Alfred Joseph Hitchcock was born in London on the 13th August ,

1899. The son of a poultry monger, his early life was spent in North
London, and he was educated at Saint Ignatius' College, a Jesuit
school, until his declared interest in engineering induced his parents
to send him to the School of Engineering and Navigation . Eventually
he went to viork for the Henley Telegraph Company, taking evening
classes in art and moving to the advertising department.
From the age of 16 he had been sufficiently fascinated by the
cin~ma to read, ' not just film and fan papers, but the professional and
trade journals ' . He remembers the impact made on him by American
pictures rather than British, and recalls in particular Griffith , Murnau
and Fritz Lang' s De, Mude Tod (Destiny).
In 1920 he heard that Paramount-Famous Players-Lasky were
opening an Islington Branch and submitted sub-title cartoons for a
novel on which they were working . Thus he embarked on the first
phase of his career, comprising initially graphic and then also editorial
work (including rewriting of sub-titles) on the silent films listed
in the filmography .
He designed, or rewrote, the titles for such silent films as Call of
Youth and The Great Day (Hugh Ford, 1921), The Princess of New
York and Tell Your Children (Donald Crisp, 1921) and Three Live
Ghosts (George Fitzmaurice, 1922).
His first producing-directing initiative occurred when, in 1921, he
embarked, in association with the actress Clare Greet, on a film whose
subject was the ordinary people of London . It lived up to its title ,
Number Thirteen, being, according to Hitchcock , ' no good' , even as
far as it went, but it ran into money troubles and was never completed.
In 1922 Hitchcock stepped in to completeAl 'a; 's Tell Your Wife, in
CHAPTER 1
The Thirteen Lives
of Alfred Hitchcock
18 THE THIRTEEN LIVES OF ALFRED HITCHCOCK
collaboration with its producer -star , Sir Seymour Hicks , when its
director fell ill .
After Balcon - Saville - Freedman Productions took over the studio ,
Hitchcock found a variety of employments , from assistant director ,
art director , scenarist and editor , on a quintet of films directed by
Graham Cutts .
The third phase of Hitchcock ' s life may be described as his ' scena-
rist ' period (1922- 25). Five films were produced by Michael Balcon
and directed by Graham Cutts ( Woman to Woman , 1922, The White
Shadol ~', 1923, The Passionate Adventure , 1924, The Blackguard and
The Prude ' s Fall , both 1925) .
(4). 1925- 27. For Michael Balcon at Gainsborough, Hitchcock
directed The Pleasure Garden ( 1925) , The Mountain Eagle and The
Lodger (both 1926) , Dol ~'nhill and Easy Virtue (both 1927) .
( 5) . 1927- 33. For John Maxwell at British International Pictures ,
Hitchcock directed The Ring ( 1927) , The Farmer ' s Wife and Champagne
(both 1928), The Manx Man and Blackmail (both 1929, the
latter marking the transition to sound). Then followed an episode in
Elstree Calling , Juno and the Paycock and Murder (all 1930), The Skin
Game ( 1931) , and Rich and Strange and Number Seventeen (both
1932). Hitchcock then produced Lord Camber's Ladies (directed by
Benn Levy ) and directed Waltzes from Vienna ( 1933) .
(6) . 1934- 36. At Gaumont British , with Ivor Montagu or Michael
Balcon producing, Hitchcock directed The Man Who Knew Too Much
( 1934) , The Thirty -Nine Steps ( 1935), Secret Agent and Sabotage (both
1936) .
(7) . 1937- 38. For Edward Black at Gainsborough , Hitchcock
directed Young and Innocent ( 1937) and The Lady Vanishes ( 1938).
(8). In 1938 Hitchcock was approached by David O. Selznick, and
the years from 1938 to 1947 may loosely be described as the Selznick
Period , although diversified by one-shot associations with other
producers . Before his departure for Hollywood , he directed , for
Ponner -Laughton -Mayflower , Jamaica Inn ( 1939) . In Hollywood , he
directed Rebecca (Selznick, 1940), Foreign Correspondent (Walter
Wanger, 1940), Mr . & Mrs . Smith and Suspicion (both produced by
Hitchcock at R.K .O.- Radio , 1941), Saboteur ( Frank Lloyd - Jack
Skirball , 1942) , Shadow Of A Doubt ( Jack Skirball , 1943) , Lifeboat
(Kenneth MacGowan at 20th . . century -Fox , 1944) , Bon Voyage and
Aventure Malgache (Ministry of Information , GB, 1944), Spellbound
(Selznick , 1945), Notorious (Hitchcock at R.K .O., 1946) and The
Paradine Case (Selznick , 1947) .
THE THIRTEEN LIVES OF ALFRED HITCHCOCK 19
(9) . 1948- 49. For Transatlantic Pictures , which he had formed with
Sidney Bernstein of Granada , Hitchcock directed Rope ( 1948) and
Under Capricorn ( 1949) .
( 10) . 1950- 54. For Warner Brothers : Stage Fright ( 1950), Strangers
on a Train ( 1951) , I Confess ( 1953) , and Dial M for Murder
( 1954) .
( 11) . 1954- 56. At Paramount : Rear ~Vindow ( 1954) , To Catch A
Thief ( 1955), The Trouble With Harry and The Man Who Knew Too
Much (both 1956) . The Wrong Man ( 1957) was a last film at Warners ,
followed by Vertigo (Paramount , 1958) , North -by-North - West (at
M .GiM ., 1959) and Psycho (Paramount , 1960) .
( 12) . From 1955 Hitchcock embarked on a parallel career as producer
, presenter and occasionally writer -director of television films .
Jack Edmund Nolan gives the total number of hour or half -hour films
appearing under the Hitchcock banner between 1955 and 1963 as 353,
and details twenty directed by Hitchcock himself .
( 13) . 1963- 72. At Universal : The Birds ( 1963), Marnie ( 1964) , Torn
Curtain ( 1966), Topaz ( 1969), Frenzy ( 1972) .
Hitchcock ' s creative shifts and turns bear some relationship to
these producer periods. Although The Lodger, Blackmail , Murder and
Number Seventeen had drawn attention to Hitchcock as a director of
thrillers , it was his Gaumont British and subsequent Gainsborough
periods which established him as ' the Master of Suspense' . It is to
these films , together with the four thriller forerunners (the last two
rarely revived) to which critics refer when they speak of the ' English
Hitchcock ' as opposed to the American Hitchcock . But , in fact , there
are three, clearly distinct , English Hitchcocks. His first Gainsborough
period stresses romantic subjects. His British International period
abounds in adaptations of dramatic and literary subjects. His Gaumont
British and second Gainsborough periods group the picaresque comedy
thrillers . Of this characteristic genre, two further clear examples
appear during the first three Hollywood years, but a series of visually
somewhat ' enclosed ' drama -thrillers , with ' women ' s film ' production
styles become the predominant style of the Se1znick era, and culminate
in the two Transatlantic films. Hitchcock remains aloof from
the underworld film nair, a genre in which his work might have been
sharper and harder . Quite possibly the influence of Se1znick had
sensitized him to themes and settings which enabled him to combine
suspense with a middle -class ' women ' s angle ' . The Warner Brothers
period shows no clear direction, but one can see the first of Hitch -
cock' s Paramount group as marking a gradual increase in the general
20 THE THIRTEEN LIVES OF ALFRED HITCHCOCK
dramatic, visual and poetic complexity which can be accommodated
around or within the suspense . In this respect his evolution is in line
with Hollywood ' s gradually more adventurous spirit . After The Birds ,
however , Hitchcock appears as a Hollywood ' conservative ' , making
a magisterial use of its traditional elements, without using new stylistic
and thematic freedoms .
But any distinction into periods must remain schematic. Thus the
devotee of chronological periods must wish that The Wrong Man had
been made in 1954 instead of in 1957, when it would fit neatly into the
Warner' s era and pair with I Confess. But it doesn' t, and there are so
many possibilities , some purely to do with contract -making , that to
attempt too detailed a spiritual evolution would be fruitless and unreal .
Clearly one must also stream Hitchcock ' s work , vertically as it were ,
into genres and themes .
A . Romantic novels , e.g., The Pleasure Garden , dominate his first
two Balcon periods. Much later, the three Selznick films represent a
return to this kind of material , albeit at a suaver and swisher level ,
with an intensification of the sustained suspense and the moralising ,
more slickly deadpan rather than more profound . Jifarnie is obviously
related to the same genre .
B. The B.I .P. films enabled Hitchcock to cast a wry and inquisitive
eye over various facets of the British scene. The presiding spirit could
be described as dramatic realism , and it is our contention that its
infiltration of subsequent thrillers , as against their novelettish plushness
, often accounts for much of their richness : as in Shadow Of A
Doubt , Rear ~Vindo}~', The Trouble With Harry . The opening of Blackmail
(which precedes virtually all the Grierson documentaries ) and the
first half of The ~Vrong AI an qualify for the designation ' semi -documen -
tary ' , as it was later applied to British films like North Sea and San
Demetrio London .
C. The Hitchcock thrillcr had appeared before the Gaumont -
British period (e.g., The Lodger for Balcon, Blackmail for Maxwell ),
but this period- in which Ivor Montagu ' s participation is perhaps
important - introduces the classic thriller sextet . The last two suggest
slackening creative tensions , and it might be argued that Hitchcock ' s
best form reappears only when the general Hollywood climate becomes
more sophisticated .
D. In contrast to the dramatic realism looming so large in the
English film , the American Hitchcocks tend , for the usual Hollywood
reasons, to centre on wish-fulfilment high life. But the picaresque
odysseys (Foreign Correspondent , Saboteur), occasionally involve
THE THIRTEEN LIVES OF ALFRED HITCHCOCK 21
ordinary people. Other films endow their glossy milieux with a certain
poetic queasiness.
E. Many Hitchcock films take the form of a picaresque pursuit ,
which may at first seem the polar opposite of such claustrophobic,
single setting films as Lifeboat, Rope and Under CalJricorn. But often
Hitchcock counterpoints the sealed situation (e.g., a hostile couple
handcuffed to each other) against the chase. Rear Window plays the
sealed against the kaleidoscopic (the various windows opposite) in
another way. So the picaresque background provides a special form
of that same isolation which inspires the enclosed films.
F. Hitchcock ' s films undoubtedly show a concern with moral
values, although exactly which values are involved, and how simple,
or single-minded, they are, has yet to be sufficiently debated. Of fifty -
two major films two hinge on a specifically Catholic theme, while
three hinge on and are moralised in specifically Freudian terms.
G. Hitchcock ' s work shares with the fiction feature genre a dramatic
and thematic structure derived from the traditions of 19th-century
narrative plays and novels. It is characteristic of these forms that
interest in the fortunes of one or more individuals involves the interaction
of dramatic, moral , social, philosophical , poetic, and any other
matters arising, although the autonomy and interaction of each
separate area is strictly subordinated to, sometimes even occluded
by, the individualism emphasised by the dramatic perspective.
H. Aesthetic interests are not secondary in Hitchcock ' s work , and
internal evidence supplies no reason to doubt his remarks to the effect
that what interests him is the way of telling a story. Nonetheless, he
must have a story to tell , i .e., sequences of human experiences to
evoke. It is obvious that an interest in aesthetic form, whether primary
or subordinate, may go parallel with a repetitive thematic, retained
partly for reasons of personal preference and partly as popular with
audiences.
All these Hitchcocks have produced sharp critical controversies.
Through the '40s and ' 50s, English and American critics, and the
older generation of French critics (like Jean-George Auriol of La
Revue du Cinema, 'father ' of Cahiers du Cinema) vastly preferred the
English thrillers , for their visual speed, comic realism and varied social
canvases, and their preferred American films were closest to that style
(Foreign Correspondent , Saboteur, Shadow OIA Doubt, Strangers On
A Train). Hitchcock ' s other American films struck them as clever, but
sleek, slick and empty. A minor English artist , a major English entertainer
, seemed to have become just a velvet glove on the leaden fingers
22 THE THIRTEEN LIVES OF ALFRED HITCHCOCK
of David O. Se1znick. Notorious suggested that , as his own producer,
he had turned into another Se1znick himself. Andre Bazin, the ' senior
wrangler' of Cahiers, could not see Hitchcock as an artistic master,
and nor did the French Left (Positif, Premier Plan).
So far as the Anglo-Saxon critics were concerned, their preference
was fortified by aesthetic theories favouring fast and varied visual
movement (as more cinematic), a realistic social atmosphere (as opposed
to highlife glamour), and location settings. Hitchcock ' s strong
points were seen as his pure cinematic style, which lifted his compound
of melodrama and realism to a level of felt excitement roughly comparable
with the chase across the salt flats at the end of Stagecoach.
And for these critics that sort of thing was quite enough, since they
felt that the cinema had its own lyrical way of redeeming material
which might otherwise be considered banal. This can be described as
the Manvell -Lindgren line. They inherited earlier comments about the
' Hitchcock touch' , praising manipulations of the medium which some
younger critics found rather gimmicky- like the distortions of a
woman' s voice saying ' Knife !' as the word rasps on the nerves of the
guilty heroine (Blackmail ), or the cut from a woman screaming to a
whistling locomotive emerging from a tunnel (The Thirty-Nine Steps).
These examples were part of the older generation' s honouring of
' pure cinema' , i .e., cinematic style, as against the literary approach,
and Hitchcock in certain ways shared their aesthetic appreciation. For ,
given the rather different cinematic idioms obtaining during the
' 30s, they were far less extraneous than they may now seem. Far
from being mere gimmicks, they were genuine climactic extensions of
form. John Grierson' s was a lone voice raised against this emphasis,
when he argued that the critics' emphasis on the ' touch' was turning
Hitchcock into a mere aesthete, that Murder and The Skin Game were
thematic poppycock, and that Hitchcock ' s strong point was his feeling
for everyday realism. This line was maintained by Lindsay Anderson
whose Sequence articles implicitly reproached Hitchcock with staying
at the Savoy. In other ways, however, Grierson' s and Anderson' s
approaches come very near to the present writer ' s.
Quietly different from the Manvell -Lindgren and Grierson-Anderson
lines alike was the Sight and Sound approach, identifiable from the
early ' 50s. Being, as Tony Richardson remarked, ' anti -cinema' , it
satisfied itself with the most obvious and traditional literary qualities
on the level of script, and a liberal humanism of a traditional middle-
class kind. By these standards contemporary Hitchcock , of the ' 50s, was
not only boring but often vaguely nasty. However, nostalgia, critical
THE THIRTEEN LIVES OF ALFRED HITCHCOCK 23
politics and the inertia of habit prevented the- logically necessary-
dismissal of English Hitchcock as nasty also . In contrast Hitchcock ' s
French detractors were always ready to accept troubled views of
human nature, and criticised Hitchcock for uninteresting accounts of
human experiences .
The first radical revaluation of Hitchcock came through the columns
of Cahiers du Cinema and in particular the work of Eric Rohmer and
Claude Chabrol . To Hitchcock ' s moral preoccupations they were ,
perhaps , sensitised by sharing with him a Roman Catholic background
or sympathies . In Hitchcock ' s films they felt that they discerned a
consistent theme of a transference of guilt , such that the apparently
innocent are also partly guilty , that curious affinities between heroes
and villains appear , and that the villains incarnate temptations to
which , on some secret or unconscious level , the heroes have yielded ,
and for which they must be memorably punished , or from which
they must be purified , by some sort of trial , concluding in a chastening
awareness .
This approach gave a much -needed new awareness of Hitchcock .
Reservations about it form much of the substance of this study , and
will be unfolded as it goes .
An analogous approach was made by Jean Douchet , for whom
Hitchcock ' s real inspiration was an esoteric occultism , based on ' the
duel between Light and Shadow , therefore of Unity and Duality ' .
Thus the opening long shot of Psycho , showing an entire town in
daylight , is contradicted by the second shot , of one particular room , in
semi -darkness . ' In two shots , Hitchcock expresses his subject . . . the
eternal and the finite , existence and nothingness , life and dreams .' It is
in line with Douchet ' s mixture of neo - Platonism and Manicheanism
that his sentence structure equates the shot of the embracing couple
with the finite , nothingness and death . But one might well object
the meanings attributed to the two shots can be reversed . The two
lovers are, successfully or otherwise , attempting to reach spiritual
eternity , existence and life , while the opening shot suggests the false
unity ofa complacent, smothering society. Douchet 's method is as fascinating
as any delirium of interpretation can be, but overlooks too
much to explain Hitchcock adequately. Thus he considers mealtimes
as occasions of the absorption of substances (i .e., matter into mind ),
without so much as thinking of the importance of mealtimes in family
and social life, of their social spirituality . And sometimes his schema-
tisation is inaccurate , as when , on Vertigo , he writes that in Hitchcock
' every representative of the established order (policeman, judge,
24 THE THIRTEEN LIVES OF ALFRED HITCHCOCK
statesman, etc.) is a representative of God' . What then of the detective
who fakes the evidence and frames an innocent man in Blackmail ?
Or of the lecherous judge in The Paradine Case? Or of Castro in Topaz,
whom all Hitchcock ' s heroes are supposed to be thoroughly justified
in subverting? Is God a liar , a lecher, a Communist ? Thus Douchet
impoverishes Hitchcock , misreading his dramatic dialectic as simplistic
allegory. One' s suspicions are aroused also by Douchet' s remark that
'All great artists say more or less the same thing.'
None the less, such interpretations possess their own creative
fascination and influence such writers as Noel Simsolo and the con-
tributorstoEtudes Cinematographiques .
The rising generation of English critics saw things another way
altogether, and contrary to a widespread English impression, the
approaches of Ian Cameron and Victor Perkins in Alovie bore no
resemblance either to Chabrol and Rohmer' s or to Douchet' s. Refusing
to equate cinematic style with the obvious aesthetic ' touch' , or to
remain content with script, they stressed instead the manipulation of
audience attentions, sympathies and reactions. They emphasised, not
a hidden symbolism, but an overt level of dramatic and moral experience
. And this approach has subsequently been vindicated by its close
relationship to the actual questions and answers which Hitchcock sets
himself in working out a film.
The present writer would likewise insist that the real Hitchcock
touch is a more diffuse affair than a moral schema, or points of style.
It comprises a certain conjunction of elements, the absence of even
one of which gives us a feeling of atypicality . The story ingredients
include ( 1) violent death, (2) a physical or mental chase in which we
identify with a pursued pursuer, so that (3) virtue appears menacing
and indulgence deceptive, while (4) amorous badinage (or tormenting)
proceeds and (5) hero and heroine are offered some dramatically
plausible choices between good and evil and (6) ' greys are everywhere'
(the remark is Hitchcock ' s, although Chabrol and Rohmer substituted
for it a transference of guilt , which is quite a different thing). There is
a sense of having penetrated from an apparently tolerant , even permissive
, world , to a grimmer one, whose cruelties seem, confusingly,
both amoral and morally unremitting . In the British thrillers , everyday
worlds of familiar foibles and eccentricities momentarily part to
reveal grimmer patterns. There is usually, however, an affirmative
return to a normally comfortable world .
In Movie and in his book, Robin Wood worked out another interpretation
of Hitchcock the moralist . Its basic co-ordinates were a mix-
THE THIRTEEN LIVES OF ALFRED HITCHCOCK 25
ture of evangelical fundamentalism secularised , and an aesthetic whose
theory , at least , ifnot its application , owed something to F . R. Leavis .
Despite parallelisms with Chabrol and Rohmer , the moral tone was
substantially different , the emphasis lying on individual responsibility
and the consequences of its absence. It might have been so developed
as to emphasise its basic contradictions with the French critics '
Catholicism , as well as their idea of Jansenism . However , one ' s
objections to Robin Wood' s moral interpretations are parallel . He
doesn ' t consider the possibility that any moral system other than one
might be involved , and this assumption seems to me to risk depriving
Hitchcock ' s films of much of their interest , as well as evading the
problem , and possibilities , of comparing moral codes. None the less,
Wood ' s attention to moral and dramatic detail , without benefit of
metaphysic , aligns itself with the other Movie pieces in clarifying the
level , form and nature of the films ' contents . As in the case of the
Chabrol and Rohmer approach , the present writer ' s divergencies and
alternatives will become apparent as the analysis proceeds.
I n general , those for whom Hitchcock was the master of the ' touch '
preferred his English films to his American period. Conversely, those
for whom Hitchcock was a moralist preferred his Hollywood period
to his English period . Two critics for whom Hitchcock was finally an
entertainer have adopted more consistent attitudes to his whole work .
For Franc;ois Truffaut , Hitchcock is above all the showman -manipulator
; he refers to Hitchcock ' s moral vision as a kind of artistic credential
, but he clearly has no interest whatsoever in finding out anything
new about it . Truffaut , we know , loves (a) intimate movies and (b)
movies as circus ; Hitch ' s cat - and -mouse games with suspense fit both
requirements perfectly. One might well be tempted by the theory that
Truffaut ' s feeling for Hitchcock is a kind of nostalgia . The younger
man , specialist in emotions of vulnerable passivity , desperately longs
for , and hero worships , the slick , subtle mastery with which Hitch -
cock torments his audience. So far , too, Truffaut has depended on a
childlike hero for his best inspiration (Les Quatre Cents Coups, Tirez
Sur Le Pianiste , Jules et Jim), while his later films evidence a certain
dryness. How professionally enviable, therefore, the wily aplomb
with which the older man has varied his utterly reliable thematic ! In
Truffaut ' s search for Hitchcock ' s triumphs of manipulation , one can
see the younger artist forgetting the silver and gold of his true inspiration
, in the style of Renoir, for the sawdust and tinsel daydream of
meticulous control over one' s audience and one' s professional destiny.
Chabrol ' s own films closely transpose the Hitchcock thematic into
26 THE THIRTEEN LIVES OF ALFRED HITCHCOCK
the settings, style and terms that interest Chabrol . And critical paradox
continues in an infinite regression, for Gavin Millar , who efficiently
ferrets out all Hitchcock ' s artistic weaknesses , notably his reliance on
certain popular stereotypes, is also English high priest of the Chabrol
cult . Unfortunately , his dismissal of Hitchcock relies heavily on a
selection of his least interesting moments which, abundant as they are,
isn' t the whole story. For the question remains of distinguishing what
is valid in each director ' s work from what is less so or not so, and one
might easily reverse Millar ' s preferences, by hazarding that if Chabrol
is the more consciously schematic moralist it is because his characters
have so little internal existence as to remain derisory caricatures of
bourgeois habits, or merely symbols for metaphysical and theological
diabolisms, all of which would contrast with Hitchcock ' s calculated
and commonsensical view of human nature. Chabrol , then, would be
a young and callow Hitchcock , unstably veering between the intellectual
and the clownesque.1
Given the variety of possible positions, it ' s curious, or perhaps it ' s
only too typical , that one fairly obvious possibility was hardly argued.
This is that Hitchcock has always been an entertainer whose work
can, on occasion, and for one reason or another, reach a degree of
sophistication and intensity such that his material takes on sufficient
truth , urgency and challenge to qualify as a significant artist (and
whether he' s.a minor or a major one is another matter again; but to
be a minor artist is no mean achievement). It then becomes as impossible
to try to discredit Psycho by ridiculing , however justifiably , a
scene in Foreign Correspondent , as to suppose that all Hitchcock 's
films fall into one of only two possible categories: the major and the
minor masterpiece. Just because of the thematic similarities, the distinction
is, precisely, whether the screw is relaxed into banality or
twisted towards the crunch, and how far the drama is false or felt .
1 US Cousins (as suggested in Films and Feelings ) would be the one Chabrol film
whose Hitchcockian schema is authentically felt through.