The Films of Alfred Hitchcock

Alfred Hitchcock was born on 13 August 1899 in Leytonstone, London. He was educated at the Jesuit Classic school St Ignatius’ College, Stamford Hill, London and London County Council School of Engineering, Poplar, London. After graduating he became a draftsman and advertising designer for a cable company. He became interested in photography and began working as a title-card designer for the London branch of Paramount Pictures. In 1920, he landed a full-time position at Islington Studios designing the titles for silent movies. He co-wrote and worked on the film Die Prinzessin und der Geiger (1924) with Graham Cutts which was shot in Berlin. While there, he had the chance to watch F.W. Murnau who was shooting Der Ietzte Mann (1924), Hitchcock was influenced by Murnau’s set design in his later productions. In 1925, Michael Balcon of Gainsborough Pictures gave Hitchcock an opportunity to direct his first feature film - The Pleasure Garden (1925). However, the movie flopped threatening Hitchcock with obscurity but he bounced back with The Lodger: A Story of the London Fog (1926) the following year which was a major critical and commercial success. On 2 December 1926, Hitchcock married his assistant director Alma Reveille, their only child, Patricia was born on 7 July 1928. Alma was to become Hitch’s closest collaborator, she wrote some of his screenplays and though often unaccredited worked with him on every one of his films. His 1929 feature Blackmail was one of the UK’s first sound pictures, the climax of the film took place on the dome of the British Dome beginning a Hitchcockian trend of shooting around famous landmarks.

From 1933, he was once again working with Michael Balcon at Gaumont-British Picture Corporation. His second film for Balcon, The 39 Steps (1935) was one of the first to introduce the concept of the Macguffin, a plot device around which a whole story seems to revolve but ultimately has nothing to do with the true meaning of the story. By the end of the 1930s, Hitchcock was in high demand and he was in a position to negotiate his own career options when David O. Selznick signed Hitchcock to a seven year contract in March 1939.Although now working out of Hollywood, Hitchcock would continue to shoot many of his movies in his home country of England, including his first Rebecca (1940). Rebecca would go on to win the Academy Award for Best Picture in 1940. Suspicion (1941) was Hitchcock’s first film as both producer and director, it also marked the first time that he collaborated with Cary Grant. The second movie he made for Universal, Shadow of a Doubt (1943) was Hitchcock’s personal favourite of all his films. It’s use of overlapping characters, dialogue and close-ups is constantly referred to by theorists to illustrate psychoanalytic potential in film. Rope (1948) was Alfred’s first color film, it is also notable as it takes place in real time and is edited to appear as a single continuous shot through the use of long takes. In 1954, he moved to Paramount Pictures shooting the critically acclaimed Rear Window (1954) featuring James Stewart and Grace Kelly.

Hitchock was an intriguing paradox, a classic English gent with impeccable manners, an essence of stability who dominated the crazy, throwaway, celebrity obssessed Hollywood arena. His films were great suspense thrillers which entertained audiences globally, but they are deeply layered and as you peel away the layers they reveal something all the more depraved, calculating and revealing. His character were androgynous and somewaht decadent yet Hitchcock remained Warholian aloof, monogomous and seemingly conservative.

In 1956, he remade his own 1934 film The Man Who Knew Too Much which starred Cary Grant and Doris Day and featured the song Whatever Will Be, Will Be (Que Sera Sera) which became a massive hit for Day. Towards the end of the fifties, Hitchcock made four films in a row that were to become some of his most famous and most acclaimed - Vertigo (1958), North by Northwest (1959), Psycho (1960) and The Birds (1963). Failing health took a toll on Alfred, reducing his film production during the last two decades of his life. In 1972, he returned to London to film Frenzy (1972) which was to be last major success. For the first time, Hitchcock allowed nudity and profane language. Hitchcock became famous for his remarkable and unrivalled control of pace and suspense and his films drew heavily on fear and fantasy. His movies also contained a black humour and insightful witticisms on the ways of the world. Many of his protagonists were innocent people caught up in situations and circumstances beyond their control. He was nominated by the Academy as Best Director six times but remarkably he never won an Academy Award for directing. Hitchcock was also one of the first producers to realise how important and influential the medium of television would become. From 1955 to 1965, he was producer and host of the television series entitled Alfred Hitchcock Presents, it made him an instant celebrity as people were enthralled by his curious voice, image and mannerisms. This is how we remember Hitch, a curious Edawrdian gent who harked back to a different time and yet dominated the most glitzy place on the planet - Hollywood. He lived there, worked prolifically there but he retained all the elements of himself, remaining his own man. Perhaps, more can be deduced from his supposedly throw away comment that 'Actors are cattle', maybe he saw them as mere pawn to achieve his vision. He delivered some of the finest suspense moments ever committed to celluloid and we'll always remember him for his crafty and thought provoking camera angles that he introduced to film.