Donald Spoto - The Art of Alfred Hitchcock: Fifty Years of His Motion Pictures

B Y THE S AME A UTHOR

The Hidden Jesus: A New Life
DianaThe Last Year
Notorious: The Life of Ingrid Bergman
Rebel: The Life and Legend of James Dean
The Decline and Fall of the House of Windsor
A Passion for Life: The Biography of Elizabeth Taylor
Marilyn MonroeThe Biography
Blue Angel: The Life of Marlene Dietrich
Laurence OlivierA Biography
Madcap: The Life of Preston Sturges
Lenya: A Life
Falling in Love Again: Marlene Dietrich (A Photoessay)
The Kindness of Strangers: The Life of Tennessee Williams
The Dark Side of Genius: The Life of Alfred Hitchcock
Stanley Kramer Film Maker
Camerado: Hollywood and the American Man

F IRST A NCHOR B OOKS E DITION , J ANUARY 1992

Copyright 1976, 1992 by Donald Spoto

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. Published in the United States by Anchor Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, and simultaneously in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto. Originally published in hardcover by Hopkinson and Blake in 1976. First published in paperback by Dolphin Books/Doubleday in 1979. This completely revised and updated Anchor Books edition is published by arrangement with Doubleday, a division of Random House, Inc.

Anchor Books and colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Spoto, Donald, 1941
The art of Alfred Hitchcock: fifty years of his motion pictures / by Donald Spoto. 2nd ed., completely rev. and updated.
p. cm.
Anchor books.
1. Hitchcock, Alfred, 18991980.Criticism and interpretation.
I. Title.
PN1998.3.H58S68 1992
791.430233092dc20 91-3438

eISBN: 978-0-307-56714-7

www.anchorbooks.com

v3.1

for James T. Caroscio
19461986

In 1972, I was asked to contribute an essay about Alfred Hitchcocks great film Vertigo for a book about classic motion pictures. The editor was satisfied with six pages but I was not, and soon after that, the idea for The Art of Alfred Hitchcock was borna detailed critical appreciation of his work, film by film, the first such book by an American.

My movie-watching and note-taking progressed in archives, libraries and retrospective theaters around the world, and in homes where private prints were screened for me in those days when videotape was not the ubiquitous commodity it is today. But in 1975, I discovered that Hitchcocks early films were not easy to see. In fact, it was necessary to spend a month at the British Film Institute, London, watching rare copies of mostly unknown pictures like Champagne, The Manxman and The Skin Game.

With a few notable exceptions, Hitchcocks first seventeen films are perhaps historical curiositiesinteresting works by a gifted novice rather than cinematic masterpiecesand so in 1975, while writing the first edition of The Art of Alfred Hitchcock, I chose to treat somewhat more briefly the works from 1925 to 1934, a decision retained in preparing this revision. I regard the production of The 39 Steps, in 1935, as the great leap in Hitchcocks art. From that year, when he turned thirty-six, he was, I think, an artist of enduring significance.

Of Hitchcocks fifty-three features, there is only one I have not seen: The Mountain Eagle, produced in Germany in 1925 and lost soon after. Additionally, I have omitted consideration of Hitchcocks legendary television shows (of which he directed less than two dozen out of more than 350); of a very few early British talkies and sound films he co-produced (but in which, according to the record, he had only minimal involvement); and of Bon Voyage and Aventure Malgache, two short films he directed for a French acting troupe, in London exile during World War II. (Comments and critical observations about all these may, however, be found in my companion volume to this, The Dark Side of Genius: The Life of Alfred Hitchcock.) The Art of Alfred Hitchcock, then, treats only his full-length feature films.

During my initial research for the first edition, a very rich kind of material was provided by interviews with people who worked with Hitchcock. In this regard, I was fortunate to have the cooperation and encouragement of Dame Peggy Ashcroft, Ingrid Bergman, Hume Cronyn, Joan Fontaine, Princess Grace of Monaco (the former actress Grace Kelly), Tippi Hedren, Tom Helmore, Ernest Lehman, Simon Oakland, Jessica Tandy, Samuel Taylor and Teresa Wright. Princess Grace, after reading the first draft of the book, generously offered to contribute a foreword. Hers was one of several friendships thatlike unexpected benedictionscame from this project.

For this later edition, of course, I also had the benefit of the dozens of interviews I later conducted between 1980 and 1983, during research for The Dark Side of Genius. That list, too long to be repeated here, contains the names of many more whose contributions remain memorable.

Hundreds of hours, of course, were also spent in the dark, watching these extraordinary movies. Invaluable assistance was provided by Patrick Sheehan at the Motion Picture Division of the Library of Congress, Washington; by Jeremy Boulton at the National Film Archives, London; and by Charles Silver at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, where Mary Corliss, surely the most knowledgeable and unfailingly gracious film stills archivist in the business, enabled me to find many rare photographs. Tippi Hedren also made available her extensive personal collection of stills from the productions of The Birds and Marnie.

As I drew near to concluding the first draft of The Art of Alfred Hitchcock, he and screenwriter Ernest Lehman were preparing Family Plot, Hitchcocks fifty-third (and, as it happened, his last) movie. For courtesys sake, I sent a few chapters of the manuscript to Hitchcockthe commentaries on Sabotage, the second version of The Man Who Knew Too Much and Frenzy. Within days, I received a telegram at my home, inviting me to watch him at work on Family Plot in California. When I arrived, he granted me an extended interview, the first of many meetings I treasured during the last five years of his life. He also generously handed over to me the storyboards for Family Plot, along with his kind permission to reproduce them in this book.

The original edition of The Art of Alfred Hitchcock was published in the autumn of 1976. I sent the first copy to Hitchcock, who responded by inviting me to Los Angeles and then giving a public endorsementthe first in a series of happy surprises that contributed to making the book something of a standard work. Since that time, Alfred Hitchcock died (in April 1980); my biography of him was also published, in many languages; and his primacy as one of the few great artists of the cinema has been confirmed worldwide and without question.

From 1975 to 1986, I was fortunate to teach Hitchcocks films year-round, on a rotating cycle, in undergraduate and graduate seminars at the New School for Social Research in New York; additionally, I was often invited to lecture on one or another film or theme at festivals and at colleges and universities in America and Europe, as well as at public educational series for the American and British Film Institutes. Many people I met at these events have deepened my appreciation of Hitchcock over the yearsmore than ten thousand students at the New School and perhaps as many more in worldwide audiencesand to them all I am keenly indebted for their comments, suggestions and criticisms.