The Essential Guide to Alfred Hitchcock

The Essential Guide to Alfred Hitchcock
Born 1899, Leytonstone, England
Died 1980, Bel Air, USA

More books have been written about Alfred Hitchcock than any other filmmaker, alive or dead. He was the self-styled “master of suspense”. In a career that stretched to half a century, he directed more than 50 films – and rarely strayed from his favourite genre.

The son of a grocer, and a devout Catholic, Hitchcock often attributed his fascination with (and fear of) the law, transgression and punishment to an episode in his childhood when his parents took him to the local police station and asked them to lock him up. Even though the incident was brief (if it ever really happened) it made a deep impact on the young man.

A gifted artist, Hitchcock found work designing title cards for silent films, including a spell in the famous German UFA studios, where he came under the influence of expressionist horror films like Nosferatu and The Cabinet of Dr Caligari. Back in Britain he quickly rose through the ranks, showing a natural facility with the camera. Among his 1920s films, Blackmail was the first British sound picture. He embraced the new possibilities of the form without sacrificing the sophisticated visual language that he had already developed.

Hitchcock further cemented his personal fame by making cameo appearances in most (though not all) of his films. With his roly-poly figure he was instantly recognizable. Later in his career he would also appear in the trailers for his films, and introduce his own TV show, “Alfred Hitchcock Presents…”

Hitch made several thrillers in the 1930s that remain classics today, including the original version of The Lady Vanishes and The 39 Steps. Already his most famous motifs were well established by then, including his preference for blondes in peril, and for innocent protagonists who find themselves in the wrong place at the wrong time. He liked to talk about “the McGuffin”, a plot motor that drives the story, but which is of no consequence to the audience – like the money Janet Leigh steals in Psycho, but which is never discovered by Norman Bates.

He was lured to Hollywood by producer David O Selznick in 1939 and immediately had success with Rebecca, though he also made a number of films in support of the war effort.

Hitchcock was famous for meticulously storyboarding every frame of his films and claimed that “actors should be treated like cattle”. Nevertheless, he insisted on prime beef: Cary Grant, James Stewart, Ingrid Bergman and Grace Kelly were among his favourites.

He hit a peak in the mid-to-late 1950s, with Rear Window, The Wrong Man, Vertigo, North by Northwest and then Psycho. By now the French critics had discovered him and were analyzing his work with a respect that surprised their counterparts in the UK and the US, who had always taken him at face value, as an entertainer, not an artist. Although his work declined in the 1960s with the end of the studio system and the deaths of several trusted collaborators, Hitchcock’s reputation continued to grow, to the point where he is universally recognized as one of the greatest filmmakers of the twentieth century. For all his success, though, he never won the Oscar for Best Director.