Quotes About Hitchcock

Hitchcock loves to be misunderstood, because he has based his whole life around misunderstandings.

Working with Chaplin was very amusing and strange. His films are so funny, but working with him, I found him to be a very serious man. Whereas the films of Hitchcock are macabre, he could be a very funny man to work with, always telling jokes and holding court. Of course, when I worked with Charlie he was getting older.

Disney has the best casting. If he doesn't like an actor he just tears him up.

Guilt, of course, is the predominant theme of Hitchcock's films. It derives not only from the complexities of his own inner life: guilt is also one of the great themes in all art, and especially in contemporary art and literature.

Cary Grant is the only actor I ever loved in my whole life.

I always told Hitch that it would have been better to put seats around the set and sell tickets.

I'm a filmmaker, and I was most influenced by Hitchcock's films. How he could plant such deep enriched characters and then make us care both about the antagonist and protagonist was masterful.

The rules of suspense are that you do know, and you just don't know when. In the Hitchcock rules of suspense, you are supposed to know that there is a bomb on the bus that might blow up, and then it becomes very tense - but if you don't know that there's a bomb and it just blows up, then it's just a surprise.

I suppose I was interested in creating a vision; in the same way, I was very drawn to tension within cinema. Hitchcock was my other early obsession - 'Psycho' and its score. So there was the sense of trying to create an atmosphere: how a sound resonates and makes an effect.

In North By Northwest during the scene on Mount Rushmore, I wanted Cary Grant to hide in Lincoln's nostril and then have a fit of sneezing. The Parks Commission...was rather upset at this thought. I argued until one of their number asked me how I would like it if they had Lincoln play the scene in Cary Grant's nose. I saw their point at once.

Film your murders like love scenes, and film your love scenes like murders

I'm attracted to things that scare me, like 'Psycho,' my favorite Hitchcock movie.

As far as I know, Vera Miles had a terrible time with Hitchcock, and she wanted to get out of the contract. He didn't let her. She did 'Psycho,' and I believe, if you look at 'Psycho,' there isn't one close up of Vera, not one. After that, she would never even speak about him to anyone.

I think 'North by Northwest' and 'Rope' and Rear Window' and 'Psycho' are on my list of favorite all time movies. I just think his kind of command as a director was almost unparalleled, and I feel like in certain ways the sort of character-based thriller owes more to Hitchcock than anyone.

Hitchcock makes it very clear to us. There's an objective and a subjective camera, like there's a third- and a first-person narrator in literature.

People don't call them horror movies, but Hitchcock, for me, is my favorite storyteller. He was really exploring dark themes, and I don't know what category you put his movies in. Thriller? Horror? Some of them go in either one.

I have a perfect cure for a sore throat: cut it.

One of the main reasons I am so drawn to Hitchcock is that he planned his shots way in advance on story-boards, which he designed like classic paintings (he was an art connoisseur). It's why he found shooting on set boring - because he had already composed the film in his head.

Tim and Fritz Lang I loved working with. Not Hitchcock so much. There was no communication.

I really love Hitchcock; I think he was a complete genius, to me one of the best directors. Such a sense of how to put things together.

My favorite types of movies definitely aren't thrillers, but at the same time you can't deny the genius of Hitchcock's films.

Particularly [Alfred] Hitchcock, who takes his time with everything he says. There's a controlling way in how he speaks because he takes his time to finish all his sentences.

Mr. Hitchcock taught me everything about cinema. It was thanks to him that I understood that murder scenes should be shot like love scenes and love scenes like murder scenes.

So, Hitchcock wouldn't say anything about my work in the movie but, on the other hand, he wouldn't complain, either.