Alfred Hitchcock

Sir Alfred Hitchcock KBE
Studio publicity photo, 1955
Born	Alfred Joseph Hitchcock (1899-08-13)13 August 1899 Leytonstone, Essex, England
Died	29 April 1980(1980-04-29) (aged 80) Bel Air, California, U.S.
Other names	Hitch The Master of Suspense
Citizenship	British (1899-1980) United States (1955-1980)
Alma mater	Salesian College St Ignatius' College
Occupation	Film director, film producer
Years active	1919–1980
Spouse(s)	Alma Reville (m. 1926; his death 1980)
Children	Patricia Hitchcock

Sir Alfred Joseph Hitchcock KBE (13 August 1899 – 29 April 1980) was an English film director and producer, referred to as the "Master of Suspense". He pioneered many elements of the suspense and psychological thriller genres, he had a successful career in British cinema with both silent films and early talkies and became renowned as Britain's leading filmmaker. Hitchcock moved to Hollywood in 1939 and became a U.S. citizen in 1955.

Hitchcock became a highly visible public figure through interviews, film trailers, cameo appearances in his own films, and the ten years in which he hosted the television programme Alfred Hitchcock Presents (1955–1965). He also fashioned for himself a recognisable directorial style, and the term Hitchcockian is now often used to refer to his style of filmmaking. Hitchcock's stylistic trademarks include the use of camera movement that mimics a person's gaze, forcing viewers to engage in a form of voyeurism; in addition, he framed shots to maximise anxiety, fear, or empathy, and used innovative forms of film editing. His work often features fugitives on the run alongside "icy blonde" female characters.

He directed more than fifty feature films in a career spanning six decades and is often regarded as one of the most influential directors in cinematic history, his first thriller, The Lodger: A Story of the London Fog (1927), helped shape the thriller genre in film. His 1929 film, Blackmail, is often cited as the first British sound feature film, while Rear Window (1954), Vertigo (1958), North by Northwest (1959) and Psycho (1960) are regularly ranked among the greatest films of all time.

Biography[edit]

Early life: 1899-1930[edit]

Born in Great Britain[edit]

Hitchcock was born on 13 August 1899 in Leytonstone, at the time part of Essex (now part of the London Borough of Waltham Forest).^[1] He was the second son and the youngest of three children of William Hitchcock (1862–1914), a greengrocer and poulterer, and Emma Jane Hitchcock (née Whelan; 1863–1942). He was named after his father's brother. Hitchcock was raised as a Roman Catholic, and sent to Salesian College, Battersea,^[2] and the Jesuit grammar school St Ignatius' College in Stamford Hill, London.^[3][4] His parents were both of half-English and half-Irish ancestry,^[5][6] he often described a lonely and sheltered childhood that was worsened by his obesity.^[7] Around age five, Hitchcock recalled that to punish him for behaving badly, his father sent him to the local police station with a note asking the officer to lock him away for five minutes,^[8] this incident implanted a lifelong fear of policemen in Hitchcock, and such harsh treatment and wrongful accusations are frequent themes in his films.^[9]

Sources vary on Hitchcock's performance in school. Gene Adair reports that by "most accounts, Alfred was only an average, or slightly above-average, student",^[10] although McGilligan writes that Hitchcock "certainly" excelled academically.^[11] When Hitchcock was 15, his father died; in that same year, he left St. Ignatius to study at the London County Council School of Engineering and Navigation in Poplar, London,^[12] after leaving, he became a draftsman and advertising designer with an electrical cable company called Henley's.^[13]

During the First World War, Hitchcock was called up to serve in the British Army; he was ultimately excused from military service with a 'C3' classification due to his size, height or an unnamed medical condition, but was nonetheless "able to stand service conditions in garrisons at home".^[14] Hitchcock joined a cadet regiment of the Royal Engineers in 1917,^[14] his military stint was limited, and he mainly engaged in theoretical briefings, weekend drills, and exercises. Hitchcock would march around London's Hyde Park and was required to wear military puttees, though he never mastered the proper wrapping of them.^[15]

While working at Henley's, Hitchcock began to dabble in creative writing, the company's in-house publication The Henley Telegraph was founded in 1919, and he often submitted short articles,^[16] eventually becoming one of its most prolific contributors.^[17] His first piece, "Gas" (1919), published in the first issue, tells of a young woman who imagines that she is being assaulted one night in London—only for the twist to reveal that it was all just a hallucination in the dentist's chair induced by the anesthetic.^[18]

Hitchcock's second piece was "The Woman's Part" (1919), which involves the conflicted emotions that a husband feels as he watches his actress wife perform onstage.^[19] "Sordid" (1920) surrounds an attempt to buy a sword from an antiques dealer, with another twist ending. The short story "And There Was No Rainbow" (1920) is Hitchcock's first brush with possibly censurable material. A young man goes out looking for a brothel, only to stumble into the house of his best friend's girl. "What's Who?" (1920) at first glance seems to be a precursor to Abbott and Costello's "Who's on First?" routine, as it is a short dialogue piece resembling antic dialogue from a music hall skit. It captures the confusion that occurs when a group of actors decide to put together a sketch in which they will impersonate themselves; in the story’s forty sentences, confusion regarding the questions “Who’s me?” and "Who’s you?” rise to comic emotional heights.^[20] "The History of Pea Eating" (1920) is a satirical disquisition on the various attempts that people have made over the centuries to eat peas successfully. His final piece, "Fedora" (1921), is his shortest and most enigmatic contribution, it also gives a strikingly accurate description of his future wife Alma Reville, whom he had not yet met.^[21]

British silent films[edit]

Hitchcock was a film fan from his teenage years, and in 1919 began his film career at the age of twenty, working as a title card designer for the London branch of the American firm Famous Players-Lasky, the production arm of Paramount Pictures, at Islington Studios.^[22] After Famous Players-Lasky pulled out of London in 1922, Hitchcock stayed as part of the studio staff, he was hired by a new firm run by Michael Balcon and others after being noticed at work on the short film Always Tell Your Wife in early 1923.^[23] In time Balcon's company took the name Gainsborough Pictures.^[24][25]

His rise from title designer to film director took five years, during this period, he became an unusual combination of screenwriter, art director, and assistant director on a series of five films for Balcon and director Graham Cutts: Woman to Woman (1923), The White Shadow (1924), The Passionate Adventure (1924), The Blackguard (1925), and The Prude's Fall (1925).^[26]

Hitchcock's 1925 collaboration with Cutts, The Blackguard (German: Die Prinzessin und der Geiger, 1925), was produced at the Babelsberg Studios in Potsdam, where Hitchcock observed part of the making of F. W. Murnau's film The Last Laugh (1924).^[27] He was impressed with Murnau's work and later used many techniques for the set design in his own productions;^[28] in a book-length interview with François Truffaut, Hitchcock also said that he was influenced by Fritz Lang's film Destiny (1921).^[26] He was likewise influenced by other foreign filmmakers whose work he absorbed as one of the earliest members of the "seminal" London Film Society, formed in 1925.^[29][30]

Hitchcock's first few films faced a string of bad luck, his first directing project came in 1922 with the aptly titled Number 13, filmed in London.^[31] The production was cancelled because of financial problems;^[31] the few scenes that had been finished at that point have been lost. Michael Balcon^[32] gave Hitchcock another opportunity for a directing credit with The Pleasure Garden (1925), a co-production of Gainsborough and the German firm Emelka, which he made at the Geiselgasteig studio near Munich in the summer of 1925, the film was a commercial flop.^[33] Next, Hitchcock directed a drama called The Mountain Eagle (1926), possibly released under the title Fear o' God, in the United States, this film is lost.^[34]

Hitchcock's luck changed with his first thriller, The Lodger: A Story of the London Fog (1927),^[35] a suspense film about the hunt for a Jack the Ripper type of serial killer in London.^[36] Released in January 1927, it was a major commercial and critical success in the United Kingdom,^[37] as with many of his earlier works, this film was influenced by Expressionist techniques Hitchcock had witnessed first-hand in Germany.^[38] Some commentators regard this piece as the first truly "Hitchcockian"^[39][40] film, incorporating such themes as the "wrong man".^[41]

Following the success of The Lodger, Hitchcock hired a publicist to help strengthen his growing reputation, on 2 December 1926, Hitchcock married his assistant director, Alma Reville,^[42] at the Brompton Oratory in South Kensington, London.^[36] Alma was to become Hitchcock's closest collaborator, but her contributions to his films (some of which were credited on screen) Hitchcock would discuss only in private, as she was keen to avoid public attention;^[43] in 1928, Hitchcock and Alma purchased a house named 'Winter's Grace', situated on Stroud Lane, Shamley Green, in Surrey. The building was originally a Tudor farmhouse dating from the 16th century, the Hitchcocks lived most weekdays at 153 Cromwell Road in London, whilst spending their weekends in Shamley Green entertaining guests. ^[44] Their only child, daughter Patricia, was born on 7 July of the same year.

Early sound films[edit]

Hitchcock began work on his tenth film, Blackmail (1929), when its production company British International Pictures (BIP) decided to convert its Elstree facility to sound, and to utilise that new technology in Blackmail. It was an early "talkie", often cited by film historians as a landmark film,^[45] and is often considered to be the first British talkie feature film.^[46][47]

Blackmail began the Hitchcock tradition of using famous landmarks as a backdrop for suspense sequences, with the climax of the film taking place on the dome of the British Museum. It also features one of his longest cameo appearances, which shows him being bothered by a small boy as he reads a book on the London Underground;^[48] in the PBS series The Men Who Made The Movies,^[49] Hitchcock explained how he used early sound recording as a special element of the film, stressing the word "knife" in a conversation with the woman suspected of murder,^[50] during this period, Hitchcock directed segments for a BIP musical film revue Elstree Calling (1930) and directed a short film featuring two Film Weekly scholarship winners entitled An Elastic Affair (1930).

In 1933, Hitchcock was once again working for Michael Balcon^[32] at Gaumont British,^[51] his first film for the company The Man Who Knew Too Much (1934) was a success and his second The 39 Steps (1935) is often considered one of the best films from his early period, with the British Film Institute ranking it the fourth best British film of the 20th century.^[52] The film was acclaimed in the UK, and it made Hitchcock a star in the US, and established the quintessential English "Hitchcock blonde" Madeleine Carroll as the template for his succession of ice cold and elegant leading ladies,^[53] this film was one of the first to exploit a "MacGuffin", a rather peripheral driver of the narrative. In The 39 Steps, the MacGuffin is a stolen set of design plans; in 1966, Hitchcock explained to French director François Truffaut:

There are two men sitting in a train going to Scotland and one man says to the other, "Excuse me, sir, but what is that strange parcel you have on the luggage rack above you?", "Oh", says the other, "that's a Macguffin.", "Well", says the first man, "what's a Macguffin?", The other answers, "It's an apparatus for trapping lions in the Scottish Highlands.", "But", says the first man, "there are no lions in the Scottish Highlands.", "Well", says the other, "then that's no Macguffin."^[54]

Hitchcock's next major success was The Lady Vanishes (1938), a fast-paced film about the search for kindly old Englishwoman Miss Froy (Dame May Whitty) who disappears while on board a train in the fictional country of Bandrika.^[55] The Guardian called the film "one of the greatest train movies from the genre's golden era", and a contender for the "title of best comedy thriller ever made".^[56] The BFI ranked it the 35th best British film of the 20th century,^[52] the film saw Hitchcock receive the 1939 New York Film Critics Circle Award for Best Director, the only time he received an award for his direction.^[57]

Hitchcock was lauded in Britain, where he was dubbed "Alfred the Great" by Picturegoer magazine. Additionally, his reputation was beginning to soar overseas by the end of the 1930s, with a New York Times feature writer stating: "Three unique and valuable institutions the British have that we in America have not. Magna Carta, the Tower Bridge and Alfred Hitchcock, the greatest director of screen melodramas in the world."^[58] Variety magazine referred to him as, "probably the best native director in England."^[59]

Early Hollywood years: 1931-1945[edit]

Hollywood and the Selznick contract[edit]

David O. Selznick signed Hitchcock to a seven-year contract beginning in March 1939,^[60] and set to end in 1946, which brought the Hitchcocks to Hollywood.^[61] The suspense and the gallows humour that had become Hitchcock's trademark in his films continued to appear in his American productions, the working arrangements with Selznick were less than ideal. Selznick suffered from constant financial problems, and Hitchcock was often displeased with Selznick's creative control over his films; in a later interview, Hitchcock commented, "[Selznick] was the Big Producer. ... Producer was king, The most flattering thing Mr. Selznick ever said about me—and it shows you the amount of control—he said I was the 'only director' he'd 'trust with a film'."^[62]

Selznick lent Hitchcock to the larger studios more often than producing Hitchcock's films himself. Selznick made only a few films each year, as did fellow independent producer Samuel Goldwyn, so he did not always have projects for Hitchcock to direct. Goldwyn had also negotiated with Hitchcock on a possible contract, only to be outbid by Selznick. Hitchcock was quickly impressed with the superior resources of the American studios compared with the financial limits that he had often faced in Britain.^[63]

The Selznick picture Rebecca (1940) was Hitchcock's first American film, set in a Hollywood version of England's Cornwall and based on a novel by English novelist Daphne du Maurier. The film stars Laurence Olivier and Joan Fontaine, the story concerns a naïve (and unnamed) young woman who marries a widowed aristocrat. She goes to live in his huge English country house, and struggles with the lingering reputation of his elegant and worldly first wife Rebecca, who died under mysterious circumstances, the film won Best Picture at the 13th Academy Awards.^[64] The statuette was given to Selznick, as the film's producer.^[64] Hitchcock was nominated for the Best Director award, his first of five such nominations, but did not win.

There were additional problems between Selznick and Hitchcock, with Selznick known to impose restrictive rules on Hitchcock, at the same time, Selznick complained about Hitchcock's "goddamn jigsaw cutting", which meant that the producer did not have nearly the leeway to create his own film as he liked, but had to follow Hitchcock's vision of the finished product.^[65]

Hitchcock's second American film was the thriller Foreign Correspondent (1940) with its plot set in Europe, based on Vincent Sheean's Personal History and produced by Walter Wanger. It was nominated for Best Picture that year. Hitchcock, along with many other British subjects, felt uneasy living and working in Hollywood while their country was at war; his concern resulted in a film that overtly supported the British war effort.^[66] The movie was filmed in the first year of the Second World War and was inspired by the rapidly changing events in Europe, as fictionally covered by an American newspaper reporter (portrayed by Joel McCrea), the film mixed footage of European scenes with scenes filmed on a Hollywood backlot. It avoided direct references to Nazism, Nazi Germany, and Germans to comply with Hollywood's Production Code censorship at the time.^[67]

Early war years[edit]

Hitchcock's films were diverse during the 1940s, ranging from the romantic comedy Mr. & Mrs. Smith (1941), to the courtroom drama The Paradine Case (1947), to the bleak film noir Shadow of a Doubt (1943). In September 1940 the Hitchcocks bought the 200-acre (0.81 km²) Cornwall Ranch near Scotts Valley in the Santa Cruz Mountains. The ranch became the holiday home of the Hitchcocks, their primary residence was an English-style home in Bel Air which was purchased in 1942.^[68] Suspicion (1941) marks Hitchcock's first film as a producer as well as director. It is set in England, and Hitchcock used the north coast of Santa Cruz, California for the English coastline sequence,^[22] this film is the first of four projects on which Cary Grant worked with Hitchcock, and it is one of the rare occasions that Grant was cast in a sinister role.^[22] Joan Fontaine^[69] won Best Actress Oscar^[22] for her performance. Grant plays a penniless dishonest con-artist whose actions raise suspicion and anxiety in his shy young English wife (Fontaine);^[70] in one scene Hitchcock uses a lightbulb to illuminate what might be a fatal glass of milk that Grant is bringing to his wife. The character that Grant plays in the film is a killer in the book upon which the film was based, Before the Fact by Francis Iles, but Hitchcock and the studio felt that, among other issues, Grant's image would be tarnished by that. So Hitchcock settled for an ambiguous finale, although, as he stated to François Truffaut, a murder would have suited him better.^[71]

Saboteur (1942) is the first of two films that Hitchcock made for Universal during the decade. Hitchcock was forced to use Universal contract player Robert Cummings and Priscilla Lane (a freelancer who signed a one-picture deal with Universal), both known for their work in comedies and light dramas.^[72] Breaking with Hollywood conventions of the time, Hitchcock did extensive location filming, especially in New York City, and depicted a confrontation between a suspected saboteur (Cummings) and a real saboteur (Norman Lloyd) atop the Statue of Liberty, that year, he also directed Have You Heard?, a photographic dramatisation of the dangers of rumours during wartime, for Life magazine.^[73]

Hitchcock also wrote a mystery story for Look magazine in 1943, "The Murder of Monty Woolley", this was a sequence of captioned photographs inviting the reader to inspect the pictures for clues to the murderer's identity; Hitchcock cast the performers as themselves, such as Woolley, Doris Merrick and make-up man Guy Pearce. The article was reprinted in Games Magazine in November/December 1980; in 2012, Hitchcock featured in the BBC Radio 4 series The New Elizabethans to mark the Diamond Jubilee of Queen Elizabeth II. A panel of 7 academics, journalists and historians named Hitchcock among the group of people in the UK "whose actions during the reign of Elizabeth II have had a significant impact on lives in these islands and given the age its character".^[74]

Shadow of a Doubt (1943) was Hitchcock's personal favourite of all his films and the second of the early Universal films.^[75] It is about young Charlotte "Charlie" Newton (Teresa Wright), who suspects her beloved uncle Charlie Oakley (Joseph Cotten) of being a serial murderer. Hitchcock again filmed extensively on location, this time in the Northern California city of Santa Rosa during the summer of 1942. Working at 20th Century Fox, Hitchcock adapted a script of John Steinbeck's, which recorded the experiences of the survivors of a German U-boat attack in the film Lifeboat (1944). The action sequences were shot in a small boat in the studio water tank, the locale posed problems for Hitchcock's traditional cameo appearance. That was solved by having Hitchcock's image appear in a newspaper that William Bendix is reading in the boat, showing the director in a before-and-after advertisement for "Reduco-Obesity Slayer".^[76] While at Fox, Hitchcock seriously considered directing the film version of A. J. Cronin's novel about a Catholic priest in China, The Keys of the Kingdom, but the plans for this fell through. John M. Stahl ended up directing the 1944 film, which was produced by Joseph L. Mankiewicz and starred Gregory Peck.^[77]

Wartime non-fiction films[edit]

Hitchcock returned to the UK for an extended visit in late 1943 and early 1944. While there he made two short films in French for the British Ministry of Information: Bon Voyage and Aventure Malgache.^[78] The two British propaganda films made for the Free French were the only films that Hitchcock made in the French language, and they "feature typical Hitchcockian touches",^[79] on his motivation for making the films, Hitchcock stated: "I felt the need to make a little contribution to the war effort, and I was both overweight and over-age for military service. I knew that if I did nothing, I'd regret it for the rest of my life."^[80] From late June to late July 1945, Hitchcock served as "treatment advisor" on a Holocaust documentary which used footage provided by the Allied Forces,^[81] it was produced by Sidney Bernstein of the British Ministry of Information, and was assembled in London. Bernstein brought his future 1948–49 production partner Hitchcock on board as a consultant for the film editing process for the British Ministry of Information and the American Office of War Information.^[81][82]

The film-makers were commissioned to provide irrefutable evidence of the Nazis' crimes, and the film recorded the liberation of Nazi concentration camps, the film was originally intended to be broadcast to the Germans following World War II, but the British government deemed it too traumatic to be shown to the already-shocked post-War population.^[83] Instead, it was transferred in 1952 from the British War Office film vaults to London's Imperial War Museum and remained unreleased until 1985, when an edited version was first broadcast in May 1985 as an episode of the PBS network series Frontline under the title which the Imperial War Museum had given it: Memory of the Camps.^[84][85] The full-length version of the film German Concentration Camps Factual Survey was completed in 2014, and was restored by film scholars at the Imperial War Museum.^[81]

Post-war Hollywood years: 1945-1953[edit]

Later Selznick films[edit]

Hitchcock worked for Selznick again when he directed Spellbound (1945), which explores psychoanalysis^[86] and features a dream sequence designed by Salvador Dalí. Gregory Peck plays amnesiac Dr. Anthony Edwardes under the treatment of analyst Dr. Peterson (Ingrid Bergman), who falls in love with him while trying to unlock his repressed past,^[87] the dream sequence as it appears in the film is ten minutes shorter than was originally envisioned, having been edited by Selznick to make it "play" more effectively.^[88] Two point-of-view shots were achieved by building a large wooden hand (which would appear to belong to the character whose point of view the camera took) and out-sized props for it to hold: a bucket-sized glass of milk and a large wooden gun, for added novelty and impact, the climactic gunshot was hand-coloured red on some copies of the black-and-white film. The original musical score by Miklós Rózsa makes use of the electronic theremin, and some of it was later adapted by the composer into Rozsa's Piano Concerto Op. 31 (1967) for piano and orchestra.

Notorious (1946) followed Spellbound. Hitchcock gave a book-length interview to François Truffaut, in which he said that Selznick had sold the director, the two stars (Grant and Bergman), and the screenplay (by Ben Hecht) to RKO Radio Pictures as a "package" for $500,000 due to cost overruns on Selznick's Duel in the Sun (1946). Notorious stars Hitchcock regulars Bergman and Grant, and features a plot about Nazis, uranium and South America. His prescient use of uranium as a plot device led to Hitchcock's being briefly under FBI surveillance. McGilligan writes that Hitchcock consulted Robert Millikan of the California Institute of Technology about the development of an atomic bomb. Selznick complained the notion was "science fiction", only to be confronted by the news stories of the detonation of two atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in Japan in August 1945.^[89]

Sidney Bernstein and Transatlantic Pictures[edit]

Hitchcock formed an independent production company with his friend Sidney Bernstein called Transatlantic Pictures,^[90] through which he made two films, his first in colour and making use of long takes. With Rope (1948), Hitchcock experimented with marshalling suspense in a confined environment, as he had done earlier with Lifeboat (1944), the film appears to have been shot in a single take, but it was actually shot in 10 takes ranging from 4-½ to 10 minutes each, a 10-minute length of film being the maximum that a camera's film magazine could hold at the time. Some transitions between reels were hidden by having a dark object fill the entire screen for a moment. Hitchcock used those points to hide the cut, and began the next take with the camera in the same place, it features James Stewart in the leading role, and was the first of four films that Stewart made with Hitchcock. It was inspired by the Leopold and Loeb case of the 1920s. Under Capricorn (1949), set in 19th century Australia, also uses the short-lived technique of long takes, but to a more limited extent. He again used Technicolor in this production, then returned to black-and-white films for several years. Transatlantic Pictures became inactive after these two unsuccessful films, however, Hitchcock continued to participate in the production and ownership his own films for the rest of his life.^[91][92]

Hitchcock filmed Stage Fright (1950) at studios in Elstree, England where he had worked during his British International Pictures contract many years before,^[93] he matched one of Warner Bros.'^[94] most popular stars, Jane Wyman, with the expatriate German actress Marlene Dietrich and used several prominent British actors, including Michael Wilding, Richard Todd and Alastair Sim. This was Hitchcock's first proper production for Warner Bros., which had distributed Rope and Under Capricorn, because Transatlantic Pictures was experiencing financial difficulties.^[95]

His film Strangers on a Train (1951) was based on the novel by Patricia Highsmith; in it, Hitchcock combined many elements from his preceding films. He approached Dashiell Hammett to write the dialogue, but Raymond Chandler took over, then left over disagreements with the director;^[96] in the film, two men casually meet, one of whom speculates on a foolproof method to murder; he suggests that two people, each wishing to do away with someone, should each perform the other's murder. Farley Granger's role was as the innocent victim of the scheme, while Robert Walker, previously known for "boy-next-door" roles, played the villain.^[97] I Confess (1953) was set in Quebec with Montgomery Clift as a Catholic priest.

The canonical Hitchcock films: 1954-1960[edit]

Early peak years: Rear Window and Vertigo[edit]

I Confess was followed by three popular colour films starring Grace Kelly. Dial M for Murder (1954) was adapted from the stage play by Frederick Knott. Ray Milland plays the scheming villain, an ex-tennis pro who tries to murder his unfaithful wife (Kelly) for her money. She kills the hired assassin in self-defence, so Milland manipulates the evidence to make it look like a premeditated murder by his wife, her lover Mark Halliday (Robert Cummings) and Police Inspector Hubbard (John Williams) work urgently to save her from execution.^[98] With Dial M, Hitchcock experimented with 3D cinematography, with the film now being available in the 3D format on Blu-ray.

Hitchcock moved to Paramount Pictures and filmed Rear Window (1954), starring James Stewart and Kelly again, as well as Thelma Ritter and Raymond Burr. Stewart's character is a photographer (based on Robert Capa) who must temporarily use a wheelchair. Out of boredom, he begins observing his neighbours across the courtyard, and then becomes convinced that one of them (Raymond Burr) has murdered his wife. Stewart tries to convince both his policeman buddy (Wendell Corey) and his glamorous model-girlfriend (Kelly, whom screenwriter John Michael Hayes based on his own wife), and eventually he succeeds,^[99] as with Lifeboat and Rope, the principal characters are depicted in confined or cramped quarters, in this case to Stewart's small studio apartment overlooking a large courtyard. Hitchcock uses close-ups of Stewart's face to show his character's reactions to all that he sees, "from the comic voyeurism directed at his neighbours to his helpless terror watching Kelly and Burr in the villain's apartment".^[99]

From 1955 to 1965, Hitchcock was the host of the television series titled Alfred Hitchcock Presents.^[100] While his films had made Hitchcock's name strongly associated with suspense, the TV series made Hitchcock a celebrity himself, his irony-tinged voice and signature droll delivery, gallows humour, iconic image and mannerisms became instantly recognisable and were often the subject of parody. The title-sequence of the show pictured a minimalist caricature of Hitchcock's profile (he drew it himself; it is composed of only nine strokes), which his real silhouette then filled. His introductions before the stories in his programme always included some sort of wry humour, such as the description of a recent multi-person execution hampered by having only one electric chair, while two are now shown with a sign "Two chairs—no waiting!". He directed 18 episodes of the TV series himself, which aired from 1955 to 1965 in two versions, it became The Alfred Hitchcock Hour in 1962.^[101]

The series theme tune was Funeral March of a Marionette, by the French composer Charles Gounod (1818–1893),^[102][103] the composer of the 1859 opera, Faust. The composer Bernard Herrmann suggested the music be used. Arthur Fiedler and the Boston Pops Orchestra included the piece on one of their extended play 45-rpm discs for RCA Victor during the 1950s. In the 1980s, a new version of Alfred Hitchcock Presents was produced for television, making use of Hitchcock's original introductions in a colourised form.^[104] Hitchcock also appears as a character in the popular juvenile detective book series, Alfred Hitchcock and the Three Investigators. The long-running detective series was created by Robert Arthur, who wrote the first several books, although other authors took over after he left the series, the Three Investigators—Jupiter Jones, Bob Andrews and Peter Crenshaw—were amateur detectives, slightly younger than the Hardy Boys. In the introduction to each book, "Alfred Hitchcock" introduces the mystery, and he sometimes refers a case to the boys to solve, at the end of each book, the boys report to Hitchcock, and sometimes give him a memento of their case.^[105]

In 1955, Hitchcock became a United States citizen,^[106] his third Grace Kelly film To Catch a Thief (1955) is set in the French Riviera, and pairs her with Cary Grant. He plays retired thief John Robie, who becomes the prime suspect for a spate of robberies in the Riviera. A thrill-seeking American heiress played by Kelly surmises his true identity and tries to seduce him. "Despite the obvious age disparity between Grant and Kelly and a lightweight plot, the witty script (loaded with double entendres) and the good-natured acting proved a commercial success."^[107] It was Hitchcock's last film with Kelly, she married Prince Rainier of Monaco in 1956, and ended her film career. Hitchcock then remade his own 1934 film The Man Who Knew Too Much in 1956, this time, the film starred James Stewart and Doris Day, who sang the theme song "Que Sera, Sera", which won the Oscar for Best Original Song and became a big hit for her. They play a couple whose son is kidnapped to prevent them from interfering with an assassination, as in the 1934 film, the climax takes place at the Royal Albert Hall, London.^[108]

At the height of Hitchcock's success in 1956, he was also asked to introduce a set of books with his name attached, the series was a collection of short stories by popular short-story writers, primarily focused on suspense and thrillers. These titles included Alfred Hitchcock's Anthology, Alfred Hitchcock Presents: Stories to be Read with the Door Locked, Alfred Hitchcock's Monster Museum, Alfred Hitchcock's Supernatural Tales of Terror and Suspense, Alfred Hitchcock's Spellbinders in Suspense, Alfred Hitchcock's Witch's Brew, Alfred Hitchcock's Ghostly Gallery, Alfred Hitchcock's A Hangman's Dozen, Alfred Hitchcock's Stories Not For the Nervous and Alfred Hitchcock's Haunted Houseful. Hitchcock himself was not actually involved in the reading, reviewing, editing or selection of the short stories, some notable writers whose works were used in the collection include Shirley Jackson (Strangers in Town, The Lottery), T. H. White (The Once and Future King), Robert Bloch, H. G. Wells (The War of the Worlds), Robert Louis Stevenson, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Mark Twain and the creator of The Three Investigators, Robert Arthur. In a similar manner, Hitchcock's name was licensed for a digest-sized monthly, Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine, which has been published since 1956.

The Wrong Man (1957), Hitchcock's final film for Warner Bros., is a low-key black-and-white production based on a real-life case of mistaken identity reported in Life magazine in 1953. This was the only film of Hitchcock to star Henry Fonda, playing a Stork Club musician mistaken for a liquor store thief, who is arrested and tried for robbery while his wife (Vera Miles) emotionally collapses under the strain. Hitchcock told Truffaut that his lifelong fear of the police attracted him to the subject and was embedded in many scenes.^[110] Vertigo (1958) again starred James Stewart, this time with Kim Novak and Barbara Bel Geddes. Stewart plays "Scottie", a former police investigator suffering from acrophobia, who develops an obsession with a woman that he is shadowing (Novak). Scottie's obsession leads to tragedy, and this time Hitchcock does not opt for a happy ending, some critics, including Donald Spoto and Roger Ebert, agree that Vertigo represents the director's most personal and revealing film, dealing with the Pygmalion-like obsessions of a man who crafts a woman into the woman that he desires. Vertigo explores more frankly and at greater length his interest in the relation between sex and death than any other film in his filmography.^[111] Hitchcock, and Vertigo, were later paid homage-to in the 1977 Mel Brooks film High Anxiety.

Vertigo contains a camera technique developed by Irmin Roberts that has been copied many times by filmmakers commonly referred to as a dolly zoom. It was premiered in the San Sebastián International Film Festival, where Hitchcock won a Silver Seashell.^[112] Vertigo is considered a classic today, but it met with some negative reviews and poor box office receipts upon its release, and was the last collaboration between Stewart and Hitchcock.^[113] Its critical reputation grew; in the 2002 Sight & Sound polls, it ranked just behind Citizen Kane (1941); ten years later, in the same magazine, it was voted by critics as the best film ever made.^[109] By this time, Hitchcock had filmed in many areas of the U.S.^[114]

Later peak years: North by Northwest and Psycho[edit]

Hitchcock followed Vertigo with three more successful films, which are also recognised as among his best films: North by Northwest (1959), Psycho (1960) and The Birds (1963). In North by Northwest, Cary Grant portrays Roger Thornhill, a Madison Avenue advertising executive who is mistaken for a government secret agent,^[115] he is hotly pursued across the United States by enemy agents, apparently one of them being Eve Kendall (Eva Marie Saint), who is in reality working undercover. During its opening two-week run at Radio City Music Hall, the film grossed $404,056, setting a record in that theater's non-holiday gross,^[116] at that time, Time magazine called the film "smoothly troweled and thoroughly entertaining."^[117] A. H. Weiler of The New York Times made it a "Critic's Pick" and said it was the "year's most scenic, intriguing and merriest chase"; Weiler complimented the two leads:

Cary Grant, a veteran member of the Hitchcock acting varsity, was never more at home than in this role of the advertising-man-on-the-lam, he handles the grimaces, the surprised look, the quick smile ... and all the derring-do with professional aplomb and grace. In casting Eva Marie Saint as his romantic vis-à-vis, Mr. Hitchcock has plumbed some talents not shown by the actress heretofore, although she is seemingly a hard, designing type, she also emerges both the sweet heroine and a glamorous charmer.^[118]

Psycho is among Hitchcock's most widely seen films.^[119][120] Produced on a constrained budget of $800,000, it was shot in black-and-white on a spare set using crew members from his television show Alfred Hitchcock Presents,^[121] the unprecedented violence of the shower scene, the early death of the heroine and the innocent lives extinguished by a disturbed murderer became the defining hallmarks of a new horror film genre and have been copied by many authors of subsequent films.^[122] The public loved the film, with lines stretching outside of cinemas as people had to wait for the next showing, it broke box-office records in the United Kingdom, France, South America, the United States and Canada and was a moderate success in Australia for a brief period.^[91] It was the most profitable film of Hitchcock's career; Hitchcock personally earned well in excess of $15 million. He subsequently swapped his rights to Psycho and his TV anthology for 150,000 shares of MCA, making him the third largest shareholder in MCA Inc. and his own boss at Universal, in theory at least, but that did not stop them from interfering with him.^[91][92] Following the first film directed by Hitchcock, Psycho has since become an American horror franchise consisting of six films loosely based on the Psycho novels by Robert Bloch, namely Psycho, Psycho II, Psycho III, Bates Motel, Psycho IV: The Beginning, the scene-by-scene colour 1998 remake of the original film, and additional merchandise spanning various media.

After 1961 to death: 1961-1980[edit]

After 1961[edit]

The Birds (1963), inspired by a short story by English author Daphne du Maurier and by a news story about a mysterious infestation of birds in Capitola, California, was Hitchcock's 49th film, and the location scenes were filmed in Bodega Bay, California.^[123] Newcomer Tippi Hedren co-starred with Rod Taylor and Suzanne Pleshette, the scenes of the birds attacking included hundreds of shots mixing live and animated sequences. The cause of the birds' attack is left unanswered.^[124] Hitchcock cast Hedren again opposite Sean Connery in Marnie (1964), a romantic drama and psychological thriller. Decades later, Hedren called Hitchcock a misogynist and said that Hitchcock effectively ended her career by keeping her to an exclusive contract for two years when she rebuffed his sexual advances.^[125][126] However, Hedren appeared in two TV shows during the two years after Marnie;^[127] in 2012, Hedren described Hitchcock as a "sad character"; a man of "unusual genius", yet "evil, and deviant, almost to the point of dangerous, because of the effect that he could have on people that were totally unsuspecting".^[128] In response, a Daily Telegraph article quoted several actresses who had worked with Hitchcock, including Eva Marie Saint, Doris Day and Kim Novak, none of whom shared Hedren's opinion about him.^[129] Novak, who worked on Hitchcock's Vertigo, told the Telegraph "I never saw him make a pass at anybody or act strange to anybody."^[130]

Psycho and The Birds had unconventional soundtracks: the screeching strings played in the murder scene in Psycho were unusually dissonant, and The Birds dispensed with any conventional score, instead using a new technique of electronically produced sound effects. Bernard Herrmann composed the former and was a consultant on the latter,^[131] also acting as composer for Marnie.

Failing health reduced Hitchcock's output during the last two decades of his life. Biographer Stephen Rebello claimed Universal "forced" two movies on him, Torn Curtain (1966) and Topaz (1969).^[92][132] Both were spy thrillers set with Cold War-related themes, the first, Torn Curtain (1966), with Paul Newman and Julie Andrews, precipitated the bitter end of the twelve-year collaboration between Hitchcock and composer Bernard Herrmann. Herrmann was sacked when Hitchcock was unsatisfied with his score, and replaced with British composer John Addison. Topaz (1969), based on a Leon Uris novel, is partly set in Cuba. Both received mixed reviews from critics.

Hitchcock returned to Britain to make his penultimate film Frenzy (1972), after two espionage films, the plot marks a return to the murder thriller genre, and is based upon the novel Goodbye Piccadilly, Farewell Leicester Square. The plot centres on a serial killer in contemporary London, the basic story recycles his early film The Lodger. Richard Blaney (Jon Finch), a volatile barman with a history of explosive anger, becomes the prime suspect in the investigation into the "Necktie Murders", which are actually committed by his friend Bob Rusk (Barry Foster).^[133] This time, Hitchcock makes the victim and villain kindreds, rather than opposites, as in Strangers on a Train. Only one of them, however, has crossed the line to murder,^[133] for the first time, Hitchcock allowed nudity and profane language, which had previously been taboo, in one of his films. He also shows rare sympathy for the policeman on the case and his comic domestic life.^[134]

Biographers have noted that Hitchcock had always pushed the limits of film censorship, often managing to fool Joseph Breen, the longtime head of Hollywood's Production Code. Many times Hitchcock slipped in subtle hints of improprieties forbidden by censorship until the mid-1960s. Yet Patrick McGilligan wrote that Breen and others often realised that Hitchcock was inserting such things and were actually amused as well as alarmed by Hitchcock's "inescapable inferences".^[135] Beginning with Torn Curtain, Hitchcock was finally able to blatantly include plot elements previously forbidden in American films.

Family Plot (1976) was Hitchcock's last film. It relates the escapades of "Madam" Blanche Tyler, played by Barbara Harris, a fraudulent spiritualist, and her taxi driver lover Bruce Dern, making a living from her phony powers. William Devane, Karen Black, Katherine Helmond, and Cathleen Nesbitt co-starred. It is the only Hitchcock film scored by John Williams. While Family Plot was based on the Victor Canning novel The Rainbird Pattern, the novel's tone is more sinister and dark than what Hitchcock wanted for the film. Screenwriter Ernest Lehman originally wrote the film with a dark tone but was pushed to a lighter, more comical tone by Hitchcock.

Last project and death[edit]

Near the end of his life, Hitchcock had worked on the script for a projected spy thriller, The Short Night, collaborating with James Costigan, Ernest Lehman and David Freeman. Despite some preliminary work, the screenplay was never filmed, this was caused primarily by Hitchcock's seriously declining health and his concerns for his wife, Alma, who had suffered a stroke. The screenplay was eventually published in Freeman's 1999 book The Last Days of Alfred Hitchcock.^[136][137]

Hitchcock died aged 80 in his Bel Air home of renal failure on 29 April 1980.^[68][138] While biographer Spoto wrote that Hitchcock "rejected suggestions that he allow a priest ... to come for a visit, or celebrate a quiet, informal ritual at the house for his comfort", Jesuit priest Mark Henninger wrote that he and fellow priest Tom Sullivan celebrated Mass at the filmmaker's home; Sullivan heard Hitchcock's confession.^[139] He was survived by his wife and their daughter.^[140] Lew Wasserman, board chairman and chief executive officer of MCA Inc. and previously Hitchcock’s longtime agent, stated:

I am deeply saddened by the death of my close friend and colleague, Sir Alfred Hitchcock, whose death today at his home deprives us all of a great artist and an even greater human being. Almost every tribute paid to Sir Alfred in the past by film critics and historians has emphasised his continuing influence in the world of film, it is that continuing influence, embodied in the magnificent series of films he has given the world, during the last half-century, that will preserve his great spirit, his humour and his wit, not only for us but for succeeding generations of film-goers.^[68]

Hitchcock's funeral Mass was held at Good Shepherd Catholic Church in Beverly Hills on 30 April 1980, after which his body was cremated and his remains were scattered over the Pacific Ocean on 10 May 1980.^[141]

Aesthetic[edit]

Psychology of characters[edit]

Hitchcock's films sometimes feature characters struggling in their relationships with their mothers; in North by Northwest (1959), Roger Thornhill (Cary Grant) is an innocent man ridiculed by his mother for insisting that shadowy, murderous men are after him. In The Birds (1963), the Rod Taylor character, an innocent man, finds his world under attack by vicious birds, and struggles to free himself from a clinging mother (Jessica Tandy). The killer in Frenzy (1972) has a loathing of women but idolises his mother, the villain Bruno in Strangers on a Train hates his father, but has an incredibly close relationship with his mother (played by Marion Lorne). Sebastian (Claude Rains) in Notorious has a clearly conflictual relationship with his mother, who is (correctly) suspicious of his new bride Alicia Huberman (Ingrid Bergman). Norman Bates has troubles with his mother in Psycho.

Hitchcock heroines tend to be blondes,^[142][143] the famous victims in The Lodger are all blondes. In The 39 Steps, Hitchcock's glamorous blonde star, Madeleine Carroll, is put in handcuffs; in Marnie (1964), the title character (played by Tippi Hedren) is a thief. In To Catch a Thief (1955), Francie (Grace Kelly) offers to help a man she believes is a burglar; in Rear Window, Lisa (Grace Kelly again) risks her life by breaking into Lars Thorwald's apartment. The best-known example is in Psycho where Janet Leigh's unfortunate character steals $40,000 and is murdered by a reclusive psychopath. Hitchcock's last blonde heroine was Barbara Harris as a phony psychic turned amateur sleuth in Family Plot (1976), his final film; in the same film, the diamond smuggler played by Karen Black could also fit that role, as she wears a long blonde wig in various scenes and becomes increasingly uncomfortable about her line of work. The English 'Hitchcock blonde' was based on his preference for the heroines to have an "indirect" sex appeal of English women, ladylike in public, but whores in the bedroom, with Hitchcock stating to Truffaut:

I think the most interesting women, sexually, are the English women. I feel that the English women, the Swedes, the northern Germans and Scandinavians are a great deal more exciting than the Latin, the Italian and the French women. Sex should not be advertised. An English girl, looking like a schoolteacher, is apt to get into a cab with you and, to your surprise, she'll probably pull a man's pants open. ... Without the element of surprise the scenes become meaningless. There's no possibility to discover sex.^[68]

Signature appearances in his films[edit]

Hitchcock appears briefly in most of his own films, for example, he is seen struggling to get a double bass onto a train (Strangers on a Train), walking dogs out of a pet shop (The Birds), fixing a neighbour's clock (Rear Window), as a shadow (Family Plot), sitting at a table in a photograph (Dial M for Murder), and missing a bus (North by Northwest).

Themes, plot devices and motifs[edit]

Hitchcock returned several times to cinematic devices such as suspense,^[144] the audience as voyeur,^[145] and his well-known "MacGuffin," a plot device that is essential to the characters on the screen, but is irrelevant to the audience. Thus, the MacGuffin was always hazily described (in North By Northwest, Leo G. Carroll describes James Mason as an "importer-exporter.") A central theme of Hitchcock's films was murder and the psychology behind it.^[146][147] His work often features the theme of fugitives on the run alongside "icy blonde" female characters.^[142][143]

Inspiration for themes[edit]

In a 1963 interview with Italian journalist Oriana Fallaci, Hitchcock was asked how in spite of appearing to be a pleasant, innocuous man, he seemed to enjoy making films involving suspense and terrifying crime, he responded:

I'm English, the English use a lot of imagination with their crimes. I don't get such a kick out of anything as much as out of imagining a crime. When I'm writing a story and I come to a crime, I think happily: now wouldn't it be nice to have him die like this? And then, even more happily, I think: at this point people will start yelling. It must be because I spent three years studying with the Jesuits, they used to terrify me to death, with everything, and now I'm getting my own back by terrifying other people.^[148]

Style of working[edit]

Writing[edit]

Hitchcock once commented, "The writer and I plan out the entire script down to the smallest detail, and when we're finished all that's left to do is to shoot the film. Actually, it's only when one enters the studio that one enters the area of compromise. Really, the novelist has the best casting since he doesn't have to cope with the actors and all the rest." In an interview with Roger Ebert in 1969, Hitchcock elaborated further:

Once the screenplay is finished, I'd just as soon not make the film at all ... I have a strongly visual mind. I visualise a picture right down to the final cuts. I write all this out in the greatest detail in the script, and then I don't look at the script while I'm shooting. I know it off by heart, just as an orchestra conductor needs not look at the score ... When you finish the script, the film is perfect, but in shooting it you lose perhaps 40 percent of your original conception.^[149]

In Writing with Hitchcock, a book-length study of Hitchcock's working method with his writers, author Steven DeRosa noted that, "Although he rarely did any actual 'writing', especially on his Hollywood productions, Hitchcock supervised and guided his writers through every draft, insisting on a strict attention to detail and a preference for telling the story through visual rather than verbal means. While this exasperated some writers, others admitted the director inspired them to do their very best work. Hitchcock often emphasised that he took no screen credit for the writing of his films. However, over time the work of many of his writers has been attributed solely to Hitchcock's creative genius, a misconception he rarely went out of his way to correct. Notwithstanding his technical brilliance as a director, Hitchcock relied on his writers a great deal."^[150]

Storyboards and production[edit]

According to the majority of commentators, Hitchcock's films were extensively storyboarded to the finest detail, he was reported to have never even bothered looking through the viewfinder, since he did not need to, though in publicity photos he was shown doing so. He also used this as an excuse to never have to change his films from his initial vision. If a studio asked him to change a film, he would claim that it was already shot in a single way, and that there were no alternate takes to consider. However, this view of Hitchcock as a director who relied more on pre-production than on the actual production itself has been challenged by the book Hitchcock at Work, written by Bill Krohn, the American correspondent of Cahiers du cinéma. Krohn, after investigating several script revisions, notes to other production personnel written by or to Hitchcock alongside inspection of storyboards, and other production material, has observed that Hitchcock's work often deviated from how the screenplay was written or how the film was originally envisioned, he noted that the myth of storyboards in relation to Hitchcock, often regurgitated by generations of commentators on his films, was to a great degree perpetuated by Hitchcock himself or the publicity arm of the studios. A great example would be the celebrated crop-spraying sequence of North by Northwest which was not storyboarded at all, after the scene was filmed, the publicity department asked Hitchcock to make storyboards to promote the film and Hitchcock in turn hired an artist to match the scenes in detail.^[151]

Even when storyboards were made, scenes that were shot differed from them significantly. Krohn's extensive analysis of the production of Hitchcock classics like Notorious reveals that Hitchcock was flexible enough to change a film's conception during its production. Another example Krohn notes is the American remake of The Man Who Knew Too Much, whose shooting schedule commenced without a finished script and moreover went over schedule, something that, as Krohn notes, was not an uncommon occurrence on many of Hitchcock's films, including Strangers on a Train and Topaz. While Hitchcock did do a great deal of preparation for all his films, he was fully cognisant that the actual film-making process often deviated from the best-laid plans and was flexible to adapt to the changes and needs of production as his films were not free from the normal hassles faced and common routines utilised during many other film productions.^[152]

Krohn's work also sheds light on Hitchcock's practice of generally shooting in chronological order, which he notes sent many films over budget and over schedule and, more importantly, differed from the standard operating procedure of Hollywood in the Studio System Era. Equally important is Hitchcock's tendency to shoot alternate takes of scenes, this differed from coverage in that the films were not necessarily shot from varying angles so as to give the editor options to shape the film how he/she chooses (often under the producer's aegis).^[153] Rather they represented Hitchcock's tendency of giving himself options in the editing room, where he would provide advice to his editors after viewing a rough cut of the work. According to Krohn, this and a great deal of other information revealed through his research of Hitchcock's personal papers, script revisions and the like refute the notion of Hitchcock as a director who was always in control of his films, whose vision of his films did not change during production, which Krohn notes has remained the central long-standing myth of Alfred Hitchcock, his fastidiousness and attention to detail also found its way into each film poster for his films. Hitchcock preferred to work with the best talent of his day—film poster designers such as Bill Gold and Saul Bass—who would produce posters that accurately represented his films.^[154][155]

Approach to actors[edit]

Hitchcock became known for his alleged observation, "Actors are cattle", he once said that he first made this remark as early as the late 1920s, in connection to stage actors who were snobbish about motion pictures. However, the actor Michael Redgrave said that Hitchcock had made the statement during the filming of The Lady Vanishes (1938). Later, in Hollywood, during the filming of Mr. & Mrs. Smith (1941), Carole Lombard brought some heifers onto the set with name tags of Lombard, Robert Montgomery and Gene Raymond, the stars of the film, to surprise the director.^[156] Hitchcock said he was misquoted: "I said 'Actors should be treated like cattle'."^[157]

Much of Hitchcock's supposed dislike of actors has been exaggerated. Hitchcock simply did not tolerate the method approach, as he believed that actors should only concentrate on their performances and leave work on script and character to the directors and screenwriters; in a Sight & Sound interview, he stated that, 'the method actor is OK in the theatre because he has a free space to move about. But when it comes to cutting the face and what he sees and so forth, there must be some discipline',^[158] he often used the same actors in many of his films.

During the making of Lifeboat, Walter Slezak, who played the German villain, stated that Hitchcock knew the mechanics of acting better than anyone he knew. Several critics have observed that despite his reputation as a man who disliked actors, several actors who worked with him gave fine, often brilliant performances and these performances contribute to the film's success, as more fully discussed above, actress Dolly Haas, who was a personal friend of Hitchcock and who acted for him in the 1953 film I Confess, stated that Hitchcock regarded actors as "animated props".

For Hitchcock, the actors, like the props, were part of the film's setting, as he said to Truffaut:

In my opinion, the chief requisite for an actor is the ability to do nothing well, which is by no means as easy as it sounds, he should be willing to be utilised and wholly integrated into the picture by the director and the camera. He must allow the camera to determine the proper emphasis and the most effective dramatic highlights.^[159]

Addressing his earlier statement comparing actors to cattle, Hitchcock said in an interview with François Truffaut:

I'm not quite sure in what context I might have made such a statement, it may have been made ... when we used actors who were simultaneously performing in stage plays. When they had a matinee, and I suspected they were allowing themselves plenty of time for a very leisurely lunch. And this meant that we had to shoot our scenes at breakneck speed so that the actors could get out on time. I couldn't help feeling that if they'd been really conscientious, they'd have swallowed their sandwich in the cab, on the way to the theatre, and get there in time to put on their make-up and go on stage. I had no use for that kind of actor.^[156]

In the late 1950s, French New Wave critics, especially Éric Rohmer, Claude Chabrol and François Truffaut, were among the first to see and promote Hitchcock's films as artistic works. Hitchcock was one of the first directors to whom they applied their auteur theory, which stresses the artistic authority of the director in the filmmaking process.^[160] Hitchcock's innovations and vision have influenced a great number of filmmakers, producers, and actors, his influence helped start a trend for film directors to control artistic aspects of their films without answering to the film's producer.

Awards and honours[edit]

Hitchcock was a multiple nominee and winner of a number of prestigious awards, receiving two Golden Globes, eight Laurel Awards, five lifetime achievement awards (including the first BAFTA Academy Fellowship Award), as well as being nominated five times for an Academy Award for Best Director (albeit never winning). His film Rebecca (nominated for 11 Oscars) won the Academy Award for Best Picture of 1940—another Hitchcock film, Foreign Correspondent, was also nominated that year.^[161] Hitchcock has two stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, receiving one for his contribution to television and another for his work in motion pictures.^[162] Following a 2007 critics' poll by Britain's Daily Telegraph in which he was ranked Britain's greatest filmmaker, one scholar wrote: "Hitchcock did more than any director to shape modern cinema, which would be utterly different without him, his flair was for narrative, cruelly withholding crucial information (from his characters and from the audience) and engaging the emotions of the audience like no one else."^[163][164]

After refusing a CBE in 1962,^[165] Hitchcock received a knighthood in December 1979 when he was appointed a Knight Commander of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire (KBE) by Queen Elizabeth II in the 1980 New Year Honours.^[166][167] Asked by a reporter why it had taken the Queen so long, Hitchcock quipped, "I suppose it was a matter of carelessness".^[168] Prior to receiving his knighthood, critic Roger Ebert wrote: "Other British directors like Sir Carol Reed and Sir Charlie Chaplin were knighted years ago, while Hitchcock, universally considered by film students to be one of the greatest filmmakers of all time, was passed over".^[169] An English Heritage blue plaque, unveiled in 1999, marks where Hitchcock lived in London at 153 Cromwell Road, Kensington and Chelsea, SW5.^[170] In 2002, the magazine MovieMaker named Hitchcock the most influential filmmaker of all time;^[171] in 2012, Hitchcock was among the British cultural icons selected by artist Sir Peter Blake to appear in a new version of his most famous artwork, the Beatles' Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band album cover, in order to celebrate British cultural figures whom he most admires.^[172][173]

Hitchcock directed more than fifty feature films in a career spanning six decades and is often regarded as one of the most influential directors in cinematic history;^[171][174] in 1978, film critic John Russell Taylor described Hitchcock as "the most universally recognizable person in the world", and "a straightforward middle-class Englishman who just happened to be an artistic genius".^[169] Hitchcock has been portrayed in several films after 2010 including Anthony Hopkins in the 2012 film Hitchcock, he was also portrayed by Toby Jones in the 2012 HBO telefilm The Girl. In June 2013, nine restored versions of Hitchcock's early silent films, including his directorial debut, The Pleasure Garden (1925), were shown at the Brooklyn Academy of Music's Harvey Theatre. Known as "The Hitchcock 9", the travelling tribute was made possible by a $3 million programme organised by the British Film Institute.^[29] Roger Ashton-Griffiths portrayed Hitchcock more recently in the 2014 film Grace of Monaco.

Archives[edit]

The Alfred Hitchcock Collection is housed at the Academy Film Archive in Hollywood, California, the Hitchcock Collection includes home movies, 16mm film shot on the set of Blackmail (1929) and Frenzy (1972), and the earliest known colour footage of Hitchcock. The Academy Film Archive also preserved many of Hitchcock's home movies. Complementing the film material are the Alfred Hitchcock Papers housed at the Academy's Margaret Herrick Library ,^[175] the David O. Selznick and the Ernest Lehman collections housed at the Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center in Austin, Texas contain material related to Hitchcock's work on the production of The Paradine Case, Rebecca, Spellbound, North by Northwest, and Family Plot. ^[176]

Filmography[edit]

See also[edit]

• List of Alfred Hitchcock cameo appearances
• List of film director and actor collaborations
• List of unproduced Hitchcock projects

Notes[edit]

References[edit]

• Leff, Leonard J: The Rich and Strange Collaboration of Alfred Hitchcock and David O. Selznick in Hollywood. University of California Press, 1999
• Leitch, Thomas: The Encyclopedia of Alfred Hitchcock (ISBN 978-0-8160-4387-3). Checkmark Books, 2002. A single-volume encyclopaedia of all things about Alfred Hitchcock.
• McGilligan, Patrick: Alfred Hitchcock: A Life in Darkness and Light. Regan Books, 2003. A comprehensive biography of the director.
• Truffaut, François (1984) [1967]. Hitchcock by Truffaut: A Definitive Study of Alfred Hitchcock. Simon & Schuster/Touchstone Book. OCLC 10913283.  A series of interviews of Hitchcock by the influential French director.

Further reading[edit]

• Auiler, Dan: Hitchcock's notebooks: an authorised and illustrated look inside the creative mind of Alfred Hitchcock. New York, Avon Books, 1999. Much useful background to the films.
• Barr, Charles: English Hitchcock. Cameron & Hollis, 1999. On the early films of the director.
• Clues: A Journal of Detection '31.1 (2013). Theme issue on Hitchcock and adaptation.
• Conrad, Peter: The Hitchcock Murders. Faber and Faber, 2000. A highly personal and idiosyncratic discussion of Hitchcock's oeuvre.
• Deutelbaum, Marshall; Poague, Leland (ed.): A Hitchcock Reader. Iowa State University Press, 1986. A wide-ranging collection of scholarly essays on Hitchcock.
• Duckett, Stephane: Hitchcock in Context. Moreton Street Books, 2014. A reappraisal of influential text on Hitchcock.
• Durgnat, Raymond: The strange case of Alfred Hitchcock Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press, 1974 OCLC 1233570
• Durgnat, Raymond; James, Nick; Gross, Larry: Hitchcock British Film Institute, 1999 OCLC 42209162
• Evans, Peter (2011) [2004]. "Hitchcock, Alfred Joseph". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (online ed.). Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/31239.  (Subscription or UK public library membership required.)
• Giblin, Gary: Alfred Hitchcock's London. Midnight Marquee Press, 2006, (Paperback: ISBN 978-1-887664-67-7)
• Grams, Martin, Jr. & Wikstrom, Patrik: The Alfred Hitchcock Presents Companion. OTR Pub, 2001, (Paperback: ISBN 978-0-9703310-1-4)
• Haeffner, Nicholas: Alfred Hitchcock. Longman, 2005. An undergraduate-level text.
• Hitchcock, Patricia; Bouzereau, Laurent: Alma Hitchcock: The Woman Behind the Man. Berkley, 2003.
• Henry Keazor (ed.): Hitchcock und die Künste, Schüren, Marburg 2013, ISBN 978-3-89472-828-1. Examines the way Hitchcock was inspired by other arts such as literature, theatre, painting, architecture, music and cooking, used them in his films, and how they then inspired other art forms such as dancing and media art.
• Krohn, Bill: Hitchcock at Work. Phaidon, 2000. Translated from the award-winning French edition, the nitty-gritty of Hitchcock's filmmaking from scripting to post-production.
• Leff, Leonard J.: Hitchcock and Selznick. Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1987. An in-depth examination of the rich collaboration between Hitchcock and David O Selznick.
• Loker, Altan: Film and Suspense. Trafford Publishing, 2006. (ISBN 978-1-4120-5840-7). Discusses the psychological means by which Hitchcock created the sense of reality in his works and manipulated his audience.
• McDevitt, Jim; San Juan, Eric: A Year of Hitchcock: 52 Weeks with the Master of Suspense. Scarecrow Press, 2009, (ISBN 978-0-8108-6388-0). A comprehensive film-by-film examination of Hitchcock's artistic development from 1927 through 1976.
• Modleski, Tania: The Women Who Knew Too Much: Hitchcock And Feminist Theory. Routledge, 2005 (2nd edition). A collection of critical essays on Hitchcock and his films; argues that Hitchcock's portrayal of women was ambivalent, rather than simply misogynist or sympathetic (as widely thought).
• Mogg, Ken. The Alfred Hitchcock Story. Titan, 2008 (revised edition). Note: the original 1999 UK edition, from Titan, and the 2008 re-issue worldwide, also from Titan, have significantly more text than the 1999 abridged US edition from Taylor Publishing. New material on all the films.
• Poague, Leland and Thomas Leitch: A Companion to Alfred Hitchcock. Wiley-Blackwell, 2011. Collection of original essays by leading scholars examining all facets of Hitchcock's influence
• Rebello, Stephen: Alfred Hitchcock and the Making of Psycho. St. Martin's, 1990. Intimately researched and detailed history of the making of Psycho,.
• Rohmer, Eric; Chabrol, Claude. Hitchcock, the first forty-four films (ISBN 978-0-8044-2743-2). F. Ungar, 1979. First book-long study of Hitchock art and probably still the best one.
• Rothman, William. The Murderous Gaze. Harvard Press, 1980. Auteur study that looks at several Hitchcock films intimately.
• San Juan, Eric; McDevitt, Jim: Hitchcock's Villains: Murderers, Maniacs and Mother Issues. Scarecrow Press, 2013, (ISBN 978-0-8108-8775-6). An in-depth analysis of the villains who were critically important to Hitchcock's films and were often emblematic of Hitchcock himself.
• Spoto, Donald: The Art of Alfred Hitchcock. Anchor Books, 1992, the first detailed critical survey of Hitchcock's work by an American.
• Sullivan, Jack: Hitchcock's Music. Yale University Press, 2006, the first book to fully explore the role music played in the Hitchcock's films. ISBN 0-300-11050-2
• Vest, James: Hitchcock and France: The Forging of an Auteur. Praeger Publishers, 2003. A study of Hitchcock's interest in French culture and the manner by which French critics, such as Truffaut, came to regard him in such high esteem.
• Weibel, Adrian: Spannung bei Hitchcock. Zur Funktionsweise der auktorialen Suspense. (ISBN 978-3-8260-3681-1) Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann, 2008
• Wikstrom, Patrik & Grams, Martin, Jr.: The Alfred Hitchcock Presents Companion. OTR Pub, 2001, (Paperback: ISBN 978-0-9703310-1-4)
• Wood, Robin: Hitchcock's Films Revisited. Columbia University Press, 2002 (2nd edition). A much-cited collection of critical essays, now supplemented and annotated in this second edition with additional insights and changes that time and personal experience have brought to the author (including his own coming-out as a gay man).
• Youngkin, Stephen D. (2005). The Lost One: A Life of Peter Lorre. University Press of Kentucky. ISBN 978-0-8131-2360-8.  Contains interviews with Alfred Hitchcock and a discussion of the making of The Man Who Knew Too Much (1934) and Secret Agent (1936), which co-starred classic film actor Peter Lorre.
• Žižek, Slavoj: Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Lacan ... But Were Afraid to Ask Hitchcock, London: Verso, 1993

External links[edit]

• Alfred Hitchcock at the BFI
• Alfred Hitchcock on IMDb
• Alfred Hitchcock at AllMovie
• Alfred Hitchcock at the TCM Movie Database
• Alfred Hitchcock at the British Film Institute's Screenonline
• Alfred Hitchcock papers at the Margaret Herrick Library
• Alfred Hitchcock at Find a Grave

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