Alfred Hitchcock: The King of Modern Suspense Thrillers - Essay Example

?Alfred Hitchcock: The King of Modern Suspense Thrillers When Alfred Hitchcock was born on August 13, 1899 to Emma and William Hitchcock, becoming a legendary film director was not in the cards for him. Growing up as the son of a green grocer and poulterer, his father was a disciplinarian who once sent a young Alfred with a note to the local police station, requesting them to put him in jail for 5 minutes due to bad behavior. This was an incident that would mark the psyche of the young man for the rest of his life. Educated in the Catholic school system, the overweight Alfred grew up a loner and sheltered. The cause of his obesity was never determined, although some believe that it was quite possibly caused by a glandular condition. After attending the London County School of Engineering and Navigation, he tried to participate in World War I but was rejected by the military because of his obesity. Undaunted, Hitchcock joined the cadet regimen of the Royal Engineers in 1917. Although he did his part during training, he still did not make it to active military service. Eventually, the man who had previously worked as a draftsman and advertising engineer at Henley's would go on to become one of the most prolific writers of the in-house The Telegraph where he began to dabble in stories rooted in suspense and twist endings. As a writer, he tried his hand at writing various genres including the satirical disquisition “The History of Pea Eating” and Fedora, which is considered as his shortest and most enigmatic contribution to the literary world (“Alfred Hitchcock”). Finding work as a title designer led Hitchcock to discover photography, which in turn led to his working as Islington Studios as a silent film title card designer. Hitchcock began a steady 5 years ascent to film director from the moment he began working for Islington Studios. Working steadily in Germany as a collaborator of acclaimed film director Graham Cutts in 1924, the length of time that he spent living and working there influenced his “seminal” and expressionist film making style. Just like any other film maker just starting out, his career was plagued by budget constrictions, canceled films due to lack of budget, and lackluster ticket sales. Yet Hitchcock soldiered on and became one of the most notable film directors in England for his early films. The most notable of his early work was “The Lodger: A Story of the London Fog”, which was released in 1929. A majority of film historians believe that this movie in particular set the style for the future films of the director. It was in describing this film that the term “Hitchockian” was first used as there seemed no better or fitting term with which to describe the story he told on film (“Alfred Hitchcock”). Most of Hitchcock's early films made in Britain are silent films. His tenth film however, titled “Blackmail” which was shot in 1929, is considered to be an early British “talkie” considered by many to be the first ever British sound feature film. This film is also notable for having the longest appearance by the director in the movie, as was Hitchcock's signature in all his films. More importantly, this film set the trend by the director of using important landmarks in the country as backdrops for the highlights of his movies. By the 1930's his name was becoming well known far and wide thanks to the success of his films “The Man Who Knew Too Much” and “The 39 Steps”. This resulted in the American film producer David O. Selznick actively bidding for his services, winning a 7 year contract with the soon to be highly acclaimed film director. Hitchcock left England for a new career in the colonies in March, 1939. (“Alfred Hitchcock”), believing that he had reached the limits of the British film industry. The golden age of Alfred Hitchcock as a film director occurred during his stint in Hollywood where, unhampered by budget issues, he was able to tell the story that he wanted, regardless of how much film footage it took to do so. The audience lapped up his work such as Rebecca (130 minutes), The Paradise Case (132 minutes), North by Northwest (136 minutes), and finally Topaz, his longest film at 142 minutes (“Alfred Hitchcock”). Film experts such as Arthur Vesselo have called Hitchcock a “master of the contrasts” due to his uncanny ability to “balancing the normal against the abnormal, slowness against speed, sound against silence, humour against terror” (qtd. in Wilson). This was a highly engaging method of film making that was best seen in Hitchcock' personal film favorite “Shadow of a Doubt” which was released in 1943 starring Joseph Cotten. Alfred Hitchcock was a man who did not have a chip on his shoulder even though he was receiving countless praise and accolades for his landmark films. Instead, he saw no problem with collaborating with other writers to bring the vision of a story to life. One of his more notable collaborations was with John Steinbeck for the movie “The Life Boat”. He also worked with Thornton Wilder and John Michael Hayes to come up with the brilliant James Stewart suspense thriller “The Rear Window”. But his favorite, not often mention collaborator on his film had to be his wife, Alma Reville whom he met in 1921 and married in 1926. She was a simple editor and scriptwriter when they met, making for the perfect marriage of the two most important aspects of film making. According to his daughter Pat, the reason that her father relied on Alma for most of his collaborations was because “she was the one person who he relied on to tell him the truth “. Such was the influence of his wife over his film making that when she suggest that he cut the scene of Kim Novak in Vertigo that had her “running across a square where her legs looked fat”, he apologized to her and then promptly cut the scene from the film. Continuity issues be damned, Hitchcock was the kind of man who took the opinion of his wife very seriously. Such was her influence over him that when he received a lifetime achievement award from the American Film Institute he “... begged permission to thank four people who had given him the most "constant collaboration". One was a film editor, the second a scriptwriter, the third the best cook he knew and the fourth the mother of his daughter, "and their names are Alma Reville." “ (Wilson, Bee “Alfred Hitchcock: From Silent Film Director to the Inventor of Modern Horror”). While other people tended to take on Hitchcock quite lightly due to his pudgy figure and lack of handsomeness, this did not deter the man from creating Oscar winning films that lay the foundation for our modern day suspense thrillers. It is said that: From the outset, with the multi-Oscar-winning psychological thriller Rebecca(1940) and the topical anti-Nazi thrillers Foreign Correspondent(1940) and Saboteur (1942), Hitchcock was one of Hollywood's "money" directors whose mere presence on a marquee attracted audiences. It seemed that in the crazy world of film - making, there was one thing that Alfred Hitchcock understood best about his audience, their desire to be scared out of their wits and then find themselves exhilarated by the unique ending of his films, which were always never what the audience usually expected. This was the reason that movie producers such as RKO and Universal, trusted his vision and placed high budgets behind his films. The producers backed him up even when they thought that he was producing volatile films such as “Shadow of a Doubt” in 1943, which would push the enveloped when it came to the censors and audience acceptance of the storyline. The man could seem to do no wrong when given leeway to produce suspense thrillers with marquee names such as Ingrid Bergman, Cary Grant, Tippie Hedren, and Grace Kelly to name but a few Hollywood luminaries that graced an Alfred Hitchcock film set. For all of the success of Alfred Hitchcock however, the prolific film maker also had his misses. Films such as Rope, where he experimented with new techniques as an independent producer found very little success. Driving him to return to the genre and production system that had made him a success in the past. It must be noted that the man had always been a visionary. Directing the film Dial M for Murder in 1954 as a 3-D movie when the technology was still in its infancy. He recognized the potential of the virtual reality that the technology created for the audience and was among the first to experiment with its features. But as his age advanced, he got bolder with his film-making. Directing such Hollywood suspense classics like “The Trouble with Harry” (1955), Vertigo (1958), The Birds (1963) which became the forerunner of today's nature gone mad stories, and the suspense thriller that he is best known for “Psycho” in (1960). As the taste of the movie audience changed over the years, Hitchcock's films also began to lose its draw at the box office. Although his films Marnie (1964) and Torn Curtain (1966) were still of the same high quality and caliber that Hitchcock films were known for, they failed to make a profitable return at the box-office due an uneven story and casting problems. After 30 years of being away from England, his last most notable film is the one that he directed upon his return “Frenzy” in 1962 (“Alfred Hitchcock”). Alfred Hitchcock died on April 29, 1980. Works Cited “Alfred Hitchcock”. Movies & TV. nytimes.com. n.d. Web. 8 Dec. 2013. “Alfred Hitchcock”. wikipedia.org. wikipedia.org. n.d. Web. 7 Dec. 2013. Wilson, Bee. “Alfred Hitchcock: From Silent Film Director to Inventor of Modern Horror”. theguardian.com.theguardian.com. 15 Jun. 2012. 9 Dec.2013. Read More