FILM SERIES TO HONOR MASTER OF THRILLERS

To Alfred Hitchcock film buffs, his 1958 labyrinthine saga, “Vertigo,” ranks high on the “Hitch” parade.

These buffs can cite the film’s every plot twist, every morbid mood, every bizarre camera angle, including the finale that sends Jimmy Stewart and Kim Novak screaming up the winding belltower stairway.

Naturally, “Vertigo” is included in the UC Irvine Film Society’s nine-movie Hitchcock retrospective that opens April 3 at Social Science Hall, the most extensive tribute the society has made to a single moviemaker.

One person who couldn’t be more pleased by this latest homage to the master of suspense is Leonard South of Newport Beach, who was Hitchcock’s camera operator for “Vertigo” and such other celebrated Hitchcock works as “The Trouble With Harry” and “North by Northwest.”

“Hitch knew more about making movies than anyone in the business. He was a great artist who also had an incredible knowledge of the technical side,” said South, 73, who was cinematographer on Hitchcock’s last film, the 1976 “Family Plot,” and is now director of photography for the CBS-TV series “Designing Women.”

At UCI the Hitchcock series is considered more than a celebration of the much-lionized Hitchcock’s place in cinematic history.

“There’s a kind of neo-Hitchcock trend in movies today, a reworking of the thriller genre, like Curtis Hanson’s ‘The Bedroom Window’ and Brian De Palma’s ‘Dressed to Kill.’ With this series, we’re going back to the source, to the man who perfected and brought such depth to the form,” said Ross Goo, one of the UCI Film Society’s four student organizers.

Although Hitchcock died in 1980, he remains the most widely known of the classic Hollywood directors. His films are constantly revived in theaters and on television. His public image is still that of a Buddha-shaped man with an oddly clipped way of speaking and a liking for sardonic asides.

As Leonard South remembers Hitchcock, the short, rotund, English-born moviemaker could indeed be imperious and intimidating.

“People were scared of Hitch. He demanded absolute perfection. He ran everything exactly as he wanted it because he knew exactly what he was doing--planning every last shot, piece of decor and bit of dialogue,” said South, who now works mostly in television.

“It was all formality with him. He always wore a dark suit and tie on the set, even when we were shooting on location in the North African heat. He expected some of us, including (cinematographer Robert) Burks and me, to do likewise.”

South, who started as a camera loader in the Warner Bros. special effects department in the early 1940s, joined the Hitchcock entourage in 1951 as a camera assistant to Burks, Hitchcock’s favorite director of photography.

The 1951 film was “Strangers on a Train,” and South, continuing as a Burks assistant, stayed on for 10 more Hitchcock films, including “Rear Window,” “To Catch a Thief” and “Marnie.” (Burks and South didn’t do “Psycho”; Hitchcock instead brought over the photographic team from his television series.)

During those years, South was the camera operator for sequences that are among the best-remembered in the Hitchcock repertoire--such as the sweeping montage of Cary Grant being chased by a low-flying crop-duster plane in “North by Northwest” and the swarms of real-life crows attacking Tippi Hedren in “The Birds.”

“Hitch was always trying to push the limits on techniques and to be different. The crew and actors went along, but I tell you, those (crop-duster and bird) scenes were some of the hardest I’ve ever been involved in. They called for absolutely perfect timing in situations that were really rather scary,” South said.

To achieve the attack scene in “The Birds,” bird handlers stood beside the camera, flinging the crows at Hedren, as she stood against a wall screaming. “We (camera crew) were under a plastic-type covering,” South recalled. “The birds were trained for the scene, but a few still got out of hand and a lot of us, besides Tippi, got pecked and scratched.”

South went on to become a full-fledged director of photography for other Hollywood movie-makers and in television, but he rejoined Hitchcock in 1975 for “Family Plot.” By then, Hitchcock, who was 76 and in rapidly failing health, had become increasingly erratic on and off the set.

“Sometimes he would say he was tired and called off the shooting in mid-day,” South said. “Yet other days, he was as sharp, as commanding, as inventive as he ever was.”

After Hitchcock’s death in 1980, the physical deterioration and mental lapses of his last years became widely discussed, most notably in “The Dark Side of Genius: The Life of Alfred Hitchcock,” the 1983 biography by critic Donald Spoto.

“Yes, Hitch was greatly depressed. He was in constant, terrible pain from arthritis. Alma (Hitchcock’s wife) was terribly ill and bedridden from strokes,” South said. “But everything else people have tried to say about his state of mind is, well, just plain nonsense.”

South is just as adamant in his view of attempts by Spoto and other critics to analyze how Hitchcock’s films--especially those that dealt with voyeurism and obsession--were shaped by Hitchcock’s most private self, including sexual fantasies and childhood dreads.

“Let me put it this way. If you become as famous as Hitch, and if you live as long as he did, people try to dredge up all sorts of theories about you, particularly if someone was as reserved and private as Hitch was,” South said.

“But what counts, really, is the legacy of his films. That is the way he should be remembered. Because in his prime, he had no peer.”

UCI’S HITCHCOCK MOVIE SCHEDULE April 3--”Blackmail” (1929). April 10--”The Man Who Knew Too Much” (1934). April 17--”The 39 Steps” (1935). April 24--”Rebecca” (1940). May 1--”Shadow of a Doubt” (1943). May 8--”Spellbound” (1945). May 15--”Rope” (1948). May 22--”Rear Window” (1954). May 29--”Vertigo” (1958). Screenings will be at 7:30 p.m. and 9:30 p.m. at UCI’s Social Science Hall. Tickets are $4 general admission, $2 UCI students. For information, call the UCI Office of Arts and Lectures, (714) 856-6379.