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The Camera Lies: Acting for Hitchcock
The first book on Hitchcock that focuses exclusively on his work with actorsAlfred Hitchcock is said to have once remarked, "Actors are cattle," a line that has stuck in the public consciousness ever since. For Hitchcock, acting was a matter of contrast and counterpoint, valuing subtlety and understatement over flashiness. He felt that the camera was duplicitous, and directed actors to look and act conversely. In The Camera Lies, author Dan Callahan spotlights the many nuances of Hitchcock's direction throughout his career, from Cary Grant in Notorious (1946) to Janet Leigh in Psycho (1960). Delving further, he examines the ways that sex and sexuality are presented through Hitchcock's characters, reflecting the director's own complex relationship with sexuality.Detailing the fluidity of acting -- both what it means to act on film and how the process varies in each actor's career -- Callahan examines the spectrum of treatment and direction Hitchcock provided well- and lesser-known actors alike, including Ingrid Bergman, Henry Kendall, Joan Barry, Robert Walker, Jessica Tandy, Kim Novak, and Tippi Hedren. As Hitchcock believed, the best actor was one who could "do nothing well" - but behind an outward indifference to his players was a sophisticated acting theorist who often drew out great performances. The Camera Lies unpacks Hitchcock's legacy both as a director who continuously taught audiences to distrust appearance, and as a man with an uncanny insight into the human capacity for deceit and misinterpretation.
269 pages, Kindle Edition
Published August 18, 2020
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Displaying 1 - 13 of 13 reviews
November 8, 2020
Aside from Sheila O'Malley, no working American critic has thought so long and hard, or researched so diligently, American screen acting as Dan Callahan has. He applies his understanding and erudition to a work that sheds new light on Hitchcock as an artist and as a human being. The book abounds with illuminating portraits of Hitchcock's most outstanding performers, from near-anonymous bit players to megastars like Bergman, Peck, Kelly, Fontaine, Leigh, Stewart, and Grant. Essential.
September 1, 2020
Dan Callahan's THE CAMERA LIES: ACTING FOR HITCHCOCK offers an insightful, succinct and engaging film-by-film analysis of the master filmmaker's work. This impressive, thoughtful and delightfully opinionated book rivals Donald Spoto's definitive guide THE ART OF ALFRED HITCHCOCK. The subtitle undersells the scope of Callahan's attention. Yes, it looks at how Hitchcock worked with actors, but Callahan ("The Art of American Screen Acting") offers a wealth of information and gossip on how Hitchcock also partnered with outstanding co-writers, editors, composers and cinematographers.
Hitchcock was uncharacteristically modest about working with actors. He notoriously said, "All actors should be treated like cattle." But, Callahan reminds readers, "Hitchcock films are filled to bursting with memorable performances, great performances... and not just from leading players." Jimmy Stewart (who starred in several Hitchcock films including REAR WINDOW) said Hitchcock "preferred to let the actor figure out things for himself. He refers to his method as 'planned spontaneity.' " But if Hitchcock wasn't getting what he wanted, he stepped in. According to Callahan, in VERTIGO, Hitchcock told Kim Novak "exactly how he wanted her to say her lines, down to the breath (or lack of it) and rhythm." Although Callahan occasionally points out dated or sexist details in the films, he also explains that Hitchcock's films remain fresh today because he constantly fought against censorship and cleverly snuck a lot of gay and sexual innuendo into many of his films.
Hitchcock buffs will devour this fresh and adroitly written guide. THE CAMERA LIES is an illuminating mixture of scholarly reference and good gossip.
THE CAMERA LIES is a fresh and delightfully opinionated film-by-film examination of Alfred Hitchcock's six decades-long career as Hollywood's "Master of Suspense."
Hitchcock was uncharacteristically modest about working with actors. He notoriously said, "All actors should be treated like cattle." But, Callahan reminds readers, "Hitchcock films are filled to bursting with memorable performances, great performances... and not just from leading players." Jimmy Stewart (who starred in several Hitchcock films including REAR WINDOW) said Hitchcock "preferred to let the actor figure out things for himself. He refers to his method as 'planned spontaneity.' " But if Hitchcock wasn't getting what he wanted, he stepped in. According to Callahan, in VERTIGO, Hitchcock told Kim Novak "exactly how he wanted her to say her lines, down to the breath (or lack of it) and rhythm." Although Callahan occasionally points out dated or sexist details in the films, he also explains that Hitchcock's films remain fresh today because he constantly fought against censorship and cleverly snuck a lot of gay and sexual innuendo into many of his films.
Hitchcock buffs will devour this fresh and adroitly written guide. THE CAMERA LIES is an illuminating mixture of scholarly reference and good gossip.
THE CAMERA LIES is a fresh and delightfully opinionated film-by-film examination of Alfred Hitchcock's six decades-long career as Hollywood's "Master of Suspense."
January 8, 2021
“Actors are like cattle,” Alfred Hitchcock famously declared. He later claimed it was merely one of his “Machiavellian quips” and not to be taken seriously. “Let us say, rather, that actors are a necessary evil.” Revising his statement further, he said, “Actors should be treated like cattle.” Dan Callahan’s new book, The Camera Lies: Acting for Hitchcock, is filled with anecdotes that detail the director’s fraught relationship with his performers. His research covers all the director’s films, from The Pleasure Garden (1925) to his final effort, Family Plot (1976). Callahan, who has published two earlier books on film acting history, has read widely on his subject. There are numerous biographies and critical volumes on the filmmaker’s individual films to draw on, particularly François Truffaut’s Hitchcock/Truffaut, a series of conversations between the two directors, and Donald Spoto’s The Dark Side of Genius, which looks at Hitchcock’s work in relation to how it reflects his (numerous) eccentricities.
The Camera Lies focuses on the director’s fascinating attitudes about acting and the casting process. It is important to keep in mind that Hitchcock was a highly technical director. From story development (done with the essential assistance of his wife Alma) through preproduction and production, he exactingly calculated his use of camera angles, storyboards, and music. Sometimes even the timing of specific scenes was determined beforehand. His feeling about actors was much less methodical: they merely had to do their job for the camera. Underacting was his mantra. Celebrated as “The Master of Suspense,” he favored montage sequences as the best way to involve audiences by building maximum tension. When it came to constructing a scene, Hitchcock often relegated actors to a series of smaller, less essential shots.
“The sense of versatility in a stage actor, of convincingly being or portraying something you are not, was anathema to Hitchcock,” claims Callahan. “The externals of a face interested Hitchcock, and certain line readings could be sculpted.” Silent film actors, trained for the stage, could often appear artificial and overwrought in the movies. Stanislavski‘s Method, developed in this country under Lee Strasberg, trained actors to tap into the inner life of their characters in order to emphasize emotional realism. The aim was to create more believable film performances. But when it came to the movies, Method actors risked chewing the scenery, which was just what Hitchcock didn’t want. As a result, some actors were a better fit for him than others. With that measurement as his guide, Callahan has crafted an entertaining and illuminating guide to understanding the director’s relationship with some of the most iconic actors of the day. Hitchcock knew he wielded the whip hand: actors at all levels of success are pressured by competition, fear of bruised egos, and the tyrannical whims of directors and producers.
In The Lodger (1926), Hitchcock’s taste in performance is evident. Of the film’s lead actor, Ivor Novello, the author writes, “He is at his best when he silently broods and trusts to presence . . . at his worst when most active.” Hitchcock liked actors who “did nothing well.” Regarding Herbert Marshall, the male lead in Murder! (1930), Callahan observes that he “is the ideal Hitchcock actor: a little phlegmatic, maybe, but able to suggest that there are fires banked down in him, and with a speaking voice redolent of the plummy but held-back or constipated tones of James Mason.” Many of Hitchcock’s male leads often come off as somewhat repressed, often sexually inhibited, a characteristic many recognized in Hitchcock himself. Think of the unctuous Bruno Anthony played by Robert Walker in Strangers on a Train (1951), or the coiled madness of Anthony Perkins’s magnificent Norman Bates in Psycho (1960). A legendary actor, however, could throw Hitch for a loop. The director could not elicit the performance he wanted from one of the era’s finest actors, Charles Laughton, whose repressed homosexuality would seem to make him an excellent fit for a Hitchcock protagonist. About Laughton in Jamaica Inn (1939) Hitchcock declared: “It isn’t possible to direct a Charles Laughton film. All you can do is act as a referee.”
Some of the greatest Hitchcock performers managed to be both charming and somewhat mysterious: “Cary Grant was an ideal Hitchcock actor because he never settled on one attitude for long.” Jimmy Stewart and Henry Fonda, both debonair, naturally folksy, and low key, also served Hitchcock well. As for a great Method actor like Montgomery Clift, Callahan comments that “he was a virtuoso and not a Hitchcock actor. He acts with his cheeks, his mouth, his hands, his eyebrows, his forehead.”
The actresses in Hitchcock’s films often leave the strongest impression. He preferred women who were smart, cool, sexy, well-coifed, usually blonde, and exuded a tantalizingly restrained sexuality: Joan Fontaine, Kim Novak, Eva Marie Saint, Janet Leigh, Doris Day, Tippi Hedren, and Grace Kelly. Hitchcock’s idea of “negative acting” encourages viewers to project onto the character rather than to try to figure out their intentions. “Hitchcock wants us to do the acting most of the time” is how Callahan puts it. Hitch adored Kelly, but he lost her when she became Princess of Monaco: “For Hitchcock, Kelly was a doll that could be molded to his specifications. She is for the movies, a fantasy.” Novak “looks, fleshy, solid, and earthy, but her manner is ethereal, spacey, anxious, absent.” One note Hitch gave Novak stands as useful advice for all film performers: “If you put a lot of redundant expressions on your face, it’s like taking a piece of paper and scribbling all over it.” Ingrid Bergman was another favorite: “Bergman’s face lives in dreamy uncertainty,” comments Callahan. What Hitchcock really liked were faces in transition. He wanted the camera to spotlight the split-second gulf that opened up when one emotion changed into another.
l to r: Cary Grant, Joan Fontaine, and Alfred Hitchcock during the filming of Suspicion.
Not all of Hitch’s relationships with actresses were rosy. The notoriously salty and sexually forthright Tallulah Bankhead — cast in Lifeboat (1944) — was not his kind of woman. Too overtly aggressive. Sadly, as he grew older, the director’s sexual peccadilloes became increasingly apparent. He became abusive and controlling toward Tippi Hedren, the star of The Birds (1963) and Marnie (1964). “Hedren’s stories in recent years describe Hitchcock resembling the villain in an old stage melodrama on the set of Marnie, practically twirling his mustache as he demanded sexual access to her.”
Despite his personal flaws, Hitchcock’s five decades of work remain among the most significant in film history. “Hitchcock deals in dreams, fears, and archetypes,” argues Callahan, “but the richness of his work lies in his ability to also charge these non-realistic elements with realistic detail.” For actors, the stories in this book should be educational. As contemporary casting agencies, channeling Hitchcock, often advise: “You’d be great for this. Just don’t act.”
The Camera Lies focuses on the director’s fascinating attitudes about acting and the casting process. It is important to keep in mind that Hitchcock was a highly technical director. From story development (done with the essential assistance of his wife Alma) through preproduction and production, he exactingly calculated his use of camera angles, storyboards, and music. Sometimes even the timing of specific scenes was determined beforehand. His feeling about actors was much less methodical: they merely had to do their job for the camera. Underacting was his mantra. Celebrated as “The Master of Suspense,” he favored montage sequences as the best way to involve audiences by building maximum tension. When it came to constructing a scene, Hitchcock often relegated actors to a series of smaller, less essential shots.
“The sense of versatility in a stage actor, of convincingly being or portraying something you are not, was anathema to Hitchcock,” claims Callahan. “The externals of a face interested Hitchcock, and certain line readings could be sculpted.” Silent film actors, trained for the stage, could often appear artificial and overwrought in the movies. Stanislavski‘s Method, developed in this country under Lee Strasberg, trained actors to tap into the inner life of their characters in order to emphasize emotional realism. The aim was to create more believable film performances. But when it came to the movies, Method actors risked chewing the scenery, which was just what Hitchcock didn’t want. As a result, some actors were a better fit for him than others. With that measurement as his guide, Callahan has crafted an entertaining and illuminating guide to understanding the director’s relationship with some of the most iconic actors of the day. Hitchcock knew he wielded the whip hand: actors at all levels of success are pressured by competition, fear of bruised egos, and the tyrannical whims of directors and producers.
In The Lodger (1926), Hitchcock’s taste in performance is evident. Of the film’s lead actor, Ivor Novello, the author writes, “He is at his best when he silently broods and trusts to presence . . . at his worst when most active.” Hitchcock liked actors who “did nothing well.” Regarding Herbert Marshall, the male lead in Murder! (1930), Callahan observes that he “is the ideal Hitchcock actor: a little phlegmatic, maybe, but able to suggest that there are fires banked down in him, and with a speaking voice redolent of the plummy but held-back or constipated tones of James Mason.” Many of Hitchcock’s male leads often come off as somewhat repressed, often sexually inhibited, a characteristic many recognized in Hitchcock himself. Think of the unctuous Bruno Anthony played by Robert Walker in Strangers on a Train (1951), or the coiled madness of Anthony Perkins’s magnificent Norman Bates in Psycho (1960). A legendary actor, however, could throw Hitch for a loop. The director could not elicit the performance he wanted from one of the era’s finest actors, Charles Laughton, whose repressed homosexuality would seem to make him an excellent fit for a Hitchcock protagonist. About Laughton in Jamaica Inn (1939) Hitchcock declared: “It isn’t possible to direct a Charles Laughton film. All you can do is act as a referee.”
Some of the greatest Hitchcock performers managed to be both charming and somewhat mysterious: “Cary Grant was an ideal Hitchcock actor because he never settled on one attitude for long.” Jimmy Stewart and Henry Fonda, both debonair, naturally folksy, and low key, also served Hitchcock well. As for a great Method actor like Montgomery Clift, Callahan comments that “he was a virtuoso and not a Hitchcock actor. He acts with his cheeks, his mouth, his hands, his eyebrows, his forehead.”
The actresses in Hitchcock’s films often leave the strongest impression. He preferred women who were smart, cool, sexy, well-coifed, usually blonde, and exuded a tantalizingly restrained sexuality: Joan Fontaine, Kim Novak, Eva Marie Saint, Janet Leigh, Doris Day, Tippi Hedren, and Grace Kelly. Hitchcock’s idea of “negative acting” encourages viewers to project onto the character rather than to try to figure out their intentions. “Hitchcock wants us to do the acting most of the time” is how Callahan puts it. Hitch adored Kelly, but he lost her when she became Princess of Monaco: “For Hitchcock, Kelly was a doll that could be molded to his specifications. She is for the movies, a fantasy.” Novak “looks, fleshy, solid, and earthy, but her manner is ethereal, spacey, anxious, absent.” One note Hitch gave Novak stands as useful advice for all film performers: “If you put a lot of redundant expressions on your face, it’s like taking a piece of paper and scribbling all over it.” Ingrid Bergman was another favorite: “Bergman’s face lives in dreamy uncertainty,” comments Callahan. What Hitchcock really liked were faces in transition. He wanted the camera to spotlight the split-second gulf that opened up when one emotion changed into another.
l to r: Cary Grant, Joan Fontaine, and Alfred Hitchcock during the filming of Suspicion.
Not all of Hitch’s relationships with actresses were rosy. The notoriously salty and sexually forthright Tallulah Bankhead — cast in Lifeboat (1944) — was not his kind of woman. Too overtly aggressive. Sadly, as he grew older, the director’s sexual peccadilloes became increasingly apparent. He became abusive and controlling toward Tippi Hedren, the star of The Birds (1963) and Marnie (1964). “Hedren’s stories in recent years describe Hitchcock resembling the villain in an old stage melodrama on the set of Marnie, practically twirling his mustache as he demanded sexual access to her.”
Despite his personal flaws, Hitchcock’s five decades of work remain among the most significant in film history. “Hitchcock deals in dreams, fears, and archetypes,” argues Callahan, “but the richness of his work lies in his ability to also charge these non-realistic elements with realistic detail.” For actors, the stories in this book should be educational. As contemporary casting agencies, channeling Hitchcock, often advise: “You’d be great for this. Just don’t act.”
June 6, 2021
I've been reading Hitchcock books since I was a kid, well before I'd actually seen any Hitchcock films (they weren't in regular rotation on TV on the Canadian prairies in the early 80s). The plot summaries and imagery in the stills were so intriguing, and I'd keep myself sane on my long late afternoons trudging through the snow delivering papers by acting them out in my head (the real versions always turned out to be better).
Since then I've read dozens of books on the subject, including all the major ones, so it's some surprise to find one that feels fresh and mines a rich vein mostly ignored in other tomes. Callahan's writing goes down like a dream and unlike a lot of writers who write mostly about acting, he doesn't miss a trick in the other departments. Some of my favourite writing on Hitchcock can be found in this book, something I didn't think I could say in the year of our lord 2021.
Since then I've read dozens of books on the subject, including all the major ones, so it's some surprise to find one that feels fresh and mines a rich vein mostly ignored in other tomes. Callahan's writing goes down like a dream and unlike a lot of writers who write mostly about acting, he doesn't miss a trick in the other departments. Some of my favourite writing on Hitchcock can be found in this book, something I didn't think I could say in the year of our lord 2021.
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May 13, 2021Dan Callahan says his new book, “The Camera Lies: Acting for Hitchcock,” is “an investigation of the human figure in Hitchcock films” and “an attempt to prove that Hitchcock was a theorist of acting as much as of filmmaking.” These interesting claims inveigled me into reading the volume, which turns out to be pretty awful in every respect, from the nonstop clumsiness of the writing to the relentless superficiality of the so-called investigation itself. I find little value in the observation that Ivor Novello’s nose “appears to be all nostril like Julie Christie’s,” or that James Mason’s voice is “held-back or constipated,” or that Shirley MacLaine “doesn’t really know what she’s doing” in “The Trouble with Harry,” or that Cornell Woolrich is a “miserably inventive” writer. Equally sad locutions abound in every chapter. Callahan has a special interest in homosexuality vis-à-vis Hitchcock’s films, which can be intriguing when he isn’t calling a character a “fag hag,” or inexplicably describing John Dall’s stutter as “masturbatory,” or saying that Marlene Dietrich “seems to have her own drag act movie going on” in “Stage Fright,” or wondering if Lisa thinks Jeff might be gay in “Rear Window,” a speculation that borders on hallucination. As for analysis of performers and performances, Joel McCrea is indeed “a fine and undervalued actor,” so why does his fine work for Hitch receive only a single shallow sentence? How can a book about acting not even name-check Nigel Bruce in “Suspicion”? “Juno and the Paycock” is a minor film, but surely the culminating scene merits a comment more coherent than “The camera sniffs out the removal of what all the actors are doing here, and the projected grandstanding of this climax.” Et cetera, et cetera. I have great respect for Oxford University Press – they’ve even had the good (?) sense to publish me – but I’m shocked to see this carelessly written volume under their imprint. Hitchcockians deserve better.
June 19, 2020
Thank you to Edelweiss and the publisher for a digital ARC of THE CAMERA LIES. I've always loved Hitchcock films and this deep dive into the behind the scenes was a perfect read for me. Hitchcock's relationship with his actors has always had some folklore to it, especially with his female leads. This book is a fascinating look at how Hitchcock viewed actors and their role in his masterpieces. This is an ideal read for both film buffs and Hitchcock fans.
June 13, 2021
The Title of This Book Lies
When I saw this book listed on Amazon, I thought it would be a study of how and why Alfred Hitchcock cast certain actors in particular roles. This interested me as his ideas of casting against type were often effective and inspired. I also thought it would offer new insights into how he coaxed some very fine and memorable performances from select actors and actresses. Unfortunately, there is little coverage of that in this book. While there are a few points and examples of how Hitchcock connected his performers with the movie camera, with the interesting ideas of "negative acting" and "how to do nothing well," the author spends most of the book offering his own ideas and "armchair analyst" theories about what some of the movies or some scenes are about, along with what may (or may not) have been Hitchcock's intentions. In short, this book claims to be about where the value of acting stood in Hitchcock's films, but that topic is not covered all that fully.
When I saw this book listed on Amazon, I thought it would be a study of how and why Alfred Hitchcock cast certain actors in particular roles. This interested me as his ideas of casting against type were often effective and inspired. I also thought it would offer new insights into how he coaxed some very fine and memorable performances from select actors and actresses. Unfortunately, there is little coverage of that in this book. While there are a few points and examples of how Hitchcock connected his performers with the movie camera, with the interesting ideas of "negative acting" and "how to do nothing well," the author spends most of the book offering his own ideas and "armchair analyst" theories about what some of the movies or some scenes are about, along with what may (or may not) have been Hitchcock's intentions. In short, this book claims to be about where the value of acting stood in Hitchcock's films, but that topic is not covered all that fully.
February 13, 2022
This description of this book says it is the “first book on Hitchcock that focuses exclusively on his work with actors.” While there are some insightful observations and illuminating information about many of the actors Hitch worked with across his prolific career, it is mixed with a lot of extraneous factoids as well as judgmental opinions that too often distracted me from the main topic.
April 5, 2022
Pretty much anything on Hitchcock is interesting and this book is that. It's also annoying as the author spends more time playing armchair phycologist than digging deeper into the acting theory. It seemed, according to the author, that almost every object in Hitchcock's films had a sexual connotation. I guess I'm a boy scout...;) He's also wildly in love with his own opinion.
August 17, 2021
I loved this! But I think you really do need to be a big Hitchcock fan and have seen most of his movies to appreciate it. I love his writing style- very down to earth/ readable (not at all academic thank god)
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
July 12, 2023
Recently went to Manchester by the Sea for the first time and thought it was funny that there's a bookstore there called Manchester by the Book, which is where I found this. I added a star because for reasons I no longer remember I am Facebook friends with the author.
June 27, 2021
The story is a bit blow by blow at times but overall informative. One slight irritation was the interest taken in the performers' sexual preferences.
July 27, 2023
too wordy
Too much written about the movies that H directed and so very little about the great director. Did not enjoy
Too much written about the movies that H directed and so very little about the great director. Did not enjoy
Displaying 1 - 13 of 13 reviews