January 28 Am back.  Just some passing thoughts on Psycho this time, perhaps ironically inspired by the News item below about the death of Israel Baker, the man who led the orchestra that recorded the film's unforgettable score.  Early in Psycho Marion Crane (Janet Leigh) is heard to say, 'Headaches are like resolutions.  You forget them as soon as they stop hurting.'  It's a brilliant line, of course - in a film of many brilliant lines - for both its general truth about much human 'forgetting' and for its relevance to Psycho in particular.  We all have 'selective' memories, and congratulations to Marion for recognising it.  She is here sounding the idea of how we fall into 'traps' of our own making (at least in part): we may resolve to change, but soon habit and indolence may see us falling back into those traps.  Even the great philosopher Schopenhauer, who aspired to be as objective as humanly possible, clearly never quite extricated himself from the combative and pessimistic mindset that he brought to his dealings with his mother, a society hostess in Weimar, Germany.  Consequently, in formulating his philosophy of the effects of the world's Will, he looked too little on 'the bright side' of things.  But we all resort to our particular defence mechanisms.  Note Marion in the frame-capture below.  Her line about headaches is partly an act, a diversion, to avoid having to explain to Caroline (Patricia Hitchcock) how she has just spent her extended lunch hour.  Nonetheless, her weary gesture also expresses an unconscious anguish at the 'trap' she is beginning to feel herself in with her impecunious boyfriend Sam (John Gavin).  Caroline has her own limitations.  Not as bright nor even as - relatively - liberated as Marion, she babbles about how her mother's doctor had prescribed her tranquilisers on the day of her wedding.  (The mother's influence is very apparent, and the hovering closeness of the family doctor suggests a certain unhealthiness of the family generally.)  In turn, Caroline's observation about how her husband had been 'furious' when he found out his wife had taken 'tranquilizers' reminds us of a man's possible viewpoint in all of this, and again anticipates the working of fundamental 'drives' (cf Will) in the overall scheme of things, which Psycho is clearly about.  'Everything's perverted in a different way', Hitchcock once said.  Much of the 'objectivity' of Psycho is inherent in an English fiction tradition that Hitchcock knew well, for it goes back to Mrs Belloc Lowndes.  In the novel 'The Lodger' (1913), the Lodger is unambiguously a killer but escapes into the night.  Mr and Mrs Bunting, the co-landlords of the house where the Lodger had stayed, take different viewpoints.  Mrs Bunting retains a compassion for the escaped man, which she had begun to feel quite early.  '"So you see," she said at last, "you see, Bunting, that 'twas me that was right after all.  The lodger was never responsible for his actions.  I never thought he was, for my part."  And Bunting stared at her ruminatingly.  "Depends on what you call responsible ---" he began argumentatively.  But she would have none of that.  "I heard the gentleman say myself [sic] that he was a lunatic," she said fiercely.  And then, dropping her voice, "A religious maniac - that's what he called him."'  (Chapter XXVII)  Earlier in the novel, Mrs Bunting had begun to experience an oppressive feeling which is almost Schopenhauerian: 'For the first time in her life she visioned the infinite misery, the sadness and strangeness, of human life.'  (Chapter XVI)  This is certainly Belloc Lowndes's position, and not too far removed from Hitchcock's in his films, including Psycho.  It is related to the grim humour of the hardware store scene where the lady customer professes concern about not inflicting suffering on 'insect or man' but soon - note - appears to have forgotten that she had held such scruples.  Equally, the same theme of 'schizophrenia' and partial viewpoints is inherent in the male psychiatrist's over-glib, jargon-ridden summing up of the Norman Bates case at the end of the film.  We sense an incompleteness here, including potentially in ourselves.  As critic Robin Wood would note, there is an organic unity about Psycho whose function is to remind us of our limitations that we share with the film's characters.

                                                                           


•  The 2011 'Hitchcock Annual' is now out.  More details soon.  [Also, Our New Publications page will be updated shortly ...]

(Readers of this webpage are urged to send reports for possible inclusion in this feature. Both general-interest and Hitchcock-specific items are sought.  N.B.: information about Hitchcock DVDs is incorporated at several points below.)

Death of Israel Baker, Psycho violinist

As concertmaster of the orchestra that recorded Bernard Herrmann's all-strings score for Hitchcock's Psycho (1960), classical violinist Israel Baker helped create a seminal piece of film culture.  Sadly, he died at his home in California on Christmas Day, 2011, following a stroke.  He was 92.

In a recent tribute, classical music expert Jim Svejda called Baker 'one of the great violinists of the 20th century'.  Not only was his work heard in several dozen movie scores beside Psycho, but his brilliant playing tecnique was recognised by recording companies and audiences, particularly of chamber music.  Svejda cited the 'benchmark recording' of Igor Stravinsky's L'Histoire du Soldat, conducted by the composer and featuring Baker. 

Hitch and Alma to be portrayed by big stars

At last, after four years in development, a film from Stephen Rebello's non-fiction book 'Alfred Hitchcock and the Making of Psycho' (1990) is almost set to start shooting - possibly next April.  The stars couldn't be bigger.  Sir Anthony Hopkins will play the director,  Dame Helen Mirren will play his lifetime companion, wife Alma.  The studio is Fox Seachlight.  Director Sasha Gervasi has made a previous show-business film, Anvil! The Story of Anvil (2009), about the misfortunes of a heavy metal band, and he'll work from a script by Rebello and John McLaughlin - the latter wrote the ballet suspenser Black Swan (2010), about a dancer and her dark side.  (For earlier announcements about the film, readers can scroll down this page.)

• Meanwhile, a TV film, The Girl, about actress Tippi Hedren and her relation with Hitchcock on The Birds and Marnie, will screen on BBC 2 in the New Year.  Sienna Miller plays Tippi, Toby Jones plays Hitchcock (who was heard to refer on-set to Tippi as 'the girl', harking back to girl-meets-boy films of the silent era).  Scriptwriter Gwyneth Hughes has based the script on Donald Spoto's book 'Spellbound by Beauty' (2008), which delves into the uneasy relationship between mentor Hitchcock and his muse, Tippi.

Lost Cutts/Hitchcock film discovered in New Zealand

From the same New Zealand Film Archive that last year yielded a missing John Ford treasure - Upstream (1927) - comes news that the first three reels of the Graham Cutts six-reel feature The White Shadow (1924), on which Hitchcock worked as an assistant, have been found.  A tinted print of the film was among a trove of old prints lodged with the Archive in 1989 but only recently evaluated by teams sent from the United States by the National Film Preservation Foundation.  The reels will stay in New Zealand although a new preservation master and exhibition print have been sent to California where the film will 're-premiere' on September 22nd.

The White Shadow was made in England starring Betty Compson and Clive Brook, the same team that had recently made the more successful Graham Cutts film Woman to Woman (1923), for which Hitchcock wrote the script.  American leading lady Compson was imported for her box-office appeal - years later she would be cast by Hitchcock as Gertie in his Hollywood screwball comedy Mr and Mrs Smith (1941).  Hitchcock adapted The White Shadow from a novel by Michael Morton, 'Children of Chance', about twin sisters, one good and one bad.  The film's title is explained thus: 'as the sun casts a dark shadow, so does the soul throw its shadow of white, reflecting a purity that influences the lives of those upon whom the shadow falls'.

It isn't true that Graham Cutts was a 'hack' director (as someone  recently said).  Hitchcock learned a lot from this man who started out as an exhibitor - the 'master showman of the North' as Herbert Wilcox called him - and whose main skills as a director appear to have been visual.  He had 'only a sketchy interest in film structure', according to film historian Rachel Low, but contributed in particular 'an instinctive sense of the power of the look, not only as a means of controlling others but as projector of internalised visions' (Christine Gledhill, 'Reframing British Cinema 1918-1928').  Cutts directed Ivor Novello and Isabel Jeans in The Rat (1926) and two other 'Rat' pictures (1926, 1929).

For more information, click here: http://www.filmpreservation.org/preserved-films/lost-hitchcock-film

Production sketches for Stage Fright sold at auction - but are they in Hitchcock's own hand?

Approximately 300-400 production sketches for Hitchcock's Stage Fright (1950) were recently sold at Bonhams, London, where they fetched £28,800.  They exist as rough pencil sketches on 130 loose sheets in a faded spring binder.  They had been stored in an attic in Dorset, England, and belonged to Jack Martin (1899-1969) who had worked on Stage Fright as first assistant director.

There isn't any question that the sketches were used during the film's production.  What is in question is who drew them?  Bonhams claim that it was Hitchcock himself, but it seems more likely that they were the work of professional artist Mentor Heubner (1917-2001) who did similar work for Hitchcock on Strangers on a Train (1951), I Confess (1953), and perhaps Rope (1948).  Notoriously, Heubner also did the faux Hitchcock storyboards for North by Northwest (1959) that Hitchcock commissioned for publicity purposes after the fact, i.e., after the film was made.

For more information and to see some of the sketches, visit the Bonhams website (though it's inactive as we post this notice): www.bonhams.com/eur/auction/18847/lot/175/     

Help the BFI rescue The Hitchcock 9

As previously announced, the British Film Institute wants to restore the nine surviving Hitchcock silent films, and are asking Hitchcock lovers everywhere to make donations to the cause.  There has been an excellent response so far.  The BFI has recently announced that new scores will be written for The Lodger (by Nitin Sawhney), The Pleasure Garden (by Daniel Cohen), and for a film yet to be decided (by Tansy Davies).  For further details, and to see a trailer, click here: http://www.bfi.org.uk/saveafilm.html?q=saveafilm   And for still more information, watch this 11-minute clip on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1iiZ3BO5dpk

(See also the News items below, "Hitchcock film festivals ..." and "Another Mountain Eagle find".)

Deaths

Once again, and sadly, we must report that some people connected with Hitchcock have died.  Googie Withers (1917-2011), who was born in India but grew up in England, has passed away in Sydney, Australia.  Her sole appearance in a Hitchcock film was as Blanche, one of the offsiders of Iris (Margaret Lockwood) whom we see at the start of The Lady Vanishes (1938).  Other film roles were in Michael Powell's One of Our Aircraft is Missing (1942) and Robert Hamer's It Always Rains on Sunday (1947).  Googie also had memorable roles on the stage and on television, including in a BBC adaptation of Jane Austen's Northanger Abbey.  The BBC obituary is here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-14174256

The fine film and stage actress Anna Massey (1937-2011), who was the daughter of actor Raymond Massey, and who was seen in such films as John Ford's Gideon's Day (1958), Michael Powell's Peeping Tom (1960), Otto Preminger's Bunny Lake is Missing (1965), and (as 'Babs') in Hitchcock's Frenzy (1972), died on July 3rd.  An excellent obituary, from the London 'Telegraph', is here: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/culture-obituaries/tv-radio-obituaries/8615826/Anna-Massey.html

Film editor Hugh Stewart (1910-2011) died on May 31st, aged 100.  In the 1930s he edited films by Victor Saville - such as Evergreen (1934), Dark Journey (1937), and South Riding (1938) - as well as Hitchcock's The Man Who Knew Too Much (1934) and Michael Powell's The Spy in Black (1939).  Later he edited nine Norman Wisdom films.  But it was another Hitchcock connection, of sorts, that the 'Telegraph' understandably claims may be Stewart's 'most notable contribution on celluloid ... made at Bergen-Belsen in April 1945, when he insisted that the Allies record the horrors of the liberated concentration camp'.  Some of the resulting footage was included in the film Memory of the Camps (1945/1985), on which Hitchcock worked as an advisor.  To read the 'Telegraph' obituary, click here: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/culture-obituaries/film-obituaries/8606935/Hugh-Stewart.html

Death of playwright/screenplay writer Arthur Laurents (1918-2011)

The man who wrote the book of the musical and film West Side Story, and who scripted Hitchcock's Rope (1948), has died in New York City where he was born.  Arthur Laurents wrote or co-wrote scripts for such films as Rope, Max Ophuls's Caught (1949), Otto Preminger's Bonjour Tristesse (1958), and the ballet drama The Turning Point (Herbert Ross, 1977).  Laurents's play 'The Time of the Cuckoo', set in Venice, starred Shirley Booth on stage and Katherine Hepburn on film (David Lean's Summer Madness, 1955).  Laurents was gay.  At the time of Rope, he had an affair with actor Farley Granger (see below); his partner for 52 years was aspiring actor Tom Hatcher, who died in 2006.  Of Hitchcock, Laurents wrote in his memoirs 'Original Story By' (2000) that he 'was fun to work for and fun to be with.  He was a tough businessman; otherwise, he lived in the land of kink. ... Homosexuality was at the center of Rope; its three main characters were homosexuals.  Thus [Hitchcock's] seeming obsession.'

The BBC obituary is here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-13307873 

Death of actor Farley Granger

Farley Granger, star of the Hitchcock films Rope (1948) and Strangers on a Train (1951), has died at his Manhattan home, aged 85.  His other films included Nicholas Ray's They Live by Night (1949) and Luchino Visconti's Senso (1954).

In 2007, Granger published with his partner, Robert Calhoun, an entertaining book of memoirs, 'Include Me Out: My Life from Goldwyn to Broadway'.  Hitchcockians will learn there that Farley considered James Stewart not quite right for Rope, because he was too nice to realise the darker side of the character Rupert.  'It might have been interesting to see what an actor like James Mason ... would have brought to the part.'  Farley also agreed with Hitchcock that Ruth Roman (a Warners contract-player whom the studio insisted on) was miscast in Strangers on a Train.  'Hitch had wanted the then-little-known young actress Grace Kelly for the part.'

To read the BBC obituary for Farley Granger, click here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-12894264             

Patrick Bergin to star in parody of Hitchcock's Dial M for Murder

Scott Fivelson's comic play 'Dial L for Latch-Key' is to be filmed by Victory Films, starring Patrick (Patriot Games) Bergin.  In London, the play recently ran at the Etcetera Theatre.  According to the publicity, 'This time Grace Kelly doesn't dial M for murder - she accidentally dials L for latch-key.'  Other characters include a conniving husband reminiscent of Ray Milland at his most cad-ish, an Inspector straight out of 'Monty Python', and a know-it-all film critic.  Fivelson's play will be published in paperback and eBook editions by Hen House Press, available March 15th.

For more information, click here: http://www.filmindustrynetwork.biz/patrick-bergin-to-star-in-adaptation-of-london-alfred-hitchcock-play/8131

• Related news.  Other upcoming film projects of interest to Hitchcockians include Stoker, loosely based on Hitchcock's Shadow of a Doubt, and set to star Colin Firth and Nicole Kidman; and Paramount are reportedly developing another remake of Hitchcock's The Man Who Knew Too Much in which the parents are held hostage and their young son risks danger to find and save them.

Rare photos and other Hitchcock items found

The photograph below is one of 24 of Alfred Hitchcock in a set of 38 taken probably in 1966 by press photographer Renate Dabrowski of Frankfurt, Germany.  The photographs are owned by US art dealer SB and may soon go on sale.  The identity of the lady in the photograph is not known.  Can any of our readers help?  (Note.  Hitchcock visited Frankfurt several times, including in 1966 and 1972.  Of course, he had worked in Germany in the 1920s.  Frankfurt seems the likely location of the photographs, although one of them shows in the background a jet of Austrian Airlines and several others show Hitchcock standing next to stewardesses from the same airline.  So it's possible that the photographs were taken in Austria.)

The story of how SB acquired the photographs is fascinating.  As she tells it: 'Many years ago I bought a box of miscellaneous items at Abell's Auctions in Los Angeles.  The box was one of a number of boxes that were up for auction as abandoned storage, only this one had "Classical tapes" written on the side and since I love classical music I figured I had little to lose.  It was only after I opened the box and found the photos as well as the reel-to-reel tapes, including one that wasn't of music but of a more personal nature, that I realized that they had actually belonged to Hitchcock himself.  To be honest, I never played that particular tape through and I think it got tossed in my move from LA to San Francisco.  I remember that the selection of music on the tapes was in fact quite eclectic with quite a few modern composers as well [as classical ones], in particular John Cage which I found surprising at the time.'

[We thank SB for very kindly providing the above information and the photograph.]

Still coming: Alfred Hitchcock and the Making of Psycho: The Movie

Some new 'custom' DVDs of likely interest to our readers

The Warner Archive now offers 'mod' ('manufactured on demand') DVDs of reasonable price, including such notable films as Richard Thorpe's Night Must Fall (1937) and Ted Tatzleff's The Window (1949).  The former was based on the play by Emlyn Williams, the latter on the story by Cornell Woolrich.  For more information, and to place orders, visit the Warner Archive Collection

Death of English director, Roy Ward Baker (1916-2010)

Watch 'Finding Equilibrium in Hitchcock's Vertigo': roundtable discussion held in New York, November 6th, 2010

The above occasion was organised by The Philoctetes Center for the Multidisciplinary Study of Imagination, New York.  Four of the five panelists who participated are contributors to the forthcoming 'Companion to Alfred Hitchcock' (Wiley/Blackwell, 2011): Richard Allen, John Bolton, Joe McElhaney, and Brigitte Peucker.  A fifth panelist was Edward Nersessian, a leading New York psychiatrist.

Another Hitch sculpture

We have previously reported on at least a couple of sculptures of Alfred Hitchcock that have been made (scroll down to items "For sale: bronze statue of Hitchcock" and "Another bronze statue of Hitchcock", below).  The latest is a life-size caricature of him, recently unveiled by our friends at the McGuffin (sic) Film Society in Walthamstow, London, to mark the 80th anniversary of the EMD Cinema there, which Hitchcock is said to have attended.  (The building opened in 1887 as a dance hall, and we gather that it was re-built in 1930 as a cinema for the new sound films.)  An earlier item about the EMD Cinema is elsewhere on this page (scroll down to "Actors campaign to save Hitchcock-connected East London cinema").  And for the latest information, click here: http://www.guardian-series.co.uk/your_local_areas/8401574.WALTHAMSTOW__Hitchcock_sculpture_unveiled/

Claude Chabrol dead at 80

Death of Robert Boyle, aged 100

The gifted production designer Robert Boyle, who worked on such Hitchcock masterpieces as Vertigo and North by Northwest, has died in California.  (Scroll down to read our earlier item "Production designer Robert Boyle ...".)

Death of cinematographer/director/producer Ronald Neame (1911-2010)

Ronald Neame, who was born in London, and began his film career working with Alfred Hitchcock as a stills photographer at British International Pictures, has died in Los Angeles, aged 99.  As a cinematographer, he photographed David Lean's In Which We Serve (1942) and Blithe Spirit (1945).  As a producer, he produced Lean's Brief Encounter (1946), Great Expectations (1946), and Oliver Twist (1948).  As a director, he made such fine, character-based entertainments as Tunes of Glory (1960), Gambit (1966), The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie (1968), and The Poseidon Adventure (1972).

Another of his films was the lyrically-told World War II thriller The Man Who Never Was (1955).  It was based on a true incident (thought up by Ian Fleming when he was working in Naval Intelligence) in which a man's dead body was floated off the European coast with fake invasion plans planted in his briefcase to deceive the Germans.  Hitchcock almost certainly saw Neame's film and was influenced by it to make North by Northwest.

Another Mountain Eagle find - though still not the film itself

Alfred Hitchcock's 'lost' film The Mountain Eagle (1926) has never been recovered - although the British Film Institute recently announced that they will launch another search for it in 2012, as part of the 'Cultural Olympiad' in London (coinciding with the Olympic Games).

Meanwhile, on eBay earlier this month, a full-size original German poster for the film was auctioned.  We understand that it fetched 66,000 Euros.  Here is a reproduction of it, together with a lobby card for the film.  For information about the latter, scroll down this page to the item "Rare lobby card ...".

Hitchcock on DVD and Blu-Ray

We understand that Psycho will be released on Blu-Ray in Region 1 on 2 August, and in Region 2 on 19 October.  For more information, click here: http://www.thehdroom.com/news/Hitchcocks-Psycho-Celebrating-50th-Anniversary-on-Blu-ray/6685.   Other Hitchcock titles already available on Blu-Ray are North by Northwest (reportedly a good transfer if a little dark) and The 39 Steps (the latter a Region 2 release and reportedly not a good transfer).

Meanwhile, as our regular readers know, Paramount Home Entertainment released a Centennial Collection DVD of To Catch a Thief in March 2009 (Region 1).  Here is what our reviewer, Brian Wilson, wrote:

To begin with, this edition of To Catch a Thief contains a remarkably good transfer.  Since Paramount does not indicate that this release of the film has been remastered in any way, I can only assume that the transfer here is identical to the one featured on the 2007 Special Collector’s Edition.  Unlike that earlier version, however, the Centennial Collection edition of the film is a two-disc release.  Disc One contains the film itself.  It also contains an entirely new commentary by Hitchcock film historian Dr. Drew Casper, replacing the one by Peter Bogdanovich and Laurent Bouzereau featured on the 2007 release.  While I have not listened to that earlier commentary, I have been told that it relies too much upon personal reminiscences and anecdotes without offering consistent insight into the film itself.  Casper’s commentary, on the other hand, offers an extremely detailed analysis of the film.

Disc Two contains several special features, three of these new.  “A Night with the Hitchcocks” is a Q&A session between Drew Casper’s film students at the University of Southern California and Hitchcock’s granddaughter Mary Stone and daughter Pat Hitchcock.  Although this piece has moments of interest, I felt that it was ultimately unrewarding.  “Unacceptable Under the Code: Film Censorship in America” is a short documentary about the history of the Motion Picture Production Code and its specific impact on To Catch a Thief.  “Behind the Gates: Cary Grant and Grace Kelly” is a short celebration of the lives and work of the two actors, featuring several production stills and excerpts from To Catch a Thief.

Lamented death of actor John Forsyth (1918-2010)

John Forsyth, whose real name was John Freund, has died of cancer at his home in California, aged 92.  Though he had considerable Broadway and film experience, he was best known as the scheming oil tycoon in TV's 'Dynasty' and as the voice (only) of the leader of 'Charlie's Angels'.  But Hitchcock aficionados remember him with affection as Sam, the artist who fell in love one magical autumn day with Jennifer (Shirley Maclaine) in The Trouble With Harry (1955) and as the US intelligence official Michael Nordstrom in Topaz (1969), adapted from the Leon Uris novel set during the Cuban Missile Crisis.  Hitchcock also directed him in a classic episode of 'The Alfred Hitchcock Hour' called "I Saw the Whole Thing" (1962).  Earlier, Forsythe had appeared in an episode, "Premonition" (1955), of 'Alfred Hitchcock Presents'.

                                                                                                                                                                                                                        .

Korngold opera with a Hitchcock connection receives a different performance in Paris

We have taken this item from the December 2009 issue of 'Positif'.  Yann Tobin writes:

'Saw "La Ville Morte" ("Die tote Stadt"/"The Dead City") at the Opera Bastille.  The powerful score, modelled on the "degenerate art" that was soon to be persecuted by the Nazis, was composed by Erich Wolfgang Korngold in 1920.  The links between this opera and cinema are many.  The opera has been staged in a knowing way by Willy Decker to bring out numerous filmic references, from Caligari to Fellini.  It was adapted from the novel by Georges Rodenbach, "Bruges-la-Morte" (the source of inspiration for Vertigo, via Boileau and Narcejac), but with the ending changed: the hero finally "psychoanalytically" frees himself from the memory of his deceased beloved, whose double he has encountered.  In the 1930s, Korngold will follow Max Reinhardt to the United States, where he will eventually become the epic composer of action films for Warner.  Coming from this genial exile, the original scores for Captain Blood [Michael Curtiz, 1935] and The Adventures of Robin Hood [Curtiz, 1938] retain traces of his hymn to liberty.'

[The above item was freely translated by Adrian Martin, whom we thank.]

Death of Eric Rohmer (Maurice Schérer), filmmaker, philosopher, author, in Paris

Frenchman Eric Rohmer has died in his ninetieth year.  This prolific director will perhaps be best remembered for the series of films he called his 'contes moraux' such as Ma Nuit Chez Maud/My Night With Maud (1970).  A former editor of 'Cahiers du Cinéma', he co-authored with Claude Chabrol the book 'Hitchcock' (1955), the first full-length study of the films of Alfred Hitchcock.

The following tribute is supplied by Inge Pruks who in the 1970s briefly studied under Rohmer while at the Sorbonne:

‘What a dignified, serene person was Eric Rohmer. He always concerned himself with the important if minimalist things in life: such as conversation (even disagreements) conducted in a civilized manner, like the small white lies we tell and hope that no one notices, like unifying the arts, like what it means to be a social being, or maybe even a human being. This often led him into an exploration of such dualities as young/old, male/female, reflective/active, honest/dishonest, contemporary/medieval, not to forget familial/professional (his own lifelong duality of Maurice Schérer/Eric Rohmer). I can still picture his tall, lean figure, his head on one side, listening with interest to students after lectures, quizzical yet authoritative. A real gentleman, a true intellectual, forever questing and never satisfied with the answer he might have discovered. His death is the passing of an age.’

Passing of Robin Wood, author of 'Hitchcock's Films' (1965)

English-born film critic and author Robin Wood has died of cancer, aged 78, in Toronto.

This is very sad news.  Wood was the author of several seminal - and influential - books of film criticism, among them 'Hitchcock's Films' (1965), 'Personal Views: Explorations in Film' (1976), and 'Hollywood from Vietnam to Reagan' (1986).  Wood's essay on Hitchcock's Psycho appeared in 'Cahiers du Cinéma' soon after the film came out and led to his decision to write an entire book on Hitchcock in English.  The book was ground-breaking and passionate in answering the question, 'Why should we take Hitchcock seriously?'  His subsequent articles on film were prized by journals such as the English 'Movie' and the American 'Film Comment'.  For many years he was a contributing editor of the journal 'CineAction' published in Toronto.  His partner Richard Lippe remains on its editorial board.

For David Bordwell's fine obituary (with further links), click here: http://www.davidbordwell.net/blog/?p=6483

Some films recommended by our friends!

Dr Adrian Martin, of Monash University, Melbourne, Australia, tells us that he recently saw 'the most profoundly (not superficially) Hitchcockian film made in several decades: [South Korean director] Bong Joon-ho's Mother.  What a brilliant movie this, on every level!' 

Another new film is strongly recommended by Michael Walker (author of 'Hitchcock's Motifs') after seeing it at this year's London Film Festival.  He wrote to us that newcomer Giuseppe Capotondi's Double Hour (La Doppia Ora) was a 'revelation'. Michael added: 'The following day I simply could not stop thinking about it; it's many years since a new film had such an impact on me and was so vivid in my mind afterwards.'  He strongly suggested not familiarising oneself with details of the film's plot before seeing it.

Lastly, our friend Dr Steven Schneider is an executive producer on Oren Peli's Paranormal Activity (2009) which is less Hitchcockian than inviting comparison with The Blair Witch Project.  Roger Ebert's review calls it 'an ingenious little horror film'.

Patrick Hamilton's 'Rope' (1929) at the Almeida in London

The play that Hitchcock filmed in 1948 works splendidly on stage in its own right.  Loosely based on a US case, but set in London, the play presents a chilling anatomy of an apparently gratuitous murder, and a brilliant snapshot of a jazz-age generation wallowing in privilege, booze, parties, a shallow obsession with fashion and films, and a desperate inner emptiness.  Not to speak of an arrogance that infected many British intellectuals after the First World War licenced, some of them boasted, by the philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche.  (Meanwhile, in Germany ...)

The season at the Almeida Theatre in Islington, North London, runs from Thursday 10 December 2009 to Saturday 6 February 2010.  The play will be directed by well-known stage and film director Roger Michell.  Ticket prices £6 - £32.  For further information, click here: http://www.almeida.co.uk/production_details/production_details.aspx?code=82

For sale: bronze statue of Hitchcock (here seen in clay, before casting) 

Another bronze statue of Hitchcock

Speaking of statues of Hitchcock ... the seacoast town of Dinard, northwest France, for several years had a resin statue of Alfred Hitchcock gracing its foreshore.  On Hitch's shoulders perched a seagull and a crow.  The sculptor was Lionel Ducos.  In 2004 the original statue blew away in a gale but this year it was replaced by a sturdier one in bronze, by the same sculptor.  The photo below was supplied by Dr Alain Kerzoncuf, whom we thank.  Note: Dinard is a movie-conscious town and hosts an annual British Film Festival with invited celebrities.  Deliberately, it sometimes shows films with a Hitchcock connection.  According to the recent British documentary Alfred Hitchcock in East London, directed by Bill Hodgson, the young Hitchcock and his family 'spent several happy holidays' at Dinard.     

Actors campaign to save Hitchcock-connected East London cinema

Actors Tony Robinson ('Blackadder') and Meera Syal ('The Kumars at No. 42') have joined a campaign to stop an historic cinema, the EMD Cinema in Walthamstow, London, from being turned into a church.  Alfred Hitchcock, who grew up nearby, is said to have seen his first movies there.  The cinema first opened as a dance hall in 1887 and finally closed its doors to the public in 2003.  The building was then purchased by a Brazil-based religious organisation, the Universal Church of the Kingdom of God (UCKG).  The organisation's initial plans to turn the building into a church were rejected by the local council, but it is now expected to submit new proposals.  Opposing this, a local film society, the McGuffin (sic) Film Society, wants the council to offer the UCKG ownership of an empty building next to the cinema, allowing the EMD to be sold to operators who would re-open it to show movies.  Tony Robinson calls the cinema 'an exotic masterpiece'.  He says: 'At this exciting time when east London is about to be revitalised, it would be crazy to turn our backs on such a magnificent venue.'

The above item is taken from an article that appeared in the London 'Telegraph'.  To read more, click here: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/film/5184501/Tony-Robinson-campaigns-to-save-cinema-where-Alfred-Hitchcock-saw-first-films.html 

And for an update, click here: http://www.mcguffin.info/

Premiere of film Alfred Hitchcock in East London

To commemorate the 80th anniversary of Britain's first talkie, Blackmail, the above-mentioned McGuffin (sic) Film Society recently held a screening of Hitchcock's 1929 film followed by the world premiere of the 65-minute documentary Alfred Hitchcock in East London.

'Most people are ignorant of Hitchcock's associations with east London,' says the documentary's writer and director Bill Hodgson.  'My film paints a picture of Hitchcock and his roots which is radically different from previous biographies.'

In Leytonstone the film identifies the old cinema buildings where the boy Alfred was first exposed to motion pictures.  His churchgoing in nearby Stratford and his schooldays in Hackney are also explored as well as his teenage years in Limehouse during the First World War.

Alfred Hitchcock in East London is now available on DVD.  For more information, click here: http://www.mcguffin.info/

Deaths of composer Maurice Jarre (1924-2009) and cinematographer Jack Cardiff (1914-2009)

Sadly, both of the above individuals have recently died.  Maurice Jarre composed the scores for Hitchcock's Topaz (1969) and films by such directors as Georges Franju, Luchino Visconti, and David Lean.  Jarre won Academy Awards for his scores for Lean's Lawrence of Arabia (1962), Doctor Zhivago (1966), and A Passage to India (1984).

The brilliant Jack Cardiff, a regular collaborator with Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger (Black Narcissus, The Red Shoes, et al.), photographed Hitchcock's Under Capricorn (1949).  Cardiff published his autobiography, 'The Magic Hour' (with a preface by Martin Scorsese), in 1996.  He reported that he enjoyed painting and that the French Impressionists had been a major influence on his cinematography.  That may explain why, as Richard Allen ('Hitchcock's Romantic Irony', 2007) has observed, Under Capricorn is atypical of Hitchcock's films visually.  Under Capricorn seeks to convey emotion in its images directly, with suitable use of diffuse colour, whereas Hitchcock's other colour films typically use symbolic or stylised colour, often in discrete blocks, to signify emotion.

Production designer Robert Boyle, aged 99, further honoured

Robert Boyle, who turns 100 in October, still lectures about his craft to students at the American Film Institute.

In March, he was toasted at a tribute arranged by the Art Directors Guild Film Society and the American Cinematheque.  The same week, the 'Los Angeles Times' ran an article on him (March 27 2009).  It noted that Boyle began his career in 1933 in the art department at Paramount, having just come from USC with a degree in architecture.  At Paramount and later at Universal, where he graduated to art director, he worked on a wide range of movies including horror films such as The Wolf Man (1941), the Alfred Hitchcock movies Saboteur (1942) and Shadow of a Doubt (1943), and even the old 'Ma and Pa Kettle' comedies.

After working on the two Hitchcocks, Boyle went into the Army during World War II. 'After my discharge, I went back to work with Hitch, who had formed a company at RKO with Cary Grant and that didn't pan out.  The next opportunity to be with Hitch was [when] he called me for North by Northwest [1959] and then after that The Birds [1963] and Marnie [1964].'

According to Boyle, once you worked with Hitchcock you became part of his movie family.  'He was a great collaborator,' Boyle says.  'He would discuss a movie with anybody, including his driver.'

Hitchcock engages viewers on more levels, suggests a recent study 

Researchers in a new field called 'neurocinematics' use MRI scans to monitor brain activity while subjects watch films.  Recently, subjects were shown 30 minute clips from Sergio Leone's The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly (1966), an episode of 'Alfred Hitchcock Presents' ("Bang! You're Dead"), and an episode of the TV comedy series, 'Curb Your Enthusiasm'.

The researchers, from the Computational Neuroimaging Laboratory at New York University, found that the Hitchcock clip provoked the most consistent pattern of brain activity among all subjects studied, 'consistently turning on and switching off responses of different regions in more than 65 percent of the cortex'.  By contrast, the Leone clip produced a score of 45%, while 'Curb Your Enthusiasm' scored 18%.

Quote: 'The fact that Hitchcock was able to orchestrate the responses of so many different brain regions, turning them on and off at the same time across all viewers, may provide neuroscientific evidence for his notoriously famous ability to master and manipulate viewers' minds.  Hitchcock often liked to tell interviewers that for him "creation is based on an exact science of audience reactions".'

To read more, go here: http://scienceblogs.com/neurophilosophy/2008/06/neurocinematics.php

Note.  At the end of the above-listed report (just before 'Comments'), there's a link marked simply PDF.  Click on that to read the original report as published in a new online journal called 'Projections: The Journal for Movies and Mind'.

Region 2 release of Hitchcock's Bon Voyage (1944) and Aventure Malgache (1944)

Yet another Hitchcock borrowing? The likely influence of Yellow Canary (Herbert Wilcox, 1943) on Hitchcock's Notorious (1946)

Producers of Disturbia (2007) sued for allegedly ripping off the story on which Hitchcock's Rear Window (1954) was based

Coming: Alfred Hitchcock and the Making of Psycho: The Movie

'[I]t could never be said that director Ryan Murphy (Running With Scissors) is one to let grass grow under his feet.'  Thus wrote 'Hollywood Elsewhere' columnist Jeffrey Wells by way of 'leaking' some exciting news for Hitchcock buffs: that Murphy is set to direct 'a drama about the making of Hitchcock's Psycho, and particularly the hurdles and roadblocks that the great British director [to be played by Anthony Hopkins] went through in order to bring it ... to fruition'.  Wells also reveals that British actress Helen Mirren (The Queen) may play Hitchcock's wife and collaborator, Alma.

We can add some details.  The film will be based on Stephen Rebello's book 'Alfred Hitchcock and the Making of Psycho' (1990.  (Rebello is an Exutive Producer on the project.)  A recent draft of the film's screenplay is said to have a tone closer to The Queen or Gods and Monsters than to RKO 281: The Battle Over Citizen Kane (as named in the 'Hollywood Elsewhere' item).  Apparently, too, the true focus of the film will be on Alfred and Alma and the impact of their intricate personal lives on the creation of the 1960 film.

A revelation: Maurice Elvey's The Water Gipsies (1932), part-scripted by Alma Reville, screened in London

Our London correspondent, Michael Walker ('Hitchcock's Motifs'), has sent us the following.  'The NFT has just done a short season of quota quickies. The Water Gipsies (Maurice Elvey, 1932) was a revelation. Taken from a novel by A.P.Herbert, it allowed its heroine (played by Ann Todd) and her sister quite astonishing sexual freedom without being punished.  I mention it for two Hitch-related reasons. First, Alma Reville [Mrs Alfred Hitchcock] was one of the scriptwriters (along with Miles Malleson, Basil Dean and John Paddy Carstairs).  I sensed Alma's hand in the liveliness of the two sisters.  Second, Ann Todd projects a palpable sexual desire, which I don't think is a commonly recognised feature of her performances. But I do think it's also there in The Paradine Case (1947), where it contributes to a real sense of a sexual marriage - perhaps the strongest example in Hitchcock.'

Rare early Hitchcock photo

In the rare 1922 photo below, that's Alfred Hitchcock (with moustache?) squatting beside the camera and gesturing across the road at actress Clare Greet.  The occasion was the filming of Number Thirteen (aka Mrs Peabody) on location outside the public house, "The Angel", in Rotherhithe, London.  The film was never finished.  According to a caption, the director, Hitchcock, had two assistant directors, A.W. Barnes and  Norman Arnold.  Cameraman was Joe Rosenthal.

Deaths

• We're saddened to learn of the death of Psycho screenwriter Joseph Stefano, on August 25, of a heart attack.  He was 84.  Besides Hitchcock's Psycho (1960), Stefano wrote the screenplay of Gus Van Sant's Psycho remake (1998) and a TV 'prequel' called Psycho IV: The Beginning (1990), as well as such films as Michael Anderson's The Naked Edge (1961), starring Gary Cooper.  In 1963 Stefano co-produced TV's 'The Outer Limits', the successful s-f series for which he wrote several of its 49 episodes.  Our first tribute is from Stephen Rebello, author of 'Alfred Hitchcock and the Making of Psycho' (1990): 'Joseph Stefano spoke very much like a musician, with a rich voice and a delivery dotted with jazzy riffs and deep, sonorous chords, often punctuated by the pizzicato of explosive laughter.  I can't imagine Hitchcock not being delighted, inspired, and perhaps a bit perplexed by such a free spirit.  I wish they had stayed together for Marnie not only because Stefano was so good at story structure but because he showed great empathy for tragic, melancholic characters who tough things out with unexpected jabs of dark, anarchic humor.'  Our second tribute is from Dr Phil Skerry, author of 'The Shower Scene in Hitchcock's Psycho' (2005): 'Two years ago, when Janet Leigh died, I wrote to Joe expresssing my sorrow, and he replied, "I still haven't got it into my head and (more so) my heart that I will not be seeing her dear smile again. I feel a terrible loss, and I will never forget her." Joe's words perfectly convey my feelings about this wonderful, generous, talented man.'  

• Actress Kasey Rogers, aka Laura Elliot, died on July 6.  She was 79.  As Laura Elliot, she played the trampish wife Miriam in Hitchcock's Strangers on a Train (1951).  On TV, Kasey Rogers was Louise Tate in the hit series 'Bewitched'.  Our tribute is from Richard Valley, editor of 'Scarlet Street' magazine: 'Kasey was a smart, amusing, good-natured woman and we were very, very, very fond of her.  Anyone who has ever met her or enjoyed her fine work in Strangers on a Train or on 'Peyton Place' or 'Bewitched' must feel the same.'

DVD news: 'Alfred Hitchcock Presents', Season Two, on the way

A year after they released the first season of the entertaining 'Alfred Hitchcock Presents', Universal Studios Home Entertainment have announced that the second season will be released on October 17 (Region 1) ...

Henry Bumstead (1915-2006)

Henry Bumstead, the veteran Hollywood production designer who worked for Hitchcock on The Man Who Knew Too Much (1956), Vertigo (1958), Topaz (1969), and Family Plot (1976), has died at the age of 91 in Pasadena, California.

In a nearly 70-year career that began when he was a draftsman in the art department at RKO in the late 1930s, Bumstead's first picture as an art director was the 1948 Paramount drama Saigon, starring Alan Ladd.

Bumstead twice won Academy Awards: for his work on To Kill a Mockingbird (Robert Mulligan, 1962) and The Sting (George Roy Hill, 1973).  He also received Oscar nominations for Vertigo and Unforgiven (Clint Eastwood, 1992).  

In recent times, Bumstead's longtime association with actor-director Eastwood saw him still on the job into his 90s.  It was while working on Eastwood's Million Dollar Baby (2004) that Bumstead learned that he had prostate cancer.

'Bummy was one of a kind,' Eastwood remembers.  'We will all miss him terribly.'

Anna Massey reads from her memoirs

Actress Anna Massey (Peeping Tom, Hitchcock's Frenzy, etc.) has just finished reading extracts on BBC Radio4 from her recently-published memoirs, 'Telling Some Tales'.  In one program she talked about Frenzy.

Danny Nissim in London (whom we thank) notes that the Frenzy segment had some interesting material covering Massey's audition: Hitch sat behind a huge desk and spent the first 45 minutes talking about making batter pudding!  At one point, he asked how tall Massey was, explaining that she would have to fit into a potato sack.  But Massey disputed the myth that Hitch treated actors as cattle.  He was patient and helpful, often using a comic irony which put everyone at their ease.

On Alfred Hitchcock and his screenwriters

Passing of Jay Presson Allen

Screenwriter, novelist, playwright and producer, Jay Presson Allen, has died at the age of 84 from a stroke, at her home in Manhattan.

Her extensive film credits include Marnie (Alfred Hitchcock, 1964), Cabaret (1972), Just Tell Me What You Want (1980, from Allen's novel), Prince of the City (1981), and The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie (1969).  It was in fact Allen's fine stage adaptation of Muriel Spark's novel 'The Prime of Mis Jean Brodie' which drew her to Hitchcock's attention: he read an advance copy of it and hired her for Marnie.  Afterwards, he commissioned her to adapt J.M. Barrie's play 'Mary Rose' but his cherished project never actually made it to the screen.     

Ms Allen once told an interviewer, 'I never wanted to direct. I always thought that was a brutal job, one that I never had an interest in. A lot of it’s baby-sitting, and I could never stand for that. Hitchcock wanted to make me into a director. But I had a husband [film producer Lewis Allen], a child and a life and I didn’t want to give those things up.'

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Murder! plus Mary on one DVD

Hitchcock's Murder! (1930) and its German version, Mary - which Hitchcock shot immediately afterwards - have now been released on one DVD by Arthaus. Our correspondent, DF, in Germany reports: 'The quality is quite good except for one or two places where the original film seems to have been irreparably damaged - only very short spots, and of little consequence - and among the extras is an excerpt from Hitchcock's interview with Truffaut in August 1962.'  (Regrettably, for our English-speaking readers, we learn that the Arthaus release of Mary does not have English subtitles.)  

• Nor, we now hear, will an imminent French DVD release of Mary have English subtitles.  It will appear on a disc with Hitchcock's Jamaica Inn (1939).  Also forthcoming soon from France (probably in June) are these Hitchcock discs: Under Capricorn (1949) plus an interview with Claude Chabrol; Juno and the Paycock (1930) plus The Man Who Knew Too Much (1934).  Coming later from France are Waltzes from Vienna (1933), as previously announced here; The Pleasure Garden (1925); Downhill (1927).

(Thanks to AK for information about the French DVDs.) 

Actress Alida Valli dies

Italian actress Alida Valli, star of Hitchcock's The Paradine Case (1947), Carol Reed's The Third Man (1949), and Luchino Visconti's Senso (1954), has died in Rome at the age of 84.

Born Alida Maria Laura von Altenburger in 1921 in Pola (now Pula in Croatia), she made her cinema debut at the age of 15 and appeared in over 100 films.  One of those films was Mario Soldati's exquisite Piccolo mondo antico/Little old-fashioned world (1941), set in the Italian lakes in the 1850s, and described by critic David Shipman as 'a "literary" film but otherwise as near as dammit perfect'.  After the War she was discovered by US producer David Selznick, who put her under contract, thinking he had found a new Ingrid Bergman.  In fact, her English-speaking career did not last long (supposedly due to her thick accent), but she continued to act in Italian and French films, as well as theatre.

She was awarded a Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival in 1997 for her contribution to Italian cinema.

Magazine-issue and book on Hitchcock's The Trouble With Harry (1955) both coming

Vermont writer, artist, and film critic Stephen R. Bissette has begun a new magazine, 'Green Mountain Cinema', dedicated to New England movies and video, whose Spring 2005 issue will feature Hitchcock's VistaVision comedy The Trouble With Harry.  The first issue of the magazine has recently appeared.  For more information about it, click here: http://www.blackcoatpress.com/greenmountaincinema1.htm

Stephen is also working on an entire 'making of' type of book about Hitchcock's wonderful film.  He is visiting locations in Vermont, such as Craftsbury Common, where parts of the film were shot, and interviewing local residents.  He would be very thankful to receive any production stills or photocopies of newspaper clippings (especially those of the period).  Stephen may be contacted at <msbissette@yahoo.com>.

[Our thanks to Tony Williams and Nandor Bokor for information in this item.]

Hitchcock biography by McGilligan criticised

Reviews of Patrick McGilligan's 'Alfred Hitchcock: A Life in Darkness and Light' (2003) have now appeared in 'Cineaste', the 'Hitchcock Annual', 'Film Quarterly' - and (at great length) on this website.  All have been luke-warm.

For example, Prof. Marshall Deutelbaum concludes his review in 'Film Quarterly' (Vol. 58, Issue 1) like this: 'By choosing to write a biography without attempting to discern any trace of his subject's life in his films, McGilligan has limited Alfred Hitchcock: A Life in Darkness and Light to the facts of a life's work without insight into the life itself.' (p. 58).

To read this website's long 'Report' on McGilligan's book, click on the following URLs:

'Miss Torso' dead at 68

Georgine Darcy was just 17 when Alfred Hitchcock chose her to play the dancer 'Miss Torso' who is seen living opposite Jeff's apartment, and entertaining a string of suitors in the evenings, in Rear Window (1954). 'I had absolutely no idea who Alfred Hitchcock was,' she said. 'I considered myself a dancer and photographer's model and not an actress. I think he was impressed with my portfolio as I paid the extra, and had photos taken of me in colour.' On meeting her, Hitchcock suggested she find an agent, but she ignored the advice - to her cost. She was paid $350.

Georgine Darcy died in Malibu, California, recently.

What is of interest to Hitchcockians is that Hitchcock kept in touch with her after Rear Window.  He told her: 'If you go to Europe and study with [actor and acting coach] Michael Chekhov, I could make a big star out of you.' But she again ignored his advice, and settled into an undistinguished career. Her most noticeable roles came as Gypsy, the secretary to Pat O'Brien on 'Harrigan and Son' on television in the early 1960s, and in such unmemorable films as Don't Knock the Twist (1962), Women and Bloody Terror (1969), and The Delta Factor (1970).

Georgine Darcy is survived by her second husband, the actor Byron Palmer, to whom she was married for 30 years. .

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Another To Catch a Thief coming

There's no word yet on who will direct or star in Paramount's remake of the Hitchcock comedy-adventure To Catch a Thief (1955), now set in Miami.  'Entertainment Weekly' (25 June, 2004) quotes screenwriter Todd Komarnicki: To Catch a Thief is one of Hitchcock's fluffier offerings. 'It was a delicacy on the Hitchcock menu, not one of his full-meal movies.'  A faster pace is promised this time: 'Thievery [must now compete] with alarm systems and bodyguards and everything protected.  We're going to see some really badass thieving this time around.'

Latest DVD news: Hitchcock releases from Warners and from MGM

Warners has announced a Region 1 release date - September 7 - for nine Hitchcock titles on DVD, each with its own 'making of' documentary and other extras.  As previously announced here, the titles include: Foreign Correspondent (1940), Suspicion (1941), Mr and Mrs Smith (1941), Stage Fright (1950), Strangers on a Train (1951), I Confess (1953), Dial M For Murder (1954), and The Wrong Man (1957).  In the case of Strangers on a Train, it will be released on two discs comprising a new Special Edition.  The ninth title will be the previously released North by Northwest (1959): Special Edition.  The discs will sell as a set for $99.92 (SRP).  The Strangers on a Train: Special Edition two-disc set will be available separately for $26.99.  The other discs will each be available separately for $19.97.

We can reveal that among the people participating in the 'making of' documentaries are members of the Hitchcock family, filmmakers Peter Bogdanovich and Richard Franklin, critic Bill Krohn, and various others.

We also hear of titles coming in November as part of MGM's Alfred Hitchcock promotion. These will include: The 39 Steps (1935), Sabotage (1936), Young and Innocent (1937), The Lady Vanishes (1938), Rebecca (1940), Spellbound (1945), Notorious (1946), and The Paradine Case (1947). They'll be available in a box set and separately.

[Thanks to Kristopher Valentine and Richard Carnahan for forwarding information contained in this item, and to the Digital Bits website.].

More on Rodenbach's novella Bruges-la-Morte (1892) and the line to Hitchcock's Vertigo (1958)

We'll put a special page concerning the above topic on this website soon, but meanwhile readers are reminded to visit our 'Selections' page to read the article called "The original of Vertigo".  The editor of 'The MacGuffin', Ken Mogg, says: 'It's clear to me that two Belgian (or Belgian/French) literary works, Georges Rodenbach's novella "Bruges-la-Morte" (1892) and Georges Simenon's novel "Lettre à mon juge" (1947) were both influences, probably directly, on the novel by French writers Pierre Boileau and Thomas Narcejac, "D'Entre les morts" (1954), that became Alfred Hitchcock's film masterpiece Vertigo (1958).  However, Boileau and Narcejac's novel was also almost certainly influenced by two French films.  Henri Verneuill's Le Fruit Défendu/ Forbidden Fruit (1952) was an adaptation of "Lettre à mon juge", and it starred Fernandel as the married doctor who takes a mistress Martine (Françoise Arnouil) who from the moment he sees her exerts a strange fascination over him, and whom he eventually strangles.  Also, Robert Siodmak's Le Grand Jeu/ Card of Fate/ Flesh and the Woman (1953) is a classic Foreign Legion story (originally filmed in 1934 by Jacques Feyder) starring Gina Lollobrigida as both a Parisian redhead and her brunette "double" who turns up in Algiers and haunts the hero.  I think it was Peter Cowie who first pointed to this latter film as a possible predecessor of Vertigo.

'Then there are all the literary and cinematic (and even operatic) descendants of Rodenbach's original novella that may have exerted a degree of influence on Vertigo.  Here I'm thinking of the silent films The Unfinished Portrait (1910), attributed to Léonce Perret, and Daydreams (1915), directed by Yevgeni Bauer (both of these works were direct adaptations of "Bruges-la-Mortes"); the novellas "Gradiva" (1903), by Wilhelm Jensen, and "Der Tod in Venedig"/ "Death in Venice" (1913), by Thomas Mann; and the opera "Die tote Stadt"/ "The Dead City" (1920), by Erich Wolfgang Korngold (again this was taken directly from "Bruges-la-Morte" or perhaps from its stage version, "Le Mirage", first performed in 1901).

'Finally, I wouldn't be surprised if Rodenbach influenced Belgian artists, most notably, perhaps, the Surrealist Paul Delvaux (1897-1994), who produced a series of paintings depicting nude and semi-nude women in dreamlike settings, often cityscapes at night.  (Other influences on Delvaux were his fellow Belgian Magritte and the Italian Chirico.)  I'm sure that Hitchcock knew his work.  For example, I detect his influence on the death scene of the Karen Dor character in Topaz (1969).'

For an earlier version of this News story, see below.  And for more information about the novellas 'Gradiva' and 'Der Tod in Venedig', see the article "The Fragments of the Mirror: Vertigo and its Sources" [parts (b) and (c)] elsewhere on this website..

From Rodenbach's novella Bruges-la-Morte (1892) to Hitchcock's Vertigo (1958) - firming the line

Dominique Païni's essay "Léonce Perret, le dernier symboliste", included in the anthology 'Léonce Perret' (2003), which was published in conjunction with the 2002 Cinema Ritrovato festival in Bologna, Italy, refers to the short film Het Onvoltooide Portret/The Unfinished Portrait (1910), apparently directed by the Frenchman Léonce Perret (1880-1935).  In a French setting, the film reworks the story originally told by the Belgian Symbolist author Georges Rodenbach (1855-98) about a man whose first wife dies but who 're-appears' in the form of a double, and whom the man then obsessively woos, leading (in the novella) to a bizarre murder.  Rodenbach's story is set in the Belgian city of Bruges, 'a city of silence, ennui and ... desolation', and the story's original publication was accompanied by 35 half-tone reproductions of photographs of the city.  A stage version of the story, 'Le Mirage', was first produced in 1901.

In 'The MacGuffin' #29 (January 2004), Michael Walker described The Unfinished Portrait at some length, and its obvious influence, direct or indirect, on the novel 'D'Entre les Morts' (1954), by Pierre Boileau and Thomas Narcejac, that eventually became Hitchcock's masterpiece, Vertigo.  Walker noted, though, that neither Rodenbach's novella nor Boileau and Narcejac's novel alludes to a portrait of the dead woman.

Now, after reading Walker's account, Prof. Tony Williams (whom we thank) has emailed us as follows:

'I recently viewed a film which is another "unlikely candidate" in anticipating Vertigo. This is Daydreams (1915), directed by the Russian filmmaker Yevgeni Bauer (1865-1917), and also based on "Bruges-la-Morte".  However, unlike The Unfinished Portrait, Daydreams is complete.  Bauer is one of those recently rediscovered pre-Revolutionary directors put into the shade post-1917. His work belongs to those excavated silent films often shown at the Podernone Festival and others. I'll give a brief synopsis.

'It opens with the main character distraught over the body of his recently deceased wife (significantly covered with flowers). As a last memory, he cuts off a plaid of her hair (fetish associations!) and continues to mourn his dearly departed to the concern of his maid (cf. Midge in Vertigo). One day, he passes a look-alike in the street and follows her to a theatre where he discovers her playing a revived corpse in a performance of Meyerbeer's "Robert le Diable". Already psychologically disturbed, he reacts like a male hysteric.  Parallels with Hitchcock's Scottie are not hard to see, as well as with Bernard Herrmann's operatic score.

'He brings her back home and asks an artist friend to paint her portrait with her wearing the clothes of the dead wife. Since "Tina" is a vulgar Judy-type, the artist warns his friend against this "magnificent obsession", but to no avail. I believe the dead woman's jewelry also figures in the narrative. Tina attempts to seduce his friend. The maid gives her notice since she cannot put up with her master's obsession any longer.

'The film also involves a ghostly appearance of the deceased wife similar to that described in The Unfinished Portrait, and further contains a flashback to the courtship and eventual death. Finally, Tina goes too far in provoking the man by playing with the braid before him. The man strangles her with the braid, and the film ends with the maid returning to witness this tragic climax.

'Naturally, like The Unfinished Portrait, this is not an exact anticipation of Vertigo. But it contains elements which will later appear in "D'Entre des Morts" and  Hitchcock's film.'

We'll print more about this matter here shortly..

Ronald Neame talks about Hitchcock's Blackmail (1929)

At the Hollywood Heritage Museum in Los Angeles recently, a screening of the sound version of Blackmail was attended by both Patricia Hitchcock and the British director Ronald Neame.  Neame, who is now in his 90s (biography), worked as an assistant camera operator on Hitchcock's film.  The following report is from Mark Norberg (whom we thank).

Neame said he was amazed at the memories of the shoot that came to him while watching the picture. He remembered standing behind a curtain (where Anny Ondra kills the artist) with a couple of other stage hands and hitting the curtain to represent the struggling pair. Something else he mentioned was the fact that Hitch assigned him to shoot 16mm footage of the filming.  [Editor's note.  About a minute of such footage was included on the Criterion laser disc of Blackmail, released in 1992. The footage is silent and has the title "The kiss".  Shot on the set of the artist's studio, it shows Hitch having fun demonstrating to Cyril Ritchard how he wants him to kiss Ms Ondra!  The latter is co-operative but laughing!]

He also was able to recall the occasion when the then Duke and Duchess of York (later the King and Queen Mother) visited the set of the 'first British sound picture'. He recounted how the Duchess stepped into the sound booth with Hitch where she took off her hat so that she could put on a headset and listen to the sound being recorded. Neame recalled immense problems with the recording of the dialogue, the cameras having to be contained in large soundproof booths - and these having to be moved in their entirety for a tracking shot or a pan of more than a few degrees.

He stated that he hadn't seen the sound version of Blackmail for some time but that he had seen the original silent version about four years ago and that he felt the silent version was much superior. And he noted that although Blackmail was [officially] the first British talkie, since most British theaters were not equipped for sound most people saw only the silent version anyway when it was first released.

When asked about working on the set with Hitch, Neame mentioned the usual things you hear: 'he was always calm and in control', 'always wore a jacket and tie', etc. Then Neame turned to Pat Hitchcock and said with a devilish grin, 'but most I remember Hitch's sense of humour which tended to be rather sadistic'. In the tobacco shop scene there is a gas flame on the counter from which the villain lights his cigar. One day Neame came on the set to see Hitchcock heating a half crown over the open flame with a pair of pliers. He couldn't imagine what Hitch was doing. After the coin was quite hot Hitch threw it to the ground and called over the prop man who seems to have been his favorite victim.  Hitch pointed across the floor to the coin and said something like 'Hey there! What's that half crown doing just lying on the floor?' Of course, when the man went to pick it up, he discovered exactly what it was doing there!  Later, Hitchcock induced the same man to put on a pair of handcuffs, which were in abundance during the shoot.  Hitch then told the man that if he would keep them on until the next day, while locked in the studio, Hitch would reward his efforts with a gift. The prop man readily accepted the bet, not knowing that the director had put a generous amount of laxative in the poor fellow's tea! Neame was later told by the man that, with the industrious help of his wife, he had made it through the night and onto the set the next day with the handcuffs intact. (Neame was unable to recall exactly what Hitchcock gave the man for his troubles but said Hitch did pay off his bet.)

An especially touching story concerned Neame's recounting how kind Hitchcock always was to him and how, during the time they were working together, Hitch always referred to him as 'one of his boys'.  Decades later, Neame met up again with Hitch, now in a wheelchair, and very nervously asked if Hitch remembered him.  Hitch was quick to reply, 'Why of course! You're one of my boys!.... And my goodness - you've grown sideburns!'.

Report on recent Kim Novak forum

Author Stephen Rebello, who on January 17 chaired the above sell-out event in Los Angeles for the American Cinematheque, tells us: 'For the moderator, these things are tricky.  The conversation needed to be about a six-film retrospective and [Ms Novak's] overall career.  For Hitchcockians, of course, that means not enough telling detail about Vertigo, for "fans," not enough gossip about Harry Cohn, Rita Hayworth, feuds with leading men, etc. I think we struck a balance, though.'

The following report is by Bill Krohn ('Hitchcock at Work'), who adds some material and asks a question:

'After a screening of Vertigo, and with Stephen Rebello handling the mike, [Kim] recounted that Harry Cohn, her boss, told her it was a lousy script, but to do it because it was Hitchcock. She read it and thought it was a wonderful script. She said that she knew instinctively how to play the role because she had been in the hands of men telling her what to do, how to dress, how to walk, ever since she got to Hollywood - notably Harry Cohn. She said she hated Madeleine's grey dress and the black shoes that went with it. All she had to do was put them on to feel imprisoned - which again worked for the performance.

'The rest of the evening was about the rest of Kim's career. Nothing but nice things to say about Hitchcock. Stephen asked her afterward for me if she looped the Nun's line "I heard voices" [at the end of Vertigo], and she said she didn't, but it would have been a wonderful way to convey Madeleine's feelings of guilt. She did actually - it was almost 50 years ago, so she's forgotten. And her reading of that "Hitchcock touch" is exactly right. "I heard voices" is looped over Madeleine and Scottie embracing - a disembodied voice that could very well be Madeleine's conscience (the maternal superego, Slavoj Zizek would say), which then rises up in the darkness of the next shot. Go, Hitch!

'Noted in passing while watching the film for the umpteenth time: Midge's last name is Wood (= Midge would, if Scottie could), and for some reason she is polishing a spectator pump (medium-heeled woman's shoe) when Scottie comes to her apartment to ask for an expert on San Francisco history.  (Explanations, MacGuffinists?)  Another small detail: I'm pretty sure the Madeleine stand-in wearing the grey suit walks through the first dolly-in on Madeleine in the black dress at Ernie's. She would have been on the set anyway, ready to shoot her walk-on as Madeleine later in the film, and Hitchcock probably just sent her through the first shot for the hell of it.

'Finally, a question: If Scottie's real friends - like Midge - call him Johnny, why does Madeleine, in both incarnations, call him Scottie?'

[Our thanks to both Stephen Rebello and Bill Krohn for the above.  Stephen further tells us: 'Also in attendance at the showing of the 70 mm restored print of Vertigo were Tippi Hedren and Diane Baker, sitting together. Patricia Hitchcock and two of her daughters also attended the benefit party which followed the screening, as did Hedren and Baker.  The mayor of Hollywood officially declared it Kim Novak Day.' ] 

We've announced a few coming remakes of Hitchcock films here, only to end up with egg on our face.  It seems that the strike-average for such remakes actually getting made is about one project in two.  But this one sounds promising ...

Noted screenwriter Robert Towne (Chinatown, Mission Impossible 3) has struck a deal to write, and direct, a remake of Hitchcock's classic comedy-thriller The 39 Steps (1935).  The American president and CEO of Carlton International Media, Stephen Davis, whose company owns the rights to all of the film versions of The 39 Steps that have been made (three so far, including Hitchcock's original, from John Buchan's novel) said: 'There is only a handful of individuals in our business with the talent, experience, and insight to whom we would entrust [such a project], and Robert Towne is one of them.'.

How many actors appeared in both versions of The Man Who Knew Too Much?

The answer to that question, according to Charles Barr's 'English Hitchcock' (1999), p. 234, is 'one'.  Frank Atkinson played the policeman shot dead on the mattress during the gun battle with Peter Lorre's anarchists in the 1934 version and was one of the employees in Ambrose Chappell's London taxidermist's visited by James Stewart in the 1956 version.

But a recent newspaper obituary for Betty Baskcomb (d. 15 April 2003) claimed that she, too, appeared in both versions of TMWKTM.  Our man in London, Michael Walker, decided to check.  He soon found that in the 1956 film Baskcomb plays Edna, the bespectacled woman at London Airport who telephones the villains.  But where is she in the 1934 version?  Our man had a flash of inspiration: 'I thought the most sensible character to check out would be the young woman who is displaced from her bed during the gun battle. We only see her face briefly as she turns, but I think it's enough. She does the same strange mouth movement as Edna in TMWKTM (2); she has the same long nose. To check further, I tracked Baskcomb down in Robert Hamer's It Always Rains on Sunday (1947): she's the incumbent barmaid (Edie, I think), in effect Googie Withers's successor. She has a little scene with a reporter around 71 minutes in; and there we can see what she looked like. Allowing for the age differences, I'm now pretty confident that I've found her in the 1934 movie.'  (Good work, Michael!).

DVD news:  German 6-disc release reportedly superb

We hear that 7 Hitchcock features have been released as a set entitled 'Hitchcock: The Early Years'.  The 6 discs comprise The Lodger (1926), Downhill (1927), The Man Who Knew Too Much (1934), Sabotage (1936), Secret Agent (1936), Young And Innocent (1937), and The Lady Vanishes (1938).

A Yahoo 'MacGuffin' Group correspondent, JG, writes: 'DVD aficionados [report that] this set is far better than all else out there ... including the Criterion.  The soundtracks are in English.  I have the set and it is superb and all the fanfare is accurate.  I have the Laserlight sets of the early Hitchcocks ... and these transfers are far, far better. Enormously so.'

Here's a link to the German Amazon site: Amazon.de: Verwandte Artikel entdecken

• And for soundtrack enthusiasts, the City of Prague Philharmonic, conductor Paul Bateman, have recorded        'The Essential Alfred Hitchcock': new digital recordings including The 39 Steps, The Lady Vanishes, Rebecca, Spellbound, Lifeboat, Under Capricorn, Stage Fright, Vertigo, North by Northwest, Psycho,Marnie, Topaz, and Frenzy.

Here's a link to Silva Screen Records, UK: PSYCHO: The Essential Alfred Hitchcock  

Hitchcock didn't care for Christie's novels as film fare, finding them too dry and cerebral, but of course they do have suspense after their own fashion.  And TV adapatations, in particular, of the Jane Marple and Hercule Poirot stories have shown just how engagingly filmic those stories can be.  Our favourite series remains the Miss Marple series with Joan Hickson.  But both Peter Ustinov and David Suchet have been fine Poirots.  So we print here an item from the latest 'Scarlet Street' (#49) headed "Boob Tube Tidings".  Some brief comment then follows.

'Fans of David Suchet's letter-perfect performances as Agatha Christie's Poirot will be delighted to hear that he'll return as the natty Belgian sleuth in four new productions to be telecast on the Arts & Entertainment Channel starting this fall.  Shooting has completed on Five Little Pigs- based on Christie's 1942 novel [known as 'Murder in Retrospect' in the US] - and three other adaptations will roll between now and early 2004: Death on the Nile, The Hollow, and Sad Cypress.  Four additional Poirot productions are tentatively set for filming next year.  It seems Mr Suchet is as anxious as any fan for the entire canon to be filmed, and is confident that he'll appear in them all.'

Comment.  All four titles mentioned above are outstanding Christies.  And Sad Cypress may have an additional interest for Hitchcock fans because, to quote Robert Barnard's 'A Talent to Deceive' (1980), the novel represents 'the only time Christie uses the lovely-woman-in-the-dock-accused-of-murder ploy' - à la Robert Hichens's 'The Paradine Case' (1933) and Hitchcock's 1947 film adaptation, starring Alida Valli as Mrs Paradine.

We once printed an item here from the 'London Morning Metro' for 15 September, 2000:  '[Alfred] Hitchcock is to be acknowledged ... in the East End.  Hitchcock's work, depicted in a series of metre-high mosaic panels, will be featured in the main corridor at Leytonstone Tube station, half a mile from the old Hitchcock family home.'  As soon as the 17 (Number Seventeen, get it?!) mosaics were unveiled, Londoner Mark Eyers visited them with his camera, and sent us 4 of the resulting photos, which we offered our readers.  But now (November 2003) all of the mosaics may be viewed on the Web.  Here's a link: Alfred Hitchcock mosaics, Leytonstone  Enjoy!.

Bad news about Criterion Hitchcocks ...

The quality Criterion DVDs of Rebecca, Spellbound, and Notorious are to be allowed to go out of print - at least for the time being - from the end of 2003 (Region 1).  All three of these DVDs carry valuable extras, including commentary.  Marian Keane (Harvard University) gives the commentary on Spellbound and Notorious, film historians Leonard Leff and Rudy Behlmer the commentaries for Rebecca.  A case of shop early this year for Christmas?

Onstage, a gay take on Hitchcock ...

Performance-artist John Epperson has just finished a two-month engagement in New York in the show 'As I Lay Lip-Synching'.  The character he plays, 'Lypsinka', dressed to the nines and wearing a flamboyant orange wig and heavy make-up, presents what is essentially a nightclub act with songs and patter derived from live and studio recordings of mainly obscure female singers of the fifties and sixties. But these musical sections of the act are repeatedly interrupted with extensive audio excerpts from films.  At one point, the character begins to undergo some kind of crisis within a dream state.  Here, extensive dialogue excerpts from Hitchcock's Marnie are used, including the scene in the kitchen between Marnie and her mother, the 'You Freud/Me Jane?' scene between Marnie and Mark Rutland, and the scene in which Mark drives Marnie back to 'Whykwyn'.  However, all of the dialogue of Mrs Edgar and of Mark has been edited out so that it becomes a form of monologue. In addition, the Marnie dialogue is interspersed with dialogue from other films - including Elizabeth Taylor carrying on about lobotomies in Suddenly, Last Summer and Sandra Dee screaming 'I'm a good girl!' in A Summer Place! -  all of this forming a brilliant audio and performance montage.

According to our informant, Assistant Professor Joe McElhaney (whose forthcoming book on Hitchcock contains a chapter on Marnie), previous stage acts of Epperson's also drew on Hitchcock's film, using such memorable lines of Mrs Edgar (Louise Latham) as 'We don't talk smart about the Bible in this house, missy' and 'We don't need no filthy man comin' 'round here no more, do you understand?'  In that same act, Epperson repeatedly used Bernard Herrmann's 'neurosis' theme from the film to signify the moments when Lypsinka was lapsing into insanity.  The latest act uses the Psycho shrieking violins as transitions.

Comments McElhaney: 'I found all of this at least as interesting and innovative a "queer" take on Hitchcock as any academic essay by someone like Lee Edelman!'  (Note. There's a 'Lypsinka' website: lypsinka.com.  An earlier version of the audio montage described above can be heard there.).

Staying on the line: Larry Cohen's latest again inspired by Hitchcock

Phone Booth, the project that writer-director Larry Cohen (It's Alive, Q: The Winged Serpent, The Stuff) had hoped to sell to Hitchcock, and which Fox 2000 eventually bought for Joel Schumacher, was clearly considered enough of a hit earlier this year to warrant a new Cohen project.  David R. Ellis (Final Destination 2) will direct Cellular from a Cohen script, and it, too, has a 'minimalist', telephone theme.  Starring Kim Basinger, it follows the fortunes of a woman kidnapped and thrown into a car trunk with only her cell phone as a lifeline to the outside world. She makes desperate calls, trying to find a rescuer and to prevent her husband and child from being kidnapped too - before her cell phone battery goes dead.  According to Cohen, one film in particular inspired both Phone Booth and Cellular: Hitchcock's Rear Window (1954).  'It's one of my favourite thrillers', Cohen has said.  

The just-ended Bologna Film Festival included Swedish director Victor Sjöstrom's hitherto 'missing' first Hollywood movie, Name the Man (1923), taken from a novel by Hall Caine, very similar both in story and theme to The Manxman (Hitchcock, 1928).  'But', writes Michael Walker (whom we thank), 'it lacked the original ending. Both prints that survived were Russian, and Russians preferred unhappy endings, so the film ends abruptly at the point when everything is going badly wrong!  Even so, you can see that it was a fine movie, if not quite of the class of The Wind (1928) and The Scarlet Letter (1926).'  Bologna 'also showed two other rare Sjöstroms: his first movie, The Head Gardener (1912)  - by the way, right from the beginning of his career, he cast himself as the villain! - and another "missing" one, Dodskyssen/ Kiss of Death (1917), a whodunnit which was most interesting as a technical exercise, since Sjöstrom plays men who are doubles (and in one shot, we see both the doubles and their mirror images, i.e. four Sjöstroms on screen at once!).'  

The author of the 'Poldark' novels, set in 18th-century Cornwall, has died in a nursing home in Sussex, England.  The novels formed the basis of a popular BBC-TV miniseries in the 1970s.  The best, and best-known, film adaptation, though, of a Winston Graham novel was undoubtedly Alfred Hitchcock's psychological suspense drama Marnie (1964), starring Tippi Hedren and scripted by Jay Presson Allen.  But Graham himself wrote several screenplays, of varying quality.  His adaptation of his mystery novel set in post-Occupation France, 'Night Without Stars', as filmed by Anthony Pellisier in 1951, was frankly insipid, though David Farrar and Nadia Gray gave adequate performances.  On the other hand, when Ronald Neame made Take My Life in 1947, from an original screen treatment co-written by Graham, the result was splendid, an interesting companion-piece to Hitchcock's more ambitious and complex The Paradine Case filmed the same year in similar settings (the Old Bailey, etc.).  Neame's cinematic (read: visually energetic) rendering showed the influence of his Cineguild partner, David Lean.  Presumably it was the Cineguild input that made the screenplay work so well.  However, it should not be forgotten that Graham's 'Marnie' received this enthusiastic accolade from one New York critic: 'the best book about a woman written by a man' (quoted in Tony Lee Moral, 'Hitchcock and the Making of Marnie' [2002], p. 6).
 

When an art exhibition including Douglas Gordon's '24 Hour Psycho' and supposedly paying tribute to The Master of Suspense, Alfred Hitchcock, ran in London during Hitchcock's Centennial year, 1999, our favourite review was that published in 'Time Out' which panned the exhibition mercilessly.  So we publish the following item without further comment.

In Glascow recently, a diligent repairman noticed a 'faulty' light bulb in a neon hotel sign and took it upon himself to replace it - but wasn't thanked for his trouble.  The flickering light turned out to be the central part of a £200,000 artwork by Turner Prize-winning Douglas Gordon.  His 'EMPIRE' sign, which was deliberately wired so the letter 'P' blinked to match that of the run-down Empire Hotel in Alfred Hitchcock's Vertigo (1958), has stood in Glascow for five years.  Informed of what had happened, Glascow resident Jim Livingstone, 48, said: 'I thought everybody in the city knew the sign was an artwork and was supposed to flicker.'.

Another Hitchcock-related stage play

In recent years, London has seen stage versions of Hitchcock's Strangers on a Train, Vertigo, and Marnie (though the latter production returned to Winston Graham's novel for additional characters and dialogue).  And in California, as reported in 'The MacGuffin' #28, they have had a stage version of Rope (as distinct from Patrick Hamilton's original play).

Now London has 'Hitchcock Blonde' by Terry Johnson.  It has just transferred from the Royal Court to the Lyric in the West End (and may open in New York in 2004).  Here's a description: 'A media lecturer and his female protégé find some deteriorated Hitchcock footage.  Have they discovered some early rushes?  What film were they for, and who is the mysterious blonde?  "Hitchcock Blonde" is not a play about Alfred Hitchcock.  He may, however, make a cameo appearance.'  (Impressive!)

• More Hitchcock DVD news.  From late April, R2 DVD owners have another chance to buy the Universal Hitchcocks - but, according to our sources, with the addition of Foreign Correspondent, Mr and Mrs Smith, and Suspicion to the collection.  N.B.: Suspicion is packaged with its 'colourised' version as an 'extra'.  (See also separate item on Topaz, etc., lower down this page.)  Next, according to 'Scarlet Street' forums, Image Entertainment has announced the release of Under Capricorn on DVD (we hear it is very good - there are no 'extras', however). And the <alt.movies.silent> newsgroup reports that Kinowelt in Europe is working on a DVD of Murder!/Mary similar to their double feature of the silent/sound Blackmail.  Lastly, we hear that Warners will be bringing out Dial M for Murder, Stage Fright, The Wrong Man, and (presumably) I Confess in 2004.  (Thanks to Scott Parker for this, who heard it announced on 'Home Theater Forum'.)

• For Hitchcock DVD collectors.  Paramount have released the Region 1 DVD of To Catch a Thief.  Presented in 1.85:1 anamorphic widescreen and mono,  the disc includes several featurettes - such as "The Writing and Casting of To Catch A Thief" and "The Making of To Catch A Thief" - plus a stills gallery and trailers. Retail is $US 24.95.  (The quality of this DVD is outstanding - KM.)

• German DVD release of silent & sound versions of Blackmail.  The following report by silent-film historian David Shepard comes from <alt.movies.silent>.  'A DVD containing both the talking and silent versions of Hitchcock's Blackmail has been released by Kinowelt Home Entertainment on their "Art Haus" label.  It's Region 2 PAL, so of course one would need multi-standard equipment to view it in North America.  I think it could easily be ordered through amazon.com (Germany).  The German title is Erpressung.  The silent version is IMHO one of the truly great "high silent" films. Hitch (who of course spoke German and had worked at UFA) really knew his Lang and Murnau and, if possible, went them one better.  The image quality of both versions is breathtaking.  It makes the Criterion laserdisc (for which I was once most grateful) look like garbage. The sound on the talking version is absolutely free of optical hiss, thumps etc.  The silent version has a (digital) piano score which is obviously inspired by the music used on the silent sequences of the talkie, but is musically much better. [...] The viewer can call up the material in original English or add optional subtitles in German, Spanish, Italian or Portuguese.'

• Deja vu. Those who remember the ill-fated 'Multimedia Hitchcock' project on the Web - itself designed as a pilot for a still vaster project of making available online scholarly resources and essays in film study - will watch with interest the progress, or otherwise, of a recently-announced program, a collaboration between the American Film Institute and the Georgia Institute of Technology.  These two illustrious bodies will create a scholarly website for the movie Casablanca (1942).   Still in its early stages of development, the site is intended as a prototype for a virtual cineplex containing interactive academic studies of classic movies.  Accessible through the AFI's website, the analysis of each film would then be digitally linked to pertinent scenes on a DVD in an online student's computer.  It's hoped that this approach will solve copyright problems caused by film companies' reluctance to see their 'product' published directly on the Web.  (As we recall, such reluctance proved a stumbling block in the case of the 'Multimedia Hitchcock' project.  The latter was given a booth presentation in 1999 at the Hitchcock Centennial Celebration in New York, but has not been heard of publicly since then.)  Meanwhile, legislation is helping to smoothe the way for this latest multimedia project.  A subscriber to an academic film list recently posted the following: 'While overall the media corporations are winning increasing power in copyright, the 2002 copyright legislation now in effect in the US allows university educators to put entire commercial films on edu websites, provided they are only accessible for students and for instructional purposes.'

• A couple of articles on the Web may interest our readers.  The first, occasioned by the new Robert Altman film, Gosford Park, sending up the so-called Golden Age of British murder-mystery stories, profiles matinee idol, song-writer, and actor, Ivor Novello (1893-1951), who is portrayed in Altman's film.  The article includes information on why Novello saw fit in 1932 to reprise his starring role in The Lodger, originally filmed by Alfred Hitchcock just six years earlier.  (The article says that the remake, directed by Maurice Elvey, was a flop, though not everyone seems to agree. Leslie Halliwell, for instance, while conceding it was a minor British film of the time, thought it 'not bad'.)  To read the article, from the 'Los Angeles Times', click here: Resurrected by a Song.  And we have only just learnt - more than two years late! - that director Andrew L. Stone (1902-99) has died.  When Stone wasn't making more-than-competent musical films, such as Stormy Weather (1942) and Song of Norway (1970, a fantasia on the life of Grieg), he was turning his hand to made-on-location thrillers of high calibre, such as The Steel Trap (1952), Julie (1956), and Cry Terror (1958), usually with excellent casts.  The Steel Trap actually starred Joseph Cotten and Teresa Wright, and had a score by Dmitri Tiomkin (that combination sound familiar?), while Julie put Doris Day in a big dramatic role the same year that she starred in Hitchcock's The Man Who Knew Too Much: this time, instead of having to try and save a statesman's life at the Royal Albert Hall, she must single-handedly steer a runaway airliner to safety - naturally, our Doris proves up to it!  To read Kevin Brownlow's "A Tribute to the Last Silent Film Director: Andrew L. Stone", go to: Andrew L. Stone.

• [This item may be transferred to 'Odd Spot' in due course, perhaps under the title "The film that wasn't there".]  Reportedly, the new Coen brothers film, The Man Who Wasn't There, is part-set in Santa Rosa, California, where Hitchcock's Shadow of a Doubt was filmed in 1943.  According to the film's cinematographer, Roger Deakins, the setting constitutes a Hitchcock homage, and on radio recently he spoke of shooting portions of the film in that very town.  However, an October 12 article in the Santa Rosa 'Press Democrat', and published on the Web, seems to indicate that the Santa Rosa portions of the film were in fact shot some distance away, in the town of Orange.  Read the 'Press Democrat' article: Santa Rosa will be played by Orange

• Universal seem to be unfairly milking Hitchcock buffs of every last cent.  The DVD of Topaz reportedly contains another few minutes of footage over and above the 17 minutes of extra footage that were in the VHS restored version.  And, curiously, still no explanation is provided about where the footage has come from (is coming from?) or who has pieced (is piecing?) it together.

• The above item refers to the DVD of Topaz released in the US (Region 1).   Sad to report, a note in 'Sight and Sound', December 2001, says that the DVD of Topaz released in the UK (Region 2), though it contains the film's two alternative endings (see "More about ... a longer version of Topaz", below), prints at least one of them in the wrong aspect ratio: the duel-in-the-stadium 'reveals cropping of the image on this particular DVD, since neither duellist appears in the wide shot that's meant to encompass them (the aspect ratio is marked on the disc as 1.33:1 when the original film is 1.85:1)'.  Indeed, when you examine the information printed on the same page (p. 64) of 'Sight and Sound', at least four of the R2 Universal Hitchcocks (The Birds, Marnie, Torn Curtain, and Topaz itself) have been released with an aspect ratio of 1.33:1, instead of the 1.85:1 aspect ratio in which they were shot and originally released.(Update.  With the re-release of the R2 Universal Hitchcock DVDs in April, 2003, you might have expected the above-named 'gaffes' to be righted.  But it hasn't happened.  [We thank reader Alistair Kerr for confirming this.]  Nor is there joy for our Australian/R4 readers.  The same 'gaffes' occur here.)

British playwright Frederick Knott (1916-2002) will long be remembered as the author of the ingenious play on which Hitchcock's Dial M For Murder (1954) was based.  (Knott also worked on the film's screenplay - though, as the following obituary notes, he received only his 'expenses' in payment.)  The play's cunning, would-be wife-murderer, Tony Wendice (played by Ray Milland in the film), owes something as a character to his counterpart in the stage play and 1947 film called 'Dear Murderer' by St John Legh Clowes; and his nemesis, Chief Inspector Hubbard (played superbly on stage and in the film by John Williams) seems part-based on the crafty Scotland Yard detective played by Naunton Wayne in the 1949 film Obsession adapted from the stage play by Alec Coppel.  However, 'Dial M For Murder' is essentially the work of Knott, and is both gripping and elegant.  The following obituary, by Douglas Martin, comes from the 'New York Times', 20 December, 2002:

                 Frederick Knott, a notoriously unprolific playwright who
                 scored big when he did write - with his 1952 Broadway hit
                 'Dial M for Murder' and later with the 1966 thriller 'Wait
                 Until Dark' - died on Tuesday in his Manhattan apartment.
                 He was 86.

                 'He hated writing,' his wife, Ann Hillary Knott, said.

                That is perhaps understandable. The clever, complicated
                 'Dial M for Murder' was turned down by seven London
                 producers before being accepted as a television drama by
                 the British Broadcasting Corporation. Mrs. Knott said that
                 he became so discouraged that he almost tore up the script.

                 Making matters worse, he signed away the movie rights for a
                 paltry £1,000 after the television production. Though he
                 wrote the screen version for Alfred Hitchcock in 1954, he
                 thus made far less money than he might have. When the
                 picture was remade in 1998 as 'A Perfect Murder,' he
                received credit for writing the play, but no payment, Mrs.
                 Knott said.

                 But he made enough with just three plays to live
                 comfortably and that was his sole objective. 'He wrote only
                 for money,' his wife said.

                 'Dial M for Murder' was translated into two dozen languages
                 and is still performed by professional and amateurs around
                 the world. 'Wait Until Dark' was a Broadway hit and then a
                 successful movie with Audrey Hepburn in 1967. He also wrote
                 'Write Me a Murder' in 1961.

                 Major Frederick Paull Knott was born in in Hankow, China,
                 on Aug. 28, 1916. His parents were Quaker missionaries who
                 sent him back to England for his education. He graduated
                 from Cambridge University in 1938 and served in the Royal
                 Artillery from 1939 to 1946.

                 He then retreated to a cottage next to his parents' home in
                 Sussex to struggle with a play he had already imagined. His
                 inspiration was the bang of a gun going off, he said in an
                 interview with 'The New York Times' in 1961. He imagined the
                 bang in an old, very oak-paneled English house that had
                 seen better days.

                 He worked for 18 months straight; he stayed in his bathrobe
                 and his mother left meals by the door. He emerged with
                 'Dial M for Murder.'

                 Then the struggle really began. A succession of producers
                 rejected the play, with one calling it trivial. His wife
                 read aloud a letter from the producer August MacLeod, who
                 complimented the 'ingenious little plot,' but said that
                'the play as a whole would cause little interest.'

                 But then the BBC offered to use it as a 90-minute
                 television play early in 1952. It got rave reviews. He sold
                 the film rights to a London movie company headed by Sir
                 Alexander Korda.

                 Then James Sherwood, a stage producer with a lease on a
                 London theater, had to cancel the production of a play and
                 asked to produce 'Dial M for Murder.' After less than three
                 weeks' rehearsal, it opened to critical acclaim.

                 The excitement in the plot does not arise from trying to
                 solve a murder. The theatergoer knows who committed it and
                 how it was executed. Rather, the tension grows from the
                 attempts of Scotland Yard to break down the culprit's
                 seemingly perfect alibi so that an innocent party can be
                 saved from execution.

                 Maurice Evans, the actor, saw the London production and
                 offered to star in the show on Broadway. That plan was
                 almost scuttled by the film deal, according to 'The
                 Encyclopedia of Mystery and Detection.' Sir Alexander had a
                 clause barring any future live productions until after the
                 movie came out. That snag was worked out, and 'Dial M'
                 began its run of 552 performances in October 1952 at the
                 Plymouth Theater.

                 In the next five years, the play was produced in 30
                 countries. It is still a standard of summer stock and
                 school productions.

                 Mr. Knott then worked closely with Hitchcock on writing the
                 screenplay, though Mrs. Knott said that he was paid just
                 his expenses. Sir Alexander had received $175,000 from
                 [Warners] for the rights to the 1954 movie..

'Got him at last'?

That line (minus the question-mark) from Hitchcock's Murder! (1930) comes to mind now that crime author Patricia Cornwell claims to have identified Jack the Ripper as the painter Walter Sickert (1860-1942) whose art was admired by Hitchcock to the extent that he owned two Sickert works.  Indeed, one of the latter, "The Camden Town Murder" (though Hitchcock owned only an early sketch version of it), features in the 'evidence' that Cornwell adduces against the painter.  But her most conclusive piece of evidence might seem to be this: one letter allegedly sent by the Ripper is written on paper with the same distinctive watermark and edgings as writing paper used by Sickert, provided to him by his stationer father.

A pity, perhaps, that Hitchcock isn't around to direct a follow-up version of The Lodger (1926), which he adapted from the novel by Marie Belloc Lowndes, an earlier woman crime writer, and loosely based on the Ripper case.

For more, click here: Guardian Unlimited Books | News | Does this painting by Walter Sickert reveal the identity of Jack the Ripper? And now here's a 'New York Times' review of Cornwell's book on the Ripper case, that suggests she has got it all wrong:  'Portrait of a Killer': Investigating a Historical Whodunnit.

Alfred Hitchcock - Mr Nice-guy

One of our favourite passages in Stephen Rebello's 'Alfred Hitchcock and the Making of Psycho' (pb, 1991) is this reminiscence by Rita Riggs, the film's costume designer: '[Hitchcock] had a sense of fun about him that I don't think some people picked up on.  For instance, one night, I came home to find a carton of wild, French strawberries on my doorstep because we had been talking about them recently.  Is that perversity or is that doing something out of sheer enjoyment?'  (p. 99)  Now the 'Los Angeles Times' has revealed that the actor Bob Crane (1928-78) - the subject of a new film directed by Paul Schrader - once received a dozen red roses every day for a week from an anonymous admirer of his work on 'Hogan's Heroes'. The donor?  None other than Mr Aitch!  [Thanks to Bill Krohn in Hollywood for this item.].

Where is Hitchcock's 'lost' short called An Elastic Affair?

In 1929 Alfred Hitchcock directed An Elastic Affair, running ten minutes.  He made it at the Elstree studios of British International Pictures to showcase the talents of two young actors named Aileen Despard and Cyril Butcher who had just won scholarships awarded by 'Film Weekly'.  The scholarships - and the completed film - were announced in the Saturday January 18th, 1930, issue of 'Film Weekly', and the film was shown silent (though it was apparently shot with sound) on the following day, Sunday January 19th, 1930, at the London Palladium, where its 'stars' appeared in person to receive their contracts from John Maxwell, Chairman of British International Pictures, Ltd.  Under those contracts, both actors would be trained in film acting at the Elstree Studios for six months.

Hitchcock researcher (and contributor to this website), Dr Alain Kerzoncuf, is trying to locate a copy of An Elastic Affair.  He hopes that someone reading this News item may have information about the film's whereabouts or know something about its two young actors and the contents of the film in which they appeared together.  (It is known that Aileen Despard - whose full name was Aileen Despard Kilpatrick - made about three other films after An Elastic Affair.  Cyril Butcher took up a stage career, and may have appeared in some films; he also wrote or co-wrote plays, a musical comedy, film scripts, and at least one book related to acting.)  Dr Kerzoncuf may be contacted by email at this address: <alain.ker@wanadoo.fr>..

The late Ms Kael: how to be very, very subjective

Findings by Bill Krohn, Dan Auiler, and even Ken Mogg, notwithstanding, showing that Hitchcock was a regular viewer of Hollywood, English, and other movies, the late Pauline Kael claimed the contrary in one of her last interviews now published on the Web.  (Yes, we're talking about the author of the book 'Raising Kane' which, after its original publication in 'The New Yorker', proved to be full of egregious errors - pointed up later by Peter Bogdanovich in 'Esquire' - many of which were based on Kael's near-total ignorance of how movies are made.)  Here's the most relevant passage:

                           Did you ever meet Alfred Hitchcock?

                           Yes, and I didn't have a very good time, because he
                           wanted to talk about movies but hadn't really gone
                           to see anything. His wife had, and she was very
                           knowledgeable and very pleasant. I liked her a lot,
                           but he kept breaking off to talk about his wine cellar
                           and his champagne collection. I got very distressed
                           when we talked about actors, because he had often
                           cast people not after seeing them in pictures but
                           from seeing them on a reel of film that their agents
                           brought him, so that he saw only little highlights
                           from some of their roles. He didn't know the
                           possibilities of some of the actors, and this was
                           reinforced by his feeling that he shouldn't
                           improvise. Directors should not be allowed to
                           improvise, he said, even though he had done a lot of
                           improvisation earlier in his career, and it was some
                          of his best work. I think part of the rigidity of his
                           later pictures was from his feeling that everything
                           should be worked out in advance, which didn't
                           allow for any creative participation by the actors.
                           You feel the absence of that participation in movies
                           like Topaz and Marnie and, I would say, all of
                           his later movies. He was quite rigid, almost like a
                           religious fanatic - no one should improvise, the
                           director should have everything planned out in
                           advance.

Before the above was published, Bill Krohn was approached by a 'fact-checker' from 'The New Yorker' and asked if he supported what Ms Kael claimed about Hitchcock.  No, he said, and debunked both the idea that Hitchcock never improvised and the 'truly ludicrous claim' (Krohn's phrase in an email to 'The MacGuffin') about test-reels that were used to hire actors, as opposed to seeing them in films.  Krohn cited the case of Doris Day, to whom Hitchcock remarked at a party that her performance in Stuart Heisler's Storm Warning (1951) was excellent - and who, several years later, was hired by him to star in The Man Who Knew Too Much (1956) because he remembered her supporting role for Heisler.  Long-standing readers of this page will recall something else that Krohn once told us: how Hitchcock and wife Alma were regular attenders at the repertory cinema in Los Angeles run by cinematographer Gary Graver.  (Patricia Hitchcock and Graver were recently interviewed for the French-release DVD of Suspicion, and Pat recalled those occasions well.)  To read the full interview with Pauline Kael (the above excerpt is only a fragment), click here: The New Yorker: On-line Only

Rare lobby card from Hitchcock's 'lost' The Mountain Eagle (1926) turns up in Massachusetts  

The above lobby card was recently discovered at a flea market in Rowley, Massachusetts.  Of heavy cardboard, it was found behind a second picture of a dog, apparently as backing.  (Both pictures were in a cardboad box containing broken picture frames and glass.)  It is probably the only extant lobby card for The Mountain Eagle, Hitchcock's film that had limited distribution (in Germany and the USA) and all prints of which have disappeared.

The Mountain Eagle was set in the backwoods of Kentucky but filmed on location in the Austrian Tyrol and in a Munich studio.  The dog seen here may have belonged to the film's hero, a hermit known as Fearogod (Malcolm Keen), who at one point must trek through snow carrying a sick child.

Although no prints exist of Hitchcock's second film as a director, the Margaret Herrick Library of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, Beverly Hills, California, contains some 30 stills and production photographs.  Several of the production photographs show what appears to be the dog seen here - perhaps it was the unit's mascot.  The photographs are reproduced in Dan Auiler's book, 'Hitchcock's Notebooks' (1999).

Film historian J. Lary Kuhns points out that the American distributor of The Mountain Eagle, Artlee Pictures (named after its President, Arthur A. Lee), also distributed Hitchcock's first film, The Pleasure Garden (1925), which was shot almost entirely in the Emelka Studios, Munich.  Kuhns believes that the lobby card for The Mountain Eagle 'is pretty much final confirmation of my claim that [contrary to some reports] the film did not have the US title Fear o' God'.  The film starred Nita Naldi, Bernard Goetzke, and Malcolm Keen.

[Special thanks to Sandra McLachlin, Gloucester, Massachusetts, who found the lobby card and who told us about it.].

'They're attacking again!'

That line from Hitchcock's The Birds (1963), based on the short story by Daphne du Maurier, came true the other day for none other than the late writer's 60-year-old son, Christian 'Kits' Browning, and his wife, Olive, in Cornwell, England.  Husband and wife have been viciously attacked several times by pairs of seagulls nesting outside the cottage where du Maurier herself once lived.  Recently, scores of gulls massed to attack, and a pest-control expert, who had been called in, had to come to the rescue.  '[A pair of particularly vicious gulls] built their nest on a stone pillar in the garden,' Browning explained.  The exterminator, wearing a hard hat and protective gear, distracted the mother by waving a stick and quickly stuffed the nest and eggs into a bag.  'All the other gulls within half a mile, scores of them, came and circled and attacked to protect [or avenge? - Ed.] the female.'  The Brownings took shelter inside the house.  Now, they wonder if the super-protective gulls will retaliate.  Daphne du Maurier was inspired to write her apocalyptic short story after witnessing similar behaviour.  'She was walking and saw a farmer, who had plowed up worms, surrounded by gulls flying around his head.  She suddenly thought, "Supposing they attacked."'.

In April, to celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of their movie palace, the El Capitan, in Hollywood, the Disney organisation unveiled restorations of four Hitchcock films: Rebecca,Spellbound, Notorious, and The Paradine Case.  There was a roundtable discussion at the launch of each print.  Patricia Hitchcock O'Connell was on all the panels.  Noted film historian and author Rudy Behlmer hosted the launch of Notorious.   Among the other participants were authors Stephen Rebello and Bill Krohn and actors Norman Lloyd and Rhonda Fleming.  Although the restoration of The Paradine Case could not incorporate footage slashed from the original print both before its première release and later when it was further cut for release to television (see item lower on this page), a couple of surviving sequences (unfortunately without sound) exist.  Bill Krohn has promised to write for 'The MacGuffin' an account of these (screened at the launch)..

Scriptwriter Arthur Laurents comments frankly on the homosexuality in (and out of) Rope

Playwright and screenwriter Arthur Laurents has written 'Original Story By: A Memoir of Broadway and Hollywood', which was reviwed by David Ehrenstein in the 'Los Angeles Times' on 9 April, 2000.  Here's an excerpt from the review:

'[As the 1940s] ended, Laurents met Farley Granger at an otherwise dull Hollywood party.  "We touched once by accident and reacted as though it was foreplay."  The next day Laurents gave Granger a phone call and found "[i]t was though he had been waiting for the signal, all he needed to jump into his car and come barreling across the canyon.  I barely had enough time to shower and shave before there he was, running through the door, and then, there we were rolling on the floor.  On the shag rug in the living room of a sublet on the wrong side of Doheny Drive in midafternoon, me and my movie star.  Oh frabjous day!"

'But while Granger was gung-ho, Laurents was alarmed: "I was afraid that Farley moving in would be announcing I was gay.  Whatever people might think, they didn't know.  Now they would."  For right on top of this, Laurents had been hired by Alfred Hitchcock to write the screenplay of Rope [1948], an Americanized version of Patrick Hamilton's London-set play about a pair of gay Leopold and Loeb-style thrill killers - one of whom was to be played by Granger.

'In Hollywood back then, "homosexuality was unmentionable, known only as 'it.'  'It' wasn't in the picture, no character was 'one.' "  But of course they "were," and so "in my effort to Americanize English homosexuality" -
and make Rope viable to U.S. audiences - Laurents created characters based on a gay group he "had met briefly in New York who played squash and were raunchy after dinner" - upper-crust precursors of 'The Boys in the Band'."  The Hays office, however, with its industry's self-appointed guardians of the nation's morality, was so unhinged by a few British turns-of-phrase in the dialogue, it returned the script with these words "furiously blue-penciled and marked HOMOSEXUAL DIALOGUE exclamation point."  Hitchcock, by contrast,was fearless - and supremely playful.  "It tickled him that Farley was playing a homosexual in a movie written by me, another homosexual; that we were lovers; that we had a secret he knew; that I knew he knew - the permutations were endless, all titillating to him, not out of malice or a feeling of power but because they added a slightly kinky touch and kink was a quality devoutly to be desired."'

Bob Harris & Jim Katz, the team who gave us a revamped Vertigo on 70mm, have completed their restoration of Rear Window, and general release was scheduled for February 2000.

Rear Window, as restored by Harris & Katz, is among the first films printed in Technicolor's revived dye-transfer process. The film has never looked as good as it could have, according to Harris, even during its initial release in 1954. That's because the dye-transfer prints weren't made until the 1962 reissue (on a double-bill with Psycho, as we recall), when they were poorly done and came out beige. 'So this [is] the first time we see the film's full-colour spectrum', Harris said.

The restored print was previewed in London and New York, to great enthusiasm from both audiences.  Here's a report from Scott Marshall, originally sent to the <rec.arts.movies.tech> Usenet group  (Scott Marshall is editor of 'Wide Gauge Film and Video') ...

'The film looks and sounds brand new. It's wasn't like watching an old movie.  It was like going back in time to 1954 and watching a new movie. Technicolor's re-engineered dye transfer "IB" printing looks absolutely perfected with completely true colors and the occasional appearance of a color so rich and deep that you didn't know it existed even in real life (watch for the waiter's red jacket). The sound was in its original mono but rich, undistorted, and noise-free. Projected aspect ratio was 1.66:1 (the entire 1.35:1 negative image was restored).

'Restoring full color from the faded and damaged negative and showing it on a large screen makes a great difference in telling this story. One can see more of the performances in the various tiny windows--more of the acting and facial expressions--giving this unique ensemble piece extra depth over what can be sensed on a small screen. And there's something about seeing the glowing red end of a smoked cigar in a pitch black apartment in IB Tech that is uniquely chilling.'

After Rear Window, Harris & Katz were going to turn their attentions to another Hitchcock film starring James Stewart: The Man Who Knew Too Much(1956).  For undisclosed reasons, the restoration of that film has now been undertaken 'in house' by Universal, without the assist of Harris & Katz..

Death of Albert J. Whitlock, visual effects artist, at 84

We are saddened to note the passing of Albert Whitlock, the widely-respected visual-effects artist best known for his work with Hitchcock on a  succession of films made at Universal from The Birds (1963) to Family Plot (1976).  Whitlock died in Santa Barbara, California, on October 26, 1999.  The two-times Academy Award winner was born in London in 1915, and his first work in a film studio was as a 'general factotum' (as he once told KM).  He painted some of the signs used in The 39 Steps (1935).  In America, he worked for a time with the Disney organisation before Hitchcock, recalling him from their British days, employed him to paint the matte backgrounds forThe Birds, e.g., several vistas of Bodega Bay. Whitlock was a quietly spoken, gracious man.  He appears briefly in Mel Brooks's Hitchcock spoof, High Anxiety (1977), as the man in the tower at the end.

The Hitchcock Centennial conference in New York

'Hitchcock: A Centennial Celebration' ran from October 13-17, 1999, at the Directors Guild of America Theatre and St. Moritz Hotel in midtown Manhatten.  It was sponsored by the Tisch School of the Arts at NYU and organized by Dr Richard Allen, chair of the Dept. of Cinema Studies.  What follows are some items of note from the conference sent to us by Jim Davidson (whom we thank).

The 'other' Marnie: It is well known that Evan Hunter worked on the script for Marnie before Jay Presson Allen was hired, but the screenwriters' forum of the conference revealed that Joseph Stefano also worked on an early version of Marnie.  [John Russell Taylor mentions this in 'Hitch' (1978), p. 265 - Ed.]  Apparently, Hitchcock wanted to submit a treatment of Marnie to Grace Kelly when she was considering the role - believing she would never read the full Winston Graham novel - and so he had Stefano, fresh off Psycho, write a treatment.  Later, Hitchcock told Stefano that Grace had declined the role because she and her husband (Prince Rainier) had 'found the money that they needed elsewhere'.  But Evan Hunter, when he began working on the Marnie script, was never shown the Stefano treatment; for that matter, until the day they met at the conference, Hunter had never even known that Stefano was involved.

Casting choices:  Some interesting items came to light about Hitchcock's casting choices.  Robin Wood stated that Joseph Cotten was not the first choice for the role of Sam Flusky in Under Capricorn. Hitchcock actually wanted Burt Lancaster for the part.  Arthur Laurents, the screenwriter of Rope, claims that Hitchcock had sought Cary Grant, Montgomery Clift and Farley Granger for the roles eventually played by Jimmy Stewart, John Dahl and Granger.  Grant and Clift, apparently sensitive to the homosexual sub-text of the film, declined the roles. Finally, according to Peter Wollen, Hitchcock was fascinated by Claudette Colbert and originally wanted to use her for the female lead in Foreign Correspondent.

Tippi and 'Gorky' :  According to all the actors that spoke at the conference - Eva Marie Saint, Teresa Wright, Janet Leigh, Patricia Hitchcock - the director allowed his actors much freedom and rarely gave explicit directions on the set.  Tippi Hedren, as a first time actress on the set of The Birds, tended at times to deliver her lines too stridently.  According to Evan Hunter, Hitchock had a simple code word that he used for correcting this flaw:  he would say the word 'Gorky' and Hedren would tone down her delivery.

Censors as 'collaborators':  Leonard Leff, author of the book 'Hitchcock and Selznick', made the interesting observation that the censors that Hitchcock dealt with sometimes worked as unwitting collaborators on his films. He cited several examples of this. Joseph Breen's objections to the scene where Maxim DeWinter confesses to his wife that he murdered Rebecca led Hitchcock to come up with the creative approach of having a moving camera 'describe' the events that led up to Rebecca's 'accidental' demise.  The objections to the details of Alicia's marked past in Notorious caused Ben Hecht to rewrite the character, which made her seem more mysterious. In Rear Window, Hitchcock knew the censors wouldn't allow the topless shot introducing 'Miss Torso' that the script called for, so he devised the playful shot where her bra unsnaps and she must lean over to retrieve it.  Finally, of course, there is the well known 'phallic shot' at the end of North by Northwest, but Eva Marie Saint commented that that effect was not very subtle; in fact, she recalled that at the film's premiere she noticed it and mentioned it to her husband.

New Hitchock 'bio' in the works: As noted elsewhere on this Web site, Patrick McGilligan is working on a new biography of Hitchcock to be next year.  McGilligan is only finished researching through 1945, but he promised an illuminating view of Hitchcock's early years in the book.  For one thing, McGilligan has uncovered 7 or 8 new short stories (in addition to the already published "Gas") that Hitchcock wrote before 1921, while working at the Henley Telegraph and Cable Co.  McGilligan also stated that 'a very different' Hitchcock will emerge from what he referred to as 'the Henley's Period' (1914-21).

These are some brief highlights to emerge from 'Hitchcock: A Centennial Celebration' .  The current issue of 'The MacGuffin' has a more extensive coverage of the conference.

As we noted here earlier, the new video re-release of Topaz from Universal carries a surprise. In small type on the back of the box is this announcement: 'includes 17 minutes of extra footage'. No explanation is given. But Bill Krohn, whose 'Hitchcock At Work' is now out, knows what happened.  According to Krohn, the film died 'the Death of a Thousand Cuts' at the hands of the film's British distributor, Rank, who refused to show the film in England if the running-time wasn't reduced.  Hitchcock was therefore virtually forced to cut all prints of the film.  Already dismayed at being forbidden by Universal to make Kaleidoscope (see item elsewhere on this page), he was further saddened by this latest indignity.  He really liked the film in its initial preview form, at its full length and with the ending he wanted - a pistol duel between the rival spies played by Frederick Stafford and Michel Piccoli.  But some members of preview audiences reacted negatively to the ending ...

The new video release of the film by Universal carries a different ending, in which Piccoli boards a plane for Moscow at Orly Airport and waves a dignified farewell to  Stafford. According to Krohn and others, Hitchcock was happy with this ending, too, because it was 'realistic'.  But both screenwriter Samuel Taylor and associate producer Herb Coleman disliked it, feeling that it would offend the French censors.  In addition, Taylor thought it violated the meaning of the film, which was a denunciation of the human consequences of Cold War realpolitik. Taylor therefore proposed ending on a close-up of Nicole Dévereaux (Dany Robin) asking, 'When will it end?', followed by a number of superimposed flashbacks (including what the script calls the Pietà shot) showing what she meant.  In the event, the film was released with the flashbacks - but instead of these being preceded by the close-up of Nicole, a freeze-frame was substituted, implying the death of Piccoli's character.  (Dan Auiler, editor of 'Hitchcock's Notebooks', who recently spoke to Herb Coleman, says that Coleman hated this ending, finding it very B-movieish.)

Here's Dan Auiler's report on the new video-release, which has much of the footage intended by Hitchcock restored:

'This is by far the best cut I've ever seen of the film. It importantly restores the ending I [actually] prefer, of the French double agent flying off to Russia. The rest of the moments add to the film in important ways - principally in character development. This cut does cause us to re-evaluate the film slightly. I always considered the film one of Hitchcock's only structural failures (a film that was just built too poorly). This cut reveals a film that at least has decent bones (to paraphrase Charles Bennett), but still has enormous problems in casting and even some direction (I refer in particular to the scene that always sets my teeth on edge - the showing off of the spy gadgets in Karin Dor's bedroom). Knowing what we [now] know about the production history of the film, Hitchcock gets an "A" for pulling off such a solid film with such limited time and resources. It's too bad the disastrous version of Topaz has circulated for so many years - this cut is proof that Hitch wasn't so much off his mark in the late Sixties, but struggling with studio politics.'

[Thanks to both Bill Krohn and Dan Auiler for the information printed here.]

• By way of clarification, the three known endings of Topaz that were filmed (the freeze-frame 'suicide'  followed by a montage of flashbacks; the duel; the airport farewell) have all previously been released on a laserdisc of the film.  What is new about the recent video of Topaz is that it includes 17 minutes of extra footage approximating what was cut by Hitchcock at Rank's insistence before the film's general release.

• Footnote (revised). Recent reports indicate that French director Claude Chabrol filmed the final shot (in the standard release print) showing a newspaper being discarded in the street near the Arc d'Triumph when Hitchcock was too ill to travel to Paris.  [Thanks to Ric Menello for this information.].

Restored titles

The original main titles have been restored to both Notorious (1946) and The Paradine Case (1947). The 'Los Angles Times' (18 August, 1999) reports that in the case of Notorious, not only is the RKO logo back in place (many current prints have the Selznick logo) but the skyline at the bottom of the frame is once again a live image rather than a dull still. Unfortunately, a major find - additional footage and alternate takes from The Paradine Case, some of which bolster Ethel Barrymore's Oscar-nominated performance - are without a soundtrack, so the best that restorer Scott MacQueen has been able to do for now is preserve the rare materials. 'The pace is much slower in these alternate scenes', MacQueen notes. 'Obviously Hitchcock was experimenting more with longer takes, which would culminate a year later in Rope.'.

Dubious statements?

In its edition of 10-16 August, 1999, 'The Hollywood Reporter' has an article "Saving Hitch" by Stephen Galloway. But a few of the points in the article are questionable:

1. 'Vertigo [1958] was restored three years ago by Robert Harris and Jim Katz at a cost of some $1.5 million. The film remains the prototype of the perfect restoration.' Perfect? That's far from the view of many Hitchcock aficionados, including Steven L. DeRosa who in 'The MacGuffin' #21 listed the many jarring discrepancies between the original film and its 'restored' version. He wrote, for example: 'from the very first gun shot of the opening sequence to the ringing of the tower bell in the finale, the [soundtrack] differences are jarringly apparent. These variations from the original work go beyond the scope of what a restoration should be.' Also, as DeRosa pointed out, excellent IB Technicolor prints of the original film exist, and might have been consulted to get the palette of the 'restored' film correct. Instead, Harris and Katz told the media how they had gone 'to great pains to locate original costumes and paint-chips from antique cars in order to match the look intended by the original filmmakers. The purpose of this [continues DeRosa] seems most a means of showing off. ... The green dress worn by Kim Novak does look a certain way in reality, but that is not necessarily the shade of green that it might appear in Technicolor.'

2. The Disney organisation has restored to Spellbound (1945) 'the black-and-white film's famous two-color-frame sequence' [of a gunshot]'. We have always believed the sequence in question was four frames long, not two. [Note: reports tell us that the new DVD of the film does not in fact include any coloured frames.]

3. 'A new print has also been made of The Paradine Case [1947] at its full 114-minute length (the film has been cut down over the years in versions as short as 80 minutes.' The truth is that Hitchcock's original rough-cut of the film ran close to three hours, and was reduced by producer Selznick to 132 minutes for the film's Los Angeles opening on 31 December, 1947. It was later cut for television by twenty minutes. So in this case the 'restoration' is simply a return to the cut version. The missing twenty (or eighteen) minutes is still to be denied us, it seems. [But see previous item.] 

The Venice Film Festival (1-11 September, 1999) showed a hitherto-unseen 20-minute segment from Kaleidoscope, Hitchcock's original Frenzy project, based on the true story of Neville Heath, a sadistic 28-year-old RAF officer hanged in 1946 for the sexual assault and murder of two young women. (The 1972 Hitchcock film called Frenzy bears little relation to the original Frenzy project.) In 1967 Hitchcock began preproduction for the film, having photographers shoot detailed storyboards, resulting in hundreds of slides featuring models and unknown actors. He also had 35mm film reels shot in New York. But Universal/MCA killed the project. (Our information about the project comes from Dan Auiler's essay on "[Hitchcock's] Unrealised Projects" in 'The Alfred Hitchcock Story'.)

• Film director and Hitchcock scholar Richard Franklin (see previous item) has seen the Kaleidoscope footage, and writes as follows: 'Predictably the case is argued that [the film] may have been a masterpiece. However, having read what there was of the screenplay and seen all the test footage, I suspect the studio (particularly Hitchcock's mentor, Lew Wasserman) was right [in forbidding Hitchcock to make the film].'

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The 'Hitchcock Annual' is a quality publication containing articles contributed by academic writers and specialist authors.  The 2010 issue (Volume 16) is co-edited as usual by Professors Sid Gottlieb and Richard Allen.  For all orders, including back isues, contact Columbia University Press, 61 West 62nd Street, New York, NY 10023; http://cup.columbia.edu/search?q=Hitchcock+annual&go.x=21&go.y=9  .

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Official title-page

About 'The MacGuffin'/How to Subscribe

About me (skippable)

ACADEMIC HITCHCOCK 1 - Murray Pomerance on TMWKTM (1956) 

ACADEMIC HITCHCOCK 2 - Richard Allen on Vertigo 

ACADEMIC HITCHCOCK 3 - Theodore Price on Marnie 

EXCERPTS 1 - Michael Walker on "Confined Spaces" in Hitchcock

EXCERPTS 2 - Tony Lee Moral on Marnie

EXCERPTS 3 - Thomas Leitch on Irony; Jamaica Inn

EXCERPTS 4 - Lesley Brill on Mr and Mrs Smith

Alfred Hitchcock and Charles Dickens

Article: "Why I Make Melodramas" by Alfred Hitchcock

Feature: Screenwriter Charles Bennett on "Shakespeare, Melodrama, and Hitchcock"

Report: Patrick McGilligan's biography of Alfred Hitchcock (including film by film, to 1929) 

The endings for Suspicion/ Bill Krohn's additional research

Notes on The 39 Steps

Notes on Rear Window

Notes on Vertigo (and Strangers on a Train)