Rebecca McCallum is a writer, curator, podcaster and devoted student of Hitchcock’s cinema. She shall be presenting a season of Hitchcock films at the Pictureville Cinema on the 7th and 14th of March. You can book here.
Can you tell us a little about yourself and your relationship to the films of Alfred Hitchcock?
My name is Rebecca McCallum, I live in the northwest of the UK and I’m a writer, a speaker, a curator, and the creator and host of the Talking Hitchcock Podcast. I’ve written for Fangoria, Rue Morgue, Movement Pictures Film Club and Hemlock Books, online and in print. I co-hosted a BBC Radio programme called Hitchcock and Me and I’ve curated screenings and events across the UK, celebrating Hitchcock’s works, re-evaluating them as well, which is very important. That’s included outdoor screenings of The Birds (1963) at the Botanical Gardens with Flatpack Film Festival, which was terrific to be in that particular setting watching the film, gave it a completely different experience. I did a festival with Storyhouse Cinema in Chester entitled The Apartment Trilogy. We screened Rope (1948), Dial M for Murder (1954) and Rear Window (1954) over one weekend. That was terrific. I’ve done anniversary screenings of North by Northwest (1959) and Rear Window. Recently, I also screened some of the Hitchcock Presents episodes at Mocha Bird Cinema. I’ve spoken at and hosted two previous events at the Pictureville Cinema, which is why I’m so delighted to be returning. I was asked to speak at their Widescreen Weekend Film Festival where I introduced To Catch a Thief (1955), another amazing Hitchcock film and last year they hosted a special screening of Rebecca (1940) as part of their Cine Spotlight series.
I’ve also spoken at Hitch-Con, which is the largest international conference of its kind on the director. I’ve spoken there twice now, once about Rope and about the complexity of reading Rupert Cadell, the Jimmy Stewart character, as a hero or an anti-hero. And then last year I spoke about masculinity and crisis using Rear Window and Coppola’s The Conversation (1974). Although I’m a woman, I do talk a lot about masculinity. I get asked a lot about women in Hitchcock and I’m thrilled to talk about them, but I am also thrilled to talk about the men of Hitchcock as well, who are equally fascinating.
The podcast Talking Hitchcock is about celebrating not just the work of Hitchcock, but the world. There’s deep dives of the films. If anyone’s a fan of Notorious (1946), there’s five hours there to listen to. I dread what it’s going to be like when I get to Vertigo (1958); it probably needs its own podcast. I also look at everything adjacent, like costume design. I speak to historians, authors, architects, actors who’ve played Hitchcock roles on stage. So it’s about the films but also about the ripple effects that Hitchcock has in our modern world as well my own relationship, which is rooted in being drawn to his films for two reasons really; discovery and surrender. Hitchcock’s work is very distinguishable. It’s very of its own universe. It has its own themes, its own language, ideas, perspective. And that’s a world that I love being pulled into. It’s so entertaining. It’s also a very human experience watching Hitchcock’s films. He’s got a lot to say about what it means to be human. I also love how he has a collision between the ordinary and the extraordinary. I’m always in disbelief when people say I’m a scholar or an expert. I say “I’m a student forever”. That’s what propels my interest really.
The segments in your upcoming season at the Pictureville correspond to different eras of Hitchcock’s career. How easy was it to arrive at that structure and define those eras.
I sat down to build the programme and the festival idea. The implications were on my mind. What implications would there be? And what experience do I want to create for an audience? Part of the idea of the Four Seasons of Hitchcock was to serve that objective of looking at Hitchcock right from the beginning, from his early moments and map out where his creativity takes him across these four main phases of his filmography. I was curious as well to revisit these films that I’ve selected. In my talks, I will be speaking a lot about re-evaluating these film texts, looking at them again with a critical eye to see what does it reveal about Hitchcock the artist, but also Hitchcock the man. I had so many ideas. If you speak to the wonderful programmer at Pictureville, Rebecca Hill, she’ll tell you that I pitched her a whole dossier of ideas and she loved them all. We’ve got a few that we are planning to return to, so that’s something to look out for. But the idea for this came naturally because I just started with what would I like to see? Then there’s the obvious films that are screened time and time again, and for good reason. One of those is in this programme. But I’ve never experienced or heard of a festival that looked at his career using this concept. So I think as soon as I built in the four periods (the silent, the British, the Hollywood, and the final years), it’s just finding the films that corresponded with my aims.
Let’s have a look through the programme, starting with The Lodger (1927), Hitchcock’s third feature film, but the film he considered to be the first true Hitchcock movie. How developed is his style at this stage in his career?
This is the very reason that I selected it because it’s all there. Hitchcock’s preoccupations are all here; his themes, his motifs, his experimentalism as well. A lot of people remark to me, “oh, if you’ve seen one Hitchcock film, they’re all the same”. And I say “no, resolutely no”. There’s so much experimentation going on; technical flourishes, the immersive way in which he tells stories. The Lodger was very important to me because I feel his directorial voice is on pretty much full display and he’s in a unique position because this is a silent film. Having a career that crosses from Silent Cinema to talking pictures to colour and even 3D, I believe that without this silent area era in Hitchcock’s career he just wouldn’t be making films in this way he does. Pure Cinema, his own term, I don’t believe would exist if we didn’t have this early foundation. I think he calls it filmed emotion. That’s what it is.
You then come to the sound era with The 39 Steps (1935), and specifically this is the British sound era. Hitchcock claimed to be American trained when he referred to his early work, referring to his early work at Gainsborough when it was still owned by Paramount. Is there something quintessentially British about The 39 Steps? Or does this particular film play like an early version of his Hollywood thrillers?
I think perhaps there is an argument for it sitting on the cusp of both. Maybe we can only see that again in retrospect, which is another argument for this programme. There are a lot of echoes of The 39 Steps in later Hitchcock films, most famously, North by Northwest, but also many others, which I will be talking about in my introduction. I think it is Hitchcock in his British period at his best. He’s at his most sharpened and his most polished. I think the British sensibility is there, but it’s a real standout at this time. It has a great combination of suspense and screwball comedy. He’s trying something new with this episodic approach. It feels very familiar to us now, all these ingredients, but actually, if you look back prior to The 39 Steps, he is doing something quite daring and quite unique at this point in his career. He’s given us Richard Hannay; a very complete, well-rounded protagonist, a very strong early example of a Hitchcock protagonist. In Hitchcock’s interview with Truffaut, Truffaut spoke about The 39 Steps marking the point where Hitchcock attaches less importance to plot and more to emotion, which Hitchcock agreed with. We’re back to that film’s emotion, which is Hitchcock really putting his audiences at the centre of his art.
Do you think Hitchcock’s humour and well-known public persona helped him push the envelope in terms of acceptability in his Hollywood era?
Exactly! He’s always undercutting this gruesome, grotesque, macabre… I mean, Rope‘s a brilliant case in point. He makes things that should be really uncomfortable feel like entertainment. And he does that through complicitness. Rope‘s a great example because we see right at the very beginning what’s happened. I won’t spoil it for anyone, just in case, because Rope is a favourite of mine but we see right at the beginning what’s happened; therefore we are complicit. And so I think he loves to put his audiences in that space of this winking nature that he has. I think he gets away with a lot with that sense of humour in Rope. Also, it’s a beautiful piece of casting to put Jimmy Stewart in that role. A lot of people see Stewart’s character in terms of where the film goes, that he comes out looking heroic. But for me, it’s a very problematic character. It’s a very dark and troubling character. I think Hitchcock wouldn’t have gotten away with that if he didn’t cast the boy next door, the good old American Jimmy Stewart in that role. That’s another beautiful example of how he’s always subverting. And yes, he totally curated his public image and it’s a stroke of genius. You could tack onto that his film cameos; another way of trademarking himself, of creating this signature and of reminding people, “hey, in case you forgot, this is a Hitchcock film”.
How difficult was it to choose Rear Window as the one to represent the Hollywood era?
Oh, it was incredibly difficult. Rope is a favourite but Vertigo‘s my true favourite. We’re just spoiled in this era. The Birds, North by Northwest, I could have screened any of them. But I screened Rear Window quite a few times in the last couple of years and the fact that I continue to screen it and continue to have conversations with audiences who observe things I’ve missed… audiences connect very strongly with this film. I feel it has a lot to say to a modern audience so that’s why it wasn’t a hard choice.
Coming after of The Lodger and The 39 Steps, what impression will the audience get of the opportunities or even limitations that the Hollywood system afforded Hitchcock?
I think it’s clear by 1954 that studios recognize Hitchcock’s ability for storytelling and for connecting with audiences. In coming to america, he makes Rebecca another milestone moment. He continues to build on that, leading up to Rear Window. I think he solidifies his storytelling even further here. Rear Window encapsulates his interests. It seems like Cornell Woolrich’s story was written for him. It’s so perfect. And, I think working inside the Hollywood system, he made the best of everything. He had the most dedicated and most exceptional team of people that he surrounded himself with. And it’s important when we talk about Hitchcock that we’re not just talking about one person. We’re talking about cinematographers, costume designers, actors, composers, all these people that he trusts. He wasn’t an interfering director; he trusted the people that he put in those positions to support him.
The studio system obviously works for Hitch. It serves him well. We spoke about restriction, but I think Hitchcock works really well under restriction. Restricted environments, the Hayes code…We’ll touch on Frenzy (1972), a film with a lot less restriction and arguably a very different film in many respects, which is fascinating. But I think he just works better when he has restrictions because he’s great at suggestion. I think very highly of Frenzy but on the whole, he’s someone that works well under these more limited conditions, probably because he gets to be more inventive.
The final film is Frenzy, from a much later point in his career, after his return to England. To what extent does Frenzy feel like a culmination of his work? And is there a sense of homecoming to the UK within it?
100%. I’m going to tease what I’m going to talk about in my introduction. That’s all about returning for many, many reasons. This was the first film that I wanted to screen. It’s very overlooked in terms of programming, but within the Hitchcock world, the corridors of whispers, it’s received a lot of reappraisal and there are a lot more conversations happening around it. Its placement to me is fascinating in terms of what it can tell us about Hitchcock at that time. He starts to slow down his filmmaking. We have less output in these final years, and he comes back to London after 20 plus years. I think he did Stage Fright in 1950, then this is 72. And when you say culmination, there’s a lot of those key themes that are here. The wrong man accused, notions of sex and death, doubling, food is very key in Frenzy, and I’ve developed a very exciting new theory about food and Frenzy that I’ll be sharing in my introductory talk. It’s a very different quality of film to the Hollywood phase. People who come to Rear Window will say “oh, Hollywood” and then Frenzy is a completely different beast. It’s gritty, it’s grimy, there’s no glitz and glamour here; there’s no real stars. It’s almost got a documentarian style to it. I continually revisit this film and certainly it’s being spoken of more, as I said, but it doesn’t get the same exposure. So I want to shine a light on it. And I’m very curious to hear what audiences have to say about it.
Hollywood had fundamentally changed by that point. The studio system was giving way to the emergent New Hollywood directors. How did Hitchcock fit into that new focus and indeed the emergence of auteur theory? One would have thought that Hitchcock would almost have been a precursor to that thinking.
I would agree, but I would not include him in that set. To me, Hitchcock is a genre of its own. Screening Frenzy is going to be interesting. I mentioned the Hayes Code before. Obviously, this is now lifted and we’re working in the 70s, a period in cinema that’s very nihilistic. There’s a lot of nudity and violence on screen now. The representation of women in Frenzy is certainly something that I will be digging into. Just because I’m a fan of this film, doesn’t mean that I don’t have things to say about the dichotomy of what’s going on in the representation of women. I do feel that Hitchcock encourages a lot of alignment to the females in this film. That being said, they also do suffer. But they prove to be very resilient, very vigilant women as well. Rather than advocating for the mistreatment of women, it seems to me Hitchcock is holding up that mistreatment for us to see as a cinematic mirror.
This might be an audience member’s first experience of Alfred Hitchcock’s films. They’ve never seen a Hitchcock film before and they’ve seen this as a break into the whole thing. What impression do you think they’ll walk away from the weekend with?
I hope so. I so hope that there are some first-timers. They are my favourites. That will make me so incredibly happy and so excited. My hope is that they are stirred by these films or that it inspires a curiosity within them to go and fill in some gaps. I hope that they’re drawn into that same universe and they feel that sense of surrender and entertainment. I hope above all that they’re just taken away somewhere for 90 minutes to two hours. Ultimately, I’d like to think this festival would be a stepping stone towards them creating their own Hitchcock journey.
Four Seasons of Hitchcock shall be held at the Pictureville Cinema in Bradford on the 7th and 14th of March. Book your tickets here.