Alfred Hitchcock: A Life in Darkness and Light by Patrick McGilligan

Author:Patrick McGilligan
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
ISBN: 0060988274
Publisher: Harper Collins, Inc.
Published: 2003-01-02T00:00:00+00:00

Ingrid Bergman’s salary was not the only drain on the budget, which would eventually soar above $2 million. Set design and construction costs rose beyond all estimates. The Flusky mansion boasted two floors and a half dozen rooms, and had to be built in sections that could slide open electronically to allow giant camera cranes to float through doorways and walls. It covered the largest Elstree stage.

Hitchcock’s cast was ready for action by mid-June, but construction lagged behind, and then a wildcat technicians’ strike forced an additional delay. The strike cost not only money but goodwill; when Ingrid Bergman first visited the set, she was stunned by the “hostile feeling” emanating from the crew.

The script also lagged, and it never jelled into a satisfying whole. Cronyn was inexperienced, and although James Bridie wrote for Hitchcock several times, he “was a semi-intellectual playwright and not in my opinion a very thorough craftsman,” the director reflected years later. The ending of Under Capricorn remained anticlimactic—a rare failure for Hitchcock. “On thinking it over later on,” said the director, “I realized that he [Bridie] always had very good first and second acts, but he never succeeded in ending his plays.”

July 1 arrived. The leads grew restless. Bergman, whose inflated (financial and script) importance had already thrown Hitchcock off stride, had time to kill. She ate, drank, gained weight—and she stewed. The Irish lilt required by Lady Flusky worried her. Characteristically, the director told Bergman not to worry, but to her, Hitchcock seemed worried about everything—the script, the set, the elaborate camera work—except her.

Bergman was in a personal and professional muddle. Her marriage, weakened by her love affairs, was falling apart. She had grown to loathe Hollywood’s factory-line production system, and was anxious to move in a new direction and reinvigorate her career. After seeing Open City and Paisan, she found herself swept away by the truthfulness of Italian neorealism. In April, she wrote a letter to filmmaker Roberto Rossellini, declaring her eagerness to break away during Under Capricorn and meet him and discuss the possibility of working with him in the future. These plans did not escape Hitchcock’s notice.

Joseph Cotten dined nightly with the Hitchcocks and Bergman. To him, Hitchcock seemed on edge, complaining about the rationing that was still in effect in England—and, it seemed, “all things British.”

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