Two for the biathlon, please

Not being the sort to turn one's back on demand, for a civil morning satire on any seasonal festival of sport, I found myself shut out at the Zermatt ticket window, the Swiss having decided that it's all very well to fleece the world for a priceless glimpse of glossy slopes, but never too many of us for very long. Hence to the Finland station and its well-traveled path to a Winter just as incontestable, and just as meticulously exclusive. A well run Winter is no accident; but then, a distinct sentimentality invades the responses of us all to the sparkling season; and I have to confess how my own take a turn to marksmanship. 

I caught this bug at the movies, 

through the masterful process 

photography of one of Mr Hitch-

cock's benchmark British flicks, 

in an opening scene of very nif-

ty shooting at some soigné Swiss 

establishment which, along with 

celluloid itself, has doubtless 

gone the way of all good things 

in hands that never knew, it was 

not about the money. Like you, I

am only sorry that the inventor

of the Kalashnikov expired this

past year, on the eve of mother

Russia's gaudiest exhibition, un-

der a regime so steeped in its

virtues as to make its knowing

too much as chilling as the sea-

son. But we are all men of the

world (if you'll excuse the 

phrase), as we turn to sport.

I keep repeating the mantra, Security is Good for Me, but I must admit, I've always traveled to get away from it. This, too, inspires a jaunt to Russia, where even an undesirable stands an even chance of being ignored. If I wanted the joys of soccer mommying, I could have stayed at home on the telephone, and let our morbid little police state keep its beady nasty pinpoint on my person. Can you imagine, what elation and relief there must be, in the sophisticated, indifferent presumption of guilt? The load off one's shoulders, the curiosity lifted from one's purchase of a coffee? But I stray. 

I don't admire the enrich-ment a hypocrisy toward our presumption of inno-cence brings, to a new totality in the state's invasion of our existence. With the reversal of that presumption we see an inordinate obsession for evidence of every kind, magnifying the enormity of intrusion with de Sade's zealotry for trivia. I am not interested in the excuses our ostensible Conservatives have for this seduction of the republic. With them, it has always been about the money, and fear is a dandy diversion. But now we know, this is beyond the Putinesque, this sodden puttanesca.

Alfred Hitchcock

  director

Charles Bennett,

  Ivor Montagu and

  Emlyn Williams

  screenplay

Curt Courant

  cinematography

The Man Who Knew 

  Too Much

Gaumont, 1934©

John Russell Taylor

Hitch

  The Life and Times of

  Alfred Hitchcock

Pantheon, 1978©

Donatien-Alphonse-François,

  Marquis de Sade

Philosophy in the Boudoir

  or, The Immoral Mentors

Joachim Neugroschel

  translation

Francine du Plessix Gray

  introduction

Penguin, 2006©

v  Photo Hedi Slimane