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Keeping you in the dark:






Saul Bass and Alfred Hitchcock
genius vs. the mediocre



mere theories?
if I'm wrong



The first Hitchcock movie I saw was To Catch A Thief . How disappointing - everybody had been raving about how good this guy Hitchcock was - but I had seen many much better films. It opens with a sequence where a cat walks on a tile roof, which made the audience laugh. Still can't see what's so funny about that.
To me, Hitchcock was stark staring mad. He not only carried on like he was a maniac, he really was one. He was also much too fat. Not a sympathetic character at all. I'll quote you some out of Alexander Walker's book on la Hepburn maggiore, Audrey - her real story :

All Hitchcock had told [Hepburn] of the role was that she would play a courtroom lawyer [...] who defends her father when he is accused of murder. [...] Hitchcock had assured her, in the tone he used when wheedling actresses into doing what he wanted, that she would make 'a very pretty Portia' [...] What he neglected to tell her was that the plot would require her to be sexually assaulted. The pleasures that come from assaulting well-bred ladies in motion pictures were not then as well recognized a Hitchcock trademark as [later]. (page 166/7)
Audrey took her first comprehensive look at the complete script of the Hitchcock film. In her present state, having just lost a child, she reacted with disbelieving horror. Her character was going to be raped in a London park. (page 169)
She could not - and resolved she would not - play this part. But she had signed a contract with Hitchcock. [...] There was only one way out of the dilemma - and it did not require the threat of litigation to make Audrey embrace it. She became pregnant again. [...] With bad grace he tore up the agreement - and forever held it against her, considering it a deliberately engineered breach of contract.

Then, Hitchcock has made the most terrible trash. Sure, everybody has ups and downs, but a very minor Kurosawa movie is a very good film. Some of what Hitchcock made is really not worth looking at in almost every sense. It's often heard that you shouldn't judge somebody by their bad products, but that's a show biz dictum I can't agree with.To Catch a Thief was followed up with The Trouble with Harry , The Man Who Knew too Much and The Wrong Man ; not bad movies, but especially the last one practically forgotten. It was a great surprise to have the next one turn out to be not only the most beautiful movie Hitchcock ever made, but a real masterpiece:

There are so many fine visuals in this movie that it made me jump to the conclusion that, somehow, Saul Bass had his hand in it. Well, I was wrong, as Stefan Blau assures me - and he ought to know. Examples: There is a most weird shot, when James Stewart for the second time kisses Kim Novak for the first time. The camera dollies around the couple in a hotel room, and on behind them we see the setting of their first first kiss. It may have been done with a revolving plateau for the actors and rear projection or a moving matte/bluescreen. And the music!
I had my suspicions about several other details. The light that keeps diminishing in the bookshop. The wave crashing behind an embrace. A cloud of pigeons coming by at exactly the right moment. All of these, I graciously and even happily concede, could very well have been thought of by Hitch. There are just so many of them.
The nightmare has been done by John Ferren.

Same here; I was convinced Saul Bass had at least one finger in the pie of the famous scene in the corn fields,
where Cary Grant is attacked by a crop-dusting plane. Well, after all, maybe he did?




The hand of the master is all over.





The famous bathroom murder storyboard was admittedly done by Saul Bass.
There are claims that Hitchcock directed it, and in a way that can only be correct.
Must have been done on a rostrum camera from a b/w photograph.

When Janet [Leigh] was making Psycho, I'd go on the set and watch them work. Hitchcock had everything planned down to the smallest detail, and he came to the set each day absolutely prepared. Every shot in the movie was laid out on a storyboard. He would set up the stage and the cameras and show the cameraman the drawings, and they would match the shots exactly. That shower scene, for example, was pure geometry—this intricate combination of angles and body parts that rose up somehow in his brain. Then he just plugged the actors into the mathematical equation. Some actors didn't like it because it wasn't personal enough for them. They didn't think they had enough room to be creative. His singleness of purpose and concentration were too demanding for them. But we all know now how effective that method was. Tony Curtis - The Autobiography, London 1994

Funny how Curtis never thinks about who actually must have made all those drawings, and in exactly whose brain this intricate combination of angles and body parts somehow rose up. Incidentally, his story also explains how they managed to make Psycho on such a tight budget.

Mother is found in the cellar. The movement of the light bulb totally confuses the audience.
One of the great shockers in motion picture history. And the music!

According T.M.F. Steen in Dutch Skoop magazine 5/4, March 1968, Psycho is for, say, 90% Saul Bass' movie. Again, Stefan Blau disagrees, but I'm not at all so sure here. My final guess is, first, that Saul after delivering all those delicacies gratis, wanted, and got, some credit for Psycho, which was grudgingly granted; second, that Hitchcock, like many other directors, then got sick and tired of everybody writing enthusiastically practically only about the wonderful titles and splendid music in his movies. Unlike Otto Preminger, who did not seem to care at all - a totally different character. Hitchcock may have been just plain jealous. He also got rid of composer Bernard Herrmann for what many feel is the same reason.

What we need to settle these questions is the forthcoming book by Saul Bass' daughter, which is months, what do I say - years! overdue already.

After this remarkable trio, Hitchcock went on to make
The Birds , which at least had a very good script by Evan Hunter;
Marnie , a boring piece of Freudian nonsense,
Torn Curtain , a spy drama nobody wants to remember,
Family Plot , which I thought much better again,
and, in London, Frenzy which was really bad -
a good illustration of how a director's name ultimately depends on the film crews working for him.

Movies	the most complete list of Saul Bass' movie work around dates, directors, alphabetical listing, posters, ads, record sleeves, book designs - the works
Logos & Trademarks	some of these may surprise you
More Movie Graphics	honor where honor is due: more good artists in this field
Screen Aspect Ratios	how you hardly ever see a movie as it was meant to be seen
Bass Business Bust	how the Dutch never got to see The Searching Eye
Bass Books	Books on, about and by Bass

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