The Man, The Myth, The Slightly Dodgy Legend

Alfred Hitchcock is the master of suspense, the original auteur, a control freak, and a misogynist. Hitchcock is certainly one of the most influential figures in cinematic history, but there is not denying that this man was a tad dodge.

One of the units I’m studying this term is titled, ‘Filmmaking through Hitchcock’. I’ve only watched ‘Psycho’ before this unit, and so, last week was my first proper introduction to Hitchcock. After watching ‘Vertigo’, ‘Strangers on a Train’ and ‘The Birds’, I have noticed a strange obsession with Hitchcock and his blonde women. I don’t know about you, but I find this fetish like obsession kind of cringe. Hitchcock was no doubt, a devious man, both in his radical and experimental filmmaking practices, and in the way he treated his actors.

In this blog, let us get to know the man, the myth, the slightly dodgy legend, a little better. Here are five facts you didn’t know about Alfred Hitchcock (maybe).

The Greatest Documentary Never Made

Hitchcock was involved in a documentary that some call, ‘The Greatest Documentary Never Made’. In 1945, Sidney Bernstein (a British businessman and media executive, founder of the Granada Group and Granada Television) was tasked with creating the definitive documentary about the liberation of concentration camps. Bernstein selected Alfred Hitchcock as one of the great filmmakers involved in the project.

The aim of this documentary was to show the true horrors of the Holocaust, and for it to act as proof and warning to future generations. The footage captured were some of the most heart-breaking and honest scenes from the tragedy, so haunting that Hitchcock was traumatised and stayed away from Pinewood Studio where they were editing the footage for a week

The documentary was never finished as the footage got tangled up in the politics involved at the end of the war. However, this footage was used and can be seen in Andre Singer’s 2014 documentary, ‘Night Will Fall’.

Hitchcock on Film Production

Hitchcock wrote an encyclopaedia on how to make movies. He was one of several contributors and in 1965, he wrote an entry as part of the 14th edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica explaining the history of filmmaking, telling the story through images, the screenplay and so on. And honestly, who better to explain the art of filmmaking than the master of suspense himself.

In this long entry, we can see where the common saying, ‘show don’t tell’, came from. In the section titled, ‘The Screenplay’, Hitchcock emphasises the importance of ‘things’ and the visual aspect of cinema, “To put things together visually; to embody the action in the juxtaposition of images that have their own specific language and emotional impact – that is cinema.”. Hitchcock then writes that a skilled writer “will not fall into the uncinematic habit of relying too much on the dialogue”. In fact, Hitchcock seemed to be impartial to talking picture, “Some indeed there are who believe that the day talking picture arrived motion picture, as applied to the fictional film, died and passed to other kinds of film”. According to Hitchcock, filmmakers who went to the extreme of using sound simply made “stage plays”.

‘Psycho’(1960), deemed as a “disgusting movie” by Walt Disney.

Hitchcock was banned from Disneyland. After ‘Psycho’, Hitchcock wanted to film some of the scenes of his next movie in Disneyland. When Walt Disney heard about this through reports in a trade paper, he put out this statement:

“In no circumstances would Hitchcock, maker of that disgusting movie Psycho, be allowed to shoot a foot of film in Disneyland.”

So, basically, Walt Disney didn’t want Hitchcock to taint his image, especially when Disneyland has just opened five years earlier. Yes, yes. It seems that behind the family friendly façade of Micky Mouse, Disney is, in fact, the fun police; what a shame. Hitchcock shifted the idea to film on an around the world cruise but eventually the project fell apart and was never made.

How many Oscars did Hitchcock win?

Hitchcock never won an Oscar for his work as a director. He was nominated five times. ‘Rebecca’ in 1941 which lost to John Ford’s ‘The Grapes of Wrath’. ‘Lifeboat’ in 1945 which lost to Leo McCarey’s ‘Going My Way’. ‘Spellbound’ in 1946 which lost to Billy Wilder’s ‘The Lost Weekend’. ‘Rear Window’ in 1955 lost to Elia Kazan’s ‘On The Waterfront’. And in 1961, ‘Psycho’ lost to Billy Wilder’s ‘The Apartment’.

Four of his movies were nominated for Best Picture, which back then was called ‘Outstanding Production’. ‘Rebecca’ and ‘Foreign Correspondent’ were both nominated in the same year with ‘Rebecca’ winning Best Pictures. The other two were ‘Suspicion’ and ‘Spellbound’.

Hitchcock did receive the Irving G. Thalberg award in 1968. Nonetheless, it is shocking to see that one of the most influential filmmakers in history never received an Oscar for putting so much into the craft of cinema.

Hitchcock: A shady character

“It is the worst thing to be the object of someone’s obsession if you’re not interested. It became unbearable” – Tippi Hedren, star of Hitchcock’s ‘The Birds’ and ‘Marnie’.

Hedren writes about Hitchcock’s obsession with her in her autobiography, ‘Tippi: A Memoir’ (2016), “He suddenly grabbed me and put his hands on me. It was sexual, it was perverse, and it was ugly. The harder I fought him, the more aggressive he became.” Hedren says that Hitchcock retaliated with cruelty. In the famous attack scene of ‘The Birds’, Hitchcock replaced mechanical birds with real ones, and Hedren was really pecked in her face. Hitchcock also threatened to ruin her career because she refused to sleep with him.