Alfred Hitchcock
Hitchcock married filmie Alma Reville at Brompton Oratory in Kensington in Dec 1926 and they lived in Earls Court. Beginning his film career as a designer in silent films, Hitchcock starting directing the films themselves within five years. For the rest of his life, he used London as the setting for many of his films. Even after he moved to the US and was working in Hollywood!
He wanted to show the rough bits of his city, like the fair dinkum Cockney he was. Hitchcock’s first big success came with The Lodger (1927), a serial killer. Some scenes were filmed inside his studio, but Hitchcock filmed on location where it was practical eg in Westminster and Charing Cross.
Another location which appeared often in The Lodger was Scotland Yard, headquarters of the Metropolitan London Police. Hitchcock was a regular visitor to Scotland Yard, visiting the Police Crime Museum for inspiration. This Victorian museum was home to a grisly selection of criminal evidence from Jack the Ripper and Dr Crippen.
The Lodger was a serial killer loose in London, targeting young women with golden curls. Hitchcock knew all the mystery genre tropes and he filled his film with them. Presumably this was to subvert expectations, twisting the incredibly suspicious lodger into a romantic hero! This film provided a blueprint for the rest of his filmography.
The British Museum played a direct role in Hitchcock’s final silent film Blackmail (1929). The climactic chase scene occurred across the domed glass roof of the museum’s old reading room. Blackmail’s other scenes occurred in Trafalgar Square and Whitehall.
Much of The Man Who Knew Too Much (1934) was set in London. The diction of the players was very English, but none the less pleasing and suitable to the NY reviews. Only the photography was thought to be below American norms.
The film The 39 Steps (1935) showed Robert Donat’s character, while vacationing in London, befriending a scared woman; she told him that she was a spy and made a cryptic reference to the 39 steps. The woman was later murdered, so Donat fled on a train to Scotland.
The 39 Steps, 1935
Sabotage (1936) one of the final films Alfred made before moving to the US in 1939. Opening at the then-newly-built Battersea Power Station, the film celebrated the city’s tourist favourites eg Trafalgar Square and Piccadilly Circus.
Although Hitchcock’s sense of humour was a constant in his Hollywood films, it was more pronounced in the British films, which felt more like comic capers than slasher flicks. The Lady Vanishes (1938) initially resembled a typical British farce, as troubled travellers filled up cramped corners at a crowded inn. This film also made regional references, discussing life in Oxford.
David Selznick signed Alfred to a 7-year contract from March 1939, and the Hitchcocks moved to Hollywood. Although he was clearly an established filmmaker with many credits before his move to LA, Hitchcock had to transition from British curiosity to Hollywood mainstay. The films he made in the UK contained themes and style choices that he constantly revisited, but they also stood apart for their comic tone and special British focus on class and international conflict. Eventually the director filmed 20 feature films overseas, films that turned him into an object of fascination for the US press.
The film that best showed Hitchcock’s changed from London to Hollywood was his second American project, Foreign Correspondent (1940). When the film was released, UK and the US had very different opinions about the war devastating Europe. It opened with a title card praising foreign correspondents as brave people who saw war devastation .. while many Americans didn’t. They then focused on a New York crime reporter sent abroad to cover the chaos in Europe. He arrived a sceptic, became a true believer and eventually urged complacent fellow Americans to hear the live broadcast from The Blitz. Even though Hitchcock frequently returned to London to film, WW2 made this trip impossible. So Foreign Correspondent was filmed by a second unit.
David Selznick signed Alfred to a 7-year contract from March 1939, and the Hitchcocks moved to Hollywood. Although he was clearly an established filmmaker with many credits before his move to LA, Hitchcock had to transition from British curiosity to Hollywood mainstay. The films he made in the UK contained themes and style choices that he constantly revisited, but they also stood apart for their comic tone and special British focus on class and international conflict. Eventually the director filmed 20 feature films overseas, films that turned him into an object of fascination for the US press.
The film that best showed Hitchcock’s changed from London to Hollywood was his second American project, Foreign Correspondent (1940). When the film was released, UK and the US had very different opinions about the war devastating Europe. It opened with a title card praising foreign correspondents as brave people who saw war devastation .. while many Americans didn’t. They then focused on a New York crime reporter sent abroad to cover the chaos in Europe. He arrived a sceptic, became a true believer and eventually urged complacent fellow Americans to hear the live broadcast from The Blitz. Even though Hitchcock frequently returned to London to film, WW2 made this trip impossible. So Foreign Correspondent was filmed by a second unit.
The Lady Vanishes, 1938
One of Hitchcock’s very last films was Frenzy (1972), featuring some of the most beautiful buildings in London, including the Royal Albert Hall and Covent Garden Market, The Globe Pub in Bow St and the Nell of Old Drury Pub in Catherine St. This story of a rapist-murderer, whose distinct murder weapon was a necktie, brought Alfred full circle, back to the London of his 1927 film, The Lodger.
Alfred died in 1980. He was cremated and his ashes were scattered over the Pacific, halfway between his two loved nations. His memorial service was in the Catholic Westminster Cathedral London and his memorial stone is in Hollywood Forever Cemetery, California.
Read Hunting for Alfred Hitchcock in London.
22 comments:
Hi Hels - thanks for this ... I haven't seen a great many of his films - but it's something I need to catch up on at some stage ... so this thorough exposition really opens my eyes - take care - Hilary
Hello Hels, My mother just saw The Lodger on television, and she recommended that I look up his silent films, but it seems that they are only available in Australia! I have seen a great many of his movies, and there is so much variety, it is impossible to pick a favorite. How can you possibly compare Rebecca, Psycho, and The Trouble with Harry? Also, let's not forget his television series. Although he did not direct, his filmed introductions to each episode are one his greatest legacies.
--Jim
Only one film reminds me of Australia - Under Capricorn. It was not really a killer thriller, which may explain why it was not one of Hitchcock's best. But I liked it.
Hilary
Alfred Hitchcock's career reflected major changes over time - he went from designer to director, from silent films to talkies, from Britain to the USA. Not too many people were as flexible and modern, I believe.
Parnassus
Silent films from 1927 are usually only the raw material for historians of the cinema, so good on your mum for finding it on tv and watching it through! I think The Lodger became so famous because Hitchcock really did do his homework at Scotland Yard and knew how fascinating a story about a serial murderer would be. Just think of Jack The Ripper only one generation earlier.
Joseph
I wonder why Hitchcock was drawn to a strange story set in 19th century Australia when Sydney was full of convicts. Mind you, Ingrid Bergman was always stunning. And Joseph Cotton was very handsome, and very famous from Citizen Kane (1941).
A few years ago one survey had Vertigo knocking out Citizen Kane as the best picture of all time. But I don't think it was even Hitchcock's best. I much prefer Strangers on a Train with Robert Walker and Farley Granger.
Frank
I've seen a few of his films but I didn't really know anything about the making of them. I must have only seen a clip from Blackmail of the chase across the museum roof.
Dr F
I read a similar survey in Parade before I wrote this post; it put 1. Notorious (1946) as Hitchcock's best film, ever ahead of 2. Vertigo (1958) and 3. Psycho (1960). But that didn't help me much because I would never see a horror film and couldn't compare his entire oeuvre.
I agree with you about Strangers on a Train (1951) but at the time it got a very mixed response from the critics.
https://parade.com/564352/samuelmurrian/the-10-greatest-films-of-alfred-hitchcock/
Andrew
that would be true for most people born in the 1950s and after, I am guessing. Because I identified so strongly with London, my greatest pleasure was seeing the stories he filmed in real London settings.
Baron Sidney Bernstein (chairman of Granada) brought his friend Alfred Hitchcock back from Hollywood to Britain to work on a film for post-invasion French. Later Bernstein visited the Nazi extermination camps and was determined to create a film that would be seen by both the German and English audiences. So he invited Hitchcock back to supervise the work of US and British Army cameramen documenting the horrors of Bergen-Belsen, Dachau and Auschwitz at liberation. Hitchcock was a brave man. He had completed the documentary and had confiscated all the German documentation he could find, but the British Foreign Office banned the film in July 1945. Hitchcock was shipped back to the USA.
Student
Very brave indeed. When Bernstein and Hitchcock went to Belsen in April 1945, the unburied bodies lay scattered around the camp, while 60,000 starving survivors were packed together without food or water. And typhus was everywhere.
I don't think the British Foreign Office ever acknowledged Hitchcock's invaluable contribution.
I have always admired Hitchcock's films especially his skill of frightening the audience without showing explicit violence. I enjoyed your post very much as it informed me of many facts of which I was unaware.
Fun60
Hitchcock spent exactly half his 81 years in the USA yet he never lost his British fascination with implied danger rather than explicit violence. That also enabled him to use mystery, class differences, romance and even comedy.
Clever bloke!
I can add some information here! On a large stretch of open land known as Wanstead Flats which is very near to where Alfred Hitchcock (and me!) were brought up, there has always been a large twice-a-year Fairground. Apparently, Alfred loved it as a child and it inspired scenes in many of his movies.
The Sir Alfred Hitchcock Hotel is a medium-sized hotel but is more regarded for it's lovely old-fashioned pub. And the mosaics at Leytonstone Station are wonderful and cover the length of a longish access tunnel. Wanstead Flats has some interesting history and I have led several guided walks there! Maybe it's worth a future blog post...
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bazza
local knowledge is invaluable, thank you.
The mosaics at Leytonstone Station can be seen at https://www.ianvisits.co.uk/blog/2016/10/11/hitchcocks-murals-at-leytonestone-tube-station/
There is a small metal plate next to each of the 17 murals, explaining which film it was from and some gossip from the actors.
I am a fan! And by the way, I’ve watched The Lady Vanishes many times. I even remember *that* tune! A very funny and exciting film.
Did you see the stage version of North By Northwest when it was performed in Melbourne? It adapted amazingly well.
Sue
Long train trips were always an excellent way for strangers to meet each other and for weird events to occur. So The Lady Vanishes (1938) was a perfect setting for mystery, suspense and conspiracy. And it was perfect that a psychiatrist happened to be on the same train :)
I don't remember seeing North By Northwest (1959), neither in film nor on stage. But if coronavirus ever ends, Joe and I will be going out again. Often!
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Luiz
thank you. I was very interested in your blog because of
1. your excellent architectural photos and text, and
2. from my Gap Year in Europe long ago, my closest friends were from Brasil.
wow I didn't know he was a cockney . In voice was so deep and sonorous and his diction SOOOOO BBC . How funny . He really did reinvent himself voice wise anyway:)
mem
and we are not only talking about Hitchcock's own origins. The Lodger (1927) was subtitled “a story of the London fog”, and the heart of the story was a cockney landlady who gradually suspected that her attractive, eccentric gentleman lodger may have been the notorious killer. The Lodger wasn't his first film, but it certainly set a standard for his later work.
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