day, who sang the theme song “Que Sera, Sera”, which won the Oscar for Best Original Song and became a big hit for her. They play a couple whose son is kidnapped to prevent them from interfering with an assassination. As in the 1934 film, the climax takes place at the Royal Albert Hall, London. The Wrong Man (1957), Hitchcock’s final film for Warner Bros., is a low-key black-and-white production based on a real-life case of mistaken identity reported in Life magazine in 1953. This was the only film of Hitchcock to star Henry Fonda, playing a Stork Club musician mistaken for a liquor store thief, who is arrested and tried for robbery while his wife (Vera Miles) emotionally collapses under the strain. Hitchcock told Truffaut that his lifelong fear of the police attracted him to the subject and was embedded in many scenes. Hitchcock’s next film, Vertigo (1958) again starred James Stewart, this time with Kim Novak and Barbara Bel Geddes. Stewart plays “Scottie”, a former police investigator suffering from acrophobia, who develops an obsession with a woman that he has been hired to shadow (Novak).Vertigo contains a camera technique developed by Irmin Roberts that has been copied many times by filmmakers commonly referred to as a dolly zoom. It was premiered in the San Sebastián International Film Festival, where Hitchcock won a Silver Seashell. Vertigo is considered a classic today, but it met with some negative reviews and poor box office receipts upon its release, and was the last collaboration between Stewart and Hitchcock.
- A formal dinner at the Carlton Hotel in Nice
Built in 1942, 10957 Bellagio Road, Bel Air, was the property the Hitchcock’s lived in until their deaths in the 1980s. The 7-bedroomed house sits on a 0.64 acre site, adjacent to the Bel Air Country Club golf course, and was purchased for $40,000. Hitchcock reportedly gave Alma a new handbag for her 43rd birthday, containing a gold key to the front door. The Hitchcock’s moved to Bellagio Road from nearby St. Cloud Road, where they’d rented a property from actress Carole Lombard. In November 1959 actress Janet Leigh meets Hitchcock for the first time at his home on Bellagio Road where he outlines his plans for Psycho. She later wrote, “He outlined his modus operandi. The angles and shots of each scene were predetermined, carefully charted before the picture began. There could be no deviations. His camera was absolute. Within the boundary of the lens circumference, the player was given freedom, as long as the performance didn’t interfere with the already designed move […] This was the way the man worked. And since I had profound respect for his results, I would earnestly comply.” On August 18, 1961 in the early hours of the morning, residents of Santa Cruz are awoken by the sounds of a large sooty shearwater flock flying into their homes, disoriented by a heavy sea fog. The front page of the Santa Cruz Sentinel newspaper reports “Seabird Invasion Hits Coastal Town”. Hitchcock contacts the newspaper and requests more details, eager to incorporate them into his a new film The Birds. On November 6, 1961 a discarded cigarette butt starts a fire in Bel Air that eventually destroys over 500 houses and causes $30,000,000 damage. The Hitchcocks store their valuables in the wine cellar and seek temporary shelter. The Hitchcocks spend Christmas in St. Moritz. Hitchcock followed Vertigo with three more successful films, which are also recognised as among his best films: North by Northwest (1959), Psycho (1960) and The Birds (1963). In North by Northwest, Cary Grant portrays Roger Thornhill, a Madison Avenue advertising executive who is mistaken for a government secret agent. Cary Grant, a veteran member of the Hitchcock acting varsity, was never more at home than in this role of the advertising-man-on-the-lam. He handles the grimaces, the surprised look, the quick smile … and all the derring-do with professional aplomb and grace. In casting Eva Marie Saint as his romantic vis-à-vis, Mr. Hitchcock has plumbed some talents not shown by the actress heretofore. Although she is seemingly a hard, designing type, she also emerges both the sweet heroine and a glamorous charmer. Psycho is among Hitchcock’s most widely seen films. Produced on a constrained budget of $800,000, it was shot in black-and-white on a spare set using crew members from his television show Alfred Hitchcock Presents. The unprecedented violence of the shower scene, the early death of the heroine and the innocent lives extinguished by a disturbed murderer became the defining hallmarks of a new horror film genre and have been copied by many authors of subsequent films. The public loved the film, with lines stretching outside of cinemas as people had to wait for the next showing. It broke box-office records in the United Kingdom, France, South America, the United States and Canada and was a moderate success in Australia for a brief period. It was the most profitable film of Hitchcock’s career; Hitchcock personally earned well in excess of $15 million. He subsequently swapped his rights to Psycho and his TV anthology for 150,000 shares of MCA, making him the third largest shareholder in MCA Inc. and his own boss at Universal, in theory at least, but that did not stop them from interfering with him. On May 5, 1963 Tippi Hedren, Alma and Alfred Hitchcock fly from Los Angeles to New York, en route to the Cannes Film Festival. They stay overnight at the Regis Hotel before flying on to Paris. On May 9, 1963 The Hitchcocks and Tippi Hedren fly from Paris to Nice, before travelling on to Cannes. A evening cocktail reception is held in the ballroom of Les Ambassadeurs with 1,000 invited guests before the black-tie showing of The Birds at 9:30pm. Afterwards, a formal dinner is held at the Carlton Hotel for around 300 guests. The dishes are served in blue / underlined by the author /. The next day following a large press conference for The Birds, Hitchcock and Tippi Hedren release 400 pigeons. On May 16, 1963 The Hitchcocks arrive back in Los Angeles. The Birds (1963), inspired by a short story by English author Daphne du Maurier and by a news story about a mysterious infestation of birds in Capitola, California, was Hitchcock’s 49th film, and the location scenes were filmed in Bodega Bay, California. Newcomer Tippi Hedren co-starred with Rod Taylor and Suzanne Pleshette. The scenes of the birds attacking included hundreds of shots mixing live and animated sequences. The cause of the birds’ attack is left unanswered… In 2012, Hedren described Hitchcock as a “sad character”; a man of “unusual genius”, yet “evil, and deviant, almost to the point of dangerous, because of the effect that he could have on people that were totally unsuspecting”. In response, a Daily Telegraph article quoted several actresses who had worked with Hitchcock, including Eva Marie Saint, Doris Day and Kim Novak, none of whom shared Hedren’s opinion about him. Novak, who worked on Hitchcock’s Vertigo, told the Telegraph “I never saw him make a pass at anybody or act strange to anybody.” Hitchcock biographer Donald Spoto explains, “Throughout his career, Hitchcock liked the phrase pure cinema–‘this is pure cinema.’ What he seems to have meant by that was that he wanted to use as often as possible strictly visual means, not dialogue, to get across the emotional impact, the feeling of a shot or a sequence.” Alfred Hitchcock had a mission to communicate through pictures, to give the audience something that only the movies can give you. As filmmakers and film lovers, we can treasure and learn much about this process by enjoying Pure Cinema… 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, Hitchcock said. 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. Alfred Hitchcock loved to make movies and he loved to eat – and not necessarily in that order. So it’s no surprise that just about every movie he made featured food and dining. In Blackmail, Suspicion, Shadow of a Doubt, Rope, Strangers on a Train, Psycho, Topaz and many more films, important scenes that reveal his deeper, often unappetizingly macabre, themes take place over a meal. He took sometimes food very seriously. But he didn’t take himself too seriously. At all. In these last few slides, we see Hitch with his wife of 55 years or so, Alma Reville. She was as great a cook as you’d ever meet. I have a hunch that she kept Hitch fat and happy in order to create a bit more distance between him and the beautiful actresses he directed. Whatever the case, they had a beautiful, flourishing relationship. He sometimes mused about making a movie about a meal: it would begin early in the morning with the chefs’ helpers down at the wholesale market buying boxes of fresh produce and vegetables and the finest meat, then loading all of that onto delivery trucks to be shuttled to the kitchen of a five star hotel, where an army of chefs in tall paper toques would slice and dice and chop and bake and fry and flambé all of those ingredients into gastronomic masterpieces. A brigade of waiters would then file in and with great ceremony march those platters out to hungry patrons in the dining room, who would then cut and scoop and scrape all of that food into their mouths. Hitch deeply understood taste of the body… Although the Hitchcocks were rich and famous, they kept a relatively modest ranch style home in Los Angeles’ Bel-Air neighborhood. In the early 1960s, they remodeled their kitchen to create an open floor plan, with a bar where guests could hang out and enjoy wine while Hitch and Alma kept busy in the kitchen. While this social-cooking arrangement is common in many homes today, it was unusual back then: just another area in which the Hitchcocks were ahead of their time. Throughout his career, Hitch occupied the spotlight while Alma, his partner in crime, was content to remain in the background. In 1979, he squared that up when he received the AFI Life Achievement Award. During his acceptance speech, he said: “I beg permission to mention by name only four people who have given me the most affection, appreciation, and encouragement, and constant collaboration. The first of the four is a film editor, the second is a scriptwriter, the third is the mother of my daughter Pat, and the fourth is as fine a cook as ever performed miracles in a domestic kitchen and their names are Alma Reville.” A few years ago, their daughter, Patricia Hitchcock O’Connell, wrote a biography of about her mother, shedding some light on this important, but heretofore somewhat unknown woman. At the end of the book she added an appendix that reproduced several of Alma’s most noteworthy guest menus. Here’s one for dinner with Tippi Hedren: Here are a couple more images that reveal Hitch’s domestic side – as well as his love of imports. Hitch was a neat freak, so after Alma cooked the meal, he enjoyed washing the dishes and tidying up the kitchen. And this leads us right into our dessert course! Dessert: Freudian delights: Lady fingers and beignets arranged to look like penises /sic/. Lady fingers and custard served in an ashtray, arranged to look like cigars. Cocktail: Rusty nail. Here are the menu suggestions by Hitchcock, as I believe: Appetizer: Herbed white bean bruschetta, Caprese bruschetta, Prosciutto-wrapped cantaloupe. Wine: A variety of sparkling wines. Cocktail: White Lady. First course: Roasted beet and tomato gazpacho, Bread. Wine: A variety of white wines. Hitch treated food to grossly comical surreal effect. On his film the police chief is served lavish meals that are all but inedible. Here’s the rub: Hitch and Buñuel were friends; Hitch even called the surrealist his favorite director of all time. Because of the similarities between these two movies I believe the two directors were passing notes to each other in the back of class that year. Main course: Roasted Leg of Lamb, Ratatouille. Wine: A variety of red Bordeaux. The Hitchcocks loved to accept guests, For example on March 7, 1956 prior to filming on The Wrong Man commencing, Hitchcock hosts a “Ghost-Haunted House Party” on East 80th Street. The menu contains such delights as “corpse croquettes, barbecued banshee, ghoulish goulash and formaldehyde frappe.” In November 1957 Hitchcock hosts an Alfred Hitchcock Presents party at the Coconut Grove (part of the Ambassador Hotel, Los Angeles) for TV magazine editors. Two days later Hitchcock hosts a “Chuckwagon Diner” party at Republic Studios for newspaper columnists. On November 14, 1957 Over lunch, Hitchcock offers Vertigo actress Barbara Bel Geddes the staring role in the Alfred Hitchcock Presents episode “Lamb to the Slaughter”. Several years later in August 1974 The Hitchcocks celebrate their 75th birthdays at a special party organised by Lew Wasserman at Chasen’s Restaurant. Among the guests are Cary Grant, Laraine Day, Paul Newman and François Truffaut. /to be continued/
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