METHODS OF FAMOUS DIRECTOR

Press, Volume LXXII, Issue 21867, 21 August 1936, Page 5

METHODS OF FAMOUS DIRECTOR

ALFRED HITCHCOCK’S THEORIES IMPORTANCE OF MOTION IN FILMS To-day at the Gaumont-British Studios a 19-stone man sits ponder-

ously, with an expressionless face, in a steel chair. When he speaks, it is almost in a whisper; when he laughs, it is a deep, enjoyable chuckle. His name is Alfred Hitchcock, and he was born in London in 1900. Nowadays he is acknowledged as one of the cleverest directors in existence, a man who sees a hint of film drama in the smallest incident of everyday life. He has enthralled filmgoers with his famous thrillers, “Blackmail,” “The Man Who Knew Too Much,” “The Thirty-nine Steps,” and “The Secret Agent.” At the moment his latest drama is beinig produced at Shepherd’s Bush, “Sabotage,” with Sylvia Sidney and John Loder. “Hitch” is a man who can put his stamp on films; his methods are recognised when a film

is screened. How is it that he can achieve these results? Below, m Hitchcock’s own words, are the secrets of making a “Hitchcock picture”:— “The creed that I chalk up in front of me to-day is that we are making motion pictures. Too many men forget that. A film has got to be ocularly interesting, and above all it is the ‘picture’ which is the thing. I try to tell my story so much so in pictures that if by any chance the sound apparatus broke down in the cinema, the audience would not fret and get restless, because the pictorial action would still hold them! Sound is all

right in its place, but it is a silent picture training which counts to-day. Naval men have a theory that the finest navigators nowadays are the men who learnt their craft in the out-of-date sailing ships. Similarly I maintain that the young men of America - and Britain who strike out into the film game should first go through a course of silent film technique to make them cinematically minded and realise that it is ‘motion pictures’ firsthand foremost. “There is not enough visualising done in some studios, and instead far too much writing. People take a sheet of paper and scrawl down a lot of dialogue and instructions and call that a day’s work. It leads them nowhere. “There is also a growing habit of reading a film script by the dialogue alone. My associates and I deplore

this method, this lazy neglect of action, this lack of reading action m a film story, or, if you like, this inability, to visualise. I try to do without paper when I begin a new film. I visualise my story in my mind as a series of smudges moving over a variety of backgrounds. Often I pick my backgrounds first and then flunk about the action of the story. This was the ca.se in ‘The Man Who Knew Too Much. I visualised the snow-clad heights of the alps and the ill-lit alleys of London and threw my story and characters in among it all. ’ “My methods of film-making and the introduction of those legendary ‘Hitchcock touches’ are quite straight-

forward. -I like to keep the public guessing, and never let them know what is going to happen next. I build un my interest gradually and surely and, in thrillers, bringing it to a crescendo. I have to guard against going too fast in a film. This is fatal. X have to remember that whereas I know the story backwards, the audience has got to absorb it gradually. Otherwise the whole thitig would be too sketchy to be intelligible. . “My artists, too, must behave as human beings, and in my determination to achieve this ideal perhaps arises that story about my loathing of women in my films. I don t loathe them, and I don’t ask much of an actress. I have no wish for her to be able to play a' whole list of character roles, but she must be a real human person. That is why I deliberately deprived Madeleine Carroll of her dignity and 'glamour’ in ‘The Thirty-nine Steps,’ and I have done exactly the same thing with her in ‘Secret Agent. In this last film, the first shot you see of her is with her face covered .with cold cream! “Next to reality, I put the accent on comedy. Comedy, - strangely enough, makes a film more dramatic. I am out to give the public good healthy mental ‘shake-ups.’ Civilisation has become screening and sheltering that we cannot experienc sufficient thrills at first hand. Therefore, to prevent us becoming sluggish and jellified, we have to experience them artificially, and the screen is the best medium for this. In ‘The Man Who Knew Too Much,’ in ‘The Thirty-nine Steps,’ m ‘Secret Agent,’ and now in ‘Sabotage. I have been all out for whole-hearted thrills, but not ‘horror’ thrills, which is merely unnatural excitement, but full-blooded healthy stuff for which there will always be an eternal demand.”

Production has commenced on “Mountain Justice,” Bette Davis’s next starring vehicle for Warner Bros. First .National. Miss Davis will be supported by George Brent and a strong cast. The story, suggested by a famous case which filled American newspaper headlines not long ago, was written by Norman Reilly Raine. Her current vehicle, with George Brent as leading man, is “The Golden Arrow.”