He Scares: The Family Life of the Greatest Horror Master
It is difficult to say anything new about the great director Alfred Hitchcock, but nevertheless the German film critic Tilo Vydra tries to offer an original perspective by examining the master of horror in tandem with his faithful life partner and colleague Alma Reville. Under this name, the only Mrs. Hitchcock (and indeed the only woman in his life, as Vydra confidently assumes) is listed in the credits of many Hitchcock films, although not all of them, which she influenced as a screenwriter, editor, editor, and most importantly — simply as the indisputable authority and arbiter of taste for Hitchcock. Critic Lidia Maslova presents the book of the week specifically for Izvestia.
Tilo Vidra
"Hitchcock: Alfred & Alma. 53 Films and 53 years of love"
Moscow : Kolibri : ABC, 2025. — translated from German by Maria Sokolskaya. - 448 p —
Sometimes in Vydra's book, it seems that Hitch, as the film critic often familiarly calls him, could not solve much at all without Alma. In the prologue, Vydra talks about the studio screening of the newly completed thriller "Psycho", to which the director brought the only person he trusts blindly, that is, his wife: "Without her, not a single preview, not a single reception of the so-called zero copy, and permission for replication is not given." Alma justifies her husband's trust beyond all expectations and discovers his fatal flaw: the lead actress Janet Lee, who has just been stabbed by a psychopath, continues to breathe, and the release of the film in this form is out of the question.
Having thus demonstrated Madame's extremely sharp eye, as Alma was often called in film crews, the author of the book rewinds the chronology back and tells in detail about the family background of Alfred and Alma, who got into cinema, which was just emerging as a full-fledged art, "from the plough," so to speak. This is especially true of Alma, who was brought by her apprentice father to the Twickenham Film Studio, where the 16-year-old tea girl, who served tea, quickly turned into a editing editor and script assistant (continuity girl). All this gives Alma away as a woman of remarkable abilities, with whom the future husband simply did not dare to speak in the first two years of working together at the Islington Film Studio: "She worked here for a long time, was incomparably more experienced. He immediately noticed her and soon found out that she was an installation specialist, engaged in cutting and fitting frames. She was small in stature, with dark red curls, wearing large glasses, and radiated optimism, energy, and intelligence. It seemed to him that she was frighteningly confident in herself. At that moment, he would rather bite off his tongue than talk to her." It is quite possible to assume that in the future, in order not to demonstrate her superiority too much, Alma chose a tactic of maximum modesty that was gentle towards Hitchcock's complexes: "Having become the wife of Alfred Hitchcock, the future master of suspense, Alma will fade into the shadows in the following years. It will be her choice, her will. And yet she will never become a woman behind her husband's back, but at least a woman next to her husband."
Important sources of information for Tilo Vidra were conversations with Alfred and Alma's daughter, Patricia Hitchcock, as well as with her children, Tere Karrubba and Mary Stone. Hitchcock's granddaughters excitedly tell how great they spent time with their grandparents: "We had the most ordinary family holidays — many people just can't seem to imagine it. We always had a good time with them, I remember on weekends we often sat on the couch in their living room and just chatted with each other after Sunday lunch until the evening." In addition, Vydra was not too lazy to watch the numerous home films of the Hitchcocks, stored in the Archives of the American Film Academy, and periodically retells them with deep emotion, although with elements of film studies: "The Hitchcocks' private cinema is sometimes characterized by pronounced comedy and absurdity. Dry English humor sometimes strays into the grotesque. They laugh a lot in their home videos. These shots, which were not intended for public display, still radiate sparkling, genuine fun when viewed in the Academy's archive. Their audience can't help but notice that Alma and Heech loved carnival disguises, whether it was playing with Pat or small garden parties for which a specific theme was assigned."
It seems that many authors of biographies would confirm that close communication with the hero's relatives can be fraught with bias: for exclusive information and materials from the family archive, one has to pay with careful filtering of information so as, God forbid, not to cast a shadow on the object of research. So Vydra's book is written in the blissful genre of a Christmas story, which is certainly interesting and instructive for those who dream of an ideal family life, and it warms the soul, but it gives little food to the mind, which involuntarily begins to suspect some one-sidedness and varnishing of reality in the proposed radiant pictures.
Director Alfred Hitchcock and Alma Revill showered with confetti after their wedding
However, unpleasant and evil people still appear in Vidra's book. Thus, Charles Bennett, a prolific playwright and long-term friend of the Hitchcock family, adds a drop of tar to this barrel of molasses (the author of the script for "Foreign Correspondent", who also participated in the work on many Hitchcock films of the 1930s: "The Man Who Knew Too Much", "The 39 Steps", "Sabotage"). Bennett Vydra severely reproaches for an outspoken comment about the work on the film "39 steps", which the playwright allowed himself in the 1990s, already in his old age: "Putting Alma in the credits as the author of a working script for Hitchcock was just a way to get more money. What exactly is a "working scenario"? Alma was a wonderful person, but I don't recall that she made a significant contribution to the creation of this film. What was really a huge plus when working with Hitchcock was the amazingly delicious food Alma cooked." Indignantly dismissing the attempt to present Alma as some kind of housewife, Vydra immediately balances Bennett's tactless confessions with a quote from an interview with Hitchcock: "With the help of my wife, I paint each script very carefully so that during filming I strictly follow it from beginning to end."
British director Alfred Hitchcock directs American actress Tippi Hedren, who sits at a typewriter on the set of his film.
Among the few other "dark spots" in Vydra's biopic is Hitchcock's relationship with Tippi Hedren, who starred in The Birds and in the much less successful kleptomaniac thriller Marnie. She is, as Vydra notes with a touch of condemnation, "the only Hitchcockian actress who talks about her collaboration with Hitchcock ambivalently, sometimes indignantly and generally contradictory." Another object of criticism is the Hollywood biographer Donald Spoto, who has not portrayed anyone, whom Patricia Hitchcock complains about as a liar, in whose book there is not a single reliable quote. And really, where would such quotes come from if Hitchcock's daughter proudly denied the greyhound writer "private information". However, I don't think Spoto would be too upset if this private, confidential information boils down to lavishly scattered general pathetic words about what an ideal symbiosis Patricia's parents were, created for each other.
How much wisdom, patience and heroic self-control was probably required by a small, fragile woman (Vidro and his confidantes tirelessly play on the contrast between Alma's physical diminutiveness and mental grandiosity) in order to coexist peacefully and fruitfully with the greatest director of our time for 53 years, one can only guess from accidentally dropped phrases ("sometimes Alma had a hard time because of the complex nature of Hitch") or at least according to the description of some of Hitchcock's eccentric habits. For example, in the morning, after drinking tea, he would break a cup, throwing it over his shoulder to calm his nerves. But on the other hand, it is quite possible that Hitchcock tried to sublimate all the darkest and most neurotic sides of his nature in films. So the precious wife really got the best and cutest part of his extraordinary personality, which suffered from a lack of normality, for which Hitchcock appreciated his wife above all: "The most unusual thing about Alma is, perhaps, her normality. Normality is now becoming a deviation from the norm. Alma is distinguished by her even character and vivacity, and no one saw her with a sour face. She doesn't talk much and only opens her mouth to say something kind and helpful."
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