#it's once again othering and belittling. and especially for americans of colour I know that

[niccerooniererer]

Just remembered a thing about like, what I posted and like

and like it's so fuckin weird to me how we speak of so many issues as if they're all separate when in the end they are usually a combination of 2 things

anti choice and racism

now I can't really speak on the latter, considering I'm as white as it gets, but the first one

so. trans rights? when people wanna go against them, they wanna take away their CHOICE to transition (or not) and then go on to demonize them in as many ways as possible

gay rights? people wanting to take away the CHOICE for people to be in queer relationships, then putting all possible effort in to make us look bad

the right to do abortions? literally what the pro choice vs pro life fights have been about, especially the making people feel bad for their choice even more, basically putting an unborn baby's life above the person's who carries it

disabled rights? with intellectual and physical disabilities included as well? also personality disorders included? ableists wanting to take away again the CHOICE and the way for these people to get the care and medication they need and want, and then also going out of their ways to make these people look worthless, scummy, and often even as the villains, or at least the bad people you should avoid

intersex rights? the CHOICE taken away, both from the parents and the child to not have invasive surgeries that are just gonna most likely ruin the child's life, even going onto saying it shouldn't matter because intersex people are rare (not true at all btw) and so why should there be laws protecting these basically non existent people, once again. being a problem, in a round about way, being, somehow, bad people

like Idk if it's just me but it always seems to be the case. Where especially right wingers just can't stop acting like all these minorities bother them and they just NEED to comment on it and have to be included, just like the straight pride thing! like, it's so weird to me how they so often go on to judge you in so so many ways and try to reinforce what they see as good

as if people of the world, who are different from them are only there to be an asset they can react to, get angry at and maybe even kill if they're that far gone

like this anti choice vibe is all over the place, AND NOT WITH JUST RIGHT WINGERS they are just a good example due to their tendency of not hiding the darkest shit they want to do to you just cuz you have to use a wheelchair and have a trans pin on your bag or something

I absolutely see this with other people as well, where it seems like they are pro choice until it's about a group they don't like

like when gay skinny people will be like yasss slayyyy until a fat man tries out being a drag queen and they proceed to half subconsciously berate him for trying to do that while fat, or worse, tell him that he's being soooooo brave for this

anyways my point was that all this anti choice thing seems to have, basically 2 goals in mind: eliminate or assimilate

it's like, it feels like a losing battle

especially feeling this as I'm fat and my body image is not consistent at all, all because of this kind of, anti choice, semi fash mindset, maybe I could even call it an ideology-

anyways it either kills us or numbs us to the point that we don't fight anymore, and maybe even die to that at that point, especially if it's about getting necessary medication and aid to literally survive

anyways my point with this- why are we fighting each other? we're all hurting just about the same way, by the very same people, the very same system

best we can do is hold each other up, just a bit higher so maybe we can live just a little longer, or maybe even get something done even, whatever it is, even just society getting a little better is good

[erhiem]

For their SS22 collection, GmbH’s Benjamin Alexander Husby and Serhat Ik ask: What does ‘white’ dress mean? Written, which can be read as an unnecessarily incendiary question – ‘But I don’t see the color!!’ – An opposing jib of the post-identity era. Since ancient times, however, white fashion designers have seen the color. They have alienated and belittled other deemed wholes, filtering rich cultural heritage through myopic Western-centric approaches to create outfits suitable for anything other than racist cosplay. At all times, in fashion, at least, whiteness and its associated cultural capital have remained relatively immune to appropriation—until now, that is.

This season, the Berlin-based duo present White Noise, a body of work that evokes the archetypes of whiteness with elegance, humour, sensuality and wit. This creates a subtle undercurrent that runs through their AW21 collection – an investigation into how items such as jodhpurs and riding boots, Fair Isle knits and luxurious furs become coded as assets of a social environment – rich white posho, basically – and the subversive power of putting gray and black bodies in those clothes.

If the pair with subtlety backs their point and then slips under your radar, then, darling, you sure as hell won’t miss it anymore. The white typologies he studied are hardly esoteric—cropped, ruched knits styled with white double-zip-fly denim jodhpurs and calf-swaddling riding boots deliver the full polo-player fantasy, While the sweaters are unintentionally slung over tight shoulders, the poplin shirt tied across Daisy Duke’s front shows Tilly and Rosie watching the match from the sidelines. The clean denim look gives off a nostalgic, blue-jeans Americana air, blended neatly by baseball stripes, and sandy shirts worn with brown vegan leather trousers that call to mind a Midwestern sheriff. keep.

As you will probably have noticed from the description above, for all the seriousness of their chosen subject matter, Benjamin and Serhat’s work has a lightness—that is to say, it is steeped in satire and camp. The fundamentalists he invokes are, for all intents and purposes, very hysterical. Through them, however, they manage to parody the ethnographic strategies of white social institutions in a way that “almost drag, isn’t it,” Benjamin says. “It reminds me of this scene” Paris is burning where the category is ‘Town and Country’.”

Of course, GmbH does not in any way use fashion as a means of questioning, appropriating and destroying the cultural right of whiteness. Among the most notable people to do so in recent memory are the heroes of 90s hip-hop and R&B culture, who took on brands, looks and even clothing that once ‘aspirated’ white ideals. and made them his own—think Aaliyah and Destiny’s Child in Tommy Hilfiger, or Mary J. Blige’s iconic cut denim look. The collection’s closing chapter pays homage to this chapter in fashion history, a suit of denim and pastel faux-fur outerwear in the viral décolleté-bearing ‘Revenge Dress’ silhouette, which they launched last season, which Inspired the creation of GmbH’s Demi. clothing line.

That it’s given a collection with cerebral heft, but for all its cleverness, it doesn’t get lost in the concepts. The clothes we see emerging from the white haze in the presentation film directed by Matt Lambert are accessible and, above all, really fucking hot. Here, Benjamin and Serhat fill us in with the thoughts behind one of the standout menswear collections of the season so far.

So, white noise. Tell me about the title.

Benjamin Alexander Husby: It was partly inspired by this Don DeLillo book that I recently re-read. It touches on a lot of the volatile suburban themes surrounding death and the mediocrity of everyday life, which now feel very connected to our lives. On a more thematic note, however, our collections have always been very responsive, reacting to how we felt and what was happening in the world over and over again. This time it was more about an interest in studying what whiteness and white culture really is. As BIPOCs, we constantly have to deal with our own brownness, our blackness – we have to constantly defend and investigate it – and white people don’t have that. They don’t need to think about whiteness cause it’s right are you there, it’s just supposed to be the default.

Serhat Isik: It’s an exploration that we actually started last season, but not many people picked up on the codes we were alluding to – horse riding, skiing and all these activities that, in general, are not well reserved. but are known to be part of upper-class white culture.

Bah: Yes, That Very WASPy, Country Club Fantasy

and: Somehow, it wasn’t really clear enough for people, so this season is basically making it clear to us! GmbH as a project has always been about freeing our minds from colonization through fashion and in collaboration with our community. We’ve always been expected to describe our own cultures – and that’s a big part of what we do and what we’ve done so far. But the culture we are looking for here is what we were born in, and yet it has always been said that we are not a part of it. We wanted to find out what it looked like for a brand like GmbH to flip things over and suit white culture.

Bah: However, it’s important to say that it’s done with a bit of twisted humour. And also it’s not just about whiteness – trying to understand the tropes and archetypes of this American Dream ideal of white culture was our starting point, but then we went back to something we were always interested in – Exploring how brown and black people have historically appropriated or distorted white culture. It was pretty obvious to grow up in the 90s, it became a very influential thing in music culture, for example

Yep, there’s a switch around Look 20 where it started to remind me a little bit of Janet Jackson and Mary J Blige. But what got you interested in knowing how those kinds of figures are associated with whiteness in the ’90s next to the wealthy white fanatics we see before?

and: For me, it was really about shifting the narrative. Working in the post-identity era, I feel like there’s so much noise out there that I almost wanted to step back for a moment and focus on doing something there that was before we started GmbH. Get out of the conversation. We always say that fashion is a tool we use to raise awareness or talk about things we want to talk about, so we need a moment to regroup and rethink. How can we do it without doing the same thing. This is what drew me personally to continue researching the topic and really turn it around. Even if someone came along and said, “Oh, now they’re enforcing white culture?!”, that’s already a different conversation, and it’s the one I’m interested in hearing because It plays. I instead say, ‘They’re celebrating their culture! I love Middle Eastern patterns!’, because that’s what’s always expected of us. And it’s beautiful, sure, but now, let’s fuck things up!

Bah: I think we are all tired of constantly battling with our identities.

and: There is also a point that I get bored with it. It’s almost like we’re hoping to play into this narrative of introducing one Middle Eastern, quirky-inspired collection after another. But now we’re saying: No — let’s talk about you. Let’s talk about whiteness. Let’s talk about how we’re adapting to your culture, and see how you respond.

Bah: And if we talk about race and colour, one thing has to be acknowledged that we did not name ourselves ‘Brown’ or ‘Black’. This nomenclature is the product of a white colonial culture – so maybe whiteness is the problem. Maybe that’s what we need to understand and explore.

Here you do this by looking at the white typology, but you do it with a fairly light touch. Some of it is really camp – there’s the reality of varsity polo matches, baseball players, cowboys, Daisy Dukes… What drew you to the specific ideals you sought?

and: In some ways, it was because they were so obvious. And because codes are so important in what we do, especially codes that are used to oppress people of color, it’s also about investigating where the power lies. On another level, though, we just wanted to show everyone how we can make these archetypes really sexy in a way that might not be expected.

Another key feature of this season is your collaboration with queer Palestinian label Trashy Clothing. Tell us a little more about it and how you started working together.

BAH: It is run by Shukri Lawrence and Omar Brika, two Palestinian people based in Jordan. They reached out to us a while back, and we started a conversation about doing something together. They’ve done a lot of research into Palestinian graphic design, both political and non-political, and we’ve decided it makes sense to do something on our show – for a very visible T-shirt called Free. is Palestine. The T-shirt is for charity, but I think it’s important to point out that this is not what Palestinians are primarily asking for; They are demanding solidarity and visibility, and their voices be heard. We realized that making a very simple statement at a fashion show was one of the ways we could help keep that conversation going. This is a very serious situation, and for the first time in my life, I feel that the mainstream narrative is changing. We want to continue that conversation and momentum, no matter what.

and: That’s what’s great about fashion, and that’s one of the things we love about it — there’s a banter to it, but it’s very immediate.

.

The post GmbH SS22 collection review – i-D appeared first on Spicy Celebrity News.

[exfrenchdorsl4p0a1]

Hitchcock and Truffaut in Conversation on the Art and Craft of Storytelling

In June 1962, French screenwriter, director, producer and actor François Truffaut wrote a letter to Alfred Hitchcock asking whether he might interview him in depth about his life and career. Truffaut proposed they meet to talk for a week of all day interviews. In the letter he stated his reasons:

Paris, 2 June 1962 Dear Mr Hitchcock, First of all, allow me to remind you who I am. A few years ago, in late 1954, when I was a film journalist, I came with my friend Claude Chabrol to interview you at the Saint-Maurice studio where you were directing the post-synchronization of To Catch a Thief. You asked us to go and wait for you in the studio bar, and it was then that, in the excitement of having watched fifteen times in succession a ‘loop’ showing Brigitte Auber and Cary Grant in a speedboat, Chabrol and I fell into the frozen tank in the studio courtyard. You very kindly agreed to postpone the interview which was conducted that same evening at your hotel. Subsequently, each time you visited Paris, I had the pleasure of meeting you with Odette Ferry, and for the following year you even said to me, ‘Whenever I see ice cubes in a glass of whisky I think of you.’ One year after that, you invited me to come to New York for a few days and watch the shooting of The Wrong Man, but I had to decline the invitation since, a few months after Claude Chabrol, I turned to film-making myself. I have made three films, the first of which, The Four Hundred Blows, had, I believe, a certain success in Hollywood. The latest, Jules et Jim, is currently showing in New York. I come now to the point of my letter. In the course of my discussions with foreign journalists and especially in New York, I have come to realize that their conception of your work is often very superficial. Moreover, the kind of propaganda that we were responsible for in Cahiers du cinéma was excellent as far as France was concerned, but inappropriate for America because it was too intellectual. Since I have become a director myself, my admiration for you has in no way weakened; on the contrary, it has grown stronger and changed in nature. There are many directors with a love for the cinema, but what you possess is a love of celluloid itself and it is that which I would like to talk to you about. I would like you to grant me a tape-recorded interview which would take about eight days to conduct and would add up to about thirty hours of recordings. The point of this would be to distil not a series of articles but an entire book which would be published simultaneously in New York (I would consider offering it, for example, to Simon and Schuster where I have some friends) and Paris (by Gallimard or Robert Laffont), then, probably later, more or less everywhere in the world. If the idea were to appeal to you, and you agreed to do it, here is how I think we might proceed: I could come and stay for about ten days wherever it would be most convenient for you. From New York I would bring with me Miss Helen Scott who would be the ideal interpreter; she carries out simultaneous translations at such speed that we would have the impression of speaking to one another without any intermediary and, working as she does at the French Film Office in New York, she is also completely familiar with the vocabulary of the cinema. She and I would take rooms in the hotel closest to your home or to whichever office you might arrange. Here is the work schedule. Just a very detailed interview in chronological order. To start with, some biographical notes, then the first jobs you had before entering the film industry, then your stay in Berlin. This would be followed by: 1. the British silent films; 2. the British sound films; 3. the first American films for Selznick and the spy films; 4. the two ‘Transatlantic Pictures’ 5. the Vistavision period; 6. from The Wrong Man to the The Birds.

The questions would focus more precisely on:

a) the circumstances surrounding the inception of each film; b) the development and construction of the screenplay; c) the stylistic problems peculiar to each film; d) the situation of the film in relation to those preceding it; e) your own assessment of the artistic and commercial result in relation to your intentions. There would be questions of a more general nature on: good and bad scripts, different styles of dialogue, the direction of actors, the art of editing, the development of new techniques, special effects and colour. These would be interspaced among the different categories in order to prevent any interruption in chronology. The body of work would be preceded by a text which I would write myself and which might be summarized as follows: if, overnight, the cinema had to do without its soundtrack and became once again a silent art, then many directors would be forced into unemployment, but, among the survivors, there would be Alfred Hitchcock and everyone would realize at last that he is the greatest film director in the world. If this project interests you, I would ask you to let me know how you would like to proceed. I imagine that you are in the process of editing The Birds, and perhaps you would prefer to wait a while? For my part, at the end of this year I am due to make my next films, an adaptation of a novel by Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451, which is why I would prefer the interviews to take place between 15 July and 15 September 1962. If you were to accept the proposition, I would gather together all the documents I would need to prepare the four or five hundred questions which I wish to ask you, and I would have the Brussels Cinémathèque screen for me those films of yours with which I am least familiar. That would take me about three weeks, which would mean I could be at your disposal from the beginning of July. A few weeks after our interviews, the transcribed, edited and corrected text would be submitted to you in English so that you might make any corrections that you considered useful, and the book itself would be ready to come out by the end of this year. Awaiting your reply, I beg you to accept, dear Mr Hitchcock, my profound admiration. I remain Yours sincerely, Francois Truffaut

Hitchcock's response was by telegram shortly after receiving the letter:

Dear Monsieur Truffaut – Your letter brought tears to my eyes and I am so grateful to receive such a tribute from you – Stop – I am shooting The Birds and this will continue until 15 July and after that I will have to begin editing which will take me several weeks – Stop – I think I will wait until we have finished shooting The Birds and then I will contact you with the idea of getting together around the end of August – Stop – Thank you again for your charming letter – Kind regards – Cordially yours – Alfred Hitchcock.

Because he spoke little English, Truffaut hired Helen Scott of the French Film Office in New York to translate. The conversations filled 50 hours of tape about 54 films. A partial set of audio files are here. At the time, Hitchcock wasn't as popular and yet he had already innovated the art of storytelling in movies.

The tapes are a record of the British director's opinions, ideas, and thoughts on both the stories he told through film and how he did it, including mistakes he felt he made and how he would 'fix' them, if he could. The interviews were published in a book in 1967. A revised edition of Hitchcock included the director's later career.

In the introduction, Truffaut says:

Nowadays, the work of Alfred Hitchcock is admired all over the world. Young people who are just discovering his art through the current rerelease of Rear Window and Vertigo, or through North by Northwest, may assume his prestige has always been recognized, but this is far from being the case. In the fifties and sixties, Hitchcock was at the height of his creativity and popularity. He was, of course, famous due to the publicity masterminded by producer David O. Selznick during the six or seven years of their collaboration on such films as Rebecca, Notorious, Spellbound, and The Paradine Case. His fame had spread further throughout the world via the television series Alfred Hitchcock Presents in the mid-fifties. But American and European critics made him pay for his commercial success by reviewing his work with condescension, and by belittling each new film.

[...]

In examining his films, it was obvious that he had given more thought to the potential of his art than any of his colleagues. It occurred to me that if he would, for the first time, agree to respond seriously to a systematic questionnaire, the resulting document might modify the American critics’ approach to Hitchcock. That is what this book is all about.

During a Hollywood press conference in 1947, Alfred Hitchcock talked about his art, which was about involving the audience and creating suspense. He said:

I aim to provide the public with beneficial shocks. Civilization has become so protective that we’re no longer able to get our goose bumps instinctively. The only way to remove the numbness and revive our moral equilibrium is to use artificial means to bring about the shock. The best way to achieve that, it seems to me, is through a movie.

Suspense is the essence of cinema and Hitchcock was a master of special effects before they were a thing, using images rather than dialogue to further a story. About dialogue he says:

In many of the films now being made, there is very little cinema: they are mostly what I call 'photographs of people talking.' When we tell a story in cinema we should resort to dialogue only when it's impossible to do otherwise. I always try to tell a story in the cinematic way, through a succession of shots and bits of film in between.

[...]

Dialogue should simply be a sound among other sounds, just something that comes out of the mouths of people whose eyes tell the story in visual terms.

He also understood that people don't want to be educated, nor do they want to be tricked — as he discovered in Sabotage, a flop.

Hitchcock was very creative; we can draw lessons for marketers from his recurring themes. Anyone interested in the art of storytelling should pick up a copy of Hitchcock, a wonderful collection of insights Truffaut elicited by being in conversation with a master of the art.

  from DIYS http://ift.tt/2mBOP0p

[repwincostl4m0a2]

Hitchcock and Truffaut in Conversation on the Art and Craft of Storytelling

In June 1962, French screenwriter, director, producer and actor François Truffaut wrote a letter to Alfred Hitchcock asking whether he might interview him in depth about his life and career. Truffaut proposed they meet to talk for a week of all day interviews. In the letter he stated his reasons:

Paris, 2 June 1962 Dear Mr Hitchcock, First of all, allow me to remind you who I am. A few years ago, in late 1954, when I was a film journalist, I came with my friend Claude Chabrol to interview you at the Saint-Maurice studio where you were directing the post-synchronization of To Catch a Thief. You asked us to go and wait for you in the studio bar, and it was then that, in the excitement of having watched fifteen times in succession a ‘loop’ showing Brigitte Auber and Cary Grant in a speedboat, Chabrol and I fell into the frozen tank in the studio courtyard. You very kindly agreed to postpone the interview which was conducted that same evening at your hotel. Subsequently, each time you visited Paris, I had the pleasure of meeting you with Odette Ferry, and for the following year you even said to me, ‘Whenever I see ice cubes in a glass of whisky I think of you.’ One year after that, you invited me to come to New York for a few days and watch the shooting of The Wrong Man, but I had to decline the invitation since, a few months after Claude Chabrol, I turned to film-making myself. I have made three films, the first of which, The Four Hundred Blows, had, I believe, a certain success in Hollywood. The latest, Jules et Jim, is currently showing in New York. I come now to the point of my letter. In the course of my discussions with foreign journalists and especially in New York, I have come to realize that their conception of your work is often very superficial. Moreover, the kind of propaganda that we were responsible for in Cahiers du cinéma was excellent as far as France was concerned, but inappropriate for America because it was too intellectual. Since I have become a director myself, my admiration for you has in no way weakened; on the contrary, it has grown stronger and changed in nature. There are many directors with a love for the cinema, but what you possess is a love of celluloid itself and it is that which I would like to talk to you about. I would like you to grant me a tape-recorded interview which would take about eight days to conduct and would add up to about thirty hours of recordings. The point of this would be to distil not a series of articles but an entire book which would be published simultaneously in New York (I would consider offering it, for example, to Simon and Schuster where I have some friends) and Paris (by Gallimard or Robert Laffont), then, probably later, more or less everywhere in the world. If the idea were to appeal to you, and you agreed to do it, here is how I think we might proceed: I could come and stay for about ten days wherever it would be most convenient for you. From New York I would bring with me Miss Helen Scott who would be the ideal interpreter; she carries out simultaneous translations at such speed that we would have the impression of speaking to one another without any intermediary and, working as she does at the French Film Office in New York, she is also completely familiar with the vocabulary of the cinema. She and I would take rooms in the hotel closest to your home or to whichever office you might arrange. Here is the work schedule. Just a very detailed interview in chronological order. To start with, some biographical notes, then the first jobs you had before entering the film industry, then your stay in Berlin. This would be followed by: 1. the British silent films; 2. the British sound films; 3. the first American films for Selznick and the spy films; 4. the two ‘Transatlantic Pictures’ 5. the Vistavision period; 6. from The Wrong Man to the The Birds.

The questions would focus more precisely on:

a) the circumstances surrounding the inception of each film; b) the development and construction of the screenplay; c) the stylistic problems peculiar to each film; d) the situation of the film in relation to those preceding it; e) your own assessment of the artistic and commercial result in relation to your intentions. There would be questions of a more general nature on: good and bad scripts, different styles of dialogue, the direction of actors, the art of editing, the development of new techniques, special effects and colour. These would be interspaced among the different categories in order to prevent any interruption in chronology. The body of work would be preceded by a text which I would write myself and which might be summarized as follows: if, overnight, the cinema had to do without its soundtrack and became once again a silent art, then many directors would be forced into unemployment, but, among the survivors, there would be Alfred Hitchcock and everyone would realize at last that he is the greatest film director in the world. If this project interests you, I would ask you to let me know how you would like to proceed. I imagine that you are in the process of editing The Birds, and perhaps you would prefer to wait a while? For my part, at the end of this year I am due to make my next films, an adaptation of a novel by Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451, which is why I would prefer the interviews to take place between 15 July and 15 September 1962. If you were to accept the proposition, I would gather together all the documents I would need to prepare the four or five hundred questions which I wish to ask you, and I would have the Brussels Cinémathèque screen for me those films of yours with which I am least familiar. That would take me about three weeks, which would mean I could be at your disposal from the beginning of July. A few weeks after our interviews, the transcribed, edited and corrected text would be submitted to you in English so that you might make any corrections that you considered useful, and the book itself would be ready to come out by the end of this year. Awaiting your reply, I beg you to accept, dear Mr Hitchcock, my profound admiration. I remain Yours sincerely, Francois Truffaut

Hitchcock's response was by telegram shortly after receiving the letter:

Dear Monsieur Truffaut – Your letter brought tears to my eyes and I am so grateful to receive such a tribute from you – Stop – I am shooting The Birds and this will continue until 15 July and after that I will have to begin editing which will take me several weeks – Stop – I think I will wait until we have finished shooting The Birds and then I will contact you with the idea of getting together around the end of August – Stop – Thank you again for your charming letter – Kind regards – Cordially yours – Alfred Hitchcock.

Because he spoke little English, Truffaut hired Helen Scott of the French Film Office in New York to translate. The conversations filled 50 hours of tape about 54 films. A partial set of audio files are here. At the time, Hitchcock wasn't as popular and yet he had already innovated the art of storytelling in movies.

The tapes are a record of the British director's opinions, ideas, and thoughts on both the stories he told through film and how he did it, including mistakes he felt he made and how he would 'fix' them, if he could. The interviews were published in a book in 1967. A revised edition of Hitchcock included the director's later career.

In the introduction, Truffaut says:

Nowadays, the work of Alfred Hitchcock is admired all over the world. Young people who are just discovering his art through the current rerelease of Rear Window and Vertigo, or through North by Northwest, may assume his prestige has always been recognized, but this is far from being the case. In the fifties and sixties, Hitchcock was at the height of his creativity and popularity. He was, of course, famous due to the publicity masterminded by producer David O. Selznick during the six or seven years of their collaboration on such films as Rebecca, Notorious, Spellbound, and The Paradine Case. His fame had spread further throughout the world via the television series Alfred Hitchcock Presents in the mid-fifties. But American and European critics made him pay for his commercial success by reviewing his work with condescension, and by belittling each new film.

[...]

In examining his films, it was obvious that he had given more thought to the potential of his art than any of his colleagues. It occurred to me that if he would, for the first time, agree to respond seriously to a systematic questionnaire, the resulting document might modify the American critics’ approach to Hitchcock. That is what this book is all about.

During a Hollywood press conference in 1947, Alfred Hitchcock talked about his art, which was about involving the audience and creating suspense. He said:

I aim to provide the public with beneficial shocks. Civilization has become so protective that we’re no longer able to get our goose bumps instinctively. The only way to remove the numbness and revive our moral equilibrium is to use artificial means to bring about the shock. The best way to achieve that, it seems to me, is through a movie.

Suspense is the essence of cinema and Hitchcock was a master of special effects before they were a thing, using images rather than dialogue to further a story. About dialogue he says:

In many of the films now being made, there is very little cinema: they are mostly what I call 'photographs of people talking.' When we tell a story in cinema we should resort to dialogue only when it's impossible to do otherwise. I always try to tell a story in the cinematic way, through a succession of shots and bits of film in between.

[...]

Dialogue should simply be a sound among other sounds, just something that comes out of the mouths of people whose eyes tell the story in visual terms.

He also understood that people don't want to be educated, nor do they want to be tricked — as he discovered in Sabotage, a flop.

Hitchcock was very creative; we can draw lessons for marketers from his recurring themes. Anyone interested in the art of storytelling should pick up a copy of Hitchcock, a wonderful collection of insights Truffaut elicited by being in conversation with a master of the art.

  from DIYS http://ift.tt/2mBOP0p

[repwincoml4a0a5]

Hitchcock and Truffaut in Conversation on the Art and Craft of Storytelling

In June 1962, French screenwriter, director, producer and actor François Truffaut wrote a letter to Alfred Hitchcock asking whether he might interview him in depth about his life and career. Truffaut proposed they meet to talk for a week of all day interviews. In the letter he stated his reasons:

Paris, 2 June 1962 Dear Mr Hitchcock, First of all, allow me to remind you who I am. A few years ago, in late 1954, when I was a film journalist, I came with my friend Claude Chabrol to interview you at the Saint-Maurice studio where you were directing the post-synchronization of To Catch a Thief. You asked us to go and wait for you in the studio bar, and it was then that, in the excitement of having watched fifteen times in succession a ‘loop’ showing Brigitte Auber and Cary Grant in a speedboat, Chabrol and I fell into the frozen tank in the studio courtyard. You very kindly agreed to postpone the interview which was conducted that same evening at your hotel. Subsequently, each time you visited Paris, I had the pleasure of meeting you with Odette Ferry, and for the following year you even said to me, ‘Whenever I see ice cubes in a glass of whisky I think of you.’ One year after that, you invited me to come to New York for a few days and watch the shooting of The Wrong Man, but I had to decline the invitation since, a few months after Claude Chabrol, I turned to film-making myself. I have made three films, the first of which, The Four Hundred Blows, had, I believe, a certain success in Hollywood. The latest, Jules et Jim, is currently showing in New York. I come now to the point of my letter. In the course of my discussions with foreign journalists and especially in New York, I have come to realize that their conception of your work is often very superficial. Moreover, the kind of propaganda that we were responsible for in Cahiers du cinéma was excellent as far as France was concerned, but inappropriate for America because it was too intellectual. Since I have become a director myself, my admiration for you has in no way weakened; on the contrary, it has grown stronger and changed in nature. There are many directors with a love for the cinema, but what you possess is a love of celluloid itself and it is that which I would like to talk to you about. I would like you to grant me a tape-recorded interview which would take about eight days to conduct and would add up to about thirty hours of recordings. The point of this would be to distil not a series of articles but an entire book which would be published simultaneously in New York (I would consider offering it, for example, to Simon and Schuster where I have some friends) and Paris (by Gallimard or Robert Laffont), then, probably later, more or less everywhere in the world. If the idea were to appeal to you, and you agreed to do it, here is how I think we might proceed: I could come and stay for about ten days wherever it would be most convenient for you. From New York I would bring with me Miss Helen Scott who would be the ideal interpreter; she carries out simultaneous translations at such speed that we would have the impression of speaking to one another without any intermediary and, working as she does at the French Film Office in New York, she is also completely familiar with the vocabulary of the cinema. She and I would take rooms in the hotel closest to your home or to whichever office you might arrange. Here is the work schedule. Just a very detailed interview in chronological order. To start with, some biographical notes, then the first jobs you had before entering the film industry, then your stay in Berlin. This would be followed by: 1. the British silent films; 2. the British sound films; 3. the first American films for Selznick and the spy films; 4. the two ‘Transatlantic Pictures’ 5. the Vistavision period; 6. from The Wrong Man to the The Birds.

The questions would focus more precisely on:

a) the circumstances surrounding the inception of each film; b) the development and construction of the screenplay; c) the stylistic problems peculiar to each film; d) the situation of the film in relation to those preceding it; e) your own assessment of the artistic and commercial result in relation to your intentions. There would be questions of a more general nature on: good and bad scripts, different styles of dialogue, the direction of actors, the art of editing, the development of new techniques, special effects and colour. These would be interspaced among the different categories in order to prevent any interruption in chronology. The body of work would be preceded by a text which I would write myself and which might be summarized as follows: if, overnight, the cinema had to do without its soundtrack and became once again a silent art, then many directors would be forced into unemployment, but, among the survivors, there would be Alfred Hitchcock and everyone would realize at last that he is the greatest film director in the world. If this project interests you, I would ask you to let me know how you would like to proceed. I imagine that you are in the process of editing The Birds, and perhaps you would prefer to wait a while? For my part, at the end of this year I am due to make my next films, an adaptation of a novel by Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451, which is why I would prefer the interviews to take place between 15 July and 15 September 1962. If you were to accept the proposition, I would gather together all the documents I would need to prepare the four or five hundred questions which I wish to ask you, and I would have the Brussels Cinémathèque screen for me those films of yours with which I am least familiar. That would take me about three weeks, which would mean I could be at your disposal from the beginning of July. A few weeks after our interviews, the transcribed, edited and corrected text would be submitted to you in English so that you might make any corrections that you considered useful, and the book itself would be ready to come out by the end of this year. Awaiting your reply, I beg you to accept, dear Mr Hitchcock, my profound admiration. I remain Yours sincerely, Francois Truffaut

Hitchcock's response was by telegram shortly after receiving the letter:

Dear Monsieur Truffaut – Your letter brought tears to my eyes and I am so grateful to receive such a tribute from you – Stop – I am shooting The Birds and this will continue until 15 July and after that I will have to begin editing which will take me several weeks – Stop – I think I will wait until we have finished shooting The Birds and then I will contact you with the idea of getting together around the end of August – Stop – Thank you again for your charming letter – Kind regards – Cordially yours – Alfred Hitchcock.

Because he spoke little English, Truffaut hired Helen Scott of the French Film Office in New York to translate. The conversations filled 50 hours of tape about 54 films. A partial set of audio files are here. At the time, Hitchcock wasn't as popular and yet he had already innovated the art of storytelling in movies.

The tapes are a record of the British director's opinions, ideas, and thoughts on both the stories he told through film and how he did it, including mistakes he felt he made and how he would 'fix' them, if he could. The interviews were published in a book in 1967. A revised edition of Hitchcock included the director's later career.

In the introduction, Truffaut says:

Nowadays, the work of Alfred Hitchcock is admired all over the world. Young people who are just discovering his art through the current rerelease of Rear Window and Vertigo, or through North by Northwest, may assume his prestige has always been recognized, but this is far from being the case. In the fifties and sixties, Hitchcock was at the height of his creativity and popularity. He was, of course, famous due to the publicity masterminded by producer David O. Selznick during the six or seven years of their collaboration on such films as Rebecca, Notorious, Spellbound, and The Paradine Case. His fame had spread further throughout the world via the television series Alfred Hitchcock Presents in the mid-fifties. But American and European critics made him pay for his commercial success by reviewing his work with condescension, and by belittling each new film.

[...]

In examining his films, it was obvious that he had given more thought to the potential of his art than any of his colleagues. It occurred to me that if he would, for the first time, agree to respond seriously to a systematic questionnaire, the resulting document might modify the American critics’ approach to Hitchcock. That is what this book is all about.

During a Hollywood press conference in 1947, Alfred Hitchcock talked about his art, which was about involving the audience and creating suspense. He said:

I aim to provide the public with beneficial shocks. Civilization has become so protective that we’re no longer able to get our goose bumps instinctively. The only way to remove the numbness and revive our moral equilibrium is to use artificial means to bring about the shock. The best way to achieve that, it seems to me, is through a movie.

Suspense is the essence of cinema and Hitchcock was a master of special effects before they were a thing, using images rather than dialogue to further a story. About dialogue he says:

In many of the films now being made, there is very little cinema: they are mostly what I call 'photographs of people talking.' When we tell a story in cinema we should resort to dialogue only when it's impossible to do otherwise. I always try to tell a story in the cinematic way, through a succession of shots and bits of film in between.

[...]

Dialogue should simply be a sound among other sounds, just something that comes out of the mouths of people whose eyes tell the story in visual terms.

He also understood that people don't want to be educated, nor do they want to be tricked — as he discovered in Sabotage, a flop.

Hitchcock was very creative; we can draw lessons for marketers from his recurring themes. Anyone interested in the art of storytelling should pick up a copy of Hitchcock, a wonderful collection of insights Truffaut elicited by being in conversation with a master of the art.

  from DIYS http://ift.tt/2mBOP0p

[stormdoors78476]

Hitchcock and Truffaut in Conversation on the Art and Craft of Storytelling

In June 1962, French screenwriter, director, producer and actor François Truffaut wrote a letter to Alfred Hitchcock asking whether he might interview him in depth about his life and career. Truffaut proposed they meet to talk for a week of all day interviews. In the letter he stated his reasons:

Paris, 2 June 1962 Dear Mr Hitchcock, First of all, allow me to remind you who I am. A few years ago, in late 1954, when I was a film journalist, I came with my friend Claude Chabrol to interview you at the Saint-Maurice studio where you were directing the post-synchronization of To Catch a Thief. You asked us to go and wait for you in the studio bar, and it was then that, in the excitement of having watched fifteen times in succession a ‘loop’ showing Brigitte Auber and Cary Grant in a speedboat, Chabrol and I fell into the frozen tank in the studio courtyard. You very kindly agreed to postpone the interview which was conducted that same evening at your hotel. Subsequently, each time you visited Paris, I had the pleasure of meeting you with Odette Ferry, and for the following year you even said to me, ‘Whenever I see ice cubes in a glass of whisky I think of you.’ One year after that, you invited me to come to New York for a few days and watch the shooting of The Wrong Man, but I had to decline the invitation since, a few months after Claude Chabrol, I turned to film-making myself. I have made three films, the first of which, The Four Hundred Blows, had, I believe, a certain success in Hollywood. The latest, Jules et Jim, is currently showing in New York. I come now to the point of my letter. In the course of my discussions with foreign journalists and especially in New York, I have come to realize that their conception of your work is often very superficial. Moreover, the kind of propaganda that we were responsible for in Cahiers du cinéma was excellent as far as France was concerned, but inappropriate for America because it was too intellectual. Since I have become a director myself, my admiration for you has in no way weakened; on the contrary, it has grown stronger and changed in nature. There are many directors with a love for the cinema, but what you possess is a love of celluloid itself and it is that which I would like to talk to you about. I would like you to grant me a tape-recorded interview which would take about eight days to conduct and would add up to about thirty hours of recordings. The point of this would be to distil not a series of articles but an entire book which would be published simultaneously in New York (I would consider offering it, for example, to Simon and Schuster where I have some friends) and Paris (by Gallimard or Robert Laffont), then, probably later, more or less everywhere in the world. If the idea were to appeal to you, and you agreed to do it, here is how I think we might proceed: I could come and stay for about ten days wherever it would be most convenient for you. From New York I would bring with me Miss Helen Scott who would be the ideal interpreter; she carries out simultaneous translations at such speed that we would have the impression of speaking to one another without any intermediary and, working as she does at the French Film Office in New York, she is also completely familiar with the vocabulary of the cinema. She and I would take rooms in the hotel closest to your home or to whichever office you might arrange. Here is the work schedule. Just a very detailed interview in chronological order. To start with, some biographical notes, then the first jobs you had before entering the film industry, then your stay in Berlin. This would be followed by: 1. the British silent films; 2. the British sound films; 3. the first American films for Selznick and the spy films; 4. the two ‘Transatlantic Pictures’ 5. the Vistavision period; 6. from The Wrong Man to the The Birds.

The questions would focus more precisely on:

a) the circumstances surrounding the inception of each film; b) the development and construction of the screenplay; c) the stylistic problems peculiar to each film; d) the situation of the film in relation to those preceding it; e) your own assessment of the artistic and commercial result in relation to your intentions. There would be questions of a more general nature on: good and bad scripts, different styles of dialogue, the direction of actors, the art of editing, the development of new techniques, special effects and colour. These would be interspaced among the different categories in order to prevent any interruption in chronology. The body of work would be preceded by a text which I would write myself and which might be summarized as follows: if, overnight, the cinema had to do without its soundtrack and became once again a silent art, then many directors would be forced into unemployment, but, among the survivors, there would be Alfred Hitchcock and everyone would realize at last that he is the greatest film director in the world. If this project interests you, I would ask you to let me know how you would like to proceed. I imagine that you are in the process of editing The Birds, and perhaps you would prefer to wait a while? For my part, at the end of this year I am due to make my next films, an adaptation of a novel by Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451, which is why I would prefer the interviews to take place between 15 July and 15 September 1962. If you were to accept the proposition, I would gather together all the documents I would need to prepare the four or five hundred questions which I wish to ask you, and I would have the Brussels Cinémathèque screen for me those films of yours with which I am least familiar. That would take me about three weeks, which would mean I could be at your disposal from the beginning of July. A few weeks after our interviews, the transcribed, edited and corrected text would be submitted to you in English so that you might make any corrections that you considered useful, and the book itself would be ready to come out by the end of this year. Awaiting your reply, I beg you to accept, dear Mr Hitchcock, my profound admiration. I remain Yours sincerely, Francois Truffaut

Hitchcock's response was by telegram shortly after receiving the letter:

Dear Monsieur Truffaut – Your letter brought tears to my eyes and I am so grateful to receive such a tribute from you – Stop – I am shooting The Birds and this will continue until 15 July and after that I will have to begin editing which will take me several weeks – Stop – I think I will wait until we have finished shooting The Birds and then I will contact you with the idea of getting together around the end of August – Stop – Thank you again for your charming letter – Kind regards – Cordially yours – Alfred Hitchcock.

Because he spoke little English, Truffaut hired Helen Scott of the French Film Office in New York to translate. The conversations filled 50 hours of tape about 54 films. A partial set of audio files are here. At the time, Hitchcock wasn't as popular and yet he had already innovated the art of storytelling in movies.

The tapes are a record of the British director's opinions, ideas, and thoughts on both the stories he told through film and how he did it, including mistakes he felt he made and how he would 'fix' them, if he could. The interviews were published in a book in 1967. A revised edition of Hitchcock included the director's later career.

In the introduction, Truffaut says:

Nowadays, the work of Alfred Hitchcock is admired all over the world. Young people who are just discovering his art through the current rerelease of Rear Window and Vertigo, or through North by Northwest, may assume his prestige has always been recognized, but this is far from being the case. In the fifties and sixties, Hitchcock was at the height of his creativity and popularity. He was, of course, famous due to the publicity masterminded by producer David O. Selznick during the six or seven years of their collaboration on such films as Rebecca, Notorious, Spellbound, and The Paradine Case. His fame had spread further throughout the world via the television series Alfred Hitchcock Presents in the mid-fifties. But American and European critics made him pay for his commercial success by reviewing his work with condescension, and by belittling each new film.

[...]

In examining his films, it was obvious that he had given more thought to the potential of his art than any of his colleagues. It occurred to me that if he would, for the first time, agree to respond seriously to a systematic questionnaire, the resulting document might modify the American critics’ approach to Hitchcock. That is what this book is all about.

During a Hollywood press conference in 1947, Alfred Hitchcock talked about his art, which was about involving the audience and creating suspense. He said:

I aim to provide the public with beneficial shocks. Civilization has become so protective that we’re no longer able to get our goose bumps instinctively. The only way to remove the numbness and revive our moral equilibrium is to use artificial means to bring about the shock. The best way to achieve that, it seems to me, is through a movie.

Suspense is the essence of cinema and Hitchcock was a master of special effects before they were a thing, using images rather than dialogue to further a story. About dialogue he says:

In many of the films now being made, there is very little cinema: they are mostly what I call 'photographs of people talking.' When we tell a story in cinema we should resort to dialogue only when it's impossible to do otherwise. I always try to tell a story in the cinematic way, through a succession of shots and bits of film in between.

[...]

Dialogue should simply be a sound among other sounds, just something that comes out of the mouths of people whose eyes tell the story in visual terms.

He also understood that people don't want to be educated, nor do they want to be tricked — as he discovered in Sabotage, a flop.

Hitchcock was very creative; we can draw lessons for marketers from his recurring themes. Anyone interested in the art of storytelling should pick up a copy of Hitchcock, a wonderful collection of insights Truffaut elicited by being in conversation with a master of the art.

  from DIYS http://ift.tt/2mBOP0p

[repwinpril9y0a1]

Hitchcock and Truffaut in Conversation on the Art and Craft of Storytelling

In June 1962, French screenwriter, director, producer and actor François Truffaut wrote a letter to Alfred Hitchcock asking whether he might interview him in depth about his life and career. Truffaut proposed they meet to talk for a week of all day interviews. In the letter he stated his reasons:

Paris, 2 June 1962 Dear Mr Hitchcock, First of all, allow me to remind you who I am. A few years ago, in late 1954, when I was a film journalist, I came with my friend Claude Chabrol to interview you at the Saint-Maurice studio where you were directing the post-synchronization of To Catch a Thief. You asked us to go and wait for you in the studio bar, and it was then that, in the excitement of having watched fifteen times in succession a ‘loop’ showing Brigitte Auber and Cary Grant in a speedboat, Chabrol and I fell into the frozen tank in the studio courtyard. You very kindly agreed to postpone the interview which was conducted that same evening at your hotel. Subsequently, each time you visited Paris, I had the pleasure of meeting you with Odette Ferry, and for the following year you even said to me, ‘Whenever I see ice cubes in a glass of whisky I think of you.’ One year after that, you invited me to come to New York for a few days and watch the shooting of The Wrong Man, but I had to decline the invitation since, a few months after Claude Chabrol, I turned to film-making myself. I have made three films, the first of which, The Four Hundred Blows, had, I believe, a certain success in Hollywood. The latest, Jules et Jim, is currently showing in New York. I come now to the point of my letter. In the course of my discussions with foreign journalists and especially in New York, I have come to realize that their conception of your work is often very superficial. Moreover, the kind of propaganda that we were responsible for in Cahiers du cinéma was excellent as far as France was concerned, but inappropriate for America because it was too intellectual. Since I have become a director myself, my admiration for you has in no way weakened; on the contrary, it has grown stronger and changed in nature. There are many directors with a love for the cinema, but what you possess is a love of celluloid itself and it is that which I would like to talk to you about. I would like you to grant me a tape-recorded interview which would take about eight days to conduct and would add up to about thirty hours of recordings. The point of this would be to distil not a series of articles but an entire book which would be published simultaneously in New York (I would consider offering it, for example, to Simon and Schuster where I have some friends) and Paris (by Gallimard or Robert Laffont), then, probably later, more or less everywhere in the world. If the idea were to appeal to you, and you agreed to do it, here is how I think we might proceed: I could come and stay for about ten days wherever it would be most convenient for you. From New York I would bring with me Miss Helen Scott who would be the ideal interpreter; she carries out simultaneous translations at such speed that we would have the impression of speaking to one another without any intermediary and, working as she does at the French Film Office in New York, she is also completely familiar with the vocabulary of the cinema. She and I would take rooms in the hotel closest to your home or to whichever office you might arrange. Here is the work schedule. Just a very detailed interview in chronological order. To start with, some biographical notes, then the first jobs you had before entering the film industry, then your stay in Berlin. This would be followed by: 1. the British silent films; 2. the British sound films; 3. the first American films for Selznick and the spy films; 4. the two ‘Transatlantic Pictures’ 5. the Vistavision period; 6. from The Wrong Man to the The Birds.

The questions would focus more precisely on:

a) the circumstances surrounding the inception of each film; b) the development and construction of the screenplay; c) the stylistic problems peculiar to each film; d) the situation of the film in relation to those preceding it; e) your own assessment of the artistic and commercial result in relation to your intentions. There would be questions of a more general nature on: good and bad scripts, different styles of dialogue, the direction of actors, the art of editing, the development of new techniques, special effects and colour. These would be interspaced among the different categories in order to prevent any interruption in chronology. The body of work would be preceded by a text which I would write myself and which might be summarized as follows: if, overnight, the cinema had to do without its soundtrack and became once again a silent art, then many directors would be forced into unemployment, but, among the survivors, there would be Alfred Hitchcock and everyone would realize at last that he is the greatest film director in the world. If this project interests you, I would ask you to let me know how you would like to proceed. I imagine that you are in the process of editing The Birds, and perhaps you would prefer to wait a while? For my part, at the end of this year I am due to make my next films, an adaptation of a novel by Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451, which is why I would prefer the interviews to take place between 15 July and 15 September 1962. If you were to accept the proposition, I would gather together all the documents I would need to prepare the four or five hundred questions which I wish to ask you, and I would have the Brussels Cinémathèque screen for me those films of yours with which I am least familiar. That would take me about three weeks, which would mean I could be at your disposal from the beginning of July. A few weeks after our interviews, the transcribed, edited and corrected text would be submitted to you in English so that you might make any corrections that you considered useful, and the book itself would be ready to come out by the end of this year. Awaiting your reply, I beg you to accept, dear Mr Hitchcock, my profound admiration. I remain Yours sincerely, Francois Truffaut

Hitchcock's response was by telegram shortly after receiving the letter:

Dear Monsieur Truffaut – Your letter brought tears to my eyes and I am so grateful to receive such a tribute from you – Stop – I am shooting The Birds and this will continue until 15 July and after that I will have to begin editing which will take me several weeks – Stop – I think I will wait until we have finished shooting The Birds and then I will contact you with the idea of getting together around the end of August – Stop – Thank you again for your charming letter – Kind regards – Cordially yours – Alfred Hitchcock.

Because he spoke little English, Truffaut hired Helen Scott of the French Film Office in New York to translate. The conversations filled 50 hours of tape about 54 films. A partial set of audio files are here. At the time, Hitchcock wasn't as popular and yet he had already innovated the art of storytelling in movies.

The tapes are a record of the British director's opinions, ideas, and thoughts on both the stories he told through film and how he did it, including mistakes he felt he made and how he would 'fix' them, if he could. The interviews were published in a book in 1967. A revised edition of Hitchcock included the director's later career.

In the introduction, Truffaut says:

Nowadays, the work of Alfred Hitchcock is admired all over the world. Young people who are just discovering his art through the current rerelease of Rear Window and Vertigo, or through North by Northwest, may assume his prestige has always been recognized, but this is far from being the case. In the fifties and sixties, Hitchcock was at the height of his creativity and popularity. He was, of course, famous due to the publicity masterminded by producer David O. Selznick during the six or seven years of their collaboration on such films as Rebecca, Notorious, Spellbound, and The Paradine Case. His fame had spread further throughout the world via the television series Alfred Hitchcock Presents in the mid-fifties. But American and European critics made him pay for his commercial success by reviewing his work with condescension, and by belittling each new film.

[...]

In examining his films, it was obvious that he had given more thought to the potential of his art than any of his colleagues. It occurred to me that if he would, for the first time, agree to respond seriously to a systematic questionnaire, the resulting document might modify the American critics’ approach to Hitchcock. That is what this book is all about.

During a Hollywood press conference in 1947, Alfred Hitchcock talked about his art, which was about involving the audience and creating suspense. He said:

I aim to provide the public with beneficial shocks. Civilization has become so protective that we’re no longer able to get our goose bumps instinctively. The only way to remove the numbness and revive our moral equilibrium is to use artificial means to bring about the shock. The best way to achieve that, it seems to me, is through a movie.

Suspense is the essence of cinema and Hitchcock was a master of special effects before they were a thing, using images rather than dialogue to further a story. About dialogue he says:

In many of the films now being made, there is very little cinema: they are mostly what I call 'photographs of people talking.' When we tell a story in cinema we should resort to dialogue only when it's impossible to do otherwise. I always try to tell a story in the cinematic way, through a succession of shots and bits of film in between.

[...]

Dialogue should simply be a sound among other sounds, just something that comes out of the mouths of people whose eyes tell the story in visual terms.

He also understood that people don't want to be educated, nor do they want to be tricked — as he discovered in Sabotage, a flop.

Hitchcock was very creative; we can draw lessons for marketers from his recurring themes. Anyone interested in the art of storytelling should pick up a copy of Hitchcock, a wonderful collection of insights Truffaut elicited by being in conversation with a master of the art.

  from DIYS http://ift.tt/2mBOP0p

[porchenclose10019]

Hitchcock and Truffaut in Conversation on the Art and Craft of Storytelling

In June 1962, French screenwriter, director, producer and actor François Truffaut wrote a letter to Alfred Hitchcock asking whether he might interview him in depth about his life and career. Truffaut proposed they meet to talk for a week of all day interviews. In the letter he stated his reasons:

Paris, 2 June 1962 Dear Mr Hitchcock, First of all, allow me to remind you who I am. A few years ago, in late 1954, when I was a film journalist, I came with my friend Claude Chabrol to interview you at the Saint-Maurice studio where you were directing the post-synchronization of To Catch a Thief. You asked us to go and wait for you in the studio bar, and it was then that, in the excitement of having watched fifteen times in succession a ‘loop’ showing Brigitte Auber and Cary Grant in a speedboat, Chabrol and I fell into the frozen tank in the studio courtyard. You very kindly agreed to postpone the interview which was conducted that same evening at your hotel. Subsequently, each time you visited Paris, I had the pleasure of meeting you with Odette Ferry, and for the following year you even said to me, ‘Whenever I see ice cubes in a glass of whisky I think of you.’ One year after that, you invited me to come to New York for a few days and watch the shooting of The Wrong Man, but I had to decline the invitation since, a few months after Claude Chabrol, I turned to film-making myself. I have made three films, the first of which, The Four Hundred Blows, had, I believe, a certain success in Hollywood. The latest, Jules et Jim, is currently showing in New York. I come now to the point of my letter. In the course of my discussions with foreign journalists and especially in New York, I have come to realize that their conception of your work is often very superficial. Moreover, the kind of propaganda that we were responsible for in Cahiers du cinéma was excellent as far as France was concerned, but inappropriate for America because it was too intellectual. Since I have become a director myself, my admiration for you has in no way weakened; on the contrary, it has grown stronger and changed in nature. There are many directors with a love for the cinema, but what you possess is a love of celluloid itself and it is that which I would like to talk to you about. I would like you to grant me a tape-recorded interview which would take about eight days to conduct and would add up to about thirty hours of recordings. The point of this would be to distil not a series of articles but an entire book which would be published simultaneously in New York (I would consider offering it, for example, to Simon and Schuster where I have some friends) and Paris (by Gallimard or Robert Laffont), then, probably later, more or less everywhere in the world. If the idea were to appeal to you, and you agreed to do it, here is how I think we might proceed: I could come and stay for about ten days wherever it would be most convenient for you. From New York I would bring with me Miss Helen Scott who would be the ideal interpreter; she carries out simultaneous translations at such speed that we would have the impression of speaking to one another without any intermediary and, working as she does at the French Film Office in New York, she is also completely familiar with the vocabulary of the cinema. She and I would take rooms in the hotel closest to your home or to whichever office you might arrange. Here is the work schedule. Just a very detailed interview in chronological order. To start with, some biographical notes, then the first jobs you had before entering the film industry, then your stay in Berlin. This would be followed by: 1. the British silent films; 2. the British sound films; 3. the first American films for Selznick and the spy films; 4. the two ‘Transatlantic Pictures’ 5. the Vistavision period; 6. from The Wrong Man to the The Birds.

The questions would focus more precisely on:

a) the circumstances surrounding the inception of each film; b) the development and construction of the screenplay; c) the stylistic problems peculiar to each film; d) the situation of the film in relation to those preceding it; e) your own assessment of the artistic and commercial result in relation to your intentions. There would be questions of a more general nature on: good and bad scripts, different styles of dialogue, the direction of actors, the art of editing, the development of new techniques, special effects and colour. These would be interspaced among the different categories in order to prevent any interruption in chronology. The body of work would be preceded by a text which I would write myself and which might be summarized as follows: if, overnight, the cinema had to do without its soundtrack and became once again a silent art, then many directors would be forced into unemployment, but, among the survivors, there would be Alfred Hitchcock and everyone would realize at last that he is the greatest film director in the world. If this project interests you, I would ask you to let me know how you would like to proceed. I imagine that you are in the process of editing The Birds, and perhaps you would prefer to wait a while? For my part, at the end of this year I am due to make my next films, an adaptation of a novel by Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451, which is why I would prefer the interviews to take place between 15 July and 15 September 1962. If you were to accept the proposition, I would gather together all the documents I would need to prepare the four or five hundred questions which I wish to ask you, and I would have the Brussels Cinémathèque screen for me those films of yours with which I am least familiar. That would take me about three weeks, which would mean I could be at your disposal from the beginning of July. A few weeks after our interviews, the transcribed, edited and corrected text would be submitted to you in English so that you might make any corrections that you considered useful, and the book itself would be ready to come out by the end of this year. Awaiting your reply, I beg you to accept, dear Mr Hitchcock, my profound admiration. I remain Yours sincerely, Francois Truffaut

Hitchcock's response was by telegram shortly after receiving the letter:

Dear Monsieur Truffaut – Your letter brought tears to my eyes and I am so grateful to receive such a tribute from you – Stop – I am shooting The Birds and this will continue until 15 July and after that I will have to begin editing which will take me several weeks – Stop – I think I will wait until we have finished shooting The Birds and then I will contact you with the idea of getting together around the end of August – Stop – Thank you again for your charming letter – Kind regards – Cordially yours – Alfred Hitchcock.

Because he spoke little English, Truffaut hired Helen Scott of the French Film Office in New York to translate. The conversations filled 50 hours of tape about 54 films. A partial set of audio files are here. At the time, Hitchcock wasn't as popular and yet he had already innovated the art of storytelling in movies.

The tapes are a record of the British director's opinions, ideas, and thoughts on both the stories he told through film and how he did it, including mistakes he felt he made and how he would 'fix' them, if he could. The interviews were published in a book in 1967. A revised edition of Hitchcock included the director's later career.

In the introduction, Truffaut says:

Nowadays, the work of Alfred Hitchcock is admired all over the world. Young people who are just discovering his art through the current rerelease of Rear Window and Vertigo, or through North by Northwest, may assume his prestige has always been recognized, but this is far from being the case. In the fifties and sixties, Hitchcock was at the height of his creativity and popularity. He was, of course, famous due to the publicity masterminded by producer David O. Selznick during the six or seven years of their collaboration on such films as Rebecca, Notorious, Spellbound, and The Paradine Case. His fame had spread further throughout the world via the television series Alfred Hitchcock Presents in the mid-fifties. But American and European critics made him pay for his commercial success by reviewing his work with condescension, and by belittling each new film.

[...]

In examining his films, it was obvious that he had given more thought to the potential of his art than any of his colleagues. It occurred to me that if he would, for the first time, agree to respond seriously to a systematic questionnaire, the resulting document might modify the American critics’ approach to Hitchcock. That is what this book is all about.

During a Hollywood press conference in 1947, Alfred Hitchcock talked about his art, which was about involving the audience and creating suspense. He said:

I aim to provide the public with beneficial shocks. Civilization has become so protective that we’re no longer able to get our goose bumps instinctively. The only way to remove the numbness and revive our moral equilibrium is to use artificial means to bring about the shock. The best way to achieve that, it seems to me, is through a movie.

Suspense is the essence of cinema and Hitchcock was a master of special effects before they were a thing, using images rather than dialogue to further a story. About dialogue he says:

In many of the films now being made, there is very little cinema: they are mostly what I call 'photographs of people talking.' When we tell a story in cinema we should resort to dialogue only when it's impossible to do otherwise. I always try to tell a story in the cinematic way, through a succession of shots and bits of film in between.

[...]

Dialogue should simply be a sound among other sounds, just something that comes out of the mouths of people whose eyes tell the story in visual terms.

He also understood that people don't want to be educated, nor do they want to be tricked — as he discovered in Sabotage, a flop.

Hitchcock was very creative; we can draw lessons for marketers from his recurring themes. Anyone interested in the art of storytelling should pick up a copy of Hitchcock, a wonderful collection of insights Truffaut elicited by being in conversation with a master of the art.

  from DIYS http://ift.tt/2mBOP0p