Many people imagine that the director’s work begins in the studio and is confined to handling the actors. In my case this is not true: before I go into the studio I like to have the whole film complete in my mind. I like to have the whole story down, shot by shot, on paper, and this means working a lot on the script before I even enter the studio. The preliminary steps are something like this.
First, when I’ve got my story I like to strip it right down to the bone—just take the essentials and write them down so they only cover about a single sheet of paper. When I have made the picture I like to feel that if a man in the audience is asked what it’s about he will describe it just as I did on this one sheet. That is the beginning. Next comes the forming of the pattern the picture’s going to take. I have a hand in this, treating the essential ideas in a way which I feel is suited to the film medium and planning out the course the script should take. Now, the writers get to work, filling out the completed plan. This is usually a two months’ job and is a highly important stage to which a full understanding of the general plan is essential to all the writers. For example, as soon as the plan of the first sequence is written out it must be shown and explained carefully to the dialogue writer so that he can feel exactly the mood of speech required. And so, gradually, with all the writing units cooperating with each other, the full story is completed.
But there is still another step to come before shooting begins: when the treatment is on paper and the dialogue added, the whole script must be cut up into individual shots. When this has been done I feel the worst is over. I have an exact plan of operation and can go straight ahead putting it into celluloid. But cooperation between the writers must come first; they must be willing to discuss and reject their own material when necessary and help to be part of a single unit. Personally, I prefer writers without reputations; I find them more agreeable to changes in their work and willing to learn. An established writer often thinks his way must be best, or imagines there is no difference between writing a novel or play and writing for the movies. He forgets that the problems and situations of the stage are very different from those of the screen. These differences are best illustrated, I think, by analyzing an actual sequence in a movie, so I would like to take the first sequence of my picture Secret Agent as an example.
I had to begin this picture by telling the audience that it was wartime, and that the British Foreign Office wanted to use a young lieutenant as a spy in the Eastern war zone. So they pretended the lieutenant had been killed in France, and secretly brought him to London to give him his orders. Now if I had told these facts in a screen caption, in a form of a dialogue, or shown the young lieutenant arriving alive from France, the result would have been pretty dull. So instead I began the film with a close-up of a coffin. The coffin stands in a darkened room, covered by a British flag, and immediately creates a mood of total solemnity. This mood is deepened as the camera starts to move backwards, very slowly, almost as though it were on tiptoe itself, and the audience sees four tall candles burning at the corners of the coffin, and then the assembled mourners. When this scene has had time to sink in, the mourners slowly file out of the room until only one person is left behind—the one-armed servant, who reverently closes the big doors when the room is empty. Then, left alone, he fumbles for a cigarette, slips it in his mouth, and lights it from one of the candles. This lack of reverence is enough to change the mood of the audience from tragedy to suspicion. Then the servant goes up to the coffin, snatches off the flag, and tries to pull the coffin off its stand. It is too heavy and clumsy for his one arm; it falls, and the lid flies off. The coffin is empty! The servant turns away and looks disgustedly at the portrait of a young man on the wall. After the group picture of the mourners, the camera has been brought up close to the one-armed man. Now it shifts to the portrait on which he is gazing. Slowly the head in the portrait fades, and I cut to the same head on the shoulders of a very much alive young man who is sitting in a London office being given his orders for work as a spy. A little dialogue, a shot of newspaper headlines announcing trouble in the East, and the audience knows exactly what has happened, who the young man is, and where he is going. A mood of mystery has been created at once; the audience gets the idea of what is going on, and is receptive to further impressions.
In addition to the technical facts and treatment of the situation described above, you may notice another thing—that the audience has been let in on the secret of the agent’s identity from the start. When I can I like to do this. I think it adds greatly to the excitement if the audience is let into a secret. They know all about it, but they know many of the people on the screen don’t know, and that is what gets them excited. Even a small thing like the title of a film can matter tremendously in this respect. Take Mutiny on the Bounty. The audience knows there is going to be a mutiny. They see the story develop, they watch Charles Laughton flogging his men, and much of their excitement is in waiting for the mutiny that they know must come and of which Laughton knows nothing. Think what they would have missed if the film had been called Boys of the Bounty, or Rovers of the South Seas. Yes, share your secrets with the audiences and they will pay interest on them.
One should always give one’s audience every chance to know and understand the characters they are looking at, so they can feel what’s coming and grasp what’s happening. Not, of course, by obvious tricks, but by getting good actors who know how to express a mood or intention with the slightest gesture or change of expression, like Peter Lorre. This is the way to make your characters stand out effectively. I like an actor to play a part for which his personal experience in life has raised him. In this way he does not have to resort to cheap mannerisms and unnatural movements. The best actors are those who can be effective even when they are not doing anything. Understatement is priceless, and that is why I make melodramas, because they lend themselves so admirably to understatement.
To get back to the actors, however. A director can help a lot by taking care of his actors’ physical positions. For example, suppose a man’s enemy enters through a door. If the director has put the actor in an easy chair facing the door it will be more difficult for him to register antagonism than if he had been caught while straining towards an ashtray to stub out a cigarette, or groping for a collar stud under the bed. Or if he is chatting carelessly to a friend with a smile on his face, it is easier for his feelings to be expressed by the sudden vanishing of that smile than it is if he starts registering theatrical terror. It is more true to life and it is more believable. These physical details, no matter how small, are so much a part of life that they can be used with vivid force. It is exciting to show a cop running at topnotch speed to catch a crook, but it is still more exciting if the audience discovers the cop’s got asthma! It brings another doubtful element into the chase. It is more natural than his tripping over a fireplug. And the sound picture has greatly increased our ability to register such details.
I believe that there should always be sound effects of some kind throughout the whole film. I don’t mean constant talk, but sound. I have found that if you drop your sound effects suddenly, the picture tends to drop with it; it seems to break the continuity. But your sounds should always be as natural as possible; for example, I think we all agree that music and dialogue do not go together. It is not a natural combination. Nor do I like the toning down of sound to suit the convenience of the story—say a factory scene, when the roar of the machines is faded out so that the young man can be heard making wisecracks more distinctly. That is not natural either. Another thing to avoid is using dramatic sound in a scene which is already charged with as much drama as it can hold. It does not increase the drama—it lessens it. No, on the whole I think the chief value of such sound effects lies in giving point to a situation. Some years ago I made a picture called Blackmail. A girl committed a murder with a knife, ran home as fast as she could, crept upstairs to change her clothes, and came down to breakfast with the family as though nothing had happened. While she eats, a talkative old woman comes to the door and gossips outside about the murder. “Such a horrible thing” she says, “and done with a knife too,” “it’s just not British to kill people with a knife . . . something only a foreigner would do . . . no it’s not like using a brick or something British like that, a knife isn’t.” As she chatters away the camera turns on the girl in the room, hearing the mutter of words come through the door with just the word “knife” ringing out at the end of every mumbled sentence. And then suddenly the voice of her father, clear and loud across the table: “Pass me the bread knife, Alice, dear” as the final shock, and the camera remorselessly showing it in his hands cutting through the new loaf. I think this example gives a pretty clear idea of what I mean—of how careful use of sound can help strengthen the intensity of a situation.
“Some Aspects of Direction” was originally published in National Board of Review Magazine 13, no. 7 (October 1938): 6–8. It was based on a radio talk, “The Making of a Melodrama,” aired on WNYC on July 12, 1938, on a show hosted by Otis Ferguson (Spoto, 201).