The Blackguard (1925, dir. Graham Cutts) Art direction & screenplay by Alfred Hitchcock, who also served as assistant director.

Behind the scenes of The Blackguard (1925, dir. Graham Cutts) Art direction by Alfred Hitchcock

When Hitchcock arrived on the set of The Blackguard, the great German director F.W. Murnau was filming The Last Laugh nearby on the UFA lot.

Hitchcock either engaged Murnau in conversation, or overheard him tell others: “What you see on the set does not matter. All that matters is what you see on the screen.”

Hitchcock never missed an opportunity to quote this remark, which became a cornerstone of his own approach: The reality didn’t matter if the illusion was effective. He then emulated Murnau by hiring a slew of dwarves to stand far from the camera in The Blackguard, creating an artificial perspective for a crowd scene.

-excerpted from Patrick McGilligan’s Alfred Hitchcock: A Life in Darkness and Light

aachen dom

Aachen, Dom, kolorierte Fotografie, ca. 1900, Aachen, Germany

Act III of Giuseppe Verdi’s Ernani is set in the tomb of Charlemagne.

Twin Peaks

Claude Debussy

There’s no need either for music to make people think! … It would be enough if music could make people listen, despite themselves and despite their petty mundane troubles, and never mind if they’re incapable of expressing anything resembling an opinion. It would be enough if they could no longer recognize their own grey, dull faces, if they felt that for a moment they had been dreaming of an imaginary country, that’s to say, one that can’t be found on the map.

• Claude Debussy, Letter to Paul Dukas (1901)