Alfred Hitchcock (19 page)

The film’s climactic Albert Hall match was a triumph of illusion, indebted to the recently invented Schüfftan process, first exploited by Fritz Lang in
Metropolis
, and which Hitchcock had brought home from Germany as his most valuable souvenir. The new process enabled him to stage scenes in public places, without the expense (or permission) of actually filming there, by blending live action in the foreground against miniatures, photographs, or painted scenery. Many of Hitchcock’s most famous special effects were Schüfftan-style composites: real backgrounds mixed with re-creations.

Smoke and glare, images reflected in water and mirrors, crazily tilted framing, split-screen staging, and superimpositions were among the film’s other Teutonic flourishes. One surreal sequence cuts back and forth between drunken revelers, fantastically elongated piano keys, and a hypnotically spinning long-playing record. Ultimately,
The Ring
is “the most Germanic in style of Hitchcock’s silent films,” as critic Jonathan Rosenbaum observed—a drama conventional in its story line, but shot in a dense, experimental style. Though in neither scope nor theme as sweeping as
Metropolis, The Ring
is as dark and velvety as a Fritz Lang epic.

A first-rate boxing saga, with all the ritual and well-observed detail of the sport, it is also a surprisingly intimate film. Unlike Lang (and other Germans), Hitchcock was adept at incidental humor (the carnival guests at the church wedding were a hilarious rehearsal for the circus freaks in
Saboteur
) and warmth. This was the young, uninhibited Hitchcock, who showed tremendous curiosity and feeling for his characters: fresh from his own marriage, he was sensitive to the tensions of fidelity. This is, too, the rare Hitchcock film without a single murder victim, a man falsely accused, or a woman living in dread of sex or violence.

With the speed characteristic of picture making in that era, the photography
was completed by summer’s end, the footage was assembled by early September, and the finished film was screened later that month. The new Hitchcock film was swiftly hailed as another “masterpiece” by the
Observer
, and as “the greatest production ever made” in England by Iris Barry in the
Daily Mail.
“Mr. Hitchcock has done more for British pictures than a dozen acts of Parliament,” opined the
Evening Standard.

The
Bioscope
addressed Hitchcock presciently in a special editorial: “Our first hope is that you will long continue to make films in this country, because the producing industry—which owes you a debt of gratitude—can ill afford to be without your talent.”

Another souvenir Hitchcock brought back from Germany was the playful tyranny in his persona; a tyranny that was very German, mingled with a playfulness that was very much his own.

At Elstree in the late 1920s emerge the first eyewitness accounts of a director who sometimes ruled the set like a führer, manipulating the people and the atmosphere the way he manipulated pieces of film—achieving darkness or light according to his mood.

To get what he wanted on film, he was capable of behaving like a dictator, or a circus clown. Like other tales of Hitchcock hubris, these stories have grown and been exaggerated over the years. The penchant for elaborate, sometimes borderline-ugly practical jokes was widespread during this era. Hitchcock was not the only practical joker at B.I.P. (or, later, Gaumont); the trend was industrywide. People say, for example, that whenever Monta Bell—an American who was “literary editor” of Chaplin’s
A Woman in Paris
before turning director—was on the lot, the madness was rife.

Sometimes Hitchcock’s “odd behavior” was simply good publicity. Teatime, for example, was a treasured afternoon break, and so it was fodder for the columnists when Hitchcock took to hurling crockery over his shoulder, signaling “Back to work!” after drinking his cuppa. “I always do it when I’m feeling good,” Hitchcock explained one time. “I like to get up onto a high rostrum with a camera, and tip the tray over. Or push cups over the edge of a platform. Or just open my hand and let the whole thing drop. Wouldn’t you?”

The first time he did it, Hitchcock told the press, one of his favorite crew members split his sides with laughter—a sure invitation to repeat performances. Soon he was expected to smash all his teacups. Such eccentricity woke people up, and made for an exclamation mark in an otherwise humdrum day. The crew relished it, which was sensible policy.

Hitchcock also hated uninvited visitors to the set, especially members of the general public on courtesy tours (ironic considering his later association
with Universal Studios, packager of the most lucrative studio tour in film history). So, when such tours materialized, Hitchcock would switch to German, shouting curses and obscenities—all the more amusing when the visitors were priests accompanied by ecclesiastical students.

Most of his practical jokes were innocent: hosting formal dinners with all the food tinged with blue coloring, placing whoopee cushions under the behinds of stuffy guests, plying uptight people with strong drink and watching as they came unglued. Some were elaborate and expensive: tying quantities of kippers onto the bumpers of a victim’s fancy car, ordering a load of coal to be dumped on someone’s front doorsill.

But practical joking was also a matter of one-upmanship—a game Hitchcock was driven to win at all costs. Assistant cameraman Alfred Roome recalled how the director used to poke fun at his posh, beetle-size Austin-Healey, and one day requisitioned the car for a conference with floor manager Richard “Dickie” Beville. Both hefty men, Hitchcock and Beville squeezed inside the vehicle, pointedly annoying Roome, who felt his private vehicle ought to be off-limits. Roome went in search of a smoke pot, found one in storage, placed it underneath the Austin-Healey, and then lit the fuse. “You never saw two fat men get out of a car quicker,” recalled Roome. “Hitch never tried anything again on me. He respected you if you hit back. If you didn’t, he’d have another go.”

No question, some of his jokes had a bullying quality that disturbed people. Actors he didn’t like or considered “phony” were special targets for sarcasm or pranks. Hitchcock said defensively in a 1972 televised interview that he never meant to harm or denigrate anyone. But everyone knew his jokes were at their worst when a film wasn’t going right.

Oh, my son couldn’t be a murderer, Bruno’s mother (Marion Lorne) exclaims in
Strangers on a Train;
it must be one of his practical jokes. “Sometimes he goes a little too far,” she sighs.

People reflexively cite the case of Dickie Beville. Beville always seemed to suffer the worst, most humiliating Hitchcock persecution. One notorious time, Hitchcock bet Beville he couldn’t last a night in handcuffs. Before Hitchcock locked the cuffs, however, he tricked Beville into drinking coffee laced with a strong laxative. Even though there are wildly conflicting versions of this anecdote—the only consistent touch is the handcuffs—the story is widely accepted as gospel in English film annals. Poor Beville, it is said, spent a long diarrheic night, thanks to cruel Hitchcock.
^*

But many directors (not only Germans) enjoyed having court jesters on
the set, and Alfred Roome, assistant cameraman on
The Ring
, insisted later that he knew “for a fact” that Beville and other underlings relished their immersion into “Hitchcockery.” Roome said Beville willingly served as dupe, and as the director’s beloved guinea pig he received bonuses and promotions for his suffering. Hitchcock considered him a friend; forty years on, ensconced at Universal in Hollywood, he sentimentally kept a small photo of Beville on his desk, amid his important awards and celebrity photographs.

Alma only half tried to temper his jokes. At home she was his best audience, her only complaint an occasional exasperated “Oh, Hitch!” But his staunchest ally during the B.I.P. years, his reliable straight man, was cameraman Jack Cox, who loathed pomposity as much as Hitchcock. Cox was a storied character: happy-go-lucky, a protean drinker, a sharp dresser, a ladies’ man. Like Hitchcock he had a Cockney sense of mischief. They bantered ceaselessly on the set and conspired on many practical jokes, and when the worst, rottenest tricks were played, often there were only two people left laughing: Cox and Hitchcock.

Alma became pregnant in late 1927, and soon she was absenting herself more and more from the studio. A young woman—bright, attractive Renee Pargenter—was employed as the director’s new secretary and script girl. The Arnold brothers continued as Hitchcock’s art directors, while Emile de Ruelle supervised the editing of his pictures. Along with Cox, these people were the nucleus of the group that supplanted the Gainsborough team.

But Hitchcock and his staff weren’t in London to read the complimentary notices for
The Ring.
Amazingly, the director was already immersed in his fourth production of the year, away on the coast of Devon shooting exteriors for
The Farmer’s Wife
, a bucolic comedy about a widowed farmer sorting through local candidates for marriage. The Eden Phillpotts play had had a long run in 1924, and a popular 1928 revival. Eliot Stannard’s adaptation adhered closely to the play, so closely that Hitchcock never felt right in claiming it. “It was a routine job,” he told Peter Bogdanovich, “a stage play with lots of titles instead of dialogue.”

That, to his credit, is how Hitchcock often described his “photographed plays.” But
The Farmer’s Wife
is much better than a routine job. Its nimble comedy, subtle camera work, and excellent acting make it the most unlikely and enjoyable of his silent films.

The trade papers took note of Hitchcock’s adventurous casting: Jameson Thomas, the lanky, laconic actor picked to play the hayseed farmer of the title, wasn’t associated with any of the stage versions. (In fact, the only member of the cast who played the same part on the stage was Maud Gill.)
Lilian Hall-Davis once again played a sympathetic figure—a housemaid, the soul of caring, who steals her way into the widower’s heart. And Gordon Harker stole his scenes as Churdles Ash, the uncouth handyman.

The widower might be seen as a stand-in for the romantically bumbling Hitchcock, while the housemaid, who at one point declares, “There’s something magical in the married state,” might be considered an idealization of Mrs. Hitchcock—the perfect helpmate and model wife. Although the comedy sometimes borders on slapstick (a virgin spinster, whom the farmer chases around a table at a party, quivers as much as the gelatin mold she is carrying), the film is sweet and funny—an unabashed paean to true love and marriage.

What a triumphant year: Hitchcock directed four films in 1927, all of them successes.
^*
With a showman’s flair, he and Alma mailed out their first holiday cards as “the Hitchcocks,” celebrating along with Christmas the first anniversary of their marriage. The card was designed as a small wooden puzzle: when assembled, it formed the increasingly familiar outlined profile of “Hitch.”

Yet it wasn’t necessarily great news when B.I.P. announced a new salary for their top director: seventeen thousand pounds annually, for twelve films over the next three years.

For one thing, the figure was an exaggeration. Young writer Sidney Gilliat recalled riding in a taxi late in 1927 with Hitchcock and J. A. Thorpe, a studio executive. Thorpe lowered his voice, warning Hitchcock that he’d better rein in the studio publicity or the tax bureau would try to collect on the inflated figure. Undoubtedly Hitchcock was making “very good money,” said Gilliat—“top money, [but] it wasn’t dizzy money.”

But the public vote of confidence gave Hitchcock a brief, rose-colored opportunity to sketch his ambitions for the future. Whenever he was flush, or his slate was momentarily blank, he dreamed of atypical Hitchcock projects—subjects that would offer him a radical departure, a broader canvas—the kind of grandiose ideas that entranced him in the abstract but eluded him in practice.

While B.I.P. was making its announcement, Hitchcock was envisioning various future projects, including “two epic films dealing with the Mercantile Marine and the English railways.” There was also loose talk of Hitchcock’s chronicling England’s general strike of 1926—a ten-day nationwide stoppage, generally regarded as a historic opportunity and dismal defeat for English labor—in a film that would depict “the fistfights
between strikers and undergraduates, pickets, and all the authentic drama of the situation,” in his words.

Already in preproduction, according to B.I.P., was an experimental “film symphony” called “London,” which Hitchcock had written in collaboration with Walter Mycroft. This unusual project was said to be inspired by Walter Ruttmann’s dazzling
Berlin: The Symphony of a Great City
, made in 1927. But his would not be merely “a mechanical film,” according to the
Bioscope:
Hitchcock’s “London” would offer a heaping slice of humanity.

None of these experimental, populist, or otherwise out-of-the-ordinary Hitchcock pictures would ever be made. The director’s actual deal with B.I.P. included option clauses that hinged on his ability to churn out four B.I.P. productions a year, maintaining the staggering level of output he had managed in 1927. As fast as he was, Hitchcock couldn’t keep up that pace and hope to make the kind of films that called for the studio to risk more time and expense.

Other factors also conspired against him. Although B.I.P. had strengthened its ties with Europe, the resistance to English films was still entrenched there, and John Maxwell had just about given up hope of extracting significant revenue from America. Instead he increased his number of domestic circuits, and turned his concentration to the home market.

What Maxwell really wanted to do in the foreseeable future was to consolidate his English audience. His twelve-picture, three-year deal with Hitchcock was part of a general speedup, and a studio policy that called for more—and cheaper—films to justify its overhead. Photographing English plays and books, with English actors, was front-office conservatism that took no account of Hitchcock’s higher aspirations. And so the next several years at Elstree, from 1928 to 1932, would prove the busiest of Hitchcock’s career, but also at times the least personal.