A love-hate relationship developed between Alfred Hitchcock and almost everyone of his writers. Few directors were as involved in the writing process as he was; many writers felt he deserved co writer status on their screenplays. He rarely took screenplay credit, yet his overwhelming control over the final shape of a production some times antagonized writers, who felt slighted when critics ignored their contributions-and rather more so when Hitchcock himself failed to point out their contributions in interviews.
Hitchcock made few films that were not based on another source. Early in his career, he co wrote two screenplays for Graham Cutts, The White Shadow (1923) and The Passionate Adventure (1924), and wrote two others for Cutts, The Black guard and The Prude’s Fall (both 1925), himself. As a director, he wrote the scenario for The Ring (1927) and Alma wrote the screenplay. After this film, one of his finest silents, Hitchcock based only one other film on a story of his own devise: Notorious (1946), reworked into a full screenplay by Ben Hecht. For the rest of his oeuvre, he drew on whatever other sources were available to him-and, very often, from previously published fiction.
[THE NOVEL]
Since the publication of François Truffaut’s historic interviews with Hitchcock in the 1960s, it has been widely accepted that the authors of D’Entre les Morts knew that Hitchcock had bid unsuccessfully for their first novel, and that envy of the resulting Clouzot film’s success had left him wanting another story from them. But according to Thomas Narcejac, one of the book’s authors, this was never the case. He admits that Hitchcock and their writing team shared common interests, but in an interview conducted for this book, he maintained firmly that he and his collaborator never had any intention of writing a book especially for Hitchcock. The genesis of the idea for their second novel actually took place, much more provocatively, in a French cinema. As Narcejac was watching a newsreel, he felt he distinctly recognized a friend he had lost touch with during the war; the idea of discovering a lost acquaintance in such a way stayed with him, and it suggested to him the outline of a story. “After the war,” he explains, “there were many displaced people and families-it was common to have ‘lost’ a friend. I began to think about the possibilities of recognizing someone like this. Maybe someone who was thought dead … and this is where D’Entre les Morts began to take shape.”
Thomas Narcejac was born in a small French coastal village in 1908. He would have gone into the family seafaring business had he not lost the use of one eye in a childhood accident; his partial blindness led him instead to a philosophy degree from the French Societe des Lettres and then to a teaching career. As a teacher, Narcejac became fascinated by the form and function of the mystery genre and began to write mystery fiction, most of which he threw away. Enough was kept, though, and published that he was awarded the Prix Roman d’Aventure in 1948. It was a study of the mystery genre that he published in 1948 that caught the attention of his colleague in crime, Pierre Boileau.
Boileau was born in the Montmartre neighborhood of Paris in 1906. After working for years at the kinds of jobs that are often quaintly referred to as opportunities to gather experience, Boileau had begun writing in the 1930s. His novel Les Repos de Bacchus had won the Prix Roman d’Aventure ten years before Narcejac’s, in 1938. Yet the glory would be short-lived: Considered anti-Nazi, Boileau was immediately arrested in 1939 with the German occupation.
He was sent to work as a member of the French welfare department. The experience proved rewarding, as it required Boileau to spend his time interviewing criminals at various penal colonies-an ideal experience for a mystery writer. When he was released in 1942, he returned to his writing; six years later, while browsing in a Paris bookshop, he came across Narcejac’s book about the genre, and he was intrigued enough to contact the author.
Boileau and Narcejac held similar views on the way mysteries should be structured, and soon they had developed a successful working relationship: “I was more the person who developed the character, the internal, emotional logic of the story,” Narcejac recalls, “and Boileau was definitely best at the plot, the external logic of the story. We would meet and discuss an idea. Then, from only a few notes, 1 would have to go away and start the novel, giving Boileau the pages a few at a time. These he would correct-pointing out inconsistencies, contradictions. Some things 1 would lose track of, as 1 was following the emotion of the story and not the plot.”
Their first novel, The Woman Who Was No More (1952), was successful in France, England, and the United States. Throughout their partnership, the two produced novels that were puzzles requiring close attention, each combining startling twists of plot with characters at their wit’s end, grasping at any opportunity to find meaning.
It was Les Diaboliques (1955), the Clouzot film of their first novel that brought the team to the attention of Paramount and Hitchcock. Les Diaboliques was an outstanding success, and the style and story of the film were certainly Hitchcockian–a fact that could not have been lost on either the director or his studio.
Paramount recorded its first reading of the team’s next novel in 1954, before it was even translated into English. The strength of reader Edward Doyle’s November 1954 synopsis, and the French writers’ reputation, sold Hitchcock on the novel. Paramount purchased the rights to From Among the Dead on April 20, 1955, for $25,275.
A memo from Paramount executive John Mock reveals that Flamingo Feather and From Among the Dead were bought with the agreement that each would be made by Hitchcock for Paramount. Flamingo Feather, it suggests, was not so much a project Hitchcock wanted as one Paramount wanted for him. The French novel appears to have been a trade-the studio would buy Hitchcock that novel if he’d make the adventure story.
The novel begins with the meeting of two old friends:
“Here’s what I mean,” said Gevigne. “I want you to keep watch on my wife.”
“Good God! Is she being unfaithful?”
“No.”
“Well?”
“It’s not easy to explain. She’s queer…. I’m worried about her.” “What exactly are you afraid of?”
(From the Denny translation of From Among the Dead-1955)
According to associate producer Herbert Coleman, it was Lew Wasserman who brought the French novelists to the attention of Hitchcock. The evidence suggests that it was Hitchcock himself who requested the coverage on the book from Paramount. This 1955 report by Allida Allen is a straightforward summary:
ROGER FLAVIERES, Paris advocate, is asked by a former school fellow, GEVIGNE, for help in a delicate personal matter. Gevigne, prosperous shipbuilder-particularly now with France and Germany at war-explains he’s concerned over the sudden odd behavior of his wife, MADELEINE. They have been happily married for 4 years, but in the last few months she has been acting strangely-suddenly falling into deep meditations or trance-like withdrawals to a world where he cannot reach her. The doctors can find nothing wrong with her, either physically or mentally. But Gevigne fears for her and, extremely busy with his war time contracts; he cannot spend much time with her. That is why he is asking Flavieres to keep watch over Madeleine for him. Flaviere’s questions bring out the fact that Madeleine seems obsessed-in some occult way-by the spirit of her great-grandmother, Pauline Lagerlac, whom she resembles. Pauline was considered queer and died young. Flavieres accepts the unusual assignment and for several weeks follows Madeleine wherever she goes, observing her actions-but taking care she does not see him. They have never met. She possesses a strange beauty that enchants Flavieres so that, before a week is out, he is hopelessly in love with her. Then one day he saves her from the Seine, and from then on they become friends. He does not mention knowing her husband. They form the habit of rambling about Paris and the countryside together and Madeleine, who on several occasions falls into a trance-like meditation, gradually confides to Flavieres she is certain she has lived before-she can recall scenes-a town which Flavieres later ascertains from Gevigne she’s never been to. But Pauline Lagerlac had! The more he sees of Madeleine the greater grows the mystery and his love, which he confesses to her. Then one day she insists on their driving to a small town some distance from Paris and climbing an old church tower-though Flavieres, who suffers from vertigo, cannot follow her to the top. To his horror, he sees her body come hurtling to the ground. Dazed by grief and shock, he cannot bring himself to go near the body and flees to Paris. He says nothing to Gevigne about being with Madeleine. When her body is found, Gevigne seems distracted with grief. Still in a daze, Flavieres leaves Paris-and a sudden German advance blocks his return. The war is over when Flavieres returns to Paris. He has been unable to forget his love for Madeleine. Inquiry reveals Gevigne, upset when police questioned him about his wife’s death, fled from Paris-only to be killed in a German air raid. War has even obliterated Madeleine’s grave. Flavieres however cannot believe she is really dead. He is certain she lives again. Then a newsreel sends him hurrying to Marseilles in search of a woman he saw in it. He knows she is Madeleine-but when he finds her, she denies it. She is RENEE SOURANGE and is living with ALMARYAN, a black market operator. But Flavieres, having gotten Renee to leave Almaryan for him, stubbornly persists in trying to make her admit that she is Madeleine. She finally does confess she is the Madeleine he knew, but her name is really Renee Sourange. He never saw Gevigne’s wife-the real Madeleine! It was a plot of Gevigne’s–with the aid of Renee, then his mistress–to rid himself of his wealthy wife without being suspected. It was the real Madeleine who fell from the tower–Gevigne having taken her there before Flavieres and the supposed Madeleine (Renee) arrived. Flavieres’s testimony about Madeleine’s strange trances was to mislead the police. But Flavieres’s flight upset things–Stunned, Flavieres seizes Renee in his anger–and not realizing what he is doing, strangles her. Then, horrified and remorseful over what he has done he surrenders to the police. Allen’s synopsis is complete, with the exception of one remarkable touch she omits: At the end of the novel, as the police take him away, Flavieres kisses the dead Renee. Though latter-day writers have claimed that Hitchcock’s film was so complete a transformation as to render its origins unrecognizable, anyone familiar with Vertigo will find it easy to perceive the roots of the film in the Boileau-Narcejac original. Many of the basic elements are there, down to the vertigo itself-mentioned only in passing in the synopsis-which would become the center of Hitchcock’s psychological drama.
by Dan Auiler
Foreword from Martin Scorsese
Ebook copyright 2011 Dan Auiler
Foreword copyright 1998 Martin Scorsese Vertigo images used with permission, all rights reserved the Alfred Hitchcock Estate and Universal Studios
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Hitch’s Vertigo 