Alfred Hitchcock's films show an interesting tendency towards recurring themes and plot devices throughout his life as a director.
Hitchcock preferred the use of suspense over the use of surprise in his films. Surprisingly, the director assaults the viewer with frightening things. In suspense, the director tells or shows the audience things that 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 often used public places as scenes to heighten terror and suspense. Hitchcock was fond of illustrating this point with a short aphorism – "There's two people having breakfast and there's a bomb under the table. If it explodes, that's a surprise. But if it doesn't..." [1]
Further blurring the moral distinction between the innocent and the guilty, occasionally making this indictment inescapably clear to viewers one and all, Hitchcock also makes voyeurs of his "respectable" audience. In Rear Window (1954), after L. B. 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. Shortly before asking this, Thorwald turns to face the camera directly for the first time. [2]
Similarly, Psycho begins with the camera moving toward a hotel-room window, through which the audience is introduced to Marion Crane (Janet Leigh) and her divorced boyfriend Sam Loomis played by John Gavin. They are partially undressed, having seemingly had premarital sex, and Marion is supposed to be on her lunch hour. Later, along with Norman Bates (portrayed by Anthony Perkins), the audience watches Marion undress through a peephole. [3]
One of Hitchcock's favorite devices for driving the plots of his stories and creating suspense was what he called the "MacGuffin". The Oxford English Dictionary , however, credits Hitchcock's friend, the Scottish screenwriter Angus MacPhail, as being the true inventor of the term.
Hitchcock himself defined the term in a 1962 interview conducted by François Truffaut, published as Hitchcock/Truffaut (Simon and Schuster, 1967). Hitchcock used this plot device extensively. Many of his suspense films use this device: a detail that, by inciting curiosity and desire, drives the plot and motivates the characters' actions within the story. However, the specific identity of the item is unimportant to the plot.
State secrets of various kinds serve as MacGuffins in several of the spy films, especially his earlier British films The Man Who Knew Too Much , The 39 Steps , and The Lady Vanishes . Hitchcock has stated that the best MacGuffin, or as he put it, "the emptiest," was the one used in North By Northwest , which was referred to as "Government secrets". [4]
For their time, Hitchcock's films were regarded as rather sexualized, often dealing with perverse and taboo behaviors. Sometimes, the modest conventions of his era caused him to convey sexuality in an emblematic fashion, such as in North by Northwest , when the film cuts abruptly from two aroused but visually chaste lovers to a train entering a tunnel. [5]
Hitchcock found several ways to convey sexuality without depicting graphic behaviors, such as the substitution of explicit sexual passion with the passionate consumption of food. In a particularly amusing scene in Psycho, Norman Bates (Anthony Perkins) carries on a conversation with Marion Crane (Janet Leigh) while one of his hands strokes a dead animal and the other hand lingers on his crotch. Sexual feelings are often strongly associated with violent behavior. In The Lodger and Psycho, this association is the basis of the whole film. The taboo subject of homosexuality is evoked in both Rope [6] and Strangers on a Train , [7] while some have read Rear Window as dealing with fetishistic voyeurism [8] and Hitchcock himself analogized specific scenes in Vertigo to necrophilia. [9] Biographers have noted how Hitchcock continued to challenge film censorship throughout his career until he was allowed to show nudity in Frenzy . [10]
Hitchcock had a dramatic preference for blonde women, stating that the audience would be more suspicious of a brunette. Many of these blondes were of the Grace Kelly variety: perfect, aloof ice goddesses with a hidden red-hot inner fire. Hitchcock said he used blonde actresses in his films, not because of an attraction to them but because of a tradition that began with silent star Mary Pickford. The director said that blondes were "a symbol of the heroine." He also thought they photographed better in black and white, the predominant film for most dramas for many years. [11] Although there is a commonly held view that Hitchcock treated women poorly, there is little evidence of this beyond the examples given by Tippi Hedren in The Birds . On the contrary, Hitchcock had many strong female characters within his movies, career women, who often triumphed over men and subverted sexual stereotypes. One view suggests that Hitchcock’s films enacted “rituals of defilement” of women that evoked his fear of women and unconsciously defended against that fear by punishing and even killing them. [12] However murder of both women and men is typical of the genre of horror or psychological thrillers, with Hitchcock bearing the brunt of scrutiny from being a trailblazer in this novel trend in cinema.
Sir Alfred Joseph Hitchcock was an English film director. He is widely regarded as one of the most influential figures in the history of cinema. In a career spanning six decades, he directed over 50 feature films, many of which are still widely watched and studied today. Known as the "Master of Suspense", Hitchcock became as well known as any of his actors thanks to his many interviews, his cameo appearances in most of his films, and his hosting and producing the television anthology Alfred Hitchcock Presents (1955–65). His films garnered 46 Academy Award nominations, including six wins, although he never won the award for Best Director, despite five nominations.
Psycho is a 1960 American horror film produced and directed by Alfred Hitchcock. The screenplay, written by Joseph Stefano, was based on the 1959 novel of the same name by Robert Bloch. The film stars Anthony Perkins, Janet Leigh, Vera Miles, John Gavin, and Martin Balsam. The plot centers on an encounter between on-the-run embezzler Marion Crane (Leigh) and shy motel proprietor Norman Bates (Perkins) and its aftermath, in which a private investigator (Balsam), Marion's lover Sam Loomis (Gavin), and her sister Lila (Miles) investigate her disappearance.
Voyeurism is the sexual interest in or practice of watching other people engaged in intimate behaviors, such as undressing, sexual activity, or other actions of a private nature.
In fiction, a MacGuffin is an object, device, or event that is necessary to the plot and the motivation of the characters, but insignificant, unimportant, or irrelevant in itself. The term was originated by Angus MacPhail for film, adopted by Alfred Hitchcock, and later extended to a similar device in other fiction.
Rear Window is a 1954 American mystery horror film directed by Alfred Hitchcock and written by John Michael Hayes based on Cornell Woolrich's 1942 short story It Had to Be Murder. Originally released by Paramount Pictures, the film stars James Stewart, Grace Kelly, Wendell Corey, Thelma Ritter, and Raymond Burr. It was screened at the 1954 Venice Film Festival.
Vertigo is a 1958 American psychological thriller film directed and produced by Alfred Hitchcock. The story was based on the 1954 novel D'entre les morts by Boileau-Narcejac, with a screenplay by Alec Coppel and Samuel A. Taylor. The film stars James Stewart as a former San Francisco police detective who has retired after an incident in the line of duty caused him to develop an extreme fear of heights accompanied by vertigo. He is hired as a private investigator to report on the strange behavior of an acquaintance's wife.
A plot device or plot mechanism is any technique in a narrative used to move the plot forward. A clichéd plot device may annoy the reader and a contrived or arbitrary device may confuse the reader, causing a loss of the suspension of disbelief. However, a well-crafted plot device, or one that emerges naturally from the setting or characters of the story, may be entirely accepted, or may even be unnoticed by the audience.
Thriller is a genre of fiction with numerous, often overlapping, subgenres, including crime, horror, and detective fiction. Thrillers are characterized and defined by the moods they elicit, giving their audiences heightened feelings of suspense, excitement, surprise, anticipation and anxiety. This genre is well suited to film and television.
Notorious is a 1946 American spy film noir directed and produced by Alfred Hitchcock, starring Cary Grant, Ingrid Bergman, and Claude Rains as three people whose lives become intimately entangled during an espionage operation.
Psychological horror is a subgenre of horror and psychological fiction with a particular focus on mental, emotional, and psychological states to frighten, disturb, or unsettle its audience. The subgenre frequently overlaps with the related subgenre of psychological thriller, and often uses mystery elements and characters with unstable, unreliable, or disturbed psychological states to enhance the suspense, horror, drama, tension, and paranoia of the setting and plot and to provide an overall creepy, unpleasant, unsettling, or distressing atmosphere.
Peeping Tom is a 1960 British psychological horror-thriller film directed by Michael Powell, written by Leo Marks, and starring Carl Boehm, Anna Massey, and Moira Shearer. The film revolves around a serial killer who murders women while using a portable film camera to record their dying expressions of terror, putting his footage together into a snuff film used for his own self pleasure. Its title derives from the expression "peeping Tom", which describes a voyeur.
High Anxiety is a 1977 American satirical comedy film produced and directed by Mel Brooks, who also plays the lead. This is Brooks' first film as a producer and first speaking lead role. Veteran Brooks ensemble members Harvey Korman, Cloris Leachman, and Madeline Kahn are also featured. It is a parody of psychoanalysis and Alfred Hitchcock films.
Frenzy is a 1972 British thriller film directed by Alfred Hitchcock. It is the penultimate feature film of his extensive career. The screenplay by Anthony Shaffer was based on the 1966 novel Goodbye Piccadilly, Farewell Leicester Square by Arthur La Bern. The film stars Jon Finch, Alec McCowen and Barry Foster and features Billie Whitelaw, Anna Massey, Barbara Leigh-Hunt, Bernard Cribbins and Vivien Merchant. The original music score was composed by Ron Goodwin.
Body Double is a 1984 American neo-noir erotic thriller film directed, co-written, and produced by Brian De Palma. It stars Craig Wasson, Gregg Henry, Melanie Griffith and Deborah Shelton. The film is a direct homage to the 1950s films of Alfred Hitchcock, specifically Rear Window, Vertigo and Dial M for Murder, taking plot lines and themes from the first two.
The Man Who Knew Too Much is a 1956 American mystery thriller film directed and produced by Alfred Hitchcock, starring James Stewart and Doris Day. It is Hitchcock's second film using this title, following his own 1934 film of the same name but featuring a significantly altered plot and script.
The following is a partial list of unproduced Alfred Hitchcock projects, in roughly chronological order. During a career that spanned more than half a century, Alfred Hitchcock directed over fifty films, and worked on a number of others which never made it beyond the pre-production stage.
Psychological thriller is a genre combining the thriller and psychological fiction genres. It is commonly used to describe literature or films that deal with psychological narratives in a thriller or thrilling setting.
Hitchcockian films are those made by various filmmakers, with the styles and themes similar to those of Alfred Hitchcock.
Hitchcock/Truffaut is a 1966 book by François Truffaut about Alfred Hitchcock, originally released in French as Le Cinéma selon Alfred Hitchcock.
Alfred Hitchcock: The Art of Making Movies was a part-3-D film, part-live action show at Universal Studios Florida, and one of the theme park's original attractions. Directed by Susan Lustig and sponsored by Kodak, the attraction commemorated Alfred Hitchcock's 43-year association with Universal Studios. It featured attacks from birds similar to Hitchcock's film The Birds in the pre-show area, and featured the famous shower scene from Psycho in the main show with narration by Anthony Perkins, who played Norman Bates in the latter film. It closed on January 3, 2003, and was replaced by Shrek 4-D later that year.