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Sir: Several of your correspondents have recently castigated the films of Alfred Hitch- cock. None has mentioned that a dismissive judgment was delivered 61 years ago by Gra- ham Greene in . . . The Spectator.
On 15 May 1936, excoriating Hitchcock's The Secret Agent, Greene wrote, 'How unfortunate it is that Mr Hitchcock, a clever director, is allowed to produce and even to write his own films, though as a producer he has no sense of continuity and as a writer he has no sense of life. His films consist of a series of small "amusing" melo- dramatic situations: the murderer's button dropped on the baccarat board; the stran- gled organist's hands prolonging the notes in the empty church; the fugitives hiding in the bell-tower when the bell begins to swing. Very perfunctorily he builds up to these tricky situations (paying no attention on the way to inconsistencies, loose ends, psychological absurdities) and then drops them: they mean nothing: they lead to nothing.'
Brian Glanville
Times, 1 Pennington Street, London El
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