Alfred Hitchcock 's True Sense Essay

How auteur theory can be applied to the study of Hitchcock’s North by Northwest and Vertigo

In the movie “North by Northwest,” by Alfred Hitchcock he shows how a film can have an influence on a historical event. Alfred Hitchcock was born August 13, 1899 and died April 29, 1980 being sometimes referred as “The Master of Suspense.” During Hitchcock’s career some major historical events took place, in which he used his films to reflect and sometimes respond to those events. Hitchcock’s films both reflected and sometimes also intervened in contemporary social and political events during his career.

Alfred Hitchcock was known as the “Master of Suspense” for the psychological suspense in his

Alfred Hitchcock is widely regarded as a prime example of an auteur, a theory that emerged in the 1950s by Truffaut, in the ‘politique des auteurs’ of Cahiers du Cinema (Tudor 121). The auteur theory, as defined by Andrew Tudor, is premised on the assumption that “any director creates his films on the basis of a central structure”(140) and thus, if you consider their films in relation to each other, commonalities can be found within them. These commonalities work to demonstrate the view of the director as “the true creator of the film” (Tudor 122). Evidence of an auteur can be found in examining a director’s creative tendencies, in their distinctive themes and motifs, stylistic choices,

The first half of this course focused on Alfred Hitchcock and how his techniques are now recognized as iconic. From class discussions and film screenings, it is clear that Hitchcock pays every attention to detail when he crafts a scene. Many Hitchcock films we have seen this semester highlight how he builds suspense through cinematic elements such as shadow, dialogue, and composition. While many of his suspenseful scenes stir feelings of intensity and uncertainty, Alfred Hitchcock builds a more romantic suspense in his 1955 film To Catch a Thief in the fireworks scene (1:06:35-1:11:00).

The human eye is a funny thing. It gives us an accurate depiction of the world, informing us as to how we inhabit space and as to what we can learn from the space around us. To put it shortly, our eyes tell us about life. Vision can be remarkably narrow, in the sense that we are confined to it, but cinema can be eye opening - even life changing. Cameras and lenses allow us to alter this fixed view. When we are successfully able to alter our fixed perception of the world, we can get some miraculous, powerful, meaningful results. Alfred Hitchcock was very aware of the power of directing an eye. Through lens and camera, Hitchcock oh so naturally and subtly directs the viewer - directs us. One important case study into Hitchcock’s use of the

Alfred Hitchcock outdid himself once again when releasing, Vertigo, in 1958, which coined a new camera movement respectfully still referred to today as the “Vertigo Shot”. In this mysterious and disturbing love story, drawn out characterization tied with a specific repetitive camera movements, highlight the fantasy world the obsessively in love main character, Scottie, descents into when falling for a forbidden love. Through this alignment with Scottie, in Vertigo, Hitchcock brilliantly traps the audience in Scottie’s fantasy world along with him, where his illicit desires plausible, until Hitchcock cleverly employs certain point-of-view and narrative sequences allowing the audience by the end of the movie to come back to reality and realize

In the movie “North by Northwest,” by Alfred Hitchcock he shows how a film can have an influence on a historical event. Alfred Hitchcock was born August 13, 1899 and died April 29, 1980 being sometimes referred as “The Master Of Suspense.” During Hitchcock’s career some major historical events took place, in which he used his films to reflect and sometimes respond to those events. Hitchcock’s films both reflected and sometimes also intervened in contemporary social and political events during his career.

Alfred Hitchcock was the first English filmmaker to have any real success in Hollywood, paving the way for incredible English filmmakers of today like Danny Boyle (Slumdog Millionaire, 127 Hours), Ridley Scott (Gladiator, The Martian, Alien), Christopher Nolan (Inception, Interstellar), Tom Hooper (The King’s Speech, Les Miserables, The Danish Girl), and Sam Mendes (American Beauty and the recent James Bond movies), just to name a few (McGilligan 233). Hitchcock’s films created the modern suspense, horror, and thriller genres in film and rallied behind stories involving murder, an idea that was considered unsophisticated in Hollywood (McGilligan 233). Through his path-treading genre, Hitchcock pioneered creative techniques that build suspense throughout his films, such as the roaming cam - a slow-moving shot that pans a scene of a film. This technique makes the audience “discover” a scene and scan for possible clues and significant objects. The reluctant pace is a slow burn within the audience as they wait to see what the shot will reveal (Renée). These Hitchcock-induced tremors inflicted on Hollywood fall just behind where on which he laid his greatest quake - censorship. The Motion Picture Production Code was simultaneously Hitchcock’s worst enemy and biggest inspiration. The Hollywood censorship rule-makers discouraged films involving murder and suicide, but these regulations only made Hitchcock want to incorporate those aspects even more. Shamelessly, Hitchcock portrayed murder, suicide, sex and lesbianism in his films, even throwing a few punches at the U.S. government itself in Foreign Correspondent with his criticism of the Neutrality Act (McGilligan 278-9). Psycho brought down censorship in one swipe with its violent portrayal of murder, but more groundbreaking, the first onscreen toilet. Hitchcock’s extirpated censorship and the Production Code and by

Famously known as “The Master of Suspense”, Alfred Hitchcock knew how to keep an audience on the edge of their chair, just waiting to see what happens next. Hitchcock’s career started in the silent era of films, gained increased success through talking pictures, and soared into infamy when color film became common. Hitchcock’s famous cinematography, editing, directing of his thoughtfully selected actors, and extraordinary attention to detail, are obvious reasons why there is no denying that he is one of the greatest directors the film industry has ever seen. OSU Media student, Joseph Ford, confirms why Hitchcock is his favorite directors, “Hitchcock’s lighting and shot sequences are unmatched, he was the ultimate perfectionist and, in my opinion, there is hardly a flaw in any of his films” (Ford). There are endless lists and debates about which Alfred Hitchcock film is the greatest, and each one of his movies deserves serious consideration. It could be contested that with the unique story, intriguing characters portrayed by great actors, and the extraordinary cinematography, that Alfred Hitchcock’s Rope is potentially his greatest film.

When watching Citizen Kane, the audience nearly doesn’t need dialogue to enhance or intertitles to explain the events that unfold. The excellent cinematography alone tells the story to the viewer. The audience’s awareness of the plot is due to the techniques behind the screen, the lens used, the composition, every technical and artistic decision made (Cowan 90). Modern films might be driven by words and accented by fancy color technology, but in this film, we the audience are able to derive emotions and the inner psychology of characters through lighting, spatial narration, and the ever-famous technique of deep focus.

The amount of critical analysis surrounding Alfred Hitchcock's Vertigo is itself dizzying, but as the film has recently been restored, it seems appropriate to provide it with a fresh critical reading. The purpose of this paper then, is to draw this film out of the past with a reading that offers not only a new way of understanding it, but a close look at the culture that produced it. Specifically, Vertigo offers its most exciting ideas when contextualized in a culture of consumerism. Consumerism shaped the film, and also shapes the way we view it. The desire of the consumer is the driving force behind not only our economy, but our mode of seeing the world, and seeing films. As consumers,

Alfred Hitchcock is one of the most well known directors of all time bringing murder and mystery to a new light. His films, starting in 1925 with "The Pleasure Garden" and ending in 1976 with the film "Family Plot", set a precedent for all other directors in the film industry. Many story lines and techniques within the cinematography of Hitchcock are common standards for films of today.

Donning the garb of a historian he could depict its crucial moments it sailed through. Thus he was able to encapsulate the cold war atmosphere prevalent in America through such films like Rear Window, Strangers on a Train and North by Norwest. Here we find the director’s cinematic screen as a site where various fears, suspicion and surveillance gets enacted through its characters like L.B Jeffries, Guy Haines, Bruno Anthony and Roger O.Thornhill. It was extremely difficult in the 1950s to procure a standpoint outside the paradigm of neatly arrayed binary opposition: United States/Soviet Union, East/West, capitalism/consumerism, freedom/tyranny, good/evil. If we take this as a cue for analyzing Hitchcock films in the fifties, it seems to

The black and white, negative film "is one of the prominent British thrillers of the post-war period, in the best Alfred Hitchcock tradition,” (Tim Dirks, FilmsiteReview). Also, beautifully presented “It was voted the #1 British Film of the 20th Century” (Saddie Jeanne, Study mode). Holly Martins, the unemployed American