Read Online It's Only a Movie: Alfred Hitchcock by Charlotte Chandler - Free Book Online

other, but they weren’t love letters. They were letters about filmmaking.” They enjoyed meetings of the London Film Society. A young actor named John Gielgud was also a member and film enthusiast. Many years later, he told me, “It was where we went to see the highbrow movies.” One of the founders was Sidney Bernstein, a distributor who immediately noticed and liked Alfred Hitchcock. This was the best opportunity to see what was going on throughout the world in film. The Russian cinema was important to Hitchcock, who particularly noted its use of montage.
    Hitchcock was an enthusiastic, committed theatergoer. Many of the actors he saw on the stage at that time would later appear, sometimes more than once, in his films. Among them were Tallulah Bankhead, Edmund Gwenn, Leo G. Carroll, Gladys Cooper, Sara Allgood, Isabel Jeans, Ian Hunter, Miles Mander, John Williams, and Ivor Novello.
    Woman to Woman was the first of five films on which Hitchcock and Alma worked together. It was a joyful time for them, although, as Alma added, “It was somewhat marred because director Graham Cutts was not our cup of tea. He didn’t appreciate Hitch, he knew very little, and actually we carried him. Then, he resented it. He was jealous of Hitch, who was intuitive and perfectly understood everything technical. Cutts was ready to depend on others, but not to share credit.”
    The film was a great success, encouraging Gainsborough to follow it with The Passionate Adventure and The White Shadow, again with Hitchcock as assistant director, though uncredited, and art director of The White Shadow. Hitchcock also adapted the stage play and, with Alma, wrote the screenplay, again uncredited. The film was unsuccessful, and Cutts complained to producer Michael Balcon that Hitchcock was undermining his authority on the set. Balcon, however, was impressed by the young man, who seemed to be saving him money by doing so many jobs so well.
    After the success of Woman to Woman, Balcon made a low offer in a bid to purchase the Islington facilities, not expecting Paramount to accept, but they did. Balcon had the idea that the only way to run a successful film company in England was to own the studio facilities.
    In 1924, Hitchcock was sent by Balcon to Berlin as assistant director on The Prude’s Fall, an Anglo-German production again directed by Cutts. Alma was sent as Hitchcock’s assistant.
    At UFA (Universum-Film Aktien Gesellschaft), the great German studio founded by Universal in Neubabelsberg, they were able to watch F. W. Murnau directing The Last Laugh ( Der letzte Mann ), as well as Fritz Lang, G. W. Pabst, and other important German directors. Hitchcock learned from the German technicians as they worked.
    At that time, UFA was more artistically and technically advanced in filmmaking than England, and was challenging Hollywood. Murnau was generous to Hitchcock, answering whatever questions he asked, explaining what he was doing, inviting him to watch the filming, and encouraging him in his career. Murnau’s influence on Hitchcock would last a lifetime, according to Hitchcock: “From Murnau, I learned how to tell a story without words.”
    Aboard the ship returning from Germany where they had been scouting locations for The Prude’s Fall, Hitchcock had determined he would ask Alma to marry him “before our feet touched English soil.” He hoped that she would still feel somewhat carried away by their odyssey. His plan was complicated by her bout of seasickness. It was almost continuous from the moment they boarded the ship, which made Hitchcock hesitate. Even if the situation was not as romantic as he might have wished, he wondered if her weakened condition might help his cause, lowering her resistance. He could not imagine his future life without Alma. He had never before felt so comfortable with a woman. He realized that she was socially graceful, as he believed he could never be, and he felt that she could have anyone in the world she