I liked Alfred Hitchcock more for what he stood for than what he did. I admire his films, but it was the stand he took in his profession. He had no time for method actors.
He believed that he had paid his dues and that if he was qualified enough to hire actors who knew their craft, then why should he worry about their acting? Hitchcock said “I direct films not actors. Actors know how to do their job, I know how to do mine”.
He told the actors what to do not how to do it. He instructed them to move to the right place, which way to look, how to appear. How they did it or felt about it was not his concern.
When actors would ask WHY they were being asked to do this or that he would invariably say “because it makes a great scene”, …asked him why he would have to look over his shoulder “because I told you to” or “because you are paid to do it” and “because that is what the scene needs right now” and my favourite – “You are required to do this because the audience will love it”.
The actor in Hitchcock’s view is subservient to the movie because the movie is subservient to the audience’s response.
Hitchcock would get away with murder (not literally) because of his rapier wit and cockney sense of humour. example, having been nominate five times for an Oscar, but never winning it, he was asked how he felt, his response “Does how I feel affect me getting recognition, I think it is quite irrelevant to how I feel, the Oscar does not dictate what I think about myself, I know myself very well thank you”.
Many film critics would give savage reviews of his films while he was alive. Hitchcock was asked what he felt about these critics, his response was elegantly devastating: “They are decent, hardworking, considerate people who mean well, I don’t mean they are mean in that they don’t care about how others feel, they are not mean or bad people, what I am trying to say is that all they mean well to others. They are decent, ordinary people subject to the same foibles and frailties that we are all subject to. They do their job, I do mine. They cannot exist without the work I do, and I can exist very well without them. I am happy to give them something to do. I also mean well!”.
Hitchcocks play on the word ‘meaning’ and being 'mean' illustrates the bumbling genius of one of the great artists of our time.
"Why, that’s the way to choke a gibing spirit,
Whose influence is begot of that loose grace
Which shallow laughing hearers give to fools.
A jest’s prosperity lies in the ear
Of him that hears it, never in the tongue
Of him that makes it: then, if sickly ears,
Deaf’d with the clamours of their own dear groans,
Will hear your idle scorns, continue them,
And I will have you and that fault withal;
But if they will not, throw away that spirit,
And I shall find you empty of that fault,
Right joyful of your reformation"
Love’s Labour’s Lost (Act V, Scene II)
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