Spellbound

Jesse Lasky

The Strange Case of Alfred Hitchcock Raymond Durgnat (Faber and Faber £5.50) Take One Mervyn LeRoy (W. H. Allen £3.50)

"Anyone can become a film director,said Sergei Eisenstein. Two new biographies (one auto) hardly support the great Russian director's remark.

The Strange Case of Alfred Hitchcock examines a strange and exceptional man. If you knew Hitchcock (I was one of his writers on his 1936 production of Secret Agent) or meet the "master of suspense" through the pages of this book you'll grab that word strange like a rich uncle's will. So many elements fuse in the Hitchcock talent. Technique, irony, comedy, horror, sagacity and something more, the unique personal stamp that would make his work recognisable without the credit card loosely tagged, "the Hitchcock touch." It is a way of filling and juxtaposing frames of film that is special and his own.

This fascinating book analyses his methods with microscopic attention. Mr Durgnat works in depth, neglecting no clue that can contribute to the understanding and appreciation of his subject.

The man I knew had not yet won the attention of serious film critics. He seemed cryptic, enigmatic, ambivalent. He couldn't always articulate what he wanted or why he hadn't liked a scene, but he knew instantly when it was right for him. The enigma is clarified in this book, for the author has done his homework magnificently, omitting no quote of critic or colleague that can illuminate the overall portrait. No light gossipy anecdotal movie book, this but a post mortem on every Hitchcock film, great and less great, and the key to a complex personality, honed on Jesuitry and steeped in showmanship. Mr Durgnat explores the dimensions of dementia as glimpsed in such psychological cliffhangers as Psycho.

Hitchcock's damsels in distress were seldom caught dead in any old dress. They were frequently fashionably feminine, erotically elegant, their treacheries and trials enhanced by stunning good looks. No frowsy bawds and tarty tramps, the director most always finds lovely ladies like Madeleine Carroll, Grace Kelly, Eve Marie Saint, Tippi Hedren, Margaret Lockwood, and Joan Fontaine, or Marlene, cast to type. But the image of the fragile, almost glacial creature hiding her more basic qualities behind a precision accent, and schooled to a finish in dress and tea-pouring, became as much his hallmark as those inevitable brief appearances of Hitchcock himself, a passing stranger. Raymong Durgnat shrewdly observes "mixtures of contrarieties" yet always (or almost) those "certain key polarities."

The films themselves? Murder, The Thirty Nine Steps, Secret Agent, Sabotage, The Lady Vanishes, and that first costume piece, Jamaica Inn, stand out in the English period, leading to Rebecca, Foreign Correspondent, Suspicion, Saboteur, Shadow of a Doubt, Spellbound, Notorious, The Parading Case, Rope, Under Capricorn, Stage Fright, Strangers on a Train, I Confess, Dial M for Murder, Rear Window, To Catch a Thief, The Trouble with Harry, The Wrong Man, The Man Who Knew Too Much, Vertigo, North-by-North-West, Pyscho, The Birds, Mamie, Torn Curtain, Topaz, Frenzy . . . in this book they are valued, synopsised, and

appraised.

Meticulous sleuthing reveals a synthesis. It draws demarcation lines between different

times and places, revealing the chanes between the early English period, the Amer.'" can period first and second.... We see growth through the conclusions of various authmities, the revaluations of Eric Rohmer and Claude Chabrol in quotes from Cahiers du cinema, and the observations of such widely ranged admirers as David Selznick and Francois gruffault. For the serious cinemaddict this book is a 'must.' For the casual reader, it is an. introduction into the fascinating world 01 cinemaddiction.

It is the complete appreciation of a master entertainer whose moon had a dark side and

whose touch for suspense was and is, at beat, unmatched by any artist of his time. No, Mr Eisenstein, you and Alfred Hitchcock have been proof, if needed, that anyone could not become a film director.

As the author states: "Always an entertainer whose work can on occasion reach a degree

of sophistication and intensity . . . sufficient truth, urgency and challenge to qualify as a significant artist." Observations profound. Points entertainingly taken. And while we're on about directors Take One, the title of another new book, the auto biography of Mervyn LeRoy (as told to Dick Kleiner). Mervyn was my father's first cousin, and generously acknowledges the helping hand of his relative who set Mervyn's feet on the Hollywood trail to fame and fortune. Here is a very different portrait of a director, a self-portrait without soul-searching, a re

collection of trials and tribulations up the

ladder of show business, that reveals an ebul' lient personality. This happy fellow seems tO have enjoyed every moment of his careerclimb. This makes it enjoyable reading, and furnishes a happier than usual picture of old HollyWood ungarnished by bitter herbs.

Mervyn's earliest memory is of the San Francisco fire, and earthquake, when as a boY he saw his father wiped out in all but physical

body. He progressed up the, classic route through vaudeville into early, movies. Cousin

Jesse Lasky's helping hand became also a

hindrance, since any relative of the big boss was always suspect of being an incompetent

idiot hoisted by nepotism, or a secret agent

reporting on his fellows to the ear, of God. Since Mervyn was able, ambitious, personable

and unconspiratorial he soon lifted 'off that

first stepping stone to soar on his own. He learned films from wardrobe department

through acting into directing. He was alreadY a solid success when he married the boss's daughter, a Warner of Warner Brothers. He

turned out films that hold a firm place in Hollywood history. Little Caesar, I Am A Rt. gitive From A Chain Gang, Gold Digger of

1933, Wizard of Oz were among those that made stock holders of the companies he worked for (and audiences) happy. one of his

lesser successes was a John Wayne-Claudette Colbert comedy for Lasky, called Without Reservations. It is typical of the nice guY Mervyn that he stepped from important directorial jobs to a lower budget feature to helP out the relative whose star had waned.

Critics may have had reservations about Without Reservations, but anyone who reads this enjoyable book will not disagree with the conclusion in Jack Warner's foreword. This was "a great director and a nice guy." The two have not always gone hand in hand.

Mervyn LeRoy unlike many Hollywoodians has come into the fullness of years with fame and fortune intact.

Yes, Mr Warner it couldn't happen to a nicer guy.

Jesse L. Lasky, Jr, who has written sorne sixty films in Hollywood, including The Ten Commandments, has most recently written Whatever Happened to Hollywood?