The “indispensable” scene Alfred Hitchcock refused to cut: “I took a very firm stand”
It’s a sign of the mark Alfred Hitchcock made on cinema that when you mention ‘The Master’ in the context of filmmaking, people know exactly who you’re talking about. His list of astonishing movies is longer than any other director and over a longer period of time, using techniques and shots that would prove influential for almost every person who has ever directed a film ever since.
He implicitly understood what the audience wanted to see and often showed them things they didn’t even know they wanted to see. He would always place the power of a twisting story at the forefront of every film and even when the subject matter was dark or menacing, Hitchcock would underpin it with a devilish wit.
It’s almost impossible to decide what films might make up a definitive list of his greatest, but there are certainly some that have gone down in history as unequivocally his finest. Those include Vertigo, The Birds and the seminal horror Psycho, in addition to the 1959 thriller North by Northwest, which certainly, visually, is one of the most influential films in history.
The fourth and final film that Hitchcock made, starring Cary Grant, is a spy film that even has opening credits that are iconic, with a score by Citizen Kane’s Bernard Herrmann and featuring the first use in a movie of kinetic typography, essentially animated text.
The film tells the story of Grant’s character Roger Thornhill, an advertising executive who is chased across America by a spy after he is mistakenly outed as a government agent. On the way, he meets the mysterious and beautiful Eva Marie Saint (still alive by the way at the age of 101), who plays the femme fatale, leading him to his fate.
Probably most famous for its chase scene involving Grant scampering away from an ominous, dive-bombing biplane, the movie’s denouement takes place at Mount Rushmore, where America’s most decorated presidents are carved into the cliff face.
And Hitchcock had to fight hard to keep his vision of the ending intact, revealing: “In this picture nothing was left to chance, and that’s why, when it was over, I took a very firm stand. I’d never worked for MGM before, and when it was edited, they put on a lot of pressure to have me eliminate a whole sequence at the end of the picture. I refused.”
The scene in question is where Eva Marie Saint’s character pretends to shoot at Cary Grant in order to save his life, before Grant realises she is working for the CIA.
Explained Hitchcock: “My contract had been drawn up by MCA, my agents, and when I read it over, I found that, although I hadn’t asked for it, they’d put in a clause giving me complete artistic control of the picture, regardless of production time, cost or anything. So I was able to say politely, ‘I’m very sorry, but this sequence must remain in the picture.’”
Hitchcock’s Psycho meanwhile was released 65 years ago to the day and continues to influence horror and thriller directors on an almost weekly basis. A particularly graphic and violent film, especially for the time it was made in 1960, Hitchcock unusually had his main protagonist killed less than halfway into the movie in the shower scene that remains one of the most shocking in cinema history.
