Alfred Hitchcock

Hailed by Movie Maker magazine as one of the best filmmakers of all time, Alfred Hitchcock (1899-1980) made several successful movies in England before moving to America to direct Rebbecca (1940). The film was a hit and Hitchcock’s American film career took off. He was so impressed with the facilities available to him, he pronounced that they were “incomparably better” than those he used in England. He became an American citizen in 1956.

Hitchcock’s specialty was suspense thrillers. He was happiest when his audience was sitting on the edge of their seat. Called one of the pioneers of the psychological suspense genre, his films were meant to mess with your mind. One example is his 1948 movie, Rope. It tells the story of two men who strangle an inferior classmate, place him in a trunk and throw a party where food is served to his family and friends on the trunk where the dead man lies. Rope was Hitchcock’s first color film and featured popular Hollywood icon James Stewart.

During his sixty year career Hitchcock made more than fifty films, In America and the UK. Hitchcock had a unique style. He filmed the entire movie Rope in ten shots, each about ten minutes long. Rope, like a few other Hitchcock films, such as Lifeboat (1944) and Rear Window (1954), is filmed in its entirety in one small space. Hitchcock uses close ups of his actors’ faces to show their reaction to various scenes. In his 1958 feature Virtigo, Hitchcock uses a camera technique used by many of his counterparts and predecessors. By moving the camera in the opposite direction of its zoom, the image appears to stretch. This technique is dubbed Dolly Zoom or Vertigo Effect. Given the success of all these films, he made it work.