Alfred Hitchcock

by Peter Ackroyd

  It is in many respects an unsettling film which presents an “ordinary” world which is anything but ordinary; it is a fragile place racked with nervous tensions, where the conventions of commonplace life conceal the burden of secrets and irregular relationships. It is a world of confused identities and thwarted desires, of loneliness and pain. A great deal of unstated tension exists between the central characters. The putative hero is ambiguous and difficult, self-absorbed, petulant and arrogant.

  Hitchcock stated that “of all the films I have made, this to me is the most cinematic.” The remark can be interpreted in more than one sense. Jeff’s voyeuristic desires are no different from those of the spectators in the auditorium who are wrapped in the safe darkness where they can watch the actors unobserved. Rear Window is about the pleasures and penalties of the gaze. It is about the sheer act of seeing. But the gaze can be uncertain; it may come to unwarranted conclusions. Could everything that Jeff sees be a reflection of his fear of women? Even at the end of the film it is an open question. When asked once about the prurience of the film, Hitchcock remarked that “if anyone had mentioned that to me before I embarked on that picture, it certainly wouldn’t have kept me from going ahead with it, because my love of film is far more important to me than any considerations of morality.” Apart from confirming his belief in “pure cinema” the remark suggests that he was not necessarily aware of the implications of what he was creating. He was interested only in the tension and suspense.

  Rear Window was eventually listed by the American Film Institute as one of the best one hundred American films, but even at the time it was considered a notable success. It premiered in Hollywood on 11 August 1954, and the critics variously described it as “exhilarating” and “roundly enjoyable.” Within two years it had earned $10 million. No attention, however, was paid to the darker, more autobiographical aspects of the film. The American public demanded entertainment, and Hitchcock was ready to provide that innocent commodity with a smile. It was, after all, “only a movie.”

  . . .

  By the beginning of 1954, even as he was putting his final touches to Rear Window, he was engaged upon another production. The managers of Paramount suggested to him that he might turn his attention to a novel, To Catch a Thief, the rights of which they had purchased two years before. The story concerned a cat burglar who returns to his old criminal haunts on the French Riviera in order to entrap a thief who copies his methods. Hitchcock loved France, as well as French food, and it may be that he took the assignment as a form of light relief after the arduous studio work on Rear Window. He had worked so well with John Michael Hayes on the film that he asked him to write the script for its successor. Hayes recalled that “when he found I’d never even been to the south of France, he arranged for me and my wife to go, at studio expense, so that I could research the locales. The trip was, of course, very welcome, and by the time I returned I had a good idea of what to do with the novel.”

  Hitchcock wanted Grace Kelly. She was to be his idealised female—perhaps he associated her from his Catholic schooldays with “the light of grace.” Cary Grant, no doubt entranced by his large fee and the prospect of the leading lady, was also enrolled. Hitchcock and Hayes worked together upon the evolving script. “What made us a good team,” Hayes said, “was that he had such brilliant technique and knowledge of the visual, and ego, and conviction; and I think I was able to bring him a warmth of characterisation.” Hitchcock appreciated his contribution; he himself was notoriously unable to develop character as opposed to plot. Hayes went on to say that “we just discussed in general terms story and character, and he let me go on and write until I finished. We did have lunches together, and I’d tell him what I was doing, and he was patient enough to wait for it.” Hayes said in another interview that “what I brought to Hitch was character, dialogue, movement and entertainment.” But Hitchcock rarely complimented Hayes; as ever, he was of the opinion that if anyone did well, it was just part of the job. A subsequent screenwriter, Ernest Lehman, recalled that “he was very quiet, very unassuming, but everybody was afraid of his disapproval, and that’s what made them do their best for him. You feared doing something that was below his standards.” And of course in the end Hitchcock himself would take all the credit.

  The script of To Catch a Thief was workmanlike enough, with occasional bursts of wit and sexual suggestiveness that enlivened the partnership of Grant and Kelly.

  GRANT: Tell me, what do you get a thrill out of most?

  KELLY: I’m still looking for that one.

  (She offers him cold chicken.)

  KELLY: Do you want a leg or a breast?

  GRANT: You make the choice.

  KELLY: Tell me, how long has it been?

  GRANT: Since what?

  KELLY: Since you were in America last.

  A glittering ball is arranged in the style of the seventeenth-century French court, and one of the American guests asks a waiter, “Avez-vous bourbon?” It may not be Oscar Wilde, but it was funny and daring enough for an American film in the 1950s. There are moments, in fact, when the film seems to become a parody of itself, a hollowed-out artifice with a gorgeous surface.

  Filming began at the end of May, with rain or the threat of rain as the principal problem. Grant caused a few difficulties by walking off the set at six o’clock precisely; the timing was in his contract. Hitchcock also resented the fact that the actor received a percentage of the gross before any money was released to the director himself. Grant could also be demanding, at one moment ordering a limousine to drive him on to the set and at another moment asking for it to be replaced by a less extravagant automobile. He told a French actress in the film, Brigitte Auber, that Hitchcock “likes me a lot, but at the same time he detests me. He would like to be in my place.” And who could deny it? Hitchcock, in the face of persistent complaints about the actor from the production manager, “Doc” Erickson, reassured Erickson that “I’ll take good care of Mr. Cary Grant. On the last day of the picture, I intend to tell him off once and for all.” Of course he did no such thing. He detested the strain of “telling off” anyone. When Erickson reminded him of his promise, Hitchcock replied “Well, I don’t know. I might want him for another picture.” Which indeed he did. Good relations on the set, however, were maintained. Hitchcock would entertain the actors and crew in a variety of restaurants where he would supervise all the details of eating and drinking with the air of a maestro or emperor.

  Yet he was becoming tired with shooting on location; he always preferred to work in the safety of a studio set. Grace Kelly’s current affair was also causing difficulties, with the presence of her lover, Jean-Pierre Aumont, on the set. Hitchcock excised some scenes that were meant to be shot in France and then, back in Hollywood, organised the most flamboyant sequences with all the proper technical equipment at his disposal.

  Courtesy of Mondadori Portfolio/Getty Images

  Grace Kelly in To Catch a Thief, wearing a costume designed by Edith Head, 1955.

  Work was finished at the beginning of September 1954, three weeks behind schedule. It had been filmed in VistaVision, with high-resolution images in widescreen, and some of the film’s advertising claimed that “you’ll feel that you’re actually on the beautiful Riviera.” Unfortunately this lent much of the picture the air of a travelogue, and reinforced the shallowness of the film itself. Hitchcock admitted as much at its premiere in London, where he confessed that “if sometimes you have to make corn, try at least to do it well.”

  To Catch a Thief had its moments, particularly those that combined the comedy of Grant and the sexuality of Kelly; but its light and almost frivolous tone did not please all of the critics. The reviewer from Variety said of Grace Kelly that she “clothes-horses through the footage in some fetching Edith Head creations.” In truth Hitchcock created the film as a homage to his leading lady; he dressed her as a hierophant might dress a Madonna. But that did not mean he spared her some of the pain of a Magdalene. In one scene Cary G
rant was meant to hold her wrists and push her against a wall. Hitchcock believed that he was being too gentle, and asked for the scene to be retaken again and again until the violence was more real. Grant recalled that “Grace went back alone behind the door where the scene started, and just by chance I happened to catch a glimpse of her massaging her wrists and grimacing in pain.”

  Grace Kelly herself had become a star, largely as a result of Hitchcock’s direction, and To Catch a Thief was very popular with the public. Hayes was nominated by the Writers Guild for best comedy while the other salient points of the film were awarded with nominations for art direction and costume. It was a well-dressed film. Robert Burks, not a moment too soon, was given the Academy Award for cinematography.

  While on location in Nice, at a flower market, Hitchcock was interviewed by André Bazin, the editor of the influential periodical Cahiers du Cinéma and considered to be one of the most prominent of French film theorists. He observed the shooting from the side of the set until Hitchcock was ready for him, and noted that “I had been watching for a good hour, during which Hitchcock did not have to intervene more than twice; settled in his armchair, he gave the impression of being prodigiously bored and of musing about something completely different.” Their interview lasted some fifty or sixty minutes, during retakes, but “Hitchcock did no more than throw one or two quick glances at what was going on.”

  Bazin said that the director’s answers were “disconcerting,” by which he meant that Hitchcock did not respond to his theoretical probings. Hitchcock seemed to be puzzled by the French critic’s insistence on the “meaning” or “message” of his films, and preferred instead to talk of technical or practical matters. He told him, in Bazin’s words, that “it was easy to make an ‘artistic’ film but the real difficulty lay in making a good commercial film.” It is no wonder that Bazin was disconcerted. The French theorists were characteristically interested in what might be called the deep structures of everyday reality; when they were confronted with the formal, methodical and highly organised nature of Hitchcock’s films, they found their ideal. American scholars and theorists, some in burgeoning film schools, picked up the habit of this form of analysis. They were ready and willing to find meaning in anything. Hitchcock’s granddaughter entered a course on film at her school. She asked him of one film, “Did you mean this in this scene? Because that’s what we were taught.” Hitchcock rolled his eyes. “Where do they think of these things?” On another occasion he helped her on an essay concerning one of his favourite films, Shadow of a Doubt. She earned only a C grade. “Well, I’m sorry,” he said. “That’s the best I can do.”

  Bazin was also associated with the “auteur” theory, even then coming into prominence with the criticism of Truffaut and others, that emphasised the importance of the director’s personal vision and creative imagination in the making of a film. Hitchcock was by no means opposed to this novel approach. He had always disseminated the myth that he was the sole author of his films, principally by giving no public credit to his collaborators. If the critics found something to detect and to interpret, a symbol or a theme, he was not inclined to disillusion them. For all his apparent pride and self-sufficiency he had a deep longing to be applauded and recognised. The “auteur” theory helped to raise Hitchcock’s reputation to levels that he had not so far reached, at least in French culture. No doubt he was also secretly delighted that a large portion of his European audience considered him to be an artist rather than a simple entertainer. He had always known as much but had preferred not to say so, for fear of frightening American producers and studio accountants.

  . . .

  “I finished To Catch a Thief one afternoon at five thirty, and by seven thirty Harry was under way,” claimed Hitchcock. This is in part self-admiring exaggeration; in truth he and John Michael Hayes had been working on the new film even when engaged on its predecessor.

  Hitchcock had read The Trouble with Harry by Jack Trevor Story, and had been immediately struck by what might be called the novel’s black pastoral comedy. It is the story of Harry, a corpse that will not stay buried but is constantly being dug up again by neighbours, each of whom believes for various reasons that he or she has killed him. The novel is set in an English village but the film was transposed to Vermont; autumn in New England might be the perfect setting for humorous melancholy. The comic and the macabre are set up side by side in an atmosphere of gentle understatement in what Hitchcock called “a strictly British genre.” The tension heightens the comedy, and the comedy increases the tension. At the beginning of the film an elderly character known as “the Captain” is dragging the corpse of Harry through some undergrowth. A middle-aged lady, taking her constitutional, observes him. “What seems to be the trouble, Captain?” Hitchcock later claimed that this was his favourite line in all of his films. It captures perfectly the sweetness and insouciance of this study in death.

  One of the principal delights of the film is the first appearance on screen of Shirley MacLaine; on her cinematic inexperience he commented merely that “I shall have fewer bad knots to untie.” He actually had very little work to do with her. He wanted to retain her freshness and lack of guile, and had no interest in “directing” her. MacLaine recalled the first script-reading. “I didn’t know how to act. I could hardly read the script. I was the dancer! I sort of played myself, or whatever.” At the end of the reading Hitchcock turned to her and simply remarked, “My dear, you have the guts of a bank robber.”

  Certain phrases from Hitchcock during the filming have survived. “Let’s move on! Spray the damned leaves! Move on.” “It’s only a movie, after all, and we’re all grossly overpaid.” “That’s very good. But let’s try it this way.” The filming lasted only for a month in Vermont before the inclement rain and wind made the work impossible. In the middle of October Hitchcock and crew retired to the relative safety and comfort of the studio, bringing with them an ample stock of autumnal Vermont leaves to dress the set.

  It may have been a very “British” film, as Hitchcock had suggested, yet it was admired in France, where it ran and ran, perhaps assisted by the new acclaim Hitchcock was enjoying with the younger French critics. It is an elaborately self-conscious and theatrical narrative that might have been set in the Forest of Arden; as Hitchcock remarked, “it’s as if I had set up a murder alongside a rustling brook and spilled a drop of blood into the clear water.” The playful and romantic music of Bernard Herrmann helps to create the appropriate mood. This was the first project on which Hitchcock and Herrmann worked together, and they collaborated for the next decade on the remake of The Man Who Knew Too Much, The Wrong Man, Vertigo, North by Northwest, The Birds, Marnie and, most sensationally, Psycho. Herrmann himself was sometimes difficult—excitable, nervous and prone to take offence—but they worked well together, principally by respecting each other’s professionalism.

  The film was released to an underwhelming reception in the United States, however, where audiences were generally bored or baffled by it. It may be the public did not respond well to the Britishness or, rather, Englishness of the film. Or it may be, as Hitchcock claimed, that the studio had not properly promoted it. “I’m afraid,” he said, “that the people who run the cinemas, and those people who distribute films, my natural enemies, couldn’t see it as an attraction for the public.” At a later date he confessed that “the film has lost, I suppose, about half a million dollars. So that’s an expensive self-indulgence.”

  Courtesy of Popperfoto/Getty Images

  Bernard Herrmann, who composed the music for eight Hitchcock films, starting with The Trouble with Harry, 1955.

  . . .

  Matters of finance may have been on his mind when he embarked on what was essentially a second career. After post-production on The Trouble with Harry was complete the Hitchcocks enjoyed a Christmas vacation in their favourite resort of St. Moritz. By the time they returned to Hollywood, Hitchcock was engaged in talks with Lew Wasserman, who had become president of MCA in
1946 and who had also been Hitchcock’s agent for several years. In this dual role, therefore, he suggested that Hitchcock might like to make the transition from film to television.

  The director had experimented before with different forms of broadcasting. He had acted as a host for a radio series, Murder by Experts, and had been a panel guest on a radio quiz show entitled Information, Please. On the latter programme, in 1943, he was asked, “In which famous case was the guilt fixed by the purchase of a hyacinth?” He had the answer exact to every detail. The moderator on the panel asked him, “How was the tide running at the time?”

  Yet the transition to the small screen was a challenge. It is possible that at first he held back, out of genuine uncertainty, but all the forces of his nature propelled him forward. Television meant fame. Television meant success. Television meant money. He always needed more fame, more money, more success; these were just the laws of his being. In the mid-1950s, too, the Hollywood studios began to produce material for the small screen, having previously ignored it. Television dramas, each introduced by a celebrated performer, had also become more frequent since the late 1940s when the three major networks—ABC, NBC and CBS—began to provide full nightly schedules.

  When Lew Wasserman made it clear that he would have to do very little in return for a very large fee, Hitchcock consented. He would be executive producer and script supervisor in name only, and his major role was as the presenter at the beginning and end of each instalment. For this he was to be paid $129,000 per episode. He would also own the rights to each programme after its first broadcast. It was money for nothing, or next to nothing. It was an offer that Hitchcock could not refuse.

  Yet even as the negotiations continued he had another film on his mind. He had first considered a new version of The Man Who Knew Too Much in 1941. It is not at all clear why he returned to the idea fourteen years later. He said sometimes that he simply wanted to find an appropriate vehicle for the talents of James Stewart, but this does not seem plausible. It is more likely that he saw the commercial possibilities of what had always been one of his favourite films. The original had been released in 1934, and it might be seen as a quite new thing in the mid-1950s. It would be in colour, and have the benefit of a wide screen.