F.T. The term “imagery” is particularly appropriate, because what we’re saying is that it isn’t necessary to photograph something violent in order to convey the feeling of violence, but rather to film that which gives the impression of violence.
This is demonstrated in one of the opening scenes of North by Northwest, in which the villains in a drawing room begin to manhandle Cary Grant. If you examine that scene in slow motion, on the small screen of the cutting room, you will see that the villains aren’t doing anything at all to Cary Grant. But when projected on theater screens, that succession of quick frames and the little bobbing movements of the camera create an impression of brutality and violence.
A.H. There’s a much better illustration in Rear Window when the man comes into the room to throw James Stewart out of the window. At first I had filmed the whole thing completely realistically. It was a weak scene; it wasn’t impressive. So I did a close-up of a waving hand, a close-up of Stewart’s face and another one of his legs; then I intercut all of this in proper rhythm and the final effect was just right.
Now let’s take a real-life analogy. If you stand close to a train as it’s speeding through a station, you feel it; it almost knocks you down. But if you look at the same train from a distance of some two miles, you don’t feel anything at all. In the same way, if you’re going to show two men fighting with each other, you’re not going to get very much by simply photographing that fight. More often than not the photographic reality is not realistic. The only way to do it is to get into the fight and make the public feel it. In that way you achieve true realism. F.T. One method of unrealistic shooting to get a realitic effect is to set the decor behind the actors into motion.
A.H. That’s one way to do it, but it isn’t a rule. It would entirely depend upon the movements of the actors. As for myself, I’m quite satisfied to let the pieces of film create the motion. For instance, in Sabotage, when the little boy is in the bus and he’s got the bomb at his side, I cut to that bomb from a different angle every time I showed it. I did that to give the bomb a vitality of its own, to animate it. If I’d shown it constantly from the same angle, the public would have become used to the package: “Oh well, it’s only a package, after all.” But what I was saying was: “Be careful! Watch out!”
F.T. To get back to that train you mentioned a while back, in North by Northwest, there’s a scene in which the action takes place inside the train, but you show the whole of the train from the outside. To do that you didn’t set your camera on the outside, in the fields, but you attached it to the train so that it was entirely dependent on it.
A.H. Planting the camera in the countryside to shoot a passing train would merely give us the viewpoint of a cow watching a train go by. I tried to keep the public inside the train, with the train. Whenever it went into a curve, we took a longshot from one of the train windows. The way we did that was to put three cameras on the rear platform of the Twentieth Century Limited, and we went over the exact journey of the film at the same time of the day. One of our cameras was used for the long shots of the train in the curves, while the two others were used for background footage.
F.T. In your technique everything is subordinated to the dramatic impact; the camera, in fact, accompanies the characters almost like an escort.
A.H. While we’re on the subject of the camera flow and of cutting from one shot to another, I’d like to mention what I regard as a fundamental rule: When a character who has been seated stands up to walk around a room, I will never change the angle or move the camera back. I always start the movement on the close-up, the same size close-up Í used while he was seated.
In most pictures, when two people are seen talking together, you have a close-up on one of them, then a close-up on the other, then you move back and forth again, and suddenly the camera jumps back for a long shot, to show one of the characters rising to walk around. It’s wrong to handle it that way.
F.T. Yes, because that technique precedes the action instead of accompanying it. It allows the public to guess that one of the characters is about to stand up, or whatever. In other words, the camera should never anticipate what’s about to follow.
A.H. Exactly, because that dissipates the emotion and I’m convinced that’s wrong. If a character moves around and you want to retain the emotion on his face, the only way to do that is to travel the close-up.
F.T. Before talking about Psycho I would like to ask whether you have any theory in respect to the opening scene of your pictures. Some of them start out with an act of violence; others simply indicate the locale.
A.H. It all depends on what the purpose is. The opening of The Birds is an attempt to suggest the normal, complacent, everyday life in San Francisco. Sometimes I simply use a title to indicate that we’re in Phoenix or in San Francisco. It’s too easy, I know, but it’s economical. I’m torn between the need for economy and the wish to present a locale, even when it’s a familiar one, with more subtlety. After all, it’s no problem at all to present Paris with the Eiffel Tower in the background, or London with Big Ben on the horizon.
F.T. In pictures that don’t open up with violence, you almost invariably apply the same rule of exposition: From the farthest to the nearest. You show the city, then a building in the city, a room in that building. That’s the way Psycho begins.I
A.H. In the opening of Psycho I wanted to say that we were in Phoenix, and we even spelled out the day and the time, but I only did that to lead up to a very important fact: that it was two-forty-three in the afternoon and this is the only time the poor girl has to go to bed with her lover. It suggests that she’s spent her whole lunch hour with him.
F.T. It’s a nice touch because it establishes at once that this is an illicit affair.
A.H. It also allows the viewer to become a Peeping Tom.
F.T. Jean Douchct, a French film critic, made a witty comment on that scene. He wrote that since John Gavin is stripped to his waist, but Janet Leigh wears a brassière, the scene is only satisfying to one half of the audience.
A.H. In truth, Janet Leigh should not have been wearing a brassière. I can see nothing immoral about that scene and I get no special kick out of it. But the scene would have been more interesting if the girl’s bare breasts had been rubbing against the man’s chest.