Alfred Hitchcock

"Hitchcock" redirects here. For other uses, see Hitchcock (disambiguation).
Sir Alfred Hitchcock
KBE

Studio publicity photo, circa 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 United Kingdom
United States
Alma mater
Occupation Film director, film producer
Years active 1919–1980
Religion Roman Catholic[1]
Spouse(s) Alma Reville (m. 1926)
Children Pat Hitchcock

Sir Alfred Joseph Hitchcock, KBE, (13 August 1899 – 29 April 1980)[2] was an English film director and producer,[3] at times referred to as "The Master of Suspense".[4] 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 England's best director. Hitchcock moved to Hollywood in 1939[5] and became a US citizen in 1955.[6]

Over a career spanning more than half a century, Hitchcock fashioned for himself a recognisable directorial style.[7] His stylistic trademarks include the use of camera movement that mimics a person's gaze,[8] forcing viewers to engage in a form of voyeurism.[9] In addition, he framed shots to maximise anxiety, fear, or empathy, and used innovative forms of film editing.[9] His work often features fugitives on the run alongside "icy blonde" female characters.[10][11] Many of Hitchcock's films have twist endings and thrilling plots featuring depictions of murder and other violence. Many of the mysteries, however, are used as decoys or "MacGuffins" that serve the films' themes and the psychological examinations of their characters. Hitchcock's films also borrow many themes from psychoanalysis and sometimes feature strong sexual overtones.

Hitchcock became a highly visible public figure through interviews, movie trailers, cameo appearances in his own films, and the ten years in which he hosted the television program Alfred Hitchcock Presents. 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."[12]

Hitchcock directed more than fifty feature films in a career spanning six decades and is often regarded as the greatest British filmmaker.[13] He came first in a 2007 poll of film critics in Britain's Daily Telegraph, which said: "Unquestionably the greatest filmmaker to emerge from these islands, 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 viewers) and engaging the emotions of the audience like no one else."[14][15] Prior to 1980, there had long been talk of Hitchcock being knighted for his contribution to film, with film critic Roger Ebert writing: "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", before he received his knighthood from Queen Elizabeth II in the 1980 New Year Honours.[12] In 2002, the magazine MovieMaker named Hitchcock the most influential filmmaker of all time.[16]

Early life

Alfred Hitchcock was born on 13 August 1899 in Leytonstone, which at the time was part of Essex, 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 brought up as a Roman Catholic and was sent to Salesian College[17] and the Jesuit Classic school St Ignatius' College in Stamford Hill, London.[18][19] His parents were both of half-English and half-Irish ancestry.[20][21] He often described a lonely and sheltered childhood worsened by his obesity.[22] Around age five, Hitchcock said that he was sent by his father to the local police station with a note asking the officer to lock him away for five minutes as punishment for behaving badly.[23][24] This incident implanted a lifetime fear of policemen in Hitchcock, and such harsh treatment and wrongful accusations are frequent themes in his films.[25]

When Hitchcock was 15, his father died. In the same year, he left St. Ignatius to study at the London County Council School of Engineering and Navigation in Poplar, London.[26] After leaving, he became a draftsman and advertising designer with a cable company called Henley's.[27] During the First World War, Hitchcock was called up to serve in the British Army. He was excused from military service with a 'C3' classification due to his size, height or an unnamed medical condition, but he was "able to stand service conditions in garrisons at home".[28] Hitchcock signed up to a cadet regiment of the Royal Engineers in 1917.[28] His military stint was limited; he received theoretical briefings, weekend drills and exercises. Hitchcock would march around London's Hyde Park and was required to wear puttees, the proper wrapping of which he could never master.[29]

While working at Henley's, Hitchcock began to dabble creatively. The company's in-house publication The Henley Telegraph was founded in 1919, and he often submitted short articles and eventually became one of its most prolific contributors. His first piece was "Gas" (1919), published in the first issue, in which a young woman 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.[30]

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.[31] "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) was 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) was humorous, and was also a forerunner to the famous Abbott and Costello "Who's on First?" routine. "The History of Pea Eating" (1920) was a satirical disquisition on the various attempts that people have made over the centuries to eat peas successfully. His final piece, "Fedora" (1921), was his shortest and most enigmatic contribution. It also gave a strikingly accurate description of his future wife Alma Reville, whom he had not yet met.[32]

Inter-war British career

Silent films

Hitchcock became intrigued by photography and started working in film production, working as a title card designer for the London branch of what became Paramount Pictures.[33] In 1920, he received a full-time position designing the titles for silent movies at Islington Studios with its American owner Famous Players-Lasky and their British successor Gainsborough Pictures.[34][35] 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 producer Michael 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).[36]

Hitchcock's penultimate 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).[37] He was very impressed with Murnau's work and later used many techniques for the set design in his own productions. In a book-length interview with François Truffaut, Hitchcock also said that he was influenced by Fritz Lang's film Destiny (1921).[36] 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.[38]

Hitchcock (right) during the making of Number 13 in London

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.[39] The production was cancelled because of financial problems;[39] the few scenes that had been finished at that point have been lost. Michael Balcon[40] 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.[41] 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.[42]

Hitchcock's luck changed with his first thriller, The Lodger: A Story of the London Fog (1927), a suspense film about the hunt for a Jack the Ripper type of serial killer in London.[43] Released in January 1927, it was a major commercial and critical success in the United Kingdom.[44] As with many of his earlier works, this film was influenced by Expressionist techniques Hitchcock had witnessed first-hand in Germany.[45] Some commentators regard this piece as the first truly "Hitchcockian"[46][47] film, incorporating such themes as the "wrong man".[48]

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, at the Brompton Oratory in South Kensington, London.[43] Their only child, daughter Patricia, was born on 7 July 1928. 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.[49]

Early sound films

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,[50] and is often considered to be the first British sound feature film.[51][52] 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.[53] In the PBS series The Men Who Made The Movies,[54] 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.[55] 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). Another BIP musical revue, Harmony Heaven (1929), reportedly had minor input from Hitchcock, but his name does not appear in the credits.

In 1933, Hitchcock was once again working for Michael Balcon[40] at Gaumont British.[56] 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.[57] The film was acclaimed in Britain, and it made Hitchcock a star in the United States, and established the quintessential English "Hitchcock blonde" Madeleine Carroll as the template for his succession of ice cold and elegant leading ladies.[58] This film was also one of the first to introduce the "MacGuffin". In The 39 Steps, the MacGuffin is a stolen set of design plans. Hitchcock told 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."[59]

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.[60] 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".[61] In 1939, Hitchcock received the New York Film Critics Circle Award for Best Director, the only time he received an award for his direction.[62][63]

Hitchcock was lauded in Britain, where he was dubbed "Alfred the Great" by Picturegoer magazine, and 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."[64] Variety magazine referred to him as, "probably the best native director in England."[65]

Hollywood

Selznick contract

David O. Selznick signed Hitchcock to a seven-year contract beginning in March 1939, and the Hitchcocks moved to Hollywood.[66] 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:

Hitchcock with Chandran Rutnam (centre) and Sri Lankan film maker Anton Wickremasinghe at the Academy Awards in Los Angeles.
[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".[67]

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.[68]

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 the elegant and worldly first wife, whose name was Rebecca and who died under mysterious circumstances. The film won the Academy Award for Best Picture of 1940.[69] The statuette was given to Selznick, as the film's producer.[69] 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.[70]

Hitchcock's second American film was the European-set thriller Foreign Correspondent (1940), based on Vincent Sheean's Personal History and produced by Walter Wanger. It was nominated for Best Picture that year. Hitchcock and 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.[71] 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 back lot. It avoided direct references to Nazism, Germany and Germans to comply with Hollywood's Production Code censorship.[72]

Early war years

Cary Grant and Ingrid Bergman in Notorious (1946)

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 dark and disturbing 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.[3] Suspicion (1941) marked Hitchcock's first film as a producer as well as director. It was set in England, and Hitchcock used the north coast of Santa Cruz, California for the English coastline sequence.[33] This film was the first of four projects on which Cary Grant worked with Hitchcock, and it was one of the rare occasions that Grant was cast in a sinister role.[33] Joan Fontaine[73] won Best Actress Oscar[33] for her performance. Grant plays an irresponsible English con man whose actions raise suspicion and anxiety in his shy young English wife (Fontaine).[74] 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 Grant character is a killer in Before the Fact by Francis Iles, the book on which the film is based, but Hitchcock and the studio felt that Grant's image would be tarnished by that ending. Hitchcock settled for an ambiguous finale, as he stated to François Truffaut, though a murder would have suited him better.[75]

Saboteur (1942) was 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.[76] 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.[77]

Shadow of a Doubt (1943) was Hitchcock's personal favourite of all his films and the second of the early Universal films.[78] 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. The director showcased his personal fascination with crime and criminals when he had two of his characters discuss various ways of killing people, to the obvious annoyance of Charlotte.

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 also 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".[79]

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.[80]

Wartime non-fiction films

Hitchcock returned to the UK for an extended visit in late 1943 and early 1944 and, while there, he made two short films for the British Ministry of Information: Bon Voyage and Aventure Malgache.[81] 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".[82] 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."[83]

From late June to late July 1945, Hitchcock served as "treatment advisor" on a Holocaust documentary which used footage provided by the Allied Forces.[84] 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.[84][85]

The film-makers were commissioned to provide irrefutable evidence of the Nazis' crimes, and the film recorded the liberation of Nazi concentration camps. 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 broadcast as an episode of the PBS network series Frontline under the title which the Imperial War Museum had given it: Memory of the Camps.[86][87] 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.[84]

Later Selznick films

Hitchcock worked for Selznick again when he directed Spellbound (1945), which explored psychoanalysis[88] and featured 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.[89] 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.[90] 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 theremin, and some of it was later adapted by the composer into a concert piano concerto.

Grant and Bergman in Notorious (1946)

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 Ingrid Bergman and Cary 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 Dr. Robert Millikan of Caltech about the development of an atomic bomb. Selznick complained that 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.[91]

His last film under his contract with Selznick was The Paradine Case (1947), a courtroom drama which critics thought lost momentum because it apparently ran too long and exhausted its resource of ideas.

Sidney Bernstein and Transatlantic Pictures

Hitchcock formed an independent production company with his friend Sidney Bernstein called Transatlantic Pictures, through which he made two films, his first in colour and making use of long takes. With Rope (1948), Hitchcock experimented with marshaling 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 featured 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 used 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. But Hitchcock continued to produce his own films for the rest of his life.

1950s: Peak years

Alfred Hitchcock

Hitchcock filmed Stage Fright (1950) at studios in Elstree, England where he had worked during his British International Pictures contract many years before.[92] He matched one of Warner Bros.'[93] 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.[94]

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.[95] 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.[96]

I Confess (1953) was set in Quebec with Montgomery Clift as a Catholic priest. It 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.[97] With Dial M, Hitchcock experimented with 3D cinematography, with the film now being available in the 3D format on Blu-ray.

James Stewart and Grace Kelly in Rear Window (1954)

Hitchcock then 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.[98] As with Lifeboat and Rope, the principal characters are confined, 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".[98]

In 1955, Hitchcock became a United States citizen.[99] 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."[100] It was Hitchcock's last film with Kelly. She married Prince Rainier of Monaco in 1956, and ended her film career.

Hitchcock 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.[101]

James Stewart and Kim Novak in Vertigo (1958). In a 2012 BFI Sight & Sound critics' poll, Vertigo was ranked the greatest film ever made.[102]

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, who plays 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.[103]

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 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.[104]

The film 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.[105] 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.[106] It had previously been ranked just behind Citizen Kane (1941) in earlier Sight and Sound decade polls, but it was voted best ever film in the 2012 Sight & Sound critics poll.[102]

Cary Grant in North by Northwest (1959)

By this time, Hitchcock had filmed in many areas of the US.[107] He 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.[108] 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.

1960: Psycho

Psycho is arguably Hitchcock's best-known film.[109] 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.[110] 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.[111]

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.[112] 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.[112][113]

After 1960

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.[114] 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, "perhaps highlighting the mystery of forces unknown".[115] 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.[116][117] However, Hedren appeared in two TV shows during the two years after Marnie.[118] 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."[119] 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.[120] Novak, who worked on Hitchcock's Vertigo, told the Telegraph "I never saw him make a pass at anybody or act strange to anybody."[121]

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.

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).[113][122] 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. Topaz (1969), based on a Leon Uris novel, is partly set in Cuba. Both received mixed reviews from critics.

Hitchcock returned to Britain to film 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 for the "Necktie Murders," which are actually committed by his friend Bob Rusk (Barry Foster).[123] 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.[123] 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 chief inspector and his comic domestic life.[124]

Hitchcock at work on location in San Francisco for Family Plot

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".[125] 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 and Cathleen Nesbitt co-starred. It is the only Hitchcock film scored by John Williams. 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. The film went through various titles including Deceit and Missing Heir. It was changed to Family Plot at the suggestion of the studio.

Last project and death

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.[126][127]

Hitchcock died aged 80 in his Bel Air home of renal failure on 29 April 1980.[128] 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 Father Mark Henninger wrote that he and fellow priest Tom Sullivan celebrated Mass at the filmmaker's home; Father Sullivan heard Hitchcock's confession.[129] He was survived by his wife and their daughter. 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.[3]

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.[130]

Aesthetic

Alfred Hitchcock's interview, around 1966

Signature appearances in his films

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

Hitchcock returned several times to cinematic devices such as suspense, the audience as voyeur, 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.[131][132]

Psychology of characters

Hitchcock's films sometimes feature characters struggling in their relationships with their mothers. In North by Northwest (1959), Roger Thornhill (Cary Grant's character) 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 of 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.[10][11] The famous victims in The Lodger are all blondes. In The 39 Steps, Hitchcock's glamorous blond 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 blond 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 blond 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.[3]

Style of working

Writing

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.[133]

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."[134]

Storyboards and production

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.

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.

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). 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.[135][136]

Approach to actors

"The length of a film should be directly related to the endurance of the human bladder."

—Alfred Hitchcock

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.[137] Hitchcock said he was misquoted: "I said 'Actors should be treated like cattle'."[138]

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 and 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'.[139] 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, in "Inter-War British Career," 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.[140]

Regarding Hitchcock's sometimes less than pleasant relationship with actors, there was a persistent rumour that he had said that actors were cattle. Hitchcock addressed this story in his 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.[137]

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 film-making process.

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.

Inspiration for suspense and psychological thrillers

In a 1963 interview with Oriana Fallaci, Hitchcock was asked in spite of looking like a pleasant, innocuous man, he seemed to have fun making films which involve a lot of suspense and terrifying crime, to which 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.[141]

Television, radio and books

Along with Walt Disney, Hitchcock was among the first prominent film producers to fully envisage just how popular the medium of television would become. From 1955 to 1965, Hitchcock was the host of the television series titled Alfred Hitchcock Presents.[142] 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.

The series theme tune was Funeral March of a Marionette, by the French composer Charles Gounod (1818–1893),[143][144] 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.

Hitchcock 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.

At the height of Hitchcock's success, 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; in fact, even his introductions were ghost-written. The entire extent of his involvement with the project was to lend his name and collect a cheque.

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.

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, whom Hitchcock identified, in the last photo, as the murderer. The article was reprinted in Games Magazine in November/December 1980.

Awards and honours

English Heritage Blue plaque in 153 Cromwell Road, London, SW5 commemorating Hitchcock

Hitchcock was a multiple nominee and winner of a number of prestigious awards, receiving two Golden Globes, eight Laurel Awards, and five lifetime achievement awards including the first BAFTA Academy Fellowship Award, as well as being five times nominated for, albeit never winning, an Academy Award as Best Director.[145] 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.[146] 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.

After refusing a CBE in 1962,[147] Hitchcock received a knighthood in 1980 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.[148] Asked by a reporter why it had taken the Queen so long, Hitchcock quipped, "I suppose it was a matter of carelessness".[149] An English Heritage blue plaque, unveiled in 1999, marks where Sir Alfred Hitchcock lived in London at 153 Cromwell Road, Kensington and Chelsea, SW5.[150]

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.[38]

Portrayals in film and television

Filmography

See also

Notes

  1. ↑ Hamilton, Fiona. "PM hails Christian influence on national life". The Times. Retrieved 25 June 2013.
  2. ↑ Mogg, Ken. "Alfred Hitchcock". Senses of Cinema. Sensesofcinema.com. Archived from the original on 28 March 2010. Retrieved 18 July 2010.
  3. 1 2 3 4 "Alfred Hitchcock Dies Of Natural Causes". Variety. 7 May 1980. Truffaut argues that the portly Englishman belonged “among such artists of anxiety as Kafka, Dostoyevsky and Poe.
  4. ↑ Moerbeek, Kees (2006). Alfred Hitchcock: The Master of Suspense. Simon & Schuster. ISBN 978-1-4169-0467-0.
  5. ↑ Life, 19 June 1939, p. 66: "Alfred Hitchcock: England's Best Director starts work in Hollywood". Retrieved 4 October 2012
  6. ↑ "Alfred Hitchcock Dies; A Master of Suspense". New York Times. Retrieved 23 September 2014
  7. ↑ Lehman, David (April–May 2007). "Alfred Hitchcock's America". American Heritage. Archived from the original on 27 December 2009. Retrieved 21 July 2010.
  8. ↑ "Hitchcock: The Moving Observer". 9 September 2015. Retrieved 28 September 2015.
  9. 1 2 Bays, Jeff (December 2007). "Film Techniques of Alfred Hitchcock". Borgus.com. Retrieved 13 July 2010.
  10. 1 2 Whitington, Paul (18 July 2009). "NOTORIOUS! (Hitchcock and his icy blondes)". The Irish Independent. Retrieved 13 July 2010.
  11. 1 2 Dowd, Maureen (1 December 2012). "Spellbound by Blondes, Hot and Icy". The New York Times. Retrieved 13 November 2013.
  12. 1 2 "Hitchcock: he always did give us knightmares". Roger Ebert.com. 2 January 1980.
  13. ↑ "The Directors' Top Ten Directors". British Film Institute. Archived from the original on 14 May 2011. Retrieved 10 May 2011.
  14. ↑ Avedon, Richard (14 April 2007). "The top 21 British directors of all time". The Daily Telegraph. Retrieved 8 July 2009. Unquestionably the greatest filmmaker to emerge from these islands, 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.
  15. ↑ "British Directors". RSS Film studies. Retrieved 11 June 2008.
  16. ↑ Wood, Jennifer (6 July 2002). "The 25 Most Influential Directors of All Time". MovieMaker. Moviemaker.com. Archived from the original on 8 June 2011. Retrieved 26 April 2011.
  17. ↑ "Alfred Hitchcock profile at". Filmreference.com. Retrieved 28 May 2013.
  18. ↑ "Death and the Master". Vanity Fair. April 1999. Archived from the original on 28 November 2010. Retrieved 30 December 2010.
  19. ↑ "Welcome to St. Ignatius College". Archived from the original on 15 March 2008. Retrieved 5 March 2008.
  20. ↑ McGilligan, 2003, p. 7
  21. ↑ Spoto, Donald (1999). The Dark Side of Genius: The Life of Alfred Hitchcock. Da Capo Press. p. 15. ISBN 978-0-306-80932-3.
  22. ↑ McGilligan, 2003, pp. 18–19
  23. ↑ The Dick Cavett Show. 8 June 1972.
  24. ↑ "Hollywood in the Hills". Sentinel Staff Report. 24 July 2005. Archived from the original on 15 January 2009.
  25. ↑ McGilligan, 2003, pp. 7–8
  26. ↑ McGilligan, 2003, p. 25. The school is now part of Tower Hamlets College.
  27. ↑ McGilligan, 2003, pp. 24–25
  28. 1 2 Ackroyd, Peter (2015). Alfred Hitchcock. Random House. p. 14.
  29. ↑ Hitchcock, Alfred. A life in Darkness. pp. 25–26.
  30. ↑ Duncan, Paul (2003). Alfred Hitchcock: Architect of Anxiety, 1899-1980. Taschen. p. 20.
  31. ↑ McGilligan, 2003, p. 34
  32. ↑ McGilligan, 2003, pp. 30–45
  33. 1 2 3 4 "Local Inspiration for Movie Classics: Hitchcock had Link to Santa Cruz". Santa Cruz Public Libraries, Ca. Archived from the original on 5 September 2007.
  34. ↑ "Gainsborough Pictures (1924–51)". British Film Institute ScreenOnline. Retrieved 6 March 2008.
  35. ↑ McGilligan, 2003, pp. 46–51
  36. 1 2 Truffaut 1984
  37. ↑ Sidney Gottlieb (ed), Alfred Hitchcock: Interviews By Alfred Hitchcock. Illustrated Edition. (Univ. Press of Mississippi, 2003). pp. 157–158.
  38. 1 2 Kehr, Dave (23 June 2013). "Hitchcock, Finding His Voice in Silents". The New York Times. Retrieved 29 June 2013.
  39. 1 2 Donald Spoto. The Art of Alfred Hitchcock. New York: Anchor Books, 1976–1992. p. 3 ISBN 978-0-385-41813-3
  40. 1 2 "Balcon, Michael (1896–1977) Executive Producer". British Film Institute ScreenOnline. Archived from the original on 14 February 2008. Retrieved 6 March 2008.
  41. ↑ McGilligan, 2003, pp. 68–71
  42. ↑ Donald Spoto. The Art of Alfred Hitchcock. New York: Anchor Books, 1976–1992. p. 5 ISBN 978-0-385-41813-3
  43. 1 2 Robert A. Harris, Michael S. Lasky. "The films of Alfred Hitchcock". p.6. Citadel Press, 1976
  44. ↑ See Robert E. Kapsis, Hitchcock: The Making of a Reputation. Illustrated Edition. (University of Chicago Press, 1992). p. 19
  45. ↑ Alan Jones (2005) The rough guide to horror movies p. 20. Rough Guides, 2005
  46. ↑ "Hitchcockian Stuff". Alfredsplace.com. Retrieved 6 March 2008.
  47. ↑ Gleiberman, Owen (7 January 2006). "Ask the Critic – The Hitch Is Back-What, exactly, makes a film Hitchcockian.". Entertainment Weekly (EW.COM). Archived from the original on 7 June 2011. Retrieved 26 April 2011.
  48. ↑ McGilligan, 2003, p. 85
  49. ↑ Chandler, Charlotte (2006). It's only a movie: Alfred Hitchcock: a personal biography. Hal Leonard Corporation.
  50. ↑ Rob White, Edward Buscombe. British Film Institute film classics, Volume 1 p. 94. Taylor & Francis, 2003
  51. ↑ Richard Allen, S. Ishii-Gonzalès. Hitchcock: past and future. p.xv. Routledge, 2004
  52. ↑ Music hall mimesis in British film, 1895–1960: on the halls on the screen p.79. Associated University Presse, 2009
  53. ↑ Walker, Michael (2005). Hitchcock's motifs. p.88. Amsterdam University Press
  54. ↑ "American Masters-Alfred Hitchcock". Public Broadcasting System. Archived from the original on 19 March 2008. Retrieved 5 March 2008.
  55. ↑ McGilligan, 2003, pp. 120–123
  56. ↑ "Gaumont-British Picture Corporation". British Film Institute. Archived from the original on 20 February 2008. Retrieved 6 March 2008.
  57. ↑ "The British Film Institute 100". Archived from the original on 14 May 2011. Retrieved 26 April 2011.
  58. ↑ "From Hollywood starlet to wartime angel". Daily Mail. Retrieved 16 February 2014
  59. ↑ McGilligan, 2003, p. 158
  60. ↑ "Lions of British Cinema-Sir Alfred Joseph Hitchcock, (13 August 1899 – 29 April 1980)". AvantGardeNow.com. Archived from the original on 9 October 2007. Retrieved 6 March 2008.
  61. ↑ "My favourite Hitchcock: The Lady Vanishes". The Guardian. Retrieved 16 January 2015
  62. ↑ "The Lady Vanishes". Turner Classic Movies. Retrieved 22 January 2013.
  63. ↑ "Awards for The Lady Vanishes". Internet Movie Database. Retrieved 22 January 2013.
  64. ↑ Leff, 1999, p. 16
  65. ↑ Leff, 1999, p. 21
  66. ↑ Leff, 1999, p. 35
  67. ↑ Sidney Gottlieb, Alfred Hitchcock: Interviews By Alfred Hitchcock. Illustrated Edition. (Univ. Press of Mississippi, 2003). p. 206.
  68. ↑ Leff, 1999, p. 30
  69. 1 2 "Awards for Rebecca (1940)". Internet Movie Database. Retrieved 7 March 2008.
  70. ↑ McGilligan, 2003, pp. 251–252
  71. ↑ Duncan, Paul (2003). Alfred Hitchcock: architect of anxiety, 1899–1980. p.90. Taschen, 1 November 2003
  72. ↑ McGilligan, 2003, p. 244
  73. ↑ "Joan Fontaine". Hollywood.com. Archived from the original on 25 March 2008. Retrieved 5 March 2008.
  74. ↑ Tom Scott Cadden (1984). "What a bunch of characters!: an entertaining guide to who played what in the movies". p. 131. Prentice-Hall,
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