"It must always be remembered that the primary aim of pictures is to provide entertainment. To entertain people, one must first capture their interest." - Alfred Hitchcock
The name, Alfred Hitchcock, has sort of become a cliche, which is ironic because his filmmaking broke so many cliches by changing visual storytelling, specifically for psychological thrillers. Hitchcock, born in 1899, progressed filmmaking and influenced future films.
One piece of advice he said was, "Make your audience suffer, but give them pleasure. The same pleasure they have when they wake up from a nightmare." For example, Rear Window shows the danger early but uses the entirety of the film to build suspense. It makes the audience uncomfortable as they imagine the characters getting caught or witnessing a murder. It's not until the end when Hitchcock manages a somewhat sweet ending by wrapping up all the characters. Miss Lonelyheart finds a man, the dancer's love comes home, and the couple who's dog died has a new one. Lisa, played by Grace Kelly, reads a travel magazine next to Jeff, played by Jimmy Stewart, who now has two broken legs instead of one. The audience goes through a tremendous amount of suffering and suspense in order to enjoy this somewhat happy ending.
Hitchcock implemented and created many different techniques to portray emotion and make the audience feel something. His stylistic close ups on facial expressions helps convey the characters' strong emotions. Hitchcock is also famous for his point of view shots he used to create suspense. Second-unit cameraman, Irmin Roberts, created the dolly zoom, or "Vertigo Effect," which is used in Vertigo. Watch the scene below:
Once sound was used in films, dialogue started being used really heavily. But Alfred Hitchcock defined cinema as a visual medium. He believed dialogue should only be used when the visuals can't communicate an idea. He says, "sometimes you find that a film is looked at solely for its content without any regard to the style or manner in which the story is told." He wanted to use the camera every chance he gets to reveal the story with visuals and objects.
I can finally say I have seen one of Hitchcock's most iconic and important films. Yes, I am talking about "Vertigo". So a few things about this movie: At the beginning I wasn't really impressed by it. The storyline was good but nothing out of the ordinary. Also Hitchcock did take his time to set up this movie. So basically what I felt it was just an ordinary movie became into a movie of pure suspense and thrill. This movie literally had me on the edge of my seat for at least half an hour straight. I think that although the build up for this movie was pretty long it was totally worth at the end when the movie has a 180 degree twist.
One thing that Vertigo left me thinking was the impact this movie had in me even it's been more than 50 years since it was released in theaters. I can only imagine how influential this movie was for its time. I mean, for me growing up with multiple shows and movies with a similar theme, I was even more impressed with Vertigo than with most of the things I've seen in the past. I feel that this is a fantastic movie and I feel it plant the seed to create many of the shows and movies we have today. One of the techniques used by Hitchcock that has really captured my attention in many movies that I've seen recently (including Chinatown) most of the story is shot from the main character's perspective. I feel this structure adds a little bit to the element of surprise since the viewer is actually discovering most of the key points of the story at the same time as the protagonist. I did notice that Hitchcock changes this style of telling the story after Vertigo's major twist (which I will not reveal). Shot wise Vertigo is extremely well shoot. This movie is especially know for the "dolly zoom shot" which has influenced many films in the past years. An example of this shot is in this video:
I'm going to stop talking about the plot line of Vertigo really don't want to spoil this movie for anyone but I think that this movie is a "must see" for everyone in the movie business so If you haven't seen it I would definitely recommend you to get on that.
Reading about French New Wave we have to talk about Alfred Hitchcock you can argue that he was a main influence on Truffaunt. He had his very own directing technique and style and you can easily see it in all of his films.
Here is a famous scene from one of Hitchcock's most notable movies, Vertigo. This scene just bleeds Hitchcock you can feel his presence in every shot, especially in the dolly zoom technique.
I would not call him the grandfather of French New Wave, there are too many influences on this movement, but I would call him a strong influence.
