Cinema Quarterly (1933 - 1934)

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ALFRED HITCHCOCK on MUSIC IN FILMS In an Interview with STEPHEN WATTS When the British student of intelligent cinema turns to survey the creative side of film-making in his own country the names available for reference are pathetically few. Even ranging over the whole of the talkie's short history he can probably produce a bare half-dozen, say (alphabetically for safety!) Asquith, Dupont, Grierson, Hitchcock, Korda, and Saville, and only the two last-named of these can be regarded, at the moment, as contributors to the ordinary cinema. But the arrival of Waltzes from Vienna and the news that he has joined the Gaumont-British organization bring back to prominence the name of Alfred Hitchcock. His return to active direction is almost accidental. After his term as production supervisor at British International — a regrettable, fallow period for the keen intelligence which gave us Blackmail and Murder — and his signing a contract for Korda, he was approached by Tom Arnold, the theatrical manager, to supervise the filming of Waltzes from Vienna. The step from that to actually directing it was taken because the subject interested Hitchcock so much. It sounds strange that the most unremittingly cinematic of our directors, the realist and humanist, Hitchcock, should undertake what seemed like simply the rendering into celluloid of a stage musical success. The clue is in that word "musical". He saw here a chance to do two things : to try out some of his ideas about the relation of music to the film, and try to prove that a film that is a film can be created out of a ready-made theatre subject. It was of these beliefs and theories about music and the film that Hitchcock talked to me, illustrating his points with instances from the film he was then busily engaged on cutting. "The arrival of talkies, as you know, temporarily killed action in pictures," he began, "but it did just as much damage to music. 80