Review by C.J. Bunce
Alfred Hitchcock’s Storyboards arrives in bookstores this week, an introduction to the Master of Suspense through images from a handful of his films. Available to order now here at Amazon, it includes a brief introduction to some of the artists he worked with on 11 selected films, and even a few sketches by Hitchcock himself. Hitchcock’s biggest films have become so iconic that the few scenes reproduced are going to leave fans wishing for more. But what is there, especially the opening scenes from Vertigo, illustrate that the celebrated director relied on collaborators to get his vision onto the big screen.
Hitchcock made more than 50 films, so using only 11 is a tad frustrating, especially leaving out images from major works like Rear Window, Dial M for Murder, Rope, Lifeboat, To Catch a Thief, Strangers on a Train, The Man Who Knew Too Much, and Rebecca, Hitchcock’s only film to win a Best Picture Oscar. The text is a bit too “fanboy,” with too much jumping around to be a truly scholarly look at the director and his process. The book’s writer Tony Lee Moral states more than once that “No other director is more strongly associated with storyboarding” than the Hitchcock. In truth storyboards have been used in making films back to pioneering filmmaker Georges Méliès. Akira Kurosawa painted his own storyboards for his movies. Countless others since are known for using storyboards.
The book reproduces less than a dozen complete scenes laid out together as we’ve seen in previous concept art and storyboard books reviewed at borg, showing mostly single images of concept artwork from the films. Those that allow readers to see the scene unfold include the shower murder in Psycho, and a frenetic attack from The Birds. Because of the book layout it’s often difficult to tell what artist illustrated what panel. Most storyboard and concept art books show artist attribution on each image or page (or an unavailable note if that is the case), and the text here not always lining up with the images means this is often impossible to know. I think all of the five images that ring of Edward Hopper from Shadow of a Doubt and the two from Rebecca are from Dorothea Holt, but it’s not clear.
The only other artwork that truly evokes Hitchcock’s magic is art director Henry Bumstead’s ten pages of original art pulled from the Muir Woods scene, the Golden Gate scene, and the fall scenes in Vertigo–frequently listed by film scholars as the greatest American film of all time. The Muir Woods scene sets the mood the best, while a hanging Jimmy Stewart is more cartoony–but clearly it served its purpose. The watercolor of the Spanish Mission would make a great print–I think this was created by Bumstead.
The art for Cary Grant’s cropduster chase sequence in North by Northwest is as sparse as the scene, and the author notes they might have been sketched by Mentor Huebner, but possibly sketched afterward for publicity purposes. A few pages from Spellbound by Salvador Dali–the best-known concept artist used by Hitchcock–are notably included. Another familiar name, Saul Bass, sketched out three scenes for Psycho, and a selection of his work is included. Production designer Robert Boyle’s color sketches for The Birds are attractive–but most of the black and white storyboards will be difficult for even the biggest fan to match to the film.
Each artist is provided with a brief biographical entry, and readers get a small sampling of their work. Readers only get a glimpse into how each artist sat down with Hitchcock in advance of each film and put pen to paper. How much of each set of storyboards would Hitchcock cut and send back to the artist, and what was the back and forth like? We just don’t find out.
The book does not include screen captures or other clips from the films. A book like this really needs those side-by-side images, otherwise this is just a book of sketches. Just compare this to a book like Blade Runner 2049: The Storyboards (reviewed here) or Star Wars: The Storyboards (reviewed here). A handful of the art sequences may easily match your memory of key movie sequences, but the rest force the reader to re-create the film in his/her own mind. The book has an index, but only of the films, with no other detail, making it more difficult to understand who did what and when.
Less than a dozen spreads look like this:
The value to film aficionados will be in the images themselves. Without context some of them do reflect what made it to the final screen cut. But the images provided only reflect the beginning of such an analysis. Readers only get a hint of the process, the artist’s style, and whether Hitchcock and the artist were successful at translating the storyboards to the cinematographer. Problems in the text include repetitive phrasing, a reliance on “loaded” words that reflect the author’s love for the director instead of sticking with factual assertions, citation and footnotes–maybe a hard edit may have made for a better presentation, and fans hoping for a trove of information will find the book consists of merely 145 pages.
For diehard Hitchcock fans, they will appreciate seeing the storyboards that made it into the book. For anyone looking for a book on storyboarding, other books cover the subject more thoroughly, and other Hitchcock books better discuss the director’s method. Alfred Hitchcock’s Storyboards arrives in bookstores this week in a hardcover volume. It’s available to order now here at Amazon.
