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Alfred Hitchcock (1899-1980), has been highly regarded for his unique Hitchcockian style. He is renowned as the “master of suspense” given his distinctive understanding of arranging suspense and shock; he also is a master storyteller, who never stopped innovating to surprise the audience; moreover, Hitchcock values the importance of technical ingredients (cinematography, soundtrack, etc.) above acting and subject matter.
Alfred Hitchcock created more than 50 films (mainly thrillers) spanning six decades, the famous ones include Vertigo, Psycho, Rebecca, The Birds, and North by Northwest.
As a cinematic innovator, Hitchcock constantly presents new ideas to the public. One of the most unusual statements he made when talking about his goal is: “Always make the audience suffer as much as possible.” Hitchcock achieved this goal by manipulating the storyline and the techniques in his preferred style, which is undoubtedly worth discussing.
To begin with, Alfred Hitchcock has his own belief about storytelling. Besides removes excess information from the scripts to keep it as simple as possible, he also prefers a linear storyline and often develops the story with one perspective.
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The main purpose is to make the suspense more effective. These features are demonstrated in all three films in this unit. In Vertigo, the audience receives information from Scottie’s (James Stewart) perspective throughout the film.
However, the conspiracy is not revealed until the end of the movie when the audience realizes the concealed truth. In The Birds, the story proceeds with no pause to explain the reason for the bird attack but merely narrates what’s happening to the protagonists from their perspective.
In The Man Who Knew Too Much, there is a slight divergent to the storyline where Hank’s (Christopher Olsen) whereabouts is disclosed to the audience, but the main focus is still on Dr. Benjamin (James Stewart) and his wife Josephine (Doris Day).
Thriller is the genre that Hitchcock is devoted to, and these films inevitably require plot twists and suspense. One of the main issues that some thriller directors encounter is that if they have too many things going on in the story makes the situation far too complex, and this confusion bores the audience. Hitchcock solves this problem smartly by using a simple storyline. Besides making the story more comprehensible, it helps to maximize suspense.
Even though the audience views the story from a single perspective, a key technique that Hitchcock likes to use is to show the audience what the characters don’t know. A good example is in The Birds is when Melanie (Tippi Hedren) hasn’t noticed the growing number of birds behind her, the audience already starts to worry about the outcome. This keeps the audience on the edge and tension builds up more effectively. Having talked about Hitchcock’s preference for constructing simple storylines, the theme he likes to choose is also worth noting.
Psychological suspense is the genre that he is most famous for. Vertigo, a classic psychological thriller, is the perfect example that demonstrates his distinctive style. It is intuitive from the title that the male protagonist, Scottie (James Stewart), suffers from vertigo after being traumatized from an accident. This psychological instability foreshadows his inner conflicts and the inability to make rational decisions. When the situation intensifies at the end, this psychology factor is emphasized through Scottie’s emotional behaviour.
Besides the psychological theme, Hitchcock also likes to compound elements such as guilt, love, death, and violence to add depth to his films. Also in Vertigo, Scottie becomes madly in love with a married woman, Madeleine Elster (Kim Novak) —— a combination of love and guilt. After he finds out the truth about her identity, he is still under the illusion that Madeleine is the one he loves. His extreme behaviour over rationality contributes to his violent behaviour in the end.
In The Birds, the birds are the ones acting violent and bring destruction to the town, while Mitch (Rod Taylor) and Melanie (Tippi Hedren) elaborates the love element in the film. This kind of seemingly irrelevant connections bring complication to his film, but also makes the audience more engaged to figure out his implication. Alfred Hitchcock once said, “I don’t care about the subject matter; I don’t care about the acting, but I do care about the pieces of film and the photography and the soundtrack and all of the technical ingredients that made the audience scream.” He proved this belief by bringing countless technical innovations into his films.
As the master of suspense, he considers cinematography a significant component in creating suspense. Hitchcock treats the camera as if it was the viewer’s eyes, and always try to build more connections with the audience. His well-known technique is suspense editing, which involves revealing the danger around the character through a long shot or medium shot, then using close-up shots to slowly cut between the character and approaching danger. The crows on the playground scene in The Birds perfectly demonstrates this technique.
The camera first reveals one crow in the frame that represents an established threat to the protagonist. While Melanie (Tippi Hedren) is still unaware of the threat, the camera switches back and forth between her and the crows, until she finally realizes the extent of danger she is in. As mentioned in the second paragraph, this two minutes of building tension achieve Hitchcock’s goal: to make the audience suffer. It is worth mentioning that Hitchcock differentiates suspense and shock through whether the audience was given information about the potential outcome.
Suspense only exists if the audience is aware of the upcoming threat, in other words, the audience is active participants. In contrast, shock surprises the audience for a few seconds but is less effective than suspense. An example to illustrate shock would be another scene in The Birds: Melanie is suddenly attacked by a bird while she is on the boat. In addition to camerawork, Hitchcock also considers lighting an effective cinematographic technique to embody feelings, atmosphere, and mental states.
He likes to use diverse lighting and shadow to convey information that is not expressed by the characters. Vertigo is a representative example of this technique. The green light that surrounds and illuminates the hotel creates an uncanny atmosphere that is distant from reality. It also informs the audience that the characters are experiencing an unstable mental state, which once again echoes the movie title. The extreme feeling of love and hate inside Scottie (James Stewart) is also represented by colours.
Both red and green lightings are used to show the illusion that Scottie experiences. It is also worth noticing that these two colours are used previously in this film to represent Scottie and Madeleine (Kim Novak), and green is the colour associating with Madeleine. In The Birds, the change in lighting also conveys a meaning. In the beginning, the lighting is bright and cheerful, and everything seems harmonic as well. As the bird attack begins, the lighting gets darker gradually, creating a mysterious atmosphere.
The shadow over the dead body also emphasizes the threat of birds and pushes the fear into the climax. For the rest of the film, the lighting remains dark and gloomy. In both Vertigo and The Birds, the lighting plays a key role in exaggerating the existed terror, panic, and suspense. They serve the purpose of maximizing the fear. Besides cinematography, Hitchcock attaches significance to the soundtrack of the film as well. He is a firm believer in the force of music, and this is demonstrated through many of his films including The Man Who Knew Too Much and Vertigo.
In The Man Who Knew Too Much, music is used as an indispensable element. There are a few scenes that instead of playing in the background, music is singled out to represent meaningful values. There are two pieces of music in this film that play a key role in plot development: “Que Sera Sera” (by Jay Livingston) performed by Josephine (Doris Day) and “Storm Clouds Cantata” played in the Royal Albert Hall. “Que Sera Sera” is first introduced at the beginning of the film where Josephine sings the song with her son, Hank (Christopher Olsen). It is a sweet and joyful scene emphasizing the intimacy between mother and son, which is rare in Hitchcock’s films (mother figures are often controlling and oppressive).
The second appearance of this song occurs in the embassy; it is sung by Josephine as a cue to her son. Hitchcock introduces this song at the beginning to foreshadow its reoccurrence, and the meanings conveyed in the song change from the bond between mother and son to the determination and faith of a mother in protecting her son. The song also plays a crucial role in developing the plot: it acts as a natural transition in the movie.
The most significant piece of music in The Man Who Knew Too Much is “Storm Clouds Cantata”, where the chorus pushes the plot into the climax. For more than nine minutes, the only thing that the audience can hear is the chorus, and based on the information they receive, the assassination is about to start. The seemingly endless song stretches the tension and makes the audience suffer. Hitchcock not only concerns about the emphasis of the soundtrack but also cares about finding the right song. In Vertigo, the score composed by Bernard Herrmann is a representative work of Hitchcock’s wise choice.
The music is recognizable as it embodies the psychological factor of the film. Even when the music is singled out, the audience can sense the obsession, paranoia, and even spinning. It is a masterpiece that complements the film and successfully draws the audience in. On the contrary, The Birds is a movie produced with no background music except one song sang by schoolchildren. As a director who highly values the importance of music in a film, Hitchcock made a bold decision to use the noise of birds as the single element in the soundtrack.
It triggers the fear that the audience subconsciously possesses toward this creature while making the story more realistic and engaging. This is one of the innovative attempts that Hitchcock made. He proved that the horror brought by silence instead of music is even more effective because the audience is unable to foresee the coming danger. In conclusion, Alfred Hitchcock’s distinctive style in storytelling and techniques is a valuable breakthrough in the movie industry. His recognizable film works had huge impacts and influenced numerous well-known directors including Martin Scorsese, Steven Spielberg and Brian De Palma.
Hitchcock sought perfection in every possible way, but he never stopped attempting to break the rigid beliefs and stereotypes about movies. He explained in detail regarding how to create suspense to make the audience “suffer”; boldly applied new themes and techniques; and most importantly, changed the way that the audience viewed films. The movies he created are timeless masterpieces that stand the test of time and will continue to inspire film producers. Classic never goes out of style, and Hitchcock’s remarkable contribution will forever be remembered.
Alfred Hitchcock British’s Most Famous Director of All Time. (2024, Feb 22). Retrieved from https://studymoose.com/alfred-hitchcock-british-s-most-famous-director-of-all-time-essay
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