I was attending a talk the other day, and at some point the speaker quoted Alfred Hitchcock:
“Drama is life with the dull bits taken out.”
I loved this quote, but was curious to understand the full context. So I went back to the original 1960 BBC interview. Excerpted from that interview, here is a fuller version of what he said:
“Life is more sensational. How does one describe drama? … Drama is life with the dull bits cut out.”
Hitchcock’s thought, as I had hoped, was more complex than the simple version one usually hears. Seeing the full interview now, I get the sense that Hitchcock wasn’t merely trying to present entertaining fantasies.
Rather, he was trying to create films that reflected essential truths about life. Of course, given the limitations of his chosen medium, he needed to reduce life to its poorer cousin — drama.