Alfred Hitchcock is known as the ‘master of suspense’ because of his history of successful horror movies and fine film making skills.
He started peaking his career in the 50s and 60s by making films of a more dramatic nature such as Strangers on a Train(1951) and Dial M for Murder(1954). However, he then turned to making more psychiatric mystery type films.
One of his biggest hits was the suspense film, Rear Window in 1954 with Paramount Pictures, which was all shot in one location. This takes much skill and Hitchcock was definitely credited for this groundbreaking film being nominated for Best Director Academy Awards.
In the genre of horror, two of Hitchcock’s most effective films were Psycho (1960) and The Birds (1963). Hitchcock managed to make the black and white film Psycho one of his most famous movies even with such a low budget. This genre-defining film has become a trademark for horror films and many directors have copied or used ideas from it. The Shower Scene is one of the most famous scenes in cinematic history lasting 3 minutes with more than 50 cuts portraying the violence and gore of this scene extremely effectively.
The Birds was also a very effective film about the disturbing attacks of ordinary birds inspiring a whole new era of disaster films to do with nature. It was made with no music score and an unconventional end. This shows the uniqueness of Alfred Hitchcock as a director. He always liked a technological challenge and experiments with different things in his film. For example the film Rope(1948) was shot in 10 takes only.
Hitchcock also invented the ‘Hitchcock zoom’ as it is called today, in his film Vertigo, which is still used by many filmmakers.
Hitchcock’s Secrets:
His films often include:
-struggles within relationships
-beautiful blonde heroines
-he planned his scripts to the smallest of details
-he visualised the shots in his mind
-he learnt his scripts by heart so he would not have to look at them when shooting
-he never changed his films from his initial vision
Therefore, Hitchcock concentrated on pre-production rather than the production itself. From this, I learnt that it is extremely important to plan things out in detail and know exactly what you are doing in order to make a successful production.
No comments:
Post a Comment