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Screening In Cannes
Alfred Hitchcock was barely out of his teens - although on his own admission “very fat and very ambitious” - when he
wrote a short story called Gas.
S igned “Hitch” – a sign, indeed, of things to come - Gas the
Poe-inspired tale about a woman’s fear of the dentist, first appeared in The Henley,
the staff magazine of the WT Henley Telegraph Company, where he worked as a technical clerk before, a year later, beginning his career in the film industry as the designer of title cards for silent movies.
Now, nearly 90 years on, Gas has finally come to the screen as a very stylish short film, adapted and direct- ed by Sylvie Bolioli. Half-French and half-Italian, Bolioli acted and studied drama before turning to directing with radio and TV commercials in Mexico.
Returning to London – where she’d been at Rada – she was fired up to try and turn Gas into a film after reading the story in a biography about Hitchcock. With the blessing of Hitch’s daughter, she finally set about the adaptation, re-locating the story from Montmartre to London.
She explained: “I tend to be visual rather than working with words. So I storyboarded the film before I actually wrote the script; I tried to explore the original story a little further within the original concept.
“Because I live in London, it was more practical to shoot there. Soho was the ideal choice. Good lighting (her DPs were Roger Eaton and Steve Brooke Smith), wetting the pavement and a fog machine helped set the mood. Both DPs did a fantastic job. Roger had the difficult job of creating the look then Steve had the hard task of keeping continuity with the ‘look’.”
Alternating between garish fanta- sy and reality, Gas, which cost around £50,000, co-stars Johanna Mohs, Tony Hadley (once of Spandau Ballet) and Valerie Leon, not to men- tion Bolioli herself in a Hitchcock-like cameo as a junkie.
Added Bolioli: “I chose Fuji for the ‘fantasy’ scenes for the colder feel, which was best suited for the dark Soho streets. We used the 400T pushed two stops (rated 1600) to actu- ally increase the grain and give the scenes a more nightmarish touch.
“We used a red enhancer filter to precisely enhance any red colour which is of course the colour of blood. Every time the red was used, it had a specific purpose. This is why I wanted the Woman’s suit to be red. To play the Junkie, I also dyed my hair red.
“Roger also suggested we have a bleach bypass, which is how we de- saturated the colours a bit more, let- ting the red come through more and giving it that ‘edgy’ look.”
After being screened at a ‘Shoot First’ event in Edinburgh, there has, according to Bolioli, been gathering press interest in her film and she’s cur- rently hoping to have a market screen- ing at Cannes. More than 25 years after the death of “The Master of Suspense’, his legacy clearly lives on. ■
Gas was partially originated on 16mm Super F-400T 8682
32 • Exposure • The Magazine • Fujifilm Motion Picture
Photos: Scenes from Alfred Hitchcock’s short story Gas, starring Johanna Mohs, Tony Hadley and Valerie Leon;
above: Director Sylvie Bolioli on the set
A HITCH IN TIME