Essay on Alfred Hitchcock's Works of Crime Fiction

Francois Truffaut, when referring to Hitchcock said that “he exercises such complete control over all the elements of his films and imprints his personal concepts at each step of the way, Hitchcock has a distinctive style of his own. He is undoubtedly one of the few film-makers on the horizon today whose screen signature can be identified as soon as the picture begins.” Many people have used Hitchcock as the ultimate example of an auteur as there are many common themes and techniques found amongst his films. Even between the two films “Shadow of a Doubt” and “Vertigo,” many commonalities occur.

For this paper, I have decided to compare two Hitchcock films. Ever since I can remember, I have seen Alfred Hitchcock films; Psycho, The Birds, North by Northwest, I enjoy his work because I like the suspense, and visual effects that he was able to accomplish. Out of all of his films, I believe that my favorite Hitchcock films would have to be Rear Window (1954) and Vertigo (1958), because I think that the two incorporate everything that is “Alfred Hitchcock”. Hitchcock films are known for being mysterious, cynical, as well as suspenseful and they are all similar because of his use of symbolism, light, repetitive actors, and repetition of theme.

Day’s, ‘The Life and Crimes of Harry Lavender’, powerfully engages with the responder and effectively subverts the crime fiction genre to create a new era of crime fiction. Day critics modern society through the protagonistic voices of Claudia Valentine and Harry Lavender to challenge the audience's perception of what crime and criminality is. Day uses the subversion of female characters to challenge and question our perceptions of gender stereotypes. Day also effectively synthesises the insight that the dynamic personality of criminals, like Sydney, is evolving. Ultimately, “The Life and Crimes of Harry Lavender” highlights these fundamental ideas to examine the impact of the narrative voices in order to gain insight into crime fiction and to address traditional conventions of modern society.

Hitchcock's Psycho Psycho first hit our screens in 1960 directed by Alfred Hitchcock. It faced major controversy, as it was different. Horror films before this were more unrealistic and gruesome. Psycho was a groundbreaking film of the horror genre. It was more realistic the events could happen in reality.

One of the most famous horror films not just of the 1960's but of all

Alfred Hitchcock Presents "The Perfect Murder": A Rhetorical Analysis In "The Perfect Murder," from Alfred Hitchcock Presents is a black and white television series aired from 1955 to 1962. It is a story about two brothers, Paul and Henri, they are trying to come up with the perfect plan to get their inheritance from their recently deceased uncle, by any means necessary. The only thing stopping them is their perfectly healthy and stubborn Aunt Rosalie. Aunt Rosalie is very perceptive, stubborn, and not fooled by anyone.

“Genres are not systems, they are a process of systematisation.”(Neale 1980). Genres are both a method of nomenclature, dividing literature according to its style, subject and context. Genre constantly re-imagines, challenges, and expands its boundaries to reflect zeitgeist of the society at the time and to become a barometer of the social and cultural concerns of the audience. Likewise, crime fiction as a genre has evolved from traditional conventions. Alfred Hitchcock's Rear Window and Cornell Woolrich's It had to be Murder, whilst obeying and selectively utilising a few original conventions, manifest the ideology and social concerns of the postwar 1950s society in aspects of the modus operandi of the investigation, gender roles and the shift

Crime can be defined as any action or omission which constitutes an offence and is punishable by law. The representations of crime in fiction has developed and changed dramatically over centuries according to shifts in values and perceptions. Each of the three texts Snow Falling on Cedars, Oceans 11 and Shift , explore different aspects of crime, centred around the duality of good and evil through the redefinition of justice. Societies are always changing. This means that texts will always embody different values according to their context and can influence the meaning and message of the texts.

Hitchcock’s 1946 Notorious takes place in the morally ambiguous world of post-World War II where the questioning of alliances and moralities have reached a breaking point. Alicia, the daughter of an incarcerated Nazi supporter, finds herself in the midst of a purgatory world stuck in between love and hate, in other words one of ambivalence. When she is asked to travel to South America to become close to one of her father’s German contacts so that the American Government may gain valuable information about their upcoming plans she readily accepts in an effort to escape her destructive tendencies. This state of ambivalence as discussed in Philips “Against Self-Criticism” entails conflicting feelings of hatred and love for the same individual lead to a world of uncertainty or irrationality, the death drive, where the lines of morality only continue to be blurred as illustrated by Alicia, Sebastian her father’s contact whom she has wed in order to gain information, his mother, and Devlin the American Agent whom she has fallen in love with. In other words, intoxication amidst ambivalence leads to the death drive which is the driving force of the storyline aimed to showcase the extremes of this desire of self-destruction reinforced by destroying the ones who they show ambivalence towards. This drive shown in Laplanche and Pontalis’ “The Language of Psych-Analysis” is the desire for self-destruction

Alfred Hitchcock is arguably the greatest director of all time. Many of his films are considered standards of American cinema and inspired many of today’s directors. Even though Hitchcock is known as timeless director, he had an understanding of philosophy that was beyond his time. Hitchcock had a brilliant perception as to how the mind works and human reaction. Hitchcock’s understanding of philosophy can be seen in his film Vertigo and illustrates how many theories can be debilitating in everyday life.

going back to the other views to see where the policeman is and how is

Alfred Hitchcock's film Psycho Psycho, by Alfred Hitchcock, was shocking for its time. Made in the 1960's when film censorship was very tight to today's standards, Hitchcock pushed the limits of what could be shown and did with psycho things that had never been done before. The cinematic art, symbolism and sub-conscious images in this film were brilliant for the time and still are now. Realised for this, psycho has been copied in many ways and the things that made it great have become very clichéd.

I believe that in I Confess, the first four minutes is not only the most important, but it also relates back to the rest of the film perfectly. In the beginning of I Confess the audience is shown several shots of the beautiful povince of Quebec to emphasize the location and then we see a murder and a confession occur in the same night. In this essay, I 'm going to be analyzing the mise-en-scene, cinematography, and sound of the cinematic masterpiece I Confess by Alfred Hitchcock.

While American and British authors developed the two distinct schools of detective fiction, known as “hard-boiled and “golden age,” simultaneously, the British works served to continue traditions established by earlier authors while American works formed their own distinct identity. Though a niche category, detective works reflect the morality and culture of the societies their authors lived in. Written in the time period after World War I, Dashiell Hammett’s The Maltese Falcon and “The Gutting of Couffignal”, and Raymond Chandler’s “Trouble Is My Business” adapt their detectives to a new harsh reality of urban life. In “hard-boiled” works, the detective is more realistic than the detective in “golden age” works according to the

To categorise texts, allows us to view the world from another perspective, and make sense of the world. This is the function of genre. This allows the responder to class texts even further into sub genres, which have conventions they follow to. Such as Edgar Allen Poe’s ‘The Purloined Letter’ can be classified into the genre of crime, yet can also be interpreted to fit the conventions of detective crime writing, and mystery. This is made possible through Poe’s utilisation of devices used in mystery and detective novels such as red herrings and denouement.