Oh dear, Mike hasn't changed his position on this in years! But in fact
Hitchcock's interview with Truffaut surely remains the most salient of all
books on Hitchcock's films, and is to be brushed aside by scholars at their
peril, i.e., at the risk of not seeing the forest for the trees and/or of
talking nonsense!
Ultimately, of course, the book exists to illuminate how Hitchcock's mind
worked and to thereby provide a key to the inventiveness and facility of a
cinematic genius (for which, see Stirling Silliphant on working with
Hitchcock, in 'BackStory 3', edited by Pat McGilligan - the relevant passage
is on the Web and can be Googled). Once Hitchcock saw how all life is grist
to the mill of 'pure film', he was freed to invent 'forms'. ('Hitchcock is
the greatest inventor of forms in the history of the cinema' - Claude
Chabrol.) Someone has said of Leonardo that he literally saw everything -
life, his work - in terms of swirling motion, and I think there's an analogy
to be drawn there with Hitchcock (who was trained in graphic art and
mechanical engineering).
May I take this opportunity to mention to 'Film-Philosophy' readers that my
"Editor's Week" blogging on Hitchcock resumed last May - after I had been
away for eight months (URL below). Also, that my monograph on Hitchcock's
THE BIRDS (35,000 words, including an appendix on Hitchcock and the
principle of sufficient reason) comes out in, I think, the next few days, as
a downloadable e-book, in 'Senses of Cinema' #51. ('Top-drawer stuff' -
David Sterritt. 'An absolute joy to read' - Scott Murray.)
- Ken Mogg
http://www.labyrinth.net.au/~muffin/news-home_c.html
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