Alfred Hitchcock: life and death of the master of suspense

Forty years ago, Sir Alfred Hitchcock, one of the most famous film directors, died in Los Angeles. He was 81 years old. His death had not been preceded by any suspense, no one was wanted. In this new episode of "At the heart of history", produced by Europe 1 Studio, Jean des Cars traces the journey of this complex, ambiguous character who has made a unique place in the history of the seventh art.

On April 29, 1980, accompanied by a photographer from Figaro Magazine, I had an appointment with Princess Grace of Monaco at her Parisian home. She was always perfectly punctual. However, we are told that it would be a little late. An unusual, silent atmosphere permeated the residence. Suddenly, at the top of the stairs, she appears, in tears. She descends slowly, holding a paper in her hand. We have known each other for years. What had happened? She said to me: "Hello ... Excuse me ... I have just heard a terrible news. Hitch is dead! ... You will understand that this is not the time for an interview ... and more, I am not photographable! "

She was totally upset but she had the great courtesy to warn us herself. She was like that, respectful of her commitments and attentive to others. We left immediately. Another appointment would be scheduled as soon as possible. She had made three films for Alfred Hitchcock. For him, she embodied the feminine ideal. Her princess status, her refusal to tour with him after her marriage, and her new life had changed nothing about their friendship. But who was Alfred Hitchcock really?

Traumatized child finds his way into the cinema 

Alfred Hitchcock was born in London on August 13, 1899. His parents were fruit and vegetable merchants. Alfred is the youngest. His brother is 9 years older than him and his sister 7. He is lonely and quiet. He defines his childhood himself: "I was always sitting alone in a corner to observe and think ... I think that my eye, so sensitive to details, is the result of my childhood". 

He also gladly recounts his first major trauma. He's 5 years old. He annoys his father for stupidity. The latter sends him to the police station with a letter to the Commissioner. The policeman reads the letter and locks Alfred in a cell for ten minutes saying: "This is how we treat ugly little boys!". The first fear of a child. He will know how to transmit this anguish to the public later. It will even be his trademark.

The family is Catholic. Alfred will be a boarder with the Jesuits at Collège Saint-Ignace, up to 14 years old. Another place where he will know a thousand fears, the Jesuits then practicing corporal punishment and even psychological torture. Indeed, we know that we will be punished but we do not know when or how. A real thriller! Later, Alfred will say all the same that the Jesuits taught him "the sense of organization and to a certain extent, that of analysis ... As for religious influence, at the time, I think it was fear. "

He is passionate about geography, plans, maps, Lloyd's bulletins indicating the movements of boats, their routes and their destinations. He is also passionate about railway indicators and recites, by heart, the list of stations served by the Orient-Express. After college, Alfred Hitchcock went on to graduate studies in engineering. He also took drawing lessons at the University of London. And it is through drawing that he will reach the cinema. He is also interested in theater and the very beautiful actresses who perform there. Pretty actresses, as well as the world of theater and music hall, will be very present in her work. 

During the First World War, he was reformed but still participated in some maneuvers, in uniform, in Hyde Park, as a Royal Engineer. Alfred loves cinema. He admires Griffith with his film Intolerance but prefers English cinema to American cinema. He is also passionate about the German expressionism of Fritz Lang and Murnau.

At 19, Alfred Hitchcock was hired by the Henley Telegraph Company, manufacturer of electric cables. He takes care of advertising and creates a newspaper for the company. In 1920, thanks to an actor friend, he signed a contract with the American company Famous Players-Lasky. It opens studios in London. Hitchcock will compose the subtitles of obviously silent films. He improves them by accompanying them with small, funny and explicit drawings.

The Famous-Players Lasky team includes three female screenwriters from Hollywood. He works with them and learns to compose a scenario. In 1922, he was assistant director. In the same year, for Woman to Woman (in French La danseuse blessée) he was a screenwriter, adapter, dialogist and co-director. He is also in charge of the sets. It is on this shoot that he will meet Alma Reville, the editor of the film. She is the same age as him, but she is a young man: her father worked at the Twickenham studios. He will remarkably get along with Alma, only professionally at first. With her, he made two other films in London. 1925 is an important year: Hitchcock leaves for Berlin to film a film in the renowned studios of Babelsberg.

Alfred gets married and becomes a famous director

He filmed there The Black Guard (in French Le Voyou) which recounts the life of a violinist. The producer is co-producing with UFA, the huge German film company. The film is therefore made in Berlin where Hitchcock discovers an unknown world for him: night clubs where people of the same sex dance together, the daughter of the director of the UFA who offers him two young German girls ... ready to please him . In front of Alfred's frightened "Nein!" Nein! ", The two girls go to bed together. To make the most of the spectacle, the daughter of the UFA boss will adjust her glasses. Hitchcock discover, all at once, female homosexuality, voyeurism and the interest of women with glasses!

On the neighboring stage, Murnau is filming The Last of Men. Hitchcock is fascinated by his method. Berlin will be a cinema lesson for him. In the boat that brings her back to the United Kingdom, Hitchcock asks for Alma's hand. She accepts. They will marry the following year, in 1926. All her life Alma will be the inspiration, the assistant, the counselor of her husband, as well in the preparation of films as on their turning. Alfred staged two dramatic comedies in 1925. He gained notoriety with The Lodger, an adaptation of the story of Jack the Ripper. It is a success. Hitchcock has found his way. From now on, he will mainly produce dramatic comedies with a police intrigue, heroes wrongly accused. He skillfully mixes anxiety, possibly terror, humor and amorous intrigue.

In 1934, he made his first thriller "The Man Who Knew Too Much" and made a new version himself in 1956. Then, in 1935, he shot "The 39 Steps", a spy story which brings together many of his passions; there are unscrupulous conspirators in the context of the pre-war period, a hero unfairly chased on a train, a sentimental intrigue deliciously tinged with eroticism with, in particular, handcuffs as an accessory. An exciting, funny and breathtaking adventure. Hitchcock is a master of the genre. It is a huge success.

Three years later, in 1938, he directed Une femme disparaître, entirely shot in a small studio near London. Another story of espionage but of disturbing topicality. The plot takes place almost entirely on board the Orient-Express and Hitchcock shows all his mastery in this filming in a vacuum. An achievement that will not escape David O'Selznick, the producer of Autant takes the wind. He invites Alfred Hitchcock to Hollywood. He suggested that he adapt the masterpiece and bestseller of the English novelist Daphné du Maurier Rebecca to the cinema.

Hitchcock conquers Hollywood 

For Hitchcock, Rebecca is a total change of genre. It is an opening to romanticism, a rare experience in his work. Filming will not be easy. Constantly watched by the tyrannical O'Selznick, the filmmaker must fight to direct the shooting in his own way. He also maintains stormy relationships with the main actress, Joan Fontaine. Finally, he uses the shyness and the borrowed side of the actress to make his character credible. The second Mme de Winter, madly in love with her husband, played by Laurence Olivier, does not understand why he married her. She is especially complexed and fascinated by the shadow of her first wife, who died in mysterious conditions.

With Rebecca, Hitchcock signs a perfect and bewitching film, which wins the Oscar for best film in 1940. That year, Hitchcock begins a series of anti-Nazi propaganda films like Correspondent 17, Fifth Column and Lifeboat in 1943. This final title is an astonishing film: a dozen characters share a lifeboat after their boat was sunk by a German submarine. A vase in the open sea, strong characters, traitors, a scenario rich in surprises. 

While making his patriotic films, Hitchcock does not renounce the romantic. In 1941, he directed the delicious Mr and Mrs Smith, a matrimonial comedy that allowed him to direct Carole Lombard, with whom he got on wonderfully well. She had as much humor as her director. As Hitchcock had said in an interview that for him the actors were only cattle, the first day of filming, Hitchcock found on the set only three cows, each carrying around the neck a sign with the name of the three main protagonists , including Carole Lombard! Alfred Hitchcock loved pranks! The shooting was a dream ...

The same year, he directed Soupçons. Another marital comedy but much more ambiguous. The heroine, again interpreted by Joan Fontaine, suspects her husband of being a horrible character until wanting to kill her to inherit her. In the first scenario, she was right. It had to be modified because in no case, for the public, Cary Grant could not play the role of an assassin! The film is perfectly successful. The disturbing and enigmatic husband is seductive. For Joan Fontaine, it was more complicated: the director found it non-existent! Hitchcock biographer Bruno Villien says:

"In England, at a press conference given thirty years later, Hitchcock declared that Joan Fontaine was a puppet and that for" Suspicions ", he could only create a coherent character with scissors and glue , thanks to a meticulous premeditated editing from the start ". In short, he couldn't stand it. He never toured with her again.

Hitchcock and Ingrid Bergman

Fortunately, Hitchcock was going to meet, after the war, actresses who perfectly embodied his heroine model. Blonde, seemingly distant and a bit cold but, in reality, on fire under ice. The first of them is the Swedish Ingrid Bergman with whom he will get along perfectly. He defines her as follows: "Ingrid Bergman is a very sexy woman, but only because of her inner beauty". 

Pure Hitchcock! Their first collaboration is a strange film: The house of Doctor Edwardes, in 1945. It is a psychoanalytic melodrama. Ingrid Bergman is a female psychiatrist who falls in love with another psychiatrist, played by Gregory Peck. The latter is amnesiac. He is convinced that he murdered the doctor whose identity he assumed. Only psychoanalysis will help him. The use of dreams fascinated Hitchcock: he asked Salvador Dali to design the sets and costumes. This brings us to a strange scene in an ancient setting. A very Hitchcockian intrusion into the world of Freud. 

Their second collaboration, the following year, in 1946, was one of the director's most brilliant films: Les Enchaînés. A story of Nazi plotters in Rio de Janeiro. The couple Cary Grant, American agent, and Ingrid Bergman, daughter of a Nazi agent wanting to rehabilitate, take incredible risks to scare the spectators. Everything will end well. The brilliance of the film, the remarkable use of transparencies, some anthology scenes on the house of spies. The staircase plays an essential role, there are in almost all his films, from Cary Grant raising a glass of milk to his wife in Suspicions to the terrifying staircase of the house of Norman Bates (Anthony Perkins) in Psychosis . And we cannot, either, forget the staircase of the bell tower of the Mexican mission in Vertigo.

The third film with Ingrid Bergman The Lovers of Capricorn is Hitchcock's only one in costumes. It takes place in Australia, in 1830. Bergman is a terrorized heroine. The suspense is psychological and the film completely romantic.

But also Grace Kelly, Kim Novak, Eva-Marie Saint

The second blonde actress, and probably Hitchcock's favorite, is Grace Kelly. Between 1954 and 1955, he made three films with her. The first is a closed vase dear to the filmmaker: The crime was almost perfect. It was the only film he shot in relief, but that posed immense problems because the camera was huge and unwieldy in a small two-room setting. The only interest of the relief was the close-up in three dimensions of the scissors that Grace Kelly, lying on the desk, plants in the back of her attacker who tries to strangle her. It's horrible !

The second film is even more confined than the first. It takes place in a single room where James Stewart, immobilized after an accident, la one leg in plaster. His only distraction is to observe, with the help of a telephoto lens, the life of his neighbors opposite, on the other side of the courtyard. Pure voyeurism: another Hitchcock specialty! Dazzling Grace Kelly will help her fiancé to unmask a husband who murdered his wife. She takes huge risks. We will be very afraid! In short, it's a treat!

The third and last Hitchcock-Grace Kelly collaboration is the delicious La main au collet filmed in June 1954 on the Côte d'Azur. This marivaudage between a repentant former jewelry thief, nicknamed "The Cat" played by Cary Grant, and a rich unconventional American heiress, includes a premonitory scene: during a picnic on the middle ledge, the backdrop is the Rock of Monaco. Cary Grant replied: "Basically, you came to Europe to get married ..." The following year, Grace met Prince Rainier and a few months later, she married him. Alfred Hitchcock had lost his favorite star. Rest assured, he will find others: in 1956, there will be the beautiful Kim Novak in "Vertigo". Another Freudian film in which James Stewart fights against his memory and his vertigo.

Then there will be the exquisite Eva Marie Saint, in La mort aux trousses, in 1959, with partner Cary Grant. It is one of the most successful films of the master of suspense. Hitchcock succeeds in filming, in a sleeping car, the longest kiss in the history of cinema. Finally, Tippi Hedren was martyred in 1963 in Birds by a fairly sadistic Hitchcock. She will also be, in 1964, a slightly disappointing Marnie. The role had been imagined for Grace of Monaco, but we know that she refused it. 

At the same time, Hitchcock made films for television with great success. He would film Frenzy again in 1972, like a homecoming in London. It is the story of a "serial killer", like an echo of his first film on Jack the Ripper. And finally, a Family Plot, which will add nothing to its glory.

When he died in 1980, Alfred Hitchcock left an exceptional filmography that still enchants us. Let François Truffaut, one of his great admirers, explain to us why: "Let's say that if we like cinema as an escape, well! We escape ten times more in a Hitchcock film because it's better He tells modern stories, stories of ordinary people to whom extraordinary things happen. Remember that I grew up in fear and that Hitchcock is the filmmaker of fear. We enter his films as in a dream, of such formal beauty, so harmonious, so round ".

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"At the heart of history" is a Europe 1 Studio podcast

Author and presentation: Jean des Cars 

Project manager: Adèle Ponticelli

Realization: Guillaume Vasseau

Diffusion and edition: Clémence Olivier

Graphics: Europe 1 Studio