Hitchcock's work - Seminole Cinema: SEHS Film



IB Film: Year Two, W36.1Me Watching You's workWe have already explored Hitchcock's early years in England and Germany and looked at a couple of his initial directing efforts.Now we will jump ahead in order to give some perspective on Hitchcock's later films, particularly those he made in what many have referred to as Hitchcock’s 'Golden Decade', the 1950s and early 1960s.These include, in chronological order:Rear Window (1954)Vertigo (1958)North by Northwest (1959)Psycho (1960), andThe Birds (1963)The last two, you may recall, that we asked you to watch.Later we will get back to the history of Hitchcock, examining his best British films, his move to Hollywood and his work in the Studio System there.We have already explored Hitchcock's early years in England and Germany and looked at a couple of his initial directing efforts.We will jump ahead in order to give some perspective on Hitchcock's films.Later we will get back to the history of Hitchcock, examining his best British films, his move to Hollywood?and his work in the Studio System there.Pure cinemaPreviously, we looked at some of the formative influences in Hitchcock's life, such as his Catholic upbringing and education and his anxieties centered on authority and punishment.Keep in mind his varied and well-rounded early experiences in filmmaking.Hitchcock studied Soviet Montage?and worked with some of the great?German Expressionist directors.On top of this excellent training in film, Hitchcock brought his own keen intelligence, wit, and creativity to all stages of moviemaking. He was a genius, a natural whose talents and ambitions came along at just the right time to be allowed to flourish.Hitchcock thought of his filmmaking as 'pure cinema' - a directing style that incorporated Expressionism and Montage in a way that engaged audiences like no one else had.Rear Window (1954)Hitchcock was interested in voyeurism and the idea of audience as voyeur.?This is one of the central themes in?Rear Window.??James Stewart?plays Jeff Jeffries, a photographer who has?broken his leg, and is largely incapacitated, forced to recuperate seated in a wheelchair. He has?nothing to do but sit at his window in his apartment, looking over the communal area of a city apartment complex, and watch his neighbours.?Jeffries, his girlfriend (played by?Grace Kelly) and we, the audience, witness what appears to be a murder.?Hitchcock uses point-of-view?and reaction shots?to build a suspenseful story around concepts like privacy, peeping toms, and ultimately, audience participation of onscreen events.?Hitchcock uses the camera to draw the audience in and make us think about our role as observers.?And if you think he does a good job of that in?Rear Window?wait until you see?Psycho.Vertigo (1958)Vertigo?is a psychological thriller set in San Francisco.?Starring?James Stewart?as Scottie Ferguson and?Kim Novak?as Madeline / Judy,?the film twists and turns through a complicated but intriguing?plot.?Themes of love, betrayal, and power are examined in a film in which Hitchcock had complete control over every aspect of production.?The film is expressionistic in design, with recurring images of spirals - from the bell tower staircase to the distinctive knot in Madeline's hair.?The spirals come to represent both physical vertigo - the fear of heights - and Scottie's emotional turmoil.?Like many of Hitchcock's films,?Vertigo?is also about chaos entering an ordered world.North by Northwest (1959)There is more chaos here and a perfect example of another recurring Hitchcock theme - The Wrong Man.? This refers to an innocent man?swept up in dangerous events.?In?North by Northwest,?Cary Grant?is the wrong man and has to run for his life from foreign spies when he is mistaken for a government agent.?The film includes many Cold War themes of paranoia and intrigue, as well as a redeeming love story.??North by Northwest?is probably most recognised for two scenes in particular -?Cary Grant being chased by a crop-dusting plane, and the climatic chase scene across Mount Rushmore (filmed on a replica built on a?soundstage).?The plane attack is good example of Hitchcock's use of montage, starting where Grant waits quietly by an empty country road.?We watch Grant, and then we see through his eyes as he scopes out his surroundings.?Hitchcock allows the almost featureless landscape and long periods of quiet to build up the suspense - and then the plane attacks!Sub-plotHitchcock often used a plot device he called a 'MacGuffin'.The MacGuffin was something that was extremely important to the characters in the film, but not necessarily important to Hitchcock (or to the audience, he would argue).He saw the MacGuffin as a device to motivate the action and plot, but nothing he really needed to resolve.Other directors have utilised their own versions of MacGuffins.?Quentin Tarantino's?Pulp Fiction?(1994) is one modern example - the briefcase.Psycho (1960)In addition to being labeled the first modern horror film, Psycho is the film that left Hitchcock (as if he was not already) forever tagged as a director of Horror or Slasher films. While not an entirely fair description given Hitch’s complete body of work, there is no question that the film shocked audiences and influenced entire generations of directors.Even the film’s marketing crossed new innovative frontiers, as Hitchcock whipped up interest in the movie by launching a newspaper campaign that asserted that no one would be allowed into the movie theatre after the opening credits.Based on a book by Robert Block about the real life serial killer Ed Gein ?(copies of which Hitchcock tried to buy out so that no one could know what the movie was about before seeing it), Psycho is really two movies.The first story is about a young woman, Marion Crane - played by Janet Leigh - ?who commits an impetuous crime. Crane steals a large chunk of money she hopes will allow her to marry her broke boyfriend. The second story is about Norman Bates, the lonely and it turns out, insane, current proprietor of the Bates Motel.(Please note: this line is new).Unfortunately, as you already know from watching the movie (so no spoiler alert needed here!), Marion (replace “she” with her name) ?picks the wrong Motel to rest up in during her getaway and is brutally murdered in one of the most famous ( or infamous ) scenes ever filmed.'The Shower Scene', as it is known, is a masterpiece of montage editing, point-of-view or subjective viewpoint, and musical score. And that is where the second story of the film begins.Hitchcock, never afraid to push the boundaries, dared to kill off his main star only a third of the way into the film. As a result, audiences spent the rest of the film on the edge of their seat thinking - "If he will do that, what will he do next...?"Hitchcock's technical mastery is also on display. Beautifully realised tracking and crane shots, strange but compelling camera angles, and wonderful performances by the actors all point to a director at the top of his game and in complete control of his medium. As in Vertigo, Hitchcock implicates the audience by using the subjective point-of-view, in this case, by allowing us to “peep” at Marion along with Norman Bates through a hole in a motel room wall.Considered by many to be his last great film - no offense to The Birds (1963) or certainly Frenzy (1972) - Hitchcock created in Psycho some of the most iconic images in film history.These shots include of course the looming Gothic house overlooking the motel, the matching dissolve shot that pulls the audience through the blood-stained drain to Marion's dead staring eye, and the creepily designed motel parlor inhabited by a menagerie of Norman’s stuffed birds of prey, one of whom seems to peck at his head just as he mocks Marion for suggesting that he put his mother into an institution.Hitchcock's Psycho is as thrilling now as it was when it first shocked audiences over 50 years ago.?The Birds (1963)While not as well acted as some of Hitchcock’s other films - indeed it can be argued, as Bosley Crowther, film critic from the New York Times suggested that?when the film came out, that both Rod Taylor and Tippi Hedren were two of Hitchcock’s weakest thespians - The Birds is actually one of Hitchcock’s most popular and well-known movies, and considered by many reviewers to have been dismissed all too easily as a 'gimmick'?film.Review -?'The Birds':Hitchcock's Feathered Fiends Are ChillingMore recently, The Birds has become the focus of the ongoing debate about whether or not Hitchcock was a misogynist - with Tippi Hedren herself claiming that Hitchcock tortured her quite deliberately in all those scenes where she is attacked by the birds, allegedly because she had rebuffed his sexual advances.While other actresses in the film, like Jessica Tandy who plays Mitch’s mother, and Suzanne Pleshette, who plays Mitch’s old girlfriend, Annie, insisted that Hitchcock behaved like a perfect gentleman on set, it is nevertheless a disturbing accusation, particularly as many other sexual abuse cases against women have recently come to light in Hollywood. ................
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