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21 November
Some who scour these pages (I find that Brillo® is best) will already know that I favour a Faber & Faber series of collections, film by film, of interviews with directors.
In this case, it is Hitchcock on Hitchcock, into which I have delved for some revelations of what he put on record about Dial M for Murder (1954) :
First, in ‘Elegance Above Sex' (a very short piece of prose, which was originally published in Hollywood Reporter*), Hitchcock observes, regarding this film and Grace Kelly's part in it :
It is important to distinguish between the big, bosomy blonde and the ladylike blonde with the touch of elegance, whose sex must be discovered. Remember Grace Kelly in High Noon ? She was rather mousy. But in Dial M for Murder she blossomed out for me splendidly, because the touch of elegance had always been there.
(p. 96)
The only other mention of the film in this volume is in a very long-suffering** interview entitled ‘On Style’ : An interview with Cinema***, from which two extracts now follow
H : When you take a stage play, I said ? What do you call opening it up ? The taxi stops at the front door of the apartment house. The characters get out, cross the sidewalk, go into the lobby, get into an elevator, go upstairs, walk along the corridor, open the door, and they go into a room. And there they are, on the stage again. So, you might just as well dispense with all that, and be honest and say it’s a photographed stage play and all we can do is to take the audience out of the orchestra and put them on the stage with players.
I : You didn’t do this completely though. In Dial M ?
H : Yes, and I’ll tell you why. Because I’ve seen so many stage plays go wrong through opening up, loosening it, when the very essence is the fact that the writer conceived it within a small compass.
I : But you would still treat it cinematically ?
H : Within its area. If I can. As much as I can.
(p. 293)
What is of interest here is that the interviewer makes no mention of what is discussed in the review on this blog, i.e. how 3D makes the experience different, on the screen, from that on the stage, with looming bottles in the foreground, and, most of all, that fatal hand, reaching out to the audience, as if for mercy.
Moving on :
H : Well, let me say this as a maker of films. Maybe it’s a conceit on my part. I think content belongs to the original story of the writer, whoever wrote the book, that you are adapting. That’s his department.
I : That’s an interesting statement. You don’t feel then that the director, as such, is responsible for content, as you would select any different …
H : Well look, I make a film – Dial M for Murder – and what have I really had to do with that ? Nothing. It was a stage play, written for the stage, written by an author. All I had to do there was go in and photograph it.
(p. 297)
The interview is all about the element of 'style' mentioned in the title (as against 'content'), and Hitchcock contrasts the situation of this film with that of North by Northwest (1959), where his co-writer and he created the scenario, and he most interestingly goes to talk about the expectations that he sets up and then upsets in the famous crop-spraying scene.
Just for this interview alone, the volume is a very useful insight, through Hitchcock's own descriptions of what he was about with Psycho (1960), and how much more that it is that we think that we see, rather than the material that the cutting (pun intended !) actually used.
End-notes
* Vol. 172, no. 39 (November 20, 1962, 32nd Anniversary Issue).
** The unnamed interviewer, 'I' in the interview, claims (in response to Hitchock's enquiry as to what Cinema is) to be asking questions on behalf of the ?? intelligent cinema-goer ?? [actual wording needs to be checked]. However, he or she does not know what cross-cutting, art direction, or even 'a cut' are, and Hitchock - seemingly patiently - has to explain. (Why do I have the impression that Hitchock had a reputation for being 'difficult' - or was that at another time, or on set ?)
*** Originally published in Cinema 1, no. 5 (August – September 1963) 4–8, 34–35.
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Unless stated otherwise, all films reviewed were screened at Festival Central (Arts Picturehouse, Cambridge)
