Alfred Hitchcock

by Peter Ackroyd

  He was similarly reticent about the film itself. One of its early admirers, Gordon McDonell, the man who had brought him the story in the first place, wrote to him that “you certainly did put the whole of yourself into that picture.” Hitchcock might have declined the compliment. On some occasions he said that it was his “favourite,” and on others that it was “one of my favourites” or that it was “a most satisfying picture.” For most critics it remains one of the finest films he ever made. Such is the verdict of posterity. At the time it was treated as an intriguing crime thriller, and nothing more. It has been said that there are only two stories in the world; one of them concerns a journey, and the other documents the moment when a stranger comes to town. Hitchcock manages to convey all the suspicion and the anxiety, all the tension and even the terror, of the latter situation. We have already learned of his trick of throwing the empty teacup over his shoulder. Everything is brittle; everything can be shattered.

  . . .

  The film was released at the beginning of 1943 but, two months before, he had been sold by Selznick to the highest bidder. That may be a harsh verdict, but it is one to which Hitchcock himself would fully subscribe. Joseph Cotten inverted Hitchcock’s remark about actors and remarked to him that “I see they’re selling directors like cattle.” In November 1942, he moved into the sphere of the producer Darryl F. Zanuck, and into the offices of Twentieth Century Fox.

  Hitchcock already had a proposal for his new employer. He had conceived the idea of a “lifeboat film” that might reveal some of the complexities of the wartime world. He was also intrigued by the technical challenge of shooting in the confined space of a small boat. The idea of incompatible survivors stranded together in the middle of a menacing sea, after their ship has been torpedoed by a U-boat, interested him; it might seem to be a metaphor for life as well as for war.

  He began work on a treatment as soon as he joined Twentieth Century Fox. In the absence of Zanuck, who was on military duties as a colonel in the Army Signal Corps, he was assigned to the producer Kenneth Macgowan. He and Macgowan, together with Alma, worked on a rudimentary treatment but they needed a named and if possible famous author to lend credibility to the enterprise.

  Hitchcock had first considered Ernest Hemingway for the script, but the novelist demurred. Macgowan and Hitchcock then turned to John Steinbeck, whose novel The Grapes of Wrath had been made into a film by Twentieth Century Fox only three years before. Steinbeck himself was between projects and had leased a house in Hollywood. It was considered to be a perfect opportunity. Steinbeck seemed to think so too, and even before his contract was signed he had completed what he called a “novelette” of a hundred pages. It was more like an omelette.

  Steinbeck then flew to New York, ready to travel to the European theatre as a war correspondent for the New York Herald Tribune. The Hitchcocks followed him for what they considered to be important script conferences. Steinbeck was under the misapprehension that his work was almost done, but Hitchcock was naturally intent upon changes and revisions. The novelist had written the narrative from the perspective of one survivor, but this was not considered to be suitably cinematic. Steinbeck said later that Hitchcock “was one of those incredible middle-class English snobs who really and truly despise working people.” The remark makes it clear that Steinbeck did not understand, or bother to understand, the motives of his director. He may have been misled by Hitchcock’s manner, or accent, or both. Their collaboration was not a success.

  The script then passed through several writers, the last of whom, Jo Swerling, did not care for Steinbeck’s original version. He testified that “after the first reading that I gave to the Steinbeck story, I never again referred to it, nor did anybody else working on the picture.” Nevertheless Steinbeck’s name remained in the credits, perhaps for contractual reasons or perhaps to convince audiences of the film’s essential seriousness. The guiding hand remained that of Hitchcock himself, who devised many of the scenes and incidents in collaboration with Swerling. In the summer of 1943 Zanuck unexpectedly returned from duty in the Army Signal Corps, and was irate at the length of time it had taken to produce a working script. He had the screenplay timed with a stopwatch, even as Hitchcock was filming the first scenes, and was astonished to discover that the finished picture might extend to two hours. He sent a memorandum to the director, asking him “to drop some element in its entirety.”

  Hitchcock was always sure of his timings. He could see the picture in front of him. He replied to Zanuck with the message that “I don’t know who you employ to time your scripts, but whoever has done it is misleading you horribly. I will even go so far as to say disgracefully.” He signed it, ironically, as “Your obedient servant, Alfred Hitchcock.” He was right and, after a more accurate timing was made, the matter was dropped.

  The making of the film was no less difficult than its preparation. The technical challenges may have interested him but they were less appealing to the performers who, for example, were obliged to climb a ladder to a small boat in a great water tank. Sometimes they fell in the water and had to be hauled out; sometimes they were drenched by the crew; sometimes they were rocked violently from side to side, making them seasick or, rather, tank-sick. Most of the cast came down with colds or fevers or worse. Tallulah Bankhead, who played the role of a socialite journalist, remembered that she was “black and blue from the downpours and the lurchings. Thanks to the heat, the lights, the fake fog and submersions followed by rapid dryings-out, I came up with pneumonia early in November.”

  It is interesting that she “came up” rather than “came down.” She was always looking to the bright side. She even caused a minor scandal on the set with her habit of never wearing any underwear. As she climbed the ladder and entered the lifeboat the crew drew lots as to who should be able to peer up at her. Hitchcock, when told of the situation, said that it was a problem for a barber and not for a director. But he remained on the best of terms with the actress; she was a drinker with a caustic tongue, mischievous and dirty-minded. Hitchcock seems often to have been obsessed by beautiful blondes but the women he liked were feisty, witty—even foul-mouthed—characters such as Carole Lombard and Tallulah Bankhead.

  Lifeboat was not well received. It was a year in filming and post-production, when it should have taken half the time, and was clumsily released by the company. It was treated as an allegory for the war even then being waged, when essentially it was an exercise in dramatic adventure and personal crisis with the war as its setting. The plot, such as it is, concerns a disparate and disorganised group of Americans who are deceived by the German officer they have hauled to safety; he turns out to have been the captain of the U-boat that had sunk their liner, and to be gradually steering the lifeboat towards enemy lines. Several notable episodes, such as an amputation and the suicide of a woman with her dead baby, are still very powerful; but contemporaneous critics believed that it had become a subtle celebration of unflinching Nazi character and a denunciation of weak and divided Americans. Hitchcock countered with his own quickly invented moral that it was a call for America to unite, but the damage had been done. He recalled that one critic gave Lifeboat “ten days to get out of town.”

  . . .

  By the time the reviews appeared, Hitchcock had taken that advice. He had been preparing for a return to England in order to consult with his old friend from the London Film Society, Sidney Bernstein, about two films for the Ministry of Information, for which Bernstein now worked. These would be propaganda “shorts” which would help to assuage Hitchcock’s guilt about playing no defined or prominent role in Britain’s war. He told an interviewer later that “I knew that if I did nothing I’d regret it for the rest of my life.” He was also eager to confer with Bernstein about their possible collaboration in the post-war period, when a new form of Anglo-American film company might have distinct benefits.

  At the beginning of December 1943 he had the uncomfortable experience of flying across the Atlantic under wartime co
nditions. He recalled that “I flew over in a bomber, sitting on the floor, and when we got halfway across the Atlantic, the plane had to turn back. I took another one two days later.” This would have been torture for someone of his nervous temperament.

  When he arrived in London he was booked into Claridge’s but the relatively luxurious venue did not conceal the privation and terror of the city at war. He managed to see some friends, and to visit his sister who had continued living at Shamley Green, but his main memories were of bombs, searchlights and anti-aircraft fire. “I used to be alone at Claridge’s hotel, and the bombs would fall, and the guns, and I was alone and didn’t know what to do.”

  Yet he did have work on hand. He had agreed with Sidney Bernstein to make two short films to be shown in the parts of France that had been recently liberated from German occupation. He worked on Bon Voyage and Aventure Malgache in the first two months of 1944, with French players. The films were of no great significance at the time, and there is some dispute whether they were actually distributed. Yet Bon Voyage, in particular, gave him the opportunity for strong drama as a German agent uses an escaped English prisoner to infiltrate a Resistance group in France. It was much closer to real war experience than either Lifeboat or Saboteur; it had all the makings of a grand film noir, and he even entertained the notion of turning it into a full-length picture.

  He and Bernstein also continued their discussion about a partnership, a possible relationship about which David Selznick had already been informed. “I hope,” Selznick wrote to his agent in England, “that one of the motives behind bringing Mr. Hitchcock back to England is not a desire to negotiate a private deal with him for the future.” He did not wish to lose his most profitable investment. Even before he had left for London, however, Hitchcock had purchased the rights in what he considered to be appropriate material. The House of Dr. Edwardes is a novel concerning strange events in a Swiss lunatic asylum, and therefore highly congenial to Hitchcock’s tastes. He thought that he had already found the perfect scriptwriter in England. Angus MacPhail had known Hitchcock in the days of the London Film Society and had become the head of Michael Balcon’s story department at Lime Grove when Hitchcock was making The Man Who Knew Too Much and The 39 Steps. So there was a long association, compounded by a shared sense of humour and of mischief. He had also assisted in the writing of the two French propaganda films.

  Yet MacPhail had become unable to write in any determined or continuous fashion. “He rewrote his own stuff wildly,” said one of his colleagues, Sidney Gilliat, “and at all hours for sometimes no good reason.” He also seems to have been a heavy drinker. Nevertheless he did manage to complete a seventeen-page treatment which was then revised and revised again. If it did nothing else, it prepared the ground for the subsequent film.

  Selznick, who was himself undergoing psychoanalysis, was much taken by the proposal. “I’d like to stress,” he wrote to his story editor, “that I’m almost desperately anxious to do this psychological or psychiatric story with Hitch.” Hitchcock was also ready and prepared. He returned from London to Hollywood at the beginning of March, and began to work directly with David Selznick for only the second time. Their previous collaboration, Rebecca, was the occasion of mixed memories for both of them.

  There might be further trouble ahead. Unlike Hitchcock, Selznick had a real enthusiasm for, and interest in, psychiatric matters. He had entered analysis during a severe bout of depression. Psychoanalysis was the fashion of the age in the United States, with those who could afford it treating it as the secular equivalent of the Catholic confessional. Freudianism had become the new orthodox faith. This may be the reason why Hitchcock had bought up the rights to The House of Dr. Edwardes, in the hope of catching a trend. The bait worked splendidly.

  In the absence of MacPhail, Hitchcock asked to work with the redoubtable Ben Hecht. Hecht had been a crime reporter and war reporter on the Chicago Daily News before becoming a novelist and dramatist, but his real skill lay in scriptwriting and he became known as “the Shakespeare of Hollywood”; his hallmarks were speed and street-smart simplicity. Hitchcock reported later that Hecht told him, “Well, Hitchie, write the dialogue you want and then I’ll correct it.” Hecht himself applauded “the gentlemanly Alfred Hitchcock who gave off plot turns like a Roman candle.” They visited mental hospitals and psychiatric wards seeking local colour; they interviewed doctors and nurses, looking for pertinent information. They were perfect collaborators and, in the end, they were composing twenty pages of script every day. Hecht stated that “Hitchcock was beaming amid his nightmares.” Selznick asked his own analyst, May Romm, to go over the script; she set to work with a will and managed to excise many of the mistakes that the two men naturally made. She gave various mental conditions their right name and provenance.

  The plot, concerning the director of an asylum who murders his putative successor before being unmasked by one of the psychiatrists working for him, is of no importance. The only matter of consequence was the casting of Ingrid Bergman and Gregory Peck in the two principal roles. Peck was a relative newcomer and was not at his ease in the part of an amnesiac. He made the mistake of asking Hitchcock a question about what his character was thinking. What was his motivation? The director’s usual answer to such a question was “Your salary,” and on this occasion he was only a little more helpful. “My dear boy,” he said, “I couldn’t care less what you’re thinking. Just let your face drain of all expression.” Peck’s own description of his “soul-searching” and “lack of ready technique” was not helped by Hitchcock’s characteristic lack of reaction to his performance, which Peck interpreted as lack of interest. Some of his hesitation and nervousness can be glimpsed on the screen.

  Ingrid Bergman was another matter. She had arrived in the United States from Sweden five years before, under the tutelage of David Selznick who described her as “the most completely conscientious actress with whom I have ever worked.” She had already starred in Casablanca, For Whom the Bell Tolls and Gaslight; so she was no novice. Hitchcock seems to have been enchanted with her, and an intense friendship grew up between them which remained sexually unfulfilled. They were just good companions. In later life he used to say that she had always loved him and that she had once made a pass at him, but this sounds like an old man’s fantasy. In this first film together he was remarkably patient with her on the set, and the other members of the cast noticed that he seemed to approach her with a genuine shyness or nervousness. Peck recalled that “whenever he was with her, I had the feeling that something was ailing him, and it was difficult to know exactly the cause of his suffering, although some of us had our suspicions.”

  Hitchcock himself described her as “worried, miserable, high-strung, romantic, idealistic, sensitive, emotional.” It is hard to think of another occasion when he was so sympathetic towards an actor, and it may be that Bergman helped him to think much harder about the projection of a female presence upon the screen. There had been memorable performances before, notably Joan Fontaine’s in Rebecca, but none of them had the allure or intensity that he elicited from Bergman in a trio of films. He seems to have experienced an emotional sea change.

  He was equally docile with her on the set. She recalled that “he would sit patiently” while she outlined her problems over a scene, or a line, or a gesture, and then “he would say very sweetly ‘Fake it!’ ” She admitted that this was the best piece of filmic advice she had ever been given. Later in life, after she eloped with Roberto Rossellini and Hitchcock seems to have felt betrayed, he was less sentimental about her. He would say to associates “Ah, Ingrid. So beautiful. So stupid.”

  Hitchcock began filming in the summer of 1944. He arrived on the set in his limousine at precisely nine o’clock, and shooting continued in a brisk but unhurried fashion; the film was completed on schedule within forty-eight days. Peck remembered that he gave very little direction at all. He was calm, and still, but Peck also recalled that “Hitchcock liked his actors and movements to
be as much under his control as the camera movements or the props or the scenery.” On occasion he seemed to be dozing, eyes closed, and Peck himself believed that there were times when he was “sound asleep” until woken by an assistant. He may have been asleep or he may have been, in a phrase of the time, “resting his eyes” for a further effort. He may even have been running through the scene in his head and, as Peck admitted, when he woke he seemed to know “exactly what was going on.”

  He had also learned how to deal with David Selznick, who had as much concern and involvement in the production as Hitchcock. When the producer wandered on to the set, the camera was suddenly halted by one technical problem or other, and did not begin working again until Selznick had left. He must have known, in the end, that he was being diverted; but by now he had such respect for Hitchcock’s working methods that he refused to be annoyed. He told his production manager that “I have seldom seen so smooth running a crew, or as obviously efficient a company as the Dr. Edwardes unit.” He may also have calculated that he would work his own way through the film in post-production.

  There were some false starts. Hitchcock had asked Selznick to hire Salvador Dalí to create a startling dream sequence. Dalí arrived in Hollywood in the autumn, and created oil paintings and sketches to convey the essence of a disturbed dream. But his vision was too unsettling, and at Selznick’s wish much of it landed on the cutting-room floor. Dalí was of course outraged, but Hitchcock himself accepted the cuts. There are times when he seemed not to care what happened to his films after he had finished with them. He was more interested in their commercial success.

  Selznick did indeed manage the process of post-production. He changed the opening, he revised certain scenes, he altered some of the dialogue, and generally made the film shorter and snappier. He used to call the process, confusingly, “mogo on the gogo,” which meant some form of love-sickness. Gregory Peck uses the phrase in Spellbound, as the film was titled, from where Selznick may have picked it up. When the film was released, however, it was widely believed to be another Hitchcock thriller but one without the intensity of previous successes.