All language subtitles for Hitchcock 2009 - Reputations - Hitch 2.eng

13 pick one.

You want a profile?

Yeah. Talk to him, Marty. Come here.

Listen, Teddy, wait until it's all in
favor.

And tell us.

Now, don't turn the body to him.

Excuse me.

Now, talk to him. Do profile.

Pardon me, Marty? Yeah, would you
explain the name Tippy? What is it?

it originate from?

It's a Swedish nickname.

For what?

For Toopsa.

For what?

Toopsa. Would you say that again,
please?

Toopsa. You're welcome. That's an
anatomical term.

Meaning?

Little girl.

Oh, really? In Swedish.

November 1961.

Alfred Hitchcock directs a screen test.

The woman is Tippi Hedren, a former
model she has never acted

before.

Hitchcock plans to make her the star of
his next film, The Birds.

For Hollywood's most successful
director, fresh from the triumph of

nothing seems impossible.

So many people were saying, how can you
do this, Hitch? Put somebody totally

unknown, has never acted before, how can
you put this woman into this film that

you're going to do? It's going to be a
major motion picture.

And Hitch gave me the assurance that I
could do it.

He confided that he felt he was at the
top of his form, that he was entering

golden age of filmmaking.

Everything was still ahead of him, and
he was brimming all the time with ideas.

You know, we ought to do a film about
that, or this, or... And indeed, I felt

was at the top of his form.

But Hitchcock's golden age would be a
bumpy ride for the director and those

closest to him.

The successes of the past would prove
elusive, and the man who valued order

above all else would court chaos.

in his emotional life.

T14, take one.

Marty, I'm sending over to you a high
priestess.

But of what, you'll have to decide for
yourself.

Hitchcock liked to say his definition of
happiness was a clear horizon.

But even as he screen tested his new
star, the storm clouds were gathering.

In the early 1950s, Alfred Hitchcock was
looking for a home.

Brought to Hollywood in 1939 by David
Selznick, he had endured seven years of

interference and financial exploitation
before finally slipping the leash and

forming his own company, Transatlantic
Pictures.

But Transatlantic collapsed, and with it
the director's hard -won reputation for

box -office bankability.

At Warner Brothers, he went some way to
burying the memory of the failure of

Rope and Under Capricorn, with hits like
Strangers on a Train.

What he needed now was a secure base
from which to prove once and for all

he was a force to be reckoned with.

Paramount Studios was to be that home.

The Paramount people felt that this was
a logical home for Hitchcock.

They gave him every single opportunity
and every single convenience he needed.

There was never an argument. Hitchcock
would come in and say, I want to do this

picture, and they would say, yes.

When?

They'd never say why.

When? This is the apartment of a man
named Jeffries, a news photographer

beat used to be the world.

Right now, his world has shrunk down to
the size of this window.

Hitchcock's sense of security at
Paramount is apparent in the choice of

first film, Rear Window.

Told almost entirely from the point of
view of a wheelchair -bound Jimmy

and shot on an elaborate set, Rear
Window managed to be both experimental

crowd -pleasing.

This is the travelling salesman and his
invalid wife.

Out of their arguments and nagging comes
a weird kind of love.

Miss Torso, the body beautiful.

That is, viewed from a safe distance.

It was a very quiet set, very well
organized set, and I remember lots of

visiting the set. Sometimes Mr.
Hitchcock would close it, but he was

of it. That imagine my...

Little apartment. Had everything but
running water and ice cubes.

I had my bed, and I mean, I had food
there, and I... It was complete.

This whole little village, if you will.

Sort of like Mr. Hitchcock's dollhouse,
playing with his little dolls and

placing them where he wanted them.

The most beautiful doll in the dollhouse
was Grace Kelly.

Every man who ever was lucky enough to
work with Grace Kelly fell in love with

her. Me included.

I'm sure even Hitchcock.

Nobody could be in her presence and not
fall in love with her. She's just a

lovely person.

Rear window, her second role for the
director, confirmed Kelly as the

Hitchcock blonde.

Have you any idea at all why you have
this obsession with this kind of woman?

I'm only obsessed because I don't
believe in stamping the woman with the

sex all over her. I think it should be
discovered in the course of our getting

acquainted with her.

And it's more interesting for this thing
to be not apparent.

In other words, we don't have to have
the sex hanging round her neck like

baubles all over her.

I'll soon fix that.

There, miss, now you're a special
constable. As long as you stay, he

Yes, and as long as I go, you go. Come
on.

Stop them! They've gone away!

The Hitchcock blonde has a long history,
which goes as far back as Madeleine

Carroll in the 39th death.

Glamorous and glacial, Hitchcock's dream
woman is usually brought down to earth

with a bump.

He always used to take the women who
were very, very much in control of their

lives and put them in a situation of
just great upheaval and see how they

out. Do they survive?

How do they survive?

Interesting.

It's always been assumed that Hitch was
some kind of misogynist, but I have the

impression from a number of things that
he told me later on that if you're

thinking of his films, that he wasn't
identifying so much with the glamour

figures, the Cary Grants, the James
Stuarts and so on, but if he was

with anybody, it was with the suffering
heroine.

In fact, he always, as far as I can make
out, enjoyed the company of women,

perhaps more than he enjoyed the company
of men.

He certainly always had female
assistants, female secretaries.

Alma, his wife, of course, was his most
important assistant and collaborator

throughout his career.

By now, the Hitchcocks were firmly
established in their adopted home.

In Hollywood, they lived in a modest
bungalow in Bel Air, but their favourite

place was San Francisco.

The city and the surrounding area would
provide an unforgettable setting for one

of Hitchcock's most haunting films,
Vertigo.

Hitchcock.

recognized what he called a good yarn
when he saw it.

And the thing that attracted him, of
course, was the idea of a

man losing a woman to death and then
resurrecting her.

That's all he needed to think, oh, I can
do that. I can do that.

There's someone inside me and she says I
must die.

Somebody don't let me go.

Vertigo remains one of Hitchcock's most
enigmatic and, according to some,

revealing films.

The story of a man who tries to make
over a woman in the image of one who is

dead is said to echo Hitchcock's own
efforts to recreate his ideal actress.

He did try to make over women into the
actresses he liked to work with.

He would have liked to have worked all
his life with Ingrid Bergman and Grace

Kelly, you see.

And all actresses that he used were in
his mind like that.

If I let you change me, will that do it?

If I do what you tell me, will you love
me?

There was a...

A kinship with the man in the story of
wanting to make somebody over.

So he recognized that, of course. But it
wasn't anything he pressed.

Not really.

With Vertigo, Hitchcock had made a real
attempt to move beyond the traditional

suspense formula.

But few critics appreciated the effort.

One called the film far -fetched
nonsense and claimed it made him feel

Others were less kind.

Hitch treated critics as a necessary
evil.

He entertained as many critics as you
could find, but he had no

great respect for them.

He didn't think they really knew what
they were talking about most of the

They would see things in his pictures
that he never intended, and they would

miss the points that he did intend.

I think they're very nice.

I think they're very human.

They're subject to all kinds of human
foibles, is that the word?

And I think they mean very well.

I'm not going to stress the word mean.

I said they mean very well.

and they have their job to do, and I
have my job to do.

But even as Vertigo received a mauling
at the pens of the American and British

critics, elsewhere a powerful counter
-movement was underway.

The master of suspense was about to
become the master auteur.

We are now on the air.

It was François Truffaut, a leading
light of the French New Wave cinema, who

most to transform Hitchcock's
reputation, thanks to an extraordinary

with his hero that lasted for more than
50 hours.

Part interrogation, part act of homage,
Truffaut, with collaborator Helen Scott

acting as interpreter, led Hitchcock
step by step through his life and

Of the period of their childhood, they
always tell the story of the sleep

station when your father had you locked
up.

And what had you done to deserve that?

I cannot imagine, because my father used
to call me

the little lamb without a spot.

Disarmed by Truffaut's affectionate
respect, the director put aside the

persona and went further than he had
ever done before in revealing the real

Alfred Hitchcock.

Why is it that the love scenes that I
put in pictures are usually so

strong?

I don't get any particular...

kick out of doing that sort of thing
myself. As we've discussed before, I'm a

celibate, you know.

I mean, I'm not against it.

But I just don't think about it very
much, you know.

Yes, but your pictures are full of it.

Well, I would say that maybe that's the
outlet.

As the crimes, as a matter of fact.
Maybe, maybe.

In one exchange, Hitchcock described an
idea for a film about 24 hours in the

life of a city, told entirely from the
perspective of food.

I would like to do...

of 24 hours in the city. I can see the
whole film from beginning to end now.

I tried to do it on a food analogy.

I tried to show the arrival of food in
the city, the distribution of it, the

buying of it, the cooking, the eating.

And then gradually, the end of the film
would be the sewer.

They tip it in the ocean, you know.

The early brand new gleaming green
vegetables and the

mess of them that go out at the end of
the day.

It's what people do to good things.

You should make your theme always the
rottenness of humanity.

The Truffaut interview confirmed
Hitchcock as a leading auteur director.

But to his increasing annoyance, he
would never escape his other reputation

master showman.

You really are, and I mean this as a
compliment, you really are a sort of ace

manipulator, it seems to me, because you
know so much about the tricks of the

trade.

Don't you think technique would be a
nicer word?

If I were a painter, would you call
strokes of the brush tricks?

Ironically, the one thing that above all
others stopped him from being taken

seriously as an artist was the very
thing that contributed most to his fame.

Oh, oh, good evening.

I was just about to send greetings to an
old friend.

For ten years, starting in 1955,

Hitchcock's TV shows were among the most
popular on American screens.

Produced by his protégé, Joan Harrison,
they were relished for their clever

twists and high production values, but
most of all for Hitchcock's

introductions, written for him by Jimmy
Allardyce.

He would do anything that Jimmy asked
him to do.

for the lead -ins. Thus, you had Hitch
inside a bottle.

Then you had Hitch in golfing knickers,
playing golf in a most outlandish

outfit.

You had Hitch playing his own brother.

You had Hitch with a lion.

You had him doing well.

I must say, these lead -ins would come
in, and I'd say to Joan Harrison, we

can't show this to him. He'll never do
this. I mean, never.

We'd better send this back.

She said, Hitch will do it.

And he did.

He created that buffoonish character.

It was the one thing I blamed him for,
but I understood why he did it. He

to be famous and rich, and he got all
those things.

But by creating that buffoonish
character,

he threw off the cinema world.

They sort of resented the fact that he
had created that character that made him

worldwide famous, and therefore they
said, his pictures can't be that good.

And therefore they never gave him an
Academy Award.

The man who made Hitchcock into a
television star was his agent, Lou

head of the MCA Talent Agency.

Wasserman embodied all the power of the
so -called front office, the business

end of filmmaking.

He wielded the kind of authority that
Hitchcock both respected and resented.

Under Wasserman's leadership, MCA had
become one of the most powerful talent

agencies Hollywood had ever seen.

In 1958, it bought Universal Studios,
where the Hitchcock television show was

made.

Wasserman's next move was to get
Hitchcock away from Paramount and bring

Universal to make his feature films.

The Lever would be a dark story about a
woman on the run, a strange young man,

his domineering mother, and a run -down
motel.

Psycho is my first attempt at a shocker.

In other words, it has in its content
certain episodes which do shock.

In some sense it could be called a
horror film, but the horror only comes

after you've seen it, when you get home
in the dark.

This was the last picture on his
commitment to Paramount.

And I know that they were hoping for
another North by Northwest or this grand

extravaganza, color, everything, and to
do a black -and -white film noir, little

picture.

I mean, they were, you know, just threw
up their hands, and they were horrified.

I couldn't believe it.

I said, why did you give this to me to
read?

This belongs in your TV unit, not in
their feature films.

The brutal killing, the peeping Tom
business, it was a cheap kind of a

not my kind of a picture, not
Hitchcock's kind of a picture, I didn't

I don't want any part of this picture.

Paramount all but disowned Psycho.

They were happy for it to be made on the
Universal backlot, and even more

pleased when Hitchcock offered to
finance the film himself.

For Hitchcock, however, psycho was the
biggest gamble of his life.

Everyone who worked on the film was
aware that budget concerns were

his mind.

I wanted, for my own sake, to do a big
Technicolor wonderful movie.

And the first thing that Hitch said to
me was, there's a company, American

International, that's making pictures
for about $250 ,000.

And he said...

What if we did that?

And I think what he meant by that was,
what if somebody of his caliber

directed one of these low -budget
movies?

And he told me that he had intended to
do Psycho for under a million dollars,

that he was going to use his TV team,
all those people who had worked so

beautifully on his series, were now
going to work on this movie.

And it was all kind of disappointing to
me at first.

But Psycho was about more than money.

The television series had won Hitchcock
a younger audience.

Psycho was to be their film.

Screenwriter Joe Stefano, a high school
dropout who was in Freudian analysis at

the time, provided a vital link to the
drive -in generation.

This was a movie about sex.

It had always been a movie about sex, as
far as I was concerned.

And boys and their mothers don't have
any problems that aren't sexual.

And I told Hitch that this was how I
felt.

I even told him one time that I had had
a session in which I realized, down deep

inside, that I could have murdered my
mother when I was 14 years old.

And he was quite astounded by that and
also quite pleased to hear it.

This young man, you had to feel sorry
for him.

After all, being dominated by an almost
maniacal woman was enough to drive

anyone to the extreme of, well, let's go
in.

He set this picture up so well because
one clothes set.

And rumors kept going out, nudity,
nudity, murder,

blood, all this stuff, that he
instigated and sent it out there so that

everybody could start to get the hype
going.

The shower scene took seven days to
shoot.

and over 70 setups, because even though
it was on the screen for

two seconds, say the shot from up above
was on the screen for two seconds,

it still took two hours to set up,
because it was a very important part

the whole montage.

So it was very hard. I had no idea of
the impact of the shower scene when I

doing it. I knew each scene had an
impact, especially the last one.

But the total effect I didn't get until
I actually saw it,

because then I saw what he had
envisioned all along, which was each cut

film, each editing cut, was the slice of
the knife.

I went into Hitch's office the day after
it opened.

And as I walked in, he went.

And I laughed and sat down. And then he
got a call that it was raining in

Chicago, where the movie was playing,
and that people were standing all around

the block in the rain.

And he said, get them umbrellas.

This is Alfred Hitchcock. Having lived
with Psycho since it was a gleam in my

camera's eye, I now exercise my parental
rights in revealing

a number of significant facts about this
slightly extraordinary entertainment.

I've suggested that Psycho be seen from
the beginning.

In fact, this is more than a suggestion.

It is required.

After Psycho, Hitchcock moved to
Universal Studios permanently.

From the top floor of the so -called
Black Tower, Wasserman made sure his

director wanted for nothing.

He had his private office, he had a back
area where he ate his lunches, and then

a hallway where production could be. The
unit manager, the assistant director,

the art department, the editing
department, and

he had a projection room.

And it was the only one of its kind on
Universal's lot.

And it was...

Just marvelous to work under those
conditions.

The scale of Psycho's success, which
took everyone by surprise, brought with

problems of its own.

Hitchcock used to complain that, you
know, he was in competition with

And that, you know, people complained if
it wasn't the kind of Hitchcock movie

that they expected.

And I think that had its drawbacks for
him.

Hitch was their property. He belonged to
them. He was supposed to do what they

wanted.

They let him in their house every Sunday
night on television, and they wanted

another Psycho.

But while fans wanted more of the same,
critics seemed to want something

different.

The attacks of the so -called
Hitchnockians had got under the

He wanted to show them that his brand of
pure cinema...

could include characters of real
psychological depth.

Unfortunately, he didn't reveal these
ambitions to his screenwriter, Evan

Hunter, who even then was working on
what he thought was a screwball comedy

a macabre twist called The Birds.

Hitch had an agenda that was quite
opposite to mine. I wish he'd have told

what it was, because we could have
worked it out.

But he was going for a sort of
respectability that he hadn't had or

felt he hadn't had. I mean, there were
those among us who felt he was

respectable enough, but he felt he
hadn't been given the proper respect.

He showed the script to V .S. Pritchett,
a friend of his who was a short story

writer and noted critic in London.

I was suddenly getting suggestions that
were not Hitch's suggestions.

While Hunter worked on In the Dark,
Hitchcock set about tackling what had by

become a major preoccupation, the
creation of a female star who looked

Grace Kelly and who did as she was told.

He wanted somebody to own.

He wanted a star of his own.

No matter who the director is, you know,
the care and feeding of stars is hard.

That's hard.

And I think Hitchcock got an age where
he didn't want to do that anymore. He

wanted one of his own.

Perfectly understandable.

I was standing in the secretarial area
chatting, and the door opened to Hitch's

office, and he came down to where I was
standing, and there, framed in the

doorway to his office, almost as if it
were a deliberate shot, was this tall,

glacial blonde.

And Hitch walked over to him, and he
says, That's Melanie.

And I said, who is she?

And he told me she had done a, he saw
her in a hair commercial or a shampoo

commercial or something.

And I said, do you think he's going to
have the skill to do this stuff? And he

said, trust me.

After Seagull, you feel refreshed,
exhilarated, work slick as a whistle.

Feel better.

I really didn't have any training as an
actress. I had been doing commercials.

You know, I knew all about the cameras.
I knew lighting. I knew all of those

kinds of things. But when you're dealing
with product, it's quite a different

situation than being a character.

And Hitch was not only my director, he
was my drama coach.

You know, I was a very lucky lady.

Location filming for The Birds took
place in the tiny town of Bodega Bay,

hours north of San Francisco.

As ever, pre -planning had been
meticulous.

But beneath the calm surface, Hitch, the
auteur, was in turmoil.

I was pouring myself into the girl.

I was doing... I was doing Svengali, you
know.

But something happened.

that I'd never done before, I began to
examine the

script as I went along and I found

deficiencies in it.

I went through the thing in my mind in
great detail and put this

new ending in it.

But this is in the middle of shooting
the picture, which I'd never done

And for the first time, my crew around
me said,

what's wrong with him?

He's getting upset.

Because to me, I always laugh my way
through a picture.

They were strange, you know.

Back at Universal Studios, Hitchcock set
to work on the film's complex set

pieces, culminating in the terrifying
bird attack in the attic.

For five days, the three prop men had
great huge cartons filled with ravens

seagulls and crows, pigeons, and they
just kept hurling birds at me for five

days. And I would just fend them off as
they came towards me.

They kept throwing birds at Tippi
incessantly, nonstop, you know.

Cut, all right, let's go, and change the
makeup and tear the dress a little and

the suit she was wearing, tear that a
little, and let's go, let's go, and more

birds. And you could see in the rushes
that she really is beginning to look

dazed, you know.

Towards the end of it, one of them
jumped, and it cut my eye.

Just below my eye, thank God.

And I just, all of a sudden, I had had
it with that whole thing. And I got all

of the birds off of me. And I just sat
in the middle of the set and just

to cry from sheer exhaustion.

And everybody left the set.

They just left me there.

She was in bed three days at the end of
it.

Caput.

Caput.

Hitchcock had been tinkering with the
script of The Birds throughout

adding dialogue and writing new scenes
designed to bring depth to the central

characters.

The first test came in March 1963 at New
York's Museum of Modern Art, where the

film's premiere formed the centrepiece
of the first -ever Hitchcock

retrospective.

At the end of it, there was silence.

And then a polite...

patter of applause and i thought oh you
were dead

later

that year the birds opened the can film
festival the film had battled most of

his fans in america and irritated many
of his critics but thanks to champions

like truffle hitchcock's critical stock
was rising a lot depended on his next

film a psychologically complex tale
about a frigid kleptomaniac called

Once again, Hedren was cast in the
leading role, but by now Hitchcock's

attachment to his new star had taken on
a new intensity.

He was kind of trying to control who I
saw, what I,

you know, all of those kinds of things.
So that became a very, very difficult

time for me.

I think he became obsessed with this
character named Tippi Hedren.

He felt that he had created Tippi
Hedren.

I think he was having an old man's
crease to care over Tippi,

Hitch was very possessive about the
women in his life.

He was possessive of his own daughter,
and Alma was his.

And he even tried to do that with me.

He would not take his eyes off of me. He
may be talking to somebody over here,

but he was watching me all the time.

And it became very difficult.

Mrs. Hitchcock came to me on a number of
times and said, I'm so sorry, I'm so

sorry you have to go through this, or
that you're going through this.

So she, you know, it was apparent to
her.

Meanwhile, Evan Hunter.

the original screenwriter on Marnie, was
having problems of his own.

One scene in particular, in which the
frigid Marnie is raped on her honeymoon,

would ultimately lead to a falling out
with the director.

When we were discussing it for the
hundredth time, and I gave all my

you know, I didn't think a guy who loves
her would rape her on their wedding

night, and I thought it would be very
difficult to rescue him after that scene

for the rest of the film.

And he said, Evan, and you know how
directors do when they're framing a

shot? He said, Evan, and he came right
in like this. He said, when he dicks it

in, I want that camera right on her
face.

Just like that.

And I thought, oh boy, we got trouble
here.

When he wanted to do something that
might conceivably be defined as

he was like a little boy doing something
very naughty, very naughty, and he

wanted to tell you about it. He never,
ever told

or exposed consciously

what this...

within the context of what it meant to
him.

Not at all. He never knew what a dream
was about.

Not a clue.

He didn't dig into himself. It was all
instinctual.

And it's what we call talent, you know?

During the filming of Marnie, everything
sort of went fine until probably the

last quarter.

of the of the shoot it was a five -month
shoot and um it eventually got to the

point where i i couldn't stand the
control or the trying to control

and i resented it so highly that i
finally told him that i i couldn't i

couldn't bear it anymore demands were
putting being put onto me that i

acquiesce to and i said i need to get
out

And he told me that I really couldn't,
that I had my parents to worry about, my

daughter.

I said, it doesn't matter, I can't live
this way.

And he literally said, I'll ruin your
career.

She got very annoyed with him.

And so Hicks said to me, he said, she
said something that no one is permitted

say to me. And I said, what did she say,
what did she say? And he said...

She referred to my weight.

And apparently what she actually said
was, you know, you fat pig, who the hell

do you think you are to tell me that I
can or can't do this and that? So after

that, they never spoke directly to each
other again throughout the shooting. It

was, would you tell Mr. Hitchcock? Would
you ask Miss Hedren?

And that was the basis of the bust -up.

He kept me under contract.

He paid me my little salary every week.

for a couple of years.

And by that time, all of the people who
did want to use me in films, because

after Marnie, you know, I was hot, you
know, and was

just told I wasn't available.

There was never a question of us working
together again.

It was just a very definite cutoff.

And it was by me.

I am totally responsible for it.

No, I'm not. He is.

Marnie bombed at the box office.

His next film, Torn Curtain, his 50th
feature, fared even worse.

With three flops in a row, Alfred
Hitchcock was beginning to look dated.

His response was characteristically
bold.

In 1967, he attempted to reinvent
himself once more with a project known

working title, Kaleidoscope Frenzy.

Hitchcock wrote the sexually explicit,
often brutal script himself and planned

to shoot it on location in New York with
a cast of unknowns.

To sell the concept to Universal, he
commissioned an elaborate series of test

shots and stills which capture the
ambition of his intentions.

We went to about 15 locations around the
city of New York, and we went upstate

New York, and we went to the Maritime
Harbor where all the Liberty ships had

berthed. We did all places where there
was a great body of water.

Turns out that water figured very
heavily into the story.

And every time this young boy saw water
and stuff, he got turned on and he had

to commit a murder.

And unfortunately, his mother, in the
film, discovered it was him and she

him in.

This was a film that he was...

strongly believed in and really wanted
to do.

Kaleidoscope Frenzy is not a light film.

It begins in the first 20 minutes with
one of the most brutal murders that's

ever been imagined for an American
screen.

Lou Wasserman felt that Kaleidoscope
Frenzy would do irreparable harm to the

Hitchcock franchise, that Hitchcock, the
director and the marketable entity,

would basically come to an end if he
made this film.

This is despite the fact that Hitchcock
went to great lengths to convince both

Lou Wasserman and the board of MCA to do
the film.

They basically told him no.

And for Hitchcock, he had not been told
no probably for nearly 20 years.

Probably the last no he heard was in
1946 or something from David O.

So to be told no at a studio where he
was one of the preeminent directors was,

it must have been a very difficult,
almost shattering experience.

Kaleidoscope Frenzy was the last reflex
of a director who for 40 years had

delighted in keeping one step ahead of
his audiences.

Of the films that marked the end of his
career, Only Frenzy, shot in Britain in

1972, showed any of the old magic.

Slowly, slowly, and slowly.

Split the hands, drop.

Eyes begin to stare.

Can the eyes stare?

Open, open.

Open.

By now, both Hitchcock and Alma were in
poor health.

Alma had the first of two strokes during
the making of Frenzy.

Hitchcock himself had been fitted with a
pacemaker and was drinking heavily to

deaden the pain of chronic arthritis.

His arthritis in his knees was
enormously painful. I still have the

him in mind. I was walking along the
hallway of the bungalow that he

holding on to the wall to come down to a
little office I had at the end there.

But it was just an unstated agreement
that we were just going to keep Hitch

going as long as he wanted to go.

There was a woman down there in a blue
hat who was paying no attention to

anything.

In 1978, Hitchcock was working on The
Short Night, his 56th feature.

On one occasion, he asked screenwriter
David Freeman to come to his house in

-Air for a story session.

Alma had been ill during that period,
and she was feeling better.

And so he invited her to come into the
story sessions.

When Hitchcock saw her sitting there in
their house and listening,

engaged in this discussion, I thought, I
could just feel the years coming off

his shoulders.

He never walked around during a story
meeting. That's not something he did. He

would sit like a Buddha usually and just
make his decrees.

But with Alma there in their house, he
got up and kind of walked around or

walked in his fashion, and I think he
was showing off for her. I think it

was he was showing her that he could
still do it.

that she could participate, that this
was possible.

He was saying to his wife, look, we can
make another one. This can happen.

It's worth living.

I don't think there's anything less than
that.

One day I was up in my office and I got
a call from Sue, his secretary, stating

that, would you come down here right
away? Mr. Hitchcock wants to see you.

He was behind his desk, and he was very
maudlin.

What's wrong?

He says, I want you to do me a favor.

I said, well, of course.

What do you want me to do? And he says,
I want you to call Mr.

Wasserman and tell him that I'm all
through, that I'm never going to make

another movie.

It was very sad.

Something that I'll never forget.

Production on The Short Night was halted
in May 1979.

Within days, Hitchcock's office was
closed.

The following year, at the age of 80,
and with a belated knighthood to add to

countless other honours, Sir Alfred
Hitchcock died.

Alma, his toughest critic and fiercest
defender, died two years later.

If you could make only one more picture,
perish the thought, but if you could

only make one more picture, what would
it be about?

I think it would be about murder,
mayhem, violence, sex, beautifully

pictorially expressed, lovely costumes,
perfect cutting,

and a joke or two.

If you've missed it, you can catch up
with Paul Merton's intimate look at

Hitchcock on the BBC iPlayer.

But next here on BBC4, a portrait of
three legends from the 50s and all with

same surname, the Beverley sisters.

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