What Hitchock says about Dial M for Murder...

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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)

Putting on a premiere of a play versus making a film

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1 December

NB What follows is written from – and for – the perspective of the layperson

I want to suggest that the former may be less wasteful, when we are talking about the millions of dollars, pounds or other currency spent on making a film that may not get any (or enough) distribution for it to be made back, let alone make a profit. At its own higher end, a play can still be tested elsewhere before being taken to a theatre in the West End, where the overheads and risks of even a short unsuccessful run might be prohibitive.

Trying out (trialling, some would have it) a work of cinema may be possible as it’s put together, but there is nothing to compare with having the finished film before the critics, whose praise one hopes to be able to print on the posters, and to be read or heard by those influenced in other ways. Likewise with the critics’ words of acclaim outside London theatres, and all that makes for a production being a hot ticket, just as certain films become a must see.

Is there even a parallel between a play written by, say, David Hare and a screenplay ? Take Hare’s play Skylight, which first appeared at The National in 1995, and was published by Faber & Faber in May of that year, though I have been unable to establish when, in relation to the production and going on to ??, that was. Now, it is quite possible that the text of the play was moulded by its director, ??, and by the cast prior to publication, as there was likely to have been a tie-in between the published and performed versions, and even that Hare sat in on rehearsals.

That level of intervention in what is still essentially one person’s dramatic effort is still relatively small, compared with, in the case of some films, the number of people who might have been batting around ideas at different levels of nearness to a shootable script for a fairly long time: the person whose name appears credited as writer may often be a matter of politics, rather than a true ascription in the way that Hare’s name on the front of a copy of Skylight would be.

So why are so many films made that never – or scarcely – get seen on our cinema screens, which, at one point (around nine years ago), was said to be 19 out of 20 ? How, we wonder, did films such as Gambit (2012) attract actors such as Firth, Rickman and Diaz, and how well would the films that they supplanted have fared, if they had been distributed instead ?

In terms just of authors, even if they write for radio to begin with, does a writer have a better chance not script-writing for cinema, but writing a play, and what lures them to a world where they may have to relinquish all control over what they have worked on for months ? The same attraction that takes us to watch films – of seeing it on the big screen, performances caught to supposed best advantage of crew, cast and credited screenwriter.


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Thank goodness for Faber & Faber!

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26 February

Simply for this piece of drafting, which I spotted on the imprint page of Alan Bennett's Writing Home (Faber & Faber, London, 1995):

Alan Bennett is hereby identified as author of this work
in accordance with Section 77 of the Copyright,
Designs and Patents Act 1988


That may not be sheer joy to you, but look at what is in the front of other books - until such time as I can explain myself...


Which seems to be now.

This is the more usual (if, I think, flawed) form of the notice under the 1988 Act, which in this case protects - thankfully - a rare talent*:

Mark Kermode has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988,
to be identified as the author of this work


The difference being that, according to this latter formulation, something - some prior act - other than the notice itself constitutes the assertion of the right to be identified as the author.

However, when I last attacked the Act in earnest - and probably s. 77 in particular - I could see no antecedent step envisaged by the legislation. So why this past tense of 'has asserted', and why the suggestion that, say, MK bellowed an announcement (which would still be an 'announcement', not an 'assertion') to that effect at daybreak in Parliament Square for seven days running?

Probably just foolish lawyers' caution, from which F&F wisely seems to have broken free - though I'd have to look at a few more of its titles to establish when, if I were that interested...


PS In fact, there is a more intriguing use of the second type of formulation quoted above that I have now found, which is in a Vintage Classics edition of Brave New World:

Aldous Huxley has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 to be identified as the author of this work


Most people, I think, who know when the book was first published will be surprised by that statement (for Huxley, who was born in the tail end of the nineteenth century, died in 1963).

But not, perhaps, if they know the story that relates to Huxley's wife's and his belief in the possibility of extra-corporeal survival, and the story that is recounted about her attempts to make contact with him after he died...


End-notes

* For, and let's be honest, who else would want to lay claim to The Good, The Bad and The Multiplex (or The Boring, The Marginally Less Boring, and The Outright Tiresome), based on said author's tediously pedestrian account, in the first half of the first chapter, of collecting / buying cinema tickets for his daughter and him (which, so far, has taken up fourteen pages of my life)?

The cover of the book is loaded with plaudits: well, if (Empire), 'Film criticism is rarely [this] much fun', then Heaven help film critics; and, if MK (Sunday Times) has 'More opinions than Delia Smith has baking trays', then I not only fail to spot the relevance of the Delia-related comparison (unless she is cook-in-residence to that organ), but also think that I know where MK is best advised to shove such opinions (along with the trays)!


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