OUGD401 : From Theory to Practice : Content

Introduction...

Sir Alfred Hitchcock was perhaps one of the most famous directors and producers in the film industry. Over his career he had many successes within the horror and psychological thriller genres. Some of his most popular pictures such as Vertigo and Psycho labelled him the master of suspense. Even after Hitchcock’s passing he still has a huge influence on the industry and its professionals. Working within the silent era until the era of sound Hitchcock thrived in both British and American cinema.   With a career spanning over half a century Hitchcock distinguished a specific directorial style which became easily recognisable to moviegoers. Hitchcock was not just a director but a celebrity of the film industry, fans would watch intently for his famous cameos within each of his pictures. 

Early years..

Born August 13th 1899 in Leytonstone, England Alfred was the youngest child of William and Emma Hitchcock. He along with his older brother and sister had a strict Catholic upbringing. Hitchcock has said that his father once sent him to the local police station with a note asking for him to be locked in a cell for 10 minutes for bad behaviour. Hitchcock described his childhood as lonely and sheltered which was largely down to his obesity. He felt inferior to his older siblings, William and Eileen. These feelings were not helped as he witnessed his mother taking presents from his stocking and placing them into his brother and sisters one Christmas Eve. The feeling of being harshly treated would later be a recurring theme within Hitchcock’s films. Hitchcock attended Saint Ignatius College but left when he was 14 to study engineering. Hitchcock’s father died in 1914, this event had a particularly big effect on him as his father was said to be his only friend. 

First job...

In 1915 Hitchcock started his first job as a technical clerk at Henley Telegraph and Cable Company. He was easily bored by this job and received many complaints about late estimates from customers. Hitchcock attended a night class on art history and began drawing, he was soon transferred to the advertising department at Henley’s where he thoroughly enjoyed and embraced his talents.

Starting out in the film industry...

Hitchcock’s involvement with the film industry began when he designed title cards for silent films. Over the time spent designing title cards Hitchcock learnt all he could about film and the industry. In 1923 he assisted director Hugh Croise with the short film Always tell your wife. When Croise was fired by producer/actor/writer Seymour Hicks Hitchcock was asked to co-direct the remaining scenes. In that same year Hitchcock was assistant director on the film Woman to Woman with Graham Cutts and producer Michael Balcon, Hitchcock also leant his hand at script writing and art direction on this picture which was a smash hit. 

Hitchcock's first directing job...

Michael Balcon hired Hitchcock to direct his first film The Pleasure Garden made at UFA studios in Germany. This was a commercial failure and seriously endangered Hitchcock’s future in the film industry.

Hitchcock's first thriller picture..

Hitchcock made his debut in the thriller genre with The Lodger: A Story of the London Fog (1926) many consider this the start of Hitchcock’s impressive career, it also saw the introduction of the recurring themes seen throughout his films. 

Alma Reville

In 1926 Hitchcock married his personal assistant Alma Revile at the Brompton Oratory. Hitch met Alma on the set of Woman to Woman (1923) which she edited. Alfred admitted that he had noticed her 2 years before their collaboration but felt that her position within the company was higher than his, for two years he worked his way up to level which he felt was acceptable and he telephoned Alma and asked her of she would like to edit the film. Hitchcock proposed to Alma on a ship bringing them home from Berlin, the proposal was described by Hitchcock as ‘beautifully staged and not overplayed’. 

Alma was to play a huge role within Hitchcock’s long career as she worked with him on almost every picture he directed. It is said that Alma did not receive the recognition she deserved as she was always seen as a secondary to the the great Alfred Hitchcock. Alfred and Alma’s first and only child Patricia was born 7th July 1928, she would later become an American actress and producer, she also appeared in several of her fathers films. 

Timeline of films which Hitch directed..

Blackmail was released as the motion picture with sound. The climax of the film was taken on the dome of the British Museum this started Hitchcock’s tradition of using landmarks for suspense scenes in his movies.

1934 – The Man Who Knew Too Much was released, and was one of the most successful and critically acclaimed motion pictures of Hitchcock’s British period. 

David O Selznick..

Hitchcock moved to America to start a seven year contract with Hollywood producer David O. Selznick. Throughout this partnership Selznick had many money problems which meant he often controlled the creative freedom within the films. They worked together until Hitchcock’s contract ended and from then on Hitchcock produced his own movies. 

First American film...

Hitchcock’s first American movie, Rebecca was released which was very successful. Starring Joan Fontaine the recurring theme of the blonde damsel became more apparent and would later been seen throughout the majority of his pictures. 

Salvador Dali collaboration..

Hitchcock had many collaborations throughout his career. Possibly one of the most famous was with the famous artist Salvador Dali. In 1945 Hitchcock and Dali worked together on his film Spellbound where Dali designed a dream sequence which would become very well known in the future. 

Timeline of films which Hitch directed..

Notorious was released which has remained one of Hitchcock’s most acclaimed films. The plot of the movie was about Nazi’s, South America and uranium. Due to uranium being used as a plot device Hitchcock was under surveillance by the FBI. 

Stage Freight was Hitchcock’s first movie for Warner Brothers which was filmed on location in the UK. 

Hitchcock turned to technicolour with Dial M for Murder. This film starred Ray Milland and Grace Kelly who was a huge actress at the time, Kelly is perhaps one of the best known of Hitchcock’s blondes.

Rear Window was considered one of Hitchcock’s most thrilling and exciting pictures. The theme of voyeurism can be seen within this film as Jeff spies on his neighbours from his window. Voyeurism is associated with Hitchcock heavily due to his eccentric behaviour and treatment of his leading ladies. 

Vertigo is possibly one of the best known Hitchcock films today. When it was initially released it was box office failure with the fans taking a dislike to the thriller/romance aspect of the film. This film also saw one of Hitchcock’s most famous collaborations within the design industry. Hitch worked with Saul Bass to create the film poster for Vertigo, the aesthetics of this poster has long been an inspiration for many people within the design industry. 

North by Northwest was released and met with favourable results, this after the failure of Vertigo was pleasing news for Hitchcock.

Psycho was one of the most controversial of Hitchcock’s films, it is the most well known film within Hitchcock collection. Paramount were very concerned about the level of violence within certain scenes and also the nudity involved. With his wife at his side Hitchcock was able to direct these scenes and use camera shots to suggest violence and nudity without having to violate the certification standards. 

Hitchcock goes against the typical motifs seen within Hollywood cinema. He kills off his main character half way through the picture which shocked many moviegoers at the time. The famous shower scene has become a widely recognised Hitchcock clip with many professionals and members of the public re-creating the scene for photos and films. 

The Birds and Marnie were some of Hitchcock’s last pictures. Both starred Tippi Hedren who was one of last Hitchcock blondes. Hedren described working with Hitch as a troubling and unpleasant experience. She explains Hitch’s eccentric behaviour and the treatment he gave her. The experience of working with Hitchcock was quite disturbing for Hedren as she felt greatly controlled by the master of suspense. 

OUGD401 : From Theory to Practice : Digital Design Experiments

Digital design experiments for pages...

I wanted to design something visual to represent the titles of some of Hitchcock's famous films.

I tried to incorporate Hitchcock's famous silhouette into these designs in order to show a stronger link to my topic. 

Though I like the idea of using these designs I do feel that they do not link to the overall aesthetic of my publication. 

OUGD401 : From Theory to Practice : Presentation

To we had our progress presentation for the From Theory to Practice brief. We were split into two groups, one went with Richard and the other went with Fred. I was in a group with Richard. We took it in turns to each present our progress so far and our hopes for the future. After we each presented we received verbal feedback from both the tutor and our peers. 

The feedback I received from the crit was both helpful and also not. I felt that people liked my idea and it received a good reception but I did not get many ways in which I could improve my publication. Due to this I am going to just create a book which is not necessarily a bad thing but might not stand out among the other more interactive and interesting ideas. 

OUGD406 : Speaking From Experience : Binding Options

As I plan to include a small booklet in my pack I have to consider binding. I have never bound before and therefore find it very difficult to decide on the best binding technique for a product. I went to a local binding store and asked them what kind of binding they would suggest I use for my booklet. They were very helpful and suggested that the most efficient way for me was to wire bind. I have therefore booked an appointment to get my booklet wire bound before the deadline.

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Other options available....

Saddle Stich

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Japanese Binding..

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OUGD401 : From Theory to Practice : Hitchcock's Blondes

Joan Fontaine

The rival sister of actress Olivia de Havilland, Joan Fontaine made her first Hitchcock film with Rebecca, playing the naïve second wife of the urbane Maxim de Winter (Laurence Olivier). Upon arrival at de Winter’s country house, she runs afoul of her new servants, especially the manipulative Mrs. Danvers (Judith Anderson), who adored de Winter’s first wife, only to learn that she died under suspicious circumstances. Fontaine was Oscar-nominated for her performance. In Suspicion, she was again the naïve waif, this time marrying a charming man (Cary Grant) after a brief romance, only to suspect that he’s after her money and wants to kill her. This time, Fontaine won the Oscar for Best Actress, becoming the only actor, male or female, to win an Academy Award for their work with Hitchcock.

Ingrid Bergman

She once called Hitchcock an “adorable genius,” but it was Ingrid Bergmanwhose beauty and talent lit up the screen in some of the director’s most acclaimed films.  In Spellbound, she was a psychoanalyst who falls for her new boss (Gregory Peck), and learns that he’s a troubled amnesiac and possibly even a killer. Notorious starred Bergman as the daughter of a convicted spy, who is tasked by a government agent (Cary Grant) to seduce and marry the head of a group of former Nazis relocated to Brazil. She joined forces with Hitchcock a third time for the lesser-appreciated Under Capricorn, in which she was the alcoholic wife of a prominent businessman and former convict (Joseph Cotten) who took the blame for a murder she committed. Though never Oscar-nominated for her Hitchcok performances, Bergman was widely regarded as his finest leading ladies, with her turn inNotorious ranking as one of the best in her decorated career.

Grace Kelly

Without a doubt the most elegant of Hitchcock’s actresses, Grace Kellybroke the mold of the traditional icy blonde in favor of a warmer, more vivacious leading lady. In Dial M for Murder, she was the unfaithful wife of an ex-tennis pro (Ray Milland) who is targeted for murder after her husband discovers her affair with a crime-fiction author (Robert Cummings). That same year Kelly starred opposite James Stewart in one of Hitchcock’s greatest films, Rear Window, playing the socialite girlfriend to Stewart’s wheelchair-bound photojournalist who plays along with his idea that one of his neighbors killed his wife. Her third and last film with Hitchcock was 1955’s To Catch a Thief, in which she was the target of a copycat burglar mimicking the modus operandi of a notorious, but retired jewel thief (Grant). Though she left acting to become the Princess of Monaco, Kelly's three films with Hitchcock were the highlights of her short career.

Kim Novak

Both aloof and sensual, Kim Novak was cast by Hitchcock in Vertigo after original actress, Vera Miles, left due to pregnancy. Novak played the dual role of Judy Barton/Madeleine Elster, who becomes the sole obsession of acrophobic police detective John “Scottie” Ferguson (Stewart). He first becomes infatuated with Madeleine, who herself is obsessed with her own death, after a friend asks him to tail her. When Scottie’s vertigo stops him from saving her life, he meets Judy, a dead-ringer for Madeleine whose deeply held secrets causes his world to spin anew. Novak’s icy seductive qualities were put to great use and the role defined her for the rest of her career. The film was a high watermark for the actress, as Novak never managed to reach such heights again

Eva Marie Saint

Though an Oscar-winner for her performance in On the Waterfront, Evan Marie Saint was easily more identified for the role of Eve Kendall in North by Northwest – her only Hitchcock film. She played a seemingly innocent woman on a train who helps Roger Thornhill (Grant), a suave accountant wrongly accused of murder hide from the police. Little does Thornhill know, she’s actually working for a shadowy syndicate that would like nothing more than to kill him. But when her own life becomes endangered by the same people, Eve and Thornhill conspire stop a conspiracy involving hidden microfilm. And, of course, they fall in love. While Saint’s career was largely cast in the shadow of North by Northwest, she went on to further acclaim and decades later won an Emmy.

Janet Leigh

Though only on screen for the first third of the movie, Janet Leigh’s appearance  in Hitchcock’s Psycho was the most famous of his leading ladies, thanks to the now-infamous shower scene. She played Marion Crane, a secretary who embezzles $40,000 from her employer in order free her lover (John Gavin) from debt. On a drive from Phoenix to California, Marion stops at the isolated Bates Motel, where she meets the repressed Norman Bates (Anthony Perkins). Bates lives at the hotel with his abusive mother, who chastises him for wanting to have an affair with Marion. Meanwhile, Marion resolves to return the money and face the consequences, only to be viciously stabbed in the shower. Though her starring turn was brief, Leigh had the distinction of being in one of the most famous scenes in cinema history.

Tippi Hedren

Tippi Hedren was the last of the classic Hitchock leading ladies and starred in the last of his great films. In The Birds, she was a wealthy young socialite who travels to a seaside California town in pursuit of a new beau (Rod Taylor), only to find herself among the townspeople being pecked to death by swarms of seagulls. She next starred opposite Sean Connery in Marnie, widely considered to be Hitchcock’s final masterpiece. Hedren played a trouble young woman with a penchant for theft, with Connery as her boss-turned-husband who begins digging into her dark past. Hedren was hailed as a promising newcomer thanks to both roles, but spent the rest of her spotty career struggling to gain her due respect.

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OUGD401 : From Theory to Practice : Alma Reville

Alma Reville was Alfred Hitchcock's wife. She and Alfred met on set of one of his first pictures and were married in 1926. They had one child together, Patricia Hitchcock. Alma worked with Hitchcock on almost all of his pictures including his most popular and successful movies. She was known as the unsung partner as she was hardly ever given the recognition she deserved.

Article from the Telegraph

Hitchcock hadn’t heard the word ‘no’ in a long time. Of course he knewPsycho was a shockingly violent and transgressive story – that's why he wanted to film it. As Anthony Hopkins, playing the director in the new film Hitchcock, puts it, ‘Voyeurism, transvestism – very nice.’ He certainly didn’t expect his employer, Paramount, to point blank refuse to finance it. About halfway through Hitchcock, set during the making of Psycho in 1959, Hopkins and Helen Mirren face each other tensely across a table. Mr and Mrs Hitchcock are dining at home at the end of a bad day. They are personally bankrolling Psycho. The censors are crawling all over it. And the first cut looks like a disaster. ‘You might not be the easiest man to live with,’ says Mrs Hitchcock, ‘but you do know how to cut a picture better than anyone else.’ The world-famous director looks up at his wife. ‘Except for you,’ he says. 'I’m sure that’s the way Hitchcock thought,’ says Patrick McGilligan, who knew Hitchcock and wrote a definitive biography of the man. ‘Her final word on editing was the final word on editing.’ Few beyond film historians and the notoriously tight-knit Hitchcock inner circle are aware of Mrs Hitchcock’s role in his 50-year career. Alma Reville, as she called herself even after they wed, has 19 credits – from assistant director to scriptwriter – in Hitchcock-directed pictures, and several on non-Hitchcock films. More than that, she was his constant collaborator and sounding-board. ‘I hadn’t realised what an important figure Alma was in the creation of Hitchcock’s movies,’ says Mirren. ‘She was very happy to be in the shadows. But they had an incredibly close and creative relationship on every level.’ Stephen Rebello, on whose book Hitchcock is based, gives me two examples of her contribution to Psycho alone. ‘Hitchcock wanted no music in the shower scene [in which the heroine, Janet Leigh, is stabbed to death]. He just wanted the screams of Janet Leigh and the sound of the water running. He was adamant about it.’ Meanwhile, the composer Bernard Herrmann had created the now-legendary score of screaming strings for the scene – which Reville thought was rather good. ‘Hitch and Bernie were at loggerheads. Alma was extremely diplomatic, seductive and charming, and you’d want to please her because she was so smart. 'Alma persuaded Hitchcock to listen to what Herrmann was doing with that sequence, not just to reject it out of hand. 'She really had a major impact on the film, by just persuading Hitch to back off from his own ego and listen to the idea of somebody else. In this case, a brilliant idea.’ And she saved Psycho from the ultimate goof by spotting Leigh swallowing while lying ‘dead’ on the floor. ‘We must have run that sequence back and forth a couple of hundred times – we completely missed it,’ says Psycho’s script supervisor, Marshall Schlom. Outraged by the lack of recognition for Reville on her death in 1982, the film critic Charles Champlin wrote an article in the Los Angeles Times entitled ‘Alma Reville Hitchcock – The Unsung Partner’. ‘The Hitchcock touch has four hands,’ he wrote. ‘And two of them are Alma’s.’ Somehow, in the subsequent retellings of the Hitchcock story, Reville has been pushed to the edge of the frame. Or, worse, been recast as an enabler of Hitchcock’s obsessive Pygmalion-like impulses towards his leading ladies. A much-repeated anecdote – one that is reproduced in the BBC’s recent Hitchcock drama, The Girl – concerns Tippi Hedren, the star of The Birds. ‘He was developing this obsession for me and I began to feel very uncomfortable,’ Hedren told the writer Donald Spoto, in 2007. ‘He tried to control everything – what I wore and ate and drank.’ Spoto, whose biography of Hitchcock, The Dark Side of Genius, is behind the popular notion of the director as a socially inept, sadistic voyeur, tells me, ‘Tippi said to her, “Alma, you could stop this with a word. Why don’t you?” 'And Alma just looked at Tippi and walked away.’ Does Spoto believe Reville really could have stopped it? ‘Oh, absolutely. Hitchcock was terrified of her.’ To illustrate this, Spoto tells me a story: he and Hitchcock were enjoying a private screening of a film in Los Angeles in 1976. ‘All of a sudden the telephone rings. Hitchcock picked it up – only for about five seconds – then he put the phone down and drew himself out of his chair and said, “I have to go home immediately. Madame wants me at home.” 'He left at once. You see, when she said, “Come home,” he went home.’ Hitchcock’s granddaughter, Mary Stone, has attested to her grandmother’s formidable personality. ‘She was an extremely strong and proud woman,’ she has said. ‘I adored her, and occasionally feared her.’ When Stone was caught smoking at the Hitchcock home, ‘My parents gave me the worst possible punishment – I had to tell my grandmother what I had done.’ ‘Hitchcock himself said that he feared Alma’s opinion,’ McGilligan tells me. ‘But you have to understand that he said almost everything with humour. 'Does that mean he thought of her as a mother who was going to rap him on the knuckles? No. He feared her opinion because he respected it. If she said, “I don’t like it,” that was the worst thing he could hear.’ But if a cast or crew member was told, ‘Alma loves it,’ it was the highest compliment they could hope for. Reville was working for Famous Players-Lasky (later Paramount) at Islington Studios in London when she met Hitchcock. It was 1921 and, though they were both 22, she already had several years’ experience as a ‘cutter’ and continuity girl under her belt whereas Hitchcock was on his first job. She was editor on the silent picture Appearances; Hitchcock was designing dialogue cards for the film. They worked in the same studios for two years, during which time the red-haired Reville claimed she wasn’t aware of him even glancing at her. In later life, he hinted that he’d felt he couldn’t approach her until he held a better position. Then, in 1923, she received a phone-call from Hitchcock inviting her to a meeting. Hitchcock had been made assistant director on Woman to Woman and he needed an editor. Would she join the crew? According to their daughter, Patricia Hitchcock O’Connell, ‘The interview was brief, for Alma politely informed her future husband that the salary he was offering was inadequate.’ She left the room only to find Hitchcock racing down the corridor after her. He made her a better offer, and a partnership that would last half a century was born. Until the age of 15, Reville lived in Nottingham where her parents worked in lace production. When they moved to London her father took a job in the costume department of Twickenham Studios. Spellbound, Reville would cycle over after school to watch the actors at work. At 16 she got a position in the ‘cutting room’ where she would cut and glue pieces of film together, transforming scores of separate scenes into a seamless story. She climbed the ranks so quickly that articles about her appeared in the press. In 1925, the year Hitchcock’s directorial debut, The Pleasure Garden, was released with Reville as assistant director, The Picturegoer ran a piece headlined, ‘Alma in Wonderland – An interesting article, proving that a woman’s place is not always the home.’ They married a year later (Hitchcock proposed at sea during a storm) and over the next decade and a half worked together on classics such as The 39 Steps, Suspicion and Shadow of a Doubt. Alma Reville was tiny and girlish. Photographs of her relaxing in her California homes in middle age show her reading with knees drawn up to her chest like a child, hair swept off her high forehead, horn-rimmed spectacles resting on her nose. Like Hitchcock, she was always impeccably dressed with an enviable wardrobe custom-made by Edith Head. But unlike her ingeniously self-promoting husband (whom his daughter called ‘a born celebrity’), Reville shied away from the limelight. After the family’s move to America in 1939, Reville’s name appeared in credits less and less often. Rebello wonders if her confidence was shaken after some badly received screenplays or perhaps she was just falling into the more traditional role of a supportive wife and mother. What is certain is that she remained Hitchcock’s closest and constant collaborator. ‘She would still occasionally be present on set,’ remembers their daughter in her book, Alma Hitchcock: The Woman Behind the Man, ‘but it was in the evening that my parents would discuss the current film.’ Reville would read and rewrite scripts, give her opinion on casting – ‘If she didn’t like an actor, they wouldn’t get the film,’ says Rebello – and watch the first cut of a film with her husband. ‘She would comment when she thought something was off, and she was usually right. Had she been born a man, or had she had a different nature,’ continues Rebello, ‘she would have been a director herself.’ Hitchcock’s film sets were famously orderly places. He was a man of routine – Reville said he hated suspense in real life – and every day at five o’clock he’d call ‘cut’ and be chauffeured home for dinner with his wife. On Thursdays, they’d go to their favourite restaurant, Chasen’s, where they'd order steak for their adored dogs and where Alma was often overheard urging her portly husband to forgo the second pudding. They weren’t Hollywood’s most sociable couple but they loved to have small dinner parties, and Reville’s cooking was legendary. Their daughter’s book contains pages of handwritten menus: dinner for Tippi Hedren’s birthday; dinner with Sean Connery (they had caviar with vodka followed by saddle of lamb). Film and food is where the passion in the Hitchcock marriage lay. It was a sexless relationship. Hitchcock was open about his impotence and often quipped that they’d only had sex once, when they’d conceived Patricia. In Hitchcock, Reville comes perilously close to having an affair with the bisexual writer Whitfield Cook. McGilligan has read Cook’s journals and says he and Reville ‘certainly’ had a romantic relationship, possibly a sexual one. There is a scene in the film that is lifted straight from Cook’s journal, in which the pair are about to kiss when a phone-call from Hitchcock interrupts them. As for Hitchcock, much has been written about his hopeless longing for the cool blondes in his films. ‘I think that’s quite normal for a director,’ says McGilligan. ‘Was Alma upset by it? I doubt it. She was an utter professional. Did she occasionally roll her eyes as Helen Mirren does in the film? Maybe.’ Remarkably, Hitchcock never won an Oscar for his directing. But, at 79, he did receive the American Film Institute’s Lifetime Achievement Award. When he accepted it, he said, ‘I beg to mention by name only four people who have given me the most affection, appreciation, encouragement and constant collaboration. 'The first of the four is a film editor, the second is a scriptwriter, the third is the mother of my daughter, Pat, and the fourth is as fine a cook as ever performed miracles in a domestic kitchen. And their names are Alma Reville.’

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It is clear that Hitchcock adored his wife and respected her opinion above all. Having watched the new film about Hitchcock's life it is clear that she does a lot for him both professionally and as a wife. I think it is a shame that she was not given the recognition that she perhaps deserved but it is clear that she did not enjoy being in the public eye as much as Hitchcock.

IMDB Credits for Alma Reville

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When Alma Reville, wife of Alfred Hitchcock, died in 1982, Charles Champlin wrote in the LA Times that “the Hitchcock touch had four hands and two of them were Alma’s.” While Hitchcock received most of the credit for the 54 films he directed, Alma’s significant contribution should not be underestimated.

Two recent biopics, the HBO/BBC drama The Girl and the newly released feature Hitchcock, bring the relationship between the Hitchcocks into the spotlight. The two actors playing the portly director, Toby Jones and Anthony Hopkins, give an almost identical interpretation – well known for his size, voice, chin, deadpan delivery and rather lewd sense of humour, Hitchcock has become an iconic figure. But the presentation of Mrs Hitchcock differs greatly in the two dramas.

Imelda Staunton takes the role in The Girl; physically much more similar to the real Reville, she portrays a rather meek woman who, fully aware of her husband’s infidelities – whether real or fantasy – chooses to ignore them. Something of a victim, she even feeds his obsession with blondes, spotting Tippi Hedren in a TV commercial and suggesting her forThe Birds (1963).

Helen Mirren, in Hitchcock, is taller and more physically striking than Reville actually was. She is forceful and decisive, saving the production of Psycho (1960) while Hitchcock languishes in bed (a complete fiction, by the way). It is she who is tempted to have an affair, driving her husband to distraction while he fruitlessly tries to ingratiate himself with Janet Leigh.

So which is the more accurate presentation of the woman behind the man? Perhaps unsurprisingly, the truth lies somewhere in between. When Hitchcock met Reville in 1920, she had already been in the film business for five years and was well established as a cutter, scenario writer and floor secretary. He was a lowly titles artist and had to wait three years before he had reached a position in which he felt he could approach her.

They worked together at Gainsborough Studios and some there felt that she could have been a film director, although she herself was modest on this point: “I’m too small,” she said, “I could never project the image of authority a director has to project.” Other views of her tell a different story, and Alma has been described as “brisk, sometimes even brusque” and “much shrewder about people than Hitchcock, and a lot tougher.”

Alma and Alfred became Mr and Mrs Hitchcock on 2 December 1926. While she still worked on films by other directors until the mid-30s, she suppressed whatever personal ambition she may have had and devoted herself to supporting and encouraging her husband and bringing up their daughter, Pat. His eventual success allowed her to live a lifestyle she could never have dreamed of when she first began as teagirl at Twickenham Studios aged 16.

She learnt many different skills during her time in the British film industry, which stood her in good stead to offer advice wherever needed during production of Hitchcock’s films. From finding properties for him to produce, to casting, scouting locations, plotting camera angles and checking rushes, there were few areas that Alma didn’t contribute to. Once in Hollywood, she was less frequently seen on the set of his films, but was a key collaborator behind the scenes on every project.

Perhaps her greatest contribution was via the screen adaptations she worked on, for Hitchcock and others. Of the films on which she has a writing credit, it’s striking how many contain strong, well-drawn female roles. Take, for example, The Constant Nymph (Adrian Brunel, 1928), The Water Gipsies (Maurice Elvey, 1932), and The Passing of the Third Floor Back (Berthold Viertel, 1935), or Hitchcock’s Suspicion (1941), The Paradine Case (1947) and Stage Fright (1949), to name a few.

Stage Fright is the last film Alma was credited on; apparently the failure of Under Capricorn(1949), a property she had recommended to Hitchcock, led her to lose confidence in her judgement. Her absence shows; while Hitchcock’s later films are among his best regarded, the female roles tend to be less deeply examined, the action usually driven by the male protagonists. One wonders whether Marnie (1964) would have been more successful if Alma had had a hand in writing the script; despite the contribution of Jay Presson Allen, its study of an emotionally damaged woman is psychologically undermotivated.

Hitchcock was honest about his lack of understanding of the opposite sex: “I never understood what women wanted. I only knew it wasn’t me,” he once said wistfully. The onscreen portrayal of him as a man desperately attempting to seduce his blonde starlets seems a little overstated; as biopics often do, it feels as if drama has been created where none really exists. Certainly, Alma’s affair with writer Whitfield Cook, if it did take place, would have been long over by the time Psycho (1960) was being made.

While the real Alma Reville is still a little obscure, it’s only right that she is at last receiving recognition for her contribution to Hitchcock’s films. As the director said, in his speech at the presentation of his AFI lifetime award in 1979, if it wasn’t for her, he may well still have been at that gala dinner, but as “one of the slower waiters.”

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