Sir Alfred Joseph Hitchcock KBE (August 13, 1899 – April 29, 1980) was an iconic and highly influential British-born film director and producer who pioneered many techniques in the suspense and thriller genres. He directed more than fifty feature films in a career spanning six decades, from the silent film era, through the invention of talkies, to the colour era. Hitchcock was among the most consistently successful and publicly recognizable world directors during his lifetime, and remains one of the best known and most popular of all time.
Famous for his expert and largely unrivalled control of pace and suspense, Hitchcock's films draw heavily on both fear and fantasy, and are known for their droll humour and witticisms. They often portray innocent people caught up in circumstances beyond their control or understanding.
Hitchcock was born and raised in Leytonstone, London, England. He began his directing career in the United Kingdom in 1922, but from 1939 he worked primarily in the United States and applied for U.S. citizenship in 1956. Hitchcock and his family owned a mountaintop estate known as Cornwall Ranch or "Heart o' the Mountain" at the end of Canham Road, high above Scotts Valley, California, from 1940 to 1972. They bought a second home in late 1942 at 10957 Bellagio Road in Los Angeles, just across from the Bel Air Country Club. Hitchcock died of renal failure in 1980.[1]
Rebecca was the only one of his films to win the Academy Award for Best Picture, although four others were nominated. However, Hitchcock never won an Academy Award for Best Director. He was awarded the Irving G. Thalberg Memorial Award for lifetime achievement in 1967, but never personally received an Academy Award of Merit.
Life
[edit] Childhood and youth
Alfred Hitchcock was born on August 13, 1899, in Leytonstone, Essex (now London), the second son and youngest of three children of William Hitchcock (1862-1914), a greengrocer and poulterer, and his wife, Emma Jane Hitchcock (née Whelan; 1863-1942). His family was mostly Roman Catholic, being of Irish extraction.[2] Hitchcock was sent to the Jesuit Classic school St. Ignatius College in Enfield, London. He often described his childhood as being very lonely and sheltered, which was undoubtedly compounded by his weight issues.[3]
It is widely known that as a child, Hitchcock's father once sent him to their local police station with a note asking the officer to lock him away for ten minutes as punishment for behaving badly. This idea of being harshly treated or wrongfully accused is more than commonly reflected in Hitchcock's films.[4]
His mother would often make him address her while standing at the foot of her bed, especially if he behaved badly, forcing him to stand there for hours. This would be recalled by the character Norman Bates in Psycho.[5]
When Hitchcock was 14, his father died; the same year, he left the Jesuit-run St Ignatius' College in Stamford Hill, his school at the time, to study at the School for Engineering and Navigation. After graduating, he became a draftsman and advertising designer with a cable company.[6]
About that time, Hitchcock became intrigued by photography and started working in film in London. In 1920, he got a full-time job at Islington Studios with its American owner, Famous Players-Lasky and their British successor, Gainsborough Pictures, designing the titles for silent movies.[7]
[edit] Pre-War British career
In 1925, Michael Balcon of Gainsborough Pictures gave him a chance to direct his first film, The Pleasure Garden made at Ufa studios in Germany. The commercial failure of this film threatened to derail his promising career.[8] In 1926, however, Hitchcock made his debut in the thriller genre. The resulting film, The Lodger: A Story of the London Fog was a major commercial and critical success when it was released throughout the U.K. in January 1927. Like many of his earlier works, it was influenced by Expressionist techniques he had witnessed firsthand in Germany. This is the first truly "Hitchcockian" film, incorporating such themes as the "wrong man".[9]
Following the success of The Lodger, Hitchcock began his first efforts to promote himself in the media, and hired a publicist to cement his growing reputation as one of the British film industry's rising stars. On December 2, 1926, he married his assistant director Alma Reville at Brompton Oratory. Their daughter Patricia was born in 1928. Alma was Hitchcock's closest collaborator. She wrote some of his screenplays and (though often uncredited) worked with him on every one of his films.
In 1929, he began work on his tenth film Blackmail. While the film was in production, the studio decided to make it one of Britain's first sound pictures. With the climax of the film taking place on the dome of the British Museum, Blackmail began the Hitchcock tradition of using famous landmarks as a backdrop for suspense sequences. In the PBS series The Men Who Made The Movies, Hitchcock explained how he used early sound recording as a special element of the film, emphasizing the word "knife" in a conversation with the woman suspected of murder.[10]
In 1933, Hitchcock was once again working for Michael Balcon at Gaumont-British Picture Corporation. His first film for the company, The Man Who Knew Too Much (1934), was a success and his second, The 39 Steps (1935), is often considered one of the best films from his early period. It was also one of the first to introduce the concept of the "Macguffin", a plot device around which a whole story seems to revolve, but ultimately has nothing to do with the true meaning or ending of the story. In The 39 Steps, the Macguffin is a stolen set of blueprints. (Hitchcock told French director François Truffaut: "There are two men sitting in a train going to Scotland and one man says to the other, 'Excuse me, sir, but what is that strange parcel you have on the luggage rack above you?' 'Oh,' says the other, 'that's a Macguffin.' 'Well,' says the first man, 'what's a Macguffin?' The other answers, 'It's an apparatus for trapping lions in the Scottish Highlands.' 'But,' says the first man, 'there are no lions in the Scottish Highlands.' 'Well,' says the other, 'then that's no Macguffin.'")[11]
His next major success was in 1938, The Lady Vanishes, a clever and fast-paced film about the search for a kindly old Englishwoman (Dame May Whitty), who disappears while on board a train in the fictional country of Vandrika (a thinly-veiled version of Nazi Germany).
By 1938 Hitchcock had become known for his famous observation, "Actors are cattle." He once said that he first said this as early as the late 1920s, when he thought of stage actors who were snobbish about motion pictures. However, Michael Redgrave said Hitchcock made the statement during the filming of The Lady Vanishes. The phrase would haunt Hitchcock for years to come and would result in a funny incident during the filming of his 1941 production of Mr. & Mrs. Smith, when Carole Lombard brought some heifers onto the set to surprise the director.[12]
By the end of the 1930s, Hitchcock was at the top of his game artistically, and in a position to name his own terms when David O. Selznick managed to entice him to Hollywood.
[edit] Hollywood
Hitchcock's gallows humour and the suspense that became his trademark continued in his American work. However, working arrangements with his new producer were less than optimal. Selznick suffered from perennial money problems and Hitchcock was often unhappy with the amount of creative control demanded by Selznick over his films. Consequently, Selznick ended up "loaning" Hitchcock to the larger studios more often than producing Hitchcock's films himself. In addition, Selznick, as well as fellow independent producer Samuel Goldwyn, made only a few films each year, so Selznick did not always have projects for Hitchcock to direct. Remarkably, Goldwyn had also negotiated with Hitchcock on a possible contract, only to be outbid by Selznick. Hitchcock was quickly impressed with the superior resources of the American studios compared to the financial restrictions he had frequently encountered in England. Nevertheless, Hitchcock's fondness for his homeland resulted in numerous American films set in, or filmed in, the United Kingdom, right up to his next-to-last film, Frenzy.
With the prestigious Selznick picture Rebecca in 1940, Hitchcock made his first American movie, although it was set in England and based on a novel by English author Daphne du Maurier and starred Sir Laurence Olivier and Joan Fontaine. This Gothic melodrama explores the fears of a naïve young bride who enters a great English country home and must grapple with the problems of a distant husband, a predatory housekeeper, and the legacy of her husband's late wife, the beautiful, mysterious Rebecca. It won the Academy Award for Best Picture of 1940. However, the statuette went to Selznick as the film's producer, and the film did not win the Best Director award. There were additional problems between Selznick and Hitchcock; Selznick, as he usually did, imposed very restrictive rules upon Hitchcock, hindering his creative control. Hitchcock was forced to shoot the film as Selznick wanted, immediately creating friction within their relationship. At the same time, Selznick complained about Hitchcock's "goddam jigsaw cutting," which meant that the producer did not have nearly the leeway to create his own film as he liked, but had to follow Hitchcock's vision of the finished product.[13] The film was the third longest of Hitchcock's films at 130 minutes, exceeded only by The Paradine Case at 132 minutes and North by Northwest at 136 minutes.[14]
Hitchcock's second American film, the European-set thriller Foreign Correspondent (originally titled Personal History), was also nominated for Best Picture that year. It was filmed in the first year of World War II and inspired by the rapidly-changing events in Europe, as covered by an American newspaper reporter portrayed by a wise-cracking Joel McCrea. The film cleverly used actual footage of European scenes and scenes filmed on a Hollywood backlot. Curiously, because of Hollywood's Production Code censorship, the film avoided direct references to Germany and Germans.[15]
Hitchcock's work during the 1940s was diverse, ranging from the romantic comedy Mr. & Mrs. Smith (1941) and the courtroom drama The Paradine Case (1947) to the dark and disturbing Shadow of a Doubt (1943).
Suspicion (1941) marked Hitchcock's first film as a producer as well as director. This was Cary Grant's first film with Hitchcock. Joan Fontaine won Best Actress Oscar and New York Film Critics Circle Award for her outstanding performance in Suspicion.
Saboteur (1942) was the first of two films that Hitchcock made for Universal, a studio where he would work in his later years. Hitchcock was forced to utilize Universal contract players Robert Cummings and Priscilla Lane, both known for their work in comedies and light dramas; Hitchcock made the most of the situation and got remarkably good performances from the two lead actors. Breaking with Hollywood conventions of the time, Hitchcock did extensive location filming, especially in New York City, and memorably depicted a confrontation between a suspected saboteur (Cummings) and a real saboteur (Norman Lloyd) atop the Statue of Liberty.
Shadow of a Doubt (1943), his personal favourite of all his films and the second of the early Universal films, was about young Charlotte "Charlie" Newton (Teresa Wright), who suspects her beloved uncle Charlie Oakley (Joseph Cotten) of being a serial murderer. In its use of overlapping characters, dialogue, and closeups it has provided a generation of film theorists with psychoanalytic potential, including Jacques Lacan and Slavoj Žižek. The film also harkens back to one of Cotten's best known films, Citizen Kane. Hitchcock again filmed extensively on location, this time in the Northern California city of Santa Rosa, during the summer of 1942. The director showcased his own personal fascination with crime and criminals when he had two of his characters discuss various ways of killing people, to the obvious annoyance of Charlotte.
Working at 20th Century Fox, Hitchcock adapted a script by John Steinbeck that dealt with the survivors of a German U-boat attack, Lifeboat (1944). Since the action was confined to the small boat, the film was clearly the most confined of Hitchcock's films. While at Fox, Hitchcock seriously considered directing the film version of A.J. Cronin's novel about a Catholic priest in China, The Keys of the Kingdom, but the plans for this fell through. John M. Stahl ended up directing the 1944 film, which was produced by Joseph L. Mankiewicz and starred Gregory Peck, among other luminaries.[16]
Returning to England for an extended visit in late 1943 and early 1944, Hitchcock filmed two short films for the Ministry of Information, Bon Voyage and Aventure Malgache. The films were made for France's free territories and were the only ones Hitchcock made in French; they feature typical Hitchcockian touches.[17] In the 1990s, the two films were shown by Turner Classic Movies and released on home video.
In 1945, Hitchcock served as "treatment advisor" (in effect, editor) for a Holocaust documentary produced by the British Army. The film, which recorded the liberation of Concentration Camps, remained unreleased until 1985, when it was completed by PBS Frontline and distributed under the title Memory of the Camps.[18]
Hitchcock worked again for Selznick when he directed Spellbound, which explored the then-fashionable subject of psychoanalysis and featured a dream sequence designed by Salvador Dalí. The dream sequence as it actually appears in the film is considerably shorter than was originally envisioned, which was to be several minutes long, because it proved to be too disturbing for the audience. Some of the memorable and original musical score by Miklos Rozsa was later adapted by the composer into a concert piano concerto.
Notorious (1946) followed Spellbound. As Selznick failed to see its potential, he allowed Hitchcock to make the film for RKO. From this point onwards, Hitchcock would produce his own films, giving him a far greater degree of freedom to pursue the projects that interested him. Notorious starred Hitchcock regulars Ingrid Bergman and Cary Grant and features a plot about Nazis, uranium, and South America. It was a huge box office success and has remained one of Hitchcock's most acclaimed films. His use of uranium as a plot device briefly led to Hitchcock's being under surveillance by the FBI. McGilligan wrote that Hitchcock consulted scientists about the development of an atomic bomb; Selznick complained that the notion was "science fiction," only to be confronted by the detonation of two atomic bombs in 1945 that led to the end of World War II.[19]
After completing his final film for Selznick, The Paradine Case (a promising courtroom drama that critics found lost momentum because it apparently ran too long and exhausted its resource of ideas), Hitchcock filmed his first colour film, Rope, which appeared in 1948. Here Hitchcock experimented with marshalling suspense in a confined environment, as he had done earlier with Lifeboat (1943). He also experimented with exceptionally long takes — up to ten minutes long (see Themes and devices). Featuring James Stewart in the leading role, Rope was the first of four films Stewart would make for Hitchcock. It was based on the Leopold and Loeb case of the 1920s. Somehow Hitchcock's cameraman managed to move the bulky, heavy Technicolor camera quickly around the set as it followed the continuous action of the long takes.
Under Capricorn (1949), set in nineteenth-century Australia, also used the short-lived technique of long takes, but to a more limited extent. He again used Technicolor in this production, then returned to black and white films for several years. For Rope and Under Capricorn Hitchcock formed a production company with Sidney Bernstein, called Transatlantic Pictures, which became inactive after these two unsuccessful pictures. Hitchcock continued to produce his films for the rest of his life.
[edit] Peak years and Knighthood
In 1950, Hitchcock filmed Stage Fright on location in the U.K. For the first time, Hitchcock matched one of Warner Brothers' biggest stars, Jane Wyman, with the sultry German actress Marlene Dietrich, whose daughter later wrote that Dietrich detested Wyman, although Wyman had just won the Best Actress Oscar for Johnny Belinda. Hitchcock may have exploited the offscreen animosity between Wyman and Dietrich in this offbeat, behind-the-scenes glimpse of London theatrical personalities, one of whom commits a murder. Hitchcock utilized a number of prominent British actors, including Michael Wilding, Richard Todd, and Alastair Sim. This was Hitchcock's first production for Warner Brothers, which had distributed Rope and Under Capricorn, because Transatlantic Pictures was experiencing financial difficulties.[20]
With Strangers on a Train (1951), based on the novel by Patricia Highsmith, Hitchcock combined many of the best elements from his preceding British and American films. Two men casually meet and speculate on removing people who are causing them difficulty. One of the men, though, takes this banter entirely seriously. With Farley Granger reprising some elements of his role from Rope, Strangers continued the director's interest in the narrative possibilities of blackmail and murder.
MCA head Lew Wasserman, whose client list included James Stewart, Janet Leigh, and other actors who would appear in Hitchcock's films, had a significant impact in packaging and marketing Hitchcock's films beginning in the 1950s. With Wasserman's help, Hitchcock received tremendous creative freedom from the studios, as well as substantive financial rewards as a result of Paramount's profit-sharing contract.
Three very popular films starring Grace Kelly followed. Dial M for Murder (1954) was adapted from the popular stage play by Frederick Knott. This was originally another experimental film, with Hitchcock using the technique of 3D cinematography, although the film was not released in this format at first; it did receive screenings in the early 1980s in 3D form. The film also marked a return to Technicolor productions for Hitchcock. Hitchcock moved to Paramount Pictures and filmed Rear Window, starring James Stewart and Kelly again, as well as Thelma Ritter and Raymond Burr. Here, the wheelchair-bound Stewart observes the movements of his neighbours across the courtyard and becomes convinced one of them has murdered his wife. Like Lifeboat and Rope, the movie was photographed almost entirely within the confines of a small space: Stewart's tiny studio apartment overlooking the massive courtyard set. To Catch a Thief, set in the French Riviera, starred Kelly and Cary Grant.
A remake of his own 1934 film The Man Who Knew Too Much followed, this time with James Stewart and Doris Day, who sang the theme song, "Whatever Will Be, Will Be (Que Sera, Sera)" (which became a big hit for Day and won an Oscar).
The Wrong Man (1957), Hitchcock's final film for Warner Brothers, was a low-key black and white production based on a real-life case of mistaken identity. This was the only film of Hitchcock's to star Henry Fonda.
Vertigo (1958) again starred Stewart, this time with Kim Novak and Barbara Bel Geddes. The film was a commercial failure, but has come to be viewed by many as one of Hitchcock's masterpieces; it is now placed highly in the Sight & Sound decade polls. It was premiered in the San Sebastian International Film Festival, where Hitchcock won a Silver Seashell.
Hitchcock followed Vertigo with three more successful pictures. All are also recognized as among his very best films: North by Northwest (1959), Psycho (1960), and The Birds (1963). The latter two were particularly notable for their unconventional soundtracks, both by Bernard Herrmann: the screeching strings in the murder scene in Psycho pushed the limits of the time, and The Birds dispensed completely with conventional instruments, using an electronically produced soundtrack and an unaccompanied song by school children (just prior the infamous attack at the historic Bodega Bay School). These are widely considered his last great films, after which his career slowly wound down (although some critics such as Robin Wood and Donald Spoto contend that Marnie, from 1964, is first-class Hitchcock, and some have argued that Frenzy is unfairly overlooked).
[edit] Later Work
Failing health also reduced his output over the last two decades of his life. He filmed two spy thrillers, Torn Curtain with Paul Newman and Julie Andrews and Topaz (based on a Leon Uris novel), which both received mixed reviews. In 1972, Hitchcock returned to London to film Frenzy, his last major success. For the first time, Hitchcock allowed nudity and profane language, which had before been taboo, in one of his films. Biographers have noted that Hitchcock had always pushed the limits of film censorship, often managing to fool Joseph Breen, the longtime head of Hollywood's Production Code. Many times Hitchcock slipped in subtle hints of improprieties forbidden by censorship until the mid-1960s. Yet Patrick McGilligan wrote that Breen and others often realized that Hitchcock was inserting such things and were actually amused as well as alarmed by Hitchcock's "inescapable inferences."[21] Beginning with Torn Curtain, Hitchcock was finally able to blatantly include plot elements previously forbidden in American films and this continued for the rest of his life.
Family Plot (1976) was his last film. It related the escapades of "Madam" Blanche Tyler played by Barbara Harris, a fraudulent spiritualist, and her taxi driver lover Bruce Dern making a living from her phony powers. William Devane, Karen Black and Cathleen Nesbitt co-starred. It was the only Hitchcock film scored by John Williams.
Near the end of his life, Hitchcock worked on the script for a projected spy thriller, The Short Night, with screenwriters James Costigan and Ernest Lehman. Despite some preliminary work, the story was never filmed, primarily due to Hitchcock's failing health and his concerns over his wife Alma's health, after she suffered a stroke. The script was eventually published posthumously, in a book on Hitchcock's last years.[22] [23]
Hitchcock was made an Knight Commander of the Order of the British Empire by Queen Elizabeth II in the 1980 New Year's Honours. He died just four months later, on April 29, before he had the opportunity to be formally invested by the Queen. Despite the brief period between his knighthood and death, he was nevertheless entitled to be known as Sir Alfred Hitchcock and to use the postnominal letters "KBE", because he remained a British subject when he adopted American citizenship in 1956.
[edit] Death
Alfred Hitchcock died from renal failure in his Bel-Air, Los Angeles home, aged 80. His wife Alma Reville, and their daughter, Patricia Hitchcock O'Connell, both survived him. A funeral service was held at Good Shepherd Catholic Church in Beverly Hills. His body was cremated and the ashes scattered over the Pacific. [24]
[edit] Themes and devices
[edit] Suspense
Hitchcock preferred the use of suspense over surprise in his films. In surprise, the director assaults the viewer with frightening things. In suspense, the director tells or shows things to the audience which the characters in the film do not know, and then artfully builds tension around what will happen when the characters finally learn the truth.
[edit] Audience as voyeur
Further blurring the moral distinction between the innocent and the guilty, occasionally making this indictment inescapably clear to viewers one and all, Hitchcock also makes voyeurs of his "respectable" audience. In Rear Window (1954), after L. B. Jeffries (played by James Stewart) has been staring across the courtyard at him for most of the film, Lars Thorwald (played by Raymond Burr) confronts Jeffries by saying, "What do you want of me?" Burr might as well have been addressing the audience. In fact, shortly before asking this, Thorwald turns to face the camera directly for the first time — at this point, audiences often gasp.
Similarly, Psycho begins with the camera moving toward a hotel-room window, through which the audience is introduced to Marion Crane (Janet Leigh) and her divorced boyfriend Sam Loomis (John Gavin). They are partially undressed, having apparently had sex though they are not married and Marion is on her lunch "hour." Later, along with Norman Bates (Anthony Perkins), we watch Marion undress through a peephole.
[edit] MacGuffin
One of Hitchcock's favourite devices for driving the plots of his stories and creating suspense was what he called the "MacGuffin." The Oxford English Dictionary, however, credits Hitchcock's friend, the Scottish screenwriter Angus MacPhail, as being the true inventor of the term. Hitchcock defined this term in a 1964 interview conducted by François Truffaut, published as Hitchcock/Truffaut (Simon and Schuster, 1967). Hitchcock would use this plot device extensively. Many of his suspense films revolve around this device: a detail which, by inciting curiosity and desire, drives the plot and motivates the actions of characters within the story, but whose specific identity and nature is unimportant to the spectator of the film. In Vertigo, for instance, "Carlotta Valdes" is a MacGuffin; she never appears and the details of her death are unimportant to the viewer, but the story about her ghost's haunting of Madeleine Elster is the spur for Scottie's investigation of her, and hence the film's entire plot. In Notorious, the uranium that the main characters must recover before it reaches Nazi hands serves as a similarly arbitrary motivation: any dangerous object would suffice. And state secrets of various kinds serve as MacGuffins in several of the spy films, especially his earlier British films The Man Who Knew Too Much, The 39 Steps, and The Lady Vanishes. In Psycho, what might be mistaken for a red herring at the beginning of the film (a package containing $40,000 in stolen money) is actually a MacGuffin.
[edit] Signature appearances in his films
Main article: list of Hitchcock cameo appearances
Many of Hitchcock's films contain cameo appearances by Hitchcock himself: the director would be seen for a brief moment boarding a bus, crossing in front of a building, standing in an apartment across the courtyard, or appearing in a photograph. This playful gesture became one of Hitchcock's signatures. As a recurring theme he would carry a musical instrument — especially memorable was the large double bass case that he wrestles onto the train at the beginning of Strangers on a Train.
In his earliest appearances he would fill in as an obscure extra, standing in a crowd or walking through a scene in a long camera shot (e.g. in his 1927 film The Lodger). But he became more prominent in his later appearances, as when he turns to see Jane Wyman's disguise when she passes him on the street in Stage Fright, and in stark silhouette in his final film Family Plot (1976).
[edit] Motifs
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Numerous motifs (recurring objects or stylistic choices) can be found throughout Hitchcock's work.
Ordinary Person - Placing an ordinary person into extraordinary circumstances is a common element of Hitchcock's films. In The Man Who Knew Too Much (1956), James Stewart plays an ordinary man from Indianapolis vacationing in Morocco when his son is kidnapped. In The Wrong Man, Henry Fonda is arrested for a crime he didn't commit. In Psycho, Janet Leigh is an unremarkable secretary whose personal story is violently interrupted by a furious schizophrenic. Other clear examples are Strangers on a Train, I Confess, Vertigo, and North By Northwest.
Wrong Man - Mistaken identity is a common plot device in his films. In North By Northwest, Roger Thornhill (Cary Grant) is mistaken for George Kaplan, a non-existent CIA agent. In The Wrong Man, Henry Fonda is mistaken for a criminal. The plot of Vertigo revolves around James Stewart's investigation of Kim Novak's actual identity. In both versions of Man Who Knew Too Much the lead character is mistaken for a spy.
Likeable Criminal - The "villain" in many of Hitchcock's films is charming and refined rather than grotesque and vulgar. Especially clear examples of this tendency are Claude Rains in Notorious, Joseph Cotten in Shadow of a Doubt, and James Mason in North by Northwest. In Psycho, Marian Crane (Janet Leigh) steals from her employer and runs away to be with her boyfriend, thus making her a criminal as a thief and immoral for having pre-marital sex. However we are sympathetic for her as she has just decided to return the money when she is brutally murdered. In Marnie, the title character ('Tippi' Hedren) is a serial thief of significant cunning and planning. We identify with her anxiety when her disposing of an incriminating locker key gets stuck in a drain.
Stairways - Images of stairs often play a central role in Hitchcock's films. The Lodger tracks a suspected serial killer's movement on a staircase. Years later, a similar shot appears in the final sequence of Notorious. In Vertigo the staircase in the church bell tower plays a crucial role in the plot. In Psycho, several staircases are featured prominently: as part of the path up to the Bates mansion, as the entrance to the fruit cellar, and as the site of Martin Balsam's murder. In Rear Window, an entirely nonfunctional staircase adorns James Stewart's apartment, in addition to the numerous fire escape staircases seen each time we follow Stewart's gaze out of his window. In Shadow of a Doubt, Joseph Cotten attempts to murder his niece by rigging a staircase to collapse. This is attributed to the influence of German Expressionism, which often featured heavily stylized and menacing staircases (cf. The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari). In Dial M for Murder , a key kept under the stair carpet plays a pivotal role in booking the murderer. Frenzy features an unusual shot which tracks the killer and his victim first up the stairs, then retreats backwards down the stairs alone while the audience is left to imagine the killing which is taking place.
Mothers - Mothers are frequently depicted as intrusive and domineering, as seen in Rope, Notorious, Strangers on a Train, North by Northwest, Psycho, and The Birds.
Brandy - Hitchcock includes the consumption of brandy in at least five films. "I'll get you some brandy. Drink this down. Just like medicine ..." says James Stewart to Kim Novak in Vertigo. In a real-life incident, Hitchcock dared Montgomery Clift at a dinner party around the filming of I Confess (1953) to swallow a carafe of brandy, which caused the actor to pass out almost immediately. In Torn Curtain and Topaz, brandy is defined more closely as cognac. This element is also present in Dial M for Murder where the main characters of the film consume brandy throughout the entire film. Tippi Hedren (Melanie Daniels) is offered a brandy by Suzanne Pleshette, and after being attacked by the birds, drinks the brandy offered by Mitch (Rod Taylor). In Rear Window, Lisa Fremont (Grace Kelly) is "just warming some brandy."
Sexuality - For their time, Hitchcock's films were regarded as rather sexualized, often dealing with perverse and taboo behaviors. Sometimes, the prudish conventions of his era caused him to convey sexuality in an emblematic fashion, such as in North by Northwest, when the film cuts abruptly from two aroused but visually chaste lovers to a train entering a tunnel. Hitchcock found a number of ways to convey sexuality without depicting graphic behaviors, such as the substitution of explicit sexual passion with the passionate consumption of food. In a particularly amusing scene in Psycho, Anthony Perkins is carrying on a conversation with Janet Leigh while one of his hands strokes a dead animal and the other hand lingers in his crotch. Sexual feelings are often strongly associated with violent behavior. In The Lodger and Psycho, this association is the whole basis of the film. Biographers have noted how Hitchcock continued to challenge film censorship throughout his career, until he was allowed to show nudity in Frenzy. His last film, Family Plot, was curiously more subdued than many of his earlier films.
Voyeurism - Another aspect of Hitchcock's enthusiasm for perversion is the prominence of voyeurism in many films, including Vertigo, Rear Window, and Psycho. Many critics have suggested that voyeurism may be a useful metaphor with which to explain Hitchcock's approach to film narrative. (see above section)
Crime - Crime is the foundation for all Hitchcock stories, with some exceptions, such as The Birds.
Blonde Women - Hitchcock had a dramatic preference for blonde women, stating that the audience would be more suspicious of a brunette. Many of these blondes were of the Kim Novak/Grace Kelly variety: perfect and aloof. In Vertigo James Stewart forces a woman to dye her hair blonde. The Lodger, one of Hitchcock's earliest films, features a serial killer who stalks blonde women. Hitchcock said he used blonde actresses in his films, not because of an attraction to them, but because of a tradition that began with Mary Pickford. The director said that blondes were "a symbol of the heroine." He also thought they photographed better in black and white, which was the predominant film for most dramas for many years.[25]
Silent Scenes - As a former silent film director, Hitchcock strongly preferred to convey narrative with images rather than dialogue. Hitchcock viewed film as a primarily visual medium in which the director's assemblage of images must convey the narrative. Examples of imagery over dialogue are in the lengthy sequence in Vertigo in which Jimmy Stewart is silently following Kim Novak, or the Albert Hall sequence in the 1956 version of The Man Who Knew Too Much.
[edit] Cinematic experimentation
Hitchcock seemed to delight in the technical challenges of filmmaking. In Lifeboat, Hitchcock sets the entire action of the movie in a small boat, yet manages to keep the cinematography from monotonous repetition. His trademark cameo appearance was a dilemma, given the limitations of the setting; so Hitchcock appeared on camera in a fictitious newspaper ad for a weight loss product. In Spellbound two unprecedented point-of-view shots were achieved by constructing a large wooden hand (which would appear to belong to the character whose point of view the camera took) and outsized props for it to hold: a bucket-sized glass of milk and a large wooden gun. For added novelty and impact, the climactic gunshot was hand-coloured red on some copies of the black-and-white print of the film. Rope (1948) was another technical challenge: a film that appears to have been shot entirely in a single take. The film was actually shot in 10 takes of ranging from four and half to 10 minutes each, 10 minutes being the maximum amount of film that would fit in a single camera reel; some transitions between reels were hidden by having a dark object fill the entire screen for a moment. Hitchcock used those points to hide the cut, and began the next take with the camera in the same place.
His 1958 film Vertigo contains a camera trick that has been imitated and re-used so many times by filmmakers, it has become known as the Hitchcock zoom.
[edit] Character and its effects on his films
Hitchcock's films sometimes feature characters struggling in their relationships with their mothers. In North by Northwest (1959), Roger Thornhill (Cary Grant's character) is an innocent man ridiculed by his mother for insisting that shadowy, murderous men are after him (in this case, they are). In The Birds (1963), the Rod Taylor character, an innocent man, finds his world under attack by vicious birds, and struggles to free himself of a clinging mother (Jessica Tandy). The killer in Frenzy (1972) has a loathing of women but idolizes his mother. The villain Bruno in Strangers on a Train hates his father, but has an incredibly close relationship with his mother (played by Marion Lorne). Sebastian (Claude Rains) in Notorious has a clearly conflictual relationship with his mother, who is (correctly) suspicious of his new bride Alicia Huberman (Ingrid Bergman). And, of course, Norman Bates' troubles with his mother in Psycho are infamous.
Hitchcock heroines tend to be lovely, cool blondes who seem proper at first but, when aroused by passion or danger, respond in a more sensual, animal, or even criminal way. As noted, the famous victims in The Lodger are all blondes. In The 39 Steps, Hitchcock's glamorous blonde star, Madeleine Carroll, is put in handcuffs. In Marnie (1964), the title character (played by Tippi Hedren) is a kleptomaniac. In To Catch a Thief (1955), Francie (Grace Kelly) offers to help a man she believes is a cat burglar. In Rear Window, Lisa (Grace Kelly again) risks her life by breaking into Lars Thorwald's apartment. And, most notoriously, in Psycho, Janet Leigh's unfortunate character steals $40,000 and is murdered by a reclusive lunatic. Hitchcock's last blonde heroine was - years after Dany Robin and her "daughter" Claude Jade in Topaz - Barbara Harris as a phony psychic turned amateur sleuth in his final film, 1976's Family Plot. In the same film, the diamond smuggler played by Karen Black could also fit that role, as she wears a long blonde wig in various scenes and becomes increasingly uncomfortable about her line of work.
Hitchcock saw that reliance on actors and actresses was a holdover from the theater tradition. He was a pioneer in using camera movement, camera set ups and montage to explore the outer reaches of cinematic art.
Most critics and Hitchcock scholars, including Donald Spoto and Roger Ebert, agree that Vertigo represents the director's most personal and revealing film, dealing with the obsessions of a man who crafts a woman into the woman he desires. Vertigo explores more frankly and at greater length his interest in the relation between sex and death than any other film in his filmography.
Hitchcock often said that his personal favourite was Shadow of a Doubt.
[edit] Style of working
Hitchcock once commented, "The writer and I plan out the entire script down to the smallest detail, and when we're finished all that's left to do is to shoot the film. Actually, it's only when one enters the studio that one enters the area of compromise. Really, the novelist has the best casting since he doesn't have to cope with the actors and all the rest."
Hitchcock would storyboard each movie down to the finest detail. He was reported to have never even bothered looking through the viewfinder, since he didn't need to do so, though in publicity photos he was shown doing so. He also used this as an excuse to never have to change his films from his initial vision. If a studio asked him to change a film, he would claim that it was already shot in a single way, and that there were no alternate takes to consider.
However this view of Hitchcock as a director who relied more on pre-production than on the actual production itself has been challenged by the book Hitchcock At Work written by Bill Krohn, the American correspondent of Cahiers du Cinema. Krohn after investigating several script revisions, notes to other production personnel written by or to Hitchcock alongside inspection of storyboards and other production material has observed that Hitchcock's work often deviated from how the screenplay was written or how the film was originally envisioned. He noted that the myth of storyboards in relation to Hitchcock, often regurgitated by generations of commentators on Hitchcock's movies was to a great degree perpetuated by Hitchcock himself or the publicity arm of the studios. A great example would be the famous cropduster sequence of North by Northwest which wasn't storyboarded at all. After the scene was filmed, the publicity arm asked Hitchcock to make storyboards to promote the film and Hitchcock in turn hired an artist to match the scenes in detail. While Hitchcock did do a great deal of preparation for all his movies, he was fully cognizant that the actual film-making process often deviated from the best laid plans and was flexible to adapt to the changes and needs of production. Even on the occasions when storyboards were made, the scene which was shot did differ from it significantly.
Similarly much of Hitchcock's hatred of actors has been exaggerated. Hitchcock simply did not tolerate the method approach as he believed that actors should only concentrate on their performances and leave work on script and character to the directors and screenwriters. In a Sight and Sound interview, he stated that, ' the method actor is OK in the theatre because he has a free space to move about. But when it comes to cutting the face and what he sees and so forth, there must be some discipline' (see [3]). During the making of Lifeboat, Walter Slezak, who played the German character, stated that Hitchcock knew the mechanics of acting better than anyone he knew. Several critics have observed that despite his reputation as a man who disliked actors, several actors who worked with him gave fine, often brilliant performances and these performances contribute to the film's success.
Regarding Hitchcock's sometimes less than pleasant relationship with actors, there was a persistent rumor that he had said that actors were cattle. Hitchcock later denied this, typically tongue-in-cheek, clarifying that he had only said that actors should be treated like cattle. Carole Lombard, tweaking Hitchcock and drumming up a little publicity, brought some cows along with her when she reported to the set of Mr. and Mrs. Smith. For Hitchcock, the actors, like the props, were part of the film's setting.
The first book devoted to the director is simply named Hitchcock. It is a document of a one-week interview by François Truffaut in 1967. (ISBN 0-671-60429-5)
In the late 1950s the French New Wave critics, especially Éric Rohmer, Claude Chabrol, and François Truffaut, were among the first to see and promote his films as artistic works. Hitchcock was one of the first directors to whom they applied their auteur theory, which stresses the artistic authority of the director in the film-making process.
[edit] Influence
Hitchcock's innovations and vision have influenced a great number of filmmakers, producers, and actors. His influence helped start a trend for film directors to control artistic aspects of their movies without answering to the movie's producer.
[edit] Awards
The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences awarded Hitchcock the Irving G. Thalberg Memorial Award, in 1967. However, despite six earlier nominations, he never won an Oscar in a contested category. His Oscar nominations were:
for Best Director: Rebecca (1940), Lifeboat (1944), Spellbound (1945), Rear Window (1954), and Psycho (1960);
as producer, for Best Picture: Suspicion (1941).
Rebecca, which Hitchcock directed, won the 1940 Best Picture Oscar for its producer David O. Selznick. In addition to Rebecca and Suspicion, two other films Hitchcock directed, Foreign Correspondent and Spellbound, were nominated for Best Picture.
Hitchcock is considered the Best Film Director of all time by The Screen Directory.[26] Hitchcock was knighted in 1980.
Sixteen films directed by Hitchcock earned Oscar nominations, though only six of those films earned Hitchcock himself a nomination. The total number of Oscar nominations (including winners) earned by films he directed is fifty. Four of those films earned Best Picture nominations.
[edit] Television and books
Alfred Hitchcock introduces the Alfred Hitchcock Presents episode "The Sorcerer's Apprentice"
This image is a candidate for speedy deletion. It will be deleted after seven days from the date of nomination.Along with Walt Disney, Hitchcock was one of the first prominent motion picture producers to fully envision just how popular the medium of television would become. From 1955 to 1965, Hitchcock was the host and producer of a long-running television series entitled Alfred Hitchcock Presents. While his films had made Hitchcock's name strongly associated with suspense, the TV series made Hitchcock a celebrity himself. His irony-tinged voice, image, and mannerisms became instantly recognizable and were often the subject of parody. The title theme of the show pictured a minimalist caricature of his profile (he drew it himself; it is composed of only around seven lines) which his real silhouette then filled. His introductions before the stories in his program always included some sort of wry humor, such as the description of a recent multi-person execution hampered by having only one electric chair, while two are now shown with a sign "Two chairs--no waiting!" He directed a few episodes of the TV series himself, and he upset a number of movie production companies when he insisted on using his TV production crew to produce his motion picture Psycho. In the late 1980s, a new version of Alfred Hitchcock Presents was produced for television, making use of Hitchcock's original introductions in a colorised form.
"Hitch" used a curious little tune by the French composer Charles Gounod (1818-1893), the composer of the 1859 opera Faust, as the theme "song" for his television programs, after it was suggested to him by composer Bernard Herrmann. Arthur Fiedler and the Boston Pops Orchestra included the piece, Funeral March of a Marionette, in one of their extended play 45-rpm discs for RCA Victor during the 1950s.
Alfred Hitchcock appears as a character in the popular juvenile detective series, Alfred Hitchcock and the Three Investigators. The long-running detective series was created by Robert Arthur, who wrote the first several books, although other authors took over after he left the series. The Three Investigators -- Jupiter Jones, Bob Andrews and Peter Crenshaw -- were amateur detectives, slightly younger than the Hardy Boys. In the introduction to each book, "Alfred Hitchcock" introduces the mystery, and he sometimes refers a case to the boys to solve. At the end of each book, the boys report to Hitchcock, and sometimes give him a memento of their case.
When the real Alfred Hitchcock died, the fictional Hitchcock in the Three Investigators books was replaced by a retired detective named Hector Sebastian. At this time, the series title was changed from Alfred Hitchcock and the Three Investigators to The Three Investigators.
At the height of Hitchcock's success, he was also asked to introduce a set of books with his name attached. The series was a collection of short stories by popular short-story writers, primarily focused on suspense and thrillers. These titles included Alfred Hitchcock's Monster Museum, Alfred Hitchcock's Supernatural Tales of Terror and Suspense, Alfred Hitchcock's Spellbinders in Suspense, Alfred Hitchcock's Witch's Brew, Alfred Hitchcock's Ghostly Gallery, Alfred Hitchcock Presents Stories to be Read with the Door Locked, Alfred Hitchcock's A Hangman's Dozen and Alfred Hitchcock's Haunted Houseful. Hitchcock himself was not actually involved in the reading, reviewing, editing or selection of the short stories; in fact, even his introductions were ghost-written. The entire extent of his involvement with the project was to lend his name and collect a check.
Some notable writers whose works were used in the collection include Shirley Jackson (Strangers in Town, The Lottery), T.H. White (The Once and Future King), Robert Bloch, H. G. Wells (The War of the Worlds), Robert Louis Stevenson, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Mark Twain and the creator of The Three Investigators, Robert Arthur.
Hitchcock also wrote a mystery story for Look magazine in 1943, "The Murder of Monty Woolley." This was a sequence of captioned photographs inviting the reader to inspect the pictures for clues to the murderer's identity; Hitchcock cast the performers as themselves: Woolley, Doris Merrick, and make-up man Guy Pearce, whom Hitchcock identified, in the last photo, as the murderer. The article was reprinted in Games Magazine in November/December 1980.
[edit] Filmography
For a complete list of all his films go to:
Main article: Alfred Hitchcock filmography
[edit] Phobias
Alfred Hitchcock had a dislike of egg yolk. He once said:
"I’m frightened of eggs, worse than frightened, they revolt me. That white round thing without any holes … have you ever seen anything more revolting than an egg yolk breaking and spilling its yellow liquid? Blood is jolly, red. But egg yolk is yellow, revolting. I’ve never tasted it."[27]
Biographer Patrick McGilligan confirmed Hitchcock's avoidance of eggs[28], while noting that the director had actually tried them as a young man, then discovered he didn't like them. He was especially annoyed by poached eggs. His daughter Patricia, however, stated that "He loved souffles."[29]
Hitchcock also had a serious fear of the police, which was the reason he said he never learned to drive. His reasoning was that if one never drove, then one would never have an opportunity to be pulled over by the police and issued a ticket. However, Patrick McGilligan wrote that "though Hitchcock pooh-poohed driving, insisting to interviewers that he didn't even know how, he often chauffeured his daughter to school at Marymount [a private academy for girls], and for a long time drove her to Sunday Mass."[30] His fear of the police can be attributed to a circumstance encountered by Hitchcock in his youth, which he told a number of interviewers and mentioned in the PBS documentary The Men Who Made the Movies. In an attempt to punish Hitchcock for an instance of misbehavior, Alfred's father detailed in writing that the young Hitchcock had engaged in some form of childish mischief. Hitchcock's father then handed the description to Alfred, sending him to the local police station to demonstrate his wrongdoing. In response to the written notice, the on-duty police officer immediately brought Hitchcock to an empty cell and locked him there for a full 5 minutes, citing the justification for this action as a means to reprimand the young boy. Undoubtedly, history has recorded this incident as scarring. This perhaps influenced his signature theme in his movies where an innocent person would become entangled in the web of another guilty person's behaviour. This can be noted in many of his films, and a possible reason would be due to his hatred for authority, and his siding with the innocent. He also manages to convey this message to his audience in order to allow them to take his (the innocent) side. [31]
[edit] Frequent collaborators
Actors:
Sara Allgood
Murray Alper
Ingrid Bergman
Paul Bryar
Donald Calthrop
Leonard Carey
Leo G. Carroll
Edward Chapman
Hume Cronyn (also as Writer)
Violet Farebrother
Bess Flowers
Cary Grant
Clare Greet
Edmund Gwenn
Gordon Harker
Tom Helmore
Patricia Hitchcock
Ian Hunter
Isabel Jeans
Hannah Jones
Malcolm Keen
Phyllis Konstam
Grace Kelly
John Longden
Percy Marmont
Basil Radford
Jeffrey Sayre
James Stewart
John Williams
Film Crew:
Fred Ahern - Production Manager
Michael Balcon - Producer
Jack Barron - Makeup
Saul Bass - Main titles design
Robert F. Boyle - Art Director/Production Designer
Henry Bumstead - Art Director
Robert Burks - Cinematographer
Herbert Coleman - Assistant Director/Producer
Jack E. Cox - Cinematographer
Lowell J. Farrell - Assistant Director
Charles Frend - Film Editor
Hilton A. Green - Assistant Director
Bobby Greene - First Assistant Camera
Edith Head - Costume Designer
Bernard Herrmann - Music Composer
J. McMillan Johnson - Art Director/Production Designer
Barbara Keon - Production Assistant
Emile Kuri - Set Decoration
Bryan Langley - Cinematographer/Assistant Camera
Louis Levy - Musical Director/Music Composer
Norman Lloyd - Producer/Director
John Maxwell - Producer
Daniel McCauley - Assistant Director
Frank Mills - Assistant Director
George Milo - Set Decoration
Ivor Montagu - Editor/Producer
Hal Pereira - Art Director
Michael Powell - Still Photographer/Assistant Camera
Alma Reville - Assistant Director/Writer
Rita Riggs - Costume Designer
Peggy Robertson - Assistant
Emile de Ruelle - Film Editor
William Russell - Sound Recordist
David O. Selznick - Producer
Harry Stradling - Cinematographer/Director of Photography
Lois Thurman - Script Supervisor
Dimitri Tiomkin - Music Composer
George Tomasini - Film Editor
Joseph A. Valentine - Cinematographer
Gaetano di Ventimiglia - Cinematographer
Waldon O. Watson - Sound Recordist
Franz Waxman - Music Composer
Albert Whitlock - Matte Painter
William H. Ziegler - Film Editor
Screenwriters:
Charles Bennett
James Bridie
Joan Harrison
John Michael Hayes
Ben Hecht
Angus MacPhail
Eliot Stannard
[edit] See also
List of unproduced Hitchcock projects
List of film collaborations
Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine
High Anxiety – a comedy spoof that parodies many Hitchcock devices
Hitchcock & Herrmann – a stage play about the relationship between Hitchcock and composer Bernard Herrmann
Hitchcockian
Why – Milton Bradley Company board game presented by Alfred Hitchcock.
[edit] References
^ Patrick McGilligan, Alfred Hitchcock: A Life in Darkness and Light (New York: HarperCollins, 2003)
^ Patrick McGilligan, pg. 7
^ Patrick McGilligan, pgs. 18-19
^ Patrick McGilligan, pgs. 7-8
^ Patrick McGilligan, pg. 9
^ Patrick McGilligan, pgs. 24-25
^ Patrick McGilligan, pgs. 46-51
^ Patrick McGilligan, pgs. 68-71
^ Patrick McGilligan, pg. 85
^ Patrick McGilligan, pgs. 120-123
^ Patrick McGilligan, pg. 158
^ Patrick McGilligan, pgs. 210-211, 277; American Movie Classics
^ Patrick McGilligan, pgs. 251-252
^ Patrick McGilligan, pg. 253
^ Patrick McGilligan, pg. 244
^ Patrick McGilligan, pg. 343
^ Patrick McGilligan, pgs. 346-348
^ Patrick McGilligan, pgs. 372-374
^ Patrick McGilligan, pgs. 366-381
^ Patrick McGilligan, pgs. 429, 774-775
^ Patrick McGilligan, pg. 249
^ Patrick McGilligan, pgs. 731-734
^ Freeman, David (1999). The Last Days of Alfred Hitchcock. Overlook. ISBN 087951728X.
^ "Alfred Hitchcock Dies; A Master of Suspense; Alfred Hitchcock, Master of Suspense and Celebrated Film Director, Dies at 80 Increasingly Pessimistic Sought Exotic Settings Technical Challenges Became a Draftsman Lured to Hollywood", New York Times, April 30, 1980, Wednesday. Retrieved on 2007-08-21. "Alfred Hitchcock, whose mastery of suspense and of directing technique made him one of the most popular and celebrated of film makers; died yesterday at the age of 80 at his home in Los Angeles. Mr. Hitchcock, ailing with arthritis and kidney failures, had been in declining health for a year."
^ Patrick McGilligan, pg. 82
^ [1]
^ [2]
^ Patrick McGilligan, Alfred Hitchcock: A Life in Darkness and Light (New York: HarperCollins, 2003), page 18
^ "Alfred Hitchcock and To Catch a Thief - An Appreciation" (DVD)
^ Patrick McGilligan, pg. 243
^ http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000033/bio
