UNEXPECTED CONVERSATION: Alfred Hitchcock

0:02Tetragramaton You have to remember that it's all based on red riding hood. You see, nothing has changed since red riding hood. So what they're frightened of today are exactly the same things they were frightened of yesterday. Because this should be called this fright complex is rooted in every individual. Do you think women and men are frightened by different things in movies? Oh, I would say so, yes. I would definitely say that after all women are frightened by a mass. You don't see men jumping on chairs and screaming. So there are definitely different things. Do you aim to frighten men or women?

1:07Women. Because 80 % of the audience in the cinema are women. Because you see, even if the house is 50, 50, half men, half women, a good percentage of the men has said to his girl being on the make of course, what do you want to see dear? So that's where her influence comes as well. So men have very little to do with the choice of the film. Are American and European audiences frightened by different things? I would say no. She, do you got to remember the American audience is the global audience? As I once reminded an Englishman, I said, you don't understand America because you think they are Americans but they're not.

2:00America is full of foreigners. They're all foreigners since 1776. So therefore, whatever frightens the Americans, frightens the Italians, the Romanian, the Danes and everyone else you know from Europe. You have to remember that this process of frightening is done by means of a given medium. The medium of pure cinema is what I believe in. The assembly of pieces of film to create fright is the essential part of my job, just as much as a painter, by putting certain colors together, create evil on canvas. Is creating thrills an essential part of your job? Only in terms of the audience expected from me.

2:59We think of you as a master of the unexpected. That's only because one's challenged by the audience, they're saying to me, show us. And I know what's coming next. And I say, do you? And therefore, that's the avoidance of the cliché, automatically. They're expecting the cliché. And I have to say, we cannot have a cliché here. I've heard you refer to pure cinema as the films made prior to sound. Well, the only thing wrong with the silent picture was that mouths opened and no sound came out. Unfortunately, when talk came in, the vulgarians, the money changes of the industry, immediately as comments to cash in by photographing stage plays.

3:56So that took the whole thing away from cinema completely. It's like a lot of films, one sees today, not that I see you very many, but to me they're what I call photographs of people talking. There's no relation to the art of the cinema. And the point is that the power of cinema in its purest form is so vast because it can go over the whole world. On a given night, a film complaint, Tokyo, West Berlin, London, New York, and the same audience is responding emotionally to the same things. Now, no other medium can do this. The theatre doesn't do it because you've got different sets of people. But remember, in a film, they're the same actors.

4:45A book is translated. How well do we know? I don't know. The risk is in translating even a film, what they call dubbing, you know. There's a lot to be a loss. And therefore, when one's thinking of a film globally, the talk is reduced to a minimum and the impossible tells the story visually and let the talk be part of the atmosphere. Originally, your films were considered genre pieces. Now, they're considered classics. Are you happy with the acceptance? Five, I think so. I think one should be flattered for that. Of course, you know, there are constant divisions of opinion among the devotees. Have you ever considered making a horror film versus a thriller?

5:39No, because it's too easy. They're their props. I believe in putting the horror in the mind of the audience and not necessarily on the screen. I once made a movie, a rather stunning sheet called Psycho. And of course, a lot of people looked at this thing and said, what a dreadful thing to do, how awful and so forth. But of course, it was to me, it had great elements of the cinema in it. The content of such was, I felt rather amusing. And it was a bit choked, you know, and I was horrified to find the some people took it seriously. It was intended to cause people to scream and yell and so forth, but no more than the screaming and yelling on the switchback railway.

6:28Now, this film had a horrible scene at the beginning of a girl being murdered in the shower. Well, I deliberately made that pretty rough. As the film developed, I put less and less physical horror into it because I was leaving that in the mind of the audience. As the film went on, there was less and less violence, but the tension in the mind of the viewer was increased considerably. I was transferring it from film into their minds. So towards the end of it, I had no violence at all. But the audience by this time was screaming in agony. Thank goodness. Do you think of your films as rollercoaster rides?

7:10Well, I'm possibly in some respects, the man who says in constructing it, how steep can we make the first dip? And this will make them scream. If you make the dip too deep, the scream will continue as the whole car goes over the edge and destroys everyone. Therefore, you mustn't go too far because you do want them to get off the switchback railway, giggling with pleasure. Like the woman who comes out of the movie, the very sentimental movie, and says, oh, I had a good cry. Now, what is a good cry as opposed to a bad cry? I don't know, but she says that. She says, and with tears rolling down her cheeks, she said, oh, it was lovely.

8:01I cried my eyes out. How would you describe a good cry versus a bad cry? Well, I think it's the, the satisfaction of temporary pain. And that's the same thing when people endure the agonies of a suspense film. When it's all over, they're relieved. That's why I once committed a grave error in having a bomb from which I extracted a great deal of suspense. And I had to then go off, which I should never have done, because they needed the relief from their suspense. Going the time for the bomb to go off is such a time that I drew this thing out and attenuated the whole business. Then somebody should sit online, good, just look, there's a bomb.

8:59I'll pay it up, sorry, down the window. BANG! But everybody's relieved. I made the mistake. I let the bomb go off and kill someone. Bad technique. Never repeated it. But sometimes bombs do go off. That probably true, probably true, after all, you know. What is reality? I don't think many people want reality. But it wasn't the theater in films. I think it was look real, but it never must be. Those realities, none of us can really stand at any time. Do you think of your films in the tradition of the adventure story? I think more than that, I think that the attack on the whole of this subject matter is strictly English.

9:56And where sometimes one gets a little, gets into difficulties with the American people, is that they want everything spelled out, you know, exactly. And they worry about content. I don't care about content at all. The film can be about anything you like. So, Lars, I'm making that audience react in a certain way to whatever I put on the screen. And if you begin to worry about the details of what are the papers about, the spies are trying to steal, well, that's a lot of them. I can't be bothered about what the papers are, what the spies. And the content pairs say, and I often run a foul of critics who criticize content instead of the technique.

10:46And the technique is the same as other storytellers. And it comes into that area, but you see the English of Walsh had a fascination for crime as such. Do you think of yourself as an expert on crime? No, no. I'm interested in, and I suppose one has a one friend of tips, who all of the tales on the famous cases of the past. And I've often used examples. In films, for example, in the film Rare Window, there are two passages in it, which come from famous English crime. Crippin' cases are used a bit of that. And the Patrick Mann case, you know, Mann, was a man who killed a girl and then cut her up into pieces and threw the flesh out of the train between Eastbourne and London.

11:37But his real problem was what to do with the head. And that's when I put in the Rare Window with a dark, sniffing the flower bed. And I remember I was making a movie years ago, and I employed as a technical advisor, a man who was one of the big forwards, Kotlin Yard, and he was on this case. And this man, Mann, didn't know what to do with the head. So he put it into the fire grate and put a fire under it. And there was a big storm going on outside. It was the crumbles of Eastbourne on the beach. And the heat, while this thunder lighting was going on, there was only every minute of dramatic. The heat under the heat caused the eyes to open.

12:23And this particular superintendent, ex -superintendant, Rouse Kotlin Yard, told me that he went to the bushes and got a sheep's head and put it in the grate to test the time it would take the burr. The man who knew too much, you first made that in Britain, and then you made it later in the States. As much more spontaneity, I suppose a more interesting job in the English period, but more calculation in the American period. That's the main difference. Have you ever made a film without considering the audience? Yes, I made one called the Trouble with Harry. Yes, a film has lost, I suppose, about a half a million dollars.

13:06So that's an expensive self -indulgence. There we come to the question of ethics, with other people's money. Did the film lose money? Well, I think it was outside the usual ram of pictures. It was an English bookstrain, trained to earn up. Although I laid it in for a month. It was a comedy of the Macarpe, typically English, the approach to a person who lives in English. Harry was a corpse, wasn't he? The little man, played by Edmund Gwen, thought while shooting rabbits, he was responsible for the man's death. And if he found out that he wasn't responsible, so he dug it up again. And then someone else came along, and they had to reason why the man should have been baritaded, barred again.

13:55So the whole film was the barring and pull it out of this poor body. It was rather amusing, but I'm afraid that the exhibited, certain people who run cinemas, and those people who distribute films, my natural enemies, couldn't see it as a contraction for the public.

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15:24Upon entering, experience the artwork of the day. Take a breath, and see where you are drawn.

15:44What are you most afraid of? I'm scared of policemen. I never drive a car on the theory that if you don't drive a car, you can't get a ticket. I'm scared, Tetra, anything to do with the law, although I'm fascinated by it, but I would hate to be involved myself. Why do you think that is? I'm coward, I suppose. What frightens you about policemen? Well, that's a thing you seem most people think that I am because of the material in which I indulge a perfective. But I must be a monster, but I'm just the opposite to that. I'm very placid, calm, individual, and I am scared of getting into any difficulty.

16:40Somebody won't say to me, what is your idea of happiness? I said, a clear horizon. Not even that horizon with a tiny cloud, no bigger than a man's fist. It has to be absolutely clear. Ingrid Bergman once said to me, she said the trouble with her charity won't have a fight, because I walked out on her when she was bickering about something on the set. And I just walked away and when I ate with Tanji and he got back, I wasn't there. What could a policeman do that would frighten you? Well, he could charge me with some offense, like parking, and then I would get a ticket. And that would scare me. I would light the band in that old legion.

17:41It was an old musical sketch. Apparently, he quarreled with the policeman. The fine would have been $2. And then in doing so, he hit the policeman. Now it was assault. And then from that, he was moved to the jail. And then he got into trouble with another prisoner. And he attacked him and there was a fight. And eventually this prisoner was killed. And I was arrested from murder, tried, and was on the other way to the electric chair. And a policeman could say, come with me and he wouldn't have much choice. Well, my stomach would turn over. A joke was played upon me and I knocked it in. It did scare me.

18:39I did it interview many years ago in New York. And I sat in the little studio and there was an empty chair opposite me and sat on it. A policeman came in and sat in the chair and scared the hell out of me. He said, may I see your license? I said, I didn't have one. And he did it as a cat, but it worked. Do you think religion has played any role in your work? I wouldn't say so now. But I would say that the Jesuit training, I believe, gives you a sort of clarity of mind, a reasoning power. You realize it while you're being taught a young boy, but that's what they're doing to you. Did you learn Latin?

19:30Oh, yes. I know you had to learn all that and the abyss of absolute. And remember that. You know, I saw a terrible thing once. I knocked it in a French magazine. And it was one of those satirical French magazines and there was a picture of God sitting on a cloud, a bearded old gentleman. And just slowly coming up through the clouds was the figure of Christ with hands held out and the world would gone expression with holes in each hand. He's looking up to his father and God is pushing his tongue up at him. He said, there you see, I told you not to go down that. Religion seems to come under a lot of fire these days.

20:22Come, Rack, come, Rope. That's what they used to say in the days of the inquisition. How would you describe your demeanor on set compared to other directors? Well, first of all, I'll take an interesting thing. I've only been on another set once in my whole career. And that's when I first came to Hollywood to sign up with Selzn. And I was given a lunch at Paramount Studios and shown around the studios. But I've never been on another set. I've never seen another director of work. Just saw this one director. I was astonished to find he was addressing everyone through a public address system. Now I've heard about directors and how they behave.

21:16And the only thing I could say about it was who seemed to me, all the drama is on the set and none on the screen. Now it's been said to me that they don't know when I'm directing. Well, I don't direct you see, because I discuss it with the actor or actress in the dressing room. What are the kind of things that get to you that bug you? I hate to see a scene with a pouring wine out of the wrong bottle. All those details, it's the details about them. How's your experience of media today? Years and years ago there wasn't any television, there wasn't any radio. And there were just newspapers and there were very dull looking newspapers.

22:04I had a friend and editor of the London Daily Express who invented the new front page layouts with headlines all over it. But the main thing was to give a big headline to every piece. And in those days years ago, if you look at a paper say like the Kansas City star, it has a little headline at the top and a long column of print. There wasn't a communication you see, but today people have it thrown at them from all sides. It seems like communication is a good thing, no? Well, because you've got the situation of people copying what they see. You know, we're here of Burley, the influence of crime being copied.

23:01You know, I, although I deal in the same thing myself, I only regret one thing that I, within a film, that was copied. And that was foreign correspondent, the picture I made at the Goldwyn Studios here. Very elaborate film, very big film. And in it, I had a big scene lady, Namsteadam, with a politician and an important politician on the top step. And the whole thing was massive umbrellas, trolley cars, the center of the city. And a cameraman came along and set the policy on your picture, please, you know, that, be the camera in those days. They had a gun in the right hand and it took the picture, but it shot the gun.

23:57And assassinated this politician. And I heard it was done in terror hand two years later. So you feel like your movie had an unintended consequence? Yes, I think that's one of those things. One of those things, after all, bad news isn't used. Good news is not not interesting. You'll find that in all newspapers. I only bad news. Almost all stories are pitting good versus bad. People find those stories appealing. Well, appealing because it's like audiences, say, watching one of my pictures and they get scared and so forth. But they feel comfortable because it's there for the grace of God. Go high.

24:52Because they look at the man in the bad situation and they say, my God, thank God that's not me. Do you think that audiences have ideas about who you are based on the kind of stories you tell? That's the whole thing I was saying to you earlier, is that people think that one is a monster and they relate me to my material. Well, you do carry yourself with a certain gravitas. I wouldn't look at that way. And the strange thing is that whether people have become more unsophisticated, but I used to indulge very much in practical jokes. I was very high older. I used to have great pleasure from them. I remember once it chastened when Dave Chastened, his restaurant had a garden at the back.

25:49I gave a birthday party for my wife and just to live in it, I engaged from central costume and aristocratic old lady. I had a dress for the studio, hair beautifully done and sat at the end of the table and then disowned her. Against the ride by, I said, who's the old lady? I said, no, I'm trying to find out. The only person in the secret of my wife and Dave Chastened and every person arrived and said, they looked around and said, I said, who's the old lady? I went to try it out with Dave Chastened when he comes off and they were over. So Chastened came back and came out eventually and I said, Dave, this is the old lady sitting at the back.

26:39At the end of the table there, back to the garden, I was going to see her when they bent over a sill. A few words and came back and said, she said, she's with Mrs. Edge, she's called Barbie. I said, this nonsense. I've never seen the woman before in my life. She sat there the whole evening and got stiff and bewildered everyone. That sort of joke that amuses me. I once gave a dinner in London and I had two or three important guests, I gotty Laurence, got her Laurence. I said, Gerald Dumarie, that's the father of that big Dumarie who was leading act from the London stage at the time. At Turkey, other people.

27:29All the dinner was blue. Every day it was blue. The food was blue? The soup was blue. The trout was blue. We told Gerald Dumarie that it was going to be fancy dress so he came with a scotsman and nobody else was. We got him in some different clothes later. Those some jokes I used to enjoy. Talking about bringing someone in and telling them to get a fancy dress and then it's just the opposite. It reminded me of the man invited to a new party. He arrived and the woman he showed him into a room or a bar that where the people's clothes and stuff. The dress and was completely nude and entered the living room and everybody was dressed.

28:21I wouldn't perpetrate that one on anyone. That sounds rather brutal. No, no, no. That way. Tell me about Cuckney rhyming slang. Rhyming slang. Like how the raspberry got its name. Rhyming slang really goes back to almost nearly to Elizabeth's days. It goes back very, very early. It's a jargon used by traders so they can communicate with each other without the customer understanding. Now for the armoured, the gyrism is not rhyming thing. Stairs. One of those famous is stairs. You don't say stairs. You say apples and pears. Me as apples and pears. And then with the usage, the rhyme gets lost. Going up to bed, unconead.

29:15The wife is called the trouble of the stripe. Sister is skin and blister. Was this originally used as a code or a secret language? Yeah, that was the Ilappal City, a origin of it. Way back. And over many examples, you know, I suppose that's the nose. Minced pies, other eyes, North and South, a mouth. And German bands. I had an actress once say to me in London. She said, um, half a cup while I went with my German, would you? What does that mean? She said, half a cup while I went with my Germans. She wanted to go to the toilet. We're just in poliding, which is I'm going to wash my hands. Half a cup in it.

30:07Let's min it. While I lemon squash, which is washed, my hands were just German bands. In those days, in Victorian times, I had these little German bands on street corners, you know, for the name of the hat. Do people still use that language? Oh, all the time, yes. Really? Yes. I remember walking on the set Monday and then she'd be electrician and said to me, I got a nut pair of almonds. You've got almonds. Well, there's a sweet meat in England called almond rock. It's just a lot of almonds in candy, you know, all stuck together. But almond rock, it's for socks, you know? And one day another actor said to me, out loud, best child was born.

30:52He said, how's the gutful? Godful? Godful. So I didn't know what he said. So later on, I said to someone, would he be now the gut? Or he's saying, how is your child? How is the Godful bid? Well, she's rhyming slang for kid, but he only said Godful. He did him say Godful bid. By taking the rhyme away, it makes it harder to decode. Oh, it would be just kind of amateurish. It's corny just to use all rhyme. So you don't want to tell us raspberry? No, no raspberry is, is raspberry top at all. Where's the line not to cross? Where's going too far in the movie? Well, what turns me off of what I call orange wrestling matches in bed?

31:46You see that all the time, you know? It's a cliché, you know, they shoot past the man, the shoulder, leaning over the gun in bed. And you know, it's just unnecessary. I think it's cheap and bold. I used it in the last picture, but then very sparingly, which I'm a friend of. I had to show new to Tia a couple of times, but it was very important to the scene to show these couple of cuts anyway. But normally, just showing me just a little sake of showing it on his bad taste and unnecessary. So new to D's not a problem? No. Are there any crimes that you'd prefer not to show in movies? I've never made movies about professional criminal or cops.

32:44If you'll notice, if you look back over the films that I've made, generally speaking, they're about ordinary people in bizarre situations. That's all lessons. The movie I made like, a North Binoles West carried crime. It's an ordinary businessman, gets mistaken for a spy. And of course, he goes through the most bizarre experiences. Well, they didn't even have the audience to identify themselves. Much more closely with the individual. They can't identify them with the problem of the cop. They look at it objectively. They can't identify them with the necessary, with the criminal. Unless there's an intense interest such as I was in the map, in the Godfather.