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iView Author: Krishna (Hyderabad, India)

Email: moviecentric [at] gmail [dot] com

Alfred Hitchcock

I don’t know how many articles were written on Alfred Hitchcock in PFC but here I tried my best to present this article in an unconventional manner. Many of us know that Alfred Hitchcock is one of the greatest and influential director .In this article I am making some points which tries to see Alfred Hitchcock through a different angle.

Cameos:

How it started?

Alfred Hitchcock is known for his cameos in his films. He started this in his silent film ‘The Lodger’. He said that he never had a intention to make a cameo, but that scene in ‘The Lodger’ needed to be filled with people and as there were not enough people in the studio and as the empty seats has to filled he decided to sit in one of them and it marked the beginning of his wonderful cameos .

The cameo in the film ‘Blackmail’ is really innovative where he is bothered by a small boy. The cameo in the film ‘The Lady Vanishes’ has its own prominence as this is the first cameo in which we can see Hitchcock with a cigarette in his mouth and second one in ‘Spellbound’. In the film ‘Shadow of Doubt’ he holds all the cards which includes ‘ace of spades’ symbolically making a reference to DEATH.

The cameo in ‘Strangers on a Train’ is impressive as he carries a ‘Double bass’ and tries to get into the train and in ‘North by Northwest’ he tries to get into a bus but misses it. In ‘Rope’ and ‘I confess’ he just walks in the opening scene.

My favorite cameo of Alfred Hitchcock is the one in the film ‘Lifeboat’. Hitchcock first thought of making his cameo by posing as a body floating past the Lifeboat but he was afraid that he would sink and he got the unbelievable to show himself in a Newspaper as an add to ‘weight loss’.

Being Crazy:

In those days film making was very conservative and most of the directors used to be conventional and the space for unconventional directors is very less. Alfred Hitchcock is one of the craziest directors according to me as he is obstinate when it comes to what he wants to see in his film.

In the film ‘Notorious’ he places a small bulb in the glass of milk.

In the film ‘Rope’ he deliberately edited the film in such a way as to appear as a single continuous shot. Most of the scenes are around 8 minutes.

In ‘North by Northwest’ he forcefully made the producers to provide him with the flight, which later became one of the iconic scenes of film history.

In ‘Psycho’ he deliberately shot the film in ‘Black and White’ even though the color technology was available. He shot the film in ‘Black and White’ as he felt that it would have much larger impact on the audience.

In ‘Psycho’ he uses ‘chocolate’ to represent blood as he felt that it is much thicker than blood and much frightening when the audience watch it.

In ‘Psycho’ the ‘Shower scene’ was shot for 7 days and everyone on the set were unable to understand why he was spending so much time on one scene.

The ‘Shower scene’ consisted of 50 cuts for just 3 minutes.

The sound of the knife cutting the flesh was created by plunging a knife into a Melon.

The promotion for the film was also crazy as the posters contained the “No late Admission” note on them.

Techniques:

The techniques which he introduced to Cinema are amazing. His innovative thinking for making a scene much better lead t o many techniques.

Kinetic typography: Kinetic typography technique which he uses in ‘North by Northwest’ and ‘Psycho’ is very impressive and are trend setters and very much used in Bollywood films.

Single continuous shot: I don’t know if we call this as a technique but he has show his innovativeness by taking very long and continuous shots which we see them in the films ‘Rope’ and ‘Under Capricorn’.

Vertigo Shot: This technique is frequently called as ‘Dolly Zoom’. He uses this technique in his films ‘Vertigo’ and ‘Psycho’. Later this was used by Steven Spielberg and by Martin Scorsese in ‘Goodfellas’.

On Actors and Actress:

Alfred Hitchcock never tried to extract great performances from the actors and actress, he never wanted them to try anything hard or which is beyond their capability.

Cary Grant was a favorite actor of Alfred Hitchcock he said “The only actor I ever loved in my whole life”.

Apart from Cary Grant he liked James Stewart, Ingrid Bergman and Grace Kelly.

On the sets of Notorious when Ingrid Bergman had some problems understanding the character and its motivation and when she asks Hitchcock to help her then in reply he said:

“Fake It”.

Anthony Perkins was tensed during the filming of Psycho thinking about his performance then Hitchcock said:

“Don’t worry Tony, it’s only a movie”.

He felt that ‘Gregory Peck’ never suited the characters which he played in his films like ‘Spellbound’ and ‘The Paradine Case’.

When Paul Newman asked Hitchcock about the character’s motivation in his film ‘Torn Curtain’ he replied: “Your motivation is your salary.”

On Films:

“To me Psycho was a big comedy.”

“If given the choice I would choose ‘Shadow of Doubt’ as my favorite film.”

To Francois Truffaut “Psycho belongs to filmmakers, to you and me.”

Quotes:

“Actors are cattle”

Clarifying on what he exactly meant:

“I didn’t say actors are cattle. What I said was, actors should be treated like cattle.”

“The length of a film should be directly related to the endurance of the human bladder”

“Disney has the best casting. If he doesn’t like an actor he just tears him up.”

“Always make the audience suffer as much as possible”

“Drama is life with the dull bits left out”

“Some of our most exquisite murders have been domestic, performed with tenderness in simple, homey places like the kitchen table”

Alfred Hitchcock never won anOscar, but he was given the ‘The Irving G. Thalberg Memorial Award’ which is given with the Academy awards, many of his fans, journalists, critics etc… were anxiously waiting for his speech. After Alfred Hitchcock received the award he just said:

“THANK YOU”

I have attached some pics with this post related to cameos etc..

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