Customer Reviews

The Dark Side of Genius: The Life of Alfred Hitchcock

5 star:		(11)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

Spoto's life of Hitchcock, originally published in 1983, is one of the best biographies of a film director we have in English. It's a warts and all portrait, but instead of pitying or disliking Hitchcock for his idiosyncrasies and meannesses, we come to admire him even more for his singular dedication to the art of movies (and he was an artist, not merely "the master of suspense", to use an essentially narrow and insulting characterization). And as far as sheer technique goes, sheer mastery of the medium, Hitchcock probably was/is unsurpassed among modern day filmmakers.

Spoto gives us detailed accounts of the making of each of Hitchcock's major films. He really did dislike actors, calling them cattle, but he of course had a fascination with blonde actresses. The book's most poignant segment is the episode invovling Hitchcock's infatuation with Tippi Hedren (a mediocre performer at best who should have been grateful for a great man's attention and adoration), which ultimately ended in humiliation and unhappiness for both of them. Spoto is wrong, however, about MARNIE. It is one of the director's greatest movies, as moving and sad a depiction of desperation as has been committed to celluoid. It fully deserves its late revival in critical favor.

This is a clearly written, highly entertaining biography, and one of the closest glimpses we are liking to get straight from the director's chair.

"Some of our most exquisite murders have been domestic, performed with tenderness in simple, homey places like the kitchen table."

...and here is the Master of Suspense. While Hitchcock happens to be one of the better-known directors of the 20th century, he surely is the only master of enigma. Spoto has done an admirable job in depicting the life of a man always shrouded in mystery.

The book follows Hitch from his childhood. A rather unattractive mother's boy, he was an outcast at public school. It continues his story from humble beginnings, through the discovery of genius, and ends at his death in 1980, at the age of 81. Throughout the pages, Spoto covers Hitchcock's life in detail, including his many quirks, obsessions bizarre sense of humour.

Hitchcock's life was indeed bizarre - his personality and obsessions manifesting themselves in his over-eating and his dry, often macabre sense of humour. However, as the author rightly points out, the director also revealed this side of himself through the images of his movies. This makes a fascinating study once you have read the book and you'll never view Hitch's films at face value again.

Because of her desire to protect her father's privacy, Hitch's daughter, Pat, refused Spoto any assistance in the writing of this book. He went instead to a veritable legion of actors and screenwriters who knew him and worked with him. The result is an extremely revealing and often very dark portrait of a man whose character was as shadowed as his films.

But not all is dark and foreboding. There are several amusing anecdotes, which highlight Hitch's macabre sense of humour. Like the time he had a dummy made in his own likeness and sent it floating on its back down the Thames river as a publicity stunt for his movie "Frenzy" in 1972.

My own personal favourite is the story of a woman who accosted him and complained that the "Psycho" shower scene so frightened her daughter that the girl would no longer shower. His laconic reply was, "Then, Madam, I suggest you have her dry cleaned."

He also did not suffer actors gladly. While he did have his stable of favourites that he worked with, he once claimed that actors were cattle. Later he said, "I didn't say that actors are cattle - I said they should be treated as cattle." Another story says that when an actress asked Hitchcock if her right or left profile was better, he told her, "My dear, you're sitting on your best profile."

Some of Spoto's claims I can't help but treat with a little scepticism. I do know that Hitch had a fascination with murder but the tender way in which he presents it in his films is classic Hitchcock. However, the author's statement that scenes in Hitch's movies reflect kind of voyeurism, I feel that with his trademark camera pans through windows, the director was trying to give the audience a bird's eye view of the scene - no more and no less. It is his way of allowing us to enter the private lives of his characters.

When all is said and done, this is a fascinating book of a fascinating man. A genius in his own time, but also a frustrated enigma, with a taste for the truly macabre. I highly recommend this book to anyone remotely interested in learning about the man behind the mystery, although it is a little heavy at times.

I'll leave the last word to the Master of Suspense himself:

"Television has brought back murder into the home - where it belongs.

I truly cannot explain why so many are giving this book low ratings. It is a critically acclaimed, deeply researched, well written biography. Nearly every aspect of Hitchcock's life and art is discussed, ably and literately. The only thing that I can think is that some people are upset that the book also explores the more disturbing aspects of Hitchcock's life, primarily his increasing obsession in the fifties and sixties with his leading ladies. These are disturbing to read about, but the problem is not Spoto's. Hitchcock was, like many highly creative individuals, a very complex, many-sided individual. Not everything about him was admirable and his weird, disturbing fixations on some of his leading actresses, in particular Tippi Hedren, can not be blamed on Spoto. As a biographer, he would have been remiss in not reporting this aspects of Hitchcock's life.

As far as claims that the book was dull or poorly written, this says more about specific reviewers than the book itself. I found it fascinating, a real page turner, and read through it in only a few days.

I will temper my review by pointing out that this is only one of the three major biographies of Hitchcock that one wanting to know more about Hitchcock should consider reading. If you want a superb but shorter biography, you could consider John Russell Taylor's HITCH: THE LIFE AND TIMES OF ALFRED HITCHCOCK. If you are willing to read a biography much longer than Spoto's, you could consider Patrick McGilligan's outstanding ALFRED HITCHCOCK: A LIFE IN DARKNESS AND LIGHT. But the Spoto is definitely an elite biography, completely undeserving of the ill-considered low ratings some are giving this. It is meticulously researched, well-written, and hugely informative. This book will remain on the short list of the most crucial studies of the life and films of Alfred Hitchcock, and deservedly so.

Spoto has done an admirable job at putting together 500 compelling pages of reading. Unfortunately, he mentions the fundamental problem with this book in the very preface...that Hitchcock left few records and let his guard down for few individuals. The Hitchcock most knew was no more personal than what we know from his television persona. So right away, we have a biography that doesn't have much basis. So Spoto tries to compensate by drawing conclusions about Hitchcock based on his films. Kind of silly, really. Spotos analysis of the films could be interesting, but it's very uneven...he'll spend 10 pages on one film, and barely mention the existence of another. And the only revealing passage on anything regarding Hitchcock's life itself is on his Tippi Hedren years.

However, my chief problem with The Dark Side of Genius is Spoto's tendency to excuse Hitchcock when convenient. It's ridiculously facile. EVERY time Spoto reached an unsuccessful Hitchcock film, he explains how Hitchcock was preoccupied, depressed, or altogether uninterested in the that film. Can't we allow that a genius is fallible? His classics were the product of passion; his failures were due do lack of interest. That's way too black and white a stance for any serious biographer or film scholar to promote. He never allows that Hitchcock tried and failed at times. To Spoto, when he failed, it's because he didn't care.

Don't buy this book if you are looking for objective and truthful information about Hitchcock or if you admire Hitchcock and his films. Buy this book only if you are interested in the self-absorbed ratings of an author upset because he would get no official help from those close to Hitchcock and decided to spend 600 pages attempting to assassinate Hitchcock's character with his own uninformed 70's style pop psychology. It is clear from his preface that Spoto felt some special entitlement to writing an official biography of the director because he met with Hitchcock twice, once over lunch. However, the Hitchcock family did not cooperate with his "biography" citing Hitchcock's wishes. Perhaps they were simply being polite - they probably had read his earlier efforts on Hitchcock's films and realized what an untalented hack the guy is. Nevertheless, he pressed forward and did his very best to ruin Hitchcock by steeping everything that Hitch did with dark sexual motivations. Most of it is patent nonsense. For example take this gem of psyhobabble from his discussion of Rear Window (pg. 346): "That romantic involvement is treating is also indicated by the screenplay's association of Raymond Burr (the wife-murder): Stewart is a traveling photographer, Burr a traveling salesman, and each is pressured by emotional demands from an attractive blond." Anyone who has seen the film will note that, while Grace Kelly is indeed blond, Burr's wife is a dark brunette. While this may not seem a major flaw, it does give an example of the kind of psychobabble that permeates this book. Basically, Spoto attempts to tie virtually everything the director did during his life to Spoto's own amateur theories about Hitch's sexual repressions and fantasies. Spoto does not turn a hair at stretching the truth or telling outright lies to attempt to fit reality into his twisted vision of Hitchcock. His nonsense conjectures are usually so farfetched that any reader with an IQ greater than a grape will spot them, but why support such nonsense? It is a weary read, because Spoto's little-boy revenge is so plain to see on the page. Especially when he makes up lies regarding the family, for example claiming that Hitchcock forced his daughter to audition for her part on "Strangers on a Train," a claim she politely but firmly refutes. In short, Spoto does everything he can to put the worst interpretation on everything Hitchcock and his family did. If you want to read a book that reveals much more about Spoto than about Hitchcock, then buy this steaming pile of rubbish. If you admire one of the foremost geniuses of filmmaking, please don't buy this book.

Donald Spoto has done a tremendous work in obtaining first-hand accounts from Hitchcock's friends, colleagues, family, and even Alfred, himself. There is not one iota of information about Hitchcock left out of this monumental work.

He traces the ghosts of psychology that haunted Hitchcock from a very young child on until his pitiful death. Hitch's wants, desires, insecurities, and love affairs (one-sided) are intricately outlined and analyzed in a biography that has few contemporaries. This truly is the ultimate work on Hitchcock's life.

This time "Spoto" bring to us one of the most dramatic analysis about Alfred Hitchcock ever. After an excelent research including interviews and most of all own Hitchcock movies, Donald Spoto uncover one of the most sucessful careers in the history of Cinema

I have to disagree with those who trash this book. I've read it more than once, and find it quite good. The amateur psychoanalysis doesn't dominate the proceedings, while you do get a very well written overview of an enormous career. Readability counts! - most Hitch books are boring junk, based on some dire Lacanian theory or whatnot. Okay, so Spoto feels he must "explain" Hitch's often morbid sensibility - if you notice, Spoto is also very interested in Christian subject matter. Possibly he feels there is something naughty about Hitch flicks, and must apologize for/excuse his interest in this way. (Speaking of amateur psych...) But that wouldn't be reason enough to pan the book. It's a compelling read, and much of it seems to be accurate. I believe its trashy rep is overstated. Read it, you'll probably be won over.

The best bio of Hitch you're likely to ever read. Gremlins, for their
own pervo reasons, slam this as "gossip." Spoto details, with care, the
textured & complex life of a great filmmaker who was a mama's boy and
Jesuit trained. He had lower-class roots but quickly learned the difference
bet well-dun and rare, along w the better spirits. In the German UFA studios
of the '20s Hitch developed his consummate technical skills and discovered
the importance of telling a film story visually. He entertained us for
over five decades.

Spoto generously does not dwell on the most odious segment of Hitch's career
when, after 6 successful collaborations w composer Bernard Herrmann, he suddenly
booted Bernie fr the score of his clinker, Torn Curtain. Allegedly, studio goofs felt
a 'mod' sound would bring life to the corpse. Then, in turnabout, Hitch used a faux
Bernie score. What price Hollywood?

This is the best biography of a person in the
entertainment field I have ever read -- and one of
the best biographies, period. Spoto shows how Hitchcock's demons were expressed in his films in a way that resonated with millions of viewers, thus transmuting the personal into the universal. At the same time Spoto provides insightful, intelligent criticism that enables the viewer to appreciate Hitchcock's films on more levels than one would have thought possible. There are few books I would call "essential," but for anyone who has the slightest interest in Alfred Hitchcock, that is exactly what this book is.