HITCHCOCK: I have achieved a long-felt desire on my part about the use of color. As you know, many of the films you see are not color films; they're colored films. There's an excess of color, and they're brilliantly lit, and they have on what they call a Hollywood gloss. In other words, there's a lack of reality about them.

Now all this came about because of the early days of black-and-white photography. Being in monotone, the image had to be separated from the background. So they introduced back-lighting, and all the characters wore a halo. They were aiming at a third dimension, but they never really achieved it. So you would find yourself in a scene, let's say, in a farmhouse cottage, with bright lights hitting the people, coming from we don't know where, and creating back shadows everywhere. This method then transferred itself to color, which was quite unnecessary because color separates itself from the background.

So far a long time, I've tried to break this, and at last in Torn Curtain, I've broken right through. My original cameraman went sick, so I brought in a new man who I had worked with in Rebecca many years before. He was an assistant then. I brought him into this room, and I said, "Where are the black shadows?" And I said, "Look at this room now. You can't see a one." A faint one here and there caused by the diffused light from the window. So we went forward, and I showed him what the thing should be, and we made the whole picture with reflected lights. There are no halos on the people, and the light is reduced to one-quarter of what it usually is. So the colors are quite soft, and except for the two principles, there is no make-up worn by anyone in the picture. As a result, the soft light coming on their faces maintains the texture of the skin.

See, I have often wondered when an art director is building a set he creates a wall with a texture -- plaster, then he ages it down -- then the chief electrician smacks one light on it, and it ruins the whole thing. Everything's all been overlit. So now having got down to the minimum lights, the rest is a matter of taste in color.

For example, in Torn Curtain, I decided with the production designer that up to the first reel of the film, which starts in Copenhagen and ends in East Berlin, we'd have a certain amount of color up to that, and from then on the colors would be grey and beige for the mood of the iron curtains. A touch of red here and there, inspired by the color of the uniforms they wore. So that was the scheme.

So I would say that I always go for color, because if you want the effect of black and white you can always create it, because the camera will photograph what you give it. It's a matter of taste. The exteriors in Torn Curtain are all diffused also. We used a grey diffusor. In fact, we did that for the whole picture in order to reduce the color even more, so that we would prevent even Technicolor from cheating us. We made the reflected light with a big sheet: a large 20 by 20 sheet on the end of the set. And the light hit the sheet of white and then bounced back into the set. Where we had any direct light on faces, it would diffuse proportionately.

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QUESTION: A shot where the camera looks straight down a stairwell recurs in several of your films. Is this intentional?

HITCHCOCK: No. I think that's the kind of thing one reverts to by instinct. The very first time I used that shot -- shooting down a stairwall -- was in a film I made, The Lodger, in 1926. And of course you didn't have sound in those days.

The essence of the story was the landlady's concern -- is her lodges Jack the Ripper or not? And when he went out at night, I had a special staircase built right at the top of the studio. I had the whole four flights built, and all you saw was the white hand going down the rail as he went out. And that's when it first started.

QUESTION: And the similar shot in Vertigo, where the background seems to fall out of the frame...?

HITCHCOCK: As a matter of fact, that effect first came to me at the Chelsea Arts Ball in London, about 2 A.M., when after many libations everything seemed to get further and further away. I remembered that effect when I first came to America to make Rebecca.

There was a scene where Joan Fontaine was supposed to faint at a coroner's inquest, and I wanted to get the effect, but nobody could lick it. From 1939, I tried again several times. And it wasn't until Vertigo, when we had to have it that it was solved with a combination of a zoom lens and a dolly-back. When I asked the trick department how much it would cost, they said it would cost $50,000.00 for the one shot, because they'd have to take a rig above the staircase to take the camera up and the zoom forward. It was very elaborate. So I said to the trick department, Yes, but there's no one on the set. Why don't we make a miniature of it, then lay it on its side, and do the same thing from the studio floor. $19,000.00 . . .

QUESTION: Would you explain the shot in more detail?

HITCHCOCK: First of all, we have to explain the perspective of various lenses. In other words, when you look through the finder of a 50mm lens --a two-inch lens -- you see the perspective as roughly normal, as the eye sees it. Now the moment you go to a 35mm lens, the perspective begins to change, to elongate. Then you go to a 28mm. In other words, the wider the angle of lens, the more forced the perspective becomes.