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The Guardian (09/Jun/2001) - Alfred Hitchcock, Philippe Halsman (1963)

(c) The Guardian (09/Jun/2001)

Alfred Hitchcock, Philippe Halsman (1963)

Artist

The Latvian-born photographer Philippe Halsman (1906-1979) had one life as a photographer, celebrated for the joie de vivre of his celebrity portraits, and another as a victim of a notorious miscarriage of justice. In 1928, the young Halsman was hiking in the Austrian Alps with his father, who fell and died. In a bizarre and anti-Semitic response to a series of unsolved crimes in the area, Halsman was convicted of murder without any evidence. His cause was championed by, among others, Thomas Mann and Albert Einstein, and he was released after serving two years in prison.

He set up as a photographer in Paris but in 1940 had to flee the Nazis. Einstein helped him to enter the US. In New York, Halsman worked mostly for Life and became closely identified with the look of the magazine. Between 1942 and his death, he took 101 Life cover pictures, including iconic images of Marilyn Monroe, Groucho Marx and Frank Sinatra.

Subject

Alfred Hitchcock (1899-1980), whose migration to the US in 1939, while clearly not as urgent as Halsman's flight there, was nevertheless an escape - from the British class system. In Hollywood, Hitchcock felt free to reinvent himself as the blackly humorous master of suspense. Yet his cheeky persona concealed terrors. The theme of the persecuted innocent haunts Hitchcock's art. In 1956, he made The Wrong Man, about a man convicted of murder as unjustly and mysteriously as Halsman had been. Even in the entertaining North by Northwest, Cary Grant is mistaken for a murderer - a situation from which he must extricate himself.

Distinguishing features

This work is a collaboration between one artist and another. The surrealist flourishes are trademark Halsman: tilting Hitchcock's vast head and making him puff on a cigar inflates those huge cheeks and makes a face that in other pictures can look saggy appear energetic. The picture also has to be seen as part of Hitchcock's campaign of self-representation. Hitchcock saw the signature value of his corpulence, drew the famous caricature of himself in profile, appeared as a plump passer-by in his films. This photograph mimics Hitchcock's artifice. The sky, out of focus and exaggeratedly stormy, is manifestly a photographed backdrop, announcing its phoneyness in the same way as Hitchcock's hammy settings.

The empty sky evokes The Birds, which Hitchcock released in this year, 1963. So, obviously, does the bird. Painted scenery and incongruous effects are deployed copiously in this strangest of Hitchcock films. Halsman's picture manages to publicise it in a knowing, jokey way. The bird is clearly stuffed and attached to Hitchcock's cigar on a wire. Hitchcock and Halsman celebrate not just the content of The Birds but its style. Halsman manages to blur the right wing slightly so that the bird appears to be about to fly. It hints at the illusion of movement - the essence of cinema.

But the bird is not just a reference to The Birds. In Psycho, Norman Bates stuffs birds for a hobby. Hitchcock's favourite writer was Edgar Allan Poe, the author of The Raven. Here, he might be presenting himself as the heir to America's great gothic writer, but with self-mockery. That cigar has a blatantly phallic dimension but it is undermined by the bird perched cheekily on it - a joke that's pure Hitchcock.

Inspirations and influences

Halsman's contemporary equivalent is Annie Leibowitz - American celebrities' portrait photographer of choice.

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