Samples
"Alfred Hitchcock"
by Megan Rand
Brain-juice.com, 2001
In her introduction to a book about Alfred Hitchcock’s extensive career, Janet Leigh, one of the stars of Psycho, wrote, "He was such a mischievous imp. And oh so smart!" These characteristics apply both to Hitchcock’s personality and career. Talented, creative, possessing a clear vision for his work, and sporting a proclivity for slyness and practical jokes, Alfred Hitchcock created some of the most original and mesmerizing entertainment of the twentieth century.
Hitchcock was born in a London suburb on August 13, 1899. His father ran a local grocery and poultry store, and the frequently macabre sense of humor exhibited in many of Hitchcock’s films seems to have been inherited from his father, William. Hitchcock frequently told the story that, as a child, he was sent to a local police station with a note from his father, requesting that the young boy be locked in a cell for five minutes. This harsh lesson was meant to teach the young boy the consequences of breaking the law, and presumably to scare him into good behavior. Hitchcock’s relationship with his mother was similarly odd: his mother used to demand that he stand at the end of her bed each evening and submit to a lengthy, detailed series of questions about his activities that day. This particular ritual continued well into adulthood, and Hitchcock, conditioned from an early age to bestow a great amount of attention on his mother, often took her along on trips with himself and his wife. Many critics and writers have surmised that Hitchcock’s treatment of familial relations and gender roles was greatly influenced by his early relations with his parents. It is with his family that Hitchcock had his first exposures to film and theater, with the family’s frequent theater trips having led the adolescent Hitchcock to find interest in the related genre of film.
Hitchcock’s formal academic career revealed no remarkable signs. Sent by his parents to St. Ignatius College, an English boarding school, he left at age 14. Subsequently, Hitchcock enrolled in an evening course on engineering and navigation at the University of London, though he never pursued a college degree. The job held by the young Hitchcock at the Henley Telegraph and Cable Company proved to be the first step of his foray into professional filmmaking. He began there as a simple desk employee, but as his creative skills (particularly his sketching abilities) became apparent, the company moved him into the advertising and marketing department. A short story of Hitchcock’s was published in the company newsletter, and his artistic and creative talents and confidence continued to develop. At the age of 21, after reading about a particular movie studio’s upcoming productions, Hitchcock composed a set of title cards for a film (films were still silent at this point) and took them to the studio. Even though that production was subsequently canceled, those in charge were sufficiently impressed with his efforts to offer Hitchcock a job.
During his first few years in the film industry, Hitchcock worked in a number of different capacities and for a number of different employers. In addition to doing projects in Britain, Hitchcock also worked in Germany at the time when Expressionism prominently influenced German film. His trip to Germany would ultimately reveal a significant influence on Hitchcock’s later film technique. Back in Britain, Hitchcock began to develop a social relationship with Alma Reville, a collaborator on several films. Though the same age as Hitchcock, Alma had been working in the British film industry from a young age and had already established a reputation as a talented editor, writer, and actress. After Hitchcock proposed to Alma in 1923, they married in December 1926. Two years later, the couple had their first and only child, daughter Patricia.
During these years, Hitchcock completed his first film as a director, a "baroque soap opera" entitled The Pleasure Garden. The first films directed by Hitchcock received lukewarm responses. In fact, his very first two works were not even released due to unenthusiastic screenings at trade conferences. But with The Lodger and Blackmail (one of Britain’s first full-length sound movies), Hitchcock managed to achieve success early in his career. His films were particularly popular among both critics and moviegoers, though Hitchcock’s success was to some degree undermined by the directing projects he chose to take during the late 1920s and mid-1930s. While film scholars agree that many of these films are superb pieces of work, the style and tone of these films were often too obscure for the general movie-going public to embrace -- a dynamic that would occur more than once in Hitchcock’s career. In 1934, however, Hitchcock ended his career doldrums with a film that he would make twice (and to great success both times): The Man Who Knew Too Much.
1934 was the first of several productive, successful years in the British film industry. Beginning with The Man Who Knew Too Much, which starred Peter Lorre, Hitchcock made a number of movies still known and respected today, including The Thirty-nine Steps, Secret Agent, Young and Innocent, and The Lady Vanishes. During these years, Hitchcock developed the prototype for what would become well known as the Hitchcockian style: suspenseful, complex, character-driven films as technically brilliant as they are well written.
The years of Hitchcock’s career best known to contemporary film fans began in 1940, when he arrived with his wife and daughter in Hollywood. The studio system still firmly intact, Hitchcock’s career was governed from 1940 through 1947 by David O. Selznick, for whom he was contracted to work. Though each respected the other’s talent and produced frequently brilliant work, their strong personalities still often managed to clash. These disagreements with producers would continue throughout Hitchcock’s career, as he was supremely confident and impassioned regarding the execution of his films and resented the interference of others.
Despite some turmoil behind the cameras, Hitchcock turned out a remarkable group of films during his first few years in Hollywood. His first American film, Rebecca, based on the novel by Daphne du Maurier, won an Academy Award in 1940 for Best Picture. Other films from this period include Spellbound, Suspicion, Notorious, and Shadow of a Doubt. Some of Hitchcock’s long-term collaborations with actors also began in these films: Hitchcock became known for cultivating extensive working relationships with actors and actresses, with several of them appearing in numerous films for the director. Cary Grant, Ingrid Bergman, and Gregory Peck all perform in films from Hitchcock’s early Hollywood years, and other actors, such as Grace Kelly and Jimmy Stewart, would soon begin to appear as well.
During the early 1950s, Hitchcock came into a remarkable period of professional productivity. Free from long-term contracts with movie studios and familiar with American production and working styles, Hitchcock produced a string of movies unparalleled in their technical, narrative and popular impact. Between 1950 and 1964, Hitchcock made such films as Strangers on a Train, Dial M For Murder, Rear Window, To Catch a Thief, The Man Who Knew Too Much, The Wrong Man, Vertigo, North by Northwest, Psycho, and The Birds. In addition to being tightly constructed, suspenseful narrative pieces, Hitchcock’s films also bore thematic similarities. Though the films were very much entertainment designed for a mainstream viewing audience, Hitchcock frequently dealt with extremely dark and sinister elements. Paranoia, voyeurism, wrongful accusation, and preying upon the innocent are frequent themes in Hitchcock’s films. By combining these themes with likable actors, attention-grabbing plots, and well-constructed suspense, however, Hitchcock’s films avoided being bogged down in the morbid. In addition to developing a style of filmmaking uniquely and identifiably his own, Hitchcock was also an innovator in terms of film technique and narrative characteristics.
In analyzing Hitchcock’s style, one finds traces of several different elements. Heavily influenced by film genres such as Soviet Montage and German Expressionism, both of which privilege discontinuous, disjointed visuals over narrative cohesiveness, Hitchcock incorporated elements of these styles into all of his movies. Vertigo, made by Hitchcock in 1958, contains visual distortions, surreal effects, and image manipulations that recall the techniques of Montage and Expressionism. An example of discontinuous editing and camera work can be seen in the well-known shower scene of Psycho, made in 1960. As the character being played by Janet Leigh is stabbed, a number of quick shots of her body are cut together. This technique, which creates a departure from a temporally straightforward narrative, nonetheless serves the movie well by raising the suspense and fright within the work. This signature style ultimately influenced and inspired other filmmakers, as several of his techniques became widely used in other directors’ films.
One particularly influential part of Hitchcock’s signature style, the "MacGuffin" -- deserves special mention. Hitchcock came up with the name and the concept of the MacGuffin early years of his career. A MacGuffin is something -- an event, a person, an object -- that sets a plot in motion. As the story progresses, this device drops away and is never fully discussed or explored, proving to be completely meaningless and inconsequential apart from its role as a plot catalyst. In keeping with the fleeting and ultimately meaningless role of a MacGuffin, Hitchcock coined the name by choosing a word with no particular purpose or significance. An example of a movie that utilizes this technique is North by Northwest, in which a complicated plot of intrigue is initiated when Cary Grant’s character is mistaken for a government secret agent. The viewer eventually learns that the agent does not actually exist, and that the premise for the first portion of the movie is a completely empty one. Grant’s attempts to straighten out the case of mistaken identity involve him in the criminal activity that composes the main conflict of the movie. Hitchcock’s narrative loose end, however, is little noticed, for it has served its purpose in leading the viewer to the "real" plot. Although the term MacGuffin is still used most often when discussing Hitchcock’s films, the narrative device itself has since been widely identified and used in the films of others.
Hitchcock’s creative efforts were not solely confined to the genre of film. In addition to numerous motion pictures, Hitchcock also created radio and television programs, collections of short stories, and a mystery magazine. Alfred Hitchcock Presents, which premiered on television in 1955, was an extraordinarily popular program and is still rerun on television today. While these projects increased Hitchcock’s public profile and popularity, they also served to limit the public’s image of his creative capabilities. After becoming exposed to Hitchcock’s more lighthearted, whimsical, and entertaining projects, audiences did not respond well to his later films, which often dealt in darker tones and themes.
After the remarkable period of the 1950s and early 1960s, Hitchcock’s career began to take a marked downturn. Lacking the cohesive star power, narrative tautness, and sleek suspense of earlier films, Hitchcock’s later works disappointed virtually everyone. Examples of such films are Marnie (1964) and Topaz (1969). For a brief time, the 1972 film Frenzy revived Hitchcock’s career and general interest in his past works, and he received numerous honorary degrees and a tribute by the Film Society of Lincoln Center. In 1968, he also received the Irving J. Thalberg Award, seen as an "honorary" Oscar.
Throughout the rest of the 1970s, Hitchcock’s failing health limited the amount he was able to work. Just two months after being knighted by Queen Elizabeth II, the filmmaker died in his sleep on April 29, 1980. His passing was extensively documented in journalistic accounts of his career and in retrospectives of his work; dubbing him the "Master of Suspense," these tributes acknowledged Hitchcock’s seminal role in entertainment and cultural history. Besides creating some of the best known and most influential movies in cinematic history, Hitchcock also infiltrated the media of television, radio, and the written word, exposing a great variety of people to his unique brand of entertainment.
