The Times (18/Dec/1981) - Contrary images of Hitchcock
(c) The Times (18/Dec/1981)
- keywords: Alfred Hitchcock, Ingrid Bergman, John L. Russell, John Russell Taylor
Contrary images of Hitchcock
"Hitch", by John Russell Taylor
The first thing to say about this biography of Alfred Hitchcock is that it is the work of an excellent writer. In the days when John Russell Taylor was film critic of this paper I used, a twice-a-year cinema man, to read every word he wrote with both pleasure and benefit. Now that he is the paper's art critic I visit in spirit a hundred galleries a year. That, plus an obsessed interest in imaginary crime shared with the book's subject, must be my qualification for reviewing it. And, oh yes, many years ago I contrived to put that lovely phrase le suspense hitchcockien on to the lips of one of my characters.
But Russell Taylor faced a pretty difficult task in tackling his man. Hitch was a very private person. He also lived a life that outwardly was not especially interesting. A biographer could, of course, have listed interminably the practical jokes Hitch liked to perpetrate and have added a good many anecdotes, both true and false. But Russell Taylor eschews this easy way and such anecdotes as he does recount, like the scene of Ingrid Bergman on set with her back to the director's chair erupting fury for twenty solid minutes at a Hitch who had tiptoed away, tell us something that more explains the man.
Because explanation is needed, Hitch was a clash of contradictions: a nice man, who made nasty films; a naive person, who could be wickedly sophisticated; a staid Englishman, who had that passion for the most absurd practical jokes; a man who was scared of almost everything, who yet gave out a zinging aura of self-satisfaction; an intensely private individual, who allowed himself to be used as the most blatant advertising gimmick; a person of notable kindness, who was labelled, not without evidence, a misanthrope; the sentimental fellow going back year after year to his honeymoon hotel, whose films crackled with cynicism.
Russell Taylor, partly from a strong sympathy with his subject that earned him hours of friendly talk, partly by his own sensible acute-ness, paints us eventually a portrait that puts these contradictions into the same frame. We feel we know the man.
And, by golly, we feel we know the films. Russell Taylor takes us through them one by one, interesting about their making and full of informed delight at almost ail of the end-products — and informed dismay at the one or two boss-shots. The book makes me want to hire a cinema directly and have the lot shown to me one after the other.
