June 12, 1964 - Alfred Hitchcock (pictured with his wife, Alma) came to Paris this week, winding up a Continental vacation tour that has taken him to Yugoslavia and the Adriatic Coast of Italy.
The 65-year-old director has just finished editing his new film, “Marnie,” for Universal-International. It will be released in the U.S. in late summer and abroad during the early autumn.
“I have moved on from one sort of chase to another,” Hitchcock said. “The spy-hunt and man-hunt films I did 20 years ago are being much imitated today. But I must say that I don’t think my imitators, having lifted my formula, have improved upon me.
“In any case, I am at work in a different field now. You might call it the psychological chase, the tracking down of the hidden motives that make people act the way they do.”
Hitchcock said he had introduced the psychiatric note in “Spellbound” and used it again in “Rope” and “Psycho.”
“The heroine of ‘Marnie’ is a professional thief,” he said, “and we find out what has made her one. She is not a kleptomaniac, but she is a case, a Freudian case.”
For his next picture, Hitchcock has selected an adaptation of a novel by John Buchan, “Three Hostages.”
“It describes a Communist plot to kidnap three important politicians and hide each in another part of the world,” he said. “In the picture, the plot won’t be a Communist one, but a conspiracy of organized crime gangs.”
Hitchcock is the idol of the younger French moviemakers. The New Wave director, Francois Truffaut, is writing a book about him.
On the New Wave, Hitchcock was noncommittal, bestowing no praise on the avant-garde ventures, but explaining their aims.
“I think they approve of me — these French youngsters — because I usually try, as they are trying, to tell a story on the screen in cinematic terms with a minimum of dialogue. I try to use dialogue only in developing character, and never talk for talk’s sake.”
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