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Hitchcock Through Maddened Eyes by John Madden
John Madden and his treasured, two-short-of-a-full-compliment, Hitchcock collection. photo: Jody Yvette
HI, MY NAME IS JOHN MADDEN AND I
make media.
I’ve made music—from church choirs and symphonies to punk bands; theater—straight dramatic and musical; radio; television and film—working on “both sides of the camera;” and Internet and mobile content.
I spent seven years at San Francisco's City College and State University studying film and broadcasting, and all the media theory and history I could get.
But, as I said, I MAKE MEDIA—so by many lines of thought I have no business even talking about art. I’m unqualified, I’m just a MEDIA MAKER—what do I know about art?
When the charming and knowledgeable Mr. Blair, over a wonderful meal—food is as important to me as art, a trait common among us directors—asked me if I’d like to write a column on Hitchcock, I accepted immediately.
As far as I’m concerned, as not just a lover but a MAKER of cinema, the alpha and the omega of the film art form are John Ford and Alfred Hitchcock.
I wrote my first piece on Hitchcock in fifth grade after my Dad took me to see the “39 Steps” (1935) in the attic of our small town Michigan library, projected from a 16mm print. The walk home was one of the most memorable we ever had. Thank you, Dad.
Hence, Hitchcock and I have been friends for a very, very long time. But what angle to take? What has NOT been said about him? He is the most studied directorin the history of cinema.
Looking over my collection of all but two of his films ("Champagne", 1928, no uncut version yet exists) and "Topaz", (1969, simply haven’t gotten around to it yet), I thought about the many fashionable lines of inquiry, almost all of which are rooted in the masterwork, year-long interview book by Francois Truffaut—so very valuable because it is TWO cinema makers talking.
John Madden (second from right) using the Rashomon Mirror Trick on his feature 'Rabbits and Wolves' (2004). photo: Jody Yvette
This work ("Hitchcock by Truffaut: A Definitive Study of Alfred Hitchcock", 1966), above all others, speaks to me and I’ve cherished my copy since I got it in 1998.
Nowhere is Truffaut going to fall into any of the traps laid by Hitch—the so-called “participatory space,” those ambivalent absences in plot or action that he intentionally left for audiences to fill in on their own. Nowhere is Truffaut going to assume something has deeper meaning than it does—“Sometimes a cigar is JUST A CIGAR," as Uncle Sigmund used to say—when in all likelihood a production reality created it.
Nowhere is Truffaut going to try and gin up his copy with “insights” gained from on-set gossips who have no place nor ability to call a plot conference or a lengthy discussion with an actor “unnecessary” or “overly long”—AS IF a PA or even another director, for that matter, has any right to set standards or rules on the methods or behavior of THE MASTER!
It is this type of thinking that made John Ford REFUSE to ever be “interviewable.”
No, Truffaut was a DIRECTOR, a maker of CINEMA himself, hence someone who worked with actors, and even was an actor, even though he was a scholar as well. In other words, it was peer to peer. He gave Hitchcock the respect of accepting that MAYBE Hitchcock actually KNEW WHAT HE WAS SAYING! At any rate, when it came to his own work, he certainly knew what he was talking about.
“Look there! Cary Grant is walking into the UN, and he’s so small in picture in front of the edifice. CLEARLY, Hitchcock, the master planner, is framing shot in this way to both show the powerlessness of the character in the face of authority, and to create a sense of foreboding for the murder to come!”
Bull. He’s small in frame because Hitch is “stealing the shot” with a camera poking through the false side of a moving van across the street, because the UN wouldn’t allow him to shoot on their property. OOPS, reality trumps scholarly dogma.
Hitch was savvy enough to indulge this stuff, Ford was… not. Maybe that’s why there will be 100 books written about “Vertigo” (1958) before two are written about “The Informer” (1935).
Marie Krolik (Jackie Sullivan) emerges from hiding, to be greeted by a Hitchcockian girl (Veronica) from another scene from 'Rabbits and Wolves'. photo: Jody Yvette
So what CAN be said about this most hashed over, analyzed, and generally molested personality in the history of cinema and his body of work, which, it can be said, set in stone the “other half” of screen grammar—that of the moving camera—after the mise-en-scene and “fixed camera” techniques were established by the master John Ford.
As I constantly tell people—OK SHOUT AT THEM!—it is IMPOSSIBLE to make any movie whatsoever without stealing something from Ford and/or Hitchcock. There is no shot that they didn’t either invent or perfect. The very omnipresence of this puffy Englishman is intimidating, overwhelming.
“The studio system was good," as John Huston used to say. "Directors need a place to be BAD long enough to get GOOD.”
And so, when I finally got my lucrative career in the ARTS around to cinema, much as the Beatles made their name and fame by doing cover versions of American blues songs, I decided my first feature would be “A Hitchcock Picture.” And, being in San Francisco, the one that moved me the most was “Shadow of a Doubt” (1943). Set in Santa Rosa, it is the third Northern California Hitchcock.
Orson Welles said, "(That to) learn how to make movies,” he watched Ford's “Stagecoach” (1939) 41 times in 30 days. Then he made “Citizen Kane” (1941). Every night he watched with a different crew and frequently Gregg Toland (fresh from working with Ford), and studied that single work from the POV of every position and department on a movie crew.
I tried to do the same with “Shadow of a Doubt”. Since it was Hitchcock's personal favorite of his own films, I figured, "If it was good enough for him, it was good enough for me." I lifted every theme, I stole every shot I could or redid every angle, with my extremely limited resources, and followed every theoretical rule Hitch ever put down.
From eggs being evil to stealing shots of places where you weren’t allowed to film, to shooting victims on stairs differently than killers on stairs—I did everything I could do to teach myself how to make a real feature film. I was in my first semester of film school and third of broadcasting school. Thank you San Francisco City College for all you did to make that adventure possible.
Agents Daxiat and Bowlin, played by Chris Gilmartin and Sid Breckenridge (lf-rt) are behind the 8 ball in 'Rabbits and Wolves'. photo: J. Madden
What did I learn? It’s very hard to make a Hitchcock picture. VERY. I couldn’t do it, but I did finish my feature and I love it. No one can make a Hitchcock picture but Hitchcock. Chabrol couldn’t, DePalma couldn’t. Many have tried, none have succeeded—even WITH money!
More than that I learned that what Fellini had said was true: “The picture you make will never be the picture you set out to make.”
Even Hitchcock had to face that, whether it was sacrificing the ten minute takes from “Rope” (1948) he had wanted to continue in “Under Capricorn” (1949), or having to constantly adjust certain areas of leading lady wardrobe to appease the censors, or whether he had to change locations because permission to shoot was refused.
It just adds up, and adds up, compromise upon sacrifice upon interference from the “front office,” not to mention gossips on the set and, of course, the inevitable tension between that which you want to shoot, and that which you can afford to shoot.
I look at Hitchcock very differently now, even as much as I enjoy all the endless attempts to box this grocer's son into this political stance or that psychological deformation, to claim he was an “X” and not a “Y”, to make him hostile to women, or a lover of them.
I think, that this is perhaps, in the end, the Master's greatest feat. Not only did he create participatory space IN his movies, he created participatory space ABOUT his movies. By so freely going along with the critical circus—the scholars, the film students, the audience, and for one great year, with another director, who was also a scholar and disciple—Hitchcock got the last laugh.
I think that Hitch, wherever he is, is DELIGHTED at all the hoo-haw and folderol and hand wringing that goes on about him and his work.
Peter Bogdanovich recalled getting into an elevator with Hitch and, as the doors closed, Hitch “continued” a conversation that they hadn’t been having.
“Oh, it was just awful, and you know there was blood everywhere. Well, you can’t just get rid of a body that easily from a place like that, so you know, there’s a problem—oh, here’s our floor,” and off he walked. Away from the gasping passengers, Bogdanovich asked him, "What was that all about?!?” “Oh, that’s just my little game,” replied a chuckling Hitch.
Well, as in happens, in the audience or behind the typewriter, we are all STILL just pawns in the Masters "little game."
John Madden is a talented hyphenate who has enjoyed success in many avenues of expression and many places. When he isn't absorbing media or creating it, he can be found haunting Amoeba Records, watching Detroit Red Wings hockey, or playing in the park with his son. He can be reached . Posted on Nov 30, 2013 - 07:07 AM