Name	Notorious
Caption	Theatrical poster
Director	Alfred Hitchcock
Producer	Alfred Hitchcock
Writer	Ben Hecht
Starring	Cary GrantIngrid BergmanClaude Rains
Music	Roy Webb
Cinematography	Ted Tetzlaff
Editing	Theron Warth
Studio	RKO Radio Pictures
Distributor	RKO Radio Pictures
Released	August 15, 1946 (NY)
Runtime	101 minutes
Country	United States
Language	English
Budget	$2,000,000 (estimated)

Notorious is a 1946 American thriller film directed and produced by Alfred Hitchcock, starring Cary Grant, Ingrid Bergman and Claude Rains as three people whose lives become intimately entangled during an espionage operation. It was shot in late 1945 and early 1946 and was released by RKO in August 1946.

Notorious marks a watershed for Hitchcock artistically and represents a heightened thematic maturity; his biographer, Donald Spoto, writes that "Notorious is in fact Alfred Hitchcock's first attempt—at the age of forty-six—to bring his talents to the creation of a serious love story, and its story of two men in love with Ingrid Bergman could only have been made at this stage of his life."

The film is known for two scenes in particular. In one of his most famous shots, Hitchcock starts wide and high, on a second floor balcony overlooking the great hall of a grand mansion; slowly he tracks down and in on Ingrid Bergman, finally ending with a tight close-up of a key tucked in her hand. So arresting is the shot that an outline of the key became a graphic element in the film's promotional material. Hitchcock also devised "a celebrated scene" that circumvented the Production Code's ban on kisses longer than three seconds—by having his actors disengage every three seconds, murmur and nuzzle each other, then start right back up again. The two-and-a-half minute osculation is "perhaps his most intimate and erotic kiss."

Plot

and Ingrid Bergman on a plane to Rio de Janeiro]]

Alicia Huberman (Ingrid Bergman), the American daughter of a convicted Nazi spy, is recruited by government agent T. R. Devlin (Cary Grant) to infiltrate an organization of Nazis who have relocated to Brazil after World War II.

While awaiting the details of her assignment in Rio de Janeiro, they fall in love, though his feelings are complicated by his knowledge of her wild past. When Devlin is ordered to persuade her to seduce Alex Sebastian (Claude Rains), one of her father's friends and a leading member of the group, Devlin tries to convince his superiors that Alicia is not fit for the job, without success. He puts up a stoic front when he informs Alicia about the mission, choosing duty over love. Alicia concludes that he was merely pretending to love her as part of his job.

They contrive to have her meet Sebastian and renew their acquaintance. At a dinner, Alicia witnesses an odd incident; a guest becomes hysterical at the sight of several wine bottles on a sideboard and is ushered quickly from the room.

Sebastian quickly renews his ardor for her, and soon Alica reports to Devlin, "you can add Sebastian's name to my list of playmates." When Sebastian proposes, Alicia informs Devlin, hoping he will finally erupt, but the agent coldly tells her to do whatever she wants; stung, she marries Sebastian.

When she returns from her honeymoon, Alicia is hard-pressed to find anything amiss in her new home; the only thing she can relate to Devlin is that the key ring her husband gave her is short a key, the one to the wine cellar. That and the bottle episode at the dinner lead Devlin to urge Alicia to hold a grand party. The night of the affair, Alicia secretly steals the key from Sebastian’s ring, and the two slip away to the cellar. By chance, Devlin accidentally breaks a bottle. Inside they find not wine, but a black sand (which later analysis shows to be uranium). He takes a sample, cleans up, and locks the door just as Sebastian comes down for more champagne. Alicia and Devlin kiss to cover their tracks. Devlin feigns drunkenness and makes an exit, but Sebastian remains suspicious. When he comes back later, he finds glass and sand pushed under a rack.

Now Alex has a problem: he must silence Alicia, but cannot expose her without revealing his blunder to his unforgiving fellow Nazis. Sebastian discusses the situation with his mother (Leopoldine Konstantin). She suggests that Alicia "die slowly" by poisoning. They introduce poison into Alicia's coffee; she quickly falls ill and soon is bedridden.

Devlin becomes alarmed when she fails to appear at their next rendezvous. He sneaks into Alicia's quarters, where she tells him that Sebastian and his mother are poisoning her. After confessing his love for her, Devlin carries her out of the mansion in full view of Sebastian's Nazi cabal. Sebastian begs to go with them, but Devlin and Alicia drive away, leaving Sebastian to face his Nazi cohorts.

Cast

Cary Grant as T.R. Devlin

Ingrid Bergman as Miss Alicia Huberman

Claude Rains as Alexander Sebastian

Leopoldine Konstantin as Madame Anna Sebastian

Louis Calhern as Captain Paul Prescott, an officer of the US Secret Service

Moroni Olsen as Walter Beardsley, another Secret Service officer

Ricardo Costa as Dr. Julio Barbosa

Reinhold Schünzel as Dr. Anderson, a Nazi conspirator

Ivan Triesault as Eric Mathis, a Nazi conspirator

Eberhard Krumschmidt as Emil Hupka, a Nazi conspirator

Alex Minotis as Joseph, Sebastian's butler

Wally Brown as Mr. Hopkins

Sir Charles Mendl as Commodore

Fay Baker as Ethel

Cast notes

Biographer Patrick McGilligan writes that "Hitchcock rarely managed to pull together a dream cast for any of his 1940s films, but Notorious was a glorious exception." Indeed, with a story of smuggled A-bomb uranium as a backdrop, "[t]he romantic pairing of Grant and Bergman promised a box office bang comparable to an atomic blast."

Not everyone saw it that way, however, most notably the project's original producer David O. Selznick. After he sold the property to RKO to raise some quick cash, Selznick lobbied hard to get Grant replaced with Joseph Cotten; the United States had just dropped A-bombs on Japan and Selznick argued that the first film out about atomic weaponry would be the big winner—and Grant wasn't available for three months. Unsaid was that Selznick was leery of Grant because he "would come with ego and salary demands," but most telling of all—Selznick owned Cotten's contract. Hitchcock and RKO production executive William Dozier invoked a clause in the project sale contract, blocked Selznick's attempts, and Grant was signed to play opposite Bergman by late August 1945.

But wrong as Selznick was in trying to ease Grant out, he was very much right about a different casting decision: Hitchcock "had oddly wanted the epicene Clifton Webb" to play Alexander Sebastian. Selznick pressed for Claude Rains in typical Selznick memo-heavy style: "Rains offers 'an opportunity to build the gross of Notorious enormously... .[D]o not lose a day trying to get the Rains' deal nailed down.'" Whether they were thinking in Selznick's box office terms or in more artistic ones, Dozier and Hitchcock agreed, and Rains's performance transforms Sebastian into a classic Hitchcock villain: sympathetic, nuanced, in some ways as admirable as the protagonist. Hitchcock continued his conversation a few weeks later, this time dining at Chasen's with William Dozier, an RKO producer, and pitching it as "the story of a woman sold for political purposes into sexual enslavement." By this time, he had one of the single-word titles he preferred: Notorious. The pitch was convincing: Dozier quickly entered into talks with Selznick, offering to buy the property and its personnel for production at RKO.

Dozier's interest rekindled Selznick's, which up to that point had only been tepid. Perhaps what started Hitchcock's mind rolling was "The Song of the Dragon", a short story by John Taintor Foote which had appeared as a two-part serial in the Saturday Evening Post in November 1921; Selznick, who owned the rights to it, had passed it on to Hitchcock from his unproduced story file during the filming of Spellbound. Set during World War I in New York, "The Song of the Dragon" told the tale of a theatrical producer approached by federal agents, who want his assistance in recruiting an actress he once had a relationship with to seduce the leader of a gang of enemy saboteurs. Although the story was a nominal starting point that "offered some inspiration, the final narrative was pure Hitchcock."

Hitchcock travelled to England for Christmas 1944, and when he returned, he had an outline for Selznick's perusal. to both Hecht's and Hitchcock's profound annoyance. The two would dine at Romanoff's and "pool their defenses about what Hitchcock thought was a first class script." In the event, the dropping of the atomic bomb on Hiroshima on August 6, 1945, and the release of details of the Manhattan Project, removed any doubts about its use.

By June 1945, Notorious reached its turning point. Selznick "was losing faith in a film that never really interested him"; the MacGuffin still bothered him, as did the Devlin character, and he worried that audiences would dislike the Alicia character. He also got to be his own producer for the first time, an important step for him: "supervising everything from the polishing of the script to the negotiation of myriad post-production details, the director could demonstrate to the industry at large his skill as an executive." When the United States detonated two atomic bombs over Japan in August, the memos commenced anew and centered mainly on Selznick's continuing dissatisfaction with the script. Hitchcock was abroad, Ben Hecht's appraisal, handwritten in the margin, was straightforward: "This is really loose crap."

What he did have in his hand, though, was the script for "...a consummate Hitchcock film, in every sense filled with passion and textures and levels of meaning."

Production

Principal photography for Notorious began on October 22, 1945 The only scene requiring outdoor filming was at the riding club where Devlin and Alicia contrive to meet Alexander Sebastian on horseback; this scene was shot at the Los Angeles County Arboretum and Botanic Garden in Arcadia, California. Second unit crews shot establishing exteriors and rear-projection footage in Miami, Rio de Janeiro and at the Santa Anita Park racetrack.

With everything stage-bound, production was smooth and problems were few, and small—for instance, Claude Rains, who stood three or four inches shorter than Ingrid Bergman. He also suggested Rains try elevator shoes: "Walk in them, sleep in them, be comfortable in them."

Although the production proceeded smoothly, it was not without its unusual aspects. The first was the helpfulness of Cary Grant toward Ingrid Bergman, in a way that "was remarkably calm and pointedly unusual for him." Although this was Bergman's second outing with Hitchcock (the first was the just-finished Spellbound), she was nervous and insecure early on. The often moody, sometimes withdrawn Grant, though, "came to Notorious full of bounce" As a result of this sympatico, and "to accomplish the deepest logic of Notorious, Hitchcock did something unprecedented in his career: he made Ingrid his closest collaborator on the picture":

Music

The music for Notorious is the least celebrated of the major Hitchcock scores, writes film scholar Jack Sullivan, one that few writers or fans talk about. "The neglect is unfortunate, for Roy Webb composed one of the most deftly designed scores of any Hitchcock film. It weaves a unique spell, one Hitchcock had not conjured before, and the hip, swingy source music is novel as well."

The composer was Roy Webb, a staff composer at RKO, who had most recently scored the dark films of director Val Lewton for that studio. He wrote the fight song for Columbia University while he was there in the 1920s, then served as assistant to film composer Max Steiner until 1935; his reputation was "reliable but unglamorous." Hitchcock had tried to get Bernard Herrmann for Notorious, but Herrmann was unavailable; Webb too was a Herrmann fan: "Benny writes the best music in Hollywood, with the fewest notes," he said.

Before the sale of the property to RKO, Selznick attempted, with typical Selznick gusto, to steer the course of the music. He was miffed that no hit pop song had come out of his previous Hitchcock picture Spellbound, so he considered eighteen "gooey, sentimental songs" Notorious was, however, their only film together.

Alicia and Devlin fall quickly in love once they arrive in Rio, and Webb uses tambourines, guitars, drums and Brazilian trumpets swinging into Brazilian dance music to provide "sensuous foreplay for the tumultuous love affair." Numbers include "Carnaval no Rio", "Meu Barco", "Guanabara" and two sambas "Ya Ya Me Leva" and "Bright Samba". Yet understatement and atypical use are everywhere:

Often, Webb and Hitchcock use no music at all to undergird a romantic scene. The famous two-and-a-half minute non-kiss kiss begins with distant music when it commences out on the balcony, but goes silent when the couple move inside "to their private world, imparting an austere eroticism as the camera glides with them." Other times, they flout conventional wisdom: when Alicia asks the band to stop playing stuffy waltzes and liven things up with Brazilian music to cover her trip to the wine cellar with Devlin, "Hitchcock takes the risk of relying entirely on Latin dance tunes rather than on a suspense cue." T. R. Devlin is a long time finding his trust, while Alexander Sebastian offers his up easily—and ultimately pays a big price for it. Likewise, the film addresses "a twofold redemption: a woman's need to be trusted and loved, which will enable her to transcend a life that has become empty of affection and riddled with guilt; and a man's need to open himself to love, which will enable him to overcome a life full of severe repression." At the same time, he blurred mother-love with erotic love and poignantly, in both the film and in its director's life, "both kinds of love were in fact limited to longing and fantasy and unfulfilled expectations." then drinking becomes even more dangerous as the Sebastians administer their poison through Alicia's coffee. Even the MacGuffin comes packaged in a wine bottle. "All the drinking is valueless and finally dangerous."

Critics embraced the film. Writing in The New York Times, critic Bosley Crowther praised the film, writing "Mr. Hecht has written and Mr. Hitchcock has directed in brilliant style a romantic melodrama which is just about as thrilling as they come—velvet smooth in dramatic action, sharp and sure in its characters and heavily charged with the intensity of warm emotional appeal." The usually terse critic Leslie Halliwell almost glowed when it came to Notorious: "Superb romantic suspenser containing some of Hitchcock's best work." Decades later, film critic Roger Ebert also praised the film, adding it to his "Great Movies" list and calling it "the most elegant expression of the master's visual style." On the website Rotten Tomatoes, the film has an overall positive rating of 97%, based on 29 reviews.

The review that would have pleased Hitchcock the most came from perhaps his favorite critic, daughter Patricia Hitchcock O'Connell. Notorious is her favorite of her father's pictures. "What a perfect film!" she told biographer Charlotte Chandler. "The more I see Notorious, the more I like it."

The film was entered into the 1946 Cannes Film Festival.

Claude Rains was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor, and Ben Hecht was nominated for an Academy Award for Writing Original Screenplay.

In 2006, the film was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant".

Adaptations

A Lux Radio Theater adaptation was broadcast on January 26, 1948, with Ingrid Bergman reprising her role as Alicia Huberman and Joseph Cotten taking Cary Grant's role of T. R. Devlin. Another radio adaptation was produced for The Screen Guild Theater, again starring Ingrid Bergman, although this time with John Hodiak, and was broadcast on January 6, 1949.

It was remade in 1992 as a TV movie of the same name, with John Shea as Devlin, Jenny Robertson as Alicia, Jean-Pierre Cassel as Sebastian, and Marisa Berenson as Katarina.

In the animated television series the season two episode Senate Spy is almost a line for line adaptation of Notorious, even going so far as to frame the final shot of the episode the same way as the movie.

Mission Impossible II is a remake of Notorious; a deadly virus is used instead of the uranium, and there is an action-packed facade, but the core story, many of the scenes, and some of the dialogue from Notorious were used.

Freddy Blohm's song "Rio Blues" tells the story, grimly, from Sebastian's point of view.

Tribute to Hitchcock

On March 7, 1979, the American Film Institute honored Hitchcock with its Life Achievement Award. At the tribute dinner, Ingrid Bergman presented him with the prop key to the wine cellar that was the single most notable prop in Notorious. After filming had ended, Cary Grant had kept the key. A few years later he gave it to Bergman, saying that it had given him luck and hoped it would do the same for her. When presenting the key to Hitchcock, to his surprise and delight, she expressed the hope that it would be lucky for him as well.

References

Notes

Bibliography

Brown, Curtis F. The Pictorial History of Film Stars - Ingrid Bergman. New York: Galahad Books, 1973. ISBN 0-88365-164-5, p. 76-81

Humphries, Patrick. The Films of Alfred Hitchcock. Crescent Books, a Random House company, 1994 revised edition. ISBN 0-517-10292-7, p. 88-93

External links

Notorious essay at the Criterion Collection by William Rothman

Notorious radio adaptation on MP3 aired January 26, 1948 on Lux Radio Theatre (59 minutes, with Ingrid Bergman and Joseph Cotten)

Reprints of historic reviews, photo gallery at CaryGrant.net

A film review of Notorious

Category:1940s romance films Category:1940s thriller films Category:1946 films Category:American films Category:Black-and-white films Category:English-language films Category:Films directed by Alfred Hitchcock Category:Political thriller films Category:RKO films Category:American spy films Category:United States National Film Registry films Category:Films set in Rio de Janeiro

Name	Alfred Joseph Hitchcock
Caption	Alfred Hitchcock by Jack Mitchell
Birth name	Alfred Joseph Hitchcock
Birth date	August 13, 1899
Birth place	Leytonstone, London, England
Death date	April 29, 1980
Death place	Bel Air, Los Angeles, California, United States
Other names	HitchThe Master of Suspense
Occupation	Film director
Years active	1921–1976
Spouse	Alma Reville (1926–1980; his death)
Website	}}

Sir Alfred Joseph Hitchcock, KBE (13 August 1899 – 29 April 1980) was a British film director and producer. He pioneered many techniques in the suspense and psychological thriller genres. After a successful career in his native United Kingdom in both silent films and early talkies, Hitchcock moved to Hollywood. In 1956 he became an American citizen while remaining a British subject.

Over a career spanning more than half a century, Hitchcock fashioned for himself a distinctive and recognizable directorial style. He pioneered the use of a camera made to move in a way that mimics a person's gaze, forcing viewers to engage in a form of voyeurism. He framed shots to maximize anxiety, fear, or empathy, and used innovative film editing. Many of Hitchcock's films have twist endings and thrilling plots featuring depictions of violence, murder, and crime, although many of the mysteries function as decoys or "MacGuffins" meant only to serve thematic elements in the film and the extremely complex psychological examinations of the characters. Hitchcock's films also borrow many themes from psychoanalysis and feature strong sexual undertones. Through his cameo appearances in his own films, interviews, film trailers, and the television program Alfred Hitchcock Presents, he became a cultural icon.

Hitchcock directed more than fifty feature films in a career spanning six decades. Often regarded as the greatest British filmmaker, he came first in a 2007 poll of film critics in Britain's Daily Telegraph, which said: "Unquestionably the greatest filmmaker to emerge from these islands, Hitchcock did more than any director to shape modern cinema, which would be utterly different without him. His flair was for narrative, cruelly withholding crucial information (from his characters and from us) and engaging the emotions of the audience like no one else." The magazine MovieMaker has described him as the most influential filmmaker of all-time, and he is widely regarded as one of cinema's most significant artists.

Hitchcock's life

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Hitchcock was born on 13 August 1899 in Leytonstone, London, the second son and youngest of three children of William Hitchcock (1862–1914), a greengrocer and poulterer, and Emma Jane Hitchcock (née Whelan; 1863–1942). He was named after his father's brother, Alfred. Hitchcock was raised Catholic and was sent to the Jesuit Classic school St Ignatius' College in Stamford Hill, London. His mother and paternal grandmother were of Irish extraction. He often described his childhood as being very lonely and sheltered, a situation compounded by his obesity.

Hitchcock said he was sent by his father to the local police station with a note asking the officer to lock him away for ten minutes as punishment for behaving badly. This idea of being harshly treated or wrongfully accused is frequently reflected in Hitchcock's films. Hitchcock's mother would often make him address her while standing at the foot of her bed, especially if he behaved badly, forcing him to stand there for hours. These experiences would later be used for the portrayal of the character of Norman Bates in his movie Psycho.

Hitchcock's father died when he was 14. In the same year, Hitchcock left St. Ignatius to study at the London County Council School of Engineering and Navigation in Poplar, London. After graduating, he became a draftsman and advertising designer with a cable company called Henley's.

It was while working at Henley's that he first started to dabble creatively. Upon the formation of the company's in-house publication The Henley Telegraph in 1919, Hitchcock started to submit short articles, eventually becoming one of its most prolific contributors. His first piece was Gas (1919), published in the very first issue, in which a young woman imagines that she is being assaulted one night in Paris - only for the twist to reveal that it was all just a hallucination in the dentist's chair, induced by the anesthetic. His second piece was The Woman's Part (1919), which involves the conflicted emotions a husband feels as he watches his wife, an actress, perform onstage. Sordid (1920) surrounds an attempt to buy a sword from an antiques dealer, with another twist ending. The short story And There Was No Rainbow (1920) was Hitchcock's first brush with possibly censurable material. A young man goes out looking for a brothel, only to stumble into the house of his best friend's girl. What's Who? (1920), while being very funny, was also a precursor to the famous Abbott and Costello "Who's on First?" routine. The History of Pea Eating (1920) was a satirical disquisition on the various attempts mankind has made over the centuries to eat peas successfully. His final piece, Fedora (1921), was his shortest and most enigmatic contribution. It also gave a strikingly accurate description of his future wife, Alma (whom he had not met yet).

During this period, Hitchcock became intrigued by photography and started working in film production in London, working as a title-card designer for the London branch of what would become Paramount Pictures. In 1920, he received a full-time position at Islington Studios with its American owner, Famous Players-Lasky and their British successor, Gainsborough Pictures, designing the titles for silent movies. His rise from title designer to film director took five years.

Pre-war British career

Hitchcock's last collaboration with Graham Cutts led him to Germany in 1924. The film Die Prinzessin und der Geiger (UK title The Blackguard, 1925), directed by Cutts and co-written by Hitchcock, was produced in the Babelsberg Studios in Potsdam near Berlin. Hitchcock also observed part of the making of F. W. Murnau's film Der letzte Mann (1924). He was very impressed with Murnau's work and later used many techniques for the set design in his own productions. In his book-length interview with François Truffaut, Hitchcock/Truffaut (Simon and Schuster, 1967), Hitchcock also said he was influenced by Fritz Lang's film Destiny (1921).

Hitchcock's first few films faced a string of bad luck. His first directing project came in 1922 with the aptly titled Number 13. However, the production was canceled due to financial problems of Gainsborough Pictures gave Hitchcock another opportunity for a directing credit with The Pleasure Garden made at UFA Studios in Germany; unfortunately, the film was a commercial flop. Next, Hitchcock directed a drama called The Mountain Eagle (possibly released under the title Fear o' God in the United States). This film was also eventually lost. In 1926, Hitchcock's luck changed with his first thriller, . The film, released in January 1927, was a major commercial and critical success in the United Kingdom. As with many of his earlier works, this film was influenced by Expressionist techniques Hitchcock had witnessed first-hand in Germany. Some commentators regard this piece as the first truly "Hitchcockian" film, incorporating such themes as the "wrong man".

Following the success of The Lodger, Hitchcock hired a publicist to help enhance his growing reputation. On 2 December 1926, Hitchcock married his assistant director, Alma Reville at the Brompton Oratory in South Kensington. Their only child, daughter Patricia, was born on July 7, 1928. Alma was to become Hitchcock's closest collaborator. Alma's contribution to his films (some of which were credited on screen) had always been privately acknowledged by Hitchcock, as she was keen to avoid public attention.

In 1929, Hitchcock began work on his tenth film Blackmail. While the film was still in production, the studio, British International Pictures (BIP), decided to convert it to sound. As an early '', the film is frequently cited by film historians as a landmark film, and is often considered to be the first British sound feature film. With the climax of the film taking place on the dome of the British Museum, Blackmail began the Hitchcock tradition of using famous landmarks as a backdrop for suspense sequences. In the PBS series The Men Who Made The Movies, Hitchcock explained how he used early sound recording as a special element of the film, emphasising the word "knife" in a conversation with the woman suspected of murder. During this period, Hitchcock directed segments for a BIP musical film revue Elstree Calling (1930) and directed a short film featuring two Film Weekly scholarship winners, An Elastic Affair (1930). Another BIP musical revue, Harmony Heaven (1929), reportedly had minor input from Hitchcock, but his name does not appear in the credits.

In 1933, Hitchcock was once again working for Michael Balcon His first film for the company, The Man Who Knew Too Much (1934), was a success and his second, The 39 Steps (1935), is often considered one of the best films from his early period. This film was also one of the first to introduce the concept of the "MacGuffin", a plot device around which a whole story seems to revolve, but ultimately has nothing to do with the true meaning or ending of the story. In The 39 Steps, the Macguffin is a stolen set of design plans. Hitchcock told French director François Truffaut:

There are two men sitting in a train going to Scotland and one man says to the other, "Excuse me, sir, but what is that strange parcel you have on the luggage rack above you?", "Oh", says the other, "that's a Macguffin.", "Well", says the first man, "what's a Macguffin?", The other answers, "It's an apparatus for trapping lions in the Scottish Highlands.", "But", says the first man, "there are no lions in the Scottish Highlands.", "Well", says the other, "then that's no Macguffin."

Hitchcock's next major success was his 1938 film The Lady Vanishes, a fast-paced film about the search for a kindly old Englishwoman Miss Froy (Dame May Whitty), who disappears while on board a train in the fictional country of Bandrika.

By 1938, Hitchcock had become known for his alleged observation, "Actors are cattle". He once said that he first made this remark as early as the late 1920s, in connection to stage actors who were snobbish about motion pictures. However, Michael Redgrave said that Hitchcock had made the statement during the filming of The Lady Vanishes. The phrase would haunt Hitchcock for years to come and would result in an incident during the filming of his 1941 production of Mr. & Mrs. Smith, where Carole Lombard brought some heifers onto the set with name tags of Lombard, Robert Montgomery, and Gene Raymond, the stars of the film, to surprise the director. Hitchcock said he was misquoted: "I said 'Actors should be treated like cattle'."

At the end of the 1930s, David O. Selznick signed Hitchcock to a seven-year contract beginning in March 1939, when the Hitchcocks moved to the United States.

Hollywood

The suspense and the gallows humour that had become Hitchcock's trademark in film continued to appear in his productions. The working arrangements with Selznick were less than optimal. Selznick suffered from perennial money problems, and Hitchcock was often displeased with Selznick's creative control over his films. In a later interview, Hitchcock summarised the working relationship thus:

[Selznick] was the Big Producer. [...] Producer was king, The most flattering thing Mr. Selznick ever said about me—and it shows you the amount of control—he said I was the "only director" he'd "trust with a film".

Selznick loaned Hitchcock to the larger studios more often than producing Hitchcock's films himself. In addition, Selznick, as well as fellow independent producer Samuel Goldwyn, made only a few films each year, so Selznick did not always have projects for Hitchcock to direct. Goldwyn had also negotiated with Hitchcock on a possible contract, only to be outbid by Selznick. Hitchcock was quickly impressed with the superior resources of the American studios compared to the financial restrictions he had frequently encountered in England.

Hitchcock's fondness for his homeland resulted in numerous American films set in, or filmed in, the United Kingdom, including his penultimate film, Frenzy.

With the prestigious Selznick picture Rebecca in 1940, Hitchcock made his first American movie, set in England and based on a novel by English author Daphne du Maurier. The film starred Laurence Olivier and Joan Fontaine. This Gothic melodrama explores the fears of a naive young bride who enters a great English country home and must adapt to the extreme formality and coldness she finds there. The film won the Academy Award for Best Picture of 1940. The statuette was given to Selznick, as the film's producer. Rebecca was the fourth longest of Hitchcock's films, at 130 minutes, exceeded only by The Paradine Case (132 minutes), North by Northwest (136 minutes), and Topaz (142 minutes).

Hitchcock's second American film, the European-set thriller Foreign Correspondent (1940), based on Vincent Sheean's Personal History and produced by Walter Wanger, was nominated for Best Picture that year. The movie was filmed in the first year of World War II and was apparently inspired by the rapidly changing events in Europe, as fictionally covered by an American newspaper reporter portrayed by Joel McCrea. The film mixed actual footage of European scenes and scenes filmed on a Hollywood back lot. In compliance with Hollywood's Production Code censorship, the film avoided direct references to Germany and Germans.

1940s films

and Ingrid Bergman in Notorious (1946)]] Hitchcock's films during the 1940s were diverse, ranging from the romantic comedy Mr. & Mrs. Smith (1941) to the courtroom drama The Paradine Case (1947), to the dark and disturbing film noir Shadow of a Doubt (1943).

In September 1940, the Hitchcocks purchased the Cornwall Ranch, located near Scotts Valley in the Santa Cruz Mountains. The ranch became the primary residence of the Hitchcocks for the rest of their lives, although they kept their Bel Air home. Suspicion (1941) marked Hitchcock's first film as a producer as well as director. Hitchcock used the north coast of Santa Cruz, California for the English coastline sequence. won Best Actress Oscar for her "outstanding performance in Suspicion". "Grant plays an irresponsible husband whose actions raise suspicion and anxiety in his wife (Fontaine)". In what critics regard as a classic scene, Hitchcock uses a light bulb to illuminate what might be a fatal glass of milk that Grant is bringing to his wife. In the book the movie is based on (Before the Fact by Francis Iles), the Grant character is a killer, but Hitchcock and the studio felt Grant's image would be tarnished by that ending. Though a homicide would have suited him better, as he stated to François Truffaut, Hitchcock settled for an ambiguous finale.

Saboteur (1942) was the first of two films that Hitchcock made for Universal, a studio where he would continue his career during his later years. Hitchcock was forced to use Universal contract players Robert Cummings and Priscilla Lane, both known for their work in comedies and light dramas. Breaking with Hollywood conventions of the time, Hitchcock did extensive location filming, especially in New York City, and depicted a confrontation between a suspected saboteur (Cummings) and a real saboteur (Norman Lloyd) atop the Statue of Liberty.

Shadow of a Doubt (1943), Hitchcock's personal favourite of all his films and the second of the early Universal films, was about young Charlotte "Charlie" Newton (Teresa Wright), who suspects her beloved uncle Charlie Oakley (Joseph Cotten) of being a serial murderer. Critics have said that in its use of overlapping characters, dialogue, and closeups it has provided a generation of film theorists with psychoanalytic potential, including Jacques Lacan and Slavoj Žižek. Hitchcock again filmed extensively on location, this time in the Northern California city of Santa Rosa, California, during the summer of 1942. The director showcased his own personal fascination with crime and criminals when he had two of his characters discuss various ways of killing people, to the obvious annoyance of Charlotte.

Working at 20th Century Fox, Hitchcock adapted a script of John Steinbeck's that chronicled the experiences of the survivors of a German U-boat attack in the film Lifeboat (1944). The action sequences were shot on the small boat. The locale also posed problems for Hitchcock's traditional cameo appearance. That was solved by having Hitchcock's image appear in a newspaper that William Bendix is reading in the boat, showing the director in a before-and-after advertisement for "Reduco-Obesity Slayer". While at Fox, Hitchcock seriously considered directing the film version of A.J. Cronin's novel about a Catholic priest in China, The Keys of the Kingdom, but the plans for this fell through. John M. Stahl ended up directing the 1944 film, which was produced by Joseph L. Mankiewicz and starred Gregory Peck, among other luminaries.

Returning to England for an extended visit in late 1943 and early 1944, Hitchcock made two short films for the Ministry of Information, Bon Voyage and Aventure Malgache. Made for the Free French, these were the only films Hitchcock made in the French language, and "feature typical Hitchcockian touches". In the 1990s, the two films were shown by Turner Classic Movies and released on home video.

In 1945, Hitchcock served as "treatment advisor" (in effect, a film editor) for a Holocaust documentary produced by the British Army. The film, which recorded the liberation of Nazi concentration camps, remained unreleased until 1985, when it was completed by PBS Frontline and distributed under the title Memory of the Camps.

Hitchcock worked for Selznick again when he directed Spellbound (1945), which explored psychoanalysis and featured a dream sequence designed by Salvador Dalí. Gregory Peck plays amnesiac Dr. Anthony Edwardes under the treatment of analyst Dr. Peterson (Ingrid Bergman), who falls in love with him while trying to unlock his repressed past. The dream sequence as it actually appears in the film is considerably shorter than was originally envisioned, which was to be several minutes long, because it proved to be too disturbing for the audience. Some of the original musical score by Miklós Rózsa (which makes use of the theremin) was later adapted by the composer into a concert piano concerto.

Notorious (1946) followed Spellbound. According to Hitchcock, in his book-length interview with François Truffaut, Selznick sold the director, the two stars (Grant and Bergman) and the screenplay (by Ben Hecht) to RKO Radio Pictures as a "package" for $500,000 due to cost overruns on Selznick's Duel in the Sun (1946). Notorious starred Hitchcock regulars Ingrid Bergman and Cary Grant, and features a plot about Nazis, uranium, and South America. It was a huge box office success and has remained one of Hitchcock's most acclaimed films. His use of uranium as a plot device led to Hitchcock's being briefly under FBI surveillance. McGilligan writes that Hitchcock consulted Dr. Robert Millikan of Caltech about the development of an atomic bomb. Selznick complained that the notion was "science fiction", only to be confronted by the news stories of the detonation of two atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in Japan in August 1945.

After completing his final film for Selznick, The Paradine Case (a courtroom drama that critics found lost momentum because it apparently ran too long and exhausted its resource of ideas), Hitchcock filmed his first colour film, Rope, which appeared in 1948. Here Hitchcock experimented with marshaling suspense in a confined environment, as he had done earlier with Lifeboat (1943). He also experimented with exceptionally long takes—up to ten minutes long. Featuring James Stewart in the leading role, Rope was the first of four films Stewart would make for Hitchcock. It was based on the Leopold and Loeb case of the 1920s. Somehow Hitchcock's cameraman managed to move the bulky, heavy Technicolor camera quickly around the set as it followed the continuous action of the long takes.

Under Capricorn (1949), set in nineteenth-century Australia, also used the short-lived technique of long takes, but to a more limited extent. He again used Technicolor in this production, then returned to black-and-white films for several years. For Rope and Under Capricorn, Hitchcock formed a production company with Sidney Bernstein called Transatlantic Pictures, which became inactive after these two unsuccessful pictures. Hitchcock continued to produce his own films for the rest of his life.

1950s: Peak years

and Grace Kelly in Rear Window (1954)]]

In 1950, Hitchcock filmed Stage Fright on location in the UK. For the first time, Hitchcock matched one of Warner Bros.' biggest stars, Jane Wyman, with the sultry German actress Marlene Dietrich. Hitchcock used a number of prominent British actors, including Michael Wilding, Richard Todd, and Alastair Sim. This was Hitchcock's first production for Warner Bros., which had distributed Rope and Under Capricorn, because Transatlantic Pictures was experiencing financial difficulties.

With the film Strangers on a Train (1951), based on the novel by Patricia Highsmith, Hitchcock combined many elements from his preceding films. Hitchcock approached Dashiell Hammett to write the dialogue but Raymond Chandler took over, then left over disagreements with the director. Two men casually meet and speculate on removing people who are causing them difficulty. One of the men takes this banter entirely seriously. With Farley Granger reprising some elements of his role from Rope, Strangers continued the director's interest in the narrative possibilities of blackmail and murder. Robert Walker, previously known for "boy-next-door" roles, plays the villain.

MCA head Lew Wasserman, whose client list included James Stewart, Janet Leigh and other actors who would appear in Hitchcock's films, had a significant impact in packaging and marketing Hitchcock's films beginning in the 1950s.

Three very popular films starring Grace Kelly followed. Dial M for Murder (1954) was adapted from the popular stage play by Frederick Knott. Ray Milland plays the scheming villain, an ex-tennis pro who tries to murder his unfaithful wife Grace Kelly for her money. When she kills the hired assassin in self-defense, Milland manipulates the evidence to pin the death on his wife. Her lover, Mark Halliday (Robert Cummings), and Police Inspector Hubbard (John Williams), work urgently to save her from execution. Hitchcock experimented with 3D cinematography, although the film was not released in this format at first. However, it was shown in 3D in the early 1980s. The film marked a return to Technicolor productions for Hitchcock.

Hitchcock then moved to Paramount Pictures and filmed Rear Window (1954), starring James Stewart and Kelly again, as well as Thelma Ritter and Raymond Burr. Stewart's character, a photographer based on Robert Capa, must temporarily use a wheelchair; out of boredom he begins observing his neighbours across the courtyard, and becomes convinced one of them (Raymond Burr) has murdered his wife. Stewart tries to sway both his glamorous model-girlfriend (Kelly), which screenwriter John Michael Hayes based on his own wife, and his policeman buddy (Wendell Corey) to his theory, and eventually succeeds. Like Lifeboat and Rope, the movie was photographed almost entirely within the confines of a small space: Stewart's tiny studio apartment overlooking the massive courtyard set. Hitchcock used closeups of Stewart's face to show his character's reactions to all he sees, "from the comic voyeurism directed at his neighbors to his helpless terror watching Kelly and Burr in the villain's apartment". It was Hitchcock's last film with Kelly. She married Prince Rainier of Monaco in 1956, and the residents of her new land were against her making any more films.

Hitchcock successfully remade his own 1934 film The Man Who Knew Too Much in 1956, this time starring Stewart and Doris Day, who sang the theme song, "Que Sera, Sera (Whatever Will Be, Will Be)" (which won the Oscar for "Best Original Song" and became a big hit for Day). They play a couple whose son is kidnapped to prevent them from interfering with an assassination.

and Kim Novak in Vertigo (1958)]]

The Wrong Man (1957), Hitchcock's final film for Warner Brothers, was a low-key black-and-white production based on a real-life case of mistaken identity reported in Life Magazine in 1953. This was the only film of Hitchcock's to star Henry Fonda. Fonda plays a Stork Club musician mistaken for a liquor store thief who is arrested and tried for robbery while his wife (newcomer Vera Miles) emotionally collapses under the strain. Hitchcock told Truffaut that his lifelong fear of the police attracted him to the subject and was embedded in many scenes.

Vertigo (1958) again starred Stewart, this time with Kim Novak and Barbara Bel Geddes. Stewart plays "Scottie", a former police investigator suffering from acrophobia, who develops an obsession with a woman he is shadowing (Novak). Scottie's obsession leads to tragedy, and this time Hitchcock does not opt for a happy ending. Though the film is widely considered a classic today, Vertigo met with negative reviews and poor box office receipts upon its release, and marked the last collaboration between Stewart and Hitchcock. The film is ranked second (behind Citizen Kane) in the 2002 Sight & Sound decade poll. It was premiered in the San Sebastián International Film Festival, where Hitchcock won a Silver Seashell.

Late 1950s, 1960s and 1970s

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By this time, Hitchcock had filmed in many areas of the United States. He followed Vertigo with three more successful films. Two are also recognised as among his very best films: North by Northwest (1959) and Psycho (1960). The third film was The Birds (1963).

In North by Northwest, Cary Grant portrays Roger Thornhill, a Madison Avenue advertising executive who is mistaken for a government secret agent. He is hotly pursued by enemy agents across America, apparently one of them being Eve Kendall (Eva Marie Saint).

Psycho is almost certainly Hitchcock's most well known film. Produced on a highly constrained budget of $800,000, it was shot in black-and-white on a spare set. The unprecedented violence of the shower scene, the early demise of the heroine, the innocent lives extinguished by a disturbed murderer were all hallmarks of Hitchcock, copied in many subsequent horror films. After completing Psycho, Hitchcock moved to Universal, where he made the remainder of his films.

The Birds, inspired by a Daphne Du Maurier short story and by an actual news story about a mysterious infestation of birds in California, was Hitchcock's 49th film. He signed up Tippi Hedren as his latest blonde heroine opposite Rod Taylor. (On April 13, 2011, at the Cinema Arts Centre in Huntington, NY, Hedren stated in an interview with Turner Classic Movies' Ben Mankiewicz, prior to a screening of The Birds, that because she refused Hitchcock’s sexual advances, Hitchcock effectively stunted her career.) The scenes of the birds attacking included hundreds of shots mixing actual and animated sequences. The cause of the birds' attack is left unanswered, "perhaps highlighting the mystery of forces unknown".

The latter two films were particularly notable for their unconventional soundtracks, both orchestrated by Bernard Herrmann: the screeching strings played in the murder scene in Psycho exceeded the limits of the time, and The Birds dispensed completely with conventional instruments, instead using an electronically produced soundtrack and an unaccompanied song by school children (just prior to the infamous attack at the historic Bodega Bay School). These films are considered his last great films, after which his output deteriorated. (although some critics, such as Robin Wood and Donald Spoto, contend that Marnie, from 1964, is first-class Hitchcock, and some have argued that Frenzy is unfairly overlooked).

Failing health took its toll on Hitchcock, reducing his output during the last two decades of his career. Hitchcock filmed two spy thrillers. The first, Torn Curtain (1966), with Paul Newman and Julie Andrews, was a Cold War thriller. Torn Curtain displays the bitter end of the twelve-year collaboration between Hitchcock and composer Bernard Herrmann. Herrmann was fired when Hitchcock was unsatisfied with his score. In 1969, Topaz, another Cold War-themed film (based on a Leon Uris novel), was released. Both received mixed reviews from critics but are nonetheless recognised as espionage thrillers.

In 1972, Hitchcock returned to London to film Frenzy, his last major triumph. After two only moderately successful espionage films, the plot marks a return to the murder thriller genre that he made so many films out of earlier in his career. The basic story recycles his early film The Lodger. Richard Blaney (Jon Finch), a volatile barkeeper with a history of explosive anger, becomes the prime suspect for the "Necktie Murders," which are actually committed by his friend Bob Rusk (Barry Foster). This time, Hitchcock makes the victim and villain twins, rather than opposites, as in Strangers on a Train. Only one of them, however, has crossed the line to murder. Biographers have noted that Hitchcock had always pushed the limits of film censorship, often managing to fool Joseph Breen, the longtime head of Hollywood's Production Code. Many times Hitchcock slipped in subtle hints of improprieties forbidden by censorship until the mid-1960s. Yet Patrick McGilligan wrote that Breen and others often realised that Hitchcock was inserting such things and were actually amused as well as alarmed by Hitchcock's "inescapable inferences". Beginning with Torn Curtain, Hitchcock was finally able to blatantly include plot elements previously forbidden in American films and this continued for the remainder of his film career.

Family Plot (1976) was Hitchcock's last film. It related the escapades of "Madam" Blanche Tyler played by Barbara Harris, a fraudulent spiritualist, and her taxi driver lover Bruce Dern making a living from her phony powers. William Devane, Karen Black and Cathleen Nesbitt co-starred. It was the only Hitchcock film scored by John Williams.

Last film work and death

Near the end of his life, Hitchcock had worked on the script for a projected spy thriller, The Short Night, collaborating with screenwriters James Costigan and Ernest Lehman. Despite some preliminary work, the story was never filmed. This was due primarily to Hitchcock's own failing health and his concerns over the health of his wife, Alma, who had suffered a stroke. The script was eventually published posthumously, in a book on Hitchcock's last years.

Hitchcock died on 29 April 1980, 9:17AM. He died peacefully in his sleep due to renal failure in his Bel Air, Los Angeles, California home at the age of 80, survived by his wife and their daughter. His funeral service was held at Good Shepherd Catholic Church in Beverly Hills. Hitchcock's body was cremated and his ashes were scattered over the Pacific Ocean.

Themes, plot devices and motifs

Hitchcock returned several times to cinematic devices such as suspense, the audience as voyeur, and his well-known "MacGuffin," an apparently minor detail serving as a pivot upon which the narrative turns.

Technical innovations

Hitchcock seemed to delight in the technical challenges of film making. In the film Lifeboat, Hitchcock stages the entire action of the movie in a small boat, yet manages to keep the cinematography from monotonous repetition (his trademark cameo appearance was a dilemma, given the limitations of the setting; so Hitchcock appears in a fictitious magazine for a weight loss product). Similarly, the entire action in Rear Window either takes place in or is seen from a single apartment. In Spellbound, two unprecedented point-of-view shots were achieved by constructing a large wooden hand (which would appear to belong to the character whose point of view the camera took) and out-sized props for it to hold: a bucket-sized glass of milk and a large wooden gun. For added novelty and impact, the climactic gunshot was hand-coloured red on some copies of the black-and-white print of the film.

Rope (1948) was another technical challenge: a film that appears to have been shot entirely in a single take. The film was actually shot in 10 takes ranging from four and a half to 10 minutes each; a 10 minute length of film being the maximum a camera's film magazine could hold. Some transitions between reels were hidden by having a dark object fill the entire screen for a moment. Hitchcock used those points to hide the cut, and began the next take with the camera in the same place.

Hitchcock's 1958 film Vertigo contains a camera technique developed by Irmin Roberts that has been imitated and re-used many times by filmmakers, wherein the image appears to "stretch". This is achieved by moving the camera in the opposite direction of the camera's zoom. It has become known by many nicknames, including Dolly zoom, "Zolly," "Hitchcock Zoom," and "Vertigo Effect."

Signature appearances in his films

Hitchcock appeared briefly in many of his own films, usually playing upon his portly figure in an incongruous manner, for example, seen struggling to get a double bass onto a train, or walking dogs in the background.

Psychology of characters

Hitchcock's films sometimes feature characters struggling in their relationships with their mothers. In North by Northwest (1959), Roger Thornhill (Cary Grant's character) is an innocent man ridiculed by his mother for insisting that shadowy, murderous men are after him. In The Birds (1963), the Rod Taylor character, an innocent man, finds his world under attack by vicious birds, and struggles to free himself of a clinging mother (Jessica Tandy). The killer in Frenzy (1972) has a loathing of women but idolises his mother. The villain Bruno in Strangers on a Train hates his father, but has an incredibly close relationship with his mother (played by Marion Lorne). Sebastian (Claude Rains) in Notorious has a clearly conflictual relationship with his mother, who is (correctly) suspicious of his new bride Alicia Huberman (Ingrid Bergman). Norman Bates has troubles with his mother in Psycho.

Hitchcock heroines tend to be lovely, cool blondes who seem proper at first but, when aroused by passion or danger, respond in a more sensual, animal, or even criminal way. The famous victims in The Lodger are all blondes. In The 39 Steps, Hitchcock's glamorous blonde star, Madeleine Carroll, is put in handcuffs. In Marnie (1964), the title character (played by Tippi Hedren) is a thief. In To Catch a Thief (1955), Francie (Grace Kelly) offers to help a man she believes is a burglar. In Rear Window, Lisa (Grace Kelly again) risks her life by breaking into Lars Thorwald's apartment. The best known example is in Psycho where Janet Leigh's unfortunate character steals $40,000 and is murdered by a reclusive psychopath. Hitchcock's last blonde heroine was—years after Dany Robin and her "daughter" Claude Jade in Topaz—Barbara Harris as a phony psychic turned amateur sleuth in his final film, 1976's Family Plot. In the same film, the diamond smuggler played by Karen Black could also fit that role, as she wears a long blonde wig in various scenes and becomes increasingly uncomfortable about her line of work.

Some critics and Hitchcock scholars, including Donald Spoto and Roger Ebert, agree that Vertigo represents the director's most personal and revealing film, dealing with the obsessions of a man who crafts a woman into the woman he desires. Vertigo explores more frankly and at greater length his interest in the relation between sex and death than any other film in his filmography.

Hitchcock often said that his favourite film (of his own work) was Shadow of a Doubt.

Style of working

Writing

Hitchcock once commented, "The writer and I plan out the entire script down to the smallest detail, and when we're finished all that's left to do is to shoot the film. Actually, it's only when one enters the studio that one enters the area of compromise. Really, the novelist has the best casting since he doesn't have to cope with the actors and all the rest." In an interview with Roger Ebert in 1969, Hitchcock elaborated further: }}

In Writing with Hitchcock, a book-length study of Hitchcock's working method with his writers, author Steven DeRosa noted that "Although he rarely did any actual 'writing', especially on his Hollywood productions, Hitchcock supervised and guided his writers through every draft, insisting on a strict attention to detail and a preference for telling the story through visual rather than verbal means. While this exasperated some writers, others admitted the director inspired them to do their very best work. Hitchcock often emphasised that he took no screen credit for the writing of his films. However, over time the work of many of his writers has been attributed solely to Hitchcock’s creative genius, a misconception he rarely went out of his way to correct. Notwithstanding his technical brilliance as a director, Hitchcock relied on his writers a great deal."

Storyboards and production

Hitchcock's films were strongly believed to have been extensively storyboarded to the finest detail by the majority of commentators over the years. He was reported to have never even bothered looking through the viewfinder, since he did not need to do so, though in publicity photos he was shown doing so. He also used this as an excuse to never have to change his films from his initial vision. If a studio asked him to change a film, he would claim that it was already shot in a single way, and that there were no alternate takes to consider.

However, this view of Hitchcock as a director who relied more on pre-production than on the actual production itself has been challenged by the book Hitchcock At Work, written by Bill Krohn, the American correspondent of Cahiers du cinéma. Krohn, after investigating several script revisions, notes to other production personnel written by or to Hitchcock alongside inspection of storyboards, and other production material, has observed that Hitchcock's work often deviated from how the screenplay was written or how the film was originally envisioned. He noted that the myth of storyboards in relation to Hitchcock, often regurgitated by generations of commentators on his movies was to a great degree perpetuated by Hitchcock himself or the publicity arm of the studios. A great example would be the celebrated crop spraying sequence of North by Northwest which was not storyboarded at all. After the scene was filmed, the publicity department asked Hitchcock to make storyboards to promote the film and Hitchcock in turn hired an artist to match the scenes in detail.

Even when storyboards were made, scenes that were shot differed from it significantly. Krohn's extensive analysis of the production of Hitchcock classics like Notorious reveals that Hitchcock was flexible enough to change a film's conception during its production. Another example Krohn notes is the American remake of The Man Who Knew Too Much, whose shooting schedule commenced without a finished script and moreover went over schedule, something that, as Krohn notes, was not an uncommon occurrence on many of Hitchcock's films, including Strangers on a Train and Topaz. While Hitchcock did do a great deal of preparation for all his movies, he was fully cognizant that the actual film-making process often deviated from the best laid plans and was flexible to adapt to the changes and needs of production as his films were not free from the normal hassles faced and common routines utilised during many other film productions.

Krohn's work also sheds light on Hitchcock's practice of generally shooting in chronological order, which he notes sent many films over budget and over schedule and, more importantly, differed from the standard operating procedure of Hollywood in the Studio System Era. Equally important is Hitchcock's tendency to shoot alternate takes of scenes. This differed from coverage in that the films were not necessarily shot from varying angles so as to give the editor options to shape the film how he/she chooses (often under the producer's aegis). Rather they represented Hitchcock's tendency of giving himself options in the editing room, where he would provide advice to his editors after viewing a rough cut of the work. According to Krohn, this and a great deal of other information revealed through his research of Hitchcock's personal papers, script revisions and the like refute the notion of Hitchcock as a director who was always in control of his films, whose vision of his films did not change during production, which Krohn notes has remained the central long-standing myth of Alfred Hitchcock.

His fastidiousness and attention to detail also found its way into each film poster for his films. Hitchcock preferred to work with the best talent of his day—film poster designers such as Bill Gold and Saul Bass—and kept them busy with countless rounds of revision until he felt that the single image of the poster accurately represented his entire film.

Approach to actors

Similarly, much of Hitchcock's supposed dislike of actors has been exaggerated. Hitchcock simply did not tolerate the method approach, as he believed that actors should only concentrate on their performances and leave work on script and character to the directors and screenwriters. In a Sight and Sound interview, he stated that, 'the method actor is OK in the theatre because he has a free space to move about. But when it comes to cutting the face and what he sees and so forth, there must be some discipline'. During the making of Lifeboat, Walter Slezak, who played the German character, stated that Hitchcock knew the mechanics of acting better than anyone he knew. Several critics have observed that despite his reputation as a man who disliked actors, several actors who worked with him gave fine, often brilliant performances and these performances contribute to the film's success.

For Hitchcock, the actors, like the props, were part of the film's setting, as he said to Truffaut:

In my opinion, the chief requisite for an actor is the ability to do nothing well, which is by no means as easy as it sounds. He should be willing to be utilised and wholly integrated into the picture by the director and the camera. He must allow the camera to determine the proper emphasis and the most effective dramatic highlights.

Regarding Hitchcock's sometimes less than pleasant relationship with actors, there was a persistent rumour that he had said that actors were cattle. Hitchcock addressed this story in his interview with Francois Truffaut:

I'm not quite sure in what context I might have made such a statement. It may have been made...when we used actors who were simultaneously performing in stage plays. When they had a matinee, and I suspected they were allowing themselves plenty of time for a very leisurely lunch. And this meant that we had to shoot our scenes at breakneck speed so that the actors could get out on time. I couldn't help feeling that if they'd been really conscientious, they'd have swallowed their sandwich in the cab, on the way to the theater, and get there in time to put on their make-up and go on stage. I had no use for that kind of actor.

Carole Lombard, tweaking Hitchcock and drumming up a little publicity, brought some cows along with her when she reported to the set of Mr. and Mrs. Smith. Sixteen films directed by Hitchcock earned Oscar nominations, though only six of those films earned Hitchcock himself a nomination. The total number of Oscar nominations (including winners) earned by films he directed is fifty. Four of those films earned Best Picture nominations. Spellbound won the Academy Award for Best Original Music Score. Actor Joan Fontaine won the Academy Award for Best Actress for her performance in Suspicion, the only Academy Award–winning performance under Hitchcock's direction.

Six of Hitchcock's films are in the National Film Registry: Vertigo, Rear Window, North by Northwest, Shadow of a Doubt, Notorious, and Psycho; all but Shadow of a Doubt and Notorious were also in 1998's AFI's 100 best American films and the AFI's 2007 update. In 2008, four of Hitchcock's films were named among the ten best mystery films of all time in the AFI's 10 Top 10. Those films are Vertigo (at No. 1); Rear Window (No. 3); North by Northwest (No. 7); and Dial M for Murder (No. 9).

Alfred Hitchcock received the AFI Life Achievement Award in 1979.

Hitchcock was made a Knight Commander of the Order of the British Empire by Queen Elizabeth II in the 1980 New Year's Honours. Although he had adopted American citizenship in 1956, he was entitled to use the title "Sir" because he had remained a British subject. Hitchcock died just four months later, on 29 April, before he could be formally invested.

Fame

Hitchcock became famous for his expert and largely unrivaled control of pace and suspense, and his films draw heavily on both fear and fantasy. The films are known for their droll humour and witticisms, and these cinematic works often portray innocent people caught up in circumstances beyond their control or understanding.

Hitchcock began his directing career in the United Kingdom in 1922. From 1939 onward, he worked primarily in the United States. In September 1940, Hitchcock had purchased a mountaintop estate for the sum of $40,000. or 'Heart o' the Mountain', the property was perched high above Scotts Valley, California, at the end of Canham Road. The Hitchcocks resided there from 1940 to 1972. The Hitchcocks became close friends with the parents of Joan Fontaine, after she starred in his film, Rebecca. in Los Angeles, just across from the Bel Air Country Club.

Rebecca was the only Hitchcock film to win the Academy Award for Best Picture for lifetime achievement. He never won an Academy Award for direction of a film.

Television and books

Along with Walt Disney, Hitchcock was among the first prominent motion picture producers to fully envisage just how popular the medium of television would become. From 1955 to 1965, Hitchcock was the host and producer of a television series entitled Alfred Hitchcock Presents. While his films had made Hitchcock's name strongly associated with suspense, the TV series made Hitchcock a celebrity himself. His irony-tinged voice and signature droll delivery, gallows humor, iconic image and mannerisms became instantly recognisable and were often the subject of parody.

The title-theme of the show pictured a minimalist caricature of Hitchcock's profile (he drew it himself; it is composed of only nine strokes), which his real silhouette then filled. His introductions before the stories in his program always included some sort of wry humor, such as the description of a recent multi-person execution hampered by having only one electric chair, while two are now shown with a sign "Two chairs--no waiting!" He directed a few episodes of the TV series himself, and he upset a number of movie production companies when he insisted on using his TV production crew to produce his motion picture Psycho. In the late 1980s, a new version of Alfred Hitchcock Presents was produced for television, making use of Hitchcock's original introductions in a colorised form.

Alfred Hitchcock Presents was parodied by Friz Freleng's 1961 cartoon The Last Hungry Cat, which contains a plot similar to Blackmail.

"Hitch" used a curious little tune by the French composer Charles Gounod (1818–1893), the composer of the 1859 opera Faust, as the theme "song" for his television programs, after it was suggested to him by composer Bernard Herrmann. Arthur Fiedler and the Boston Pops Orchestra included the piece, Funeral March of a Marionette, in one of their extended play 45 rpm discs for RCA Victor during the 1950s.

Hitchcock appears as a character in the popular juvenile detective book series, Alfred Hitchcock and the Three Investigators. The long-running detective series was created by Robert Arthur, who wrote the first several books, although other authors took over after he left the series. The Three Investigators—Jupiter Jones, Bob Andrews and Peter Crenshaw—were amateur detectives, slightly younger than the Hardy Boys. In the introduction to each book, "Alfred Hitchcock" introduces the mystery, and he sometimes refers a case to the boys to solve. At the end of each book, the boys report to Hitchcock, and sometimes give him a memento of their case.

When the real Hitchcock died, the fictional Hitchcock in the Three Investigators books was replaced by a retired detective named Hector Sebastian. At this time, the series title was changed from Alfred Hitchcock and the Three Investigators to The Three Investigators.

At the height of Hitchcock's success, he was also asked to introduce a set of books with his name attached. The series was a collection of short stories by popular short-story writers, primarily focused on suspense and thrillers. These titles included Alfred Hitchcock's Anthology, Alfred Hitchcock Presents: Stories to be Read with the Door Locked, Alfred Hitchcock's Monster Museum, Alfred Hitchcock's Supernatural Tales of Terror and Suspense, Alfred Hitchcock's Spellbinders in Suspense, Alfred Hitchcock's Witch's Brew, Alfred Hitchcock's Ghostly Gallery, Alfred Hitchcock's A Hangman's Dozen and Alfred Hitchcock's Haunted Houseful. Hitchcock himself was not actually involved in the reading, reviewing, editing or selection of the short stories; in fact, even his introductions were ghost-written. The entire extent of his involvement with the project was to lend his name and collect a check.

Some notable writers whose works were used in the collection include Shirley Jackson (Strangers in Town, The Lottery), T.H. White (The Once and Future King), Robert Bloch, H. G. Wells (The War of the Worlds), Robert Louis Stevenson, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Mark Twain and the creator of The Three Investigators, Robert Arthur.

Hitchcock also wrote a mystery story for Look magazine in 1943, "The Murder of Monty Woolley". This was a sequence of captioned photographs inviting the reader to inspect the pictures for clues to the murderer's identity; Hitchcock cast the performers as themselves; such as Woolley, Doris Merrick and make up man Guy Pearce, whom Hitchcock identified, in the last photo, as the murderer. The article was reprinted in Games Magazine in November/December 1980.

Filmography

Frequently cast actors and actresses

7 films: Clare Greet: Number 13 (1922), The Ring (1927), The Manxman (1929), Murder! (1930), The Man Who Knew Too Much (1934), Sabotage (1936), Jamaica Inn (1939)

6 films: Leo G. Carroll: Rebecca (1940), Suspicion (1941), Spellbound (1945), The Paradine Case (1947), Strangers on a Train (1951), and North By Northwest (1959)

4 films: Cary Grant: Suspicion (1941), Notorious (1946), To Catch a Thief (1955), and North By Northwest (1959)

4 films: James Stewart: Rope (1948), Rear Window (1954), The Man Who Knew Too Much (1956), and Vertigo (1958)

4 films: Edmund Gwenn: The Skin Game (1931), Waltzes from Vienna (1934), Foreign Correspondent (1940), and The Trouble with Harry (1955)

3 films: Ingrid Bergman: Spellbound (1945), Notorious (1946), and Under Capricorn (1949)

3 films: Grace Kelly: Dial M for Murder (1954), Rear Window (1954), and To Catch a Thief (1955)

3 films: Basil Radford: Young and Innocent (1937), The Lady Vanishes (1938), Jamaica Inn (1939)

3 films: John Williams: The Paradine Case (1947), Dial M for Murder, (1954), and To Catch a Thief (1955)

3 films: Patricia Hitchcock: Stage Fright (1950), Strangers on a Train (1951), Psycho (1960)

Frequent collaborators

;Actors and actresses

Sara Allgood

Murray Alper

Ingrid Bergman

Paul Bryar

Donald Calthrop

Leonard Carey

Leo G. Carroll

Edward Chapman

Hume Cronyn (also as writer)

Violet Farebrother

Bess Flowers

Cary Grant

Clare Greet

Edmund Gwenn

Gordon Harker

Tom Helmore

Patricia Hitchcock (daughter)

Ian Hunter

Isabel Jeans

Hannah Jones

Malcolm Keen

Grace Kelly

Phyllis Konstam

John Longden

Percy Marmont

Basil Radford

Jeffrey Sayre

James Stewart

John Williams

Tippi Hedren

;Screenwriters

Charles Bennett

James Bridie

Joan Harrison

John Michael Hayes

Ben Hecht

Angus MacPhail

Eliot Stannard

;Film crew

Fred Ahern - Production Manager

Michael Balcon - Producer

Jack Barron - Makeup

Saul Bass - Main titles design

Robert F. Boyle - Art Director/Production Designer

Henry Bumstead - Art Director

Robert Burks - Cinematographer

Herbert Coleman - Assistant Director/Producer

Jack E. Cox - Cinematographer

Graham Cutts - Director

Lowell J. Farrell - Assistant Director

Charles Frend - Film Editor

Bill Gold - Film poster designer

Hilton A. Green - Assistant Director

Bobby Greene - First Assistant Camera

Edith Head - Costume Designer

Bernard Herrmann - Music Composer

J. McMillan Johnson - Art Director/Production Designer

Barbara Keon - Production Assistant

Emile Kuri - Set Decoration

Bryan Langley - Cinematographer/Assistant Camera

Louis Levy - Musical Director/Music Composer

Norman Lloyd - Producer/Director

John Maxwell - Producer

Daniel McCauley - Assistant Director

Frank Mills - Assistant Director

George Milo - Set Decoration

Ivor Montagu - Editor/Producer

Hal Pereira - Art Director

Michael Powell - Still Photographer/Assistant Camera

Alma Reville (wife) - Assistant Director/Writer

Rita Riggs - Costume Designer

Peggy Robertson - Assistant

Emile de Ruelle - Film Editor

William Russell - Sound Recordist

David O. Selznick - Producer

Harry Stradling - Cinematographer/Director of Photography

Lois Thurman - Script Supervisor

Dimitri Tiomkin - Music Composer

George Tomasini - Film Editor

Joseph A. Valentine - Cinematographer

Gaetano di Ventimiglia - Cinematographer

Waldon O. Watson - Sound Recordist

Franz Waxman - Music Composer

Albert Whitlock - Matte Painter

William H. Ziegler - Film Editor

See also

Alfred Hitchcock filmography

Drew Casper

List of unproduced Hitchcock projects

List of film collaborations

Bibliography

Leitch, Thomas: The Encyclopedia of Alfred Hitchcock (ISBN 978-0-8160-4387-3). Checkmark Books, 2002. A single-volume encyclopedia of all things Hitchcock.

McGilligan, Patrick: Alfred Hitchcock: A Life in Darkness and Light. Regan Books, 2003. A comprehensive biography of the director.

References

Further reading

Auiler, Dan: Hitchcock's notebooks: an authorized and illustrated look inside the creative mind of Alfred Hitchcock. New York, Avon Books, 1999. Much useful background to the films.

Barr, Charles: English Hitchcock. Cameron & Hollis, 1999. On the early films of the director.

Conrad, Peter: The Hitchcock Murders. Faber and Faber, 2000. A highly personal and idiosyncratic discussion of Hitchcock's oeuvre.

DeRosa, Steven: Writing with Hitchcock. Faber and Faber, 2001. An examination of the collaboration between Hitchcock and screenwriter John Michael Hayes, his most frequent writing collaborator in Hollywood. Their films include Rear Window and The Man Who Knew Too Much.

Deutelbaum, Marshall; Poague, Leland (ed.): A Hitchcock Reader. Iowa State University Press, 1986. A wide-ranging collection of scholarly essays on Hitchcock.

Durgnat, Raymond: The strange case of Alfred Hitchcock Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press, 1974 OCLC 1233570

Durgnat, Raymond; James, Nick; Gross, Larry: Hitchcock British Film Institute, 1999 OCLC 42209162

Durgnat, Raymond: A long hard look at Psycho London: British Film Institute Pub., 2002 OCLC 48883020

Giblin, Gary: Alfred Hitchcock's London. Midnight Marquee Press, 2006, (Paperback: ISBN 978-1-887664-67-7)

Gottlieb, Sidney: Hitchcock on Hitchcock. Faber and Faber, 1995. Articles, lectures, etc. by Hitchcock himself. Basic reading on the director and his films.

Gottlieb, Sidney: Alfred Hitchcock: Interviews. University Press of Mississippi, 2003. A collection of Hitchcock interviews.

Grams, Martin, Jr. & Wikstrom, Patrik: The Alfred Hitchcock Presents Companion. OTR Pub, 2001, (Paperback: ISBN 978-0-9703310-1-4)

Haeffner, Nicholas: Alfred Hitchcock. Longman, 2005. An undergraduate-level text.

Hitchcock, Patricia; Bouzereau, Laurent: Alma Hitchcock: The Woman Behind the Man. Berkley, 2003.

Krohn, Bill: Hitchcock at Work. Phaidon, 2000. Translated from the award-winning French edition. The nitty-gritty of Hitchcock's filmmaking from scripting to post-production.

Leff, Leonard J.: Hitchcock and Selznick. Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1987. An in-depth examination of the rich collaboration between Hitchcock and David O Selznick.

McDevitt, Jim; San Juan, Eric: A Year of Hitchcock: 52 Weeks with the Master of Suspense. Scarecrow Press, 2009, (ISBN 978-0-8108-6388-0). A comprehensive film-by-film examination of Hitchcock's artistic development from 1927 through 1976.

Modleski, Tania: The Women Who Knew Too Much: Hitchcock And Feminist Theory. Routledge, 2005 (2nd edition). A collection of critical essays on Hitchcock and his films; argues that Hitchcock's portrayal of women was ambivalent, rather than simply misogynist or sympathetic (as widely thought).

Mogg, Ken. The Alfred Hitchcock Story. Titan, 2008 (revised edition). Note: the original 1999 UK edition, from Titan, and the 2008 re-issue world-wide, also from Titan, have significantly more text than the 1999 abridged US edition from Taylor Publishing. New material on all the films.

Paglia, Camille. The Birds. British Film Institute, January 2008 ISBN 978-0-85170-651-1

Rebello, Stephen: Alfred Hitchcock and the Making of Psycho. St. Martin's, 1990. Intimately researched and detailed history of the making of Psycho,.

Rohmer, Eric; Chabrol, Claude. Hitchcock, the first forty-four films (ISBN 978-0-8044-2743-2). F. Ungar, 1979. First book-long study of Hitchock art and probably still the best one.

Rothman, William. The Murderous Gaze. Harvard Press, 1980. Auteur study that looks at several Hitchcock films intimately.

Spoto, Donald: The Art of Alfred Hitchcock. Anchor Books, 1992. The first detailed critical survey of Hitchcock's work by an American.

Spoto, Donald: The Dark Side of Genius. Ballantine Books, 1983. A biography of Hitchcock, featuring a controversial exploration of Hitchcock's psychology.

Taylor, Alan: Jacobean Visions: Webster, Hitchcock and the Google Culture, Peter Lang, 2007.

Truffaut, François: Hitchcock. Simon and Schuster, 1985. A series of interviews of Hitchcock by the influential French director.

Vest, James: Hitchcock and France: The Forging of an Auteur. Praeger Publishers, 2003. A study of Hitchcock's interest in French culture and the manner by which French critics, such as Truffaut, came to regard him in such high esteem.

Weibel, Adrian: Spannung bei Hitchcock. Zur Funktionsweise der auktorialen Suspense. (ISBN 978-3-8260-3681-1) Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann, 2008

Wikstrom, Patrik & Grams, Martin, Jr.: The Alfred Hitchcock Presents Companion. OTR Pub, 2001, (Paperback: ISBN 978-0-9703310-1-4)

Wood, Robin: Hitchcock's Films Revisited. Columbia University Press, 2002 (2nd edition). A much-cited collection of critical essays, now supplemented and annotated in this second edition with additional insights and changes that time and personal experience have brought to the author (including his own coming-out as a gay man).

Contains interviews with Alfred Hitchcock and a discussion of the making of The Man Who Knew Too Much (1934) and Secret Agent (1936), which co-starred classic film actor Peter Lorre.

External links

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