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any moons ago, before Paul
Greengrass held us captive
with Jason Bourne’s frantic
globetrotting or Jed Mercurio
set the nation on the edge of
their seats with BBC series Bodyguard, there
was another creative gunslinger in town.
Alfred Hitchcock, who directed more than
50 feature films, has long been christened
“the master of suspense”. Nearly 40 years
after he faced the final curtain, the slick
storytelling that made his name remains as
relevant and inspirational as ever.
Hitchcock’s oeuvre made him one of the
most inf luential filmmakers of all-time;
who can forget Janet Leigh’s screams in the
shower in Psycho, Tippi Hedren’s helpless
cries in The Birds and a sharp-suited Cary
Grant’s frantic escape from a crop-duster in
North By Northwest.
“He had a great understanding of cinema
logic,” says Tony Lee Moral, Mayfair resident,
author and something of a ‘Hitchcockian’
expert. “He knew where to put the camera.
For example, when Janet Leigh is killed in
the shower, he knows instinctively to put the
camera on the tiled room f loor so it spirals
out of her eye. The audience have spent 40
minutes investing in this character and are
shocked the main star has just been killed.“In North By Northwest, he knew to put
Cary Grant in a Savile Row business suit
and have him run like a jack rabbit while
he’s being chased by a biplane. He’s stripped
of all of his New York accoutrements and is
completely defenceless.”
Fittingly, when we meet for breakfast in
Burlington Arcade, Tony is wearing a Kilgour
jacket, which Hitchcock asked Grant to wear
in the 1959 classic.
“He very cleverly used costume and dress,”
he says. “Cary Grant is dressed in this great
Kilgour suit throughout the movie, but when
he meets Martin Landau, who is one of the
heavies, the villain, Hitchcock very cleverly
gave him an expensive suit so Cary Grant
also felt intimidated. He was very clever in
the psychological use of costume.”
Tony has written three books on
Hitchcock; Making Of Marnie (2005), The
Making Of Hitchcock’s The Birds (2013)
and Alfred Hitchcock’s Movie Making
Masterclass (2013).
“He has been a huge part of my life,” he
says. “I’ve written three books about him and
I’ve interviewed practically everyone who is
still alive who worked with him in America.
“I interviewed Winston Graham before
he died [the novelist wrote Marnie, which
Hitchcock adapted into a 1964 film], I spokeCULTURE
ALFRED HITCHCOCK WIELDING A BUTTER KNIFE DURING BREAKFAST AT CLARIDGE’S, 1969
CARY GRANT IN HITCHCOCK’SNORTH BY NORTHWESTto the screenwriters in New York; some great
screenwriters like the screenwriter of Psycho
and Jay Presson Allen, who wrote Marnie,
and Evan Hunter, who wrote The Birds.
“In 1999, there was a big Hitchcock
conference in New York for the centennial of
his birth and I met a lot of collaborators.”
Tony has been a fan of Hitchcock since he
was a child. He watched his first Hitchcock
film, I Confess, when he was 10 and it made a
deep impression.
“At that age I just appreciated the suspense
and mystery and conf licted values which
Hitchcock is very good at doing. Then when
I became interested in film when I was at
university, I basically was able to appreciate
his expertise as a director.”
Born in Hastings, Tony graduated from
university with a science degree and bagged
a job at the BBC in 1992 as a researcher for
David Attenborough. He would go on to
work for the Discovery Channel in Russia,
before moving to the United States to work
for National Geographic. His two years in
California helped inspire his latest thriller,
The Haunting Of Alice May, released earlier
this year. It’s a mystery novel about a young
girl who falls in love with a ghost, and it
incorporates Hitchcock’s techniques with
both characterisation and location.