Greene & Hitchcock: a Marriage Made in Hell?

Falk: Greene & Hitchcock: A Marriage Made in Hell? Or, the What-ifs & t

What was the nature of Greene’s Greene & Hitchcock: A strange miasma about Hitchcock and his work—Jordan again—which seemed so Marriage Made in to affect the great author in the majority Hell? Or, the What-ifs of his often perceptive, frequently witty, and regularly acerbic film writings & the Why-nots across nearly half a century? The first sustained assault on Quentin Falk Hitchcock arrived in Greene’s The Spectator review of 15 May 1936 of The In a letter to his youngest brother Secret Agent, not to be confused with Hugh, dated 31 October 1936, Graham Conrad but based instead, if confusingly, Greene wrote: “I had to see Hitchcock on Somerset Maugham’s Ashenden: Or, the other day about possible work for The British Agent, a collection of loosely G.B. [Gaumont-British Picture linked spy stories first published almost Corporation]. A silly harmless clown. I a decade earlier: “How unfortunate it is shuddered at the things he told me he that Hitchcock, a clever director, is was doing to Conrad’s The Secret allowed to produce and even write his Agent.”1 own films, though as a producer he has This is possibly the only-ever no sense of continuity and as a writer he recorded actual encounter between two has no sense of life. … His films consist remarkable artists, “poets of English of a series of small ‘amusing’ criminality and bad conscience,” as Neil melodramatic situations. … Very Jordan, the Oscar-winning Irish perfunctorily he builds up to these tricky filmmaker of Mona Lisa and The Crying situations (paying no attention on the Game, would memorably bracket them way to inconsistencies, loose ends, in his Foreword to the third (and later, psychological absurdities) and then fourth) edition of my book, Travels in drops them; they mean nothing; they Greeneland: The Cinema of Graham lead to nothing.”2 His concessionary Greene. “clever director” now begins to ring not Despite the piquant prospect in later just ironic but positively hollow. Finally, years of occasional collaborations (of the critic rails, “nothing is left of which more later), these would remain [Maugham’s] witty and realistic entirely unfulfilled, leading Jordan to fiction.”3 muse, somewhat mournfully one senses, Avid followers at the time of Greene’s about that palpable lack of contact Spectator reviews might have suspected between Greene and Hitchcock, whose that such a diatribe was always pending mutual preoccupations with sex, about Hitchcock who, at thirty-six, had murder, guilt, and jealousy, as well as already forged a formidable reputation their shared Catholicism—one born with films like The Lodger, Blackmail, with, the other acquired—suggests they The Man Who Knew Too Much, and The might have made ideal creative 39 Steps. For even in some earlier bedfellows. reviews of other films and their

1 Graham Greene: A Life in Letters, ed. Richard Dark, ed. David Parkinson (Manchester: Greene (London: Little, Brown, 2007), 79. Carcanet, 1993), 101. 2 The Graham Greene Reader: Mornings in the 3 Ibid., 162.

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filmmakers, Greene couldn’t resist happen half an hour away.”7 sideswipes at Hitchcock. In his mostly Now, it would be remiss not to step damning critique of Jack Raymond’s back for just a second and return to the Come Out of the Pantry, a New York-set subject of Conrad’s The Secret Agent. musical comedy about class, we Just what Hitchcock and his suddenly also learn that “Mr. Hitchcock screenwriters, no fewer than four of sometimes indulges in crime or ‘low life,’ them, had actually done to Conrad’s but it is with the ‘amused’ collector’s air novel was spelled out two months later of a specialist in sensation.”4 in Greene’s review of the film. However Just three months later Greene instead—as one might have expected, reviewed Pierre Chenal’s Crime et recalling in particular that letter to his Chatiment, a Gallic adaptation of sibling—Greene suddenly and quite Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment: dramatically changed tack conceding “The cinema has always been successful that, with Sabotage, retitled not to at conveying violence, and what a confuse it with his previous film, “for the remarkable film will result when our first time he [Hitchcock] has really murderer is a really classic one. I have ‘come off.’”8 long suspected that a high-class murder Greene’s apparently sudden volte is the simple artistic ideal of most film face, especially in connection with an directors, from Mr. Hitchcock adaptation of the author who was an upwards.”5 How that “upwards” wounds. acknowledged influence on Greene’s And again, apropos Fritz Lang’s Fury, own writing, is all the more surprising here was a film he finally adjudged given the reviewer’s seemingly endless “great,” albeit one he admits he antipathy—before and after Sabotage— approached initially with trepidation which might also have been interpreted because of the director’s propensity for as some kind of odd, inexplicable, and melodrama, though “infinitely more seemingly one-sided personal vendetta. expert than, say, Mr. Hitchcock’s.”6 Yet like much of Greene’s recall, He was no less sparing three years especially in retrospect, there is often a later when confronted with Jamaica healthy—or should that be, unhealthy— Inn, Hitchcock’s follow-up to the widely element of unreliability. So when we praised The Lady Vanishes—which read, toward the foot of a Spectator escaped Greene’s official gaze—and review in November 1935 for the shortly before the director would American news series The March of decamp to Hollywood and the future Time, mention of “Mr. Hitchcock’s triumphs of Rebecca onwards and, yes, blameless film of Lord Tweedsmuir’s upwards as the much-trumpeted Master patriotic thriller” The Thirty-Nine of Suspense. Greene decried this screen Steps—Greene was principally version of Daphne du Maurier’s comparing contemporary censorship colorfully bucolic tale of Cornish demands—that conclusion contrasted wreckers as a “bogus costume piece” in starkly, almost bizarrely, with an which “there are no surprises—and no altogether different verdict more than suspense: we can see everything that will thirty-five years on, about the same film:

4 Ibid., 53. 7 Ibid., 292. 5 Ibid., 82. 8 Ibid., 163. 6 Ibid., 116.

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“How inexcusably he spoilt The Thirty- first volume up to 1939) and Michael Nine Steps,” wrote Greene in his Shelden noted Greene’s early antipathy Introduction to The Pleasure Dome, a to the work of Hitchcock, they never 1972 collection of his film criticism of really posited any possible ulterior some 600 films between 1935 and 1940 motive. However, Professor Richard for both The Spectator and the short- Greene, author of Russian Roulette, the lived arts magazine Night and Day. newest account of Greene’s life and Of course, Hitchcock wasn’t alone as times published in Autumn 2020, a focus for Greene’s persistent critical offered me this intriguing twist on the disdain. Another was Alexander Korda, tandem tale: “I think that both the ex-patriate Hungarian, Britain’s Hitchcock and Korda began in the same emerging movie mogul and czar at low place in Greene’s estimation. He Denham, the country’s largest studio, looked to both for scriptwriting work in which opened for business in May 1936 late 1936, and found it with Korda, so a little under a year after starting that relationship evolved. He did not construction. Throughout that same come to an agreement with Hitchcock, year Greene poured scorn on Korda’s so continued to regard him as a ‘silly productions. “The usual Denham harmless clown.’”11 mouse” was a regular epithet. Then, just Was Greene’s continuing hostility to three months after lambasting Korda’s Hitch—one-sided it must be always Rembrandt in November 1936: “The reiterated—and emerging partnership film is ruined by lack of story and with Korda somehow fueled simply by continuity; it has no drive,”9 Greene commercial considerations? That it was changed tack exhorting of Fire over Korda and not Hitchcock who, in the England, a “well-directed and lavish mid-1930s, had offered the thirty-two- picture … the best production to come year-old coming novelist (then also from Denham yet.”10 The “mouse” has father of two young children) access to roared at last! some crucial supplementary income in Had something significantly changed addition to freelance film reviewing and for Greene in those intervening months? journalism. But is that too simplistic On the principle he would rather be and, arguably, overly cynical? joined by the writer than be constantly There would be, much later, two attacked by him, Korda invited Greene further snubs for Hitchcock by Greene to meet him at Denham and suggest when both artists were at the height of some possible scenarios. The same year, their powers. In 1952, not that long after Greene’s idea of a thriller set between Graham’s (probably) finest one and five in the morning had been screenwriting hours on, first, The Fallen written (by others), produced and Idol and then The Third Man in the late- exhibited as a sixty-five-minute Quota 1940s, Hitchcock apparently sought help Quickie called The Green Cockatoo. from Greene to crack his latest Greene and Korda would soon become Hollywood movie, I Confess, a killer lifelong friends. thriller based on a chilling true story While Greene’s past biographers about the sanctity of the confessional. such as Norman Sherry (certainly in his According to Mike Hill, who lectured

9 Ibid., 157. 11 Email to QF, 2 October 2019. 10 Ibid., 181.

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about Greene and Hitchcock at the 2010 serious literary reputations were Berkhamsted Festival and again, five founded. ‘Entertainments’ were thrillers, years later, at the Manchester Literary melodramas, carrying no ‘message,’ and Philosophical Society, this would stories which would make popular have seemed natural Greene territory; films.”14 Hill then quotes Greene’s rather but he “turned Hitchcock down, this tasty two-sentence pitch to Korda for the time on the grounds that he was film that would become The Green interested in adapting for the screen Cockatoo: “This may not have been only his own stories. But this reason Greene’s customary way of developing a wore a little thin when a few years later story, but it is a striking potential Greene adapted Shaw’s Saint Joan for opening to a film, and rather a good film director Otto Preminger.”12 example of the kind of ‘ingenious Toward the end of that decade, melodramatic situation’ Greene so another “what if?” beckoned when it was criticized in Hitchcock. The fact is that reported that Hitchcock had submitted a Greene’s ‘entertainments’ of the 1930s pre-publication bid of £50,000 for Our and 1940s very often demonstrate the Man in Havana. Money considerations very characteristics Greene was critical were clearly not the sole issue this time of in Hitchcock’s films.”15 Hill firmly around when Greene refused Hitch the believes, and it is a stance difficult to rights, later telling me, “I felt the book dispute, that Greene’s refusal to work just wouldn’t survive his touch.”13 As we with Hitchcock in the 1950s was chatted in his Antibes apartment in predicated by his jaundiced views of the 1983, it was clear that for Greene, old filmmaker in the 1930s, ones he habits died hard as far as Hitchcock was stubbornly refused to abandon concerned, while also conceding he thereafter. actually did like some of the director’s But what collaborators they might work, such as Notorious (1946), after have made—Greene, a “child of the film Hitch went to Hollywood. age” (Basil Wright), a writer with “a Money and, possibly, hubris aside, camera eye” (Evelyn Waugh), and Mike Hill also offered a rather different Hitchcock, the “Master of Suspense,” the and fascinating slant on Greene’s critical “most complete filmmaker of all” hostility toward Hitchcock: “It is that (Francois Truffaut)—two men, just five Greene saw (and criticized) in years apart in age, who not only both Hitchcock’s films some of the endured, separately, legendary memos characteristics of his own fiction. This from producer David O. Selznick, but criticism reflects the distinction, also each merited, much more adopted by Greene in the 1930s but significantly, enduring adjectives to dropped later, between the novelist’s describe aspects of their respective ‘entertainments’ and his more serious creative worlds: “Greeneland” and work, his ‘novels.’ ‘Entertainments’ were “Hitchcockian.” In fact, it is difficult now popular, more commercial, written to not to think of almost any Greene novels make money, not the stuff on which (well, perhaps saving just a handful) let

12 Mike Hill, lecture on Greene and Hitchcock, 14 Mike Hill, lecture on Greene and Hitchcock, 2015. 2015. 13 Quentin Falk, Travels in Greeneland: The 15 Ibid. Cinema of Graham Greene (Dahlonega: University of North Georgia, 2014), 99.

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alone his entertainments that would not have enjoyed elements of the so-called Hitchcock touch. Mike Hill cites in particular Stamboul Train, A Gun for Sale, The Ministry of Fear, and Our Man in Havana, opining of the last, a little mischievously one suspects, “Greene’s refusal may have cost us all dear.”16 What Greene would probably have regarded as a marriage made in hell might just have turned out to be heaven- sent.

Quentin Falk is the author of ten books including Travels in Greeneland: The Cinema of Graham Greene that was shortlisted for the Mobil BFI Film Book of the Year, and biographies of Anthony Hopkins, Alfred Hitchcock, Albert Finney, and George Drewry VC, a Great War naval hero. He is currently writing about the career of the British film director Charles Crichton, to be published late 2020. In 2016, he was a Visiting Professor of English at the University of North Georgia.

16 Ibid.

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