Do you ever wonder why they never went back to Alfred Hitchcock...
LegoBatman008
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...After the Bond films had become a success? I do. But the world may never know, especially now that Cubby Broccoli and Harry Saltzman are both gone from this world. And they've been gone for I don't know how many years.
And quite frankly I think the biggest mistake they've ever made was re-hiring Guy Hamilton after On Her Majesty's Secret Service. I believe they could have brought in Alfred Hitchcock after OHMSS and had him do a proper sequel to Majesty's with a brand new actor as James Bond. But that's just some wishful thinking on my part.
And quite frankly I think the biggest mistake they've ever made was re-hiring Guy Hamilton after On Her Majesty's Secret Service. I believe they could have brought in Alfred Hitchcock after OHMSS and had him do a proper sequel to Majesty's with a brand new actor as James Bond. But that's just some wishful thinking on my part.
"Ahem, you know in the future if you're going to steal cars, don't dress like a car thief, man." - Spider-Man
Comments
Hamilton is a fine director, but he seemed very interested in doing more of a Blake Edwards take on his films than his more "serious" work earlier. Goldfinger plays a lot like an Edwards film, so his leaning in that direction was already obvious in 1963-64.
I don't know if Hitchcock was ever interested...But I do believe that Alfred Hitchcock could have made a decent follow-up to On Her Majesty's Secret Service, had EON Productions went with him (Hitch) after George Lazenby had quit his job.
With Hitchcock you'd have got much more of it as Hitch was using it up
Till the end, even though better ways existed.
But To Catch A Thief was one of those rare exceptions wasn't it? -{
If Hitchcock had worked on Diamonds are Forever, I'm not sure what rear projection work would really have been needed. I do think the film would have been classier, though. Hitchcock, even when being lurid, managed to keep a certain air of magic in his films. I wouldn't exactly call it dignified, but they were a cut above the competition. Diamonds are Forever feels less so. I suspect Hitchcock would have jettisoned Jill St. John and replaced her with a better actress while having her character developed more, presented Wynt and Kidd more like Rosencrantz and Gildenstern than Oscar Madison and Felix Unger, and added more wit and intrigue and less camp and action. I do think he would have upped the violence quotient a bit, as he clearly was going for that in his other films.
If Hitchcock had worked on Diamonds Are Forever I'm not sure if it would've been called 'Diamonds Are Forever'...it probably would've been called something else. And I have no idea what Hitch would've called it. Perhaps, "Live and Let Die" instead.
You know what kills me? I bet there is some kind of parallel universe out there where Alfred Hitchcock actually did get to work on a James Bond film and we're NEVER gonna get to see it because there's no way of accessing a parallel universe at all.
No, they can't. That's just a drug-induced fantasy.
Once you sort out the Einstein, Rosen bridge formula the trans dimensional
Worm hole is very easy to control !
Just remember never " reverse the polarity !"
Broccoli and Saltzman both had large egos in regards to producing the EON series. Though Hitchcock would have made a great fit for an EON/Bond film (one only has to watch North By Northwest), he was well known for his controlling demands on every aspect of making a film. I just don't see how they could have worked together well enough. At the smallest suggestion of making a script change, Hitch would have sat there with his hands grasped across his girth in his famous buddha pose, pursed his lower lip - and said, "No, I don't think we'll do that". Can you imagine how those producers would have reacted?
The EON films were they're baby. They had no problem hiring qualified directors like Young for their projects, because those directors were open to creative input. Hitchcock was only open to that from his DP's and writers.
That explains why Albert R. Broccoli and Harry Saltzman were apprehensive about letting Alfred Hitchcock direct Dr. No with Cary Grant as Bond.
In the book, The Battle for Bond, which details the events leading up to and following the lawsuit between Fleming and Kevin McClory, the two along with Ivar Bryce (Fleming's schoolmate friend and the "money" in their partnership), sought out Hitchcock for their Bond movie project, way before EON acquired the film rights to the Bond books. In fact, they were in heavy negotiations with Hitchcock and his salary would have been the bulk of the TB movie budget. As said, it was fear that Hitchcock would have eventually wrested creative control that counted against getting him, along with his enormous payday demands.
It is only with the recent EON production team that they’ve enlisted A-list ringers with the likes of Paul Haggis and Sam Mendes, big names in their own right before getting associated with Bond. When Cubby and Harry were in control, they tapped into talent they’ve previously worked with and built up their production team repertoire, in-house. The directors and screenwriters they used weren’t totally green, but they weren’t A-listers either, most likely so EON can keep not only talent fees down, but to maintain control over the production and it worked, because they manufactured a specific branding of their product for decades to come with little variance in taste and feel.
Hiring Hitchcock then would have been akin to hiring Spielberg or Tarantino today (both expressed desires to do Bond films), but you would end up with singularity Bond movies surrounded by personality hype and that would be a bad precedence, especially for “regular” Bond films down the line. IMO, they ran that danger with Mendes, but it worked out since his excellent work isn’t that well-known in the mainstream.
Lastly, since this thread is about hiring Hitchcock in the early 70s, I don’t know if he would have been up to snuff with the action sequences based on his movies from that period that I watched, Frenzy and Family Plot (which surprisingly I watched in the theater as a kid); I suspect the lower action-thriller quotient had to do with his maturity at the time. In terms of what he could have brought to a Bond film, it would have been ideal to get him when Fleming, Bryce and McClory had him in mind, in the late 50s or early 60s, when IMO he was at the top of his game in the action-thriller genre.
It would have been fantastic
But my favourite Hitchcock Bond film that never was is Casino Royale shot in the style and mood of Suspicion. It has the tension, both sexual and otherwise, the issues with trust and loyalty and the whole film noir feel. It would be Perfect!
Very true, but that is an updated version. If Hitchcock had got his hands on CR in the 50s, things would have been different and, I'd venture, very much along the lines Number24 suggests.
Have wanted total control ! and as Cubby and Harry were putting up the money
They had every right to have a major say in the movie
Also helps.