Book Review - Hitchcock On Hitchcock

Hitchcock On Hitchcock: Selected Writings And Interviews
Edited by Sidney Gottlieb
University of California Press, 1997
Reviewed by William I. Lengeman III
(First published at Creature Corner)

The late Alfred Hitchcock may be one of the world’s best-known movie directors. The only other director who really comes close is Woody Allen. Among the contributing factors that made “Hitch” a household name were his prodigious output as a director – more than fifty feature films in roughly as many years – his trademark cameo appearances in each film, a television series that ran for ten years and to which he lent not only his name, but his hosting talents, and a keen awareness of the value of public relations.

What many people probably don’t know is that Hitchcock’s creative output also included numerous published writings, many – not surprisingly – dealing with film. Hitchcock On Hitchcock collects the best of these writings, along with a number of published interviews with the master.

Editor Sidney Gottlieb acknowledges that some of these pieces may not have been penned by Hitchcock, but rationalizes their inclusion based on the assumption that they were written with his knowledge and approval and would never have seen the light of day if he had not signed off on them. Gottlieb chose to include only pieces which relate in some way to the production of motion pictures, but also includes a substantial bibliography that will lead interested readers to other published writings by Hitchcock.

The selections are organized into five sections: A Life In Films; Actors, Actresses, Stars; Thrills, Suspense, the Audience; Film Production; Technique, Style, and Hitchcock at Work, with each section arranged chronologically. Many articles date from the Thirties – obviously a busy decade for Hitchcock, the writer - but they span more than a half-century. Gas, the earliest piece here, is a short fictional vignette written in 1919, while Surviving is a transcript of an interview published in Sight & Sound magazine in 1977, not long before Hitchcock’s death. Film Production, one of the more workmanlike pieces presented here, is a lengthy entry that is noteworthy for having appeared in the 1965 edition of Encyclopedia Brittanica.

Several themes keep cropping up throughout this book. There is Hitchcock’s repeated assertion that he is a commercial filmmaker, one who has been prevented from flexing his creative muscles by the financial realities of motion picture production and the expectations of his audience. There is also Hitchcock’s dogged insistence that film should be a primarily visual medium, perhaps not surprising, given the fact he got his start during the silent film era.

As far as technique is concerned, Hitchcock reveals his fondness for a mobile camera and sequential shooting, while disassociating himself from much of the technical gimmickry he used in his earlier pictures. He discusses his notorious statement that “actors are cattle,” clarifying that what he meant to say was that actors should be treated like cattle. Other oft-repeated assertions regarding acting include the notion that “the best screen actor is the man who can do nothing extremely well.”

On more than one occasion, Hitchcock expresses a strong preference for suspense and thrillers that provide “good, healthy mental shakeups,” while confessing to a disdain for the shocking and lurid content of the horror genre. And of course, the dry and acerbic wit that was Hitchcock’s trademark is on display throughout, though not nearly as frequently as one might expect. In Search for the Sun, Hitchcock discusses the perils and pitfalls of working with dogs, boats and babies, and confesses, of the inability of the latter to cry on order, that he had to “fight back the inherent desire to stick a pin in them.”

Hitchcock on Hitchcock may not be the book to turn to when beginning a study of the director’s life and work – the biographies and a book-length interview by fellow director Francois Truffaut are probably a better starting point - but it is a valuable reference for those who have read the “standard” texts on Hitchcock and want to increase their understanding of how he worked and thought.

Copyright 2007 - William I. Lengeman III