2013 CAPA Summer Movie Series (Columbus, OH)

It’s my favorite time of year in central Ohio, or nearly. CAPA, our local arts organizing group, has announced its lineup for the 2013 Summer Movie Series held in Downtown Columbus’ historic Ohio Theatre. For those of you unfamiliar with this seasonal gem, the June 28 through Aug. 25 series features a plethora of classic movies shown in the theater that was originally built as a movie house and is now used for concerts, ballets, etc.

Among this year’s offerings are two Hitchcock movies, which you know delights me. The wonderfully amusing The Trouble with Harry, To Catch a Thief and the Jimmy Stewart rendition of The Man Who Knew Too Much will certainly be on my schedule.

Other prize showings include An American in Paris, Grand Hotel, Citizen Kane, Bonnie and Clyde, The Thin Man, 1974′s The Great Gatsby, and Touch of Evil.

I have been notoriously bad about achieving all the CAPA Summer Movie Attendance goals I have set in years past, and I won’t pretend this year will be any better. I do hope to at least catch the Hitchcock flicks, but I’ll admit The Man Who Knew Too Much won’t be at the top of my list.

Feature: Hitchcock’s Recipe

I discovered this brilliant video on the ModCloth blog. It was apparently created by students at the University of Applied Sciences and Arts in Hannover and is wildly entertaining and insightful, for those who are well versed in the ways of Alfred Hitchcock. Seeing as my blog is named after a technique of the great director, I thought it only fitting to share it with you. It’s certainly worth watching more than once to enjoy all the details contained therein. Enjoy!

Feature: A Movie Through Its Posters — Psycho

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Psycho is one of those movies that is known worldwide and still revered as a great piece of horror history. In no way is that more evident than by the sheer extent of foreign movie posters for the flick.

Argentina

Australia

Belgium

Czech Republic

Denmark

France

Germany

Italy

Italy

Mexico

Romania

Spain

Hitchcock was the “master of suspense” but his movies did not really fall into the horror category before Psycho. The movie was controversial and met with a lot of pushback from the Hayes Office but Hitchcock managed to make compromises –giving up one scandalous aspect to allow another to stay in. The movie nevertheless is well known for Janet Leigh‘s undergarment outfits at separate instances in the film’s start. This part of the film certainly did not escape notice to those individuals who create movie posters worldwide. Six of the posters above feature the scantily clad Leigh, which probably proved a selling point for the flick.

Also prominent in the posters is the horror-stricken face of Anthony Perkins upon discovering a body in his hotel’s bathroom. The lead-up scene also was a source of controversy with the short takes assembled to give the impression we are seeing nudity. Including Perkins on the posters in this manner certainly would have lulled the audience into believing his character’s innocence, fueling one of the movie’s twists.

My favorite of these posters is the German one. It is simple and striking with its bold teal color and large Perkins facade. I love that shot of Perkins, and I think this poster uses it to its greatest effect. Which do you like best?

Mr. and Mrs. Smith

Wowza!

Mr. and Mrs. Smith (1941)

Alfred Hitchcock is most popularly known today as the “master of suspense”, and rightfully so. Most people remember him for the drama of his thrillers and some find his pictures terrifying. What is perhaps ignored by the average viewer, however, is the man’s astute sense of humor.

Mr. and Mrs. Smith was the only movie Hitchcock made in America that was strictly a comedy with no suspense whatever. This was not his only venture into the genre, however, as many of his early English films were suspense-free. In all Hitchcock flicks, however, the viewer can find evidence of “Hitchcockian humor”, many times slipped in under the nose of the Hayes Office. Much of the master’s humor related to sexual innuendo, and the director was constantly pushing the envelope to see what he could get away with under the Production Code. Mr. and Mrs. Smith is one movie that is all about what consists of proper behavior for an unmarried couple, even if they’ve been married before.

Perfectly paired are Robert Montgomery and Carole Lombard as Ann and David Smith. The flick opens with the servants wondering what is going on in the couple’s bedroom, where they have been holed up for three days. The duo has a policy of never leaving their bedroom until an argument has been resolved, David’s job as a lawyer be damned. We come in just in time to see the couple rekindle their affection, but over breakfast, Ann insists on another of their traditions: asking a question to which David must give a totally honest answer. The question is: If you could do it over again, would you marry me. The answer: no.

This answer becomes particularly important when later that day David learns that his marriage to Ann is not legal because of a mix up with the way the county and state in which they were married provided the paperwork. The man who delivers the news, Mr. Deever (Charles Halton), knew Ann when she was a girl and so drops by the home to give her the information. Ann is convinced David will marry her right away, but in trying to make a big surprise of the situation, he does not. That leads to Ann furiously throwing her non-husband out of their apartment and returning to her maiden name and life.

The remainder of the story involves David fighting to get Ann back while each tries to make the other jealous. Ann does this by dating David’s law practice partner (Gene Raymond). Both are too stubborn and too conniving to relinquish control until finally their games land each in the other’s arms.

The fun in Mr. and Mrs. Smith is not just the almost screwball-style of acting our stars bring to the screen –I’ll get to that momentarily– but the moral questions it raises. Hitchcock loved to create circumstances in his movies when an unmarried couple find themselves forced to share a bedroom (see The 39 Steps and Spellbound). In this case the viewer cannot help but wonder about just how wrong it was that the two have been sharing a bed for three years and whether they can continue to do so without redoing their vows. This movie could obviously never be made today and make any sort of sense.

Mr. and Mrs. Smith is pure gold for me. With my two favorite actors in the lead paired with my favorite director, the movie cannot go wrong. Lombard is as zany as she is in My Man Godfrey, although, her character is more on the sane side in this case. Montgomery really brings out his comedic side as well, both in dialogue and physically. The lines are so well written with such subtle humor and innuendo that the more you pay attention the funnier the movie is. I could watch it everyday.

The Best Hitchcock Movie (That Hitchcock Never Made)

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Tell No One (2006)

    There’s a reason Alfred Hitchcock remains probably the best remembered director in movie history. His unique style of both filming and storytelling have inspired directors for generations and continues today. A few years ago I caught the French film Tell No One (Ne le Dis a Personne) in the theater and it today is still one of the best movies I have ever seen.

     Although most of Hitchcock’s films were adapted from plays or books, they were always given a thorough rewriting, often by multiple scribes. The end result was always something Hitchcockian. When viewing his body of work, certain plot themes arise, primarily the “wrong man” scenario and the chase. Besides the movie The Wrong Manthat was based on a real-life incident that resembled a Hitchcock plot, the master of suspense used this approach in many others including The Man Who Knew Too Much,  The 39 Steps, To Catch a Thief, North by Northwest and Frenzy, among others.  A story centered on a chase is also used repeatedly in Hitchcock’s repertoire, whether that chase happens around a city or across the country culminating at Mount Rushmore.

     Tell No One has both these elements on top of a fantastic mystery. But the movie does not just draw from Hitchcock in its structure; it also has the characteristic of many detective stories of the past –such as the Thin Man and Pink Panther movies– that become so complex that a character must explain at the film’s close just what has transpired and what motivated the crime.

     In Tell No One, Alex Beck (François Cluzet) and his wife Margot (Marie-Josée Croze) are visiting their home town where they grew up together and go for a dip at the secluded lake they have visited every year. After a minor disagreement, Margot leaves the wooden raft they are lying on in the darkness and returns to shore. When Alex hear’s her call out, he panics and swims to the dock where he is promptly knocked out with a bat and falls unconscious into the water.

     Eight years later and Dr. Beck receives an anonymous email at his office telling him to click on a link at a specific time coinciding with he anniversary of his wife’s death. The link reveals a surveillance camera of a public area, and moments later Margot appears and looks straight into it. An email that follows instructs him to tell no one because “they are watching.”

     Unlike many Hitchcock films that have the wronged man working as a loner to solve the crime for which he is accused, Alex brings in his sister’s partner Helene (Kristin Scott Thomas) who is willing to believe that Margot is alive. Alex starts to ask questions, first of his cop father in law (André Dussollier) about the appearance of Margot’s beaten face when he identified her (Alex was in the hospital and in a three-day coma after being knocked out into the lake but somehow left on the dock where police found him). The woman had been tortured and left with dead animals therefore appearing to be the victim of a serial killer with that M.O. The story had many holes in it, however, and police had suspected Alex was the killer.

     Next, Alex inquires with Margot’s best friend Charlotte (Florence Thomassin) about new photos police have presented from Margot’s post office box (held under a fake name) that depict her severely bruised. Charlotte says the injuries were not a result of a car accident as she had been instructed to say, but she does not know their origin. Charlotte, however, is soon visited by some mysterious observers who torture her to discover where Margot is and ultimately kill her. As Alex was the last to see the woman alive, he is the police’s main suspect.

     Alex is informed the police are on their way to arrest him, but he has received another message instructing him to meet at a park and concluding with “I love you,” thus confirming to him that it is his wife he will find there. Unwilling to miss the date, Alex flees and leads a heated chase across the city before eluding the cops. From here Alex does some additional investigating and the police chief starts to think the man is innocent of all crimes.

     The mystery is difficult to follow; the individuals who are after Alex and Margot and the where and why of Margot’s absence are impossible to determine based on the information we are given. The truth has traces of conspiracy in it but not to the extent the viewer might think at certain junctures through the film.

     Tell No One has the additional Hitchcock theme of worthless law enforcement. Hitch was not a fan of police, but the extent to which his aversion manifested can be debated between truth and myth. As a boy, his father had him locked up in a jail cell for an afternoon because of some digression, and he allegedly from that point on feared police. He refused to drive, always having someone else take the wheel, because of that dislike. Most of his movies have police sniffing up the wrong tree and mis-accusing the wrong man. The same is true here where the plot not only involves Alex as suspect in his wife’s murder but the events are prompted by their new accusal when the bodies of two men are found buried at Margot’s murder site. It is because of police ineptitude in this and Hitchcock flicks that our everyday man finds himself in the role of detective, making the adventure more relatable for we everymen.

     A compliment I can give to Tell No One that does not find its way into my considerations of Hitchcock flicks is that it is far more emotional than any of the master’s classics. Cluzet gives a wonderful performance through his raw emotions as he discovers what he thinks is his living wife and fights his way to get to her. Although all Hitch movies had an element of romance to them, none created the connection between characters we have in Tell No One. Margot is painted as the perfect wife from the opening sequence, and the childhood romance and lifelong relationship she shared with Alex makes their separation all the more profound. You won’t see me crying during any Hitchcock films, but I’ll admit to some mistiness at multiple moments here.

• A special thanks to Dorian at Tales of the Easily Distracted for hosting such a creative blogathon about the Hitchcock movies the master never made. See what else fits the bill on her site.

Feature: Hitchcock Movie Posters from Italy

I put up a post a while ago comparing U.S. movie posters for American movies to the versions that were released for the same pictures in Italy. As I continue to roam the web, and particularly the newly discovered MoviePostersDB.com, I continue to find that foreign, particularly Italian, posters are far more artistic/intriguing/seductive than the American ones. This time I have focused specifically on Hitchcock movies, films that in and of themselves embody artistry, intrigue and seduction. These movies, because they were so well publicized, have multiple posters per country to their name, but here I have grabbed what appear to be the most common versions.

ITALY VS. AMERICA

I think there is no arguing that the American version of what would advertise Hitchcock’s first American film looks pretty bland compared the foreign one. I also concede, however, that the former looks a bit like a romance novel cover. And who is the gorgeous woman in the backdrop? Certainly not Judith Anderson’s Mrs. Danvers. It could be the artist’s manifestation of the deceased Rebecca, but she is never shown in the picture, which is sort of the point. Nevertheless, I would rather see the Rebecca advertised by the image on the left than the one on the right.

 Notorious is possibly my favorite Hitchcock movie and one that is certainly darker than the American poster would suggest. Although the key depicted is of significance, the romance between Cary Grant and Ingrid Bergman is not as light-hearted as the advertisement would suggest. The Italian poster is a bit vague in its meaning and with the title perhaps suggests merely a story of an illicit affair, but it is by far the edgier version and one that better suits the tone of the actual movie.

Although I have always enjoyed the Dial M for Murder American poster, the Italian version is a bit more striking, and bloody. Because the Italian title translates as “Perfect Crime”, choosing to focus on the weapon rather than the phone that justifies the American title makes sense. It also notes other intricacies of the film, such as the scissors and the time. I can see the favorite of these two being a toss up for some people. Your thoughts?

I am not in love with either of these posters, but the foreign version is much more eye-catching. It highlights the one setting in which the entire film takes place while highlighting its star, who is perhaps not as mean as the poster suggests. The U.S. ad is just bland. We get it: it’s called Rope and there’s a rope.

In this instance, the Italian poster borrows from the American one but manages to give us a much different feel for the movie. The use of unnatural color and the red tone suggestive of blood makes The Birds a more frightening looking picture. The birds themselves also look more threatening in the overseas ad, which allows it to trump the domestic version.

I’m not sure I can entirely pass judgement and declare the Italian Vertigo poster better than the U.S. version. Although the foreign advertisement has many seductive and creepy elements, the simplicity of the American poster and its emphasis on the vertigo effect invented by Hitchcock in making that movie is difficult to rival. Again, the Italian movie title is not the same as the American, so “The Woman Who Lived Twice” likely inspired a different poster.

What do you think?

Feature: The Long-Take Movie

Unless you are a movie-as-an-artform type of fan, the editing in a movie often escapes us. In most cases, all of those cuts are meant to be invisible, at times subliminally conveying a message without us realizing it. And although cameramen might painstakingly struggle to film a scene in one long take, many audience members will fail to recognize the accomplishment.

Alfred Hitchcock was the first director to bring to fruition a movie done entirely in one long take, sort of. Moviemakers in the 1940s were limited by this thing called “film”, the actual celluloid that ran through the camera and recorded all the images later flashed before our eyes. So in those days it was not possible to capture a 90-minute movie without ever stopping the camera because the actual reel only held a certain amount of film. In the case of Rope, Hitchcock instead gave us the illusion of a cut-less picture by disguising the breaks between reels. He did succeed in never stopping the camera rolling while there was film left, but hid the transition between reels by focusing in on the backs of characters, creating a black screen that would prevent viewers from distinguishing a break in filming.

Fast forward 60 years to the age of digital film photography and the issue of celluloid can no longer hamper a filmmaker’s ability to keep the camera rolling. In 2001, a Russian director developed the idea of making a movie in one, 90-minute take all centered on the Hermitage museum. Although the idea of not having to edit any footage sounded easy to Aleksandr Sokurov at first, bringing about the actual filming of Russian Ark took several years of planning.

The film crew, cast of one main character and more than a thousand extras were given four days access to the museum. Three were used to remove items, insert new ones and prepare the lighting for the shoot. The actual filming had to occur on one day. Told as a dream, the story runs through 300 years of Russian history as significant characters float in an out of the scenes while the French marquis who is guiding the camera criticizes Russia’s lack of artistic culture. The camera itself is the second character, the dreamer, who converses with the marquis and himself through a post-production voice over.

Unlike Rope, which relied on a handful of characters getting their parts correct, Russian Ark protected itself from any on-screen mishaps by giving only one character specific dialogue to deliver. There is a certain lack of synchronicity in the voice over as at times the marquis’ pauses for response do not last long enough and the voice over runs on top of his dialogue. Also, the lack of echo in the voice-over dialogue makes it seem to us as though these thoughts are occurring in the dreamer’s (or our) head, especially because the marquis at times does not seem to hear what is said.

Moving ahead to today, the horror movie Silent House recently hit theaters as yet another 90-minute example of cut-free filming, or so it would seem. Technology has taken us so far forward that directors Chris Kentis, Laura Lau were able to mimic a single-take film while actually filming 10-minute segments and disguising the transitions in post-production. The result is a highly suspenseful picture that relies entirely on practical effects and lots of behind-the-scenes maneuvers.

The story contains one main character the camera follows, two family members and a couple extra appearances. The effect relies on a dark house and mostly up-close shots of the scene, which protects against mistakes that might occur in the background. Also, being a horror movie, the characters’ reactions to the events and dialogue do not have to be perfect, thus giving a more natural feel. The movie avoids the use of CGI to create scary creatures for us and was unable to show the result of one character’s bludgeoning because the application of makeup could not have occurred fast enough to fit within the long-take structure. Silent House instead relies on severe suspense rather than actual terrifying scenes to scare the audience. The long-take approach adds to this and gives the effect of things happening in real time. (Silent House Video Clip)

The use of long takes, and in particular movies that try to use nothing but, is highly demanding on all the collaborators in front of and behind the camera. Extensive rehearsing and extremely long retakes if mistakes are made can mean lengthy, demanding days for all involved. The endeavor is certainly one done more for artistic satisfaction than commercial gain or public popularity as the average theater-goer is blind to this work. I think we can see evidence of this as the technique has failed to gain popularity among film makers. Nevertheless, I have always been intrigued by the long take, and so a movie that does only that will have me at its beck and call time and time again.

Source: “In One Breath: The Making of Russian Ark” documentary; Alfred Hitchcock: A Life in Darkness and Light by Patrick McGilligan

A Different View Through ‘Rear Window’

I came across this fascinating video created by Jeff Desom that pieces together different shots from Hitchcock’s Rear Window and aligns them all together. But this is not just an image of what the courtyard behind L.B. Jeffries’ apartment would look like in panoramic view. It’s an actual moving video of all the action in the film happening at once and in fast succession. I cannot imaging the work it must have taken to assemble this.

Rear Window Timelapse from Jeff Desom on Vimeo.

Feature: Norman Bates Reimagined

The writer and director behind 2010′s Peacock did not start out with a story that had heavy shades of Psycho, but what ultimately resulted is a retelling of the life of Norman Bates, possibly before owning that roadside hotel.

Cillian Murphy skillfully plays both John and Emma Skillpa, two parts of one man’s personality. John is an awkward sort who works in a bank in the town of Peacock during an era that looks much like the 1960s or 1970s. He interacts poorly with others and prefers to be left to himself. Emma, who is John dressed as a woman complete with wig and makeup, hides herself from the world as she quickly removes laundry from the clothes line, peers through the curtains at the neighbor’s kid, and prepares John’s breakfast and sack lunch. She then returns to the bedroom where she removes her wig and makeup and changes into the clothes she has laid out for John.

Peacock (2010)

Thus is our introduction to the dissociative identity disorder –also known as multiple personality disorder– John is taxed by. There is no grand reveal as we discover that Murphy is in fact not a woman, so the story instead leaves us thinking we will now deal with the man’s struggle to keep his secret in this small town. What disrupts the two personas’ way of life is the crashing of a train through the property fence as Emma is removing the wash from the line. The neighbors rush to her aid and wonder who she is, ultimately deciding the woman is John’s wife. Next, a local politician wants to use the train wreck as a site for a political rally because the caboose had a banner for his opponent’s re-election. The once-timid Emma begins to leave her shell as she accepts that the town now knows she exists, while John tries to backtrack on his feminine side’s decisions and keep the secret in the dark.

Like Norman Bates, the psycho who dressed in his dead mother’s clothes, donned a wig and killed young women of whom his matriarch would have disapproved, John too has a twisted history with his mother. We learn she had died one year prior –and he “met” Emma the next day– and also discover the woman mentally abused the boy by not only coddling him, but in one instance paying a young woman to have sex with him in the mother’s bed, while the mother watched, in addition to forcing him to do “horrible” sexual things. John also tells another character that Emma is not his wife, which leads one to deduce she is instead his manifestation of mother. Director and Co-Author Michael Lander said in his research into dissociative disorder, which included the study of murderer Ed Gein on which Norman Bates was based, he found that the condition is not hereditary but environmentally induced, requiring mental trauma and poor childhood nurturing with many patients reporting child abuse.

When John, becoming angry at Emma for interfering and inviting guests to his home, donates the woman’s clothes to a shelter, Emma is forced to enter the mysterious room at the end of the hall –the mother’s room. Here she finds photos of John as a child, hears the squeak of the bed springs where the man was forced to have sex with the young woman, and discovers some of the mother’s clothes. When Emma next reappears in a blue dress described by the hired woman as what the mother wore on that dreadful day, we are assured that this personality is in fact not a wife role.

SPOILER Murder is not a regular activity for John or Emma as it is for Norman, at least not at this point in his life. Emma, however, does seduce a man and takes him to a motel where she hits him with a crowbar and sets the room ablaze. Another character has been invited to the location to discover the scene and deduce that it is John who has died in the flames, thus allowing Emma to permanently take over the body. She has also by this point shaved off the man’s eyebrows and penciled in feminine ones, which also forced John to remain detached from the body. One must also wonder if, now that John is unable to reappear, Emma/John will leave town and perhaps purchase that same motel where the plot of Psycho might unfold. END SPOILER

John vs. Emma

Peacock could not have been what it was without Murphy’s involvement. The man proved himself in 2005′s Breakfast on Pluto to make quite a beautiful cross-dresser and he does that here again. Makeup, hair and clothing designers for the film also perfectly created Emma as a woman rather than a man in drag. But the two personalities really are made distinct by Murphy’s acting. His facial expressions and carriage are much different as John than as Emma, something we see at the film’s start as soon as the man removes his dress and transitions into the male personality.

Tragically, Peacock was a straight-to-DVD release despite having the star power of Murphy, Susan Sarandon,  Ellen Page, Josh Lucas and Bill Pullman. I had no expectations of the story when I went in, so it surely took me for a ride and not in the direction I expected. It has characteristics of a psychological thriller, artful drama and horror film rolled into one. I can truly say I loved this movie as an homage/reinterpretation of everyone’s favorite psycho, whether the writer-director intended that or not.

The Farmer’s Wife

Ring a Ding Ding 

     Alfred Hitchcock entered the movie business essentially as soon as it started. He rose quickly in the British ranks to the director status and so it goes without saying he has a few silent movies under his belt. The Farmer’s Wife is among those early Hitchcock films that are essentially forgotten because it does not fall under the typical style we have come to associate with the master. This movie, one of many Hitchcock pieces that would be drawn from a stage play, is a comedy, nothing more. No suspense here, but that is not to say Hitchcock did not illustrate early on his adroit approach to this lighter genre.

     Farmer Sam Sweetland’s (Jameson Thomas) wife dies at the start of our picture and her final words are to the housemaid Minta (Lillian Hall-Davis) to remember to air out her master’s pants. Our next scene is of Minta helping Sam and his daughter prepare for the young girl’s wedding. We are introduced to a host of characters at the ensuing party and we hear the handyman Churdles (Gordon Harker) remark that with the daughter out of the house, Mr. Sweetland will be looking to remarry. From the film’s inception we see Minta as the perfect new wife for the man as she runs the household and takes care of his every whim already. It will, however, take the rest of the film for Sweetland to come to that conclusion.

     Sitting down with Minta, Sam crafts a list of four women he can picture sitting in his wife’s chair opposite him by the fireplace. First up is a widow, but she says she is too independent for the man, which leads Sweetland to curse her and forbid her visit his home again. The next is a virginal spinster to whom he proposes just before she is to host a party –at which Minta and Churldes are helping out– and the woman shivers and quakes from the shock. Again fuming, Sweetland lulls outside while the rest of the party guests arrive and Churdles struggles with some trousers that have no button to keep them on.

     While still at the party, Sweetland makes his move on a young, fat gal who insists he is to old for her. This leads him to spew a number of insults resulting in the woman screaming and flailing her limbs while the rest of the partygoers try to figure out her hysterics. Finally, Sweetland makes one last effort with a barmaid, but we do not see how that results before the man returns home. He has given up, but when Minta sits down in his wife’s chair, the chemistry finally clicks and the two happily agree to wed. Adding to the hilarity, however, are the middle two women to whom Sweetland had proposed –the virgin and the hysterical one– who upon arguing with each other about the proposals change their minds just to spite the other. They show up at the Sweetland home and the young one says she is willing to accept the proposal, to which Sweetland says he will announce his bride shortly, fooling her into thinking she has won. When Minta re-enters the scene in fine dress, that crazy one again screams and flails about.

     The Farmer’s Wife is really full of fine performances. The middle two potential mates Sweetland approaches are the source of much laughter, but Churdles as a baboon-like man is really essential to this movie’s comedic success. The only struggle I faced was in thinking that I would actually like the hotheaded Sweetland to end up with sweet Minta. He proves himself a royal ass in his reactions to rejection, but his manner of treating Minta at the close is endearing enough to make it work.

     Hitchcock was reluctant to take credit for early films like The Farmer’s Wife because he essentially just filmed a play. The script for this one was nearly word-for-word the successful stage production of the same name, and so Hitch even once said, “It was a routine job. A stage play with lots of titles instead of dialogue.” Those intertitles were in fact how Hitchcock got his start in films. He was an “captioneer” in 1920 and 1921 and would design the intertitles and embellish them with drawings. From there he moved up to “art director” in mid-1921. He would meet future wife Alma Reville during this early studio work, although she was more advanced than he at the time. She entered the profession in 1915 as an “assistant continuity girl” working on cutting the pieces of film together. She can often be found on the credits of Hitchcock’s earlier films as the person responsible for “continuity” and she was always listed by her maiden name. Alma was “floor secretary” or a first assistant director by the time Alfred entered the trade. It would be several years of seeing each other around the studios before they would begin to date.

Source: Alfred Hitchcock: A Life in Darkness and Light by Patrick McGilligan