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| ti piace hitchcock? - set report | ||
| Here is an exclusive report from Alan Jones with some on set pictures. Alan Jones writes: Hi Nick. Just spent three days in Turin with Dario watching him direct TI PIACE HITCHCOCK?/DO YOU LIKE HITCHCOCK? Turin resembled a ghost town because of the Ferrogosto holiday that sees businesses closed down and many people away. And because the Winter Olympics are being held in Turin in 2006, the city looks like a building site with every major monument and square being repaired. Even the famous PROFONDO ROSSO piazza (around the corner from the crew hotel) was under canvas.
But this was the perfect atmosphere according to Dario as “Rome is far too touristy, too busy and has too much traffic. When I write a film now I always visualise Turin. And TI PIACE HITCHCOCK is set in Turin because it’s all about cinema, my cinema. Turin is actually where the Italian Film Industry was based in the silent era before Mussolini moved it to Rome. It is also a little known fact that Italians invented the full-length feature film – CABIRIA (1914) for example was 150 minutes long! And the first Italian movie theatre was built in Turin. HITCHCOCK is set in the city because it’s a homage not just to early cinema and Alfred Hitchcock but German expressionism, Robert Weine and THE CABINET OF DR. CALIGARI, F.W. Murnau and NOSFERATU, THE GOLEM, Fritz Lang of course, Russian movies during the Stalin era, Peter Lorre etc. TWO EVIL EYES was my tribute to Edgar Allan Poe and now it’s Hitchcock’s turn. This film is my valentine to all the movies, directors and stars I’ve loved throughout the years”. But hang on a minute, Dario has always loathed being dubbed ‘The Italian Hitchcock’, so what’s changed? “Nothing, I still hate being called that but there is no getting away from the fact that he was one of cinema’s biggest geniuses and every director, not just me, has been influenced by him. I’m finally paying my proper dues that’s all”. |
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| Nilo Argento on set. Claudio's son and Dario's nephew is the production secretary |
| Being made for RAI Trade at a cost of $2.5 million (“Not much really but a better budget than most TV productions”, remarks Dario) DO YOU LIKE HITCHCOCK? began shooting on July 26 and will finish on September 5. The air-date is still under discussion but Dario reckons it will be late December/early January. The eye is clearly on export DVD and foreign television sales, the reason it’s being shot in English. You’d never know it was a TV movie though in terms of quality, schedule or production values. Director of photography Frederic Fasano (SCARLET DIVA) is shooting it on 35mm under strict instructions from Dario not to make any TV compromises. Dario says, “TV fiction in Italy is so shoddy and disgusting. It looks cheap, is reliant on close-ups and is always badly acted. Well it’s my mission to upgrade the TV movie, which is why I’m making it exactly like one of my cinema movies and packing it with violence and nudity. RAI can do what they want with it after I’m finished but I’m going for it in every possibly censorable area to make it stand out from all the rubbish. I still don’t want a TV career, I never did - the reason why I waited years between THE DOOR INTO DARKNESS and my GIALLO game show. But I couldn’t have raised the money for a feature film about an old genre director – young cinema audiences aren’t interested – so I got the money from RAI instead”. |
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| Elio Germano in his trailer |
| Written by Dario, and Franco Ferrini, with the English dialogue finessed by former dialogue coach Robert Booth (TEA WITH MUSSOLINI), DO YOU LIKE HITCHCOCK? tells the story of film student Giulio (Elio Germano) about to take an exam on the works of classic British director Alfred Hitchcock. Just as he reaches for the DVD of STRANGERS ON A TRAIN for homework purposes in the local store owned by his friend Andrea (Ivan Morales, THE SPANISH APARTMENT) dark-haired Sasha (Elisabetta Rocchetti, THE CARD PLAYER, SLEEPLESS) and blonde Federica (Chiara Conti) does too. The three strangers agree to let Federica rent the title. Outside the store, Guilio sees the two women swap telephone numbers and, later, learns Sasha lives in the building opposite his. As he crams for his exam, he keeps spying the two girls together, obviously they have become firm friends – and when he sees them kissing… Then Sasha’s mother is brutally murdered. Is it just his paranoia, or is his urgent swotting getting to him, because Guilio becomes convinced the girls have entered into a Hitchcock-like pact. So he begins to spy on Sasha’s every move, an obsessive task made easier when he fractures his leg in one stalking and is confined to his apartment. His girlfriend Arianna (Cristina Brondo) thinks he’s crazy and believes he’s overdoing his homework, even though it emerges Sasha was left an enormous amount of money in her mother’s will. But if Federica killed Sasha’s mother, whom will Sasha kill in return? Learning Federica is suffering sexual harassment by her boss (Beppe Lo Console, THE PASSION OF CHRIST), he’s sure the pervert will be her victim. Is it all delusion, a coincidence or just his active imagination on frenzied overdrive? The answers take Guilio even further into a shocking whirlpool of fiendish bargains, double-cross, MacGuffins and mistaken identity culled from plot ideas and themes contained in the entire Hitchcock back catalogue. |
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| the very gorgeous and lovely Chiara Conti (Federica) in her trailer |
| Dario points out, “Everything is in the script – REAR WINDOW, VERTIGO, PSYCHO, FAMILY PLOT, DIAL M FOR MURDER, FRENZY – because not only do I introduce familiar story threads to purposely mislead the audience, I also have the characters making mistakes and realizing too late that it might not be STRANGERS ON A TRAIN the two girls are copying at all! I do expect the audience to have a certain Hitchcock knowledge and that’s why this is a very tricky script because the actors have to suggest things to the audience that may or may not be true and manipulate them rather than make things explicit. For example, Sasha and Federica’s lesbian relationship is never confirmed nor denied although it rebounds around Guilio’s mind as a possibility that grounds his theory”. Recently seen in RESPIRO and the TV movie FERRARI, Elio Germano looks every bit the perfect anorak film student. On Tuesday August 17 at the intersection of Corso Galileo Ferraris and Via Pastrengo, his character follows Federica on his motor scooter to the real estate agency Chuisano and Company where she works to spy on her possibly being coerced into a sexual liaison with her boss. The camera takes Guilio’s point-of-view as we see all the silent action occur through the windows. Germano was originally down to play Remo in THE CARD PLAYER until Dario got bigger name Silvio Mucino instead. So he owed Germano the Guilio role in many ways. Germano says, “This is an interesting part because it’s a mix of obsession and sly comedy. I’m borderline over-acting really so the audience is never sure if what I see or am thinking is the truth. I’m playing Guilio as one of life’s observers who is safe being a voyeur until the world he’s observing murderously crashes into his own. All of us at one time have said to ourselves, I’m living a movie, or, my life is a soap opera. That’s the quality I’m trying to give to Guilio – total disbelief in what he’s watching actually being played out before his shocked eyes. Of course, it might not be true anyway!”
Dario’s Hitchcock blonde is the absolutely gorgeous Chiara Conti who I deliberately ended up spending a lot of time with because she was just a delight. The star of Marco Bellocchio’s 2002 Cannes favourite L’ORA DI RELIGIONE: IL SORRISO DI MIA MADRE/MY MOTHER’S SMILE, Conti “Always wanted to be in an Argento film because it’s not only a professional experience but something magic too. To prepare for my part I watched MARNIE because Federica lives like Tippi Hedren’s character and has an overly attentive boss. I’m thrilled to be making the movie because my mother is such a Hitchcock fan and has all the movies on DVD. The hardest part of the movie is I have to put thoughts into the audience’s mind that might not necessarily be correct”. |
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| Chiara Conti is Federica apprehensively getting ready to drive to work |
Tuesday’s filming was bit of a nightmare because the weather was so changeable – sunny one moment, rainy the next. Following Federica’s car through the streets meant continual wiping off of raindrops and waiting for the roads to dry. According to dialogue coach Lynn Swanson it’s the first day not to go smoothly. Stefania Rocca’s personal dialogue coach for many years – the reason why she oversaw the entire THE CARD PLAYER cast – Lynn loves working on Dario’s pictures because “He let’s me write the little scenes for when he has a last minute idea”.
Lynn devised one of those scenes for the Wednesday shoot at Turin’s County Hall in Via Maria Vittoria. On this giallo-heavy day, Federica wears a black wig, chic black mac and carries a knife for a pivotal scene I promised Dario I would not reveal. But I can tell you that Guilio on crutches and Arianna have a lover’s quarrel in an elevator and that’s the scene Lynn has written. “Dario wanted it comical in that typical Hitchcock way because when the lift door closes on Arianna, the murderer arrives and thematically punishes Guilio in a spectacular way. My job with all the actors has been to tone down their body language. Acting in English is more muted than acting in Italian – less hands and face. Speaking English with all that movement can look grotesque so I have to monitor that. But you mustn’t get into a position where they learn their lines by rote so they begin to sound robotic. I have to ensure they learn a range of right ways to say the lines while keeping an emotional freedom for them to improvise in the moment. Elio has the hardest scenes coming up – he has to have the sudden realisation of what’s happening, quickly connect the plot dots and react. He has to get a lot of words right, why I’ve taken out most with TH in them. Italians don’t have that sound and find it easier to drop it altogether”. You’ll see Lynn in the movie because she plays a cameo as a chiropodist. It’s the first time in Italy for Spanish actress Cristina Brondo who also appeared in the Euro hit, THE SPANISH APARTMENT. “I feel a real fraud”, she says, “I didn’t know who Dario Argento was when I was offered the Arianna role and I barely know Hitchcock’s films. But the script was surprisingly clever and Dario’s international fan base will ensure I’ll be seen all over the world. Arianna doesn’t believe a word Guilio says about the supposed murder pact until….” Although Sergio Stivaletti provided the special make-up effects for two key murder scenes, he hasn’t been on set and left his assistants to carry out the blood work. |
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| Dario filming the car scenes on the Corso Galileo Ferraris |
It’s on this elegant location that Dario is using a giant Yale key prop for a door-unlocking close-up. “Anyone familiar with Hitchcock’s films will recall he used a giant gun in SPELLBOUND and a large telephone in DIAL M FOR MURDER”, says Dario. “I will introduce the movie like I did DOOR INTO DARKNESS but I haven’t decided quite how yet. I’ve asked composer Pino Donaggio (TRAUMA) to come up with a typical Bernard Herrmann score and I’m relying more on dolly and crane shots rather than steadicam because I’m going for Hitchcock’s classical simplicity. In NORTH BY NORTHWEST it was Cary Grant, a plane, and a wide-open space. I’m trying to emulate that atmosphere with my own camera design”.
To aid him in this endeavour, Dario chose cinematographer Frederic Fasano to help him make HITCHCOCK a class TV act. Fasano’s first ever movie was Asia’s SCARLET DIVA and “I was terrified”, says the Danish/Italian former advert photographer. “All these people kept asking me what they should do and I had no idea!”. It was executive producer Claudio Argento who called Fasano up and asked him to work on HITCHCOCK. “I was thrilled of course. It’s a professional honour for every Italian to work with Dario. It’s the first time I’ve ever worked with a director who knows how to properly handle the language of cinema. Other directors always have the correct textbook way of filming in their heads when they look at a scene. With Dario it’s all about personal touch and instinct. There are some scenes that are entirely dark that’s usually a TV no-no. But as usual Dario is trying to evoke a suspense sensation from Hitchcock’s work more than play it safe and just copy them”. Dario adds, “I love how young my cast are. It’s my most youth-orientated cast since TENEBRAE. Their enthusiasm has been infectious because they all want to make their mark and have spurred me on to greater things too. HITCHCOCK will be the first of seven TV thrillers I intend to make. Each will be directed by my former assistants or other crew members I like. But I won’t get round to doing any more until after THE THIRD MOTHER. I now have a fifty page treatment for that and intend to start filming in Rome next spring”. (A complete Dario interview and set report will be published soon in both Shivers and Fangoria). Alan Jones |
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| Fredetic Fasano (director of photography) and Dario survey the video monitor on Corso Galileo |
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