In this story the ordinary life of a typical small-town, middle-class family is disrupted by the intrusion of a beguiling but sinister visitor. Particularly with his Shadow of a Doubt (1943), the shooting for which was begun in the latter part of 1941. But as with many foreign filmmakers who came to the US, Hitchcock soonĮvinced his fascination for the peculiarities of American culture, Things like his focus on his characters' eyes, editing techniques, like the ones he used in Rope, and even having surprising things happen in unexpected locations, like that crop duster scene in North By Northwest.Alfred Hitchcock shifted to the US to make films in 1939, but his earliest American-made films still had mostly English settings. These are the things we call "Hitchcockian" now. The video above analyzed films such as Psycho, The Birds, Rear Window, North By Northwest, Notorious, Topaz, The Man Who Knew Too Much, and Shadow of a Doubt to make the point, but I wanted to look at a few highlights. His auteur touch would expand and mirror itself from movie to movie, but he always was working with significant tools to capture the audience's attention.įor this reason, many see Hitchcock as arguably the most important pioneer of the cinematic language. One of the things I feel like we don't talk enough about is how Hitchcock developed an auteur language that never really changed from the early 1930s until the 1970s. How Alfred Hitchcock Used Visionary Cinematic Language to Tell His Stories There's an entire visual language he introduced to help those stories resonate with the audience.Ĭheck out this video essay from The Discarded Image, and let's talk more after the jump. The idea that the most extraordinary things can happen to ordinary people is the drive behind why I started writing.īut there's so much more to Hitchcock than just storytelling. I saw North by Northwest when I was a kid, and I remember the excitement of not knowing what was around every bend.
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