Press release: Alfred Hitchcock Exhibition (Block Museum, 2007)

EXHIBITION UNCOVERS DIRECTOR ALFRED HITCHCOCK’S FILMMAKING METHODS

Alfred Hitchcock is often seen as the sole author of the films he directed, an image the “master of suspense” took an active role in cultivating. Yet a new exhibition organized by Northwestern University’s Mary and Leigh Block Museum of Art explores the profoundly collaborative nature of Hitchcock’s working methods.

Casting a Shadow: Creating the Alfred Hitchcock Film, in the Block Museum’s Main Gallery and Print, Drawing, and Photography Study Center from Sept. 28 to Dec. 9, features approximately 150 sketches, designs, storyboards, script pages, and other film production documents from such movies as Shadow of a Doubt (1943), North by Northwest (1959), and The Birds (1963), drawn from the archives of the Margaret Herrick Library at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences and the British Film Institute. The exhibition, which will also include film clips and recordings of audio conversations between Hitchcock and his collaborators, will be accompanied by a screening of more than 30 films directed by Hitchcock, an international symposium, gallery talks, and an illustrated catalogue published by Northwestern University Press and the Block Museum.

Writing in the London Evening News in 1927, Hitchcock predicted that “when moving pictures are really artistic they will be created entirely by one man.” Throughout his career, the director claimed to have planned all aspects of a film’s production from camera placement and positioning of actors to set design and editing before filming began. His sole reason for being on the set was to supervise the unfolding of his vision; a task so dull that, according to publicity, it sometimes put Hitchcock to sleep.

“Hitchcock’s ability to visualize was impressively developed, especially his talent for picturing different shots and for understanding the effect editing images together would have on an audience,” said Block Museum film curator and Block Cinema director Will Schmenner. “But visualizing the movie was not something that happened primarily in Hitchcock’s mind. Rather, it happened in words story ideas, scripts, shot lists and images production design sketches, storyboards, costume designs, camera angle diagrams, and doodles which were shared between Hitchcock and his key collaborators.”

Casting a Shadow, which travels to the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences Gallery in Beverly Hills, California, in 2008, demonstrates how Hitchcock’s working methods created a collective vision shared by the director and his colleagues. Part of Hitchcock’s talent, the exhibition suggests, lay in his ability to shepherd this collective vision, which the public knew as Alfred Hitchcock’s, to the screen. One object featured in the exhibition, for example, is a sketch Hitchcock asked his frequent production designer Robert Boyle to create after reading Daphne du Maurier’s novella “The Birds.” The drawing’s style influenced the movie’s tone and production design. Moreover, Boyle recalls that he spent most of their first discussion of the project convincing the director that The Birds was an Alfred Hitchcock film. To see this drawing and a selection of other works from the exhibition visit:

http://www.blockmuseum.northwestern.edu/exhibitions/current/hitchcock.html

The exhibition’s companion catalogue (Casting a Shadow: Creating the Alfred Hitchcock Film, $32.95) features a preface by Block Museum Ellen Philips Katz Director David Alan Robertson, an introduction by Schmenner and essays by Scott Curtis, associate professor of radio/television/film at Northwestern, Tom Gunning, Edwin A. and Betty L. Bergman, Distinguished Service Professor, department of art history, University of Chicago, Jan Olsson, professor of cinema studies, Stockholm University, Sweden, and author Bill Krohn. The 160-page-book, edited by Schmenner and Block associate curator Corrine Granof, includes 63 plates and 33 illustrations.

To complement the exhibition, the Block is organizing the symposium “Hitchcock’s Myth and Method” at 9:30 am on Friday, November 2. Participants include Curtis; Gunning; Olsson; Krohn; Tania Modleski, Florence R. Scott Professor of English, University of Southern California; and Sarah Street, professor of film, University of Bristol, England. This daylong symposium is free and open to the public.

In addition, Block Cinema will screen many of Hitchcock’s films during the fall quarter; some of them will be introduced by noted film scholars. The Block Museum will also offer a series of gallery talks focusing on specific aspects of the Casting a Shadow exhibition. Details on the film screenings and gallery talks are forthcoming. Free guided tours of the Casting a Shadow exhibition will be held at 2pm every Saturday and Sunday from September 29 to December 9.

The Block Museum is located at 40 Arts Circle Drive on Northwestern’s Evanston campus. Admission to the Block’s exhibitions is free. General admission to Block Cinema screenings is $6 or $ 4 for Block Museum members and students with ID. For more information, call (847) 491-4000 or visit

http://www.blockmuseum.northwestern.edu.

Casting a Shadow was organized by the Mary and Leigh Block Museum of Art, Northwestern University, in collaboration with the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. Additional funding and support for the exhibition and related programming is provided by the Alfred J. Hitchcock Foundation; American Airlines; the Illinois Arts Council, a state agency; the Louis Family Foundation; James B. Pick and Rosalyn M. Laudati; and the Rubens Family Foundation.

Press released emailed to site administrator and reformatted for the wiki (10/Sep/2007)