Essay on Hitchcock Deserves His Status as an Auteur

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Indisputably, Tim Burton has one of the world’s most distinct styles when regarding film directing. His tone, mood, diction, imagery, organization, syntax, and point of view within his films sets him apart from other renowned directors. Burton’s style can be easily depicted in two of his most highly esteemed and critically acclaimed films, Edward Scissorhands and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. Burton ingeniously incorporates effective cinematic techniques to convey a poignant underlying message to the audience. Such cinematic techniques are in the lighting and editing technique categories. High key and low key relationships plus editing variations evinces the director’s elaborate style. He utilizes these cinematic techniques to

Tim Burton is one of the most unusual and unique directors of our time. He brings characters to life by putting them in a habitat they don’t belong. His movies “Alice in Wonderland”, “The Corpse Bride”, “Charlie and the chocolate factory”, and “Edward Scissorhands” all demonstrate how one of a kind his movies are. Using cinematic techniques, Tim Burton points out the misfit character and shows how different they are then everyone else. His use of camera angles, lighting, and sound give the viewers a different perspective on the movies, and help pick out the individual character.

In the film industry, there are directors who merely take someone else’s vision and express it in their own way on film, then there are those who take their own visions and use any means necessary to express their visions on film. The latter of these two types of directors are called auteurs. Not only do auteurs write the scripts from elements that they know and love in life, but they direct, produce, and sometimes act in their films as well. Three prime examples of these auteurs are: Kevin Smith, Spike Lee and Alfred Hitchcock.

Hitchcock explained the reason for filming a woman wearing only her under garments in the opening sequence of Psycho: "Audiences are changing....The straightforward kissing scene would be looked down at by the younger viewers....Nowadays you have to show them as they themselves behave" (Hitchcock 1). The director was keenly aware of how audiences responded to his films (Rebello 163) and sought to maintain their interest. He was among a handful of Hollywood filmmakers who deliberately sought out innovative composers (Nowell-Smith 258); for Psycho, Hitchcock hired Bernard Hermann who wrote a modern score which challenged the norm. The title itself, fifties and sixties slang for the violently psychotic, suggested the imminence of a new generation (Brill 200).

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.

"I would not think of quarreling with your interpretation nor offering any other, as I have found it always the best policy to allow the film to speak for itself."

The film Citizen Kane, directed by Orson Welles, is a great example of how a man can be corrupted by wealth. Through the characters in the film we can observe how Charles Foster Kane, an idealistic man with principles, can be changed and misguided by wealth and what accompanies wealth. The film takes places during the late 19th century and early 20th century, a time in American history when the world is changing and wealth is a great power to change it with. Through the story telling of Kane’s life we are able to see how wealth changes, not only Kane’s ideals, but his actions and how he perceives the world.

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.

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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.

Throughout cinema, there has always been space in our hearts for the gore and intrigue that come from horror films. Though they come with different plots, there remains “the monster”, the character that brings along disgust, horror, suspense, and even sympathy. In Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho (1960), our monster is Norman Bates, the boy next door. This was one of the first times in American cinema that the killer was brought home, paving the way for the future of horror movies. According to Robin Wood in “An Introduction to the America Horror Film” (183-208), Bates follows the formula of the Monster being a human psychotic. This is conveyed through his normal façade portrayed with his introduction, the audience’s ambivalence, the use of

The term Auteur seems to bless a privileged group of filmmakers with an almost messiah-like legacy. Men such as Alfred Hitchcock, John Ford and Fritz Lange are believed to inhabit the ranks of the cinematic elite, and not surprisingly most critics are more than willing to bestow upon them the title of Auteur. By regarding filmmaking as yet another form of art, Auteur theory stipulates that a film is the direct result of its director's genius. With the emerging prominence of auteur based criticism in the 1950?s, the role of the director became increasingly integral to a film's success. However most would argue that this form of criticism didn't reach its apex until 1960s, when Andrew Sarris released his

Citizen Kane is one of the world's most famous and highly-rated classic film masterpiece. Although it was not a commercial success at the time of its release it has always been praised by film critics. The film had a budget of $800,000 and was directed, produced, as well as acted by the twenty five year old Orson Wells. Wells used innovative and unique cinematic techniques in Citizen Kane that would influence the film making for all eternity.

Auteur Theory is based on three premises, the first being technique, the second being personal style, and the third being interior meaning. Furthermore, there is no specific order in which these three aspects must be presented or weighted with regard to a film. An Auteur must give films a distinctive quality thus exerting a personal creative vision and interjecting it into the his or her films.