PATRICK BARLOW
Adaptor of The 39 Steps for the West End stage
The original idea was to adapt the John Buchan book. Then I watched the
Hitchcock film, which I had never seen, and I thought it was a completely
brilliant piece of screenwriting and storytelling. The structure is
cast-iron, and Hitchcock absolutely made it his own. There is not one moment
where you think, “That’s a bit slack.” It’s full of iconic cinema moments,
but it was Hitchcock who invented all the brilliant things: Mr Memory, the
Forth Bridge, the women. There are no women in Buchan’s book at all.
Hitchcock is not just a master of atmosphere, he’s a natural master of the
cinema in the choices he makes. I learnt so much - when he brings that
character in, when he kills someone off. I can’t stand these modern
thrillers where they seem to leave the audience’s understanding of the story
as their last concern, and you are thinking, “Who the . . ? What’s he . . ?”
Hitchcock wants you to know. He sets characters up very clearly. I’ve worked
on so many soul-destroying projects as a writer where people don’t know what
they want, but keep bringing in other people. Hitchcock just knew what would
work. A genius.
STEPHEN FREARS
Director
I remember seeing North by Northwest in the late 1950s, and it was incredible:
the landscape, the colour, the sophistication of the material. But Notorious
was the film I came to love. The story is phenomenal; it’s incredibly
sexually complex, and it has a brilliant series of set pieces. You start to
realise what you can do in any scene, how to set it in a more interesting
way. I don’t think any of that came naturally to me. I had to learn it, and
I eventually came to appreciate how brilliant a man he was.
When I made Dangerous Liaisons, the shot of Glenn Close and John Malkovich
coming downstairs is absolutely based on the ending of Notorious. Hitchcock
realised that, when people come downstairs, they bounce when they hit the
next step, and he must have flattened the staircase so it absorbed the
bumps. In Liaisons, by the final take, John was carrying Glenn [to get the
same effect].
It’s very peculiar making films. You have to reduce ideas into technical,
precise images. Hitchcock seems to have done that brilliantly. He was a
storyboard artist, a graphic artist - he drew every film. I’m totally
opposed to it, because it’s a way of avoiding looking at what is in front of
you, but he did it. He is the only person I know who could draw the film and
it worked.
JAMES HAWES
Director of the BBC’s forthcoming The 39 Steps
The film gives a whole new energy to what we call the romantic thriller.
He managed to create something almost Bond-like, with real comedy for the
hero, as well as irony and real drama. I came across an article that said
Bond could never have existed without Buchan and The 39 Steps and
Hitchcock’s North by Northwest, which is absolutely a modern version of The
39 Steps, almost beat for beat. I’m trying to be very aware of the legacy.
I’ll be tipping my hat to him.
JAMIE THRAVES
Director of Cry of the Owl, based on a Patricia Highsmith novel
I’ve been a fan of Hitchcock since I was about eight, though it was his
books I was in love with at first. (Well, I thought they were his books:
Alfred Hitchcock and The Three Investigators. No author’s name appeared on
the front cover, and his name was in bolder type.) My real appreciation of
Hitchcock didn’t occur until I began an art foundation course. I joined a
film-studies class, and the tutor was a Hitchcock nut. We watched a stack of
his movies, and Hitchcock quickly became my first film hero.
Shadow of a Doubt is one of my favourites. The moment that always gets me is
when “Charlie”, the niece, approaches her house, and Joseph Cotten, her
Uncle Charlie, is waiting for her on the porch - and she knows he is the
Merry Widow Murderer. Hitchcock employs his famous point-of-view tracking
shot as Teresa Wright (Charlie) moves closer to him. When I become Charlie,
I always want to turn and run.
Hitchcock never seemed to be short of clever ideas. He clearly brainstormed
every moment and came up with the best and most interesting solutions for
every scene, every inch of the frame, in fact. He was great at picking
brilliant collaborators, too - Ernest Lehman, Bernard Hermann, Saul Bass.
His films are so beautifully orchestrated, choreographed like dance, but
never stiff, always fluid. I find the performances consistently rich and
full of life. He has this special way of making you aware of his creativity,
but he never sacrifices your involvement with either character or story.
ANNA MASSEY
Actress, directed by Hitchcock in 1972’s Frenzy
I worked with quite a few legends of that era - Michael Powell, John Ford,
Hitchcock - and what they had in common was phenomenal focus. They knew
exactly what they wanted, the size and length of every shot. Hitchcock never
did more than one take, but he did really long takes, so there was a tension
that spread from the actors to the crew. Good direction is like an x-ray -
they know what they want to such an extent, you would never have said, “Can
we go again?”
All directors are control freaks. Hitchcock wasn’t a control freak in his
direction (it’s not true he didn’t like actors, he made you feel very free),
but he was absolutely in charge of your look - your make-up, hair, clothes,
even the gloves.
I liked him very much. He was a complicated man. His way of putting you at
ease before a take was to tell smutty jokes, and he was full of the most
extraordinary neuroses. But he coped with them. He had a wonderfully
successful life.
BHARAT NALLURI
Director
My next film, The Tourist, is a modern-day classic Hitchcock story about a
wronged man thrown into the centre of a big plot, trying to prove his
innocence. I’ll be screening North by Northwest to the cast and crew. That’s
the one I watch over and over again. The thing I love is the sexuality he
always brings, these really sexy females, but in a very subtle way.
I use him as my film-maker’s bible. I’m always quoting snippets like “Kill
your babies” - I used it only the other day about one of those beautiful
shots you wait ages to get, then you realise it doesn’t drive the plot or
any of the characters at all.
Part of Hitchcock’s genius was his deployment of shots. In Vertigo, he made
famous one of the now most overused shots in film-making, to create the
feeling of vertigo: the dolly reverse zoom. Spielberg uses it in Jaws, when
we see the shark for the first time and he tracks in on the police chief on
the beach. You track in while the lens zooms out. It’s a characteristic
technique for showing fear. Scorsese does it in Goodfellas. I’ve done it
many, many times. Every young film-maker does. And in Strangers on a Train,
you see the murder reflected in the glasses on the ground. That’s a hugely
cinematic, extraordinary moment. Nobody else was doing anything like that.
It was so modern.
Hitchcock was a very commercial film-maker who was acutely aware of his
audience. He always put them first. That’s his biggest influence on me. His
genius was that he could elevate any genre to another level and put across a
point of view, yet deliver popular entertainment to a big audience. That’s
where I want to be.
Ten Hitch trademarks
THE CAMEO Hitchcock popped up in 37 of his 52 surviving films. In
Lifeboat, he was in a newspaper ad for the “Reduco obesity slayer”
THE VERTIGO EFFECT The camera zooms in while simultaneously tracking
out to simulate the effect of vertigo
A SAUL BASS SEQUENCE Bass created titles for Vertigo, Psycho and North
by Northwest, and they became iconic
THE BLONDE IN PERIL Hitch said: “They make the best victims. They’re
like virgin snow that shows up the bloody footprints”
A LANDMARK CONCLUSION From the British Museum in The Lodger to Mount
Rushmore in North by Northwest
GALLOWS HUMOUR In The Trouble with Harry, Harry’s body is repeatedly
buried, exhumed and reburied
MOTHER PROBLEMS Notably Cary Grant’s in North by Northwest, not
forgetting Norman/Norma Bates in Psycho
THE ‘MACGUFFIN’ A plot device that advances the story but
is otherwise unimportant, viz the money Marion steals in Psycho
THE ‘WRONG MAN’ THEME So central to Hitchcock’s concerns
(The 39 Steps, North by Northwest), he used it as a title
BATHROOMS Psycho’s “shower scene” is one of the most famous in cinema.
It’s just one example of Hitch’s lavatorial obsession
