When Mike Leigh first uttered his expletives against Alfred Hitchcock`s Frenzy at the 2006 London Film Festival seminar on London film locations, I thought it was because he believed the film, judging by his own yardstick, was archaic and possibly even trivial.
Fact is when Leigh`s first feature, Bleak Moment, was released in 1972 it was compared by George Melly, then reviewing, with Hitchcock`s Frenzy which was in release at the same time. Melly reviled Hitchcock for ‘treating actors like cattle` (probably deriving from gossip that he prevented actor, Jon Finch from changing a word of dialogue without the express consent of screenwriter Anthony Shaffer whom incidentally I interviewed in 1984 prior to the start of my Alfred Hitchcock walk. Shaffer confirmed Hitchcock`s obsession for the written word which given the Method mode of the time did seem a bit out-of-date) Melly, in the same review, adulated Leigh for giving actors the chance to improvise within context of time and place.
If for Hitchcock film is life minus all the boring bits, for Leigh it is the boring bits which make living worth living. Still, there is a uniting humanism in the film of both directors- something rigorous and stiff-upper-lip. Something very British.
So why the love-hate relationship? And are they really at opposite philosophical and aesthetic poles?
True Hitchcock was fundamentally an external director who liked to track shots; but, like Leigh, he also liked to work internally and within small, closed almost claustrophobic spaces. One must never forget that it was Hitchcock who originated those relentlessly long takes in Rope and Under Capricorn whilst also conceiving (and innovatively photographing) that gargantuan apartment set for Rear Window (second only in size to those devised by C. B. DeMille for his Paramount extravaganzas).
But Rear Window was not the only film executed by Hitchcock in Mike Leigh mode. He also elected to film stage plays Rope and Dial M for Murder precisely because they gave him a chance to work within tight, closed conditions.
Another uniting characteristic, and one which would appear to divide, is the extent of voyeurism in films of both directors. Leigh`s `Naked` has been accused of misogyny and misanthropy, especially in the scenes where the security guard eavesdrops on a woman in the flat across from the building where he works. WHen the homeless character becomes directly involved with the woman, and then can`t perform because `she reminds him of his mother`, the voyeurism hovers on a level of exhibitionism.
For all his excesses, the same `cannot` be said of Hitchcock. There is never any doubt in those sequences seemingly shot out of focus of Grace Kelly in erotic mode that the director meant for anything else but for use to see it as a send-up of voyeurism rather than of any exploitation of voyeurism per se.
So where does that leave us? Let`s discuss stylistic differences.
Whilst Hitchcock always endorsed fast-paced, American-style cutting (with plenty of dissolves), Leigh prefers long takes and clean cutting. He hardly ever uses a dissolve. That said, his style in the last two films –Vera Drake and Happy-Go-Lucky– has altered dramatically and whilst I don`t per se detect dissolves in the latter film, the scenes are remarkably shorter and the cutting is very, very quick. It is no surprise that on this film he elected to rope in a slick Hollywood cutter: the guy who cut Marathon Man and a lot of other blockbusters.
Leigh`s emergence as a contender on the Hollywood scene is marked not only by the shift in editing. It is also perceptible by the film stock used in the last two films. Whilst Hitchcock luxuriated in the garishness of Hollywood Technicolor, asking only when making Frenzy that cameraman Gil Taylor forebear from making `another Technicolor bauble`, Leigh, until Vera Drake, avoided Kodachrome and/or Fuji stock (Happy-Go-Lucky) But this has changed and the change indicates a shift in direction which brings him into greater polarity with Hitchcock.
But to my mind the one overriding characteristic common to both directors is their interplay with location and location markers.
The cast-iron gas holders which loom ominously over the King`s Cross Stanley Buildings in High Hopes are as indicative as any signpost in Dial M or Rebecca. And why? Because both Leigh and Hitchcock came into films via the art colleges. Hitchcock was a draughtsman who submitted sketches for the company magazine where he worked. And Leigh studied life drawing at the Camberwell School of Art. Thus their mutual preoccupations with cityscape and local being universal, epic being simplistic combine to make both men almost emblematic British directors.
The ending? Hitch went to Hollywood in 1939, was vivisected by David O. Selznick and was terminated by Universal when his films stopped earning 20 times what they cost to make. Leigh has never been able to raise money to make his movies. There was a 10-year gap between Bleak Moment and High Hopes and no body or individual including the Film Council, the BFI, Wardour Street and/or David Puttnam has ever given him the support accorded numerous British mavericks of far less talent, imagination or intelligence. Leigh is and always will be the prodigal Jew and whether it`s the French or the Yanks or the Brits who bail him out, he`ll be forced to play on their terms and with a hand he can`t possibly win. In short, it`s a bleak future for possibly the world`s greatest living film director.
Sandra Shevey has interviewed both Leigh and Hitchcock and lives to tell the tales. She runs a tri-weekly walk around Alfred Hitchcock London film locations and plans to launch this autumn a Mike Leigh East London walk.
