\, by FRANc;OIS TRUFFAUT With the Collaboration of HELEN G. scon REVISED EDITION A TOUCHSTONE BOOK Published by Simon & Schuster New York London Toronto Svdnn Toho Singapore Copyright © 1983 by Francois 'lruffaut and Editions Ramsay English language translation copyright © 1984 by Franc;ois Truffaut All rights reserved including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form First Touchstone Edition, 1985 Published by Simon & Schuster, Inc. Rockefeller Center 1230 Avenue of the Americas New York, New York 10020 TOUCHSTONE and colophon are registered trademarks of Simon & Schuster, Inc. First published in France in 1983 by Editions Ramsay under the title Hitchcockrlrulfaut Manufactured in the United States of America 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 I 17 18 19 20 Pbk. Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Truffaut, Franc;ois. Hitchcock. Dialogue between Truffaut and Hitchcrxk. Translation of Le cinema selon Hitchcock. Includes index. 1. Hitchcock, Alfred, 1899-1980 1. Hitchcock, Alfred, 1899-1980 II Scott, Helen C 111. Title PNI998.A3H573 1984 791.43'0233'0924 84-10686 ISBN 0-671-52601-4 ISBN 0-671-00429-5 Pbk. The photographs illustrating this book were published with the kind permission of Alfred Hitchcock (producer), for the film Num­ ber Thirteen, distributed by W. and F. of London. Michael Bakon (producer), for the films The White Shadow, distributed by W. and F. of London and Selznick Distributing Corp. of the U.S.A.; Woman to Woman, distributed by W. and F. of London and Selz­ nick Distributing Corp. of the U.S.A.; Pleasure Garden, distrib­ uted by W. and F. of London and Aywon Independent Distributors of the U.S.A.; The Mountain Eagle, distributed by W. and F. of London and Artlee Independent Distributors of the U.S.A.; The Lodger, distributed by W. and F. of London and Amer-Anglo Gorp. of the U. S.A.; Downhill, distributed by W. and F. of London and World Wide Distributors of the U.S.A.; Easy Virtue, distributed by W. and F. of London and World Wide Distributors of the U. S.A. John Maxwell, British International Pict. (prod.), for the films: The Ring, distributed by Wardour; The Farmer's Wife, distributed by Wardour and Ufa Eastern Division of the U.S.A.; Champagne, distributed by Wardour; The Manx­ man, distributed by Wardour and Ufa Eastern Division of the U.S.A.; Blackmail, distributed by Wardour and Sono Art World Pictures ofthe U.S.A.; Juno and the Paycock, distributed by War­ dour and British International of the U.S.A.; Murder, distributed by Wardour and British International of the U.S.A.; The Skin Game, distributed by Wardour and British International of the U.S.A.; Rich and Strange, distributed by Wardour and Powers Pictures of the U.S.A.; Number Seventeen, distributed by War­ dour. Alfred Hitchcock, British International Picf. (prod.), for the film Lord Camber's Ladies, distributed by Wardour. Tom Arnold, Gaumont British production, for the film Waltzes from Vienna, distributed by Gaumont Film Distribution, Tom Arnold of the U.S.A. Michael Bakon and Ivor Montagu, G.B. Prod., for the films: The Man Who Knew Too Much (1st version), distributed by Gaumont Film Distribution G.B. of the U.S.A.; The Thirty-nine Steps, distributed by Gaumont Film Distribution G.B. Produc­ tions of the U.S.A.; Secret Agent, distributed by Gaumont Film Distribution G.B. Productions of the U.S.A.; Sabotage, distrib­ uted by Gaumont Film Distribution G.B. Productions of the U.S.A. Edward Black-Gainsborough, Gaumont British Picture for the film Young and Innocent, distributed by Gaumont Film Dis­ tribution, G.B. Productions of the U.S.A. Edward Black-Gains­ borough Picture, for the film The Lady Vanishes, distributed by M.G.M. in England and G.B. Productions in the U.S.A. Eric Pommer and Charles Laughton, Mayflower Prod., for the film Jamaica Inn, distributed by Associated British, Paramount of the U.S.A. David O. Selznick, for the films Rebecca, distributed by United Artists, and Spellbound, distributed by United Artists. Walter Wanger, for Foreign Correspondent, distributed by United Artists. Harry Edington, for the film Mr. and Mrs. Smith, distrib­ uted bv RKO. RKO. for the film Suspicion, distributed by R.K.O.· Frank Lloyd and Jack H. Skirball, for the film Shadow of a Doubt, distributed by Universal. Kenneth Macgowan, for the film Lifeboat, distributed by 20th Century-Fox. British Ministry of Information, for the films Bon Voyage and Aventure Mal;;:ache. Alfred Hitchcock, for the film Notorious, distributed by R. K.O. David O. Selznick, for the film The Paradine Case, distributed by Selznick Releasing Organization. Hitchcock and Sidney Bern­ stein, Transatlantic Picture, for the films: Rope, distributed by Warner Brothers; Under Capricorn, distributed by Warner Broth­ ers. Alfred Hitchcock, for the films: Stage Fright, distributed by Warner Brothers; Strangers on a Train, distributed bv Warner Brothers; I Confess, distributed by Warner Brothers; Dial M for Murder, distributed by Warner Brothers; Rear Window, distributed by Paramount; To Catch a Thief, distributed by Paramount; The Trouble with Harry, distributed by Paramount; The Man Who Knew Too Much (2nd version), distributed by Paramount; The Wrong Man, distributed by Warner Brothers; Vertigo, distributed by Paramount; North by Northwest, distributed by M.G.M.; Psy­ cho, distributed by Paramount; The Birds, distributed by Univer­ sal; Mamie, distributed by Universal; Torn Curtain, distributed by Universal. Philippe Halsman, for all the photographs illustrating the conversations of A. Hitchcock and F. Truffaut, © Philippe Halsman 1963. ACKNOWLEDGMENT We wish to thank all those who helped in conceiving, com­ pleting or illustrating this book: Aimee Alexandre, Fanny Ardant, Emmanuele Bernheim, Peter Bogdanovich, Rene Bonnell, Raymond Cauchetier, Carlos Clarens, Josiane Couedel, Roger Dagieu, L'Express, Odette Ferry, Lucette de Givray, Philippe Halsman, Monique Holveck, Chris­ tophe L., Jean-Franc;ois Lentretien, Lydie Mahias, Made­ leine Morgenstern, Christine Pelle, George Perry, Peggy Robertson, Laura Truffaut-Wong, Oliver Vaughan, Alain Venisse, Cahiers du Cinema, Cinematheque Franc;aise, Cinematheque Royale de Belgique, The Museum of Mod­ ern Art, New York, National Film Archive, London. 5 ~ r:1 M,·vclt 4) cW tNt Q d'e­ 53 f~ ~d ~ cJ~:1fAtk1.. J ~~cet-6 ~ 6ofJL{ to fafAA-rAo.. H"vcA.c 0 e.-k 0/U>/,ff,te1/ I'-"~ f/1'T CONTENTS Preface to the Revised Edition 11 • Waltzes from Vienna· The lowest ebb Introduction . 13 and the comeback . 63 1: Childhood • Behind prison bars • "Came the dawn" • Michael Baleon • Woman to Woman· Number Thirteen· Introducing the future Mrs. Hitchcock· A melodra­ matic shooting: The Pleasure Garden· The Mountain Eagle 25 4. The Man Who Knew Too Much· When Churchill was chief of police· M • From "The One Note Man" to the deadly cym­ bals • Clarification and simplification· The Thirty-nine Steps· John Buchan's influ­ ence • Understatement • An old, bawdy story· Mr. Memory· Slice of life and slice of cake 89 2: The first true Hitchcock: The Lodger· Cre­ ating a purely visual form· The glass floor • Handcuffs and sex· Why Hitchcock ap­ pears in his films· Downhill· Easy Virtue • The Ring and One-Round Jack· The Farmer's Wife· The Griffith influence· Champagne • The last silent movie: The Manxman. 43 5. The Secret Agent· You don't always need a happy ending • What do they have in Switzerland? • Sabotage· The child and the bomb· An example of suspense· The Lad)' Vanishes • The plausibles • A wire from David O. Selznick • The last British film: Jamaica Inn· Some conclusions about the British period . 105 3: Hitchcock's first sound film: Blackmail· The Shuftan process· Juno and the Pay­ cock • Why Hitchcock will never film Crime and Punishment • What is sus­ pense? • Murder· The Skin Game· Rich and Strange • Two innocents in Paris • Number Seventeen· Cats, cats everywhere 6: Rebecca: A Cinderella-like story • "I've never received an Oscar" • Foreign Corre­ spondent· Gary Cooper's mistake· In Hol­ land, windmills and rain • The blood­ stained tulip • What's a MacGuffin? • Flashback to The Thirty-nine Steps • Mr. and Mrs. Smith • "All actors are 8 cattle" • Suspicion • The luminous glass of milk 127 7: Sabotage versus Saboteur' A mass of ideas clutters up a picture' Shadow of a Doubt· Tribute to Thornton Wilder' "The Merry Widow" • An idealistic killer • Lifeboat • A microcosm of war' Like a pack of dogs • Return to London • Modest war con­ tribution: Bon Voyage and Aventure Malgache . 145 8: Return to America· Spellbound· Collab­ oration with Salvador Dali • Notorious' ''The Song of the Flame" • The uranium MacGuffin • Under surveillance by the FBI· A film about the cinema' The Para­ dine Case' Can Gregory Peck playa Brit­ ish lawyer? • An intricate shot • Horny hands, like the devil! 163 9: Rope: From 7:30 to 9:15 in one shot Clouds of spun glass· Colors and shadows • Walls that fade away' Films must be cut • How to make noises rise from the street· Under Capricorn· Infantilism and other errors in judgment· Run for cover! • "In­ grid, it's only a movie!"· Stage Fright· The flashback that lied' The better the villain, the better the picture 179 10: Spectacular comeback via Strangers on a Train' A monopoly on the suspense genre • The little man who crawled • A bitchy wife' 1 Confess· A "barbaric sophisticate" • The sanctity of confession • Experience alone is no~ enough· Fear of the police' Story of a menage d trois 193 11: Dial M for Murder' Filming in 3-D' The theater confines the action' Rear Window • The Kuleshov experiment· We are all voyeurs' Death of a small dog· The size of the image has a dramatic purpose' The surprise kiss versus the suspense kiss' The Patrick Mahon case and the Dr. Crippen case' To Catch a Thief· Sex on the screen • The Trouble with Harry· The humor of understatement· The Man Who Knew Too Much· A knife in the back' The clash of cymbals 209 12: The Wrong Man' Absolute authenticity' Vertigo' The usual alternatives: suspense or surprise' Necrophilia' Kim Novak on the set • Two projects that were never filmed • A political suspense movie' North by Northwest· The importance of photo­ graphic documentation • Dealing with time and space • The practice of the absurd • The body that came from no­ where 235 13: Ideas in the middle of the night· The long­ est kiss in screen history' A case of pure exhibitionism' Never waste space' Screen imagery is make-believe • Psycho • Janet Leigh's brassiere' Red herrings· Directing the audience' How Arbogast was killed· A shower stabbing' Stuffed birds' How to get mass emotions' Psycho: A film-maker's film 259 14: The Birds' The elderly ornithologist· The gouged-out eyes' The girl in a gilded cage • Improvisations' The size of the image' The scene that was dropped • An emo­ tional truck' Electronic sounds' Practical jokes. 285 15: Mamie' A fetishist love' The Three Hos­ tages, Mary Rose, and RRRR • Torn Curtain' The bus is the villain' The scene in the factory' Every film is a brand-new experience' The rising curve' The situa­ tion film versus the character film' "I only read the London Times" • A strictly visual mind· Hitchcock a Catholic film-maker? • A dream for the future: A film show­ ing twenty-four hours in the life of a ci~ IDI 16: Hitchcock's final years' Grace Kelly aban­ dons the cinema' More on The Birds, Mar­ nie, and Torn Curtain' Hitch misses the stars' The "great flawed films" • A project that was dropped' Topaz made to order for the front office' Return to London with Frenzy' The pacemaker and Family Plot· Hitchcock laden down with tributes and honors • Love and espionage • The Short Night· Hitchcock is ill, Sir Alfred is dead' The end 323 The Films of Alfred Hitchcock 351 Selected Bibliography 363 Index of Film Titles 364 Index of Names 365 9 PREFACE TO THE REVISED EDITION Nowadays, the work of Alfred Hitchcock is admired all over the world. Young people who are just discov­ ering his art through the current rerelease of Rear Window and Vertigo, or through North by North­ west, may assume his prestige has always been rec­ ognized, but this is far from being the case. In the fifties and sixties, Hitchcock was at the height of his creativity and popularity. He was, of course, famous due to the publicity masterminded by pro­ ducer David O. Selznick during the six or seven years of their collaboration on such films as Rebecca, Notorious, Spellbound, and The Paradine Case. His fame had spread further throughout the world via the television series Alfred Hitchcock Presents in the mid-fifties. But American and European critics made him pay for his commercial success by review­ ing his work with condescension, and by belittling each new film. In 1962, while in New York to present Jules and Jim, I noticed that every journalist asked me the same question: "Why do the critics of Cahiers du Cinema take Hitchcock so seriously? He's rich and success­ ful, but his movies have no substance." In the course of an interview during which I praised Rear Window to the skies, an American critic surprised me by com­ menting, "You love Rear Window because, as a stranger to New York, you know nothing about Greenwich Village." To this absurd statement, I re­ plied, "Rear Window is not about Greenwich Village, it is a film about cinema, and I do know cinema." Upon my return to Paris, I was still disturbed by this exchange. From my past career as a critic, in com­ mon with all of the young writers from Cahiers du Cinema, I still felt the imperative need to convince. It was obvious that Hitchcock, whose genius for pub­ licity was equalled only by that of Salvador Dali, had in the long run been victimized in American intel­ lectual circles because of his facetious response to interviewers and his deliberate practice of deriding their questions. In examining his films, it was ob­ vious that he had given more thought to the poten­ II tial of his art than any of his colleagues. It occurred to me that if he would, for the first time, agree to respond seriously to a systematic questionnaire, the resulting document might modify the American critics' approach to Hitchcock. That is what this book is all about. Patiently prepared with the help of Helen Scott, whose editorial expe­ rience was a decisive factor, I dare say that our book achieved this result. At the time it was published, however, a young American film professor predicted: "This book will do more harm to your reputation in America than your worst film." As it happens, Charles Thomas Samuels was mistaken. He com­ mitted suicide a year or two later, undoubtedly for other reasons. In fact, from 1968 on, American critics began to take Hitchcock's work more seri­ ously. Today, a movie like Psycho is regarded as a classic, and young film buffs have adopted Hit~h­ cock wholeheartedly, without begrudging him his success, wealth, and fame. While we were recording these talks with Hitchcock in August 1962, the final editing of The Birds, his forty-eighth picture, was under way. It took us some four years to transcribe the tapes and gather the pho­ tographs. Whenever I met Hitchcock during this pe­ riod, I would question him in order to update the book I called "the hitchbook." The first edition, therefore, published at the end of 1967, concludes with his fiftieth film, Tom Curtain. In the final part of the present edition, there is an additional chapter commenting on Topaz, Frenzy (his last relative suc­ cess), Family Plot, and, finally, The Short Night, a film he was preparing and constantly revising. In truth, his whole entourage was aware that Hitch­ cock's health and morale had deteriorated to such a point that a fifty-fourth picture was out of the ques­ tion. In the case of a man like Hitchcock, who lived only through and for his work, to cease activity was tan­ tamount to a death sentence. He knew it as well as everybody else, and this is why the last four years of his life were so sad. On May 2, 1980, a few days after his death, a mass was held in a small church on Santa Monica Boule­ vard in Beverly Hills. One year before, a farewell to Jean Renoir had taken place in the same church. Jean Renoir's coffin had been placed in front of the altar. Family, friends, neighbors, film buffs, and people off the street attended the ceremony. For Hitchcock, it was different. There was no coffin-it had been removed to an unknown destination. The guests, who had been invited by telegram, were checked in at the door by Universal's security men. The police kept the crowds outside at bay. It was the burial of a timid man who had become intimidating and who, for the first time, was avoiding publicity, since it wouldn't help his work-a man who, since his adolescence, had trained himself to. be in control of the situatjon. The man was dead, but not the film-maker. For his pictures, made with loving care, an exclusive pas­ sion, and deep emotions concealed by exceptional technical mastery, are destined to circulate through­ out the world, competing with newer productions, defying the test of time, and confirming Jean Coc­ teau:s image of Marcel Proust: "His work kept on living, like the watches on the wrists of dead sol­ diers." FRAN<;OIS TRuFFAuT 12 INTRODUCTION It all began when we broke the ice. That happened in the winter of 1955, when Alfred Hitchcock, having completed the location shooting of To Catch a Thief on the Cote d'Azur, came to the Saint-Maurice studios, in ]oinville, for the post­ synchronization of the picture. My friend Claude Chabrol and I decided to go there to interview him for Cahiers du Cinema. Armed with a long list of intricate questi9ns and a borrowed tape recorder, we sallied forth in high spirits. In ]oinville we were directed to a pitch-black audi­ torium, where a loop showing Cary Grant and Bri­ gitte Auber in a motorboat was being r~n continuously on the screen. In the darkness we In­ troduced ourselves to Hitchcock, who courteously asked us to wait for him at the studio bar, across the courtyard. Both movie-crazy, thrilled by our brief preview of Hitchcock's latest work, we emerged into the blind­ ing glare of daylight, literally bursting with excite­ ment. In the heat of our discussion we failed to notice the dark-gray frozen pond in the middle of the courtyard. With a single step forward we went over the ledge, landing on a thin layer of ice, which immediately gave way. Within seconds we were im­ mersed in a pool of freezing water and a state of shock. In a hollow voice I asked Chabrol, "What about the tape recorder?" He replied by slowly rais­ ing his left arm to hold the case in mid-air, with the water bleakly oozing out from all sides like a stream of tears. Staggering around the sloping basin, unable to reach the edge without sliding right back to the center, we were trapped in a situation straight out of a Hitch­ cock movie. Eventually, with the helping hand of a charitable bystander, we managed to reach firm ground. A wardrobe mistress who was passing by invited us to follow her to a dressing room where we might take off our clothes and dry out. When we attempted to thank her for her kindness, she said in a businesslike 13 way, "What a way to make a living' Are you extras for Riftfi?" Upon learning that we were reporters, she lost all interest and told us to clear out. A few minutes later, still soaking wet and shivering with cold, we made our way to the bar, where Hitch­ cock awaited us. He merely looked us over and, without a single comment on our 3ppearance, ami­ ably suggested another appointment for that evening at the Hotel Plaza Athenee. A year later, upon spotting us at one of his Paris press conferences, Hitchcock finally acknowledged the incident by saying, "Gentlemen, every time I see a pair of ice cubes clicking together in a glass of whiskey, I think of you two.': We subsequently learned that he had embellished the story with a twist of his own. According to the Hitchcock version, Chabrol was dressed as a priest and I was wearing a gendarme's uniform when we turned up for the interview. It was almost a decade after that preliminary aquatic contact that I undertook to approach Hitchcock again with a series of probing questions about his work. What prompted me to emulate Oedipus' con­ sultation of the oracle was that my own efforts as a film-maker, in the years that followed, made me in­ creasingly aware of the exceptional importance of Hitchcock's contribution and of its particular value to all those who work in the screen medium. The examination of Hitchcock's directorial career, ranging as it does from his silent movies in Great Britain to his current color films in Hollywood, is a richly rewarding source of discovery. In Hitchcock's work a film-maker is bound to find the answer to many of his own problems, including the most fun­ damental question of all: how to express oneself by purely visual means. I am not so much the author as the initiator, or if you prefer, the instigator, of this work on Alfred Hitchcock. The book is essentially a journalistic work, made possible when Alfred Hitchcock agreed to a fifty-hour-long interview. In 1962 I wrote to Mr. Hitchcock, asking whether he would answer some five hundred questions dealing solely with his career, in chronological order, and suggesting that aur discussion deal with the follow­ mg: (a) the circumstances attending the inception of each picture; (b) the preparation and structure of the screen­ plays; (c) specific directorial problems on each film; (d) Hitchcock's own assessment of the commercial and artistic results in relation to his initial expec­ tations for each picture. Hitchcock cabled his agreement. There now re­ mained one last hurdle, the language barrier, and I turned to my friend Helen Scott, of the French Film Office in New York. An American raised in France, her thorough command of the cinema vocabulary, her sound judgment and exceptional human quali­ ties, made her the ideal accomplice for the project. We arrived in Hollywood on August 13, Hitchcock's birthday. Every morning he would pick us up at the Beverly Hills Hotel to take us to his office at Univer­ 14 sal studios. With each of us wearing a microphone, and a sound engineer in the next room recording our voices, we kept up a running conversation from nine to six every day, achieving something of a track record as we talked our way through lunches. A witty raconteur, noted for his entertaining inter­ views, Hitchcock started out true to form, regaling us with a series of amusing anecdotes. It was only on the third day that he became more sober and thoughtful in spelling out the ups and downs of his career. His assessment of the achievements and the failures was genuinely self-critical, and his account of his doubts, frustrations, and hopes was completely SIncere. What emerged, as the talks progressed, was a striking contrast between Hitchcock's public image and his real self. Under the invariably self-possessed and often cynical surface is a deeply vulnerable, sensi­ tive, and emotional man who feels with particular intensity the sensations he communicates to his au­ dience. The man who excels at filming fear is himself a very fearful person, and I suspect that this trait of his personality has a direct bearing on his success. Throughout his entire career he has felt the need to protect himself from the actors, producers, and technicians who, insofar as their slightest lapse or whim may jeopardize the integrity of his work, all represent as many hazards to a director. How better to defend oneself than to become the director no actor will question, to become one's own producer, and to know more about technique than the techni­ cians? To stay with the audience, Hitchcock set out to win it over by reawakening all the strong emotions of childhood. In his work the viewer can recapture the tensions and thrills of the games of hide-and-seek or blindman's buff and the terror of those nights when, by a trick of the imagination, a forgotten toy on the dresser gradually acquires a mysterious and threat­ ening shape. All of this brings us to suspense, which, even among those who acknowledge Hitchcock's mastery of it, is commonly regarded as a minor form of the specta­ cle, whereas actually it is the spectacle in itself. Suspense is simply the dramatization of a film's nar­ rative material, or, if you will, the most intense pre­ sentation possible of dramatic situations. Here's a case in point: A man leaves his home, hails a cab and drives to the station to catch a train. This is a normal scene in an average picture. Now, should that man happen to look at his watch just as he is getting into the cab and exclaim, "Good God, I shall never make that train!" that entire ride automatically becomes a sequence of pure suspense. Every red light, traffic signal, shift of the gears or touch on the brake, and every cop on the way to the station will intensify its emotional impact. The manifest clarity and persuasive power of the image are such that it simply will not occur to the viewer to reason: "What's his hurry? Why can't he take the next train?" Thanks to the tension created by the frenzied imagery on the screen, the urgency of the action will never be questioned. Obviously, this insistence on the dramatization can­ not avoid the "arbitrary," and although Hitchcock's art is precisely the ability to impose the "arbitrary," this sometimes leads the die-hards to complain about implausibility. While Hitchcock maintains that he is not concerned with plausibility, the truth is that he is rarely implausible. What he does, in effect, is to hinge the plot around a striking coincidence, which provides him with the master situation. His treat­ ment from then on consists in feeding a maximum of tension and plausibility into the drama, pulling the strings ever tighter as he' builds up toward a par­ oxysm. Then he suddenly lets go, allowing the story to unwind swiftly. In general the suspense sequences of a film are its "privileged moments," those highlights that linger on in the viewer's memory. But Hitchcock wants each and every scene to be a "privileged moment," and all of his efforts throughout his career have been directed toward achieving pictures that have no gaps or flaws. It is this determination to compel the audience's un­ interrupted attention, to create and then to keep up the emotion, to sustain the tension throughout, that makes Hitchcock's pictures so completely personal and all but inimitable. For it is not only on the cru­ cial passages of the s~ory that he exercises his au­ thority; his single-mindedness of purpose is also reflected in the exposition, the transitions, and all the sequences which in most films are generally in­ consequential. Even an episode that merely serves to bridge two key sequences will never be commonplace, for Hitch­ cock loathes the "ordinary." For instance, a man who is in trouble with the law-but who we know is innocent-takes his case to a lawyer. This is an everyday situation. As handled by Hitchcock, the lawyer will appear to be skeptical and rather reluc­ 15 tant to become involved. Or he may, as in The Wrong Man, agree to go along only after warning his prospective client that he lacks experience in this kind of legal work and may not be the right man for the case. By introducing this disturbing note, a feeling of ap­ prehension and anxiety has been created that invests this ordinary situation with potential drama. Another illustration of this approach is his out-of­ the-ordinary twist to the conventional scene in which a young man is introducing his girl friend to his mother. Naturally, the girl is anxious to please the older woman, who may one day become her mother-in-law. In contrast to her boy friend's re­ laxed manner, hers is clearly shy and flustered. With the son's introductory ritual fading into the off­ screen background, the viewers will see a change come over the woman's expression as she stares at the girl, sizing her up with that purely Hitchcockian look so familiar to cinephiles. The young girl's inner turmoil is indicated by a slight movement of retreat. Here again, by means 'of a simple look, Hitchcock creates one of those domineering mothers he excels at portraying. From this point on, all of the family scenes in the picture will be charged with emotion and taut with conflict, with every detail reflecting Hitchcock's de­ termination to keep banality off the screen. The art of creating suspense is also the art of involv­ ing the audience, so that the viewer is actually a participant in the film. In this area of the spectacle, film-making is not a dual interplay between the di­ rector and his picture, but a three-way game in which the audience, too, is required to play. In the filmic context, suspense, like Tom Thumb's white pebbles or Little Red Riding-hood's walk through the woods, is a poetic means that serves to heighten the emotions and to make the heart beat faster. To reproach Hitchcock for specializing in suspense is to accuse him of being the least boring of film­ makers; it is also tantamount to blaming a lover who instead of concentrating on his own pleasure insists on sharing it with his partner. The nature of Hitch­ cock's cinema is to absorb the audience so com­ pletely that the Arab viewer will forget to shell his peanuts, the Frenchman will ignore the girl in the next seat, the Italian will suspend his chain smoking, the compulsive cougher will refrain from coughing, and the Swedes will interrupt their love-making in the aisles. Hitchcock IS universally acknowledged to be the 16 world's foremost technician; even his detractors will­ ingly concede him this title. Yet, isn't it obvious that the choice of a scenario, its construction, and all of its contents are intimately connected to and, in fact, dependent upon that technique? All artists are indig­ nant-and rightly so-at -the critical tendency to separate form from content. This procedure is par­ ticularly illogical when applied to Hitchcock, who, as Eric Rohmer and Claude Chabrol conectly point out in their book, * is neither a simple storyteller nor an esthete. "Hitchcock," they write, "is one of the greatest inventors of form in the history of cinema. Perhaps the only film-makers who can be compared with him in this respect are Murnau and Eisenstein ... Here, form does not merely. embellish content, but actually creates it." The art of film-making is an especially difficult one to master, inasmuch as it calls for multiple and often contradictory talents. The reason why so many bril­ liant or very talented men have failed in their at­ tempts at directing is that only a mind in which the analytic and synthetic are simultaneously at work can make its way out of the maze of snares inherent in the fragmentation of the shooting, the cutting, and the montage of a film. To a director, the greatest danger of all is that in the course of making his film he may lose control of it. Indeed, this is the most common cause of all fatalities. Each cut of a picture, lasting from three to ten sec­ onds, is information that is given to the viewer. This information is all too often obscure or downright incomprehensible, either because the director's in­ tentions were vague to begin with or he lacked the competence to convey them clearly. To those who question whether clarity is all that important, I can only say that it is the most impor­ tant quality in the making of a film. By way of expla­ nation, here is a typical example: "At this point, Balachov, understanding that he had been cheated by Canadine, went to see Benson, proposing that they contact T olmachef and share the loot between them," etc., etc. In hundreds of films this dialogue, or a variant thereof, has left you bewildered, or worse, indiffer­ ent to the proceedings on the screen. For while the authors know all about Balachov, Canadine, Ben­ son, and Tolmachef, you, the viewer, are utterly confused by virtue of that cardinal rule of cinema: • Hitchcock, by Eric Rohmer and Claude Chabrol. Editions Uni­ versitaires, Paris, 1957. Whatever is said instead of being shown is lost upon the viewer. Since Hitchcock chooses to express everything by purely visual means, he has no use whatever for Messrs. Balachov, Canadine, Benson, and Tol­ macheE. One of the charges frequently leveled at Hitchcock is that the simplification inherent in his emphasis on clarity limits his cinematic range to almost childlike ideas. To my mind, nothing could be further from the truth; on the contrary, because of his unique ability to film the thoughts of his characters and make them perceptible without resorting to dia­ logue, he is, to my way of thinking, a realistic direc­ tor. Hitchcock a realist? In cinema, as on the stage, dia­ logue serves to express the thoughts of the charac­ ters, but we know that in real life the things people say to each other do not necessarily reAect what they actually think and feel. This is especially true of such mundane occasions as dinner and cocktail parties, or of any meeting between casual acquaintances. If we observe any such gathering, it is clear that the words exchanged between the guests are superficial formalities and quite meaningless, whereas the es­ sential is elsewhere; it is by studying their eyes that we can find out what is truly on their minds. Let us assume that as an observer at a reception I am looking at Mr. Y as he tells three people all about his recent holiday in Scotland with his wife. By care­ fully watching his face, I notice he never takes his eyes off Mrs. X's legs. Now, I move over to Mrs. X, who is talking about her children's problems at school, but I notice that she keeps staring at Miss Z, her cold look taking in every detail of the younger wmnan's elegant appearance. Obviously, the substance of that scene is not in the dialogue, which is strictly conventional, but in what these people are thinking about. Merely by watching them I have found out that Mr. Y is phYsically at­ tracted to Mrs. X and that Mrs. X is jealous of Miss Z. From Hollywood to Cinecitta no film-maker other than Hitchcock can capture the human reality of that scene as faithfully as I have described it. And yet, for the past forty years, each of his pictures fea­ tures several such scenes in which the rule of coun­ terpoint between dialogue and image achieves a dramatic effect by purely visual means. Hitchcock is almost unique in being able to film directly, that is, 17