Essay about Master of Suspense: Sir Alfred Hitchcock

Thrillers and eggs are equally terrifying… Actually, according to one specific person, eggs are even more frightening. The Master of Suspense, also known as Sir Alfred Hitchcock, may be frightened of eggs, but he is famously known for his thrillers, such as ​‘Psycho’​ (1960), ‘​Rear Window’ ​(1954) and ‘​Vertigo’​ (1958). The purpose of this essay is to present some of his work, visions and style, and outline how Hitchcock changed the world cinema with his art.

History

Sir Alfred Joseph Hitchcock was an English director and filmmaker born on August 13th, 1899. Hitchcock was nicknamed the ‘Master of Suspense’ for employing a kind of psychological suspense in his films, producing a distinct viewer experience (Biography, 2019).

Before becoming a notorious director, Hitchcock enrolled at the University of London in 1916, where he took drawing and design classes, and those skills helped him get a position as a title card designer in 1920. Years later, in 1940, Alfred moved to Hollywood, where he was hired to direct an adaptation of ​‘Rebecca​’; the film won the Academy Award for Best Picture, and Hitchcock earned his first Academy Award nomination for Best Director (Barson, 2020).

According to Purtell (1993), Hitchcock’s style was influenced by other directors, such as Luis Bunuel, Sergei Eisenstein, Henri-Georges Clouzot and Michelangelo Antonioni; the director is often seen as an influence and it’s possible to see it in ​‘The Lord of the Rings’ (2001-2003) and ​‘Titanic’​ (1997), with the ‘MacGuffin, and ​‘Jaws’ ​(1975) and ​‘E.T.’​ (1982) with the dolly zoom technique (Ursell, 2016).

Director’s Vision and Style

The first films in history were silent and counted solely on the director’s ability to tell the story visually. As mentioned above in Hitchcock’s history, the director started his career in the film industry as a title card designer, required for the films back then. Because of that, Hitchcock continued to believe in cinema as a visual medium and that dialogues and sound should remain secondary to the image in telling the story (Duguid, 2014). With that in mind, it is possible to say that one of the most used techniques of Hitchcock is the montage. The director, relying on images to tell a story, uses the sequence of shots to show the audience what they need to know. Besides the famous shower scene in ​‘Psycho’​ (1960), the final scene with Norman Bates at the mental institution shows Norman, but the audience hears his mother’s voice, showing us that this personality took over Norman’s and was now in control. Pairing the image to what Norma says, we find out (or at least we can assume) that Norman was the one with mental problems and Norma was innocent: she wasn’t even capable of hurting a fly. Seconds go by and there is a close-up in Norman’s face with a deranged smile. Hitchcock also counted on mise-en-scène (described by Moura (2014) as the arrangement of everything that appears in the framing) to tell the story. In ​‘Psycho’ ​(1960), for example, the taxidermied birds are part of the story and Norman even compares his mom to one of the birds, saying she’s “as harmless as one of those stuffed birds”, and later the audience learns that his mom is dead.

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Birds are, in fact, part of Hitchcock’s style. According to Tallon (2017), the director uses birds to artfully foreshadow events and reveal deeper truths about characters. Not only part of ​‘Psycho’​ (1960), birds are also in Hitchcock’s ​‘Young and Innocent​’ (1937), ​‘Vertigo’ (1958) and, obviously, ​‘The Birds’ ​(1963).

Significance

As mentioned before, Hitchcock believed that the image should tell the story rather than the dialogue or sound effects and, because of that, he developed some techniques to make the story flow and deliver the feelings he wanted to, which became his own way to produce films and came out to be his legacy to the film industry.

In ​‘Psycho’​ (1960), for example, during the scene where Marion Crane (portrayed by Janet Leigh) is stabbed in the shower, the act of killing is not explicit. What we see, however, is a silhouette holding a knife which makes Marion scream (with a close-up on her mouth); when Hitchcock opens the shot again, it’s possible to see the silhouette move its arm to stab Marion and the latter tries to fight, with no success. After a few seconds, the director shows us the bathtub with a mix of water from the shower and blood, announcing that the character is dying.

Still following the idea that the image is telling a story to the viewer, another technique used by Hitchcock is, as the director named it, the MacGuffin. This specific characteristic is described by Hitchcock himself, according to Duguid (2014): “The device, the gimmick, if you will, or the papers the spies are after… The only thing that really matters is that in the picture the plans, documents or secrets must seem to be of vital importance to the characters. To me, the narrator, they’re of no importance whatsoever”. In ​Psycho​ (1960), the MacGuffin would be considered the money, Marion stole from her employer; while the money is of no importance to the narrator, or to us, the viewers, it is highly important to the character to the point where she even tries to hide it inside a newspaper. The MacGuffin can be seen in other recent films, as mentioned before, such as ​'Titanic' (1997) and ​'The Lord of the Rings'​ (2001-2003). In ​‘Titanic’​, the MacGuffin is the ‘Heart of the Ocean’, whereas in ‘​The Lord of the Rings’​, it is the One Ring.

And moving forward to a more ‘technical’ style by Hitchcock that is famously known, there is the ‘vertigo effect’ (also known as the dolly zoom and the Hitchcock shot). The effect originated in Hitchcock’s ​‘Vertigo​’ (1958) and, according to McCullagh (2018), can be explained as zooming in while dollying out, or the other way around, while focusing on a single point in space.

Conclusion

Whether you like thrillers or not, it is important to acknowledge the fact that Hitchcock’s ideas and style are still present in recent films more than we think. It could be a small detail that has the whole plot revolving around it, it could be a technical style, or it could be the way the images tell the story more than the dialogue and sound effects. Hitchcock brought his ideas to life and influenced many directors around the world with his unique style, as well as his personality. And even though people think cinema is just memorizing lines and filming (telling a story while you do it), it is more than that. Cinema comes with history behind the story; with a legacy never told; with people inspiring people. Cinema is, after all, art.

References

1. Barson, M. (2020, March 13). ​Alfred Hitchcock​. Encyclopedia Britannica. Retrieved from https://www.britannica.com/biography/Alfred-Hitchcock
2. Biography. (2019, October 22). ​Alfred Hitchcock​. Retrieved from https://www.biography.com/filmmaker/alfred-hitchcock
3. Duguid, M. (2014). Hitchcock's Style. Screenonline. Retrieved from http://www.screenonline.org.uk/tours/hitch/tour1.html
4. McCullagh, J. F. (2018, December 13). ​The Cinematic Power of Hitchcock's Dolly Zoom Technique​. The Beat. Retrieved from https://www.premiumbeat.com/blog/hitchcocks-dolly-zoom-filmmaking-technique/
5. Moura, G. (2014, July 1). ​Mise-en-scène​. The Elements of Cinema. Retrieved from http://www.elementsofcinema.com/directing/mise-en-scene-in-films/
6. Purtell, T. (1993, January 15). ​Who Inspired Alfred Hitchcock? ​Entertainment Weekly. Retrieved from https://ew.com/article/1993/01/15/who-inspired-alfred-hitchcock/
7. Thallon, C. (2017, June 19). ​'Psycho' Birds​. Medium. Retrieved from https://medium.com/@carterthallon/psycho-birds-2e6b36afca5e
8. Ursell, J. (2016, August 10). ​The Phenomenal Influence and Legacy of Alfred Hitchcock​. Into Film. Retrieved from https://www.intofilm.org/news-and-views/articles/hitchcock-feature