Guillermo del Toro Reveals the Alfred Hitchcock Secrets That Changed How He Makes Movies

Director Guillermo del Toro has been obsessed with the work of Alfred Hitchcock for most of his life. This week, he’s sharing decades of research and obsession with the public through “Guillermo del Toro Dissects Hitchcock,” a series of screenings and lectures at the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures in Los Angeles.

Del Toro has selected five key Hitchcock works — “Notorious,” “Shadow of a Doubt,” “North by Northwest,” “I Confess,” and “Frenzy” — which are screening at the museum accompanied by in-depth introductions in which the Oscar-winning auteur is providing both historical context and his own visual and thematic analyses of the films, down to shot-by-shot breakdowns of important sequences. The retrospective began Thursday night with “Notorious” (1946), a movie that del Toro considers to be a pivotal moment in Hitchcock’s development as a Hollywood filmmaker.

Del Toro explained that before “Notorious,” Hitchcock’s collaborations with David O. Selznick — the legendary producer who first brought the British Hitchcock to America — had resulted from a creative tension between the two strong-willed personalities. On movies like “Rebecca” and “Spellbound,” Selznick micromanaged Hitchcock and sent him endless memos, some of which Hitchcock was able to resist by sheer attrition.

“He waited, stubborn and quiet, and eventually got his way,” del Toro told the Academy Museum audience, though he added that Hitchcock met his match in the tyrannical Selznick. “Selznick was the prototypical controlling producer. We talk about the frustrations Hitchcock felt during ‘Rebecca’ because it was a tug-of-war with Selznick. Selznick wanted to leave his signature above anyone else’s.”

So what changed on “Notorious”? According to del Toro, Selznick was so obsessed with — and buried under the financial weight of — his Western epic “Duel in the Sun” that he had to relinquish control over “Notorious” to Hitchcock and RKO Pictures, thus allowing Hitchcock to finally work freely with all the resources of a Hollywood studio at his disposal. The result was one of the director’s greatest films, an espionage thriller and romance that incorporated his most personal concerns while still delivering the goods as a mainstream suspense picture.

As part of his lecture, del Toro presented images from the Academy’s Margaret Herrick Library, where he found behind-the-scenes stills depicting the making of “Notorious.” He also drew a line between Hitchcock’s previous work and “Notorious,” and then between “Notorious” and later films like “Frenzy,” presenting clips showing how certain devices (like a crane shot that begins in the sky and lands on a small detail) evolved over the course of Hitchcock’s career.

Ingrid Bergman and director Alfred Hitchcock on the set of ‘Notorious’Courtesy Everett Collection

Del Toro also discussed the most famous romantic scene in “Notorious,” a lengthy kiss between Cary Grant and Ingrid Bergman that evaded the censors’ scissors with sly blocking and action that technically stayed within the boundaries of the Production Code but defied it in spirit. Del Toro pointed out that Hitchcock’s greatness as a director is evident not only in that scene but also in the way he calls back to it at the film‘s end — with a climax that repeats the rhythms in a different way, generating powerful emotional effects through pure cinema.

It’s this idea of Hitchcock as a practitioner of “pure cinema” that motivated del Toro to host the lecture series. “He’s one of the purest filmmakers that represents cinematic language,” del Toro said. “Why do I say this is important? Because I think the language of cinema is evaporating.  Most of the time when we discuss movies, we discuss them in terms that we inherit from dramaturgy. The plot, the screenplay, the characters. But think about all the fine arts. We don’t discuss them in those terms.”

Del Toro used the example of a Van Gogh painting, noting that “nobody says, ‘Well, it’s a couple of flowers in a vase.’ No, you discuss it in terms of the vigor of the tracery of the brushstroke, the richness of its color palette, and you discuss it formally and artistically in a language that befits the medium.” Del Toro believes that we’re losing the capacity to discuss film in this matter, which is why he wanted to celebrate Hitchcock at the Academy.

“Film is not about what it’s about or who it’s about,” del Toro said. “It doesn’t exist only in dramaturgical, social, or political terms. It exists as an art form that cannot be articulated in any other way but film.” Del Toro’s intention with the Hitchcock lectures is to shine a light on the kind of cinematic literacy he feels is in short supply and foster it among young filmmakers. “It will hopefully provoke in you the desire to watch movies again and again in a different way each time.”

Del Toro teased not only upcoming Hitchcock screenings but the promise of future lecture series now that he’s a member of the Academy Board of Governors. (One idea he floated was a program devoted to Luis Buñuel’s Mexican work.) “It’s up to us to renew the pact with cinema,” del Toro said. “It’s not up to the studios. You know, there are no old movies. There are only movies waiting for you to see them for the first time and make them new.”

“Guillermo del Toro Dissects Hitchcock” runs at the Academy Museum through June 28.