Professor David Peimer
The Genius of Alfred Hitchcock
Professor David Peimer | The Genius of Alfred Hitchcock
- And as we all know, even in these terrible and very dark times and very cruel times, we thought we’d use August to at times give a bit of a lighter approach to things. So we’ve each chosen various topics as we go along in August. And one of them that I’ve chosen is the brilliance of Mr. Alfred Hitchcock, who I think we all know about, and which is extraordinary is we can say what is a Hitchcock genre? Immediately we say the name, we get a sense of mystery and drama and suspense and surprise and dramatic tension and horror, but also intelligence and subtlety. So what I’m going to look at today is looking at some of the main ideas of Hitchcock’s work, in particular, in his own words. I always find it’s better to go to the artists, the writer, the filmmaker, whoever, the poet, to their words themselves, and obviously sometimes scholars or thinkers about them. And in particular look at a little bit at a couple of the most iconic clips from his films and get a bit deeper understanding of them and talk a little bit more about the one which we all know so well, but is irresistible, “Psycho.” Just talk a little bit more about how he achieved what on earth he achieved. In a sense, I mean, there’s “Psycho,” there’s “Vertigo,” there are so many, but choosing one and looking at in a little bit more depth how he actually achieved what he did artistically. And a little bit about the man himself and his life because it is quite an extraordinary body of artistic achievement and the amount of work that he did. Quite incredible. I chose this picture, obviously, the film director’s chair, but you know, the color of light and dark, the shade, the image of Hitchcock himself, and of course the raven, which goes way back in ancient, medieval, and pre-medieval mythologies of harbingers of death or plague or terrifying things.
So I think that in a way, Hitchcock, we can say in a sense, for me there’s always been an irony, and I’m going to come back to that later, which is not just wit, but then ironic twist, which gives you a smile of acknowledgement or recognition. But I’ll come back to that. First is the biggest thing, and I think it is accurate, to say that he’s the absolute master of suspense. And I choose that word carefully because suspense is different to dramatic tension. And as he pointed out, is different to surprise. Because as he said, he fills his movies with surprises, there’s no question, but a surprise is something which we really don’t expect happens. When we actually see the mother in “Psycho,” it’s just a complete surprise to us. Maybe even the fact that Norman Bates kills the Janet Lee character is a surprise. There are surprises, which completely seem to come out of almost nowhere. Later we can find a link. But when I use the word suspense, and he makes a lovely distinction between the two, Hitchcock himself, suspense is very different. That’s how we kept going for 19 minutes or however long the movie is. And it’s the rise and fall of dramatic tension. The how to build up dramatic tension, one of the greatest challenges in any art, in particular film, but obviously in novels, plays, et cetera. The rise of suspense, dramatic tension, but of mystery and maybe a bit of surprise inside that. The suspense builds and builds and builds and builds. And then the release. The rise and then the release of suspense. You know, so we take a breath, or even if it’s a killing or a death, something that allows us to cathart, to let it go, because too much suspense would drive us nuts if it was too much all the time.
And he understood this, I think far better and far earlier than pretty much almost any filmmaker, not only of his generation, but before and compared to many, many subsequently. And most of them, the great filmmakers or who we might regard as great refer back to the brilliance of Mr. Hitchcock for this very reason, how on earth do you maintain suspense? Whereas in film, I mean, 10 seconds is a long time, 90 minutes, two hours, whatever, is a huge amount. So it is that idea of suspense that I want to focus on, and how he uses the rise and release of suspense compared to moments of complete surprise like when the mother is revealed to us in “Psycho” and other parts of other stories, you know, “The Birds,” suddenly they turn into those vicious evil birds that they become. Things that seem quite simple or ordinary but surprise us. Very different to the slow buildup of suspense, which is what he speaks about. Hitchcock’s obviously one of the most influential figures in the history of film. Surprising to most people is that he created 53 movies. I mean, that’s an incredible amount, in one lifetime. In one lifetime 53 movies and a hell of a lot of them are brilliant. Now, I don’t use that word just as enthusiastic exaggeration, but in truth. Not only because many scholars and other people say it and filmmakers say it, but I believe it. And there’s something not only charming but alluring about how he does it, why, and that he rarely, in the classic meaning of the word, mastered his craft so well. He had 46 Academy Award nominations. 46 Academy Award nominations, one director.
I mean, it is phenomenal when we really think about it. Little bit about his life. “Vertigo,” 1958. “North by Northwest,” 1959. “The Birds,” 1963. “Marnie,” which I think is a very underrated but brilliant film, a psychological thriller almost, 1964. Then interestingly in 2012, the British Film Institute voted “Vertigo” by Hitchcock the greatest film ever made. And they took Orson Wells’ “Citizen Kane” and pushed it into number two position, and they put Hitchcock’s “Vertigo” to number one. I share that with you as a sense of global achievement that this guy really reached and how he reached globally and locally, obviously we’re based in America a huge amount of the time, coming from England and originally and so on, the influence. I’m going to also talk a little bit about what he did during the latter parts of the Second World War, which I don’t think many people know about, what he did with Sid Bernstein and the concentration camps, which is really important work, but I’ll come back to that. So Hitchcock, he was the son of a greengrocer. Father used to have a pony, take the green, the groceries around, deliver them in the East End of London. And his father called him his “little lamb without a spot,” you know, brought up to be the goody two shoes, the good boy, all those kind of things and wonderfully so. He had a terror of policemen. While we see lots of police often, and through that we can decode the obvious, which is authority figures, which he plays with the ordinary person caught up in a situation where something of the law is transgressed. Authority figures.
They may not necessarily be a physical policeman or woman, but something of the law or of given social norms of authority are transgressed. And I think he very much had that sense growing up as a little kid, and lots of examples given from his life as a young boy. He grew up watching Charlie Chaplin, DW Griffiths, Buster Keaton, and interestingly Fritz Lang, the great German expressionist filmmaker. And these, I think were his formative influences as a very young guy growing up. He went to Germany and in Germany he observed and he talks about it in interviews, the nuances of German film, German expressionism, and how through atmosphere and mood and therefore lighting with a camera you can create so much, coming back to that word, suspense, which he took or he absorbed from Fritz Lang and other German expressionists and film noir and various others working at the times that he was working in the twenties, the thirties. So I think there’s something very imaginative, very magnetic about how he absorbed and took it so much further. What he’s always known as, and what he has said himself in interviews, is that he is a visual storyteller. He understood very early on that film is of course primarily a visual medium and that the dialogue, the language, the words, the script are important, but secondary. Character, very important, if not crucial, but not quite primary. Everything was dependent on visual storytelling. How on earth do you tell a story as a series of images, whether over 10 minutes, 90 minutes, two hours, whatever it might be. And the idea of storyboarding, you know, all of these things are fairly new when he’s really coming to his form. We have to remember his times very different to our times where we, of course, the advantage or the use of digital and so many other types of film equipment.
So he was extraordinarily imaginative in a visual storyboard way, in the way of telling stories visually to not only not bore people or be tedious or predictable, but not be one dimensional. Again, that word suspense. It’s atmosphere, mood, light, character, word, glance, zoom right back at what the camera can do right from far back and what the camera can do right close up just on the eye. And then moving between the two. The camera can move right in on one object, gloves, hand, and how much he used hands. And then it can zoom back again. And almost in a seamless way he moves between the zoom back and the zoom in and capturing the surrounding scene. Let’s remember in “North by Northwest,” the airplane coming down, first airplane is so far away, the long shot, the what we call the establishing shot in film. There’s the camera, there’s the long road out in the middle of the desert nowhere, one guy on his own. Far away, there’s an airplane. It doesn’t seem threatening at all. But then slowly it zooms in. The plane gets closer and closer, and the man’s face gets closer and closer until the moment of suspense builds to a moment of terror because the surprise comes that this airplane is going to try and nick him over. So surprise and suspense are constantly in creative collaboration with each other in his movies. In one of the films he even did, he installed a glass floor between two apartments so that you get a feeling that you could watch the lodger pacing up and down in his room but from below as though it’s overheard by the landlady somewhere else. So he’s playing with all, inventive at the time, with such inventive techniques, all to enhance suspense and I think a sense of mystery and strangeness.
But not strangeness that this is completely weird, bizarre, crazy, but in that meaning of the word again, suspense and of course terrifying often. His wife is really important. She was his closest collaborator, Reville, and she often wrote the script, or she co-wrote the script often, and she was the one to really say to him, take “Psycho” the book and make it into, she convinced him to turn it into a movie and many of the others as well. And he acknowledged her in his speeches and publicly very often, as an equal, as a co-collaborator. He never played it down for a second to his credit. If we can go to the next slide, please. Okay, this is on his wedding day, 1926. There’s young Hitchcock and his young wife. And I showed this because they really were a team, you know, a creative team. She understood script writing for film inside out and he often said much better than him, to get the economy of language, the precision of language, the scenes, the structure, all of that. He could work it with a camera and take it into working with a camera and the editing and the film, all of those techniques, but she understood not only storytelling, but as I said, the words, characters, scenes, when to begin and end a scene and never overwrite, never over elaborate or over explain anything. So they were a real team that worked together, which is why I wanted to show this. Not just the wedding day, but you know, the collaboration. The wartime nonfiction films which I mentioned in the beginning is important. He said in 1967, he had a series of interviews with Francois Truffaut.
Many people may know the great French filmmaker Truffaut and it’s a fantastic series of interviews. They’re long, and I haven’t included it here because they’re way too long and they go on and on about various ways. But they provide genuine, intelligent responses from Hitchcock and questioning from Truffaut. It’s the most interesting, I think, about him, about his work in those interviews. He said after the Second World War, “I felt the need to make a little contribution to the war and to the war effort.” So what happens? In 1943 and 1944, he made two short propaganda films, obviously for the Allies, et cetera. He is based in America by this time and he made them. But then once the truth about the Holocaust and the camps started to come out in 1944, of course, and early 1945, Hitchcock was called by a very close friend of his, a guy called Sidney Bernstein, who’s very interesting and went on to found Granada Television and do many big things but that’s for a separate lecture entirely. Jewish guy, obviously, British Jewish and so on. But very important in the history of British television and world television, and very important as a friend and collaborator with Hitchcock. And what’s crucial is that he’s the one who’s brought as an advisor, partly filmmaker but let’s call it advisor at the moment, to film the Nazi concentration camps. And Sidney Bernstein brings him out as a friend and to bring him on board with a team that are going to go to Belsen and the other camps and film some of the images we know only too well today. And what’s interesting is that what they filmed, they filmed over 800,000 feet of film footage of the camps. 800,000 feet.
That’s extraordinary. Unfortunately what happens is that these were only allowed to be released by the British in 1985. And they became called “Memory of the Camps,” the German concentration camps. Bernstein visited Belsen. He saw the atrocities, the results of what had happened in these camps. Hitchcock comes over to work with the American and the British Army photographic units and the cameramen documenting the horrors and the terror, the result of the horrors. The full documentary all is 800,000 feet. And what was going to be edited into proper long documentaries in the mid late forties were then canceled by the British Foreign Office because they were regarded as they might be, I’m quoting, “too incendiary in light of the need for post-war cooperation with the defeated Germans against the Soviets.” So all of that footage was held back until 1985, 800,000 feet of film. And all this work with Allied cameramen and confiscated German Nazi documentaries. All of this was held back until the mid eighties. It’s important because it’s a huge body of work of Sidney Bernstein and Hitchcock and others, but they primarily worked on together to document what had happened. You know, Eisenhower’s injunction, as we all know, film it, film it, film it so future generations never question, doubt, or forget what happened. So I mentioned that because I think it’s really important that not only the friendship between Hitchcock and Bernstein, but that he does a huge amount of this work. Okay, then we go onto “Vertigo,” I think probably one of the most personal films of his.
It’s a bit like a Pygmalion story. It’s an obsession of a man who tries to mold the woman into the person that he desires. And it’s this sense of power and suspense that he plays with to me. How one tries to mold the other into the other. Often a man trying to mold a woman. And not just going crazy or the cliches or split personality or what have become cliches today, you know, of all different personality types and so on. But how the power works insidiously inside an individual to mold, to change. And our person changes from being one thing to another thing. We have of course Dorian Gray, we have Jekyll and Hyde, so many, it’s such a recurrent theme in literature of the 20th century and ancient literature as well, this kind of double persona we call it today. But I prefer it, the sense of change of how an individual changes, which I think he finds in the characters in his films. “Northwest” and “Psycho,” in “North by Northwest,” we have the Cary Grant character who’s an advertising executive, mistaken for a government secret agent. He’s pursued across America by enemy agents. First I believe that woman’s trying to help him, but then they realize that she is an enemy agent. He leaves, it goes on and on and on. Nevermind the story, who’s working for the CIA, who isn’t. In other words, surprises constantly happen in the films and that’s totally expected in any story, film or novel or play, but it’s the ability to conquer the ancient and remarkable work of suspense to create it. Hitchcock, of course, 1960, most famous of them all. And it’s based on Robert Bloch’s 1959 “Psycho,” which was inspired by the case of a guy called Ed Gein. So he took it and she of course inspires it. And I want to show one little clip, which is an interview from Dick Cavett of Hitchcock talking a little bit about “Psycho.” If you can show it please.
Can you give away any secrets of your theory of scaring people? The “Psycho” shower scene made many women afraid to take a shower in a house where they were alone for years, some to this day.
Well, I had a letter from a man who said that my daughter, after she saw the French film “Diabolique” would never take a tub anymore because they had a scene with a man coming out of a tub and taking his eyes out. Some horror scene. He said and after seeing that, she’d never take a tub. Now having seen “Psycho,” she won’t take a shower. As a result, she’s very unpleasant to be around. So I replied, I said, “Dear sir, send her to the dry cleaners.”
I was wondering what your theory is of how to make a scene as scary as you did that. Without getting too technical, but a lot of film students are watching, ‘cause there are a lot of them around the country and in colleges. The average movie I think I’ve read is made up of about 600 separate shots, would that be true?
Well, the shower scene in “Psycho,” the knife never touched the body at all. It was just this fast cutting from one thing to another, the knife coming at the camera and so forth. Actually, the property people at the studio made me a lovely torso with pink rubber, and it was all tubed inside with blood. So if you took a knife and stabbed this rubber torso, blood would spurt out immediately. But I never used it. It was all unnecessary because the cutting of the knife and the girl’s face and the feet and everything was so rapid that there were 78 separate pieces of film in 45 seconds.
[Dick] So this fear came from the putting together later, not anything-
Well, anything that you can involve an audience so close is much better than seeing it from a distance. I think there’s nothing more boring than a barroom brawl in a Western. What do they do? Break up a lot of furniture and a lot of bottles on the shelf. But if you took the audience right in and got an impression of a face, a hand and arm and feet and everything, you’d involve the audience much closer with it.
Yeah, there are stories of, people have said to you, “Aren’t you going to show the whole room?” When they built an elaborate set and you said, “I think the stripes on the policeman’s arm are enough to show that we’re in the police station.”
Well, you don’t have to show the whole room.
And also you need a long shot for certain effects.
If you want to show or say loneliness, then you have one figure alone in a room. I remember in the film, “Rebecca,” the young girl there was brought to a big house. She was very scared. So naturally, when she walked into this big room, you made her small deliberately, you see. In fact, to make her feel afraid, I even had a fan blow her hair slightly, even though the windows weren’t open.
[Dick] Gee, that is interesting. You wanted the effect even though it wouldn’t be realistic-
That’s right.
Totally realistic. And I gather you would never shoot from, sometimes in a movie, you’ll see the cameras inside the fireplace, behind the flames.
Oh, that’s charming, isn’t it? Putting the audience out of the frying pan into the fire.
You’d never do that.
Never.
Why? What does that violate?
Well, it’s ridiculous. Nobody can get inside the fire, they’ll get burnt. It doesn’t make sense. All those things are quite silly to me.
[Dick] And yet some of them are still done even though they they haven’t-
Well, look at the movies you see today where they put flowers in the foreground so blurred and out of focus. You don’t know what it is.
I saw a Western like that, where about nine scenes in a row started with a little cactus flower and the closeup and the rider in the distance.
What was the story about, a cactus flower?
[Dick] No, but that’s the point, isn’t it?
Yes, it is.
So I wanted to show this. We can hold that there. Thanks, Jess. Because I think it gives such an insight into the art and craft of what he’s doing, detail for detail. First of all, absolute minimalist. Only show what is essential and may be necessary, but only the essential, a hand, a knife coming down. As we all remember the shower. We only see the blood right at the end. Little bit of blood going down the drain. As he said, there isn’t, you know, if you keep hacking and hacking, you’re spurting blood all over the place, you kill the suspense. So the hand, you see the woman’s face, the streak, the horror, the look, the curtain shower, the shadow before, it’s all chosen by Hitchcock 'cause he was an obsessive storyboardist. In other words, every single frame, every image is obsessively drawn and done again and again, part of the script. But again, coming back to absolute minimalism in order to excite and mobilize the imagination as much as possible. And that’s the key for me for him. It’s imaginative visual storytelling and he’s the master. And because his genre is suspense, he knows how to create that suspense. As he said, you show a ballroom brawl in a cowboy movie, bang, bang, this, that, da-da-da, there’s no suspense. The only suspense is who’s going to get shot and die and who isn’t. But here he’s showing every single moment, which is to evoke the emotional terror inside us and the emotional response inside us and then of course later, the release. Truffaut in that interview said to him that in “North by Northwest,” many complained about the implausibility of the plot. And he answered an interesting comment.
He said, “Logic in a plot is dull.” Interesting comment that he made and he’s right because we are not following rational logic in a plot, we are following the emotional arc of characters. Characters are driven by obsession, love, compassion, hate, murder, revenge, desire, whatever. So he is following the emotional arc or what we call the emotional journey of the character or even the thought process, but it’s not necessarily a set of logical formula or equations, obviously, because we are human. So it’s an interesting response that he gives. He talks about how the visuals transcend language barrier. He talks about a Japanese person or an Indian audience should scream at the same time in “Psycho” or “Rebecca” or “Rear Window” or “North by Northwest.” In other words, it’s not dependent on the word spoken or even knowing the language, it’s the visual storytelling in this extreme minimalist way to heighten suspense moment by moment. About “Psycho,” he made a very similar comment. And I’m quoting, he said, “It wasn’t a message that stirred audiences, nor was it even great performances. They were aroused by pure aesthetics of film itself, of the medium of film. I filmed it in black and white, with long passages of no dialogue. The budget was only at $800,000,” which in 1960 is really cheap. “And Norman Bates, the motel was built on the back lot at Universal Studios.”
So everything is about a visceral feeling that is being evoked. And he said, he’s talking again, “That 'Psycho’ is more in common with film noir quickies than with the elegant thrillers I made later, like ‘Vertigo’ and others.” And he also said, “I never allow the audience to anticipate a surprise, I just reveal it at a certain moment.” Surprisingly. The murder of Janet Lee, he talks about the heroine. Well, only a third of the way into the film, she’s killed. And we later discover the secret of Norman’s mother and the kind of mother that Norman Bates has. Surprise is revealed at certain times and he knows when and how as part of the overall art of visual storytelling. Obviously “Psycho” continues today to be a work of frightening, thrilling suspense of his artistry, I really believe it. And even in the beginning stories as a setup of Marian, she’s driving, her relationship develops with Marian and Norman. Even lets a relationship develop but she’s tired and she arrives there, it’s a violent rainstorm at the Bates Motel, but there’s almost like a bit of a friendly relationship between them and do we suspect that he’s going to kill her the way he does? Marian overhears the voice of Norman’s mother speaking so sharply to him, just the voice first. Suspense, it’s enough. Just plant the voice without the visual at the time. And Marian, Janet Lee character, gently suggests, oh, Norman doesn’t have to stay there in this dead end little motel in a dead end street. She shows a care towards Norman.
He’s touched. He’s so touched that he’s threatened by his feelings and that’s why he has to kill her. Isn’t that an extraordinary thing to think of in the film “Psycho”? Because he’s touched by the feelings that Marian, that Janet Lee actually shows, if you watch carefully, compared to the feelings towards the mother, he can’t cope with it. The only way is to kill it. It’s not logic. It’s driven by an emotional arc if you like. She cares about him and he has to kill her because of it. It’s fascinating. When Norman spies on Marian, we don’t get a sense that maybe this is a bit of a peeping Tom and it’s going to be a film about that or something like that. We don’t get a sense. It’s a voyeuristic, which of course Hitchcock does a lot, but we don’t get a sense necessarily that he’s going to kill her. So surprise and suspense he plays with all the time just in some parts of one film in “Psycho.” Again, as he mentioned, never show the knife striking the flesh. There are no wounds in that scene. If we think of so many movies today, there’s not a single wound shown. There’s blood but not gallons. It’s shot in black and white. Grizzly sound effects are used much more effectively. And the closing shots are not graphic, but symbolic. A little bit of blood and water spinning down the drain and they’re spinning down the drain. It’s like a metaphor almost perhaps for the mind. But it’s just by these images that for me, one of the greatest scenes ever made has been made by this guy in “Psycho.”
But what I wanted to point out is how he puts it all together. The aesthetics of visual storytelling by a master of his craft. And that closeup of the drain with the water, a little bit of blood, a little bit of water spinning around is the same size, if you look very carefully, as Janet Lee, as Marian’s unmoving eyeball. And we make the link between the two unconsciously. This is all thought through by Hitchcock as well. This is not just David speculating crazily. So it is one of the most effective scenes in film history, we all know, but it’s the artistry, not the graphic details and not being over graphic or even overdramatic. It’s the ability to be so minimalist. All that you need, what is essential to tell the story and put that in. And that’s the secret. And later of course, the surprise of Norman’s mother is revealed, another surprise is still awaiting after that, which is towards the end of the film where a sequence seems out of place. After the murders have happened and been solved there’s an inexplicable scene during which a long-winded psychiatrist lectures the assembled survivors on the causes of Norman’s psychopathic behavior. Is it parody? Anticlimax? Is he playing with wit and dramatic irony here? We’re not sure. He leaves it open. But it’s a complete surprise. Why throw that in at the end of the film?
But it’s unforgettable yet again. Story is not logic. Story is following the emotional or psychological arc of characters and interactions. And of course he’s playing with our fears every step along the way. Our fears of crime, of we committing crime ourselves, like Norman Bates, our fears of the police or authority and authority figures, our fears are becoming the victim of mad men. And of course, ultimately in “Psycho,” our fears perhaps of our mothers or fathers or parents or whatever it is somewhere in the deep parts of our minds. “Psycho” was the most profitable movie of its time. And in today’s money it would’ve made, if we equate it, about $150 million. So it was the most profitable, made on a shoestring of a budget and made as a quickie, interestingly as well. But so thought through. And when you read a lot, it’s him and his wife that created so much of the storytelling that I’m mentioning. Okay, on a very different note, I’m going to show a very short clip from Spielberg talking about one moment of his life when he was making “Jaws” and talking about Hitchcock. If we can show the next clip, please. So in the clip, Spielberg talks about making “Jaws” not only did it cost a lot of money, but the fake shark, first of all sunk to the bottom. It didn’t work as it was meant to work. It looked ridiculous after all this money. And he intended to show it early on in the movie. And what did he do? He thought of Hitchcock. The movie that made his really huge global name and reputation, “Jaws,” it was Hitchcock that inspired him. Hold it, wait.
Only show the shark much later. Don’t show so much so early. You give away too much of suspense. ‘Cause obviously “Jaws” depends on a shark and humans, you know, it’s going to depend on the suspense. When’s the shark going to attack the humans? Obviously for the visual storytelling. But when do you show that shark and these teeth? That’s the question. And because of pragmatics of a big budget and the shark not working and the electronics not working, and they film it in a tank, water, et cetera, disaster. So he adopted Hitchcock, he thought of Hitchcock. Wait, build it, build it, build it, build it, plant the seed, plant the idea, create the terror in the audience’s imagination. Create what we are calling the suspense of Hitchcock before revealing finally the source of the suspense. We all know and we watch it knowing, and we’re knowing it’s going to come, but we will wait and wait until it actually happens. So I wanted to share that because filmmakers think about each other, study each other obviously all the time, like any artists everywhere. But I think it’s one of the classic which he learns, Spielberg, very early on from Hitchcock and put into many of his other films as Scorsese, many, many others, come back to quoting Mr. Hitchcock. Okay, I want to show some iconic moments, having already spoken about some iconic moments, brief scenes from some of the great films, which I’m sure we all know pretty well. If you can show the next clip, please.
Hello? Hello? Hello? Hello? Hello? Hello? Hello? Get out of here, the tank might blow!
Lisa, Doyle!
If we can hold it there, Jess, for a moment. Thank you. Another interesting facet about Hitchcock, as I said, he zooms right out and then will zoom right in. You know, the airplane hitting the truck, the birds from a bit further and then suddenly a bird’s slamming up against the window. It’s again, constantly playing with the creative collusion between suspense and surprise moments. The other thing is what he uses so much of is obviously the face, which pretty much all filmmakers use, the eyes, the face, et cetera, and going closer and closer onto it. But what’s often underestimated is how much he uses hands. If we looked again at those iconic clips and we look at any other film, it’s the hands. And he talks about in the interview with Truffaut, that hands tell so much about a person. So if a person is anxious, what are they doing with their hands? If a person is angry, what do they do with their hands? If a person suddenly becomes viciously murderous, what do they do with their hands? If they become compassionate, kind and loving, what do they do? If they become giving, if they become angry, it goes on and on and on. And what’s interesting is that he was the first of all filmmakers, really, to understand not only the human body, but how we use our hands to express our inner emotions, which we may not say obviously in words, we may not even consciously think of, but our hands will reveal so much of our inner psyche of what’s really going on in our conscious or unconscious for that matter. And it’s hands when the camera comes closer can actually be quite terrifying or very comforting. Let’s never forget, go back to Spielberg in “ET,” ET puts his finger up and says, “Go home.”
It’s the finger that comes out, it’s the hand image that Spielberg takes from Hitchcock and so many, so many others, films and how we use, obviously with the human body, what are we going to use? But others will have endless running or it’s the hands and how you can teach or work with a really good actor to show so much through minimalist use of hands, fingers, and so on. And that’s what he uses in so many of the films as well. And it enhances suspense because the closeup of the camera zooms right in with that, together with of course the face, the eyes, the mouth. As I’ve said once before that one of the genius approaches that Marlon Brando did when he was 21, 22, when he was doing “A Streetcar Named Desire,” was that he never stopped using his mouth. And Elia Kazan, the director, noticed that he would do that in rehearsals and kept working with him. And if you watch “A Streetcar Named Desire,” in the film of of it, you’ll see Brando never stops using his mouth and it creates such sexual tension and suspense and such thought. What’s he going to do? What isn’t he going to do? We don’t have a clue. And Brando used that technique so often. Finally, of course in “The Godfather,” he puts cotton wool balls inside his cheeks even. But Brando understood the mouth, the lips can be so effective in filmic visual storytelling. Hitchcock, it was obviously all of those aspects of the face, hands, eyes, mouth, and so on, but hands in addition as well. Truffaut also said that he’d never met a filmmaker, and I’m quoting him, “Who had given more thought to the process of his art than any of his colleagues.”
And Truffaut compared him. He said that speaking to Hitchcock was like going with Oedipus on a consultation to the oracle of Delphi. So we get the sense of how much he thought about his art, how much he thought about filmmaking, obviously for suspense, terror, mystery, all the rest of it, but how he thought about visual storytelling. And of course he got so much from Eisenstein, we acknowledged he was the first great theorist at the time. The Soviet, the Russian great filmmaker, “Battleship Potemkin,” other things we know, where Eisenstein said it’s how you make a collage or combination of images. You tell the story through the combination and collage of images. So either the classic one of “Battleship Potemkin,” you show the pram and then the stairs, and of course the pram going down the stairs, the little baby and other things. But you show a story through zooming in, zooming out. But it’s through juxtaposition of images and images and images, that storytelling. The words of the character are crucial, but it’s obviously a visual medium entirely. So we go on. And of course even in “The Birds,” it’s a love story in one way and then love bird becomes, you know, we make in our own imagination but the birds turn into these vicious, cruel creatures. What’s he saying about what happens to love, possibly? He leaves it open. He lets the metaphor stay open to what might happen as these waves of birds start to gather and attack, as we saw that vicious attack against the window. Well, what exactly do these birds want? Why do these birds do it? It’s an unanswered question in the film, but it remains an enigmatic, treasured image in our scared imagination as an audience member.
“Marnie,” which I think is a more of a psychological thriller that he goes into, but a lot of these techniques are worked with as well, but it’s more on the psychology. And we get in “Marnie” because the main character of Sean Connery solves Marnie’s psychological problems that she had as a child. You know, with having a mother as a prostitute and rape and other things, et cetera. It’s a solution at the end. The release happens. But what I think he achieves, it’s not just a psychological thriller told with all these techniques. In “Marnie,” we get such a sense of relief that actually there’s a glimmer of hope. There’s a glimmer of some future’s possible that can solve the deepest, unresolved problems that are psychological in the characters when love is strong enough. Maybe sentimental but true in that film, I think often underrated “Marnie.” He said, “My suspense works comes out of creating nightmares for the audience. I play with the audience. I make them gasp, surprise them, shock them. When you have a nightmare, it’s very vivid. If you’re dreaming that you’re being led to the electric chair and then you’re happy as can be when you wake up and you’re relieved you weren’t at the electric chair.” So it’s the idea of how is a nightmare or a dream actually structured. Obviously it’s Freud, many, many others, Jung, and many have written about dreams obviously, but try to do that with a camera is much easier said than done. Hitchcock achieves it and it has the structure of a dream full of mystery and suspense and possible meanings by resonance and by association, not logic as a dream might have as well.
And of course when you wake up, you’re relieved. It was just a nightmare on a dream. Same as with the films. He wrote again and I’m quoting him, “The English,” 'cause obviously he was born English, “The English used a lot of imagination with their crimes. I get a kick out of imagining a crime. When I’m writing a story and I come to the crime, I think now wouldn’t it be nice to have the main character die like this or like that? And then even more happily, I think at this point the audience will start yelling. I spent three years growing up studying with the Jesuits. They used to terrify me to death like the police. And now I’m getting my own back by terrifying other people.” So doing it with wit as well. And I think that’s the reason for the psychiatrist scene at the end of “Psycho.” You know, it’s terrifying growing up, not only as a child, but life, experiences. Never forget, he went to Belson and the other camps, you know, what is terror? And more importantly for him, how do you show it in a film that is still so evocative decades and decades later. So he went from the silent era to the sound era. He transcended all of it. He does have this sense of the audience as voyeur and more importantly, the camera is like a voyeur. And that’s a fascinating idea for how do you use that camera? Do I use it literally, naturalistically, more psychologically or voyeuristically? Let the camera see the hand, let the camera see the object and many other things. And he also talks about he tries to take ordinary human beings and ordinary every day and put them in a dangerous situation.
What’s going to happen? And he understood, and this is what Truffaut meant, that he thought about his art so much more than so many other movie makers. And I’m quoting him, quoting Hitchcock, “The theme of the innocent man being accused provides the audience with a much greater sense of danger. The theme of the innocent man being accused of something creates a sense of danger that is an eternal archetype.” And Hitchcock goes on. “It’s easier for the audience to identify with this person than with a guilty man on the run. A guilty man on the run we identify with less, but an innocent person who’s accused or put into a dangerous situation not of his or her making, we feel much more for. And this goes way back to Mr. Aristotle of two and a half thousand years ago. He talked about the whole point of theater is to elicit pity and terror in the audience.” Interesting, pity and terror. And by pity, he meant compassion and terror of course fear. Aristotle understood it in the 33 pages of brilliance in the aesthetics and Hitchcock knows it inside out and backwards. He is not just eliciting pity, of course he’s focusing on the terror side of it. Aristotle also said that the person, the character you feel the most for is the character who has undeserved misfortune. Romeo and Juliet, two 15-year-old teenagers fall in love, but their parents of mafia families hate each other’s guts, can’t bear each other, ban the kids from seeing each other, having popcorn, going to a movie, whatever. And everything happens. It’s undeserved misfortune. The teenagers fall in love. That’s it. It’s undeserved misfortune and it’s the same what he talks about.
The ordinary person caught up in a situation, not of their making, not of their choosing and deciding like a man who’s committed a crime or done something wrong and is on the run. Very, very different. So we have this idea of that he’s read all this, he’s understood it and he knows it. One other thing I want to mention in the last couple of minutes is that he talks about what you look for in an actor. And he talks about how a good actor does nothing very well. And what he means, doesn’t mean literally do nothing, but does the absolute minimalist, but does it extremely well. Does a look with the use of a hand, a glance, a look, at a sideways movement, this image of when we see the hands coming over to strangle her or the telephone ringing and the camera’s slowly moving behind her, you know, the hello, hello, hello. Build up the tension. But it’s doing the maximum with a minimalist of physical and emotional activity. That’s the art of the actor in film, certainly for him. And he talks about the actor has got to learn authority. What does it mean? Authority that comes with control. You control. So you never let the emotion get out of control. Never too much. Never too over the top. Never too excessive. Control it. Moment for moment. So when the scream comes in “Psycho,” it’s a controlled scream. If you watch carefully how she’s acting it, it’s a controlled scream. It may appear a bit less to us, but it’s actually planted by the actor when exactly she’s going to let it go.
So it’s about storytelling, as I mentioned at the beginning, visual storytelling, withhold information. Like Spielberg discovered with “Jaws.” Withhold information before you show the actual shark. Hold it back, hold it back. Only show what you need to essentially and engage the emotions, not the logic of the audience step by step as you go along. And he talks about how he visualizes the script and you know, et cetera, et cetera. But I think these are the crucial things that I wanted to share today about part of what I love and I’m sure many of us do with an ironic sense of a smile of how a guy who made these movies so long ago, so many decades ago can still evoke such thought, imagination and sheer pleasure with terror. Why do we enjoy watching terror so much is a different story, perhaps for another time to give another talk about why do we enjoy watching things that absolutely terrify us out of our wits. That’s for a separate topic. Okay, so thank you. I’m going to hold it there and we can go into the questions. Sorry, just looking there.
Q&A and Comments:
Q: Were you aware the American satire magazine “Mad” showed a parody of Hitchcock calling him Alfred Hatchplot?
A: I didn’t know that, Jonah.
Thanks for that. Patricia, I have no sound. Ah, okay. I increase the volume. I hope that got worked out there for you.
Q: Okay, Jean. Did he and his wife meet through filmmaking?
A: Oh that’s interesting. They met through the arts in general. Exact details I’m not totally sure of to be honest. I’d have to research that and get back to you. But yeah, through the arts.
Q: Myrna, are the interviews with Truffaut on YouTube?
A: Yes, I managed to find some, but not the full interviews, clips unless you pay and download, et cetera. The ones with Truffaut. Madeleine. But that’s what I found, others may find differently.
Q: Were you aware that he was a womanizer?
A: Yes. With all his leading ladies, he ruined Tippi Hedren’s career 'cause she wouldn’t concede to his advances. Yeah, and she talks about that, Tippi Hedren, as you know, I’m sure. And that would be also for another lecture about his relationship with women and of course his relationship with the fantasy of women. You know, while so many of them were blondes, but I felt this was going to focus on suspense and the artistry of making it. His relationship with women and even his work with the concentration camps and other aspects of his work would, 53 films he made, would require, I think another one or two sessions at least, was my choice. But absolutely as you say. I think he was obsessed with fantasy and what happened if fantasy became real like, you know, Norman Bates in a way in “Psycho.”
Estelle, seemed he chose blonde leading ladies, treated them badly. Yeah. I mean, in a way he argued that the actors, he was always trying to teach the actor to do the absolute minimalist. We need to remember that actors are often trained in theater, so they’re trained to be more, let’s call it heightened or exaggerated with physical and emotional and gestures. Many of them are not trained to be absolute minimalist on stage because you can have a thousand people watching and it can be far back row and you can’t even see what’s going on really. So they’re trained to heighten or exaggerate physical and emotional gesture. And certainly method acting was part of that. So he did treat them badly, as you’re saying, but he was trying to teach them how to be absolutely minimal on film because of course the film can go right up. Like my hand is, you know, the film zoomed right in or zoomed back, you know, it’s a camera that is the key. And then the editing and the lighting goes with it.
Romaine, always experience a pugilistic quality to Hitchcock. There’s a fight at the center of many of his stories. Yeah, you’re right. I agree. Human in nature. Exactly. I mean, because he is dealing with drama, so there has to be conflict. Without conflict, we can’t have drama. And the biggest conflict is not necessarily between characters, but inside the inner life of a character. You know, sort of Jekyll and Hyde stuff.
Q: Ailey, what’s the name of the documentary released in 1945?
A: “Memory of the Camps and German Concentration Camps.” Okay.
Gita. It became available after 1985. British Foreign Office finally released it. It’s quite a shock to me that they thought this is too horrible because they need the Germans on their side against the Soviets. I can understand from a geopolitical point of view, but from a human point of view, I mean, you know, I can’t agree with it. They should have released it then.
Best for suspense, romance, jealousy, and the baddie getting a comeuppance. Yeah, exactly. So you actually end up feeling sorry. I mean, it’s an irony isn’t there? It’s a great point you’re making. You know, we end up feeling a bit sorry for Norman Bates, even after he’s killed the Janet Lee character because we know what’s happened with him and his mommy. So we do feel a bit sorry for the killer. Perhaps undeserved misfortune again.
Rita, he has the YouTube, oh, great, thanks.
Between Truffaut and Hitchcock. Thank you.
Okay. His use of music, especially in “Psycho,” certainly adds. Music, I think he really understood music and sound without a doubt. In particular sound I would say, that he really introduced so much, well as many filmmakers did. So I wouldn’t say he originated, but he understood how to use it to absolutely enhance atmosphere. Switch off the sound and the suspense is too great.
Okay. Lawrence, you didn’t mention his abuse of Tippi Hedren. Yeah, I know. Because I read a lot about the abuse of Tippi Hedren and what she said and what he said and I didn’t want to get caught in a tennis match. And also I really do think, and it’s valid what she says, probably, we can’t prove it, but probably, but I think that is for another lecture, you know, his relationship with women and the romantic or idealized fantasy he had with certain women, certainly blonde, but that’s also a speculative debate. I can’t really evidence it other than obviously what she said, which probably may well be true.
Q: Stuart, why did Hitchcock put himself in the cameo role?
A: Well, I think it became a fashionable thing for Hitchcock and quite a lot of others, you know, put themselves in a brief like couple of seconds clip in the movie themselves. I think it was a bit of a, and so is today, where the director puts themselves in for a few seconds, a kind of a fashion thing. Also, it’s part of playing with the medium in a way.
Sandy, you know, we always know that we’re watching a movie, it’s not real life. Sandy, location becomes character. Yeah, it’s interesting that you say that. The ancient Greeks, and I keep going back to them, but they wrote so much about it, and it’s quoted so much again and again in our own times, is that character is destiny and destiny is character. And that didn’t only mean that it’s all predetermined, but the conflict between free choice and compulsive choice is what I think they really meant by destiny. When do we actually choose something which is known or different or we are here to choose, but it’s compulsion that is making us choose. That’s what I get when I dig deeper into what the Greeks and many others have written about character and destiny and human nature.
Sandy, Hitchcock had an obsession with blonde woman. Yep. As did Hollywood, as Rita says. Yeah, I think he was part of his times, it’s a great point you’re making, Sandy and Rita and Romaine. I think you’re all making is a great point. He wasn’t the only one I think, and I’m not trying to excuse him at all, and his, I think appalling behavior at times, certainly with Tippi Hedren, but it was part of the whole studio system with a couple of magnates had enormous power to do whatever they wanted with their leading ladies. And how they would get away with it, rather.
Hannah, didn’t have sound, there was a button. Oh okay, thanks.
iPad, the 39 steps. Yeah, absolutely. You know, I mean 53 movies. Again, just think about it. 53, I mean it’s like Bob Dylan, you know? I don’t know, think it’s the course of 50 albums he’s made. I mean, the output, the artistic output is just extraordinary when you think about it. Or an artist like Picasso.
William, “To Catch a Thief” seemed very different. It does. And that would be another whole lecture. I missed “Gaslight,” so full of suspense. Yeah. Directed by George Cukor. Yeah.
Okay, thanks for that, Ron. Ron, hope you’re well, appreciate. Val. Thank you, very kind comments.
Nina, obsession with blondes in distress, “Vertigo,” “Psycho,” “Rear Window,” “North by Northwest,” “The Birds” and so on, yeah. It was blondes in distress, but also ordinary people caught up in dangerous or extraordinary situations and what were they going to do? What would happen? That’s the key. It’s not the person who’s committed the crime or the baddie brought up and on the run or who’s going to catch the baddie or not, you know? I think the key is it isn’t linked absolutely to the blondes in distress and goes that step further. Thank you Nina. Rita, oh, thank you very much. You’re all very kind.
Q: Nancy. Who do you think influenced Hitchcock and his obsessions?
A: Well, that’s a huge thing. He said the police and the Jesuits. And I would imagine his mother. I mean, it’s quite an image in “Psycho” and other mother in “Marnie,” the image of the mother in “Marnie” is horrific. I mean, we get a cathartic resolution and the cathartic resolution, everybody comes together, understanding, brings them all together in a not lovey-dovey but sentimental way at the end of the movie “Marnie.” But certainly, perhaps even more than blondes in distress were mothers. But it’s a lot of ambiguous scholarly stuff written or stuff written about him and his own mother. More about his father actually, interestingly, being the greengrocer.
Q: Mitzi, with a big screen and the darkness of the movie house disappearing, can these images still be exploited to tell a story?
A: Well, as they say, lighting is so crucial in film and how you use the light. I mean, Fellini would only film mostly probably 80, 90% indoors in studio because then you can control the light and therefore for him, you can control so much of the atmosphere, the moods that you want and therefore the emotion you want to evoke in the audience. Others prefer outside, but that can be much more costly and you’ve got to wait for the light to be what you want.
Romaine, from pugilistic to psychoanalyst. That’s a great, great question and great, great thought. Transformation of aggression.
Great, Ron, hope you’re well again. I think Hitchcock’s earlier black and white films made in Britain you say more interesting than the later ones. Yeah, I think you’ve got a very good point and very interesting, but I don’t think that we can ignore for a second the impact of “Vertigo” and “Psycho” and “North by Northwest” on and on and on and on. The impact is just so global, to be frank. And I mean literally, in cultures where they may not even understand more than 10% of the language, unless it’s got words underneath.
Sandy, he was also a master of the long take. Yes. The camera runs on and on and rope, exactly in touch of evil. That long shot, you constantly talk about the long shot and the closeup, but how you play with that with the camera? When you choose to go from a long shot to a closeup, when you choose from which angle you choose. Because again, what point of view is the camera showing? Is the camera showing the point of view of the director, the point of view of the main character, who’s the victim, the point view of the aggressor character, whether it’s an airplane or whatever, a big truck. What is the point of view that you choose to put the camera in? That becomes the crucial question.
Nina, the use of Silvester’s designs. Yeah, he’s working there at agency. You’re right. It’s great.
Q: How about a talk on Francois Truffaut?
A: Oh, well there’s so many of the French and many others. It could absolutely be fantastic.
Thank you. Rita, Karen. Thank you, you’re all very kind. Karen, about the idea of the innocent man caught up. Second entity can’t control, we can’t choose what happened to us, but we can’t choose how we respond. Absolutely. Spot on. And I think he would agree. We can’t choose what happens to us, but we can choose how we respond if we are lucky. Interestingly, Euripides used to say with the character destiny debate in ancient Greece, Euripides used to talk and his one play talks about you make a choice and you ride the horse of destiny. Once you have made a choice, you are on that horse and then you have no choice because all the things will happen afterwards, over which you have very little choice once you make the big fundamental one. So Euripides interestingly had a different angle to the destiny, to free choice debate, which we still have today in our own novels, theater, and own lives.
Leonard, you don’t mention the effect of the background music, which makes suspense, yeah, I know. You’re absolutely right and that could be another lecture. It’d be great. Naomi, thank you. Yeah, he was brilliant. I agree.
Rosalind. A comment. My husband was so terrified. Was he? At the end of “Rear Window.” He was a rocking chair at the end. He got up with his cinema seat to walk up and a seat banged and the whole audience jumped. I know, well, can you believe it? These guys were making movies so long ago, but they can still have this effect on us. I mean, this is fiction. This is not real life. It’s play play, make believe. Whereas my daughter, when she was four years old and I took her to the first play she’d ever seen of Scrooge and I said to her, “Are you going to be scared?” She said, “Oh no, it’s all play, play.” You know, it’s play, play. But it’s a brilliance to evoke the response is I think the artistry.
Ron, an illustrated book on Hitchcock was published. Yeah, great book. Thank you.
Gita, Claude Rains in “Notorious.” Yes, that’s right. Okay.
Eileen, didn’t TV, I’m not sure what you mean there.
George and Olga, can you explained why World War II, the Holocaust films were not shown. Well, as I mentioned, the British Foreign Office, they had 800,000 feet of film of the concentration camps, not only Belson, and they said it would be, I’m quoting, incendiary for German audiences to watch because they wanted the Germans on their side after the war against the Russians. Make of it what you will. I disagree entirely and I think it absolutely should have been shown and should be shown as often as possible.
Q: Neville, what do you think of the current great directors?
A: Oh, that’s interesting. Great, interesting question, Neville. Spielberg, Scorsese, God there’s so many, Kubrick. Probably Kubrick’s my favorite but Scorsese’s certainly up there and others. Carol, Orson Wells, and then also directors that have made individual films. Michael Curtiz. Yeah, there’s so many, but great. It’s a lovely question. It’d be fun to play with. Thanks Neville.
Carol, you haven’t mentioned Hitchcock’s subtle sense of humor. Yes. Well, I tried to mention that with the ironic wit at the end of “Psycho,” right? It brings a lot of psychiatrists together to explain what has happened, the psychopathy of what happened with the Norman Bates character. But you know, the way he talks in the interviews, there’s always a bit of irony and wit 'cause he knows in the end it’s fiction. That we can terrify each other, we can terrify ourselves with fiction. The extraordinary achievement of the human imagination and the artistry, how to put it together in Hitchcock.
Thanks very much everybody. Jess, thanks so much and hope everybody has a great rest of the weekend. Thank you.