Alfred Hitchcock: biography, filmography, best films

2024 Author: Leah Sherlock | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 05:25

Sir Alfred Hitchcock is a British and American mastodon of film direction, director, screenwriter and producer. His unparalleled film credits The Lady Vanishes, The 39 Steps, Shadow of a Doubt, Rebecca, Vertigo, Rear Window, The Birds and the unsurpassed Psycho have inexorably changed the thriller genre. The maestro, like a puppeteer, managing the threads of the audience's emotions, created a unique author's style, for which he was called the master of suspense by the world cinema community. After the release of his creations, the term “Hitchcockian” was firmly entrenched in the lexicon of film critics.

Inspiration for followers

Traditionally, the horrors of the early and mid-twentieth century evoke only a condescending smile from a sophisticated contemporary viewer. Unlike most of these paintings, Hitchcock's creations still do an excellent job of their immediate task, maintaining a tense atmosphere in the auditorium during viewing, inflating the viewers' nerves to the maximum.

Alfred Hitchcock, whose films are revered by the most eminent directors of our time,such as William Friedkin, David O. Russell, Quentin Tarantino, Michael Mann and Guillermo del Toro, influenced the formation of the creative style of more than one generation of directors. Moreover, he influenced the development of cinema in general. The brightest talents of the Dream Factory sought to star in Hitchcock's projects: Grace Kelly, Ingrid Bergman, James Stewart, Anthony Perkins, Sean Connery and many others.

The result of the creative path

During the end of his creative career, the director was awarded the American Film Institute and received a knighthood from Queen Elizabeth II of Great Britain. 55 feature films that have become classics of the world film industry are a valuable legacy that Alfred Hitchcock left behind. The filmography of the King of Horrors also includes 21 episodes of the television series A. Hitchcock Presents, 2 unfinished projects and 2 documentaries filmed as far back as 1944.

Hitchcock is called the father of the modern thriller not by chance, during the demonstration of his films, many viewers left the auditorium in a hurry, some individuals even lost consciousness. His iconic shower attack scene from Psycho is still touted as one of the most gruesome scenes in cinema. Only Alfred Hitchcock could achieve such an effect.

Biography. Childhood

The future founder of the genre was born in the suburbs of the British capital in the last month of the summer of 1899. Parents, being ardent adherents of Catholicism, sent their son to study inJesuit College. According to researchers of the maestro's biography, it was this period that decisively influenced the formation of his worldview and perception of the world around him.

Alfred Hitchcock experienced another shock as a child. Once, at an early age, he dared to disobey his father. He called a police patrol and asked to teach the negligent offspring a lesson. The police took the boy to the station and locked him in solitary confinement for a short period. The state of shock experienced left its mark on the child's psyche: as an adult, he was afraid of law enforcement officials and the law. In the plots of individual paintings, the motif of the characters' panic fear of an unfair accusation is clearly traced.

Youth

After a period of college education - the strictest discipline, oppression and constant fear - Alfred Hitchcock enters the Engineering School in 1914, where he prefers the study of navigation, engineering, mechanics and acoustics. In parallel, he attends a course of lectures on art criticism. After the outbreak of World War II, the future luminary of directing tried to enroll in the ranks of volunteers, but was enrolled in the reserve due to his obesity.

Hitchcock began his career in the advertising department of one of the electrical cable companies. Once he received a standard order for the production of posters on TB. A funny surprise awaited Alfred's boss: on the finished posters, an ordinary electrical wire was presented by Hitchcock as a murder weapon. Having evaluated the non-standard decision of the subordinate, the chiefrecommended an inventive employee to try his hand at a film studio. So, unexpectedly for himself, the future director enters the film industry.

First steps

Alfred Hitchcock, whose photo now graces the studio lobby, was originally hired as an electrician. Later, he was entrusted with writing the titles of finished films. Having immersed himself in the creative atmosphere, the magical world of cinema, Alfred soon took up writing scripts for films and got a job as an assistant director. The debut work of the director is the film "The Garden of Delights", which Hitchcock filmed in 1925. However, he was able to win the attention of the film community a year later with the film "Mountain Eagle", filmed in the style of a classic detective story. From the first sound films of the author, filmmakers were amazed by the creative style and authorial style that Alfred Hitchcock demonstrated. The films "Call of Elstree", "Blackmail", "Murder" were the first projects in which he used his author's technique, later designated by the term "suspense".

Of Hitchcock's first films, The Lady Disappears and The 39 Steps are considered the most successful, which became commercially successful and were warmly received by film critics. The first of these films was awarded the New York Film Critics Guild Award, such a high rating motivated the director to create other masterpieces.

"American" period

After world recognition, Alfred Hitchcock receives a tempting offer from the famous init was time for producer David Selznick to move to Hollywood. The first Hollywood picture of the director "Rebecca" justifies itself at the box office and receives the coveted "Oscar". Recognition allows the director not to fulfill the orders of the producers, but to shoot what he wants. In Hollywood, he releases almost a film a year, including simple detective films, thrillers and ideological films. Alfred Hitchcock tried himself in almost all genres. The filmography (including short films) of the director also has films that were recognized as failures. For example, "Stage Fright", after the release of which the film community hastily decided that the director had exhausted himself.

Peak of creativity

50-60s of the twentieth century are considered the peak of Hitchcock's work. During this period, the films "Vertigo", "Rear Window" and "North by Northwest" were released, which became the standard of Hitchcock's author's style.

However, the most important picture in Hitchcock's work is the film "Psycho" - the most terrible, famous, not losing relevance, innovative and remaining unique despite repeated attempts to reproduce its triumph. In the cinema, the notorious suspense is brought to the limit, a thin line, beyond which is the abyss of madness. It has perfected every cinematic medium, artistic expression, from unsurpassed editing to depressing musical accompaniment by Bernard Hörrmann and innovative direction, which was brilliantly introduced by Alfred Hitchcock.

The filmography (best films) of the innovator includes another of the most exciting film projects called The Birds. Feathers in the cinema are a typical metaphorical Hitchcockian image of incomprehensible evil, inexorable fate that haunts the main characters. This picture serves as further confirmation of the fact that Hitchcock, having received his primary education in a Jesuit college, was a puritan who honors the Christian commandments.

At the end of the road

After the triumph of The Birds, Alfred Hitchcock shot a few more films, but they were not such a resounding success. The last work of the maestro is the painting "Family Conspiracy", which was released in 1976. According to rumors, after that, Hitchcock simply dismissed the entire staff, closed production and left.

Hitchcock had a habit of appearing in his film works in cameos, appearing in the frame in the form of a street onlooker or a casual passerby. At the end of his career, the director deliberately created a mystical atmosphere around himself, surrounding his life with a mysterious halo.

All his life Hitchcock was faithful to the only woman - his wife Alma Reville, who became a reliable support for her husband. After her death, the director could not recover, he became addicted to alcohol. The King of Terror died in 1980 at the age of 80. His corpse was cremated, and the ashes, according to the will, were scattered over the vast expanses of the Pacific Ocean.