Hitchcock/Truffaut (2015)

Alfred Hitchcock: Self

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Quotes 

• Alfred Hitchcock : Silent pictures are the pure motion picture form. There's no need to abandon the technique of the pure motion picture, the way it was abandoned when sound came in.

• Alfred Hitchcock : There's no such thing as a face. It's nonexistent until the light hits it. There was no such thing as a line. Its just light and shade. Its the function of a pure cinema, as we well know, is the pasting of two or three pieces of film together to create a single idea.

• François Truffaut : This is something one finds often in your work, the expansion of time.

  Alfred Hitchcock : Yes, that's what film is for - to either contract time or extend it, whatever you wish.

  François Truffaut : Yes, that's very interesting.

• Alfred Hitchcock : [Talking about "Notorious"]  I was giving the public the great privilege of embracing Cary Grant and Ingrid Bergman together. It was a kind of a temporary menage-a-trois. And the actors hated doing it. They felt dreadfully uncomfortable in the manner in which they had to cling to each other. But, I said, "I don't care how you feel. I already know what its going to look like on the screen."

• Alfred Hitchcock : Actors are cattle.

• Alfred Hitchcock : [First lines]  Why do these Hitchcock films stand out well, they don't look old fashioned? Well, I don't know the answer.

  François Truffaut : I think its because they're so rigorous. They're not tied to a particular time either...

  Alfred Hitchcock : That's true.

  François Truffaut : Because they are made only in relation to you, yourself.

  Alfred Hitchcock : Yes.

• Alfred Hitchcock : My mind is strictly visual.

• François Truffaut : Your type of picture, people get enjoyment but pretend that they haven't been fooled and then, begrudgingly, their pleasure later on.

  Alfred Hitchcock : Yes.

  François Truffaut : When I say pleasure I don't mean amusement...

  Alfred Hitchcock : They're obviously, they're going to sit there and say "show me" and they expect to anticipate, "I know what's coming next". I have to say, "Do you?"

• François Truffaut : Do you dream often?

  Alfred Hitchcock : Not a lot, no.

  François Truffaut : Are dreams important to your work?

  Alfred Hitchcock : Daydreams, probably.

• François Truffaut : Your films seem to fall into the domain of dreams of danger and solitude.

  Alfred Hitchcock : Well, that's probably me, within myself.

• Alfred Hitchcock : There is sometimes a tendency among filmmakers to forget the audience. I personally am interested in the audience. I mean that one's film should be designed for 2,000 seats and not 1 seat. This to me is the power of the cinema. It is the greatest known mass medium there is in the world.

• Alfred Hitchcock : It doesn't matter where the film goes. If you've designed it correctly, the Japanese audience should scream at the same time as the Indian audience.

• Alfred Hitchcock : [Discussing "Psycho"]  Seven days, seventy set-ups. I used a nude girl, a lot. I shot some of it in slow motion. Because of covering the breasts, you couldn't do it quick. You couldn't measure it correctly.

• Alfred Hitchcock : [Discussing "Psycho"]  My main satisfaction is that film did something to an audience. I really mean that. In many ways, I feel my satisfaction in our art achieved something, often, mass emotion. It wasn't a message. It wasn't some more great performance. It wasn't a highly, appreciated novel that served the audience. It was pure film. People will say what a terrible thing to make and the subject was horrible. The people were small. There were no characters in it. I know all this. But, I know one thing: the use of filming construction of this story caused audiences all over the world to react and become emotional.

• François Truffaut : [Last lines]  In most of your films, you've shown characters divided by a secret that they refuse to reveal to one another. The atmosphere becomes more and more oppressive until finally, they decide to open up and thus liberate themselves. Does that ring true to you?

  Alfred Hitchcock : It's true. Yes.

  François Truffaut : In the end, you are mostly interested within the framework of the crime story, in filming moral dilemmas.

  Alfred Hitchcock : Sure, that's true.

  François Truffaut : So, that's my conclusion.

• Alfred Hitchcock : "The Lodger" was the first time I'd exercised any style.

• Alfred Hitchcock : [1929 filmed screen voice test for "Blackmail"]  Do you realize a Squad Van will be here any moment?

  Anny Ondra : No, really? I may gosh, I'm terribly frightened.

  Alfred Hitchcock : Why, have you been a bad woman or something?

  Anny Ondra : Well, not just, bad, but, eh...

  Alfred Hitchcock : But, you've slept with men.

  Anny Ondra : Oh, no!

• Alfred Hitchcock : I have a favorite little saying to myself, "Logic is dull".

• François Truffaut : In your films, I always get the powerful scent of original sin.

  Alfred Hitchcock : Yes

• François Truffaut : Your logic, which has never satisfied your critics, is in a sense the logic of dreams.

  Alfred Hitchcock : I think it occurs because I'm never satisfied with the ordinary. I can't do well with the ordinary.

• François Truffaut : "Vertigo" is one of your most poetic films. It's more poetic than dramatic. The film has a dreamlike quality, a slowness, something contemplative that your other films don't have, which are often built on rapid movement, on speed.

  Alfred Hitchcock : Yes. Here you are dealing with the point of view of an emotional man.

  François Truffaut : What interested you most about the story?

  Alfred Hitchcock : I was intrigued with the efforts to create a woman, after another, in the image of a dead woman.

• Alfred Hitchcock : [Discussing "Vertigo"]  The sex, psychological side, is that you have a man creating a sex image that he can't go to bed with her until he's got her back - to the thing he wants to go to bed with.

• Alfred Hitchcock : [Discussing "Vertigo"]  The thing, you see, that I liked and felt most when she came back from having her hair made blonde and it wasn't up, this means she has stripped, but won't take her knickers off.

  [laughs] 

  Alfred Hitchcock : You see, she say's all right and she goes into the bath and he is waiting. He's waiting for the woman to undress and come out. He's ready for for her.

• François Truffaut : "Vertigo" is a film for which you have a great tenderness.

  Alfred Hitchcock : Yes, I-I enjoyed it. Yes. You know, I had Vera Miles tested and costumed. We were ready to go with her. She went pregnant and that was going to be the part that I was going to bring her out. She was under contract to me. But, I lost interest. I couldn't get the rhythm going again with her. Silly girl.

• François Truffaut : [Discussing "Vertigo"]  What bothers you about the film?

  Alfred Hitchcock : The hole in the story. The husband who pushed his wife off the tower, how did he know that Stewart wasn't going to run up those stairs?

• Alfred Hitchcock : [Discussing "Psycho"]  It was a very interesting construction. I tried, for a long time, to *play* the audience. Let's say we where playing them like an organ.

• Alfred Hitchcock : [Discussing "Psycho"]  It was necessary to make the robbery and what happened to the girl, purposely on the long side, to get an audience absorbed with her plight. Where I slowed up was when I came to the scenes that indicated time and trouble.

• Alfred Hitchcock : We better not have cigars, you're right. It might make us look like movie directors and God forbid we ever look like that.

• Alfred Hitchcock : I suppose the films with atmosphere, suspense and incident are really my creations as a writer.