There’s nothing to winning, really. That is, if you happen to be blessed with a keen eye, an agile mind, and no scruples whatsoever.
Alfred Hitchcock (1899-1980) English film director
(Attributed)
Quotations by:
Hitchcock, Alfred
We seem to have a compulsion these days to bury time capsules in order to give those people living in the next century or so some idea of what we are like. I have prepared one of my own. I have placed some rather large samples of dynamite, gunpowder, and nitroglycerin. My time capsule is set to go off in the year 3000. It will show them what we are really like.
Alfred Hitchcock (1899-1980) English film director
(Attributed)
The length of a film should be directly related to the endurance of the human bladder.
Alfred Hitchcock (1899-1980) English film director
(Attributed)
Simon Rose, Classic Film Guide (1995)
In films murders are always very clean. I show how difficult it is and what a messy thing it is to kill a man.
Alfred Hitchcock (1899-1980) English film director
(Attributed)
There is no terror in a bang, only in the anticipation of it.
Alfred Hitchcock (1899-1980) English film director
(Attributed)
Quoted in Leslie Halliwell, Halliwell’s Filmgoer’s Companion (1984).
Television has brought back murder into the home
Alfred Hitchcock (1899-1980) English film director
London Observer (quoted) (19 Dec. 1965)
Seeing a murder on television can help work off one’s antagonisms. And if you haven’t any antagonisms, the commercials will give you some.
Alfred Hitchcock (1899-1980) English film director
National Observer (15 Aug 1966)
Making a film means, first of all, to tell a story. That story can be an improbable one, but it should never be banal. It must be dramatic and human. What is drama, after all, but life with the dull bits cut out.
Alfred Hitchcock (1899-1980) English film director
Interview (1962-08) by François Truffaut
(Source)
Why he avoids making "slice of life" films. Sometimes paraphrased as "Drama is life with the dull bits cut out."
From a series of interviews (with Helen Scott as the translator) of Hitchcock by Truffaut, edited and collected in the Truffaut book Hitchcock: A Definitive Study [Le Cinéma Selon Hitchcock], ch. 4 (1966) [tr. Truffaut (1967)].
I abhor violence. That is why on this program we use stabbings, shootings and garrotings only when they are absolutely essential to the plot. Or when the whim strikes us.
Alfred Hitchcock (1899-1980) English film director
Introductory narration, “The Cheney Vase” Alfred Hitchcock Presents (20 Dec 1955)