News and Comment (Home) Page of the Alfred Hitchcock Scholars/'MacGuffin' website, conducted by Ken Mogg. There's also a separate official title-page, mainly for new visitors and search-engines.

The MacGUFFIN


This webpage was last modified 18 May, 2013.

We will update our New Publications page eventually.  Meanwhile, be aware of an intriguing book, 'Dark Energy', due in July from Continuum.  For more information, click here:
http://www.amazon.com/Dark-Energy-Hitchcocks-Cinematic-Spacetime/dp/1441189459/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1365937207&sr=1-1&keywords="dark+energy"+skerry

An 'advanced' Hitchcock discussion group, for articulate film academics, professional scholars, filmmakers, etc., exists. Here's the URL:
 
http://movies.groups.yahoo.com/group/hitchen2/   Note 'articulate' and 'professional'.  The most important thing is that members can and do contribute.  If you'd like to join, please contact me first, identifying yourself.  No anonymous members!  Thanks - KM (email address below).        


More broadly, I invite film teachers, film students, fellow-authors of books on Hitchcock, and anyone else, who has some keen interest in the work of the great English-born director, Alfred Hitchcock (1899-1980), to email me.  I welcome Hitchcock-related ideas, insights, 'news tips', etc., etc., and am happy to discuss them on-site or by return of email.  Snippets from classroom or conference-hall are especially welcome - not to mention CFPs (Calls for Papers), and announcements of books, exhibits, screenings, and the like.  KM

Portions of this website will eventually be re-vamped.  (Yes, not before time!)

To contact KM (whose website this is), click here: muffin@labyrinth.net.au

To go straight to the latest "Editor's Week" item further down this page, click here.  (But first allow the page to fully load.  Note: our News section begins immediately after "Editor's Week".)

Click here to go straight to bottom of page, where you'll find links to our other pages

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'For those who care': Ken Mogg ('MacGuffin' Editor) writing elsewhere on the Web about Hitchcock:

1.
First, there's my monograph (35,000 words, including notes and appendices) on Hitchcock's The Birds.  David Sterritt calls it 'top drawer stuff'.  Australian film scholar Adrian Martin thinks it 'a fantastic, finely written, brilliantly researched piece'.  Australian filmmaker Peter Tammer thinks it 'extraordinary'.  I am happy to further quote Peter.  'Like you I have seen the film many times, probably not as many as you, certainly not ... but many.  All of the things you point to are there, clearly for us all to see and experience, and to draw interpretations from, no matter what sources [Hitchcock] was absorbing and transforming into his film.  So that gave me great pleasure to know that what I had taken from the film in the past was often in accordance with what you felt he was doing and why he was doing it.'  To read the monograph, click here: 'Senses of Cinema'

2.  Also, there's my long profile of Hitchcock's life and work (containing analysis of The Lodger, Murder!, Jamaica Inn, Rope, Vertigo, Psycho, and The Trouble With Harry, and referring to opposing literary influences on Hitchcock, viz., Oscar Wilde and G.K. Chesterton).  Thomas Elsaesser calls the profile 'definitive indeed'. 
'Senses of Cinema'

3.  On The 39 Steps (book review):
'Screening the Past'
 
4.  On I Confess:
'Senses of Cinema'/ Melbourne Cinematheque
5.  On The Birds (and the critics):
'Screening the Past'
6.  On Psycho (book review):
'Senses of Cinema'
7.  On "Banquo's Chair" (episode of 'AHP'):
'Senses of Cinema'/ Melbourne Cinematheque
8.  On "Back for Christmas" (episode of 'AHP'):
'Senses of Cinema'/ Melbourne Cinematheque
9.  On Hitchcock and Charles Dickens (book review):
'Senses of Cinema'
10. The 'ten greatest films', including two by Hitchcock: 'Sight and Sound'
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Important.  The old (1999) US edition of 'The Alfred Hitchcock Story', by Ken Mogg, et al., was a drastically cut, reduced, and even 'bowdlerised' version (which its author disowns) of the original UK edition (also 1999).  However, the full book has now (2008) been re-issued world-wide, including in the US.  American readers can obtain it from Amazon.com and other booksellers.

Testimonials about this site from readers

These haven't been updated with a new selection for a while, but here goes (May 2009 - remember that our blog "Editor's Week" has been inactive from August 2008 until now).  Btw, if this weren't the Web, where a certain amount of author-promotion seems needed (against a billion 'competitors'), I most certainly would not have broadcast these testimonials (and, yes, some are from fellow authors and/or friends!).  KM

'Excellent Hitchcock website.  I've been a regular visitor for years and look to your site first for news and information on anything related to Hitch.  Your commentary is consistently enlightening and rewarding.' - C.S., Florida, USA, 2009

'I think that you are not Jeffrey Archer's "First Among Equals" but first among unequals since your knowledge is so astounding.' - Prof. T.W., Illinois, USA, 2008

'I want to compliment you on your erudition in the sense that you move easily from the macro to the micro, and back again.'  - B.H., USA, 2008

'Over the years, I have found you to be very receptive to theories other than your own.  Your disagreement with such theories is always supported with [citation], and the presentation of both sides allows the reader to make up his own mind.' - N.A., USA, 2007

'I salute your splendid website and your continuing scholarship.' - D.S., Denmark, 2007

'Your website is a pleasure for true fans!' - G.R., Israel, 2007

'It is an amazing job you have done for anyone interested in Hitchcock.  It is also an act of love!' - A.S., Venezuela, 2007

'I must say that I have been pleased (yet again, and again) by recent "Editor's Day" [items] - I was especially happy about your pieces on Under Capricorn.' - D.F., Germany, 2007

'The world's greatest expert on Hitchcock's sources and influences is the Australian scholar K.M., and his ["MacGuffin"] site is well worth visiting on this point, as on all others.' - A.M., Australia, 2007

'Thanks for the website that is still the best Hitchcock-related place on the Internet, after all these years!' - N.B., Hungary, 2007

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That's quite enough.  It's fair to say that a good deal of this site's reputation for providing quality information about Hitchcock rests on the 'blogs' that have been appearing for over a decade in the "Editor's Day"/"Editor's Week" feature on this page.  (Sometimes, of course, it has been "Guest Editor's Day"!)  For reasons of space, it hasn't been possible to simply cache the entire feature, nor has there been time to regularly update a Selections page based on it.  However, the information isn't lost, and much of it will undoubtededly feature in forthcoming publications.  Also, we anticipate various new pages appearing on this site from time to  time.  KM
    
'[Y]our site [is] one of the best on the Internet ... for quality, accuracy of content, presentation and usability.' - Britannica.com
                                Britannica award to this
                        website

What you'll find on the remainder of this Home Page includes:

1. 'Editor's Day'/'Editor's Week': January 5, 12, 19, 26, February 2, 9, 16, 23, March 2, 9, 16, 23, 30, April 6, 13, 20, 27, May 4, 11, 18.  2. News and Comment (last revised 11 May, 2013).  3. Links to our other pages.

And what you'll find on our other pages includes:

1. About 'The MacGuffin'/ How to Subscribe (revised 8 June, 2004).  2. About me (skippable).  3. ACADEMIC HITCHCOCK 1 - TMWKTMACADEMIC HITCHCOCK 2 - Vertigo. ACADEMIC HITCHOCK 3 - Marnie.  4. EXCERPTS 1 - "Confined Spaces" in Hitchcock.  EXCERPTS 2 - MarnieEXCERPTS 3 - Irony; Jamaica Inn. EXCERPTS 4 - Mr and Mrs SmithEXCERPTS 5 - critical writing on Hitchcock.  EXCERPTS 6 - Stage Fright.  EXCERPTS 7 - Franz Waxman and Suspicion.   5. About Arthur Schopenhauer (who? why?).  6. Alfred Hitchcock and Charles Dickens.  7. Article: Hitchcock on melodrama.  8. Screenwriter Charles Bennett on "Shakespeare, Melodrama, and Hitchcock".  9. Two-part 'Report' on Patrick McGilligan's biography of Hitchcock (including film-by-film, to 1950).  10. The original, previewed ending for Suspicion (script excerpt + Bill Krohn's research).  11. Notes on The 39 Steps.  12. Notes on Rear Window.  13. Notes on Vertigo (and Strangers on a Train).  14. Two discoveries: (1) Frank Baker's novel 'The Birds'; (2) Wanted for Murder (film by Lawrence Huntington).  15. Hitchcock's villains.  16. Kim Novak interview.  17. Interview with Psycho screenwriter, Joseph Stefano.  18. Long article: "The fragments of the mirror: Vertigo and its sources".  19. Article by Bill Krohn on Family Plot.  20. Article by Martin Grams Jr: "Alfred Hitchcock Presents".  21. Article by Martin Grams Jr: "Murder and Suspense".  22. Article by Philip Kemp: "Hitching Posts" (on Hitch's 'imitators').  23. New Publications (one of this site's main pages - last revised 11 February, 2012).  24. FAQs page (new material added 12 May, 2006).  25. Links (last revised 18 January, 2008).

Links to these other pages are grouped at the bottom of this page. (If you want to go straight to the bottom of this page now, click here.)


The editor's day/The editor's week

[This feature will cover musings on Hitchcock-related topics and similar matters with which the 'MacGuffin' editor has been occupied lately. Don't expect total rigour - these are basically 'ideas in progress'. Thanks!]

January 5 Speaking of 'jaded Will' in Frenzy - see immediately above - that's an 'effect' which Hitchcock had used before, going back at least to Rebecca (1940).  There, the situation at 'Manderley' - Maxim's estate in Cornwall - recalls Arthurian legend where a 'dolorous stroke' suddenly turns the country barren.  (Since the death of Rebecca, all of the males at 'Manderlay', from Maxim down, seem to have been rendered infertile: even a junior footman, we learn, is 'having trouble with [his] teeth' - with Freudian connotations!)  Similarly, a critic has referred to Frenzy's 'wasteland vision', and we saw above (e.g., entry for December 15) how that vision of Hitchcock's manifests itself.  It owes something, of course, to William Blake ('London') and to Charles Dickens ('Bleak House', 'Our Mutual Friend').  Right, let's press on.  In Arthurian legend the effect of the 'dolorous stroke' might only be undone by the coming of a knight of exceptional valour and purity - with connotations of the Second Coming of Christ.  But there's no strong reason to suppose that either Daphne du Maurier (author of 'Rebecca') nor Hitchcock was particularly concerned with that aspect of the situation: as artists, they wanted, rather, to load the situation with as many additional nuances as they could.  (Daphne du Maurier was something of a feminist, and lesbian, and secretly sympathetic to Rebecca as the harbinger of a future in which Maxim's - and England's - narrow patriarchal outlook would be overthrown.)  True, I did say last time that Hitchcock's films are about both a superficial understanding of the life/death force - meaning an understanding that reduces the world to a process of dust returning ineluctably to dust - and about 'something else left over'.  And I noted how Marnie evokes a passage from Emerson: 'So nigh is grandeur to our dust/ So near is God to man.'  But I didn't mean that the 'something else left over' necessarily refers to 'God'!  Frenzy may finally be appealing to a sense that the world isn't as bad as it seems, that, as Jack Graham says in Shadow of a Doubt, it simply requires a lot of watching.  But then, as a policeman, Jack Graham would say that, wouldn't he?!  We're back to a fact noted by philosophers and artists, that we're all bound in subjectivity, that none of us has all the answers (or all the questions).  If you want to bring God in here, then you may do so.  The hubris of the two murderers in Rope implies that they have denied their subjectivity.  ('Did you think you were God?', we hear them asked.)  The happy ending of The Trouble With Harry implies that none of the characters has really twigged to the 'pattern' or 'divinity' that has 'shaped their ends' - they remain blithely ignorant of their good fortune (or is it, rather, the 'dusty death' that lies in wait for them just around the corner?!).  I would say that Harry works as obliquely as Frenzy, although not necessarily carrying the same message - which in any case is only ever implicit.  Here's how I summed up this aspect of Frenzy to our 'advanced' Hitchcock discussion group recently: 'Hitchcock knew that there was a bigger picture, beyond the particular subjective style of his film (imagined essentially through the disenchanted eyes of an ex-war-hero, of an impotent sex murderer, and, more generally, the cynicism of a post-1960s zeitgeist).  In other words, 'everything's perverted in a different way', as he himself once said.  Thus the bigger picture is left inadequately comprehended or comprehensible - except, perhaps, through love, unselfish love, allowing intuition of the "something else left over" ...'  It may be pertinent to end by thanking both Christopher D and Bill K for their correspondence during the week (and previously) about lamps in Hitchcock.  Of the frame-capture last time, Christopher reminded me that it offers a variation on Murnau.  'The big lamp indicates a blockage in [the Oxfords' relationship], or an inability to communicate.  The smaller lamp ... traps the husband to his spot at the dinner table.'  (Christopher is currently completing research into this very large topic of lamps in films.)  Bill K sent both Christopher and myself the following frame-capture from Frenzy - showing the murderer Rusk (Barry Foster) leaving the scene of his crime - with the slightly cryptic comment, 'I suspect that somehow this lamp holds the key.'  As Bill noted in a follow-up email, blue is often the colour of death in Hitchcock (e.g., the blue paint associated with the death of Louis Bernard in the 1956 The Man Who Knew Too Much).  Hmm.  Certainly blue is the opposite of red, the colour that is often associated with life in Hitchcock (e.g., some key moments in To Catch a Thief).  And the very innocuous appearance of the unlit blue lamp offers a fitting ironic contrast to the devastating rape/murder we have just seen.  As Christopher notes, lamps in Hitchcock sometimes signify a changing of dramatic gears - up or down.

                                                                            Rusk departs after murder in FRENZY



January 12 (revised) Two articles on Hitchcock and Catholicism that I read this week complement each other nicely, and help to give perspective to Hitchcock the man at a time when, as one writer puts it, 'an apparently unflattering portrait of [the director] in a new Hollywood production' is going the rounds.  (I hasten to add that the film in question, called Hitchcock, is entertaining and often insightful.)  'Some of his biographers have not been kind, either', the same writer, Father Mark Henninger, notes.  I'll return to his article, "Alfred Hitchcock's Surprise Ending" (
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887323401904578159573738040636.html), shortly - it deserves to be widely read, especially as one of the biographers referred to, Donald Spoto, is shown to have got things wrong in a matter involving Hitchcock's Catholicism.  (Dr Spoto, incidentally, is associated with another unflattering film about Hitchcock, The Girl, for HBO/BBC.)  But it was a correspondent, Amy S (whom I thank), who alerted me to a second article, "Biographers are divided on how to judge the personality of Alfred Hitchcock", published in the London 'Times' back on 5 September 2008.  The article can be viewed at the Hitchcockwicki site (paste the following URL into your browser: http://www.hitchcockwiki.com/wiki/The_Times_(05/Sep/2008)_-_Hitchcock:_monster_or_moralist).  Its author is Bess Twiston Davies.  What Davies points out is that 'the personal reputation of Alfred Hitchcock remains the subject of heated dispute', and again the matter appears to come down to a contrast between Donald Spoto's 'highly readable' biography of Hitchcock, published in 1983, portraying the director as 'a frustrated lecher', and Patrick McGilligan's 'authoritative' work, twenty years later, showing Hitchcock 'as an iconoclastic if ultimately devout Roman Catholic'.  Davies quotes McGilligan on how Hitchcock's 'Catholicism is overt on both a superficial and profound level' (e.g., the irreverent sight-gag showing a nun in high heels in The Lady Vanishes; the famous 'wrong man' theme in so many of the films, which, in McGilligan's words, 'question the infallibility of earthly justice as opposed to God's justice').  The only thing wrong with that formulation by McGilligan in parentheses is that it isn't necessarily a Catholic one: as I noted in 1999, in 'The Alfred Hitchcock Story', it corresponds to the atheist Schopenhauer's idea of 'temporal justice versus eternal justice'.  In other words, it has a more universal applicability than Catholicism, and was 'in the air' after the 19th century Symbolist movement (influenced by Schopenhauer), which Hitchcock himself said had profoundly affected him.  But back to Davies's article.  Someone else she quotes is Father Richard Blake SJ.  Blake writes: 'In a secular world, [Hitchcock's] characters are very Catholic.  They actively pursue their own "salvation" in trying circumstances.  They get into a pickle and depend on themselves to get out of it.  There is no Protestant "by faith alone" here.'  But again, this may be unnecessarily dogmatic, or myopic.  There's no 'by faith alone' here because Hitchcock was (a) too intelligent to accept a passive 'she'll be right' attitude in his characters (at least not after any complacency has been broken down), and (b) he knew too much about audiences and cinema to allow any easy 'interventionist' solution to a dramatic crisis or personal problem - many sensible people in the audience would simply laugh at it.  Nonetheless, Hitchcock's Catholicism is undoubtedly part of the man, and predisposed him to a wise artistry and outlook, a rare objectivity.  (In fairness, I can't help mentioning that one of the best books on Schopenhauer was written by a Catholic priest, Father Coppleston SJ ...)  Which brings me back to the article "Alfred Hitchcock's Surprise Ending", first published in the 'Wall Street Journal' on 7 December 2012.  Its message is summed up in its epigraph: 'A biographer said that the director, at the end of his life, shunned religion.  Not true.  I was there.'  And that's followed by the byline of Father Mark Henninger.  On a Saturday afternoon in early 1980 he had accompanied his senior colleague, fellow priest Tom Sullivan, to Hitchcock's house in Bel Air to give the famous director a private Mass.  They were there by invitation but found the director dozing in a chair in a corner of his living room, dressed in jet-black pyjamas.  Soon, however, Hitchcock awoke, and the Mass proceeded with Alma Hitchcock also present.  It was one of several Masses held in the Hitchcocks' house at that period, and it had brought silent tears to Hitch's eyes.  Not long afterwards, he died.  Here's how Father Henninger's article concludes: 'One of Hitchcock's biographers, Donald Spoto, has written that Hitchcock let it be known that he "rejected suggestions that he allow a priest ... to come for a visit, or celebrate a quiet, informal ritual at the house for his comfort."  That in the movie director's final days he deliberately and successfully led outsiders to believe precisely the opposite of what happened is pure Hitchcock.'  Indeed it is.


January 19 [Working on computer issues, so no "Editor's Week" this time, sorry.  Btw, a new book by our friend Dr Phil Skerry is due out next July.  It's called 'Dark Energy: Hitchcock's Absolute Camera and the Physics of Cinematic Spacetime' and will be published by Bloomsbury.  More details later.]


January 26 Prompted by the item above (January 12) on Hitchcock's Catholicism, and by the revised News item below on Psycho and art, I want to extract a few points made by me in an article that is sitting here, awaiting final revision (and which I have shown to critic/author Bill K, who likes it).  Broadly, it is an article offering a 'Bressonian' reading of Psycho.  More broadly still, it is about Psycho and Catholicism, and I haven't hesitated to cite a spectrum of Catholic writers, including Marshall McLuhan, who in 1971 made this almost Thomist observation: 'One of the advantages of being a Catholic is that it confers a complete intellectual freedom to examine any and all phenomena with the absolute assurance of their intelligibility.'  (Cf. January 12, above: 'Hitchcock's Catholicism is undoubtedly part of the man, and predisposed him to a wise artistry and outlook, a rare objectivity'.)  I also cite Richard Allen's seminal book 'Hitchcock's Romantic Irony' (2007) which 'concerns how the films embrace contradiction and how they affect us not so much by pointing as by indirect means.  Particularly suggestive are some of Allen's observations in Chapter 1 about German writer Friedrich Schlegel, such as how he associated irony and wit, and how, for him, "irony is not merely a local rhetorical play in which you mean the reverse of what you say: it is nothing less than a cognitive instrument through which the relationship of the finite to the infinite may be grasped".'  (Again cf. January 12, above, on how Hitchcock incorporated the ironic mode into his very lifestyle and even some of his characteristic remarks, which is something Donald Spoto neglected to take into account at least once, and possibly more than once.)  I go on to argue that the 'poetic' story of Norman Bates (i.e., Psycho) 'has both immediate and transcendent levels, both its "shocker" aspect and a more elevated one.  In effect, Norman is both a heinous killer and potentially an angel.'  The article likens him to the murderous thug Pinkie in Graham Green's novel 'Brighton Rock' (1938), which maintains a similar ambiguity: is Pinkie damned, or not?  Catholics, I'm told, won't say, believing that earthly justice is fallible (which may be relevant to the public furor in Australia at present concerning the Catholic Church's reluctance, historically, to prosecute or expel paedophile priests).  And what about the unfortunate (?) young waitress, another Catholic, Rose, whom Pinkie marries?  Perhaps everything that happens to us really is 'grace' - as Georges Bernanos's 'Journal d'un curé de campagne' (1936) and Robert Bresson's 1950 film both imply.  At all events, my article finds much 'Bressonian' content in Psycho and its famous shower scene symbolising a 'heavenly' space.  Marion's death beneath a halo-like shower-nozzle, at the hands of Norman Bates (who, though, is identifying here with his all-powerful mother), had been foreshadowed 'at the moment [Marion] enters Norman's parlour and reacts to two of his stuffed birds.  The first is an owl with outspread wings (straight from Goya's "The Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters") which in subsequent shots seems to soar over Norman as if to suggest his domineering alter ego, Norma Bates.  The other, lower down on the wall, is a crow with a knife-like beak - a beak emphasised by its shadow poised above a picture of a flight of angels ascending to Heaven [see frame-capture below].  The prolepsis is unmistakeable, given Hitchcock's "Symbolist" bent.  Norman is the black crow, Marion one of the menaced angels. ...  Further, Hitchcock at this time must have been taken with halo imagery.  Psycho premiered in June, 1960.  But possibly even before post-production ended, the director had found time to make an episode of Alfred Hitchcock Presents, "Mrs Bixby and the Colonel's Coat" (airdate: 27 September, 1960).  In a typically playful introduction, Hitchcock seems bemused by a halo that comes and goes above his head.  He may well have been grooming audiences to be receptive to just this imagery.'  That imagery also has its variants in the film.  Norman-as-black-crow becomes Norman-as-black-cherub (both are parodies of his would-be 'angelic' status): 'Norman is literally at home with the winged black cherub which we see when [private investigator] Arbogast enters the house, and whose shadow on a door, emphasising the figure's bow poised to shoot, effectively signals Arbogast's fate.'  To be continued.

                                                                            Crow with sharp beak in PSYCHO  


February 2 It may be helpful, to follow up my observations last time on the broadly 'Catholic' assumptions in Psycho, to note something I wrote here on July 13 2007.  Early in the film, Hitchcock dissolves from a view of Sam Loomis (John Gavin) in the Phoenix hotel room where he has spent a passionate lunch hour with Marion Crane (Janet Leigh) to our first street-level view of the town, where we see Hitchcock himself standing on the pavement, wearing a stetson.  See frame-capture below.  (In a moment, the good-looking Marion will enter the real estate office in the foreground, and Hitchcock will slyly glance at her.)  Why, I asked, does Hitchcock link himself to Sam (and to Marion) in this way?  And why is he wearing that stetson?  Answering the latter question first, I suggested that it is to prepare us for the entry of the unpleasant oil man Cassidy (Frank Albertson) in the ensuing scene, where he, too, wears a stetson, even keeping it on indoors.  (By contrast, in another scene, the respectful private investigator Arbogast, played by Martin Balsam, will remove his hat on entering the Bates house.)  I noted: 'Hitchcock by his cameo is reminding us that Phoenix is quite a well-to-do town [we have only seen the run-down hotel so far], where some people dress assertively and even flamboyantly.'  Then I turned to the contrast of Hitchcock, shown looking across the street, with our view of the hatless Sam, head hanging, his gaze inward.  'Sam is dejected because he knows that with his present income from his small hardware store in Fairvale, California, there is no immediate prospect of his marrying Marion.  So the dissolve pointedly contrasts a hangdog Sam ... with the cocky, dressed-up Hitchcock.  On the other hand - and this is typical of the director's films - the dissolve paradoxically links the two characters.  For both are "waiting".  There is a whole "waiting" motif in Psycho.'  Indeed there is.  At the most mundane level, Hitchcock appears to be waiting for a bus.  Of rather more consequence, Sam expects to wait before he can marry Marion; she, on the other hand, steals $40,000 precisely because, as her sister Lila (Vera Miles) will say, 'Patience doesn't run in my family.'  (Later, we'll hear Lila tell Sam who wants her to mind the hardware store while he goes out to the Bates motel, 'What am I expected to do?  Just sit here and wait?')  I concluded as follows: 'The "waiting" motif [in Psycho] has an almost metaphysical meaning, not unrelated to Hitchcock's ultimate theme that we're all in a Lost Paradise situation, and to that extent we're all alike, all problem-ridden.'  Indeed, as I sketched in 'The Alfred Hitchcock Story' (1999; 2008), Psycho knowingly half-quotes a famous line from Milton to that effect, a line which urges the poet himself to be patient and simply 'wait' on God's purpose.  (It was a favourite line of Hitchcock's in the film, knowingly put there by screenwriter Joseph Stefano - as he confirmed to Dr Phil Skerry who interviewed him in Stefano's villa overlooking Benedict Canyon Drive.)  Accordingly, I find inadequate David Thomson's 2010 interpretation of Hitchcock's cameo, that because the director's back is turned to Marion, and us, it's 'a signal that he's indifferent to the fates of his trapped, doomed characters'.  I don't think that's right.  I mentioned last time my 'Bressonian' reading of Psycho in a forthcoming article.  Although I note that Hitchcock was probably amused by the theological difficulties raised by someone like Norman Bates (Anthony Perkins) with his 'split personality' - according to Catholic teaching the possibility of individual redemption depends on the individual conscience! - yet I was impressed, just as Hitchcock surely was, with the Catholic notion of a democracy of souls.  'What this means, broadly speaking, is "that anyone, finally, is capable of anything, any sin, any virtuous act".  Nonetheless, Catholics also believe in the Communion of Saints: Father Peter Hebblethwaite, author of a book on Bernanos, uses the term frequently, as when he notes that [some of the novelist's characters,] because they are ignorant of such a communion, "are isolated in their private hells".  The concept involves a spiritual solidarity binding the faithful on earth and the saints and angels in heaven.  The participants in this solidarity are all called saints, while the damned are excluded.  Who these damned are isn't specified ...'  Well, my feeling is that Hitchcock - for whatever reason - wasn't prepared to judge Norman Bates.  And I was gratified just this week to read a related interpretation of Hitchcock's broad position, in Chapter 3 of Father Richard Blake's 'AfterImage: The Indelible Catholic Imagination of Six American Filmmakers' (2000).  'Catholics', writes Blake, 'are comfortable with a communion of saints that is far from perfect.'  In a word, he sees Hitchcock as portraying 'a sacramental universe' in which 'God's actions are mediated through the actual physical realities of the material world, [including] flawed human beings' (p 65).  Potentially, we are all involved - or all waiting.           

                                                                            Dissolve in PSYCHO 


February 9 An instructive film for Hitchcockians is Lois Weber's one-reel Suspense (1913), which can be viewed here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nVkVKwPpI1w.  Note that the director also plays the mother in the film.  It's basically a 'lonely house' thriller (like Psycho) with a 'chase' climax (à la portions of Strangers on a Train) whose cinema antecedents go back to D.W. Griffith (e.g., The Lonely Villa, 1909) and beyond.  (More on antecedents in a moment.)  It begins when a maid deserts her mistress, a young mother with a baby, because she can't stand to be in such a 'lonesome place'.  Leaving her key under the mat, the maid sneaks away.  This significant moment is photographed from a high angle: see frame-capture below.  It isn't a pov shot, but its economical statement (the high angle tells us that the house has two stories and it allows all the action to be shown in one shot) will recur later when an intruder finds the key.  Hitchcock would have been proud of the thought invested in that shot!  What the maid doesn't know is that her departure has been seen by a villainous-looking tramp who will soon enter the house, having seen through a window that there is only a mother and a baby inside.  The husband, we gather, is at work.  The suspense now builds.  The mother, upstairs, opens the window and looks down - straight into the eyes of the skulking tramp below.  The close-up of the man's twisted face is as startling as the moment in Hitchcock's Rear Window (1954) when the murderous Thorwald (Raymond Burr) suddenly stares into the camera lens, telling us that he has spotted Jeff (James Stewart) who has been spying on him.  The mother hurries to the phone and the screen becomes a triptych: as she tells her husband the situation, and we see him react, the third portion of the image shows the tramp finding the key.  (Again you may think of Rear Window with its multiple actions occuring on adjacent 'screens' ...  That film is full of inventions from silent-film days.)  The mother hears the tramp enter the house, and she describes her apprehension: 'Now he is opening the kitchen door.  Now he is in ...'  Still in triptych, the screen includes a close-up of the tramp's hand cutting the telephone wire at the wall ...  The dismayed husband rushes from the building where he works and steals a car outside.  But the owner has seen him and promptly waves up a couple of policemen who jump into their own car and set out in pursuit of the thief.  Shades of the 'double-chase' that Hitchcock so loved in his films like The 39 Steps (1935)!  Now it is up to the director of Suspense to both keep the action moving and yet slow it down - to draw things out, thereby prolonging the suspense.  This she does expertly.  For example, the tramp takes his time before climbing the stairs inside the house: he has found a large pie in the kitchen which he devours with gusto.  (Round about here, I thought of the fairground employee crawling beneath the out-of-control carousel in Strangers on a Train who, half way though his dangerous rescue task, stops to blow his nose!)  Meanwhile, by means of cross-cutting, we follow the progress of the two cars.  As the husband's car rounds a bend in a country road, suddenly the way is blocked by a yokel (said to be a young Lon Chaney) who is nonchalently lighting himself a cigarette, oblivious of his danger.  Stopping just in time, the husband sends the yokel on his way and resumes driving.  At this point, the camera is artfully positioned to show the police car approaching the bend.  Next, we are given shots from the husband's pov as he glances in his rear-view mirror (anticipating Psycho again?!) as his pursuers draw almost level.  But the end of the chase is at hand.  Arriving at his house, the husband runs inside, just in time to engage in hand-to-hand combat with the knife-carrying tramp.  Wife and baby are saved.  The police arrive, realise what has been happening, and the film ends happily.  Now, what is also interesting about all of this is how it fits into cinema (and stage) history.  For example, a slightly different version of the same plot, with a distinctly unhappy ending (the wife is killed by the tramp), had been performed on stage as early as 1901, in Paris.  This was the Grand Guignol play 'Au téléphone'/'At the telephone' by André de Lorde, and it would be revived many times over the years.  (To read an English translation, go here: http://gaslight.mtroyal.ca/atteleph.htm.)  Moreover, by 1913 it had already been filmed three times.  Early in 1908, Pathé released Le médecin du château, known as A Narrow Escape in the United States, which substituted the happy ending.  Later that year, Edwin S. Porter directed another version called Heard over the 'Phone, and now the non-happy ending was restored.  But when D.W. Griffith got into the act, with his already-mentioned The Lonely Villa (1909), not surprisingly - to anyone knowing Griffith - the happy ending was back!  So what might Hitchcock have done with such material? Possibly I have already answered that: he would have freely borrowed from it!  But for another possible answer, see the entry on the AHH episode, 'An Unlocked Window' (1965), on our FAQs page: http://www.labyrinth.net.au/~muffin/faqs_c.html.        


                                                                            Key left under mat in SUSPENSE (1913)


February 16 Like many a melodrama, Hitchcock's I Confess (1953) cultivates a mood of paranoia.  Father Michael Logan (Montgomery Clift) must 'suffer in silence' as the police keep asking questions, suspecting him as they do of murder.  In fact, of course, Logan is innocent but bound by the sanctity of the confessional from revealing his knowledge of the true murderer - one Otto Keller, a verger at the church in Quebec City where Logan is a priest.  Coincidence (or 'synchronicity'?) is rife in I Confess, and the script keeps piling it on.  For example, Logan maintains his silence for a double reason: he is also protecting Ruth Grandfort (Anne Baxter), the wife of a politician, who had been his sweetheart before he took holy orders.  It happens that the murdered man, a lawyer named Vilette, had been blackmailing Ruth (over her supposed 'affair' with Logan long ago) and was murdered by the would-be robber Keller just hours before Ruth intended to have it out with the blackmailer.  Moreover, Keller had shown 'malice aforethought' by wearing Father Logan's cassock from the crime scene!  The film paints Keller as increasingly a Devilish figure.  Having confessed his crime to Logan (was that also premeditated? - the film leaves it ambiguous), he hurries to his wife, Alma.  He tells her that the murder was an accident, that he only intended to rob Vilette.  Whatever momentary sympathy we may feel for Keller - he and his wife are 'displaced persons' from Europe after the War - is quickly dispelled.  We see a cunning expression appear on his face as he tells Alma that Logan 'cannot tell ... what he heard in confession'.  Now look at the frame-capture below from late in the film.  Keller is almost demented as he follows Logan through the church and into the rectory, taunting the priest with the observation that he is afraid but cannot tell the police what he knows.  Throughout the film, Logan is shown striding, often upwards (as here).  Suddenly, at the end of the sequence, he rounds on Keller and out-faces him, wordlessly.  He is the very model of rectitude and moral goodness.  Keller shrinks back, defeated for now.  The 'paranoia' is maintained in other ways, though.  Logan is surrounded by well-meaning people who are unable to help him, and may even add to his tribulation.  Logan's superior at the rectory, Father Millais, is aging and ineffective.  In an early scene he says vaguely that he has heard of a paint that does not smell.  Admitting that 'one should not judge on so little evidence ...', he nonetheless asks Logan if he might next time obtain such a paint.  But he fails to heed his own words, and in the days that follow begins to doubt Logan's innocence (as Hitchcock subtly shows).  Another priest at the rectory is Father Benoit, who appears simple-minded and is associated with a running gag about his bicycle which he parks indoors and which keeps falling over.  (I think of how the feeble-minded Stevie is introduced in Sabotage by his clumsy attempt to remove a roast from the oven.)  Even Ruth herself, in the film's celebrated flashback scene (see Robin Wood's 'Hitchcock's Films'), succeeds only in giving the police a motive for why Father Logan may be the murderer.  Also, Ruth still cannot rid herself of her love for Logan, and shows her own paranoia when it seems to her that the police have merely twisted her words: 'There was no need for my statement' she complains, which is simply not true.  At the very least, she has provided 'backgrounds' for both Logan and Vilette.  But more - much more - in the context of the film, both Logan's steadfastness, his grace under pressure, and Ruth's lyrical memory of being in love, and what it meant to her, are vindications of humanity itself, which has seemed in danger of being stuck with the 'smell' of which Father Millais complained.  To be continued.      

                                                                            Keller taunts Logan in I CONFESS


February 23 In the frame-capture below from the final scene of I Confess, Father Logan's striding (see last time) figures again as he moves to confront the wounded Keller, an abject figure at the foot of a stage.  Keller is armed and Logan orders him to drop his gun before the police shoot him again.  But Keller disobeys and a moment later he dies in the priest's arms, asking for forgiveness.  As I understand the matter, Catholics believe that Keller's contrition may save him from damnation (contra, say, the unrepentent hoodlum Pinkie in Graham Greene's 'Brighton Rock').  The scene plays as a confrontation of the holy (the priest) and the profane (symbolised by Keller and the stage) - like the film as a whole.  Father Logan is a Christ-figure.  His continual striding reminded me of the 'One who had no place of rest' cited in Oscar Wilde's sonnet, "On Hearing the Dies Irae Sung in the Sistine Chapel".  Indeed, the 'Dies Irae' (Day of Wrath) itself is quoted in Dmitri Tiomkin's score at the beginning of I Confess, as Keller, wearing a priest's cassock, hurries guiltily from the murder scene.  (In a later scene, as Logan - a classic Hitchcock 'wronged man' - walks the streets before giving himself up to the police, black smoke rises over the upper reaches of the city, as if from Hell.)  Father Richard Blake, in his book 'AfterImage: The Indelible Catholic Imagination of Six American Filmmakers' (2000), touches on the Symbolist imagery of I Confess when, for example, he refers to how the film begins and ends with shots of the Château Frontenac, adding a note on the 'Direction' traffic-sign also seen at the beginning: 'The action will end at the same hotel, but the way back to the same spot is long and convoluted, even with the Direction sign.'  In other words, the film is one of Hitchcock's microcosms of worldly life, of good and evil, which doesn't concern itself unduly with 'what it all means' - but, on the other hand, doesn't deny the possible presence of such meaning, even of the wrath of God only appeased by the goodness of the loving and the truly heroic.  One of the few quibbles I have with Father Blake's interpretation of I Confess concerns just how good a man Logan is.  I think Father Blake underestimates him!  Father Blake finds him cold and with conflicted emotions (p. 65).  I think Montgomery Clift gives Logan enormous stature - a man who, yes, deep down may still love Ruth but who means every word of what he tells her on the ferry: 'I have changed.  I chose to be what I am.  I want you to see things as they are, not to go on hurting yourself.'  (I have written elsewhere on how the film is all the more effective for never spelling out why Logan chooses to take holy orders - to dedicate himself to God - on returning from the War, rather than marry Ruth.  Some matters are ineffable, and this is one such.)  As for Vilette's blackmailing of Ruth, I see no reason to think that Logan fears for himself, only for the reputation of Ruth and her husband.  Yet Father Blake describes how Logan supposedly feels on hearing from Keller that Vilette is dead: 'he realizes that the man who was threatening to involve him in a sordid blackmail scheme ... [a] hated enemy[,] is dead, but he cannot help convict the equally hateful killer'.  Well, yes, there is some conflict here, but, if nothing else, Father Blake's description flies doubly in the face of Logan's own words later, 'I don't hate anyone, Keller.'  I think that the film conceives of Logan and Keller as opposites - yet who are 'brothers'.  (Also, by the way, note that Keller never intended to kill Vilette, only to rob him.)  Logan has a single-minded purity of heart that Keller doesn't, which isn't to say that the priest lacks emotion (as the film makes abundantly clear).  When the two men face off in that final scene in the hotel ballroom, Keller's misunderstanding - he thinks Logan has betrayed him to the police - only serves to highlight the priest's heroism.  Keller calls him 'a coward ... a hypocrite, like all the rest of us', but in fact Logan has come as close to being a true representative of Christ - and Keller a representative of the Devil - as one might well imagine.  I'll have more to say next time, including about Hitchcock's love of paradox and on how I Confess looks forward to the theme of 'waiting' in Psycho (cf February 2, above).

                                                                            End of I CONFESS


March 2 Apropos I Confess, let's refer to Hitchcock's love of paradox.  Cities in Hitchcock's Symbolist art are microcosms of the world, therefore 'corrupted'.  (If they are walled cities, such as Quebec City in I Confess or Cold War Berlin in Torn Curtain, or morph into walled estates, like 'Manderley' in Rebecca, or even whole islands or island-continents like the Isle of Man in The Manxman or Australia in Under Capricorn, they may serve as ironic reminders of a 'lost Eden'.)  A recurring Hitchcock motif involves the film's hero and/or heroine fleeing a city in order to seek vindication in a supposedly uncorrupted countryside - but finding such vindication only provisionally, and having to return to the city at the end.  Think of such films as The 39 Steps and North by Northwest.  Now, here's how I began the entry on I Confess in 'The Alfred Hitchcock Story': 'Quebec City, site of several military battles, is located at the confluence of two rivers. As [the film] begins, the camera moves towards the city's silhouette dominated by the massive Château Frontenac, which resembles a castle in a fairy tale. Women's voices sing, siren-like. The same musical passage will later accompany Ruth Grandfort's description of her early love affair with Michael Logan. All of youth's ideals, and sense of what life offers, are implicit in the film's uses of that passage. But at the end the camera retreats back across the river, the city again wreathed in darkness. Though a city of churches [and forts], it has proved not to be the City of God.'  Hitchcock's pessimism shows itself clearly enough during I Confess - for example, the film's war references and iconography suggest a human condition of recurring strife and suffering - but as always Hitchcock finally foregrounds the personal life, and there hope springs eternal.  Father Logan has been vindicated at the end, and his Christ-like steadfastness may serve to transform those who doubted him; Ruth has learnt to 'see things as they are, not to go on hurting [herself]' - for example, she can no longer nurse the secret, unspeakable thought that Logan was prepared to kill for her (although clearly he was prepared to die for the Church he believes in, and thus for all humanity), and her marriage to Pierre may actually be strengthened.  Both partners have lately shown remarkable fortitude.  In other words, Hitchcock combines pessimism with anti-pessimism, the latter learned from fellow-Catholic G.K. Chesterton.  That is one paradox at work in Hitchcock's films.  But there are others.  For example, apropos the flashback scene in the summerhouse when Logan and Ruth are caught in a storm (see frame-capture below), Hitchcock was asked whether the pair actually slept together.  His reply was as follows.  'I hope so.  Far be it from me as a Jesuit to encourage that kind of behaviour.'  Quoting Hitchcock's words, but making little of them - not even remarking on the oxymoron they comprise - Father Richard Blake merely notes that the summerhouse incident prompts Vilette's attempted blackmail of Ruth (whose husband Pierre is a rising politician, and naturally vulnerable to any scandal).  In fact, of course, it was typical of Hitchcock's films - whose 'pure cinema' is so analogous to the amoral life force (Schopenhauer's cosmic Will) - that they regularly gave audiences less 'slices of [ordinary] life' than 'slices of cake' (Hitchcock's own words).  That is, they almost let audiences get away with murder, well, adultery - which is what Ruth may have committed here (being already married to Pierre, although not having told her circumstances to Logan, newly returned from the War).  In a Hitchcock film, audiences can have their cake and eat it too!  Rather more subtly, even Vertigo - I have suggested in 'Companion to Alfred Hitchcock' - does the same thing at the end.  Depending on how you read the nun, she is either benedictory (moral and wise) or sinister (as in some of the Songs of Experience of poet William Blake).  Hitchcock leaves you free to choose.  And in a recent essay, Adrian Schober in Melbourne has shown a similar syndrome operating in The Trouble With Harry.  Dr Schober adapted his doctoral thesis into a book, 'Possessed Child Narratives in Literature and Film' (2004).  Now he has shown how young Arnie (Jerry Mathers) in Harry incorporates both Puritan/Catholic (negative) and Roussea-esque/Wordsworthian (positive) aspects of childhood - two opposing views of human nature, in fact.  Here's a 'taster' from the book: '[It] adopts as its central metaphor poet William Blake's "contrary states", which is taken to refer to an unresolved dialectic between Calvinist and Romantic ideologies of childhood.' (p. ix)  I'll return to I Confess next time.                       

                                                                            THe summerhouse scene in I CONFESS


March 9 Just to be clear now.  I suggested last time that I Confess anticipates Vertigo in pitting Church (read: spiritual and forbidding) against world(ly) (read: romantic and permissive).  The viewer of Vertigo identifies with Scottie when he falls in love with 'Madeleine' although he knows (or supposes) her to be married: the same viewer could (almost?!) condone Scottie's taking 'Madeleine' to bed (as, in effect, he later does, when he - symbolically - beds Judy, in the film's famous 360º shot).  Similarly, the viewer of I Confess is invited to (almost?!) want Logan to make love to Ruth in the summerhouse (the equivalent of the 360º shot) because, although she is married, Logan is unaware of that fact (and of course hasn't yet taken holy orders, indeed is just back from the War, which is another 'permissive' factor).  A lot of manipulative sleight-of-hand by Hitchcock here!  Playing with film as if it were the 'amoral' Cosmic Will (as described by the philosopher Schopenhauer), Hitchcock invites his audience to have their cake and eat it too!  (The summerhouse scene is lifted by Hitchcock from the amusingly titled chapter "A Scandalous Ramble" in one of his favourite novels, 'Love and Mr Lewisham' by H.G. Wells, first published in 1900.)  I said most of this last time.  By way of drawing a parallel, I also quoted last time Dr Adrian Schober on how a Hitchcock film like The Trouble With Harry may knowingly reflect 'an unresolved dialectic between Calvinist and Romantic ideologies of childhood', in other words, forbidding versus permissive.  (Is young Arnie a little devil or a little angel?  Should his natural impulses be curbed or should they be unfettered?)  Dr Schober adds a note to the effect that 'in their metaphysical and moral assumptions about good and evil and human nature, Roman Catholicism and Puritanism form part of a common discourse' (p. ix).  Let's return, then, to I Confess.  There, Catholicism is pitted against Romantic/romantic and both are given their due.  You could say that Father Logan represents the Catholic position (not least in his steadfast forward movement, previously noted) and Ruth Grandfort represents the Romantic/romantic outlook (as exemplified by her dreamy flashback, which includes the summerhouse scene).  Hitchcock, as always, wanted to include 'everything', to show life-as-it-is.  Interestingly, Father Richard Blake, in his book 'AfterImage: The Indelible Catholic Imagination of Six American Filmmakers' (2000), feels that Logan is a 'cold' figure who must be 'redeemed' by the example of Ruth's 'self-sacrifice and honesty during questioning' about her love for Logan (p. 65).  (I would prefer to say that Logan has not had his faith tested in quite the same way before - remember, though, that he returned from the War with a Military Cross - and now comes through his latest ordeal only further strengthened.)  For her part, Ruth freely admits that a woman in love is 'selfish', and must be painfully disabused of her remaining romantic fantasy that Logan would have been prepared to kill for her.  (Here I think of something that was reported this week on the BBC website, in an article on 'celibacy'.  A former Catholic priest, Jimmy O'Brien, who left the priesthood to start a family, remembers that women sometimes saw priests as 'forbidden fruit' and a bit of a 'challenge'!)  The war references in I Confess are another foretaste of Vertigo, of course.  (Think of Old Fort Point in the latter, a reminder of the time when California and the Spanish were at loggerheads.)  We are free to interpret Logan's decision, on returning from the War, to take holy orders as being a direct result of his observing 'man's inhumanity to man' (a recurring Hitchcock theme) at first hand.  The fact that the film's villain, Otto Keller, is a German has multiple resonances.  Father Blake thinks that he 'inevitably reminds audiences of the dozens of cold-blooded, calculating Nazi spies that populated American screens during the war and postwar periods' (p. 61).  But equally, his and his wife Alma's refugee status is emphasised, so again I can't quite agree with the good Father when he says that 'the film does nothing to arouse sympathy for [Keller]' (p. 61).  Rather, in keeping with melodramatic tradition, it is the mindless 'mob' outside the courthouse who are a principal Hitchcock target (this goes back to at least The Lodger).  And I think Hitchcock is concerned at the end that Keller be 'saved' from damnation.  However, Father Blake only says this: '[Ruth's] self-sacrifice and honesty during questioning [has provided] the model of sacrificial and unrequited love that enables Logan to forgive Keller, who has cruelly used Logan and who shows no sign of love for him, for [Alma], or for anyone else.'  (p. 65)  Correspondence invited!

March 16 No item this week, sorry.  Next time: beginning of survey of recent scholarly writing on Hitchcock.

March 23 Frank Krutnik is an English film historian, author of the book 'In a Lonely Street: Film Noir, Genre, Masculinity' (Routledge, 1991).  So it was stimulating this week to see him compare the classic CBS radio series Suspense (1942-62) to the noir genre: 'In their build-up of tension and intrigue, their oppressive atmosphere, and their depiction of morbid psychological compulsions, the Suspense dramas resemble the contemporaneous cinematic trend later identified as film noir.'  (p. 7)  The article in which Krutnik makes that observation is "Theatre of thrills: the culture of suspense", published in 'New Review of Film and Television Studies', Vol. 11, No. 1 (March 2013).  Naturally, Alfred Hitchcock features several times.  For example, Krutnik clears up one or two misunderstandings surrounding the 1940 pilot for Suspense, a radio production of 'The Lodger' (starring Herbert Marshall and Edmund Gwenn, then currently appearing in Hitchcock's Foreign Correspondent), which Hitchcock had filmed in 1927.  Many people (e.g., biographer Patrick McGilligan) believe that Hitchcock directed the pilot episode and was host-narrator of it.  In fact, '[c]ontractual obligations blocked Hitchcock's participation in both the Forecast programme [i.e., the pilot] and the projected series [i.e., Suspense]' (p. 8), and Krutnik reveals that Hitchcock was impersonated in the pilot by actor Joseph Kearns (see also below), while the pilot's actual director was experienced CBS producer Charles Vanda (n.3, p. 26).  One of Krutnik's main points is that with the Suspense series CBS sought to make it a prestige production, to be sharply differentiated from all the horror series that had flourished on the radio since the 1930s.  None of your disreputable '"tear-your-throat-out, split-your-noggin-with-a-cleaver school" of radio horror' (p. 8), thanks very much!  Of course, Hitchcock himself was detectably of the same persuasion (as he had long affirmed in articles and interviews), which was another reason why CBS wanted to associate his name with Suspense.  Both Hitchcock's films and those of producer Val Lewton for RKO (e.g., Cat People, 1942, The Seventh Victim, 1943) set the desired pattern, and Hitchcock himself sought at every opportunity to educate the public's taste for subtlety and suggestion-over-explicit-horror.  When Suspense finally started up in 1942, it recruited top people like innovative composer Bernard Herrmann and bestselling mystery novelist John Dickson Carr (the latter as regular adaptor of stories by both fashionable hard-boiled authors, like Raymond Chandler and Dashiell Hammett, and such diverse authors as Agatha Christie, Ambrose Bierce, James Thurber, Graham Greene, Evelyn Waugh, Wilkie Collins, and Charles Dickens).  The show's guiding force in its early years (1942-48) was writer-producer-director William Spier (from the March of Time newsreel series), who was soon tagged 'the Alfred Hitchcock of the airlanes' (p. 8).  Something not noted by Krutnik is this.  Hitchcock was not only impressed by Suspense but in 1945 made his own attempt to start such a radio series.  He produced his own pilot episode of a series to be called Once Upon a Midnight (from Poe's 'The Raven'), and cast his friends Hume Cronyn (Shadow of a Doubt) and Jessica Tandy (Cronyn's wife, later seen as Mrs Brenner in The Birds) in an adaptation of 'Malice Aforethought' by Francis Iles.  He then presented the pilot program on disc to the ABC who, however, did nothing to launch a rival series to Suspense.  Nonetheless, some time afterwards - the internal evidence suggests within a year - a radio production of The Alfred Hitchcock Show did go to air, or at least another recording was made, and it was indeed an adaptation of 'Malice Aforethought', but this time starring Joseph Kearns and with a changed script (e.g., the locale was switched from England to Long Island).  It isn't clear whether Hitchcock directed it or not.  (A recording of this version was released on audio cassette by Milestone Film & Video in 1994.)  But back to Krutnik now.  Much of the second half of his article is about pinball - yes, pinball!  Drawing largely on back issues of the show business journal 'Billboard' (which preceded 'Variety' and then competed with it for several decades), Krutnik notes that many different facets of the entertainment industry were happy to provide 'suspense'.  Or a legitimate criticism might be that a circus trapeze act, like that of Freddy Vonderheld (written up in 'Billboard' in 1955), has many climaxes 'but ... there is no building to a peak of suspense' (quoted by Krutnik, p. 16).  In postmodernist vein, Krutnik notes the outrage and suspicion shown by judges and other officials at the manufacturers of pinball machines (which became increasingly sophisticated, with their flashing lights, sound effects, ramps, shutes, free-play balls, etc.) and the schoolboys and youths who patronised them (sometimes using their lunch money to do so, and therefore being tempted to steal to make up the deficit).  The sheer sensuous alertness and co-ordinated skills (of sorts) that might be needed to play the pinball games were clearly not appreciated by the period's moral guardians.  Hmm.  Does (or does not) knowing this put Hitchcock's films in a fresh light?!  Next time: another recent scholarly article on Hitchcock.

March 30 Merritt Abrash's article "Hitchcock's Terrorists: Sources and Significance" appeared in 'Literature/Film Quarterly', Vol. 39, No. 3 (2012).  Its leading idea is this: when Hitchcock in The Birds showed 'scarcely believable large-scale assaults on human life by fearless, merciless, and well organized assailants', it was a case of the film effectively predicting the September eleventh terrorist attack on the Twin Towers in New York (p. 167).  Thus 'Hitchcock had stumbled upon an extraordinary insight into a type of terrorism little in evidence at the time - but did not know what to do with it' (p. 169).  After all, terrorist outrages hitherto had been of only two types, both of them comparatively constrained in their conception: either they were (1) directed at important political figures, as in the decades before 1914, or (2) random small-scale anarchist bombings of ordinary people, such as Verloc is ordered to carry out in Hitchcock's Sabotage (1936), which of course is loosely based on Joseph Conrad's novel 'The Secret Agent' (1907) (cf p. 167).  (Reading Abrash's article I had to remind myself again just what an agent provocateur like Verloc actually intends.  Roughly, it is to embarrass - provoke - someone into action, such as the relatively lenient British government of the time, who had done little to crush radical movements, which greatly annoyed the government of Tsarist Russia.  By implication, Verloc's employer is the Russian government, and the bombing was to be passed off as the work of radicals.  Conrad's purpose in showing this was, at one level, to expose the selfish, amoral thinking that governed politics (and beyond): the parallel with Schopenhauer's amoral cosmic Will is evident, and Conrad had indeed read Schopenhauer.  Incidentally, I imagine that the powers-that-be who send drones over Afghanistan to 'take out' suspected Taliban personnel, often at the cost of innocent civilian lives, aren't Conrad's greatest fans.)  But back to Abrash.  Another of his points about Sabotage is this: 'In contrast to Conrad, who was more interested in the psychology of terrorists than the mechanics of their acts, Hitchcock's intention was to generate suspense rather than explore motivations.' (p. 167)  By the time of The Birds, however, Hitchcock may have been concerned with more than just 'the mechanics of suspense' (as pointed out also by Frank Krutnik - see last week - who noted how the mechanical aspects had by now become a concern of other manufacturers of suspense: e.g., very literally, the makers of pinball machines).  Yet Abrash has his doubts.  He quotes writer Evan Hunter's brusque dismissal of Hitchcock's claim that the film is about complacency: 'utter rot, a supreme showman's con' (n. 3, p. 172).  And Abrash agrees with David Thomson that the birds themselves are characterised as 'spiky, alien, unpredictable, and ungraspable' (quoted on p. 169).  Finally, after referring to the scene with the hysterical mother in the Tides Restaurant, Abrash concludes: 'After September eleventh, however, the subject [of the film] is more readily recognized for what it is: demonization [of outsiders], corresponding all too closely to the altered attitudes among a great many Americans toward Muslims.' (p. 171)  Hmm.  As I see it, the whole article is just a 'bright idea' and the 'recognizable subject' it attributes to the film is as arbitrary as someone's interpretation of a Rorschach pattern.  Hitchcock knew what he was doing, well enough - although in the case of The Birds he was happy to extemporise more than usual - because he knew that he was working with characters first and foremost and only after that making a Symbolist work whose 'meanings' are whatever you like - or nothing at all.  Well, next to nothing.  That is, the only 'true subject' you can attribute to The Birds is an impression of Will itself - blind, amoral, both destructive and creative - and the wave-like attacks of the hostile avians are indeed as good a symbol of Will as you will find in cinema.  But no less symbolic of universal Will in The Birds is the adjacent ocean - also featured that way in such Hitchcock films as Lifeboat and Vertigo - while the ambiguous lovebirds, and the humans' reactions to the bird attacks, that ultimately do seem creative and restorative (up to a point), round out the picture of Will-at-work, making a general statement, 'this is how the world goes'.  The fact that there are multiple ingredients to that picture should remind us that Will (the One) and Representation (the Many) cannot ultimately be understood separately (as Oliver Sacks has pointed out).  One last, related point.  Abrash and David Thomson (and elsewhere Richard Allen) are thus only half-right to call the avians 'alien' and 'ungraspable'.  The birds simultaneously symbolise, yes, otherness (sadly, many people do indeed feel no connection with birds) and the universal Will that is in all of us (a palpable truism, as Schopenhauer insisted, even if the workings of that Will are finally mysterious).  Next time: another recent scholarly article on Hitchcock.

April 6 Mervyn Nicholson, author and socialist, ends his article "Alfred Hitchcock Presents Class Struggle" ('Monthly Review', December 2011) by saying about young Charlie (Teresa Wright) in Shadow of a Doubt: 'She crosses the line of fear into rebellion, and confronts an enemy she never dreamt was an enemy.  This is not an easy process.  She must give up illusions she has taken for granted, illusions she has in fact cherished.  It calls for courage, not only to accept the facts but to endure the isolation from others that consciousness brings with it.  She must see in a new way.' (pp. 48-49)  I want to unpack that thought with reference to Nicholson's article as a whole, which begins by claiming (several times!) that '[a]cademics typically discuss everything about Hitchcock except class' (class in a Marxist sense: e.g., capitalist exploitation of workers).  Nicholson turns, first, to Psycho.  Although he doesn't say so, it's apparent that Norman Bates (Anthony Perkins) in Psycho has something in common with young Charlie, namely, isolation.  Only, they handle it very differently.  For if Norman, too, has crossed 'the line' (as the film's psychiatrist says), and in the process has shed a few illusions of his own (his 'nihilistic' speech, as Nicholson calls it, about people in cages, has some truth!), his 'rebellion' takes the extreme form of insanity.  On the other hand, young Charlie departs at the end not for a detention cell but for marriage - although that's hardly a universal symbol of sanity, let's note!  Rather, in Shadow of a Doubt, it stands for constant vigilance, further symbolised by Charlie's husband-to-be, a police detective.  (The world in Shadow of a Doubt is at war abroad and breeds psychopaths at home - yet Nicholson shows that the world of Psycho, too, is pretty bad, what with its greedy capitalists and predatory serial-killers: 'this is a society, a social order, that is [itself] "psycho"' - p. 42.)  Now, Nicholson wants to demonise capitalism, so unsurprisingly the greedy capitalist in Shadow of a Doubt is Uncle Charlie (Joseph Cotten) - whereas in Psycho, we're told, it is Cassidy (Frank Albertson), and that film's outright madman, Norman Bates, is only capital's lackey (read on).  Here is how Nicholson describes Uncle Charlie: 'a man who does no work, who is rich and lives on those he in fact destroys, and who even theorizes his right to do so, turning vicious crimes into praiseworthy achievements of a superior being.  He is the voice of capital.' (p. 48)  Hmm.  Fair enough, in the sense that Uncle Charlie is clearly a predecessor of Monsieur Verdoux in Charles Chaplin's 1947 film, where Verdoux consciously parodies the capitalist, war-mongering nations.  (In turn, Hitchcock's Rope, the following year, attempted a similar oblique satire, and the Hitler-like Brandon uses the Overman theory of Nietzsche to justify murder: Nicholson does in fact cite Rope as an illustration of 'the fascist ideology that lurks within capitalism' - p. 37.)  So young Charlie had found herself duped - and eventually nearly killed - by her beloved uncle, and perhaps he does indeed represent murderous capitalism.  But that doesn't sound exactly like Hitchcock to me, who certainly didn't want to alienate viewers of his films, who came from all classes.  As I wanted to say last week, and tried to explain to a correspondent afterwards, surely 'Hitchcock's (Symbolist) purpose was to allow as many universal meanings into his film as he could, and to exclude as few as he could (I'm putting it roughly, crudely).  So that he did indeed sense, during scripting and filming, that he was in touch with some fundamental situation/s.'  Well, that referred specifically to The Birds, about which Hitchcock suggested that it targeted human complacency.  What I'm wondering is whether Shadow of a Doubt mightn't likewise be best described in those terms: as an object-lesson to young Charlie of evil, which doesn't necessarily need capitalism to explain it?  But in a way Nicholson admits the difficulty here, and I quite agree with this statement: '[Hitchcock] had the eye of someone outside society ... which is perhaps what we most require from our artists and creators: to show us what we need to know ... but not force us to see it.  We have to see it for ourselves.  That is the only way you can see it, by your own perception.' (p. 46)  Hence young Charlie's 'new way' of seeing is potentially our new way, too.  (However, some things from Nicholson you just have to take on trust - or not.  For instance, he sees Norman Bates, 'himself trapped by the economic circumstances he inherited from his parents', as nonetheless 'the "enforcer" of the system - the hidden violence that makes the Cassidys of this world safe' when rebels like Marion steal their money.  'He acts on behalf of Cassidy without acting on behalf of Cassidy.' - p. 41  Hmm!)  Next time: another recent scholarly article on Hitchcock.

April 13 Kyle Dawson Edwards's 2006 article, "Brand-Name Literature: Film Adaptation and Selznick International Pictures' Rebecca", is about the marketing of Rebecca and, more specifically, about the branding strategies used by Selznick International Pictures (SIP) to give their independent studio prestige, both with the public and with other studios - which owned many of the cinemas that SIP pictures played in.  For SIP, no prestige, no sales!  Hmm.  No wonder David Selznick was a driven man!  (Edwards's article, btw, is published in 'Cinema Journal', Spring 2006.)  SIP's first two pictures (although developed at MGM) were Little Lord Fauntleroy and The Garden of Allah (both 1936), and both demanded elaborate set and costume design, thus setting the trend to be followed.  Notice, too, that Fauntleroy is already one of SIP's 'big mansion' films, although the corollary idea of 'spectacular destruction' hadn't yet appeared.  Edwards notes, in a footnote, how Selznick's Titanic would have been in keeping: 'Titanic would not only allow ... a lavish set that might tower over (literally and figuratively) its actors and director, but also, as an historical adaptation, frame the cinematic destruction of that set, as in Gone With the Wind [1939] and later Rebecca [1940], as an inevitability brought about by its own excess and audacity.' (n. 49, pp. 55-56)  The 'humbling of the rich and powerful'  is implicit in that observation, with a connection to the filmmakers themselves.  In another footnote, Edwards suggests a parallel between the cost-conscious David Selznick and the second Mrs DeWinter in Rebecca as she adjusts to life at Manderley: 'she scales down her activities, confines herself to a select number of rooms, and takes her lunches at odd hours to avoid large meals and the intimidating surveillance of the Manderley staff' (n.59, p. 56).  But Selznick's budgetry zeal is undeniable.  Edwards notes that when studio manager Henry Ginsberg submitted his preliminary budget for Rebecca of $883,560, Selznick went through it and revised the amount to $689,238 (p. 41); however, the actual final cost of the film 'ballooned to over one million dollars' (n. 52, p. 56)!  Edwards comments that Selznick's attempted slashing of Rebecca's costs 'speaks volumes about [his] conception of Rebecca and of that film's relation to the more expensive Gone With the Wind' (p. 41).  Which brings us closer to the crux of the article.  Both films were adaptations of runaway bestselling novels, and both cost $50,000 for the adaptation rights (p. 41).  Also, both fitted with Selznick's general idea that '[a]dapting internationally renowned literary sources enabled SIP to streamline the story development process, promise a built-in audience to distributors and exhibitors, and fulfill its goal of producing "prestige" pictures' (p. 34).  (The audience was carefully surveyed in advance, and known to have 'the leisure time and discretionary income to visit the cinema to see the novel transcribed to the screen' - p. 35.  As anticipated, the audience for Rebecca was predominantly female: later findings by the Audience Research Index service gave a figure of 71% - p.35.)  But Hitchcock's film was very much made in the shadow of Gone With the Wind: for example, two trailers were produced that 'advertised both films and linked them in succession as ... prestige releases.  The fact that Rebecca took far less time to produce, cost one third as much, and recycled many of the sets and wardrobes from Gone With the Wind was of course not elaborated in publicity materials.' (p. 44)  An intriguing part of the article is about how Rebecca used tie-ins and product-placement.  For example, playing down how the first Mrs DeWinter - Rebecca - proves in novel and film to have been a nasty piece of work, retail advertisements encouraged women to buy things like the 'Rebecca Luxury Wardrobe' (produced, sold, and distributed by Kiviette Gowns Inc.) and the 'Rebecca Makeup Kit'.  'In return, SIP agreed to include Kiviette gowns and Robert Dudley hats in the film.' (p. 38)  Staggeringly, although Rebecca is never seen in the film, there were Rebecca look-alike contests (p. 38)!  But for all his excellent research (much of it in the David O. Selznick Collection at the University of Texas at Austin), Edwards sometimes seems to me off-line, or trivial.  He appears patronising towards auteurist film criticism (though admitting it has yielded some "perceptive insights" re Rebecca - n.6, p. 50), and occasionally beside the point.  He thinks (p. 42) that Giles and Beatrice Lacey's costumes at the fancy dress ball merely represent cost-cutting (their costumes in the novel were more elaborate), thereby missing how there is a fine sight-gag here referring to Manderley's current 'sterility' (part of an extensive motif in the film): Giles poses as a strong man but with hollow 'balls' (a bouncing barbell); Beatrice as Boedicea wears impenetrable chain-mail ...  See frame-capture below.  Next time: another recent scholarly article on Hitchcock.

                                                                            Sight-gag in REBECCA
 


April 20 There is much to praise about the article "'Dear Miss Lonelyhearts': Voyeurism and the Spectacle of Human Suffering in Rear Window", by Nicholas Andrew Miller, in 'Clues: A Journal of Detection', Vol. 31, No. 1 (2013).  Essentially, it agrees with François Truffaut that Rear Window shows 'a display of human weaknesses and people in pursuit of happiness' - and claims, convincingly, that Hitchcock and screenwriter John Michael Hayes were likely inspired by the depiction of human suffering in Nathanael West's novella 'Miss Lonelyhearts' (1933).  The fact that a character in Rear Window is referred to as 'Miss Lonelyhearts' might be indication enough, but Miller also reminds us that Hitchcock knew West: the latter wrote a screenplay for Suspicion (1941), although it was finally not used (replaced by the version penned by Samson Raphaelson, Alma Reville, and Joan Harrison).  Human suffering, notes Miller, presents us with 'an insoluble conundrum of human community' (p. 46), and he shows how that conundrum informs both West's novella (about a male journalist, 'Miss Lonelyhearts', who is bowed down by the letters sent to his advice column in a New York newspaper) and Hitchcock's film (where 'Miss Lonelyhearts', played by Judith Evelyn, is a lonely middle-aged spinster who contemplates suicide).  Miller elaborates: '[West's novella] is a searing fictional record of isolation at the heart of American social life ... The urgency and seriousness of the letter-writers' problems - a teenage girl tells of her severe congenital facial disfigurement and accompanying social ostracism; a boy relates his fears for his mentally and physically disabled sister who was sexually assaulted on the roof of their building - combines with their insolubility to create a crisis for Miss Lonelyhearts, whose job it is to respond to such suffering.' (p. 48)  The novella is a great, if unusual, work.  In the 1960s Stanley Edgar Hyman called it 'one of the three finest American novels of our century' (along with Fitzgerald's 'The Great Gatsby' and Hemingway's 'The Sun Also Rises') (n. 6, p. 55).  To me, it is just the sort of social document that would have deeply impressed Hitchcock even while realising that it is unfilmable: cf his reluctant abandonment of Ernest Raymond's 'We, the Accused' (1935) as a project; or think of the compassion which no less informs several novels/novellas from which Hitchcock did make films, such as Robert Hichens's 'The Paradine Case' (1933), Jack Trevor Story's 'The Trouble With Harry' (1949) - and, to an extent, Cornell Woolrich's 'It Had to be Murder'/'Rear Window' (1942) itself.  But, coming back to West's novella for a moment ... Miller has done his research.  He has found that West worked from actual letters given him by an advice columnist on a Brooklyn paper.  Meanwhile, West supported himself as a writer by working as night manager at the Kenmore Hall Hotel on Twenty-Third Street.  Here, from inside the glassed-in manager's office, he was able to watch detachedly, but with concern, the stream of persons who took the Kenmore's cramped, low-rent rooms: 'a menagerie of itinerants - workers, professionals, writers, and artists both young and old, all trying to make their way in the world' (p. 49).  There is a clear connect to Jefferies (James Stewart) in Rear Window, who, half-way through the film, Miller shows, is challenged along with his neighbours to rid himself of purely conventional, or even cynical, views of other people, and to start caring about them - but appears to fail the test, at least in the short term. (pp. 52-53)  Miller makes an excellent point about how both visually and aurally the film changes after this moment, with more direct appeal being made for the characters - and us - to cease being passive.  For example, the soundtrack becomes less generalised: 'for the first time, elements of the setting come to life and speak with an authenticity and an immediacy that demands response' (p. 52).  What a pity, though, that Miller misses many of the direct parallels between West's novella and Hitchcock's film, other than the fact of suffering displayed in both (crucial though that is).  In 'The MacGuffin' #23 (November 1997) we noted, for example, that Miss Lonelyhearts lives by himself in an apartment he calls a 'dismal swamp' (cf Jefferies's 'swamp of boredom') and that he is having trouble relating to his fiancée Betty, even though, when he is sickly, which is often, she visits him with meals and tries to get him to quit his job as a journalist and do something more conventional (like write advertising copy).  In Rear Window, of course, Lisa is forever plying the wheelchair-bound Jeff with gifts, hoping that her actions will end the emotional stand-off between them: she wants Jeff to quit his itinerant photographer's job and settle down with her in New York.  Even the endings of the two stories overlap: in both, a man comes to the protagonist's apartment to kill him.  Next time: another recent scholarly article on Hitchcock.

April 27 I don't have a lot to say about the article "'The Proper Geography': Hitchcock's Adaptation of Daphne du Maurier's 'The Birds'", by John Bruns, in 'Clues: A Journal of Detection', Vol. 31, No. 1 (2013).  It coins the term 'anxiogenics' to describe certain anxieties felt by the film's characters in terms of space, or expressed by the film that way.  Unfortunately the article is short on examples and long on theory - the usual academic way of disguising a lack of hard insight!  (However, the author will write a book on the topic, to be called 'Navigating the Hitchcock Landscape', which may deliver what seems to be largely missing from the preliminary hypothesising here.)  Something interesting that the article does bring out is the frequency with which Melanie Daniels (Tippi Hedren), in particular, asks directions in the early part of the film (e.g., of the postmaster when she first arrives in Bodega Bay - and where letters frequently go astray, it seems).  (See frame-capture below.)  Although Bruns doesn't say so, this seems part of the characterisation of Melanie as someone who is already finding herself 'on the other end of a gag' (about which Mitch Brenner - Rod Taylor - had joked), but who is nonetheless just like everyone else in that respect, once the birds start attacking.  Bruns does note that one of Melanie's part-time jobs has been for Travellers Aid - 'misdirecting' travellers, she says sarcastically when Mitch questions her about it.  (A Wikipedia entry on Travellers Aid points out that the organisation was first started in order to help protect vulnerable travellers, especially young women, against such things as the white slave trade - defined as white women forced into prostitution.  I'll come back to this.  To read the entry, click here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Travelers_Aid_International.)  Also, as characterisation, it further reminds us of how accustomed - even smug - Melanie has become at using her good looks to prompt men to go out of their way for her, to 'pressure' them, as she puts it good-naturedly.  So Bruns's point about how 'the social awkwardness produced by a lack of direction no doubt accounts, in part, for the film's comic tone' has some validity, certainly.  But now I want to turn to a rather different take on The Birds, and it was originally published two decades ago.  I'm referring to Dr Ted Price's book first published in hardcover by Scarecrow Press as 'Hitchcock and Homosexuality' (1992) and lately republished, with a new Introduction, in paperback.  The paperback is called 'Superbitch!  Alfred Hitchcock's 50-Year Obsession With Jack the Ripper and The Eternal Prostitute' (New Discoveries, 2011) and can be ordered through booksellers like Amazon or, at lowest cost, from <nadine@yawnsbooks.com>.  But would you like a taster - or two?  Then be aware that an excerpt from the book - namely, the chapter on Marnie - is already published on this very website (link at the foot of this page) and that another excerpt (revised), on The Birds, arrived here just last week, sent by Dr Price himself.  Before I briefly describe that excerpt, and comment on it, let me offer to send a copy of it to anyone who contacts me at <muffin@labyrinth.net.au>.  Right.  Now about Dr Price.  He is a genuine character.  He is 88 and a Disabled Combat Infantry veteran of World War II who, he tells me, fought with General Patton in the Ruhr and Czechoslovakia. His division helped liberate a Holocaust death camp.  Before his retirement, he taught Literature, Drama, and Film at Montclair State College in New Jersey.  He has a B.A. from Kenyon College, where he studied under John Crowe Ransom; an M.A. from Columbia University, where he studied under Lionel Trilling and Jacques Barzun; and a Ph.D. from Rutgers, where he studied under Paul Fussell.  His critical speciality is Recurrent Themes.  I have a tremedous admiration for Ted Price - for the concreteness of his observations and (despite a seeming monomania in setting them down, at the expense sometimes of political correctness or consideration of other readings of the same material) for the vigour and ingenuity with which he gathers his evidence.  Yes, it is indeed possible, as Dr Price first showed, to read I Confess as being, at some level, about homosexuality in the Catholic Church!  (Both Father Logan and his doppelgänger, Otto Keller, are played by gay actors - and such casting by Hitchcock was invariably significant, for, as the director once said, it is important to place actors, where possible, in roles to which their life experiences have given them special insight.)  So what does Dr Price say about The Birds?  In a word, that Melanie Daniels is one of Hitchcock's many 'prostitute' figures.  (Hitchcock once described Melanie to Peter Bogdanovich as a 'fly-by-night' - British slang for a prostitute!  The description also seems highly apposite to the character played by Tippi Hedren in Marnie.)  Dr Price uses italics to put it plainly: [Melanie] is our Strawberry Blonde Superbitch: the great Virgin-Whore.  And the truth about the birds in this film is that they are phallic symbols, flying phalluses, whose aim is to rape the life out of her.'  Is this helpful writing?  To be continued. 

                                                                            Melanie takes directions in THE BIRDS      


May 4 Last week I began to describe the paperback book 'Superbitch!  Alfred Hitchcock's 50-Year Obsession With Jack the Ripper and The Eternal Prostitute' (New Discoveries, 2011) by Dr Theodore Price.  (It was originally published in hardcover in 1992 as 'Hitchcock and Homosexuality', and has long been out of print - unjustly, considering its enormous number of insights, not least an eye-opening chapter on "The German Silent Films of the Weimar Era as Clues to Hitchcock's Films".)  I note that Amazon.com have a photo of the paperback edition on their site but are otherwise unhelpful with information about its availability.  Best to email <nadine@yawnsbooks.com> direct and arrange purchase with them.  Now, I ended last week's entry by quoting Dr Price on The Birds, about how Melanie (Tippi Hedren) 'is our Strawberry Blonde Superbitch: the great Virgin-Whore', and how the aim of the birds 'is to rape the life out of her' (italics in original).  Let me defer a direct answer to the question I posed - 'Is this helpful writing?' - while I attempt to briefly sketch Dr Price's thesis.  It is this.  Like many Englanders (and others) who grew up in the late Victorian and Edwardian eras, Hitchcock soon heard about the brutal Jack the Ripper knife-murders that had occurred in the East End of London over the space of a few months in 1888 and whose victims were said to be all prostitutes.  Londoners, and others, were at once shocked and enthralled by the successive reports of each new murder, and felt a certain bonding as they read about the crimes.  (For a rough parallel, compare the recent Boston Marathon killings and the effect on Bostonians in particular.)  But over the years, the public's fascination with the Ripper's crimes did not diminish.  It seems that something special about the crimes caught the public's imagination, and a note allegedly left by the Ripper ('I am down on whores!') may provide a clue as to why.  Drawing on Freud and Karl Abraham, in particular, Dr Price develops his thesis about the Eternal Prostitute, and successfully, in my view, relates it to the films of Hitchcock.  In the Unconscious of every male, is the unrealised wish to commit incest with the Mother.  But because this was always forbidden (even to Psycho's Norman Bates, though he is almost the exception that proves the rule), the 'unattainable' Mother becomes a duality in that same Unconscious.  On the one hand, the Mother is revered as pure, even virginal.  It is said, with evidence, that in Victorian and Edwardian times - and perhaps for long afterwards - it was well-nigh impossible for many boys and young adult men to think that their mother was ever a sexual being.  On the other hand, frustrated in his infantile desire to sleep with his Mother, the boy develops 'murderous' thoughts towards her.   As Price puts it: 'But since he cannot face up to projecting directly fantasies of incest, he does the next best thing: he projects those of murder.'  For always sleeping with the Father but not with him, the boy's Unconscious begins to think of the Mother as 'whoring around'.  And so the 'Virgin-Whore' archetype is formed (and which Price shows is central to a film like Vertigo, with its two Kim Novak characters, and where Judy actually tells Scottie, 'You don't look much like Jack the Ripper').  Hitchcock's preoccupation in his films with blondes, whose names almost invariably begin with 'M' (for 'Mother' but also invoking the two 'Marys' - the Virgin Mary and the supposed prostitute Mary Magdalene) is easily related to the Virgin-Whore archetype.  Because of her duality, she is like the woman you love to hate!  A surprising number of Hitchcock's male characters (e.g., Rusk in Frenzy) are heard referring to such women as 'bitches' - whose conflation with the Virgin-Whore archetype entitles them, in turn, to similar nomenclature themselves: as 'Superbitches'.  (The 'Strawberry Blonde' tag is essentially a nod by Price to the song heard during the fairground sequence in Strangers on a Train, where the blonde Miriam figures and draws the wrath of psychopath Bruno for being a 'tramp', i.e., a whore).  To identify Melanie in The Birds with the Superbitch, or the woman you love to hate, is simply a way of acknowledging the Unconscious or Preconscious dynamics that Hitchcock is drawing on.  But what about Price's claim that the birds are sent to 'rape the life out of her'?  In a way, this is fair.  Hitchcock may well have been using his film to realise the unrealisable (see above, on Norman Bates).  Just this week I have been writing elsewhere about the 1936 novel called 'The Birds' whose author, Frank Baker, admitted that his fundamental motivation for inflicting his killer-birds on his characters was self-satisfaction, to settle old scores.  However, I also made the point that in both Baker's novel and in Hitchcock's 1963 film the birds are ultimately just a given - while adding that, for Hitchcockians, the birds are like the 'reality' that Norman Bates in Psycho cannot face.  I'm not sure that Dr Price has himself faced the fullness of what Hitchcock's birds represent.  To be continued (obviously!).

May 11 To bring us back to what the astute Dr Ted Price has to say about The Birds - without ever pausing (it must be noted!) to consider the film's visual beauty or special atmosphere or philosophical pessimism or several other qualities - here's a passage where he reminds us that birds may not be just phallic symbols but 'also vagina or girl symbols'.  (Think: 'chicks'!)  Noting that Lydia Brenner (Jessica Tandy) and Melanie Daniels (Tippi Hedren), with their similar upswept hairstyles, might be mother and daughter, Price writes: 'In The Birds, as often in Hitchcock, the bird in this feminine sense sometimes functions as a castration symbol.  It stands for the cool Hitchcock blonde (the Virgin Bitch) who will tease, but not go to bed with you, or for the possessive mother, who will not, of course, sleep with you herself, yet will not let you sleep with any other woman either.'  This, quite clearly, is an incontestable statement - given Hitchcock's own remarks in interviews (notably in the UK journal 'Movie') and given the palpable emphasis by the film on Lydia's continuing enmity to, first, her son's former girlfriend, schoolteacher Annie Hayworth (Suzanne Pleshette), and then, for a while, to Melanie herself, the latest love-interest of Mitch (Rod Taylor).  (Such resentment by a widowed mother towards a possible 'rival' for her son's love is one of the striking parallels between Hitchcock's film and Frank Baker's 1936 novel The Birds mentioned here last time.  Another, less surprising, parallel concerns how the new girlfriend has a particularly strong and determined outlook, and a certain desperation, stemming from a 'tarnished' reputation - albeit through no fault of her own.)  All power to Dr Price for pointing this out.  Someone has to say the fundamental things and relate them to the overall work of the auteur in question, as Price has done for Hitchcock, in his definitive 400-page book.  Fundamental?  Yes!  My own view that Hitchcock's films depict the cosmic life/death force, Schopenhauer's 'Will', certainly does not clash with either Schopenhauer's or Freud's (or Dr Price's) emphasis on sexuality.  'Sexual desire is the ultimate goal of almost all human effort', Schopenhauer wrote.  'It knows how to slip its love-notes and ringlets even into ministerial portfolios and philosophical manuscripts.'  I do wish, though, that Price had extended his analysis of Hitchcock to more than just Recurrent Themes; for the omnipresent obverse of Will, the One, as Schopenhauer insisted, is Representation, the Many (and the sexual drive may fuel any number of other human concerns).  Similarly, Schopenhauer's philosophy isn't just about Will and Representation but has aesthetic and ethical dimensions.  Ditto, Hitchcock's films.  For example, Schopenhauer puts considerable emphasis on how the individual Will might be 'tamed', or turned against itself, in order to free the individual for self-determination and unselfish love, which is surely an issue of The Birds (as it is of Frank Baker's novel, soon to be reprinted, by the way) - though you wouldn't know it from reading Price!  But I don't want to do Price an injustice.  Before discussing two other papers by him (based on his book) which he has sent me, on Vertigo and Frenzy respectively, I'll just mention something I noticed this week.  Last time I thought I was being innovative when I described Price's 'Virgin-Whore' archetype as 'the woman you love to hate'.  But I was amused to notice in his book (pp. 365-66) that Price describes a variant on the archetype in just that way.  Writing about the character Hetty Porter in Frenzy, Price describes the actress playing her as his favourite of all the 'marvellous' British stage performers in the film: 'My favorite of all (it was the first time, alas, I ever saw her, and I immediately fell passionately in "hate" with her): the perfect, the complete Bitch of a Wife (surely Mrs Crippen must have been very much like her), is Billie Whitelaw.'  (See frame-capture below.)  Price acknowledges that Hetty's enmity towards Dick Blaney (Jon Finch) is ostensibly a matter of his supposed murder of his ex-wife Brenda (Barbara Leigh-Hunt).  But then Price, pursuing one of his main topics, alleges a homosexual element.  'For what we, the audience, see is a woman angry, who observes two men (one of whom is her husband) greeting each other warmly ...  In Frenzy, we soon learn that Clive Swift, Billie's husband, is an old "buddy" of Finch's from the R.A.F., during the war ...  And when we see Swift up close, we see that he is a mousy, eminently passive man, quite under the sway of someone like ex-squadron-leader Finch.  In this context, Billie must surely think: I thought he had given up all that (meaning I thought he had given up all that gay life); and here they are together again after all these years!  That is why she is so angry.'  (Italics in original.)  My main problem with that is how it may exaggerate a British form of 'mateship' (especially prevalent in wartime) - and yet I quite see how it could reflect Hitchcock's own thinking.  At any rate, I am grateful to Price for suggesting it!

                                                                            Billie Whitelaw plays Hetty Porter in FRENZY    


May 18 In what may be the last (of four) items I have devoted here to Dr Ted Price's highly estimable book on Hitchcock, 'Superbitch!' (1992; 2011), I want to concentrate this time on Vertigo, and specifically on the paper that Dr Price has sent me based on the relevant chapter in his book.  (For complimentary copies of this paper, and ones on The Birds and Frenzy, please email me at <muffin@labyrinth.net.au>.  To order the book itself, email <nadine@yawnsbooks.com>.)  Price's specialisation, Recurrent Themes, is such that, once again, apropos Vertigo, he concentrates on The Theme of the Mother.  (Naturally he acknowledges that there are other themes in Vertigo, such as 'the theme of Orpheus and Eurydice, with James Stewart trying to bring his beloved Kim Novak back from the dead' - a theme prominent in the original French novel.  But it isn't a recurring theme of Hitchcock's.  If you want to read about this particular theme in Vertigo, see film musicologist Royal Brown's book 'Overtones and Undertones', 1994, and a separate paper Brown wrote in 'Literature/Film Quarterly' #14, 1986.)  Price observes: 'Freud describes six rather peculiar "conditions" that must be present before some men can make love successfully: (1) the woman must belong to another man; (2) she must in some way be promiscuous, that is to say, she must in some way be a cheat; (3) it is especially important that she be a cheat; (4) she must make the man jealous; (5) even if he finds the moral courage to break off with such a woman, who must prove so unfaithful to him, he goes on to find just such another one, and the pattern starts all over again; and (6) the most peculiar of all the "conditions": he has a longing to rescue her.'  In short, 'the woman must remind the man of the Whore aspect of the Mother'.  Here's the Freudian explanation (still as paraphrased by Price): '(1) The Mother always belongs to another man, the Father. (2) The Son desires her, and unless she be a cheat, he can never hope to possess her. (3) Since she is the one type of woman for him, it is especially important that she be willing to cheat on the man to whom she "belongs". (4) Since every night she goes to bed not with him but with the hated rival father, she is giving him continual reason for jealousy. (5) Since a man can only have one mother, he can never really find a truly acceptable surrogate, so he goes on from one woman to another, always, after a while, disappointed in the woman at hand. And (6) against all logic, he would like to have her in conditions 1-5, yet "save" her from immorality notwithstanding.'  Thus Price is saying that the Kim Novak character in Vertigo is presented as a subjective fantasy (Scottie's, but by identification, ours): Judy is basically a 'whore' whom Elster makes 'available' to Scottie without telling him (Scottie must think she is 'cheating' on Elster), and whom Scottie sees as 'the Mother' (suitably named 'Madeleine' and dressed in an un-sexy grey suit) whom he does indeed 'rescue'; but eventually, and predictably, he learns that he has been tricked, whereupon he effectively 'gets rid of' her.  Price writes: 'What he "does" is to become, like Jack the Ripper, enraged and (for all practical purposes) kill the girl.  For as Freud points out ..., what [the man] has discovered is that his mother, who makes love to his father, is no different from a whore ...'  Thank you, Dr Price, that does explain a lot (more even than photographer/scholar Victor Burgin did when, in the 1980s, he was the first to spot some of this syndrome in Vertigo, drawing in particular on Freud's paper, also cited by Price, "A Special Type of Choice of Object Made by Men", first published in 1910).  In no particular order, it explains: (1) why Elster in his office is photographed 'above' Scottie - he is the 'remote' father-figure; (2) why Scottie is not passionate towards Midge - she is too 'loyal', saying, 'You know there's only one man in the world for me', and represents only the 'good' mother; (3) why Judy, with her pendulous breasts, is such a tragic figure, stuck in an ancestral syndrome of seduction by men who end up 'ditching' her - she is the 'whore' mother who would reform if she could but is powerless against the syndrome itself (but are the men any better off? - there is some impersonal 'force' at work here).  (By the way, someone else who has written on this theme in Hitchcock - but only in a passing reference - is Volney Patrick Gay in his 2001 book, 'Joy and the Objects of Psychoanalysis: Literature, Belief, and Neurosis', where he refers to 'Virgin Bitches' and 'Prostitute Bitches'.)  Hitchcock always liked to be able to describe his current film in a sentence or two; and by describing Vertigo in terms of Scottie's perverse quest for the Mother, Dr Price may have brought us as close to Hitchcock's own thinking as anyone has.  Frame-capture below: Judy in street on her way to the Empire Hotel, 'swinging her handbag', as Price notes.

                                                                            Judy with handbag (shoulder bag, actually) in VERTIGO  


•  The 2011 'Hitchcock Annual' is now out.  Further details are on our New Publications page - see link below.]


Bottom of page (where you'll find links to our other pages)


News and Comment

(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 and Blu-rays is incorporated at several points below.)

Rare script of The Man Who Knew Too Much (1934; 1943) offered for sale

A bookshop in New York City is offering what it describes as 'the screenplay for the original 1934 [The Man Who Knew Too Much], issued here for an intended 1943 remake by Hitchcock and David O. Selznick which was never produced'.  Asking price: $1750.

The bookshop is: Clouds Hill Books, P.O. Box 1004, Village Station, New York, NY 10014, 212-414-4432.  Email address for more information: <cloudshill@cloudshillbooks.com>.

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New Blu-ray (Region 'A') and DVD of The Man Who Knew Too Much (1934) from Criterion

Our thanks to critic/author Philip Kemp in London who writes to tell us:  'Criterion have just released it with my v/o commentary - also an excellent booklet essay by Farran Smith Nehme and a delightful interview with Guillermo del Toro, who's a huge fan of the film and of Hitchcock generally.'

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Death of Jon Finch, star of Hitchcock's Frenzy (1972)

We are saddened by the death of actor Jon Finch, who has died at the English seaside town of Hastings where he moved in 2003.  To read an obituary, click here:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2013/jan/13/jon-finch

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Psycho
mystery finally solved (revised)

When Norman Bates (Anthony Perkins) in Psycho (1960) removes a painting from his parlour wall to spy on Marion Crane (Janet Leigh) in the adjoining cabin, appropriately the painting is a classic depiction of a rape, 'Susannah and the Elders'.  But for many years Hitchcock scholars were puzzled as to whose version of the painting it is.  (There have been many versions, by both famous and lesser-known artists.)  Well, now we know.  Thanks to the vigilant eye of Roland-François Lack, who conducts the Cine-Tourist website, the artist is disclosed to be Willem van Mieris (1662-1747), or possibly his father, Frans van Mieris the Elder (1635-81), and the original work was held until 1972 at the Hyacinthe Rigaud museum in Perpignan, southern France, when it was reported stolen.  (However, as Hitchcock was both an inveterate traveller and a regular visitor to art galleries, it is entirely possible that he saw the work in situ before making Psycho.)

In fact, some film scholars in the non-English-speaking world have known the painting's identity for many years.  First, apparently, was Barbara Stelzner-Large, who mentioned it in an article published as long ago as 1990.  Another such scholar is art historian Henry Keazor, editor of the book 'Hitchcock und die Kűnste', due to be published in German in March, 2013. 

For further details, visit the Cine-Tourist website, here:
http://www.thecinetourist.net/a-picture-of-great-significance.html

                                                                                            PSYCHO painting

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Now available to view online: The White Shadow (1924)


Last year, half of a six-reel silent film, The White Shadow (d. Graham Cutts), on which a young Alfred Hitchcock worked as assistant, was unearthed in New Zealand, and received its latter-day premiere on September 22nd in Los Angeles.  (For more background, scroll down to the item below, "Lost Cutts/Hitchcock film discovered in New Zealand".)  Now the film can be viewed online, where it runs for 43 minutes.  To view it, click here:
http://www.filmpreservation.org/preserved-films/screening-room/the-white-shadow-1924

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Trailers for the two new films on Hitchcock

To see the official trailer for Hitchcock, which opens in the US on 23 November, click here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cLFuzZHyWxQ&feature=youtu.be

To see a trailer (one of two) for the TV movie, The Girl, which screens on HBO on 20 October, click here: http://www.movieweb.com/news/the-girl-trailer

To see a different trailer for The Girl, click here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vo2Rxzc2j3Q

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Composer for Hitchcock - and opening date

Keeping our readers updated on the forthcoming film Hitchcock, adapted from the book by Stephen Rebello 'Alfred Hitchcock and the Making of Psycho', has seen several News items appearing here over the past months (indeed years).

Now we can announce that the film's composer is the gifted Danny Elfmann, and that a recent preview of the completed film in Southern California drew an extraordinarily high 'approval' rating from the 600 audience members.  The film is set to open in U.S. cinemas on 23 November.  It stars Sir Anthony Hopkins and Dame Helen Mirren, and is directed by Sacha Gervasi.

• An advance premiere of Hitchcock was held in Hollywood on 1 November.  Some reviews have now appeared.  Here's one from London's 'The Guardian':

http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2012/nov/02/hitchcock-first-look-review?fb=optOut

                                                                                            Coming soon ... 

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Caveat emptor.  New blu-ray Hitchcocks are reportedly disasters

Let the potential buyer beware.  First, last week, there was this about the re-done Frenzy credits, including typographical and spelling errors, first spotted by previewer Nick Wrigley at enthusiasm.org:  http://enthusiasm.org/post/31104514441

Two days later, the same site added that the film proper now contains highly distracting DVNR (Digital Video Noise Reduction) spoilage, so that, for example, the celebrated prolonged shot of the doorway of Babs's apartment has become both intolerably grainy and looks as if someone had hit the 'Pause' button on their remote: http://enthusiasm.org/post/31285985246

Meanwhile, other Hitchcock titles in the same Universal blu-ray package are reported to be 'shagged' (as one professional previewer unofficially put it about the condition of Family Plot).  Those titles include Family Plot and Marnie - and Vertigo.  Writing about the latter, previewer Jeffrey Wells at hollywood-elsewhere.com asked: 'Why is [James] Stewart's brown suit brownish violet or brownish purple? Why are Stewart and those other guys wearing suits during the inquest hearing that are madly, wildly, psychedelically blue?'  For more, go here: http://hollywood-elsewhere.com/2012/09/still_screwed_u_1.php

• Some good news is that Universal have now delayed the release date of the Hitchcock package until 30 October 2012 (Region 1) to make 'corrections'.  To read more, click here: http://hollywood-elsewhere.com/2012/09/hitchcock_blura.php

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A treat for our readers: nice photos of Hitchcock in 1939, preparing Rebecca

We've known about these for some time.  Apologies for not alerting you sooner!  (And as Bill K noted when he told us about them: 'Boy, Joan Harrison was a babe!').  Click here:
Alfred Hitchcock in Los Angeles in 1939

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Rare Hitchcock items, including the newly-restored The Ring (1927), being streamed

We are happy to commend a useful new site, 'The Space', with the news that on Friday 13th July at 20.00 (GMT) it will be streaming live Hitchcock's The Ring, recently restored by the BFI National Archive.  The actual screening will take place at London's Hackney Empire, and this premiere performance of the restored The Ring will include a specially commissioned soundtrack composed and performed by Soweto Kinch.

That's not all, Hitchcock fans!  In the run-up to the live stream, The Space will feature Hitchcock documentaries including Hitchcock and cinema in the 20s and Hitchcock and the Evolution of Style. There will also be an interview Hitchcock gave to the BBC programme 'Late Night Line-Up' in 1966.

Since its launch in May, The Space has become a must-visit digital arts space.  It offers a selection of free and on-demand films, live events, rare archive material, and interactive collections, with new material added every week.

Here's the URL:  http://thespace.org/#./?&_suid=13419092101790729017118468231

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Death of influential critic Andrew Sarris on 20 June 2012

Sadly, the critic who initiated the 'Auteur Theory' in the USA, the admirable Andrew Sarris - born in Brooklyn, New York, of Greek parents in 1928 - has died.

Of Alfred Hitchcock he wrote in 1968: 'His is the only contemporary style that unites the divergent classical traditions of Murnau (camera movement) and Eisenstein (montage).  (Welles, for example, owes more to Murnau, whereas Resnais is closer to Eisenstein.)'  Sarris's words might serve as a program note to Hitchcock's Rebecca and Vertigo, for example.

A nice tribute to Sarris by Ronald Bergan is here: http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2012/jun/22/andrew-sarris   

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Hitchcock's Dial M for Murder to have 3D release on Blu-ray

On October 9, Warner Home Video is releasing Hitchcock's Dial M For Murder starring Grace Kelly and Ray Milland on Blu-ray 3D (SRP $35.99), alongside Hitchcock's Strangers on a Train on Blu-ray (SRP $19.98) the same date. Dial M For Murder will come packaged with a special 3D lenticular slipcover, while Strangers on a Train will come in a traditional Blu-ray package.

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Restored early Hitchcocks (x9) plus a major Hitchcock retrospective in London this year

The British Film Institute (BFI) has spent three years restoring nine Hitchcock films made between 1925 and 1929.  They will be shown at a series of gala events as part of the London 2012 Festival taking place alongside the Olympic Games.

In addition, a major Alfred Hitchcock retrospective encompassing all of his surviving films will be held at the BFI Southbank in London between August and September.

For more information, including clips from the restored The Pleasure Garden, read the BBC's report here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-18162846

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Principal photography on Hitchcock completed

Principal photography for the feature film based on Stephen Rebello's book 'Alfred Hitchcock and the Making of Psycho' was completed on June 1st, 2012. 'Now, those crucial, make-or-break postproduction decisions. Miles to go ...' (SR).  A composer will be announced shortly.  For earlier reports, scroll down this page.  

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Christian Marclay's 'The Clock' strikes Sydney, Australia, and gets a big tick

The 24-hour video work 'The Clock' won for Christian Marclay the Golden Lion for best artist at the 2011 Venice Biennale.  Now it has arrived in the Southern Hemisphere and is currently  installed in the Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney, Australia, where it will run until 3 June, 2012.

Clearly owing something to Douglas Gordon's installation '24 Hour Psycho' (1993), 'The Clock' is far more imaginative (we don't mind saying).  Moreover, among its thousands of film clips are many from Hitchcock films and TV shows, all matched to a time of day which, in turn, always coincides with the actual time of day when the exhibit is being viewed.  (If you want to try and catch the entire 24-hour sequence of clips, you will need to visit the MCA on Thursday and overnight into Friday when the Museum stays open and 'The Clock' runs non-stop.)

Film-buff friends tell us that watching 'The Clock' is indeed exhilarating.  Its many scenes somehow suggest interlocking narratives despite the constant changes in genres, eras, locations, and plotlines.  Brief excerpts from 'The Clock' and other Christian Marclay works are on YouTube.  For more information about the MCA exhibit, click here: http://www.eventfinder.com.au/2012/christian-marclay-the-clock/sydney/the-rocks

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Warner Bros launch scripts as e-books, including North by Northwest

Casablanca, An American in Paris, and Hitchcock's North by Northwest are among the titles featured in this new series.  The script for the Hitchcock film includes costume sketches and Bernard Herrmann's music notes.  For more information, click here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-17895665

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Hitchcock-inspired art

Apologies that we learned about this fascinating exhibit - testifying to the wide and perennial appeal of Hitchcock and his films - too late to inform our California readers before it closed on May 5th, 2012.  It ran at Gallery 1988 in Venice, California, and featured a hundred or so items.  The films depicted most often were, by our count, The Birds, Psycho - and (hooray!) The Trouble With Harry.  Illustrated below is "'You'll Never Make Sense of Arnie'" by Joe Scarano.

Art work by Joe Scarano inspired by TTWH

Here are two URLs that illustrate just what was shown (the second is a quick video introduction by the gallery's owner, Jensen Karp), and we trust that they will stay up indefinitely: (1) http://nineteeneightyeight.com/collections/suspense-gallows-humor?page=1 and (2) http://www.elecplay.com/all/spotlight/gallery-1988-suspense-gallows-humor-video/

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Alma Reville retrospective

The 2012 Cinema Ritrovato in Bologna, to run from 23-30 June, will this year include a strand devoted to Alma Reville's career - both the films she worked on with her husband, Alfred Hitchcock, and the several others.

As the Ritrovato newletter puts it:  'Alma had a particular talent for continuity, editing and story structure, and this is evident [both] in the films she made with her husband, like Murder! (1930), and those she made independently of [him], such as The Constant Nymph (1928), The First Born (1928), [and] After the Verdict (1929).'  The Alma Reville strand of the Ritrovato is curated by Bryony Dixon of the BFI National Archive.

For more information, click here (especially if you can read Italian): http://www.cinetecadibologna.it/     

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Call for Papers: 'Hitchcock's Children'

Contributions to a forthcoming book of essays on the above topic are invited.  Send abstracts to Debbie Olson at Oklahoma State University whose email address is given below.

'Although children and youth appear in a great number of Alfred Hitchcock’s films, they are rarely the focus of critical attention. This collection seeks to remedy that oversight and aims to add to the rich and varied tradition of Hitchcock scholarship. Many of the children and youth that appear in Hitchcock films are background or minor characters, yet they often hold special importance. From  Young and Innocent (1937), Shadow of a Doubt (1943), Strangers on a Train (1951), The Trouble With Harry (1955), and The Man Who Knew Too Much (1956) to The Birds (1963) and Marnie (1964), children and youth perform both innocence and knowingness (and so much more) within Hitchcock’s complex cinematic texts. The child character in Hitchcock’s films is significant symbolically, theoretically, and/or philosophically and offers a unique opportunity to illuminate and interrogate the child presence.

'Contributors are invited to submit critical, philosophical, and/or theoretical examinations of the children/youth characters in the full range of Hitchcock’s films, from his early silents to his later films. For the collection’s focus, children are defined as birth to age 12, while youth are defined as teenagers age 13 to 17.

'Please send an abstract (250-500 words), current contact information, and brief biography (or CV) as attachments in Word (or compatible) by May 30, 2012, to Debbie Olson, debbieo@okstate.edu.  Completed papers are due August 31st, 2012.'

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Further news on Hitchcock: Scarlett Johansson to play Janet Leigh

Scarlett Johansson (The Avengers, Lost in Translation)  will portray actress Janet Leigh in Fox Searchlight's project, now called simply Hitchcock, a film based on Stephen Rebello's non-fiction book 'Alfred Hitchcock and the Making of Psycho' (1990).  And James D'Arcy will play Leigh's Psycho co-star, Anthony Perkins.  Darcy was last seen in W.E., directed by Madonna.

Rebello's book analyses the background and production of the classic Hitchcock shocker, Psycho (1960).  The new project is said to be a biopic that sheds light on the difficulties Hitchcock encountered during the making of his film.  (For earlier announcements about the project, whose main stars are Sir Anthony Hopkins - photo below - and Dame Helen Mirren, readers can scroll down this page.)

• Update.  Further cast members have been announced.  They include Jessica Biel (playing Vera Miles), Toni Collette (as Hitchcock's long-time assistant Peggy Robertson), and Danny Huston (as Alma Hitchcock's friend, screenwriter Whitfield Cook).  A further coup: the film will be photographed by Jeff Cronenweth (The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, The Social Network, Fight Club - all directed by David Fincher, no less).

• More.  Shooting began on Friday April 13th, 2012 - reportedly by design, for Friday 13th was always Hitchcock's lucky day!  We are told that the first few days' footage 'looks and sounds absolutely thrilling'.  Titles-designer Saul Bass will be played by Wallace Langham.  But still no news who will play composer Bernard Herrmann - if indeed he features in the film at all!

Sir Anthony Hopkins in HITCHCOCK 

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Rebecca the Musical to open on Broadway in April

After Rebecca's 2006 premiere and subsequent 3-year run in Vienna, the show opened all across Europe and in Japan, with continued great success.

In 2009, Christopher Hampton agreed to write an English libretto in collaboration with the musical's original author, Michael Kunze.  The story of Rebecca is of course based on the much-loved 1938 novel by Daphne du Maurier, filmed by Hitchcock in 1940.  Now the musical is scheduled to open on Broadway on 22 April, 2012.

For further information, please copy this URL into your browser: http://wizzley.com/rebecca-musical-on-broadway-in-2012/

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The Lady Vanishes now on Blu-ray

Criterion have released Hitchcock's The Lady Vanishes (1938) on Blu-ray.  (Simultaneously they have released Ernst Lubitsch's 1935 classic Design for Living.)  The disc features a 1080p transfer, and the extras are as previously included with the Criterion DVD of the film, including an audio commentary by film historian Bruce Eder. 

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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. 

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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.

Further reading (from 'The Independent', 10 February 2012): "Tippi Hedren - Hitchcock's Caged Bird"

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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

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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/     

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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 others. 
Now here's an update from the BBC: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-17743123.  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".)

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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

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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 

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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             

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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.

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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.]

                                                           Hitch abroad

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

In a piece called "Alfred Hitchcock, by way of heavy metal?", the 'Los Angeles Times' announced on January 19, 2011, that the film adaptation of Stephen Rebello's book on the making of Psycho has found a new writer/director, Sacha Gervasi.  (For details of a much earlier announcement about the project, scroll down this page to the item "Coming: Alfred Hitchcock and the Making of Psycho: The Movie".)

Gervasi previously made the acclaimed documentary Anvil! The Story of Anvil (2009), about a couple of heavy-metal pioneers seeking to make a come-back.  The Making of Psycho film is scheduled to be produced by Ivan Reitman's Montecito Pictures in Hollywood.  Two earlier drafts of the script were written by Rebello and by Black Swan writer John McLaughlin.  But if Gervasi ends up writing and directing the picture, the 'Los Angeles Times' feels that viewers are in for a special treat: 'one can imagine plenty of wry understatement and clever pacing - the very qualities, come to think of it, that its subject might have appreciated'.

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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

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

On 5th October, the fine director Roy Ward Baker died, age 93.  He served his apprenticeship at Gainsborough Studios (1934-39), starting in the sound department, and was assistant director on Hitchcock's The Lady Vanishes (1938).  During the War, he served first in the Infantry, then in the Army Kinematograph Service, where he met author Eric Ambler.  His first film, The October Man (1947), from an Ambler script, was auspicious.  Baker's best film was also from an Ambler script, the re-creation of the sinking of the Titanic, A Night to Remember (1958).  He made several imaginative horror films, including Quatermass and the Pit (1967).

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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.

To watch a video-presentation (92') of the above, click here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wpzbe_mnGJM 

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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/

                                                                                              Hitchcock sculpture at
        Walthamstow, London

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Claude Chabrol dead at 80

The veteran French filmmaker died this morning, 12th September, 2010.  His fine book on Hitchcock, written in 1957 in conjunction with fellow filmmaker and critic, Eric Rohmer, was the first critical book on The Master.  (Eric Rohmer died earlier this year, aged 89.  See separate tribute below.)   

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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 ...".)

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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.

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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 ...".

                                                                                Original poster for DER BERGADLER/ THE MOUNTAIN EAGLE

                                                                Lobby card for THE
            MOUNTAIN EAGLE

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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.

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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.]

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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.’

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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

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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'.

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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

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

Andrew Gamache is a respected sculptor who specialises in portrait studies, and who has lately turned his attention to Hitchcock.  Seen here are two photographs of the clay model, 30 inches high, from which Andrew will cast his study of the great director.  'I originally created this piece as an exercise to enhance my portfolio with no intent to sell.  I intend to sell only one or two copies.'  Andrew is looking for expressions of interest from prospective purchasers.  'I suppose that I would ask a round figure of 5000 dollars on top of the 1500 dollars for the casting.  This would include the cost of a stone mount.'  Andrew may be contacted by email at <hippjoint@gmail.com>.  Or telephone him in the USA using this number: 386 214 3309. 

                                                                            Hitchcock statue by A.G., before casting in bronze


                                                                            Profile of Hitchcock statue by A.G., before casting

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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.     

                                                                              Bronze statue at Dinard, France, of Hitchcock

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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/

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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/

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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.

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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.'

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Death of Hitchcock artist and designer, Dorothea Redmond, in Hollywood

The 'Los Angeles Times' reports as follows:

Dorothea Holt Redmond, an illustrator and production designer who helped visualize several Alfred Hitchcock films and worked with Walt Disney to design a private apartment in Disneyland's New Orleans Square, has died. She was 98.

Redmond came to be regarded as one of the most talented illustrators in the industry, according to research by Tania Modleski, a USC English professor who is documenting the contributions women made to Hitchcock's films.  [Modleski's previous book on Hitchcock was the excellent 'The Women Who Knew Too Much'.]

Working with Hitchcock and an art director, Redmond would create an illustration that became the basis for communicating to the cameraman and others - and essentially set the tone of key scenes, Modleski told The Times in an e-mail.

The artist 'was masterful at working with light and shadow,' Modleski said, 'and deserves credit for working with Hitchcock to convey the German Expressionist aesthetic he has been praised for adopting throughout much of his career.'

Redmond's suspense-filled graphite drawings interpreting a sequence in Hitchcock's 1943 film Shadow of a Doubt helped transform a sleepy town into a threatening locale, which was essential to the movie's evolution, according to the 2007 book 'Casting a Shadow'.

Hitchcock was 'one of her very favorite people to work with,' said Redmond's daughter. 'She just loved his personality and his taste.'

In a film career that started with 1937's Nothing Sacred and spanned 20 years, Redmond contributed to seven Hitchcock films, including Rebecca (1940), Rear Window (1954) and To Catch a Thief (1955).
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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'.

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

Network DVD in the UK have released a double-bill of Bon Voyage and Aventure Malgache, the two short films Hitchcock made in England in 1944 featuring the Molière Players, a group of exiled French Resistance actors.  Also on the disc is a brief compilation of newsreels and interviews featuring Hitchcock.  For more information, click here: 
http://www.networkdvd.net/product_info.php?cPath=26&products_id=732

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Passing of Rear Window screenwriter John Michael Hayes (1919-2008)

We are saddened by the recent death of the man who between 1954 and 1956 wrote four classic Hitchcock screenplays (Rear Window, To Catch a Thief, The Trouble With Harry, and The Man Who Knew Too Much).  Each was noted for its emotional warmth and sophisticated dialogue.  Author Steven DeRosa has paid full tribute to the remarkable Hayes-Hitchcock collaboration in his book 'Writing With Hitchcock' (2001).
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Yet another Hitchcock borrowing? The likely influence of Yellow Canary (Herbert Wilcox, 1943) on Hitchcock's Notorious (1946)

Dear to our heart is a piece of research by film scholar Doug Bonner in Texas.  His paper, now published on the Web, shows that several key sequences in Notorious probably took inspiration from a British spy drama Yellow Canary made three years earlier by producer-director Herbert Wilcox as a vehicle for his lovely actress wife Anna Neagle.

How often Hitchcock resorted to such borrowing!  Often, though, he was only returning a favour to another director who had borrowed from him first!  Robert Siodmak, for example, engaged in a 'reciprocity of influence' with Hitchcock during the 1940s.  (At one point, both men shared the same producer, Joan Harrison.)  Wilcox's Yellow Canary may possibly show the influence of Hitchcock's Saboteur (1942) as well as of earlier British productions like The Spy in Black (1939) and Contraband (1940), both directed by Michael Powell.

To read Doug Bonner's article, click here:
http://www.postmodernjoan.com/pomoYCWEB01.htm   

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

The makers of a largely teenage-actor film version of Rear WindowDisturbia (d. D.J. Caruso), are being sued by the estate of Sheldon Abend (whom Hitchcock once called 'an ambulance-chaser'!).  The estate claims ownership of the rights to the original Cornell Woolrich story.  Strangely, a recent news item names this story "Murder from a Fixed Viewpoint" - whereas we had always understood that the story, originally published in the February 1942 issue of 'Dime Detective', was first called "It Had to Be Murder", then changed by Woolrich himself two years later to the more evocative "Rear Window" when he included the story in his early collection of short fiction, 'After-Dinner Story' (1944), published under his William Irish pseudonym.

We contacted Woolrich expert Francis M. Nevins who told us that the author himself originally chose the name "Murder from a Fixed Viewpoint" for his story but that it was never used - until now, for complicated (presumably legal) reasons.  

For the recent news item, click here:
http://www.reuters.com/articlePrint?articleId=USN0844655020080908

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Online: forum on Psycho's influence

Co-Editor of online journal 'Midnight Marquee', Gary J. Svehla (with Susan Svehla), recently controversially omitted Hitchcock's Psycho from a list of 'the 13 most influential horror films'.  Some of our readers may be interested in reading a transcript of a forum in which Gary defended his list against several challengers.  The transcript is available online as a .pdf document (copy and paste the following URL into your browser): http://www.midmar.com/midmar76.pdf
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'Alfred Hitchcock Premiere Collection' (seven titles) to be released 14th October 2008 (Region 1)

MGM Home Entertainment has announced the 'Alfred Hitchcock Premiere Collection' which includes Sabotage, Young and Innocent, Rebecca, Lifeboat, The Paradine Case, Spellbound, and Notorious.  (Also included in the package is the 1944 film The Lodger, directed by John Brahm.)  Each film has been restored and remastered.  Most of the films have new 'extras' (e.g., Bill Krohn and Stephen Rebello discussing The Paradine Case) plus the package contains a 32-page booklet of production notes, etc.  Retail will be $119.98.  For more information, please paste the following URL into your browser: http://www.dvdactive.com/news/releases/alfred-hitchcock-premiere-collection.html

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New editions of Hitchcock's Rear Window, Vertigo, and Psycho, and Orson Welles's A Touch Of Evil to be released on 7th October 2008 (Region 1)

Universal Studios Home Entertainment has announced two-disc special editions of the above four films.  Each will have 'extras', both 'old' and 'new' (e.g., Stephen Rebello's commentary for Psycho), with a SRP of $26.98.  For more information, click here:
http://crimespreecinema.blogspot.com/2008/07/dvd-info-universal-announces-special.html
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DVD release (Region 2) of ten episodes of the 'Alfred Hitchcock Hour'

Koch Media in Munich have announced that on 25 May, 2008, they will release a set of ten selected episodes on three DVDs of the 'Alfred Hitchcock Hour' (which had 93 episodes in all).  The majority of the shows will have German audio soundtracks (no mention of English subtitles); however, four shows will have their original English soundtracks plus German subtitles.  Koch say that further sets will follow.  Here's the list of the initial set, which includes the Hitchcock-directed "I Saw the Whole Thing", starring John Forsythe:

1.  A Piece of the Action

2.  I Saw the Whole Thing

3.  Captive Audience

4.  Ride the Nightmare

5.  Diagnosis: Danger

6.  The Star Juror

7.  Last Seen Wearing Blue Jeans

8.  Nothing Ever Happens in Linvale

9.  The Cadaver

10. The Dividing Wall

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Death of Suzanne Pleshette (1937-2008)

Suzanne Pleshette, the husky-voiced actress who redefined the television sitcom wife in the 1970s, playing the smart, sardonic Emily Hartley on 'The Bob Newhart Show', has died of respiratory failure at her home in Los Angeles. She was 70.

She made her film debut in the 1958 Jerry Lewis comedy, The Geisha Boy.  In Alfred Hitchcock's The Birds (1963) she played the schoolteacher Annie Hayworth.  Our tribute comes from Stephen Rebello in Hollywood:

'What a witty, intelligent, and stylish woman she was.  For me, one of the most intriguing things she ever did was to one day turn up on the set
of The Birds with blonde, upswept hair, a new makeup style, wearing a mink coat, Edith Head clothing, and a haughty expression.  She did it, she said, when she realized that Hitchcock only had eyes for the blonde.

'Apparently, Tippi Hedren thought it was hilarious.  Hitchcock, not so much, although I have been told that he saw in Pleshette's directness, outspokeness, and legendarily bawdy language a throwback to the days of stars like Carole Lombard.'


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French-German film coming about the young Alfred Hitchcock

French-German cultural channel ARTE have made a series of short films on the childhoods of "Six Great Filmmakers", including Hitchcock.  Other directors to be featured are Welles, Renoir, Bergman, Lang, and Tati.  The films will be shown in cinemas and on television.

The Hitchcock film is directed by Corinne Garfin and has the title Nuit Brève (The Short Night).  It shows a young Alfred going with his parents to a play starring Ellen Terry (played by Camille Natta) and afterwards meeting the famous actress.  Below is a still.  For more information, click here: http://www.umedia.fr/UMedia/enfances.htm

                                                                            Young actor
        portraying Alfred Hitchcock in forthcoming production
                                                                  Scene from the forthcoming ARTE production, Nuit Brève

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The stage production of The 39 Steps in Boston (and now Broadway, et al.)

Back in 2005 Michael Walker reported here on the opening in Leeds, England, of a play based on Hitchcock's film The 39 Steps.  (See "UK stage production of The 39 Steps" below.)  Later, in "Editor's Day", we quoted correspondent DN - Danny Nissim - on how the play had transferred to London's West End and had provided an exhilarating night-out for Danny, his wife, and friends.  In 2007 the production crossed the Atlantic and played in Boston.  In January 2008 it will move to New York (see below).  Here's what WB reported in our 'Hitchcock Enthusiasts' Group about seeing it in Boston:

'I went to Boston last Saturday to see a new play entitled "Alfred Hitchcock's The 39 Steps". The title makes clear that the play is based (loosely) on the Hitchcock film and not the John Buchan book, although perhaps a more apt title would add the tag "meets Monty Python".   Citing a Pythonesque dimension, though, doesn't fully suggest the great warmth with which the whole thing celebrates Hitchcock.  Four actors play 100+ roles and do it with great verve and ability.   It's quite funny and wonderful.   It has played for a couple of years in London's West End and one of the original actors from the UK is playing the lead here.  It transfers to Broadway in January [namely, the American Airlines Theatre in Times Square, opening on Tuesday 15 January.  In Australia, a Melbourne Theatre Company production will open in April.] They simulate effects from the film in funny, creative and low-tech ways.  They even pull off Hitchcock's cameo.   My ten-year-old daughter also loved the show.  Given my love for the original, I went a skeptic and came out a great fan.'

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New 10 DVD Hitchcock set coming to the UK (Region 2) in February, 2008

The set will include Hitchcock's first film as director, The Pleasure Garden (1925), from the Rohauer Collection.  All of the discs will have 'extras' (including film analyses by Charles Barr).  Here is the list of films:

Disc One: The Pleasure Garden
Disc Two: The Lodger (A Story of the London Fog)
Disc Three: Downhill
Disc Four: The Man Who Knew Too Much
Disc Five: The 39 Steps
Disc Six: Secret Agent
Disc Seven: Sabotage
Disc Eight: Young and Innocent
Disc Nine: The Lady Vanishes
Disc Ten: Jamaica Inn

[We thank Ryan Hewitt of Sony DADC UK Ltd, and Dave Pattern of the hitchcockwiki.com website, for information in the above item.]

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Art director Robert Boyle to receive Oscar

Production designer Robert Boyle, 98, who first worked for Hitchcock on Saboteur (1942) and who was nominated four times for Oscars in the art direction category, including for Hitchcock's North by Northwest (1959), will receive an honorary Oascar during the Academy Awards ceremony on February 24, it has been announced.

Born in Los Angeles in 1909, Boyle trained as an architect.  When the Depression cost him his job, he found work in films as an extra.  In 1933, he was hired as a draftsman in the Paramount Studios art department.  He went on to work on various films as a sketch artist, draftsman, and assistant art director before becoming an art director at Universal in the early '40s.

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Martin Scorsese's new Spanish TV commercial a mock Hitchcock film

Okay, drop everything.  Every year, the Freixenet company in Spain puts out an expensive commercial for the Christmas season. This year, it's for their Reserva wine. That's not important. What is important is that they got Martin Scorsese to make the commercial this year, a nine-minute film that is a tribute to Hitchcock's '50s masterworks. It begins with film preservationist Marty, in Last Waltz style, claiming that he has found three pages from a never-made Hitchcock script called 'The Key To Reserva'. Then it shows Scorsese making the film, and it's a joy. It's full of Hitchcockian color schemes and camera angles, all shot in a concert hall and scored to Bernard Herrmann. It makes visual references to The Man Who Knew Too MuchRear WindowNorth by Northwest and several other Hitchcock masterpieces. Lensed by Harris Savides. Edited by Thelma Schoonmaker. Starring Simon Baker in a Cary Grant suit. Trust us: drop everything you're doing and watch Marty's film here:  http://www.scorsesefilmfreixenet.com/video_eng.htm

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Another remake: The Lodger

Hitchcock was the first to make a film version of Mrs Belloc Lowndes's 1913 novel (expanded from her own short story) about a Jack-the-Ripper killer terrorising London.  The full title of Hitchcock's 1926 film was The Lodger, A Story of the London Fog.  Now writer/director David Ondaatje will attempt his version of the novel - with the setting reportedly moved to Los Angeles.  It will focus on the relationship between a paranoid landlady and her tenant. A second plot thread will involve some personal and professional problems of detective Chandler Manners, hot on the killer's trail.

• Other Hitchcock-related projects are slated or are awaiting release.  The thriller Number 13 takes its name, and setting, from the 1920s film that Hitchcock worked on but which was never finished.  It shows the youthful director (played by Dan Fogler) somehow caught in a love triangle involving two crew members. When the lead actor turns up dead, the film's editor suspects Hitchcock, and tries to uncover the truth.  Chase Palmer will direct the film, starting in January.

• A new version of The Birds is slated, to be directed by Martin Campbell (Casino Royale).  Australian actress Naomi Watts has been announced to play the lead role of Melanie Daniels.  However, according to 'The Guardian' (20 October 2007), the film has already run into opposition.  Co-star of Hitchcock's original film, Tippi Hedren, is quoted as saying, 'Must you be so insecure that you have to take a film that's a classic, and I think a success, and try to do it over?'

 British actor Bill Nighy has reportedly signed to star in Australian director Stephan Elliott's Easy Virtue, an adaptation of Noel Coward's play to be produced by Ealing Studios for 2009 release.  The play casts a critical eye at hypocrisy and upper-class English life in the 1920s.  The previous film version of the play was Hitchcock's, made in 1927 and starring Isabel Jeans and Robin Irvine.

• Another Psycho-related project (see also below) is said to be called Psycho/Analysis from a script by the late Joseph Stefano (who, of course, wrote the original Hitchcock-directed film from Robert Bloch's novel). 

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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.

                                                                           Coming: ALFRED HITCHCOCK AND THE MAKING
          OF PSYCHO

 

Major Hitchcock exhibition in Illinois emphasises his filmmaking methods

The exhibition in Evanston, Illinois, has now opened.  We hear that visitors so far have included Hitchcock actresses Tippi Hedren and Veronica Cartwright and Hitchcock biographer John Russell Taylor.

Our thanks to Burke Pattern of Northwestern University, Evanston, for these details about the exhibition ...

“Casting a Shadow: Creating the Alfred Hitchcock Film,” from Sept. 28 to Dec. 9, features approximately 150 sketches, designs, storyboards, script pages, and other film production documents from such movies as Shadow of a Doubt (1943), North by Northwest (1959), and The Birds (1963), drawn from the archives of the Margaret Herrick Library at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences and the British Film Institute. The exhibition, which will also include film clips and recordings of audio conversations between Hitchcock and his collaborators, will be accompanied by a screening of more than 30 films directed by Hitchcock, an international symposium, gallery talks, and an illustrated catalogue published by Northwestern University Press and the Block Museum of Art.
 
The exhibition will travel to the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences Gallery in Beverly Hills, California, in 2008.
 
A companion catalogue ('Casting a Shadow: Creating the Alfred Hitchcock Film,' $32.95) features an introduction by Block Museum film curator Will Schmenner and essays by Scott Curtis, associate professor of radio/television/film at Northwestern University; Tom Gunning, Edwin A. and Betty L. Bergman Distinguished Service Professor, department of art history, University of Chicago; Jan Olsson, professor of cinema studies, Stockholm University, Sweden; and author Bill Krohn. The 160 page-book includes 63 plates and 33 illustrations.
 
To complement the exhibition, the Block is organizing the symposium “Hitchcock’s Myth and Method” at 9:30 am on Friday, November 2. Participants include Curtis; Gunning; Olsson; Krohn; Tania Modleski, Florence R. Scott Professor of English, University of Southern California; and Sarah Street, professor of film, University of Bristol, England. This day-long symposium is free and open to the public.
 
In addition, Block Cinema will screen many of Hitchcock’s films during the fall quarter; some of them will be introduced by noted film scholars. The Block Museum will also offer a series of gallery talks focusing on specific aspects of the “Casting a Shadow” exhibition. Details on the film screenings and gallery talks are forthcoming. Free guided tours of the “Casting a Shadow” exhibition will be held at 2 pm every Saturday and Sunday from September 29 to December 9.
 
The Block Museum is located at 40 Arts Circle Drive on Northwestern’s Evanston campus. Admission to the Block’s exhibitions is free. General admission to Block Cinema screenings is $6 or $ 4 for Block Museum members and students with ID. For more information, call (847) 491-4000 or click here: http://www.blockmuseum.northwestern.edu/exhibitions/future/hitchcock.html.

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Deaths: Oscar-winner Jane Wyman at age 93, and actor Hansjörg Felmy at age 76

Jane Wyman, who starred as trainee actress Eve Gill in Hitchcock's Stage Fright (1950), has died.  The first wife of former US President Ronald Reagan was 93.

She won an Academy Award for her role as a deaf-mute in Johnny Belinda (Jean Negulesco,1948).

Meanwhile, the actor who played the menacing Heinrich Gerhard, head of State Security, in Hitchcock's Torn Curtain (1966), has died in Lower Bavaria after a decade-long battle with osteoporosis.
  
Felmy was one of the best-known and most important actors in Germany from the 1950s onward, including television. One of his most significant stage successes was his role in Kurt Hoffmann's satire 'Wir Wunderkinder'/'We Children of the Economic Miracle' of 1958.

[Our thanks to DF for this item.]

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Farewell Richard Franklin (Psycho II)

Our esteemed director-friend, Richard Franklin, has died of cancer in Melbourne, Australia, a few days short of his 59th birthday.  Among his early films were Patrick (1978), starring Sir Robert Helpmann, and Roadgames (1980), starring Stacy Keach and Jamie Lee Curtis - the making of which led in turn to Richard's work in Hollywood for Universal Studios: Psycho II (1983), starring Tony Perkins and Vera Miles, and Cloak and Dagger (1984), starring Dabney Coleman and young Henry Thomas plus John McIntire (the sheriff in Psycho) and wife Jeanette Nolan (who had voiced Mrs Bates in Psycho) playing the villains.  (The film was a re-working and opening-out of the 1949 movie The Window.)  Back in Australia, Richard made such admirable films as Hotel Sorrento (1995), from Hannie Rayson's stage success, and Brilliant Lies (1996), from the play by David Williamson.  No-one admired the work of Hollywood masters Alfred Hitchcock and John Ford more than Richard.  Accordingly, we have lost the one person with whom we were best able to converse about Hitch's filmmaking, and whose many insights on the films were always keen and true.  There is a superb profile of Richard written in 2005 by young Canadian critic Aaron Graham for the 'Senses of Cinema' Great Directors pages: http://www.sensesofcinema.com/contents/directors/05/franklin.html                  

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How tall was Alfred Hitchcock?

We've had this controversy before.  In one of the Second Season episodes of 'Alfred Hitchcock Presents' ("Number Twenty-Two"), in which Hitch appears in a police lineup (!), his height is given as 5 feet, 6 inches.  But on his British passport recently auctioned by Juliens of Hollywood (see image below), which is stamped 9 February 1954, his height is entered as 5 feet, 8 inches.  (Mind you, the same passport appears to indicate that Hitch was single, mentioning neither wife nor daughter!  But perhaps that's simply because the distaff side of the Hitchcock family had long ago become American citizens.)

                                            British passport of Alfred Hitchcock   

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A couple of DVDs

Recent DVD releases of The 39 Steps (1935) and To Catch a Thief (1955) have been enthusiastically praised by our readers.

The particular DVD we mean of The 39 Steps is the one contained in the package known as 'The Rank Collection' (which has actually been out for a couple of years).  Correspondent DF in Germany tells us: 'The whole thing appears to be Carlton Video, and I already have The 39 Steps on a DVD from Carlton.  But the Rank Collection version is rather better.  The transfer is beautifully done; the sound has been improved - very judiciously too.  The result is certainly the best 39 Steps that I have had the pleasure of seeing.'  For more information about 'The Rank Collection', click here: http://www.dvdtimes.co.uk/content.php?contentid=57543 

As for Paramount's new release of To Catch a Thief - not to be confused with the one of about five years ago - some reports suggest that it's a considerable improvement on the earlier one.  'The New York Times' review (8 May 2007) quotes Paramount themselves on how this version 'has been taken from a restored VistaVision negative, and [how the result] shows in far crisper detail, much deeper colors, and a new sense of depth'.  The new release, we gather, has a commentary track by Peter Bogdanovich and Laurent Bouzereau that wasn't on the earlier disk.  And our director friend Richard Franklin (Psycho II) emailed us to praise the look of the new version: 'it's FABULOUS!'  For a full review, click here: http://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/read.php?ID=27798 

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Five early Hitchcocks, fully remastered, coming on DVD

Canadian company Lionsgate Home Entertainment, part of the Lions Gate Entertainment Corporation, will release the 'Alfred Hitchcock: 3-Disc
Collector's Edition' on February 6th, 2007. The set will feature five films: The Manxman, Rich And Strange, The Skin Game, Murder!, and The Ring.  All of the films are said to be fully remastered, and new soundtracks have been recorded for the silent films.

• Caveat.  We have been told by P McF that the edition of Murder! has some drawbacks.  Though in general the restored soundtrack and visuals are superb, 'sound effects' are now sometimes 'severely noticeable'.  And dissolves look scruffy compared to the cleaned-up images on either side of them. Also, reportedly, 'of the last three scenes, the first two are missing!  They are each short, [consisting of] just one shot: Diana leaving the prison gates, and then Diana and Sir John in the car together [as he tells her] "you must save those tears - for my new play".'  However, this last matter is a known issue, and is simply a case of the original UK theatrical release print having been used for the Lionsgate DVD: the two 'missing' shots were ones included only in the original US release of the film.  (For more about the US ending, here's a link to Dave Pattern's Hitchcock wiki-site: http://www.daveyp.com/hitchcock/wiki/Murder_ending.)

• Dave Pattern tells us that sections of the audio track for Rich and Strange appear to have had Foley effects added (notably footsteps).

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New selection of Hitchcock-directed TV programs on DVD can be played without the French subtitles

Congratulations to the people responsible for the Region 2 release (PAL format) of a boxed collection of Alfred Hitchcock's work for television.  The box contains all of the episodes directed by Hitchcock of 'Alfred Hitchcock Presents' plus three other items that he directed for television: "Incident at a Corner", the celebrated episode of 'Ford Startime' which Hitchcock made in colour and which stars Vera Miles; "Four o'Clock", starring E.G. Marshall, which Hitchcock directed for the show called 'Suspicion', from a story by Cornell Woolrich; and "I Saw the Whole Thing", starring John Forsythe, which was the only Hitch-directed episode of 'Alfred Hitchcock Hour'.  Note: although the items have French subtitles, these can be turned off if not required.  Price of the 5-disc set is reportedly now 65.00 € (previously 49.95 €).  For more information, click the following: 
Hitchcock selection (Region 2)
and 
How to order (in English)

• Further good news from Region 2, specifically France.  For the first time, the full 80-minutes, English-language version of Hitchcock's Waltzes From Vienna (1933), starring Jessie Matthews, Esmond Knight, and Fay Compton, is to be released on DVD, by Universal.  But note: the release-date has been put back (it was originally going to be 20 June, 2006 - it is now March, 2007).  Also, apparently in this case the French subtitles can't be turned off.  On the same disk: Downhill.  For more information, click here: http://www.dvdfr.com/dvd/dvd.php?id=24556

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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.'

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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.

The photo is reproduced from 'The Cinema Studio', December 7, 1949.  We thank Mr Ray Ridley for sending us the photo.

                                                       Rare production still from the unfinished
        Hitchcock film NUMBER THIRTEEN
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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.'

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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) ...

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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.'

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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.

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On Alfred Hitchcock and his screenwriters

We're told that a lengthy article on Hitchcock and his relationships with his writers features in the May 2006 issue of 'Written By', the Magazine of the Writers Guild - west.  The piece is said to be the first that comprehensively treats this topic.  The May issue contains new interviews with Joseph Stefano, Patricia Hitchcock, Norman Lloyd, and Jay Presson Allen who passed away on May 1.
 
The issue is available on news stands or by contacting the magazine at <writtenby@wga.org>.
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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.) 

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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.

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The play 'Hitchcock Blonde' finally reaches the US!

A good two or three years ago we reported on the play by noted playwright Terry Johnson, 'Hitchcock Blonde', then running in London.  (See "Another Hitchcock-related stage play" lower down this page.)  Last year, the Editor of 'The MacGuffin' watched the Australian production of the play, and found it excellent!  So we're happy to announce here that South Coast Repertory, located in Costa Mesa, California (about an hour's drive south of Los Angeles), will shortly premiere the play in America, with Terry Johnson directing.  The supposed excerpts from a 'lost' Hitchcock film that figure in the play have apparently been re-done (using 'state-of-the-art videography') by William Dudley who also did the video for the original British production.  Performances will begin on February 3, with official opening on February 10, and closing March 12.  For more information, click here: 
http://www.scr.org/season/05-06season/blonde.html

• Update.  A review of the new production of 'Hitchcock Blonde' appeared in the February 14th issue of the  'Los Angeles Times'.  Headed "Hitch just a subplot in overstuffed 'Blonde'", the review, by Sean Mitchell, starts by calling the play 'A brainy bit of titillation, salted with some deep thoughts on Hollywood's dark powers and the unseemly genius of the famously morbid British director'. However, though Mitchell praises some of the performances, notably Dakin Matthews's as Hitchcock, he finds that '[playwright Terry] Johnson hasn't located a narrative structure that adequately serves his gifts' ...


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They've made a film of Hitchcock's short story "Gas"!

Hitchcock was still a teenager when he wrote several short stories for the staff magazine of the Henley Telegraph and Cable Company where he was employed.  The best-known of these stories, "Gas", showing the possible influence of Edgar Allan Poe or Wilkie Collins, appeared in the June 1919 issue.  Now there's a 12-minute film of the story.  It was shot in London on 35mm and was directed by Sylvie Bolioli for Polaris Productions.

• Update.  The film had its world premiere in Edinburgh in January.  More recently, it was marketed at the Cannes Film Festival.  An unorthodox cast includes Johanna Mohs as the story's terrified woman, Tony Hadley as the dentist, and veteran actress Valerie Leon (several Carry On films, the original The Italian Job, etc.).  Leon plays two roles in Gas - a prostitute in the anaesthesia-induced nightmare and, back in the real world, the dentist's classy receptionist.

For more information, click here: 
http://www.gasthemovie.com/index.html


Finely scented:  Laurent Fiévet's latest Hitchcock video installation opening in Paris

The third of artist Laurent Fiévet's presentations inspired by Alfred Hitchcock's work, 'Essences de l'image: portraits olfactifs' ('Essences of the image: olfactive portraits'), is a follow-up to presentations held in Finland during 2003-04.  The artist - who has a PhD in film studies - seeks to create a relation between selected shots from Hitchcock's films and some famous paintings which could have inspired them.  Fi
évet's latest presentation will run from February 14th to March 14th at the Galerie La Ferronnerie.  For more information, click here: http://www.associationdesgaleries.org/laferronnerie/

                                                                            Portrait, after A.Hitchcock and W. Turner

Laurent Fiévet: 'Portrait ...', after North by Northwest (Alfred Hitchcock) and 'Shipwreck' (William Turner)


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Cinematographer Leonard J. South dies at 92

The camera operator on nearly a dozen Alfred Hitchcock classics, including North by Northwest (1959) and The Birds (1963), and the director of photography on Hitchcock's last film Family Plot (1976), has died in California (6 January, 2006).

South began his three-decade association with Hitchcock as cinematographer Robert Burks's camera assistant on the 1951 film Strangers on a Train.  He was soon elevated to camera operator, becoming part of what Hitchcock biographer Donald Spoto called 'the ongoing Hitchcock crew who came to know exactly what the director wanted and how to give it to him.'

In a 1979 interview for the 'Daily Pilot' newspaper, South recalled that one morning on the Family Plot set, actor Bruce Dern, 'a very outgoing, nervy guy,' walked up to Hitchcock and said, 'I understand you call all actors cattle. Does that mean me, Hitch?'

'I'd say, Bruce, you are the golden calf,' Hitchcock deadpanned.

That, South recalled, 'came right out of nowhere. Bruce laughed for half an hour.'

South, a former member of the board of governors of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, also was a longtime board member of the American Society of Cinematographers, for which he served as president in 1989-90.

(Adapted from an article in the 'Los Angeles Times'.  Our thanks to RC for supplying it.)



Universal's 'Alfred Hitchcock Presents', Season One, discs have flaws ...

Correspondence on our 'Hitchcock Enthusiasts' Group indicates several production flaws in the dual-sided 3-disc DVD set containing the 39 episodes of the First Season (1955-56) of 'Alfred Hitchcock Presents' which was released last month in the USA (Region 1).  Problems include discs sticking or not playing some sections, and images breaking up.  One correspondent, after talking to a DVD collector friend, reports similar problems occuring on other dual-sided disc sets of Universal's television shows.

Our advice?  Heed what lawyer Mitch Brenner (Rod Taylor) says in The Birds: 'caveat emptor', 'let the buyer beware'.
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Mike Leigh slights Hitchcock's Frenzy (1972)

At a recent London Film Festival event whose theme was the best and worst of films about London, panellist Mike Leigh (Naked, Topsy Turvy, Vera Drake) suddenly exploded when questioned about Hitchcock's 33-year-old Frenzy, set in and around Covent Garden.  According to Leigh: 'Frenzy is a horrible film. It's sloppy. It's superficial. It says nothing about London life, and it shouldn't be in the Time Out list [of best London films]. I'd be very happy if none of my films ever stoops to the level of Frenzy.'

Hmm.  Come back in another 33 years, Mike, and let's see how your own films have fared against Hitchcock's in the estimation of audiences.  (Meanwhile, to read more about Mike Leigh's outburst - by the person who asked the question about Frenzy - click here:
http://globalnix.blogspot.com.  We thank Nick Poteri for contacting us and for permission to cite his excellent blog.)


More DVD news: 'Alfred Hitchcock Presents', Season One, coming (Region 1)
On October 4, 2005, Universal Studios Home Entertainment will release on DVD the entire first season of 'Alfred Hitchcock Presents' (39 episodes, 4 of them directed by Hitchcock himself) plus 'Alfred Hitchcock Presents: A Look Back', a featurette on the show.  For more information, click here:
http://www.tvshowsondvd.com/newsitem.cfm?NewsID=3735


Finally, Hitchcock's Lifeboat on DVD

On October 18, 2005, Fox Home Entertainment will release a 'Special Edition' of Lifeboat (1944).  The disc will include a 'making of' featurette, the theatrical trailer, and a commentary track by Professor Drew Casper of USC.

• Update, February 2006.  The above release-date was for Region 1.  We're told that the DVD is now available in Region 2 with extra material, including a two-part interview with Hitchcock by Fletcher Markle of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation.  The Region 2 release is on two discs.   


The shower scene from Psycho: new book

Is this a first?  In October, 2005, Edward Mellen Press will publish a book-length study of a single scene from a movie - admittedly, both the movie and the scene are particularly famous.  'The Shower Scene in Hitchcock's Psycho: Creating Cinematic Suspense and Terror' is authored by Dr Phil Skerry.  As well as detailed analysis, Dr Skerry includes lengthy interviews with star Janet Leigh, scriptwriter Joseph Stefano, assistant director Hilton Green, sound designer Danny Greene, assistant editor Terry Williams, and with the editor of the Gus Van Sant remake of Psycho, Amy Duddleston. The book culminates with first-person accounts of the initial viewing of Psycho and its shower scene - including reminiscences by several readers of this website. For more information, click here:
http://www.mellenpress.com/

• Robert Meyers worked for famous designer and storyboard artist Saul Bass in the 1980s.  He currently owns Bass's sketches - or virtual storyboard - for the Psycho shower scene.  Professor Meyers, formerly of Rochester Institute of Technology, will soon be opening a communication design firm in Pittsburgh.  He tells us he would be interested to receive offers for the Bass sketches.  He may be contacted here: <robertmeyersdesign@hotmail.com>.
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Death of Barbara Bel Geddes

She was superb as the Scottie-fixated Midge in Hitchcock's Vertigo (1958).  Stage and film actress Barbara Bel Geddes has died, aged 82 (8 August, 2005).  Besides her work for Hitchcock - which included four episodes of 'Alfred Hitchcock Presents' - film buffs particularly remember her for George Stevens's I Remember Mama (1946), Max Ophüls's Caught (1948), and Henry Hathaway's Fourteen Hours (1951).     
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UK stage production of The 39 Steps

Our London correspondent, Michael Walker, reports: 'In last Saturday's "Guardian" (25 June, 2005) there was a review of a theatrical production of The 39 Steps at the West Yorkshire Playhouse in Leeds. The review by Michael Billington wasn't that enthusiastic, but what was apparent was that, once again, the adaptor (Patrick Barlow from a concept by Simon Corble and Nobby Dimon) had followed the Hitchcock movie, not the novel: Forth Bridge, handcuffs, peeling off stockings and all. The play is directed by Fiona Buffini; Robert Whitelock and Lisa Jackson (a blonde) are the two stars. It runs until 16 July. I feel encouraged that Hitch has more purchase on the popular culture in general than Buchan.'
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Universal/Paramount (etc.) Hitchcocks in DVD set (Region 1)

Essentially this is a re-issue, though the 14 films are said to be 'digitally remastered'.  (And note the bonus disc.)  Release-date is announced as 4 October, 2005.  The set is available on pre-order at a discount.  For example (and to see details), click here:
http://homevideo.universalstudios.com/details.php?childId=35678


French and German DVDs of early Hitchcock


Courtesy of Dave Pattern's Hitchcock DVD website comes this information on exciting new and forthcoming releases ...

First, there's a French DVD collection of early Hitchcock films, including the previously-unreleased-on-DVD Champagne (A l'Américaine).  Altogether there are 10 titles and a couple of documentaries.  These are split across 3 volumes:

    Volume 1 (Les Premières Oeuvres 1927/1929)
    http://www.daveyp.com/hitchcock/dvds/boxsets/9002/

        The Ring/Le Masque de Cuir (1927)
        Champagne/A l'Américaine (1928)
        The Farmer's Wife/Laquelle des Trois (1928)
        The Manxman (1929)

    Volume 2 (Les Premières Oeuvres 1929/1931)
    http://www.daveyp.com/hitchcock/dvds/boxsets/9003/

        Blackmail/Chantage (1929)
        Murder!/Meurtre (1930)
        The Skin Game (1931)
        52 minute documentary about Hitch's early films

    Volume 3 (Les Premières Oeuvres 1932/1940)
    http://www.daveyp.com/hitchcock/dvds/boxsets/9004/

        Rich and Strange/A l'Est de Shanghaï (1932)
        Number Seventeen/Numéro 17 (1932)
        Foreign Correspondent/Correspondant 17 (1940)
        26 minute documentary about Foreign Correspondent

Dave Pattern writes: 'StudioCanal [the company releasing these discs] was involved in the excellent German Blackmail DVD. ... The new transfers are excellent - especially the 1920s films.  Champagne looks fantastic and it's hard to believe from the transfer that the film is nearly 80 years old!  My only negative comments are that the DVDs have forced French subtitles when you select the English language audio.  Some DVD players
may be able to override this, but neither of my standalone players were able to do so.  Also, the two documentaries have French only audio with no subtitles.' 

Then there's a French DVD collection coming soon from TF1 Vidéo which looks like it will contain the same excellent transfers used in the German 'Early Years' boxset (released by Concorde):

    'Hitchcock - Le Maître du Suspens'
    http://www.daveyp.com/hitchcock/dvds/boxsets/9046/

Finally, German company Kinowelt/ArtHaus are planning a couple of DVD releases:

    1) a DVD of Mary (the German version of Murder!) and possibly Murder! itself on the same disc
    2) a DVD of both Rich and Strange and Champagne

There's no release-date as yet for the Mary DVD, but the other DVD is scheduled for 19 August 2005.


Other Hitchcock remakes?

We have no comment on any of this.  In a recent on-set interview for the thriller The Skeleton Key, Kate Hudson (daughter of Goldie Hawn) confirmed that 'My production company is trying to develop a remake of Hitchcock's Vertigo'.  Also, we hear that, yet again, Warners have said that they're re-making Strangers on a Train.  And Universal have announced plans to re-make The Birds.  

[Thanks to AN, and others, for this information.]

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:

http://www.labyrinth.net.au/~muffin/mcgilligan1_c.html  
http://www.labyrinth.net.au/~muffin/mcgilligan2_c.html  

'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.' ] 

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Maybe this time?

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  

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New Agatha Christie TV movies coming

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.

Those Hitchcock mosaics at Leytonstone [update]

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.  

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Newly-restored film version of Hall Caine novel

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!).'  

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Death of Winston Graham, author of 'Marnie', at 93

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).
 

Well-meaning repairman interferes with 'artwork' (if that's what it is)

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!)

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News briefs

• 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.)


Death of Frederick Knott, playwright of 'Dial M For Murder'

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

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

                
                                          mtneagledog2.jpg


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."'.


Disney organisation launchs restored Hitchcocks

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."'

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Rear Window latest Hitchcock film restored

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.

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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.

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More about ... a longer version of Topaz (1969)

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.] 

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Venice Film Festival shows Kaleidoscope excerpts

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

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

EXCERPTS 5 - Jane Sloan surveys critical writing on Hitchcock

EXCERPTS 6 - Donald Spoto on Stage Fright
 

EXCERPTS 7 - Jack Sullivan on Franz Waxman and Suspicion


About Arthur Schopenhauer (who? why?)

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) 

Report (cont.): Patrick McGilligan's biography of Alfred Hitchcock (film by film, 1929-1950) 

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)

Two discoveries: (1) Frank Baker's novel 'The Birds'; (2) Wanted for Murder (film by Lawrence Huntington)

Note on Hitchcock's villains

Interview with Kim Novak

Interview with Psycho screenwriter, Joseph Stefano 

Long article: "The Fragments of the Mirror: Vertigo and its sources"

Article by Bill Krohn: "A Hitchcock mystery" (an aspect of Family Plot)

Article by Martin Grams, Jr: "Alfred Hitchcock Presents: The Quality of Humor"

Article by Martin Grams, Jr: "Murder and Suspense"

Article by Philip Kemp: "Hitching Posts" (on Hitchcock's 'imitators')

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