Pod Insights Short History Of... Alfred Hitchcock About this episode Alfred Hitchcock was one of the most celebrated film directors of all time. In a career that spanned six decades, he produced more than 50 films, including Britain’s first successful talking picture. His countless awards and accolades earned him a reputation as the ‘Master of Suspense’, but how did an introverted working class boy come to dominate Hollywood? What was the truth behind the rumours of obsessive ruthless behaviour? And what makes his films so revered still to this day?
This is a Short History Of Alfred Hitchcock.
A Noiser Production. Written by Olivia Jordan. With thanks to Tony Lee Moral, author of numerous books on Hitchcock, including ‘Alfred Hitchcock: Storyboards’.
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0:32 Speaker 01 It is the 19th of August, 1905. Outside a row of shops in Limehouse, East London, a group of children are playing on the street. Some skip over a hopscotch grid chalked out on the pavement, noisily counting aloud. Others are embroiled in a raucous game of marbles.
0:52 Speaker 01 The greengrocer's son, just six years old, watches from a doorway, making no effort to get involved. He lives in a world of his own.
1:02 Speaker 01 A crow, flying unusually low, catches the boy's eye. He ducks as it swoops, mere inches above his head, to rest on a wall. It tilts his head, staring directly at him, until, in a flash, it flaps away again.
1:23 Speaker 01 The boy follows the crow's flight as it flutters in bursts along the length of some tram lines, coming to rest on the roof of a tram stop.
1:33 Speaker 01 Distracted again, the boy picks up a fallen branch and drags it along the steel rails.
1:43 Speaker 01 He's so lost in his own world that an approaching tram driver is forced to blast his horn to get him out of the way.
1:54 Speaker 01 As he jumps back, he finally looks around.
1:58 Speaker 01 Without realising it, dusk has fallen. Worse than that, he has no idea where he is.
2:07 Speaker 01 His mother had warned him not to get lost again. And yet here he is, alone and confused, in the warrens of the East End, blinking in the smog.
2:17 Speaker 01 Panicking now, he turns and starts to retrace his steps, following the tracks back in the direction from which he came. Eventually, he begins to recognise his surroundings. He races past the row of shops to the door of the greengrocers.
2:37 Speaker 01 His mother sags with relief as she lets him in. But his father is stony-faced.
2:45 Speaker 01 He thrusts a folded piece of note paper into his son's hand and tells him to take it right away to the police station nearby.
2:54 Speaker 01 When he arrives, the boy hands the note to the first officer he sees.
3:01 Speaker 01 The constable reads it and raises an eyebrow before leading him down the corridor to a holding cell. Gruffly, he explains that his father wants him to know what happens to naughty boys. Then the policeman opens the cell, shoves him inside, and slams the door shut.
3:24 Speaker 01 The boy cowers in the corner for what seems like an age. He grips his eyes closed, trying to block out the shadows dancing through the bars and the clanging and shouts from the police station beyond the door.
3:40 Speaker 01 Five minutes later,
3:43 Speaker 01 the key turns in the lock, and the officer hauls the boy up and dispatches him home to his parents. Mr and Mrs Hitchcock.
3:54 Speaker 01 Satisfied that their son, little Alfred, has learnt his lesson, they send him straight to bed. Lying in the dark though, the child can't sleep. And it's not just the brush with the law. Though the experience does, according to his later retelling, leave him with a phobia of authority so intense, he will never even drive a car, to avoid the risk of getting so much as a parking ticket.
4:20 Speaker 01 But what has really started to take root in him is an understanding of the visceral potency of fear itself.
4:28 Speaker 01 Something that will stay with him for the rest of his life.
4:37 Speaker 01 Alfred Hitchcock was one of the most celebrated film directors of all time. In a career that spanned six decades, he produced more than fifty films, including Britain's first successful talking picture. Notching up countless awards and accolades, the man nicknamed "The Master of Suspense" gave cinema a new visual language and a style that remains influential and iconic to this day. But how did an introverted, working-class boy from the streets of London's East End come to dominate Hollywood? What was the truth behind the rumours of obsessive, ruthless behaviour? And his reputation for pushing his actors to their limits? And what makes his films quite so revered?
5:22 Speaker 01 I'm John Hopkins. From the Noiser Network, this is A Short History of Alfred Hitchcock.
5:36 Speaker 01 As the 20th century begins, greengrocers William and Emma Hitchcock are as busy as ever. Juggling the running of their shop with bringing up their three children, they move from one rented premises to another, but stay in the vicinity of London's East End.
5:54 Speaker 01 With Irish roots, this is a disciplined Roman Catholic household, with a strong moral code, a firm sense of what's right and wrong, and firm consequences for misbehaviour. Alfred, the youngest sibling, is often alone, preferring the company of his books to that of school friends. In fact, he has very few friends at all. Tony Lee Morrell is the author of four books about Alfred Hitchcock.
6:22 Speaker 02 He observed people. He used to like to sit in the corner and watch, and that very much informed his later films, especially voyeurism, point of view. So he was very much a passive observer, very quiet. And he read a lot, he loved going to plays. So his childhood was very much involved in watching, reading stories, and going to the theatre.
6:49 Speaker 01 At school, Alfred is an average pupil, but shows quirks of character which amuse his peers. He knows every stop on the new cross-continental train line, the Orient Express, which begins its journey in London. It's now that he memorizes the capital's tram map, information that will stay with him for the rest of his life. In fact, much later, when his assistants call out the scene and take numbers of his films using a clapperboard, he will amuse himself by whispering the corresponding tram routes and stops.
7:27 Speaker 01 Leaving school at the age of fourteen, Alfred is not sorry to see the back of a strict Jesuit education with its stern priests and vicious corporal punishment. But the formative lessons never leave him. When, as an adult, he is asked about his early influences, he replies that "there are no stories as gruesome as those in the Bible."
7:49 Speaker 01 For now, though, the teenager helps out in the family shop while enrolling in night classes at a local school of engineering. But before he can make his next move, the world has turned on its head with the outbreak of the First World War in the summer of 1914.
8:10 Speaker 01 Just shy of his fifteenth birthday, when Britain enters the conflict, Alfred is initially too young to enlist, but he absorbs the sense of devastation all around him.
8:22 Speaker 01 The losses of local lads, the grieving families, the way the horror of it slowly becomes commonplace.
8:30 Speaker 01 It cements for the teenager an awareness, not just of the human capacity to feel fear, but of the ability to endure it.
8:40 Speaker 01 That Christmas, his father dies of emphysema. His older siblings have already left home, so he must now help support himself and his mother. He drops out of engineering school and takes a lowly job as a technical clerk at the Henley Telegraph and Cable Company.
8:59 Speaker 01 As he turns eighteen, Hitchcock is finally old enough to enlist for military service. But though Britain is still at war, he is already overweight, and his poor fitness is another dark mark against him. So he sees out the conflict as a royal engineer cadet. When peace eventually comes, Hitchcock seeks employment once more. He hears of a film studio opening in London.
9:26 Speaker 01 A thrilling proposition at a pretty miserable time. At Henley Cable, he had learned to write and illustrate the advertisements for the company's in-house magazine. Putting this skill to use, he mocks up some title cards, the kind that flash up on the screen before a silent movie, and sends them off alongside his application to the film company. His resourcefulness is rewarded, and in 1919, he is hired as the studio's title card designer.
9:57 Speaker 01 He quickly impresses studio head Michael Balkan with both his passion for cinema and his eagerness to learn. Foot firmly in the door, Hitchcock volunteers for everything, from costume supervisor to director's assistant.
10:11 Speaker 01 His time at what becomes Gainsborough Pictures will change his life. For it is here too that he meets the person who will become his greatest creative collaborator.
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10:58 Speaker 01 Alma Revel is an established script editor, and their paths cross often. For now, he admires her from a distance. In truth, he's a little intimidated by the bright, confident redhead. Vocal, in a script room notably dominated by men.
11:14 Speaker 02 He first met her in 1923, on the picture Woman to Woman. He was working as a story title designer and a writer, but he wasn't yet an assistant director. And there was that kind of class system in the studio. He was working under Graham Cuts, a famous British director. And so when he got the job of an assistant director, he felt he could talk to Alma and ask her out. But he said for two years, he was too shy to ask her out, and he was very shy with women in general, so he didn't.
11:48 Speaker 01 Though Cuts recruits Hitchcock to be his number two on a shoot in Berlin, it is a strained relationship. Hitchcock grows weary of having to cover for his boss's extramarital affairs. Not least because they impact on their work schedule. But the chaos plays to Hitchcock's advantage. When Cuts now abandons the project, Balkan turns to his second to step in. And he doesn't need to be asked twice. Impressing Balkan by finishing the film with production time to spare, Hitchcock is offered another opportunity. This time, on a film of his own. The Pleasure Garden, a melodrama about chorus girls, is to be shot at a studio near Munich.
12:33 Speaker 01 Bringing Alma along as his assistant director, Hitchcock returns to Germany to make his directorial debut.
12:41 Speaker 01 But despite meticulous preparation, the film proves to be a trial by fire. Everything that can go wrong does. His funds to pay for production expenses are stolen. The film stock is impounded by customs. And Hitchcock, a monoglot Englishman, cannot be understood by his German crew. Even so, in the heart of the German movie industry, which is one of the world's foremost, he is the proverbial kid in a sweet shop. He learns the rudiments of silent expressionist filmmaking, how to use a camera, how to tell a story without words.
13:22 Speaker 01 As his first foray into directing, the experience has been seismic. Within the year, he is back in Europe with Alma, directing his second film, The Mountain Eagle. Shooting in the winter of 1925, it features dazzling snowbound locations in Lake Como and Samaritz. Back in Britain, with no downtime in sight, he begins work on The Lodger, starring matinee idol Ivan Novella as the eponymous house guest suspected of a string of murders.
13:52 Speaker 01 The movie establishes many of his idiosyncrasies, like his tradition of including himself in a cameo appearance. It's a ritual that begins accidentally.
14:03 Speaker 01 When a hired extra fails to turn up to work, Hitchcock fills in, playing the role of a telephone operator in the background of a scene. As he continues these walk-ons throughout the rest of his career, spotting Hitchcock will become part of the film-going experience. Audiences will erupt in giggles as they glimpse the rotund director, say, standing at a bus stop, wrestling a double bass onto a train, or glimpsed in a newspaper ad for a weight-loss drug.
14:32 Speaker 01 As his career progresses, Hitchcock will learn to get the cameo out of the way in the first five minutes, so it doesn't detract from the picture. On The Lodger, the audience is also introduced to another enduring motif, that of the Hitchcock blonde.
14:49 Speaker 01 The murderous lodger's victims unsettlingly are exclusively beautiful, fair-haired women.
14:57 Speaker 01 He calls The Lodger the first true Hitchcock film. Certainly, it is his first thriller and his first big hit, but it is also imbued throughout with his own personality. His childhood fear of authority is palpable, demonstrated in another of his themes.
15:15 Speaker 02 He had a lifelong fear of the police, a lifelong fear of being arrested, and that developed his theme of the wrongfully accused man, which really starts with The Lodger and The Thirty-Nine Steps, right up to North by Northwest and later Frenzy, the idea that the man is on the run from the police for a crime that he did not commit.
15:38 Speaker 01 The Lodger is dubbed by one critic as "the finest British production ever made", and its emerging director is already hailed "a genius".
15:50 Speaker 01 But he did not do it alone. Behind the scenes, he has someone very special in his corner,
15:56 Speaker 01 someone with whom the spectacular locations of Mountain Eagle had formed not just a filming, but a romantic backdrop.
16:09 Speaker 01 It is a bitterly cold morning in January 1926. Alma Revel stands beside Alfred Hitchcock on a windswept dock in Germany, waiting to board the boat that will carry them on their journey home to England. Shivering, Alma wraps her arms around herself, nestling into her red woolen scarf.
16:32 Speaker 01 She looks over at her boss. Clad in thickly woven knickerbockers, hiking boots, a large overcoat and wide felt hat, he is well protected from the cold, but still apparently restless, maybe even irritable, shifting his weight from foot to foot and slapping his gloved hands together repeatedly.
16:54 Speaker 01 A shrill whistle sounds, indicating that passengers should begin to board, just as the dark clouds above collapse in a thunderous downpour.
17:05 Speaker 01 Climbing the gangplank, Alma grimaces as ice-cold rain whips at every exposed inch of skin, while her director follows on behind.
17:18 Speaker 01 Onboard, luggage stowed, Alma heads for the tea room. She spots an empty table for two tucked in the corner, and signals Alfred to follow her. He makes his way over, clumsily.
17:33 Speaker 01 This is a route the pair have taken before, but their outward journey had been pleasant, relaxing even. There had been time to sit together and discuss the filming schedule, sharing a joke and a pot of tea.
17:47 Speaker 01 But this morning contains no such joys.
17:51 Speaker 01 As the engines start to rumble below decks and the ship gets underway, the wind groans, rocking the boat, causing objects to slide and passengers to lose their footing.
18:04 Speaker 01 It's more than Alma has the stomach for, so she makes her excuses and pushes herself to her feet.
18:11 Speaker 01 Nauseated, she staggers to the companionway that leads to the cabin, muttering an apology to Alfred as she goes.
18:21 Speaker 01 Inside the tiny berth, Alma is violently sick.
18:28 Speaker 01 Mustering enough energy to pull back the thin, starched blanket, she climbs onto the bunk.
18:36 Speaker 01 But no sooner does she close her eyes than there is a knock at the door.
18:41 Speaker 01 Larger than life, Alfred seems to take up every square inch of the tiny cabin as he squeezes inside, letting the door slam inelegantly.
18:52 Speaker 01 Unusually disheveled, not to mention soaked with sea spray, he kneels at Alma's bedside as though preparing to pray.
19:02 Speaker 01 But instead, he launches into a monologue.
19:07 Speaker 01 Though the delivery is perfectly rehearsed, in Alma's seasick condition, the words are largely lost. All but the last sentence, delivered after a brief pause for dramatic effect, which she does hear loudly and clearly.
19:24 Speaker 01 He is asking her to marry him.
19:27 Speaker 01 Unable to lift her head from her pillow, she manages one word in breathy response:
19:33 Speaker 01 "Yes."
19:35 Speaker 01 Smiling, Alfred reaches for Alma's left hand and carefully slips a ring onto her finger.
19:42 Speaker 01 Still fighting nausea, she draws the blanket around her neck and tries to sleep, as her new fiancé quietly leaves the room,
19:53 Speaker 01 closing the door gently behind him.
20:01 Speaker 01 In Hitchcock's eyes, Alma's acceptance of his proposal marks another dream realized. He will later say that he had wanted to become first, a movie director, and second, Alma's husband. Not in order of emotional preference, but because he felt the bargaining power implicit in the former was necessary in obtaining the latter. Simply put, he wanted to be worthy of his wife.
20:27 Speaker 01 The pair marry on December the 2nd, 1926, at the Brompton Oratory in London. Back from a honeymoon taken in Switzerland, France, and Italy, they move into a flat across two top floors of a beautiful building in West London's leafy Kensington suburb.
20:45 Speaker 01 Alma becomes not just his soulmate, but his closest collaborator, his sounding board, and often his co-writer. As one critic will put it when summing up his career, "The Hitchcock touch had four hands, and two were Alma's."
21:03 Speaker 01 For Hitchcock, marriage is the change that is as good as a rest, for in cinema, big things are happening.
21:14 Speaker 01 As it seemed inevitable, the film industry is undergoing a revolution,
21:20 Speaker 01 transitioning to a brave new world of sound. Over in Hollywood, the introduction of talking pictures, talkies, is quickly making silent movies redundant.
21:32 Speaker 01 Most of Hitchcock's 10th film, Blackmail, has already been shot when British International Pictures offer him the use of the latest recording equipment shipped in from America. As with any new technology to emerge throughout his career, Hitchcock approaches it as a challenge to be embraced.
21:51 Speaker 01 He goes back and reshoots the whole thing.
21:55 Speaker 01 The introduction of sound requires some improvisation.
22:00 Speaker 01 The film's leading lady, the silent film star Annie Ondra, with her heavy Czech accent, had not been employed for her vocal capabilities. The new version of the film requires an English actress to speak her dialogue off-camera, while Ondra lip-syncs along. And when it's released in July 1929, Blackmail wins the race to become both Hitchcock's and Britain's first full-talking.
22:31 Speaker 01 By this time, the couple have left London for a sprawling Tudor farmhouse in Surrey, where Alma gave birth to their first and only child, Patricia. And while things are changing at home, professionally, Hitchcock is entering a decade of intense activity.
22:48 Speaker 01 He now signs a multi-film deal with a major production company, working for his original boss, Michael Balkan, once again.
22:57 Speaker 01 The 1930s sees some of Hitchcock's best work, including mystery thriller The Lady Vanishes and his hugely successful adaptation of John Buckland's novel The Thirty-Nine Steps.
23:09 Speaker 01 And it's in this latter that he introduces a device known as the MacGuffin.
23:16 Speaker 01 It's a term coined by Hitchcock to mean something in a movie that drives the plot, but whose intrinsic worth is actually immaterial to the story. In The Thirty-Nine Steps, the MacGuffin is a set of stolen design plans, which ultimately are neither here nor there to the rip-roaring tale of mistaken identity and espionage.
23:38 Speaker 01 His willingness to let people in on the joke, spilling the movie-making secrets, helps cultivate Hitchcock as a brand. He happily participates in studio publicity, indulging the press and making use of his highly recognizable corpulent profile, which he draws in caricature as a logo.
23:59 Speaker 01 It all goes to underscore a monumental self-belief. Hitchcock subscribes to the film theorist's idea of the director as the auteur, a person of singular vision, so influential over their films that they are, in effect, its author. Indeed, his control on set is absolute, and he does not allow his actors' improvisation of any kind.
24:24 Speaker 01 "He is the conductor of an orchestra," he says. His musicians cannot deviate from the sheet music.
24:36 Speaker 01 Inevitably, now he's at the top of his game, Hollywood comes calling. Hitchcock receives many requests to take his career stateside, all of which he refuses on the grounds that he might risk losing his directorial control.
24:51 Speaker 01 That is, until the right combination of cash, clout, and creative freedom comes along.
24:59 Speaker 01 Flamboyant producer David O. Selznick now offers a four-film contract, and he's also got the rights to a screenplay about the Titanic and an adaptation of Daphne du Maurier's Rebecca. So, suitably enticed, in 1939, the Hitchcocks sail to America. As well as their daughter Patricia, now 11 years old, the entourage also includes a maid, a cook, and their two dogs.
25:25 Speaker 01 Though the initial plan is to start with Titanic, Hitchcock's first Hollywood film is Rebecca, set, ironically, in Cornwall, or rather, a stylized Hollywood version of it. The tale stars Laurence Olivier as a moody aristocrat, whose new young bride, played by Joan Fontaine, is haunted by the ghost of his ex-wife, and it proves an instant hit.
25:48 Speaker 01 Amongst a host of accolades, Rebecca wins Best Picture at the 13th Academy Awards, with Hitchcock receiving his first Best Director nomination. Though he doesn't win, it's a clear indication that his innovative mastery of all things sinister is being noticed by cinema's elite.
26:08 Speaker 02 The hidden menace, even though we don't see Rebecca, she's very much present there, just like Mother is present in Psycho, this unknown figure. And Mrs Danvers is one of a long line of very scary female figures. She's never seen walking really, she's always standing and she's almost like a ghost. Every time Joan Fontaine turns around, she's just standing there. So he didn't want to show her physically moving from A to B, just to give her a kind of more spectral presence. And she's very much like the rigid mother in Marnie as well, with her walking stick. And the terrible housekeeper also in Under Capricorn.
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27:23 Speaker 01 In the same year as Hitchcock's Hollywood movie, Britain declares war on Germany, marking the beginning of World War Two. Though criticised for abandoning home shores, Hitchcock is now too old to enlist. Instead, he contributes to the war effort in the only way he knows how. His film Foreign Correspondent, released in 1940, is conspicuously promotional of the British war efforts. Likewise Saboteur, Lifeboat and Notorious, which also deal with themes of spying and enemies within.
27:57 Speaker 01 On the quiet, he slips back for a visit in 1943 to make a couple of short propaganda films for the British War Office. Notably, at the end of the war, he will be a consultant on a landmark documentary about the liberation of the Nazi death camps.
28:17 Speaker 01 Throughout the 1940s, he works on more traditional thrillers like Suspicion. First of four films Hitchcock will make with Cary Grant.
28:27 Speaker 01 Spellbound in 1945 will pair him with Ingrid Bergman and Gregory Peck. Going into the post-war era, this new Hollywood Hitchcock is a raging success. Already renowned for his psychological manipulation of his audience.
28:44 Speaker 02 Hitchcock was very much aware of being labelled the master of suspense and he would lecture on the difference between mystery and suspense. He would say mystery is an intellectual process like a whodunit, like who killed Cock Robin? But suspense is an emotional process. If you tell the audience that there's a bomb under a table or a bomb under a bus and that's gonna go off in five minutes, you've got five minutes of suspense.
29:14 Speaker 02 And that is an emotional response which involves the audience because they wanna shout "look out" or "get off the bus" or "look under the table" and so you're involving the audience in your storytelling.
29:27 Speaker 01 His experimentation is unrelenting. For Spellbound, a story about psychoanalysis, Hitchcock reaches out to the Spanish surrealist artist Salvador Dali to design a psychedelic dream sequence.
29:40 Speaker 01 In 1948's Rope, starring James Stewart, he pushes the boundaries of filmmaking technique again. The movie is designed to give the impression of a single continuous take from beginning to end, though in reality it consists of several long takes, each lasting around 10 minutes, the maximum length a reel of film can hold. The camera moves seamlessly between these shots, giving the illusion of real-time action without cuts. Later, in Dial M for Murder, he will be a pioneer in the use of 3D.
30:19 Speaker 01 Though the stars are queuing up to be in his films, Hitchcock himself is becoming the first director to command the same fame.
30:27 Speaker 02 He said actors come and go, but the name of the director should stay in the mind of audiences. So he really used that to publicise himself and the brand. And Hitchcock, of course, was known for his distinctive profile, his witty demeanour, his lugubrious tone. He definitely knew that he must establish that the audience should know the name of the director. He was very firm about that and had that director above the title and above the stars.
30:57 Speaker 01 As the post-war economic recovery begins, the film industry celebrates with spectacular, star-studded escapist feature films.
31:08 Speaker 01 And in the same way that sound replaced silence in the 1930s, as the 1950s progress, black and white is supplanted by dazzling technicolor.
31:20 Speaker 01 Three of Hitchcock's most famous colour films will star the future princes of Monaco, Grace Kelly, who becomes the quintessential Hitchcock blonde. A perpetuation of Hitchcock's apparent obsession for fair-haired female leads, Kelly's characters are cool, enigmatic, but capable of grave deception. Dial M for Murder, Rear Window and To Catch a Thief are hits in succession.
31:47 Speaker 01 But with technology ever evolving, the dominance of cinema is about to be threatened by a new kid on the block in the form of television. An increasingly popular and accessible form of entertainment, TV sets are now popping up in households all over America. Not one to be left behind, Hitchcock creates an anthology series for TV, with half-hour episodes featuring short mysteries and melodramas.
32:18 Speaker 02 Alfred Hitchcock Presents ran for 10 years from 1955 to 1965. And it was Hitchcock's way of capitalising on television, which was a real threat to cinema in the early 50s. Because people would stay at home and watch a TV box as their quiz shows were very successful. And film tried to fight back with Vista Vision, location filming. So if you look at those Hitchcock films in the middle of the 50s, you've got Cary Grant and Grace Curly in the south of France. You've got Doris Day and James Stewart going to Marrakech for The Man Who Knew Too Much. That was one way to fight television with this spectacle of foreign locations.
33:02 Speaker 01 By now, in his late 50s, but showing no signs of slowing down, Hitchcock directs what many consider to be his magnum opus.
33:12 Speaker 01 Vertigo stars Jimmy Stewart opposite Kim Novak as the icy femme fatale who defies Stewart's obsessive attempts to control her. Hitchcock's continued ingenuity allows him to find loopholes in the strict laws of moral censorship governing what is and what is not allowed to be shown on screen.
33:34 Speaker 01 The notorious Hays Code, or The Production Code, is a strict set of moral guidelines enforcing limitations on content regarding sex, violence and morality from the 1930s to the 1960s.
33:48 Speaker 02 Hitchcock was always pushing the envelope with the Hays Code, especially when it came to sex and male and female relationships. In the 1950s, he couldn't show negligee, he couldn't show nudity, but he could do suggestion. Famous example is in Vertigo when Jimmy Stewart rescues Kim Novak. And the idea that he's undressed her and put her into bed after she's pretended to fall into San Francisco Bay. Now, that's quite daring for 1958.
34:18 Speaker 01 Amongst other things, Vertigo is the first film to use an in-camera effect known as the Dolly Zoom, something he attempted less successfully during the filming of Rebecca all those years ago. The technique distorts perspective, which in Vertigo demonstrates Stewart's character's debilitating dizziness he developed after a fall from a rooftop.
34:42 Speaker 01 Nowadays, the technique is often referred to as "the Vertigo Effect."
34:52 Speaker 01 But all that daring and innovation isn't enough to convince the critics. Though it will retrospectively gain recognition as a cinematic landmark, it is, in its day, a commercial flop.
35:06 Speaker 01 As Hitchcock well knows, the industry is ruthless, and you're only as good as your last picture.
35:13 Speaker 01 Now, in his sixties, Hitchcock needs a hit.
35:20 Speaker 01 In a fortuitous meeting, the lauded film composer Bernard Herrmann, a frequent collaborator, introduces Hitchcock to a friend, scriptwriter Ernest Lehman. He is duly brought in to write the screenplay for the next Hitchcock picture.
35:36 Speaker 01 Working with the master over his shoulder, Lehman agonizes for over a year to produce the original screenplay for the film, "North by Northwest."
35:47 Speaker 01 But it is worth the wait. When it is released by Paramount in 1959, it is a global success, showered with awards.
35:57 Speaker 01 From the celebrated scene of the hero, played by Cary Grant, being chased in a cornfield by a crop-dusting plane, through to the cliff-edge finale at Mount Rushmore, it is, as Lehman puts it, "the Hitchcock picture to end all Hitchcock pictures."
36:16 Speaker 01 In many ways, he is right. For, moving into the 1960s, times and tastes are changing.
36:25 Speaker 01 And Hitchcock is smart enough to know that if he is to survive, he must adapt. A period of contractual wrangling follows as Paramount refuses to finance his next film, which they consider to be a tasteless horror movie.
36:39 Speaker 01 So Hitchcock takes matters into his own hands. He announces that he will not only pay for the movie himself, but he'll film it quickly. Shooting in retro black and white, he makes use of spare sets on the Universal lot, employing the nimble crews from his TV series.
36:58 Speaker 01 Hitchcock is so convinced by the story about a psychotic, murderous motel owner, that he even has his assistants buy up every available copy of the novel on which the screenplay is based, the better to preserve its plot twist.
37:15 Speaker 01 When Psycho is released, in summer 1960, it is instantly recognized as a genre-defining cinematic masterpiece. The film's shocking subject matter, horrific violence, and uncomfortable forays into psychology cause a sensation.
37:33 Speaker 01 Hitchcock's audacious decision to kill off his main character, Janet Leigh, just forty minutes into the movie, is unheard of in filmmaking. Upturning tradition to deliver the unexpected.
37:48 Speaker 01 The moment in the shower in which a naked Leigh is stabbed to death becomes iconic, one of the best-known moments in the history of film. Though the finished scene is just forty-five seconds long, it took over a week to shoot, with seventy-eight camera setups and fifty-two cuts. But the film is also career-defining for Hitchcock's trusted composer, Bernard Herrmann, too. The screeching score of violins becoming one of the most iconic in film history.
38:18 Speaker 01 Psycho is Hitchcock's biggest commercial hit, with the director pocketing a then-staggering fifteen million dollars in his share of the profits, around ten times that in today's money.
38:35 Speaker 01 But it will be three years, the longest since his debut, before Hitchcock makes another movie. Now, in poor health, he is losing his momentum.
38:47 Speaker 01 When casting for The Birds eventually begins, it is Alma who spots his next star in a television commercial. The young, inexperienced, tippy-hedron certainly looks the part, and screen tests well, so Alma implores her husband to sign her. The Birds is an adaptation of another Daphne du Maurier story, centering on an apocalyptic scenario in which flocks of birds descend to torment the inhabitants of a Californian fishing village.
39:15 Speaker 01 On paper, it seems unfilmable. But not to Hitchcock. Though to authentically create the terrifying climax he has in mind, the master of suspense is going to need birds, real birds, and lots of them.
39:31 Speaker 01 Hundreds of crows, ravens, starlings, and seagulls are wrangled for the production. In charge of them is Ray Berwick, a noted animal handler and behaviour expert. Hitchcock arranges for Berwick to have a closed set for a minimum of three weeks before shooting begins to train the birds and get them conditioned to the enclosed environment and bright lights. During filming, a makeshift avian hospital and aviary is built on location, and a representative from the American Humane Association monitors production for animal welfare.
40:07 Speaker 01 Conditions, however, are far from exemplary, at least by present-day standards. Though generally cared for, sometimes the birds' beaks are wired shut, and others are tied in place or tranquilised to prevent them from flying away.
40:23 Speaker 01 That said, remarkably, only one creature dies during the entire production. At first, Hitchcock uses mechanical birds for the attack scenes to protect his actors. Soon, he realises that the mix of mechanical and live birds isn't effective. Their aesthetic differences too pronounced, their movements too contrasting. The film's final attack scene is proven difficult to get right. It needs something grander, more daring.
40:54 Speaker 01 And certainly, more dangerous.
41:02 Speaker 01 It is the autumn of 1962, on a secluded corner of the California coast.
41:09 Speaker 01 The set of "The Birds" is buzzing with activity as the crew prepare for their biggest scene yet.
41:17 Speaker 01 Alfred Hitchcock stands behind the camera, his face unreadable. After four days of filming the climactic scene in the attic, he still hasn't got the exact shots he wants.
41:32 Speaker 01 In her dressing room, Tippi Hedren is preparing for another grueling day when there is a knock on the door.
41:40 Speaker 01 The director's assistant leans around the frame.
41:45 Speaker 01 He looks nervous and won't meet her eye as he delivers his news quickly. They will only be using real birds today.
41:54 Speaker 01 Before Tippi can respond, he is gone, replaced in the doorway by her dresser.
42:00 Speaker 01 Tippi stands and remains still as the assistant wraps bands of fabric around her body with small lengths of elastic attached. The actor is then helped into her character's dress, which has lots of small holes to pull the loops through. Hedren knows what this is all for. It is the fifth day of filming this scene, and she's used to the tricks.
42:25 Speaker 01 The live creatures will be fixed loosely by their feet to the elastic, encouraging them to collide with her as she flails from their attack.
42:35 Speaker 01 Resigned and determined, she walks out of the dressing room and prepares to face the inevitable.
42:44 Speaker 01 She glances nervously at the trainers and wranglers with their cages of crows, ravens, and seagulls. Taking a deep breath, she crosses the set to her mark inside the attic, making no eye contact with her director as she does.
43:01 Speaker 01 Now come the handlers. Arms above her head, Tippi remains absolutely still as the creatures are attached to her costume. The wranglers have the process down to a fine art, and within minutes they're ready.
43:20 Speaker 01 Hitchcock calls for action.
43:25 Speaker 01 The birds fixed to Tippi's costume are at fever pitch within seconds, and others are launched her way as the wranglers open cage after cage beside her. The creatures descend in a frenzy, swooping down, clawing, pecking at her hair, her face, her clothing. Ducking, shrieking, gasping for breath, she scrambles for the door handle as her character is supposed to do in the script, but she can't manage it. Her screams are drowned out by the chaos around her: the screeching of birds, the rush of air, the horrific onslaught of wings.
44:02 Speaker 01 Hitchcock watches, distant, clinical, his fingers tapping lightly against his chin. This is his vision, the scene driven by the leading lady's genuine terror. The crew begin to shift, restlessly, the intensity of it becoming unbearable. Surely it must nearly be over. But just as the director opens his mouth to shout "Cut", the afflicted actor screams out in such visceral, authentic panic that he is left in no doubt. This time, he has his scene.
44:42 Speaker 01 The birds are called off, but the damage is done. Tippi stumbles back, her face covered in cuts and scratches, tears streaming down her cheeks.
44:54 Speaker 01 Hitchcock steps forward, offering stiff praise.
44:59 Speaker 01 He orders the set to clear and marches off, and the wranglers get to work, bringing some kind of order back to the set.
45:13 Speaker 01 But for Tippi Hedren, the birds have left far more damage than the marks on her skin. After the trauma of that day of filming, Hedren is signed off from work with mental exhaustion. For Hitchcock, this is the price he expects his actors to pay for greatness.
45:31 Speaker 01 Quando la film è rilasciata nel spring del 1963, i suoi effetti speciali colossali, insieme ai suoi segmenti live molto reali, la vedono considerata la film più avanguardia e sperimentale di Hitchcock ancora. Molte considerano i "bird" come il primo film di disastro ambientale. Hedren starà di nuovo in Hitchcock nel suo prossimo film, "Marnie", un esplorazione complessa di trauma e psicologia. Ma dopo, tra un considerevole acrimonio e più tardi accuse di harassment sessuale, rifiuterà di rilasciarla dalla sua contratta esclusiva.
46:06 Speaker 01 Hedren dovrà aspettare altri tre anni per rinnovare la sua carriera. Quando lo farà, il suo momento è passato.
46:14 Speaker 01 Anche se è un movimento vendettivo da parte di Hitchcock, non è un'azione normale. Le accuse di suo comportamento controllante e ossessivo diventano più comuni, particolarmente in relazione alle sue attrice principali.
46:28 Speaker 01 Julie Andrews, che co-starò con Paul Newman nel 1966 "Torn Curtain", ricorda che le donne principali di Hitchcock erano la sua proprietà speciale. Molte biografi di Hitchcock concedono che fosse un fantasista e un voyeur, anche se uno che mai ha agito sui suoi impulsi.
46:47 Speaker 01 Tuttavia, quando "Torn Curtain", un sovventato thriller della Cold War viene rilasciato, le comparazioni con i film di James Bond dimostrano come Hitchcock stia per andare avanti dai tempi. Con il codice di Haye ora defunto, la rischiosa suggestività di Hitchcock è la sua camicia vecchia. Nell'era dei hippie, delle droghe e del amore libero, immortalizzato sullo schermo da film come "Easy Rider" e "Midnight Cowboy", Hitchcock sta ancora facendo le foto studio vecchie. E sta per esca con i suoi collaboratori anche. La più notabile è il composatore Bernard Herrmann.
47:24 Speaker 01 Mentre i studios vogliono emulare il successo commerciale di collegare grandi canzoni pop ai film, come il master di James Bond, Herrmann è un tradizionale, dedicato a creare il score perfetto per la storia. Preoccupato che la sua star scende, Hitchcock si siede con i studios. E un rifiuto impermeabile emerge.
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48:21 Speaker 01 Despite numerous Oscar nominations for his films, and wins for his producers, cast, and crew, there remains one notable absence. Hitchcock, a five-time nominee, has never won a Best Director Academy Award.
48:37 Speaker 01 In 1968, the oversight is rectified, with the presentation of an honorary Oscar. It's a rare accolade, though one generally regarded as a cinematic gold watch, a valedictory prize for an esteemed individual moving into retirement.
48:53 Speaker 01 Not that Hitchcock sees it that way. He never lets up.
48:59 Speaker 01 In his early 70s now, he directs "Frenzy," shot back in London, his old home, adding a new, darker moment to his cinematic legacy. It contains, at a full six minutes, his longest and most graphic murder scene to date, in which actor Barbara Lee Hunt's character is brutalized and strangled.
49:21 Speaker 01 But it does little to impress his detractors. The movie is panned by some critics as gratuitous in its violence, with its uncomfortable focus on the victim's terror. Today, it is the only Hitchcock film with an 18 certificate.
49:37 Speaker 01 Even so, Hunt is defensive of Hitchcock. She maintains that she never saw an unattractive side to him. He was, she says, "just like everybody else: desperate to be liked, and perhaps, loved."
49:56 Speaker 01 Hitchcock's final film, Family Plot, is released in 1976, when he is 78 years old.
50:04 Speaker 01 It is a lighter, more comedic romp than his earlier works, but comes complete with the macabre, practical joking that had been a feature of his productions. When journalists turn up to one press event he hosts, they find themselves in a mocked-up graveyard with their own names carved on the headstones. Though Family Plot has its fans amongst devotees, it fails to match the success of his peak years: a lightweight postscript to a career now beyond its glory years.
50:37 Speaker 01 And although he has never been the picture of health, his physical condition is also on the wane. Mounting heart and kidney problems, as well as chronic arthritis, now prevent him from continuing his work.
50:50 Speaker 01 Public appearances become increasingly rare, and a final project, The Short Night, is left unfinished.
51:00 Speaker 01 In 1980, Hitchcock is knighted by Queen Elizabeth II. He is too ill to travel to London, so the British Consul General presents him with the papers at Universal Studios, after which he and Alma host a party on the lot, a site of so many memories. Though it's a happy affair, attended by countless stars from his films, the event is tinged with a melancholy for a Hollywood long since past.
51:28 Speaker 01 Four months later, Alfred Hitchcock dies at his Bel-Air home, aged 80.
51:34 Speaker 01 He leaves behind a monumental legacy of pioneering suspense, psychological thrillers, and cinematic innovation. His widow, Alma, who'd had major health issues of her own, will pass away two years later.
51:49 Speaker 02 I think the legacy of Alfred Hitchcock is he was a great storyteller and teacher. He's inspired many filmmakers, directors today, from Christopher Nolan to David Fincher to Park Chang Wook to Bon Jang Ho. And because people always want a good story, they want a good yarn, and Hitchcock was great about story because he was thinking about the audience and how they would respond to the storytelling. He was like a sponge where he would absorb memories and put them away and then file them and think, how can I use this in the future? That's the way Hitchcock's mind worked. He would use things from his life, store them up, and then put them back on screen in the most unexpected ways.
52:32 Speaker 01 Over the course of six decades, Alfred Hitchcock showed cinema audiences that fear could be found in an open space as easily as in a locked room. He subverted many of the norms of storytelling, developing a style of his own, which both revolutionized and reinvigorated the film industry over and over again. In a 1964 interview, Hitchcock said, "The only way to get rid of my fears is to make films about them."
53:01 Speaker 01 It's a belief that perhaps surpasses even his towering filmography. The idea that by confronting fear and creating something from it, it's possible to regain control over that which frightens us.
53:21 Speaker 01 Next time on Short History, we'll bring you a short history of Anne Frank.
53:28 Speaker 04 It's fascinating, really, that Anne has become an icon of the Second World War and the Holocaust, and that her legacy is still so fought over and contested. And there are still so many kind of deep disputes between people about what does the diary of Anne Frank and Anne really mean. There are people who feel very strongly that the commercialization of the diary and the sense that people identify with her as just a young girl, and it could be any of us, has taken away from the fact that she was Jewish and that people do not remember the fact that this happened to her because she was a Jewish girl and that it was the Jews who were kind of almost uniquely persecuted by the Nazis and murdered in the Holocaust.
54:10 Speaker 04 There were so many aspects to her. She was so multifaceted. She was so talented. You know, what could she have done? What would she have been?
54:19 Speaker 04 She was bursting to fulfill her potential, basically, and she didn't have that opportunity.
54:26 Speaker 01 That's next time.
54:38 Speaker 01 If you can't wait a week until the next episode, you can listen to it right away by subscribing to Noiser Plus. Head to www.noiser.com/subscriptions for more information.
54:50 Speaker 03 Low energy, unfocused, foggy, you might be dehydrated. Gatorade Zero powders have been scientifically designed to help improve hydration balance in the body. With a clinically proven electrolyte blend and no artificial colors or flavors. Great tasting hydration, no matter where you're going. Shop now online or at retailers nationwide. Gatorade hydrates better than water. Is it in you? Symptoms noted are signs of mild to moderate dehydration. Consult a healthcare professional if symptoms persist.
Previous Gaudi (Bonus Episode) Next Anne Frank Page updated November 3, 2026 · transcript and summary are machine-generated