Alfred Hitchcock - "Master of Suspense"
From the mid 50’s to the early 60’s, Alfred Hitchcock was the most well known director to the general public, mostly due to his many thrillers. Probably more than any other filmmaker, his name evokes instant expectations on the part of audiences: at least two or three great chills (and a few more good ones), some striking black comedy, and an eccentric characterization or two in every one of his movies. Hitchcock was originally trained at a technical school and moved towards movies through art courses and advertising, and by the mid-'20s he was making his first films. He had his first major success in 1926 with The Lodger, a thriller loosely based on Jack the Ripper. While he worked in a variety of different genres over the next six years, he found his best success with thrillers. His early work with these, including Blackmail (1929) and Murder (1930), seem old by modern standards, but have many of the essential elements of his following successes. Hitchcock came to international attention in the mid '30s with The Man Who Knew Too Much (1934), The 39 Steps (1935), and , The Lady Vanishes (1938). By the end of the 1930s, having gone as far as the British film industry could take him, he signed a contract with David O. Selznick (a producer) and went to America. From the beginning, with the multi-Oscar-winning psychological thriller Rebecca (1940) and the anti-Nazi thrillers, Hitchcock was one of Hollywood's "money" directors whose presence alone attracted audiences. Although his relationship with Selznick was stormy, he created several notable movies Spellbound (1945) being one of the most romantic of Hitchcock's movies. In 1948, after leaving Selznick, Hitchcock went through a period where he experimented with new techniques and made his first independent production, Rope; with little success. In the early and mid-'50s, he returned to form with the thrillers like Strangers on a Train (1951), which was remade in 1987 by Danny DeVito as Throw Momma From the Train and Dial M for Murder (1954), which was among the few successful 3-D movies. His films of the late '50s became more personal and daring, particularly Vertigo (1958), in which the dark side of romantic obsession was explored in extreme detail. Psycho (1960) was Hitchcock's great shock masterpiece, mostly for its haunting performances. It was the first film to depict sexuality and violence in such a graphic manner. The Birds, another thriller dealt with the theme of nature-gone-mad. However, Hitchcock's films had slipped seriously at the box office. Both Marnie (1964) and Torn Curtain (1966) suffered from major casting problems, and the script of Torn Curtain was very unfocused. Of his final three movies, only Frenzy (1972), about a rapist-murderer terrorizing London, which marked his return to British thrillers after 30 years, was successful. Although his films were often hyped as "shocking" or "terrifying," the frightening elements in his films actually relied on the viewer's own imagination, rather than graphic depictions of blood and gore. Nearly all of his films are rated PG, and only two ("Psycho" and "Frenzy") were rated R. Families and people from a wide variety of backgrounds can appreciate Hitchcock's films, without being offended by the gratuitous and juvenile violence, racism, sex, vulgarity, etc. found in many contemporary films. Hitchcock's approach to suspense has also held up much better than the "show-everything" fake gore used in many films today. While modern audiences s laugh at the "scary" parts in many older films, Hitchcock films such as "Psycho" and "The Birds" remain genuinely frightening even today. Audiences become emotionally involved with the likable "everyman" characters typically cast as Hitchcock's protagonists. His use of subjective storytelling (restricting the camera so that it shows only the viewpoint of a single character), along with selective revelations so that the audience knows important things the protagonist has not yet learned, all serve to heighten the suspense in his films.