Hello again fans of the silver screen, my latest Movie Memories article for Lanarkshire Live is an examination of arguably the finest movie director of all time - Alfred Hitchcock.
”Hitchcock’s genius not only changed cinema; it changed the way we look at the world” - film critic Adrian Turner.
A detective falls in love with a woman with two identities; a maniac attacks a woman taking a shower; birds launch a violent attack on humans. This is the type of intriguing and fascinating world of cinema created by Alfred Hitchcock.
I entered his world of mystery, thrills and suspense in 1959 - aged just eight - when I saw Hitchcock’s masterpiece North By Northwest at the New Cinema in Airdrie, a totally unforgettable experience that was the genesis of my lifetime love affair with one of the greatest directors of all time.
A brilliant craftsman with a remarkable visual style, Hitchcock was cinema’s master of suspense and, as the Daily Express once called him, “the man who invented the modern thriller”.
Alfred Hitchcock was born on August 13, 1899, in Leytonstone, near London. He was a strange child; lonely, burning with fear and ambition, his childhood was an isolated one and he was afraid to leave his bedroom.
He once told an interviewer that, at family gatherings, he would sit quietly in a corner saying nothing, adding: “I looked and observed a great deal. I’ve always been that way and still am.”
This may have led to the voyeurism theme which is much explored in his films. Rear Window (1954), which starred James Stewart and Grace Kelly, is a masterpiece about a photographer who becomes obsessed with watching his neighbours and discovers a possible murder. Looking at, and being looked at, is a recurring theme throughout Hitchcock’s work.
He developed his skills from the ground up and designed title cards for silent films. The Pleasure Garden (1926) marked his debut as a director.
While visual storytelling was pertinent during the silent era, even after the arrival of sound in 1928, Hitchcock still relied on visuals in cinema. He referred to this emphasis on storytelling as “pure cinema” - pictures without words.
In Britain, he refined his craft so that by the time he moved to America with his wife Alma and daughter Patricia in 1939 to direct Rebecca (1940) for David O’ Selznick, Hitchcock had perfected his visual style and camera techniques. The Hitchcocks would become American citizens and remain there for the rest of their life.
As a visionary artist and consummate entertainer, the genius of Hitchcock reached its peak in the 50s and 60s.
Dial M For Murder (1954) saw Hitchcock taking on the challenge of filming in the new Warner Bros 3D process and the classic movie was a sensation.
In film theory, when the male protagonist projects a fixated gaze on a female, she is codified as an erotic object. The camera’s voyeuristic nature was brilliantly explored in Hitchcock’s supreme masterpiece Vertigo (1958) with a totally convincing performance from James Stewart opposite Kim Novak in the best turn of her career.
Vertigo is about romantic obsession. A man becomes so haunted by what he believes to be the image of a dead woman that he changes the appearance of another woman to resemble her every detail.
Hitchcock was fascinated by obsession, especially that of the male with the female, and it became fruitful territory for exploring some of the more dangerous aspects of sexual fantasy.
Vertigo is the director’s darkest dream-like tale of suspense with an eye-popping title sequence designed by Saul Bass married to the brilliant score by Bernard Herrman. The movie draws the audience in with an air of mystery and then plunges into a dizzying exploration of romantic obsession.
Those who were on the set of Vertigo recall that Hitchcock’s famous meticulous attention to detail was heightened more than ever on the film.
Vertigo has, in recent years, been considered to be the most profound and exquisite of all Hitchcock’s films. It didn’t seem like that at the time of its release in 1958 as it was a critical and box office failure.
For more than 20 years the negative of Vertigo was stored under poor conditions in a warehouse in Hollywood and the film was in a state of extinction, feared to be lost forever..
However, in 1996, Universal Pictures hired Robert Harris and James Katz to rescue the masterpiece with a two-year painstaking restoration costing more than $1 million. The final result was a breathtaking technicolor 70mm Vistavisin print and DTS soundtrack, which enabled audiences to see Hitchcock’s haunting romantic thriller like never before.
“With Psycho I think I managed to do what I like best in the world controlling the audience. In the opening scene, they even become voyeurs” - Alfred Hitchcock.
When Hitchcock approached Paramount Pictures with a story based on the novel by Robert Bloch about a demented maniac who dresses up as his dead mother in order to kill his victims, it filled studio executives with enthusiasm.
Hitchcock subsidised the project and waived his salary in exchange for 60 per cent of the film’s ownership.
Psycho (1960) is a masterpiece. Produced on a shoestring budget of only $800,000, it was photographed in black and white because Hitchcock had an aesthetic objection that, in colour, the shower scene with blood flowing down the bathtub drain would have been repulsive.
Anthony Perkins was the first choice to play Norman Bates , and his performance is excellent, while Janet Leigh shone as Marion Crane .
Before filming began Hitchcock had the cast and crew sworn to secrecy as they weren’t allowed to discuss the plot.
Psycho is undoubtedly Hitchcock’s boldest film. He always insisted that he never envisioned the phenomenon it would become as it set global attendance records.
Hitchcock was once asked, how did you get the birds to attack humans?, and replied: “I paid them well.”
Rod Taylor and newcomer Tippi Hedren star in The Birds (1963), a horrific tale of nature gone berserk when thousands of birds flock into a seaside town and terrorize the residents in a series of deadly attacks.
Based on the novella The Birds by Daphne Du Maurier, Hitchcock’s seminal screen version begins as a screwball comedy and shifts to stark terror.
The amazing special effects featured in the flick presented Hitchcock with his most formidable technical challenge ever. Filming of The Birds , which began on location in Bodega Bay north of San Francisco in the spring of 1962, was challenging and wearying.
The birds themselves had to be trained and protected. Some of them were coached to land on the necks of children, however, the biting was done using bird-like glove puppets. A camera crew spent three days filming seagulls feeding in a rubbish dump. For another sequence, a cameraman stood on a cliff off Santa Cruz Island as the birds dove to catch fish thrown at them.
Other birds were painted onto the film frame by frame. These shots were sent to Ub Iwerks, a photographic expert at the Walt Disney Studio, who Hitchcock hired as a “special photographic advisor”.
Hitchcock gave cinema some of the most incredible images ever captured on film. Looking at The Birds today, one can only wonder how the stunning visuals were achieved in the days long before computer-generated images.
The Birds is honoured by the American and British Film Institute as Hitchcock’s crowning achievement as the seventh greatest thriller in American cinema.
When Marnie (1964), Torn Curtain (1966), and Topaz (1969) were critical failures, people wondered if Hitchcock was losing his touch. However, the master of suspense was back in form once again with British masterpiece Frenzy , which gave the director his greatest success since Psycho.
Although Hitchcock was nominated eight times for a Best Director Oscar, he never won the prize. Despite referring to the statue as a “fancy doorstop”, his joking, according to close friends, masked a deep disappointment.
The perfection and production values in Hitchcock’s films could not be achieved today; they were a visual and technical undertaking no longer seen in Hollywood.
During the final moment of Hitchcock’s 53rd film, Family Plot (1976), Barbra Harris, who plays a fake psychic, turns to the audience and confides in them with an enormous wink as an appropriate Hitchcockian gesture for the genius who always maintained, “it’s only a movie”.
* Don't miss the latest headlines from around Lanarkshire. Sign up to our newsletters here.
And did you know Lanarkshire Live is on Facebook? Head on over and give us a like and share!
