It's Only a Movie: Alfred Hitchcock by Charlotte Chandler

Author:Charlotte Chandler [Chandler, Charlotte]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Direction & Production, Film & Video, Performing Arts, Motion Picture Producers and Directors - Great Britain, Hitchcock; Alfred, Entertainment & Performing Arts, Great Britain, Motion Picture Producers and Directors, Biography & Autobiography, Individual Director, Biography
Publisher: Applause Books
Published: 2005-01-02T00:00:00+00:00

HITCHCOCK WAS UNHAPPY, disappointed, when Ingrid Bergman left Hollywood to be with Italian director Roberto Rossellini. Divorcing her husband, Peter Lindstrom, she starred in several films of Rossellini, whom she married and with whom she had three children. It was quite a while before she was welcomed back in Hollywood, “forgiven” for the “scandal,” and bankable again. Bergman told me that Hitchcock had never said anything to her about “Roberto,” though she knew he wanted her to be in his movies, not Italian films.

“Finally, after several years,” she said, “when I was visiting Los Angeles, Hitchcock said to me, ‘It’s a shame. He ruined your career.’

“I laughed. ‘Oh, no, dear Hitch, Roberto didn’t ruin my career. I ruined his.’ I didn’t belong in those pictures of his.”

She didn’t remember why she had chosen Under Capricorn. She told me, “You would have to ask the person I was.”

Under Capricorn was Hitchcock’s second and last Transatlantic picture. Though their company had not been successful, Hitchcock’s friendship with Sidney Bernstein continued. Hitchcock always regretted that he hadn’t produced a big success for Bernstein, who never ceased to describe his friend as “a unique genius.” Bernstein told me that he felt honored to have known and worked with him. “No regrets. I’d like to have had a success because I would have liked to be able to go on. It’s a friendship of a lifetime that I treasure.”

“With Transatlantic,” Hitchcock told me, “I had complete freedom, but that of itself is in a way a handicap, because one enters into the field of financial ethics. No doubt one can do whatever one wants, but you become restrained by a kind of responsibility. I did not understand at the time that I was being self-indulgent. I called it artistic freedom. My next picture, Stage Fright, was my attempt to return to more responsible filmmaking, but I was too late for Transatlantic.”

Hitchcock didn’t see Jack Cardiff again until 1960, when Cardiff was in Hollywood after having directed Sons and Lovers.

“Hitch was pleased to see me, of course, but he had this strange look on his face when we shook hands. He seemed kind of stunned, a bit puzzled.

“‘I saw Sons and Lovers,’ he said. Then he added softly, ‘It was bloody good.’ It was obvious he couldn’t believe that a mere cameraman could have directed such a good movie. Of all the critical praise I received for Sons and Lovers, Hitchcock’s ‘It was bloody good’ were the words I treasured most.”

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