hitchcock vs hitchcock

• andré bazin, 1954

• I cannot say that the combined efforts of Scherer, Astruc, Rivette, and truffaut have entirely convinced me of Alfred Hitchcock's flawless genius, particularly in his American work, but they have at least persuaded me to question my previous skepticism.
• contradiction between critic and author is natural
• subjective art: artistic creation — even with the most in tellectual temperaments — is essentially intuitive and practical: It is a matter of effects to attain and materials to conquer.
• objective art: a work of art escapes its creator and bypasses his conscious intentions, in direct proportion to its quality.
• The foundation of this objectivity also resides in the psychology of the creation to the extent — inappreciable — to which the artist does not really create but sets himself to crystallize, to order the sociological forces and the technical conditions into which he is thrust.
• This is particularly true of the American cinema in which you often find quasi-anonymous successes whose merit reflects, not on the director, but on the production system.

Paul Feyder, French first assistant on the film [To Catch a Thief], presented me to Hitchcock. Our conversation lasted fifty or sixty minutes (there were retakes) during which time Hitchcock did no more than throw one or two quick glances at what was going on.

• In the course of that first interview I had time to pose nearly all of the questions I had had in mind, but the answers had been so disconcerting that, full of caution, I decided to use a counterinterrogation as a control for some of the most delicate points.
• Hitchcock himself insisted that half the film's action should be silent because the journalist cannot be expected to hear his neighbors at the distance he sees them. Thus the director had to resort to the guile of "pure cinema" which he adored. In general, dialogue is a nuisance to him because it restricts cinematographic expression, and he reproaches several of his films for this restriction.
• At this point I did not abandon the point of my original inquiry by taking up the fallacious opposition of form and content. What Hitchcock calls "means" may be, perhaps, only a more indirect (and more unconscious) manner of following, if not a subject, at least a theme. I insisted, therefore, on the unity of his work, and he agreed with me in a negative way. All he demands of a scenario is that it go his "way."
  • What I wanted was the exact definition of this "way." Without hesitation, Hitchcock spoke of a certain relationship between drama and comedy. The only films that may be taken as "pure Hitchcock" (sic) are those in which he has been able to play with this discordant relationship.
    • I risk the word "humor." Hitchcock accepts it;
    • what he is trying to express may well be taken as a form of humor and he spontaneously cites The Lady Vanishes as conforming most closely to his ideal.
  • Must we conclude from this that his English work is more "purely Hitchcock" than his American? Without a doubt, first of all because the Americans have much too positive a spirit to accept humor.
    • He could never have made The Lady Vanishes in Hollywood; a simple reading of the scenario and the producer would have pointed out how unrealistic it would be to send a message with an old woman by train when it would be quicker and surer to send a telegram.
    • He thought he would please his old Italian maid by taking her to see The Bicycle Thief, but all she felt was astonishment that the worker did not end up borrowing a bike:
• Moreover, in Hollywood films are made for women; it is toward their sentimental taste that scenarios are directed because it is they who account for the bulk of the box-office receipts. In England films are still made for men, but that is also why so many studios close down. The English cinema has excellent technicians, but English films are not "commercial" enough and Hitchcock declares, with pain mixed with shame, that they are idle there while he is working.
• Hitchcock told me that his "weakness" lies in being conscious of his responsibility for all this money.
• Hitchcock appeared [...] concerned with correcting that indirect criticism of being commercial by affirming that it was easy to make an "artistic" film, but the real difficulty lay in making a good commercial film, a very feasible paradox, after all.
• Had he not always been concerned with ingenious and sometimes complex technical effects in order to obtain certain effects of mise-en-scène? Categorical answer: The importance of the technical means placed at his disposal did not particularly interest him. To the extent that they rendered the film more costly they even augmented commercial servitude. To sum it up, his ideal is, under those conditions, to accomplish perfection of "the quality of imperfection."
• I believe I understood that the quality in question was American technical perfection (lacking in the European cinema) and the "imperfection" that margin for liberty, imprecision, and, shall we say, humor that makes, for Hitchcock, the English cineaste's position superior.
• achieving the almost impossible marriage of perfect technical execution through Hollywood's oiled and supple machinery with the creative stumbling block, the unforeseen Acts of God, as in the European cinema!

⠀

• I noticed several times his taste for the elegant and ambiguous formulation that goes so far as to become a play on words. Chabrol became aware of this tendency several times in Paris when Hitchcock made theological jokes based on "God and "Good." This linguistic playfulness assuredly corresponds to a cast of mind but undoubtedly it is also a certain form of intellectual camouflage.
• I had him notice that one theme at least reappeared in his major films that, because of its moral and intellectual level, surely went beyond the scope of simple "suspense" — that of the identification of the weak with the strong,
  • whether it be in the guise of deliberate moral seduction, as in Shadow of a Doubt where the phenomenon is underlined by the fact that the niece and the uncle have the same name; whether, as in Strangers on a Train, an individual somehow steals the protagonist's mental crime, appropriates it for himself, commits it, and then comes to demand that the same be done for him; whether, as in I Confess, this transfer of personality finds a sort of theological confirmation in the sacrament of penitence, the murderer considering more or less consciously that the confession not only binds the priest as witness but somehow justifies his acceptance of the guilty role.
  • Hitchcock listened to it with attention and intensity. When he finally understood it I saw him touched, for the first and only time in the interview, by an unforeseen and unforeseeable idea. I had found the crack in that humorous armor. He broke into a delighted smile and I could, follow his train of thought by the expressions on his face as he reflected and discovered for himself with satisfaction the confirmation in the scenarios of Rear Window and To Catch a Thief.
• coming back to I Confess, I obtained an important concession. When I praised the extreme technical sobriety, the intensity in austerity, it was not in order to displease him. It is true that he applied himself here and that the film finds favor in his eyes for these formal reasons. In order to characterize this rigor of raise en scene it would be necessary to employ an epithet from the "clerical vocabulary." ... I suggested "Jansenist." — "What is Jansenist?" Sylvette Baudrot explained to him that the Jansenists were the enemies of the Jesuits. He found the coincidence very droll for he had studied with Fathers and, for I Confess, had been obliged to free himself from his education! I did not tell him I would have thought him, nevertheless, a better student. At least in theology.
• Which, then, at least among his American films, did he consider to be the most exclusively commercial and the least worthy of esteem? — Spellbound and Notorious. Those that found grace in his eyes? Shadow of a Doubt and Rear Window.
• Is it true that he never looked through the camera? — Exactly. This task is completely useless, since all the framing has been planned and indicated in advance by little drawings that illustrated the cutting technique.
  • For him it is always a question of creating in the mise-en-scène, starting from the scenario, but mainly by the expressionism of the framing, the lighting or the relation of the characters to the decor, an essential instability of image.
• From German expressionism, to whose influence he admits having submitted in the studios in Munich, he undoubtedly learned a lesson, but he does not cheat the spectator. We need not be aware of a vagueness of impression in the peril in order to appreciate the dramatic anguish of Hitchcock's characters. It is not a question of a mysterious "atmosphere" out of which all the perils can come like a storm, but of a disequilibrium comparable to that of a heavy mass of steel beginning to slide down too sharp an incline, about which one could easily calculate the future acceleration.
• Does he use any improvisation on the set? — None at all; ::he had To Catch a Thief in his mind, complete, for two months.:: That is why I saw him so relaxed while "working." For the rest, he added with an amiable smile, lifting the siege, how would he have been able to devote a whole hour to me right in the middle of shooting if he had to think about his film at the same time?