It's Only a Movie: Alfred Hitchcock (38 page)

H
ITCHCOCK ATTEMPTED A
project called
Kaleidoscope Frenzy,
and he shot some test footage in New York. The style of film he was contemplating was similar to that of Michelangelo Antonioni, whose
Blow-Up
he greatly admired. “Those Italian fellows are a hundred years ahead of us,” he said.

Written by Hitchcock,
Kaleidoscope Frenzy
starts with a brutal murder by a killer who is moved to kill when he is close to any large body of water. The murderer is finally exposed by his mother. There were to be no stars, it was to be shot in New York and there would be nudity.

Hitchcock believed in it, but Universal said no, a word Hitchcock hadn’t heard since his days with Selznick.

“I’
M VERY ENTHUSIASTIC
about my next picture,” Hitchcock told Herbert Coleman. “Lew [Wasserman] has just bought Leon Uris’s newest book for me, and Uris is writing the screenplay. I think it will be as picturesque as
The Man Who Knew Too Much
and as suspenseful as
Vertigo.
”

The screenplay Hitchcock received from Uris didn’t please him, and he contacted Arthur Laurents, who read the book and declined to try his hand at it.

“He called up and asked me to come over,” Laurents told me, “and for the first time ever, he asked
why
I didn’t think it was good. He listened, but the old fervor was gone. I felt he wasn’t Hitchcock anymore.”

Samuel Taylor accepted the assignment, sometimes writing scenes just before they were shot. Art director Henry Bumstead felt the pressure.

“You know,” he told me, “
Topaz
was a nightmare. I got high blood pressure on that picture. I’m still taking pills for it, and that’s a long time ago.

“We started in Copenhagen, and we didn’t know who the cast was. Hitch had a terrible time casting that picture.

“In Europe, I didn’t have that much help. I was doing props and everything. I want to tell you, that was the toughest show I ever did. Doing all those sets, and European sets at that, the detail and the molding and everything is much more complicated. I was working every night.

“All the exteriors were done on location, and all the interiors at Universal. I had all the stages filled with sets. I was building furniture, and I had three assistants and three decorators.

“There were some good moments in the picture, but the thing is, there was no time to prepare, and they were writing the script as we started and were casting. Poor Edith Head! I remember she was going crazy, and I didn’t know all the sets. There was just no time for prep, and I’ll tell you, prep is the most important time on a picture.”

Two other endings were filmed. In one, Devereaux and Granville have a duel in an empty Paris stadium, and Granville is shot from the stands by a sniper. In another, Devereaux sees Granville leaving on a plane for Russia at the Orly airport, and they exchange greetings. The ending finally used was an outtake of Philippe Noiret entering a house. Since his character walked with a cane, it was necessary to include only the last part of his going through the door before the off-screen gunshot signaling his suicide is heard. Audiences didn’t respond well to the ending, but the studio had objected to any ending with the spy unpunished, and suicide offered a compromise.

Curtis Harrington, a young director at the Universal Studios during the shooting of
Topaz,
spent three days watching Hitchcock work.

“I asked if I could visit the set, because Hitchcock had a closed set, and didn’t allow visitors. He said I could, and that’s all I expected, to stand in the corner and be as invisible as possible. But what happened was, he took it upon himself, all the time, to come over and tell me what he was doing and why. He was extraordinarily kind to me.

“I got to watch him do one of those unique Hitchcock shots.
Topaz
has a scene in which the ostensible heroine is shot in an embrace by this man. This was one of those famous Hitchcock ideas, unique to him. He set up the camera so that as she fell to the ground, out of this man’s arms, the camera up in the rafters looked directly down on the couple. As she fell to the ground, her skirt spread out and away from her, like a growing pool of blood.

“This was a very tricky shot, not something you can accomplish except with tricks. He had many members of the crew with monofilament threads tied to all the edges of her skirt. As she crumpled to the ground, they pulled the skirt away from her, and I think he shot it in slow motion, so it looked like the skirt just spread out magically around her, like a pool. Pure Hitchcock.

“
Topaz
has no stars. Ordinarily, Hitchcock worked with big stars. Directing these players, he would give them physical moves. He would say, ‘Look up. Look down. Look to the right, then look back.’ Now, he would
never
do that with Cary Grant or Ingrid Bergman, or any star. I asked him why he was giving those physical instructions.

“I’ll never forget what he said: ‘Well, Curtis, I have to try to bring them a very long way in one picture.’

“I remember at one point he fired an actor, and had the casting office send in five other actors. They all lined up, and he chose another one, and then proceeded shooting with that one. It was a small part, but he could not get what he wanted with the first player.

“He had a vision in his head, and that’s what he had to create. When he had the players he really wanted, it must have been a great deal easier for him, because he didn’t have to bring them anywhere.

“My own feeling about Hitchcock is that he was above all a romantic, and his vision is romantic. It’s an idealized vision, even though he dealt with mystery and mayhem. It’s the creation of the Hitchcockian world, and there isn’t a shot that isn’t thought about and created by Alfred Hitchcock.

“When I was doing
Mati Hari
with Sylvia Kristel, I gave her those physical instructions. I remembered what Hitchcock did, and I said I’m going to try to make her as good as possible in this, and I would give her beats. ‘Look up, look down, look away, look back.’ What was wonderful was that one of the French reviews said, ‘She has an acting talent we have not seen before.’

“Astrologically, you know, Hitchcock had the same astrological configuration as Mae West. I think that’s very significant, because they both had sex on the mind.”

G
ERMAN ACTRESS
Karin Dor, from the James Bond film
You Only Live Twice,
was cast in
Topaz
as Juanita de Córdoba. She told me how it happened.

“I was in Germany, and at four o’clock in the morning, my Hollywood agent called and said, ‘Pack your suitcase. Mr. Hitchcock wants to see you.’ So, I packed a little suitcase, not expecting to get the part, because I knew Mr. Hitchcock had already screen-tested over a hundred girls from all over the world.

“So, I arrived at Universal Studios and had lunch with Mr. Hitchcock in his office. He had a dining room there. We were sitting together, talking about everything. After about an hour, he said, ‘Do you know Edith Head?’ I said, ‘Who doesn’t.’ He said, ‘I think it would be a good idea if you go over and have your measurements taken.’ That was his way to tell me I got the part. I said, ‘I got the part?’ He said, ‘Yes!’

“So, I got my fittings with Miss Edith Head, which was, for me, very exciting, too.

“While we were talking in his dining room, he told me about the individual scenes, especially about the death scene, which he already had in his mind so clearly. He said, ‘I want to have you in a purple dress. The dress has to spread out to look like she’s sinking in a pool of blood.’

“But when I fell down the dress wouldn’t spread out. The idea came. Nylon wire.

“They put nylon wire at the seams, and they tried it with a double. She did the fall several times. On every wire there was one person pulling it, about eight workers. Then, the wardrobe ladies came and put a big towel around her, and the girl got out of the dress. I came in a bathrobe, and they put the towel around me, and I slipped into my dress, so we could shoot it.

“We had one day when journalists from all over the world could ask questions. Mr. Hitchcock was there with all the actors. One journalist asked Mr. Hitchcock, ‘Why did you take Miss Dor? She’s dark-haired, and dark eyes, all your leading ladies are blond and blue-eyed.’

“He said ‘
Topaz
is based on a book by Leon Uris, and Juanita de Córdoba really existed. She was Cuban, so she had to be dark-haired and dark-eyed, but Miss Dor is blond inside.’

“One morning it was so ice-cold, and I was freezing. I said to Mr. Hitchcock, ‘Is it only me who is freezing, or is it cold?’ And he looked at me and said, ‘It is only
you!
You are a coldhearted woman. You are a frigid woman. You are eating too many ice creams.’ It was totally silent, because everybody wanted to hear what I said.

“I looked at him and I said, ‘With the first two I agree. With the third one not. I hate ice cream.’ And everybody knew how I loved ice cream. He was putting me on. From this moment, we really had a marvelous relationship, because he realized I opened my mouth and said something. He was famous for saying things like that to people and waiting for the reaction.

“Sometimes he spoke to me in German, and his German was quite good. For example, this scene where the police come into my house and search, the scene where I’m coming out of my bedroom and have to come down the stairs. We rehearsed. The first time I came out and I said, ‘Mr. Hitchcock, do I go left or right from the camera when I come down the stairs?’

“He looked at me, and he said, ‘You are going to the too-hot-washed sweater.’

“And I thought, ‘My God, what can he mean by that?’

“Then I thought, what does a sweater do when it’s washed with hot water? It shrinks, and the past tense of shrink is shrank. And the German word for armoire or cupboard is
Schrank.
So, there was an armoire, and I said, ‘Ah, I know. I have to go to the armoire.’ And he said, ‘I
knew
you would get it.’ This was his way of putting in some German words sometimes, and trying to see if I would get it. But that was a toughie.

“If he was very pleased with me in a scene, he would say, ‘Would you like to have dinner with Mrs. H. and me?’ And we would go to Chasen’s, their favorite, and I was always thrilled.”

John Vernon, who played Rico Parra, felt he was playing someone like Fidel Castro’s brother, Raúl. Vernon told me, “though it wasn’t really anyone specific, and Mr. Hitchcock never said anything to me about it.

“I was asked to go to Edith Head’s wardrobe department. ‘Mr. Hitchcock wants to see you in dungarees.’ I put on a pair of overalls or whatever the Cuban army’s overalls were, and Edith Head said, ‘My God, after all the films I’ve done here, all I can offer you is
this!
’

“He loved to joke a bit. He would say, ‘Are you familiar with Cockney rhymes?’ and I said, ‘Not really.’

“‘Well,’ he said, ‘there are too many dog’s feet in your scene that you’re doing.’

“‘I don’t know what you mean.’

“‘Pauses, John.’

“And one other time, he’d just finished a scene, and I was still on the stage of the next day’s shooting, pacing the set, and he said, ‘What are you doing?’

“‘I’m working at what I’m going to be confronted with tomorrow.’

“He says, ‘What do you mean?’

“‘I’m not quite sure how I should play this scene tomorrow.’

“He says, ‘Oh, John—it’s only a movie. Why don’t you come into my trailer and we’ll imbibe, and I’ll tell you a few stories.’

“So, we sat in his trailer, and he says, ‘Have you seen my film
Rear Window
?’

“‘Yes.’

“‘Do you remember the scene where Jimmy Stewart is staring out his window to the apartment across the courtyard? Well, I had Mr. Stewart stare at a crack in a wall, and that’s all he saw for three minutes. He looked at that crack in the wall, at the paint on the wall, seriously.