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Alfred Hitchcock

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Hitchcock is famous for his somewhat portly figure, especially in profile, as well as for his movies.

Sir Alfred Joseph Hitchcock, KBE (August 13, 1899 – April 29, 1980) was a British movie director whose films are closely associated with the suspense thriller genre. Hitchcock, a devout Catholic, is one of the best known and most popular directors of all time, known as the "Master of Suspense" due to the many successful motion pictures he directed involving murderers and the innocent people caught in their paths (though sometimes his heroes and heroines are not so innocent). He directed over fifty films over the course of his career, with several of them becoming well-known box office hits that have influenced a great number of filmmakers, producers, as well as actors.

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 voice, image, and mannerisms became instantly recognizable, and were often the subject of parody. 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.

Hitchcock's films often portray innocent people caught up in circumstances beyond their control or even understanding; a common theme of his movies is that these characters are guilty, but only of minor, unrelated failings. The films draw heavily on both fear and fantasy, and are known for their droll humour. They are also known for featuring Alfred Hitchcock in cameos in the film — a technique used by other directors and writers including Colin Dexter in the ITV Inspector Morse series.

Early life

Alfred Hitchcock was born August 13, 1899 in Leytonstone, London, the second son and youngest of the three children of William Hitchcock, a greengrocer, and his wife, Emma Jane Hitchcock (nee Whelan). His family was mostly Irish Catholic. Hitchcock was sent to Catholic boarding schools in London. He has said his childhood was very lonely and protected. At 14, Hitchcock lost his father and he left St Ignatius's College, where he was going at the time to study at the School for Engineering and Navigation. He, after graduating, became a draftsman and advertising designer with a cable company.

Hitchcock, at that time, grew intrigued by photography and got his start in film in London in 1920 designing the titles for silent movies. He obtained a full-time job in the field at Islington Studios in 1920, and under its American owners, Players-Lasky, and their British successors, Gainsborough Pictures. In 1925, Michael Balcon of Gainsborough Pictures, gave him a chance to direct his first film.

Pre-war British career

His first film, The Pleasure Garden, starred Virginia Valli and Miles Mander. His second, The Mountain Eagle, starred Nita Naldi and is a lost film. The assistant director for those films, Alma Reville, later married Hitchcock.

As a major talent in a new industry with plenty of opportunity, he rose quickly. His third film, The Lodger: A Story of the London Fog was released in 1927. In it, attractive blondes are murdered, and the new lodger (Ivor Novello) in the Bunting family's upstairs apartment falls under heavy suspicion. He is, in fact, innocent of the crime.

Downhill (1927) portrayed another innocent man accused, this time a young man (again, Ivor Novello), of a theft at his school and is thrown out of his house as a result. The man later has an affair with an older woman, and in the morning, as she wakes in their bed of passion, he sees her aged face, while people outside carry a coffin past their window. Hitchcock would repeatedly return in his films to the notion that sex and death are linked.

His last film for Gainsborough Pictures was Easy Virtue. It starred Franklin Dyall and Isabel Jeans. It was a commercial failure.

For British International Pictures, he made The Ring, a boxing film with no relation to the recent horror movie of the same name; The Farmer's Wife, a comedy; Champagne, a morality fable and comedy which Hitchcock himself despised; and The Manxman, one of his best silents.

In 1929, he began work on Blackmail, another silent film. While the film was in production, the studio decided to make it one of Britain's first sound pictures. Anny Ondra, whose Czech accent was very strong, had her voice dubbed by Joan Barry, who stood just offscreen as she mouthed her lines. Many portions of the film are still in its original silent format.

He followed with several more films for British International, and incredibly, some are considered to be very bad films indeed!

Juno and the Paycock, Murder, The Skin Game, Number Seventeen, and Rich and Strange, released before Number Seventeen, but filmed after.

He made a musical for producer Tom Arnold called Waltzes from Vienna, but soon reteamed with old friend Michael Balcon at Gaumont-British Picture Corporation. His first film for the company, The Man Who Knew Too Much was a success. His second, The 39 Steps, is considered a film classic.

He followed these with the less-appreciated Secret Agent, Sabotage and Young and Innocent (a film that reteamed him with Nova Pilbeam, who played the kidnap victim in The Man Who Knew Too Much).

His next film, The Lady Vanishes, was made back at his old studio, Gainsborough, and is considered to be among his best films. It was followed by Jamaica Inn, a forgettable film, directed as a favour to Charles Laughton.

By this time, he had caught the attention of Hollywood, and was invited to make films in America by David O Selznick.

Hollywood

With Rebecca in 1940, Hitchcock made his first American film, although it is based on the novel of British author Daphne du Maurier and starred Laurence Olivier. It evokes the fears of a naive young bride who enters a great English country home and must grapple with the legacy of the dead woman who was her husband's first wife. The droll touches of humour are still there in his American work, but suspense became his trademark. Aside from war work and two feature films he worked in America for the rest of his career. Selznick though had perennial money problems, and consequently loaned Hitchcock to the larger studios more often than producing films by his signing.

Foreign Correspondent was his next film. It was his first war film, and lost to Rebecca for Best Picture of 1940.

Mr. and Mrs. Smith is a screwball comedy that is little-remembered today. It stars Carole Lombard, and due to his now-famous remark that actors were cattle, she had cattle delivered to the set with the three main stars painted on their sides. It was the last of Lombard's films to be released prior to her death in 1942.

Suspicion, his next film, won Rebecca star Joan Fontaine the Best Actress Oscar against her sister Olivia de Havilland.

Saboteur was Hitchcock's first truly all-American film, starring Priscilla Lane, Otto Kruger and Robert Cummings as the factory worker wrongly suspected of sabotage.

Shadow of a Doubt, one of his best films, was about young Charlotte "Young Charlie" Newton (Teresa Wright) who suspects her beloved uncle Charlie Spencer (Joseph Cotten) of murder. In its use of overlapping dialogue and closeups it bears the influence of Cotten's better known film, Citizen Kane.

Lifeboat followed, which although fondly remembered by many of today's critics, was panned upon its release.

Spellbound explored the then very fashionable subject of psychoanalysis and featured a dream sequence which was designed by Salvador Dali. Notorious (1946), which starred Ingrid Bergman, briefly led to Hitchcock being under surveillance by the CIA because of the use of Uranium as a plot device. It is usually considered one of Hitchcock's best films. His last David O Selznick film, The Paradine Case followed; never well regarded, it starred Alida Valli.

Rope (his first colour film) and followed. Here Hitchcock experimented with the so called ten minute take (see below). Under Capricorn, set in nineteenth-century Australia, also used this short-lived technique, but to a more limited extent. For these two films he formed a production company with Sidney Bernstein, called Transatlantic Pictures, which folded after these two unsuccessful pictures

In London in 1950, while his daughter was training at RADA, he made Stage Fright, starring Marlene Dietrich, another minor film. With Strangers on a Train the next year, Hitchcock began his golden age. Here two men casually meet and speculate on removing people who are causing them difficulty. One of the men though takes this banter entirely seriously.

In I Confess, set in Canada starring Montgomery Clift, he made a film which reflected his Catholic background. Clift plays a priest who hears a confession of murder, but is then accused of that self same murder.

Three very popular films, all starring Grace Kelly, followed. Dial M for Murder, also starring Ray Milland was adapted from the stage play by Frederick Knott. This was originally another experimental film, with Hitchcock using the technique of 3D cinematography. Rear Window, which also starred James Stewart, was withdrawn from circulation for many years. Here the wheelchair bound Stewart observes the movements of his neighbours through a telescope. He becomes convinced that the wife of a near neighbour has been murdered. Last of the three Kelly films was To Catch a Thief. Set in the French Riviera it also stars Cary Grant as a retired jewel thief who finds someone immitating his methods; it is not considered one of Hitchcock's major films.

In 1958, Hitchock released Vertigo, a film many consider to be his masterpiece. Three more recognized classics followed: North by Northwest (1959), Psycho (1960), and The Birds (1963). These were his last great films, after which his career slowly winded down.

Hitchcock died of renal failure in Los Angeles.

Themes and devices

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.

Hitchcock took pride in his ability to sustain suspense. Once at a French airport, a dubious customs official looked at Hitchcock's passport, which was marked simply PRODUCER. The official frowned and asked, "And what do you produce?" "Gooseflesh," replied Hitchcock.

Further blurring the moral distinction between the innocent and the guilty, occasionally making this indictment clear, Hitchcock also makes voyeurs of his "respectable" audience. In Rear Window (1954), after LB 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; and in fact, shortly before that Thorwald turns to face the camera directly for the first time — at this point, audiences invariably gasp.

One of Hitchcock's favourite devices for driving the plots of his stories and creating suspense was described as a "MacGuffin" by the director himself. Hitchcock described the "MacGuffin" as a red herring: a meaningless, unimportant detail that solely existed to serve as a reason for the story to exist. (See MacGuffin for more details about this plot device.)

Hitchcock also uses the number 13 in his films. Adding up various dates, street addresses, license plates, and other numbered items brings up the number 13 on a regular basis. Psycho (1960) provides several good examples. Norman Bates moves to select room 3, then room 1. The most recent date of entry in the logbook on check-in adds up to 13.

Hitchcock seemed to delight in challenging himself. In Lifeboat, Hitchcock has the entire action of the movie take place in a single lifeboat. He faced a bit of a dilemma as to how to make his trademark cameo appearance; his solution was to appear in a fictitious newspaper ad for a weight loss product.

Rope (1948) was another technical challenge that Hitchcock set for himself: a film that appears to have been shot entirely in a single take. The film was actually shot in eight takes of approximately 10 minutes each, which was the amount of film that would fit in a single camera reel; edits were hidden by having an object fill the entire screen for a moment. Hitchcock used that point to cut, and began the next take from the same point, from which the object or the camera moved.

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.

His character and its effects on his films

Hitchcock was a lonely, imaginative, obese child, raised Catholic and trained to give his mother the day's confession every night.

As an adult, driving in Switzerland one day, Hitchcock pointed out the window and told a friend, "That is the most frightening sight I have ever seen." The friend looked out with alarm and saw only a priest with his arm around a young boy. But Hitchcock leaned out of the car: "Run, little boy! Run for your life!"

Hitchcock was in his mid-twenties, and a professional film director, before he'd ever drunk alcohol or been on a date. His films sometimes feature male characters struggling in their relationships with their mothers. In North by Northwest (1959), Roger O 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 grasping mother. The killer in Frenzy (1972) has a loathing of women but idealizes his mother. The villain Bruno in Strangers on a Train hates his father, but has a incredibly close relationship with his mother. Norman Bates' troubles with his mother in Psycho are infamous.

Hitchcock heroines tend to be lovely, cool blondes who seem at first to be proper but, when aroused by passion or danger, respond in a more sensual, animal, perhaps criminal way. As noted, the famous victim in The Lodger is a blonde. In The 39 Steps, Hitchcock's glamorous blonde star, Madeleine Carroll, is put in handcuffs. In Marnie (1964), glamorous blonde Tippi Hedren is a kleptomaniac. In To Catch a Thief (1955), glamorous blonde Grace Kelly offers to help someone she believes is a cat burglar. After becoming interested in Thorwald's life in Rear Window, Lisa breaks into Thorwald's apartment. And, most notoriously, in Psycho, Janet Leigh's character steals $40,000 and gets murdered by a young man named Norman Bates (Anthony Perkins) who thought he was his own mother. (Or, as Norman put it himself, "My mother is — what's the phrase? — she isn't really herself today.") His last blonde heroine was French actress Claude Jade as the secret agent's worried daughter Michele in Topaz (1969).

Hitchcock saw that a 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.

Hitchcock loved to eat. One unrealized film idea was to show twenty-four hours in the life of a city, with the frame being the food: how it was imported and prepared and eaten and then at the end of the day thrown away into the sewers. Hitchcock did set his film Frenzy in the part of London where food arrived, was processed and distributed. The killer found himself and one of his corpses in a truck with sacks of potatoes.

Once, toward the end of a small private dinner party with meager portions, Hitchcock heard his hostess say, "I do hope you'll dine again with us soon." Hitchcock replied, "By all means. Let's start now."

Hitchcock's most personal films are probably Notorious (1946) and Vertigo — both about the obsessions and neuroses of men who manipulate women. Hitchcock often said that his personal favourite was Shadow of a Doubt.

Vertigo explores more frankly and at greater length his interest in the relation between sex and death. Kim Novak's character is most attractive as a blonde, and though Jimmy Stewart's character believes she is suicidal (he later discovers the real truth about her), he falls in love with her and she with him. Stewart's character feels an angry need to control his lover, to dress her, to fetishize her clothes, her shoes, her hair.

His workstyle

Hitchcock had trouble giving proper credit to the screenwriters who did so much to make his visions come to life on the screen. Gifted writers worked with him, including Raymond Chandler and John Michael Hayes, but rarely felt they had been treated as equals.

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 was often critical of his actors and actresses as well, dismissing, for example, Kim Novak's performance in Vertigo, and once famously remarking that actors were to be treated like cattle.

Most of his films contain a short appearance of Hitchcock himself: the director was sometimes boarding a bus, or crossing in front of a business, or across the courtyard in an apartment, or in a newspaper advertisement. It is a widely popular game to find Hitchcock's appearance in his films. There are books and websites dedicated to these appearances known as cameo roles.

Probably the most intriguing insight of Hitchcock's understanding of his own work can be found in a book simply named Hitchcock. It is a document of a one-week interview by Francois Truffaut in 1967, showing how Hitchcock's mind worked, picking the films apart piece by piece. (ISBN 0671604295).

Hitchcock did not rank highly with film critics of his own day. Except for Rebecca, none of his films won an Academy Award for Best Picture. As a producer, Hitchcock received one Best Picture nomination for Suspicion (1941). He was nominated as Best Director for five of his films: Rebecca, Lifeboat (1944), Spellbound (1945), Rear Window, and Psycho. Still, the only Academy Award that he ever received was the Irving G. Thalberg Memorial Award, for quality in producing, in 1968. Hitchcock was made an Knight Commander of the British Empire on January 3, 1980 by Queen Elizabeth II just four months before his death in Los Angeles. Alfred Hitchcock was cremated.

Quotations

  • "Like Freud, Hitchcock diagnosed the discontents that chafe and rankle beneath the decorum of civilization. Like Picasso or Dali, he registered the phenomenological threat of an abruptly modernized world." — Peter Conrad
  • "I'd like to know more about his relationships with women. No, on second thought, I wouldn't." — Ingmar Bergman
  • "I'm a philanthropist: I give people what they want. People love being horrified, terrified." — Alfred Hitchcock

Other notes

Alfred Hitchcock is also immortalized in print and appeared as himself in the very popular juvenile detective series, Alfred Hitchcock and the Three Investigators. The long-running detective series was clever and well-written with characters much younger than the Hardy Boys. Alfred Hitchcock agreed to introduce the cases of the Three Investigators after they succeeded in solving a very difficult case involving a castle and thereafter a parrot. Alfred Hitchcock formerly introduced each case at the beginning of the book. As a director, he even often gave them new cases to solve. At the end of each book, Alfred Hitchcock would discuss the specifics of the case with Jupiter Jones, Bob Andrews and Peter Crenshaw and every so often the three boys would give Alfred Hitchcock mementoes of their case.

When Alfred Hitchcock passed away, his chores as the boys' mentor/friend would be done by a fictional character: a retired detective named Hector Sebastian. Due to the popularity of the series, Alfred Hitchcock and the Three Investigators scored several reprints and out of respect, the latter reprints were changed to just The Three Investigators. Over the years, more than one name has been used to replace Alfred Hitchcock's character especially for the earlier books when his role was emphasized.

At the height of Alfred 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. They were primarily focused on suspense and thrillers. These titles included Alfred Hitchcock's Monster Museum, Afred Hithcock's Supernatural Tales of Terror and Suspense, Alfred Hitchock's Spellbinders in Suspense, Alfred Hitchcock's Witch's Brew, Afred Hitchcock's Ghostly Gallery and Alfred Hitchcock's Haunted Houseful.

Some notable writers that contributed the collection include Shirley Jackson (Strangers in Town, The Lottery), T.H. White (The Sword in the Stone), 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.

Filmography

(all dates are for release)

Silent films

Sound films

Frequent collaborators

Sara Allgood, Ingrid Bergman, Carl Brisson, Madeleine Carroll, Joseph Cotten, Hume Cronyn, Robert Cummings, Joan Fontaine, John Forsythe, Farley Granger, Cary Grant, Clare Greet, Lilian Hall-Davis, Gordon Harker, Tippi Hedren, Hannah Jones, Malcolm Keen, Grace Kelly, Charles Laughton, John Longden, Peter Lorre, Miles Mander, Vera Miles, Ivor Novello, Anny Ondra, Gregory Peck, Jessie Royce Landis, James Stewart, John Williams

Further reading

  • Truffaut, Francois: Hitchcock. Simon and Schuster, 1985. A series of interviews of Hitchcock given by the influential French director. This is an important source, but some have criticized Truffaut for taking an uncritical stance.
  • Leitch, Thomas: The Encyclopedia of Alfred Hitchcock. Checkmark Books, 2002. An excellent single-volume encyclopedia of all things Hitchcock.
  • Deutelbaum, Marshall; Poague, Leland (ed.): A Hitchcock Reader. Iowa State University Press, 1986. A wide-ranging collection of scholarly essays on Hitchcock.
  • Spoto, Donald: The Art of Alfred Hitchcock. Anchor Books, 1992. The first detailed critical survey of Hitchcock's work by an American.
  • Spoto, Donald: The Dark Side of Genius. Ballantine Books, 1983. A biography of Hitchcock, featuring a controversial exploration of Hitchcock's psychology.
  • Gottlieb, Sidney: Alfred Hitchcock: Interviews. University Press of Mississippi, 2003. A collection of Hitchcock interviews.
  • Conrad, Peter: The Hitchcock Murders. Faber and Faber, 2000. A highly personal and idiosyncratic discussion of Hitchcock's oeuvre.
  • Rebello, Stephen: Alfred Hitchcock and the Making of Psycho. St. Martin's, 1990. Intimately researched and detailed history of the making of Psycho, praised as one of the best books on moviemaking ever.
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