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Sir Alfred Joseph Hitchcock (13 August 1899 – 29 April 1980) was an English filmmaker. He is widely regarded as one of the most influential figures in the history of cinema.
In a career spanning six decades, he directed over 50 feature films, many of which are still widely watched and studied today. Known as the "Master of Suspense", he became as well known as any of his actors thanks to his many interviews,
his cameo roles in most of his films, and his hosting and producing the television anthology ''
Alfred Hitchcock Presents'' (1955–65). His films garnered 46
Academy Award
The Academy Awards, better known as the Oscars, are awards for artistic and technical merit for the American and international film industry. The awards are regarded by many as the most prestigious, significant awards in the entertainment ind ...
nominations, including six wins, although he never won the award for
Best Director despite five nominations.
Hitchcock initially trained as a technical clerk and copy writer before entering the film industry in 1919 as a
title card
In films, an intertitle, also known as a title card, is a piece of filmed, printed text edited into the midst of (i.e., ''inter-'') the photographed action at various points. Intertitles used to convey character dialogue are referred to as "dialo ...
designer. His directorial debut was the British-German silent film ''
The Pleasure Garden'' (1925). His first successful film, ''
The Lodger: A Story of the London Fog'' (1927), helped to shape the
thriller genre, and ''
Blackmail'' (1929) was the first British "
talkie
A sound film is a motion picture with synchronized sound, or sound technologically coupled to image, as opposed to a silent film. The first known public exhibition of projected sound films took place in Paris in 1900, but decades passed before ...
".
[ His thrillers '' The 39 Steps'' (1935) and '']The Lady Vanishes
''The Lady Vanishes'' is a 1938 British mystery thriller film directed by Alfred Hitchcock, starring Margaret Lockwood and Michael Redgrave. Written by Sidney Gilliat and Frank Launder, based on the 1936 novel ''The Wheel Spins'' by Ethel L ...
'' (1938) are ranked among the greatest British films of the 20th century. By 1939, he had international recognition and producer David O. Selznick persuaded him to move to Hollywood. A string of successful films followed, including '' Rebecca'' (1940), '' Foreign Correspondent'' (1940), ''Suspicion
Suspicion is a feeling of mistrust.
Suspicion(s), The Suspicion, or Suspicious may also refer to:
Film and television Film
* ''Suspicion'' (1918 film), an American silent film directed by John M. Stahl
* ''Suspicion'' (1941 film), an American ...
'' (1941), '' Shadow of a Doubt'' (1943), and '' Notorious'' (1946). ''Rebecca'' won the Academy Award for Best Picture, with Hitchcock nominated as Best Director;[ he was also nominated for '']Lifeboat
Lifeboat may refer to:
Rescue vessels
* Lifeboat (shipboard), a small craft aboard a ship to allow for emergency escape
* Lifeboat (rescue), a boat designed for sea rescues
* Airborne lifeboat, an air-dropped boat used to save downed airmen
...
'' (1944) and '' Spellbound'' (1945). After a brief commercial lull, he returned to form with '' Strangers on a Train'' (1951) and ''Dial M for Murder
''Dial M for Murder'' is a 1954 American crime thriller film directed by Alfred Hitchcock, starring Ray Milland, Grace Kelly, Robert Cummings, Anthony Dawson, and John Williams. Both the screenplay and the successful stage play on which it was b ...
'' (1954); he then went on to direct four films often ranked among the greatest of all time: ''Rear Window
''Rear Window'' is a 1954 American mystery thriller film directed by Alfred Hitchcock and written by John Michael Hayes based on Cornell Woolrich's 1942 short story "It Had to Be Murder". Originally released by Paramount Pictures, the film st ...
'' (1954), ''Vertigo
Vertigo is a condition where a person has the sensation of movement or of surrounding objects moving when they are not. Often it feels like a spinning or swaying movement. This may be associated with nausea, vomiting, sweating, or difficulties w ...
'' (1958), ''North by Northwest
''North by Northwest'' is a 1959 American spy thriller film, produced and directed by Alfred Hitchcock and starring Cary Grant, Eva Marie Saint and James Mason. The screenplay was by Ernest Lehman, who wanted to write "the Hitchcock picture ...
'' (1959) and '' Psycho'' (1960), the first and last of these garnering him Best Director nominations. '' The Birds'' (1963) and ''Marnie
''Marnie'' is an English crime novel, written by Winston Graham and first published in 1961. It has been adapted as a film, a stage play and an opera.
Plot
''Marnie'' is about a young woman who makes a living by embezzling her employers' funds, ...
'' (1964) were also financially successful and are highly regarded by film historians.
The " Hitchcockian" style includes the use of editing and camera movement to mimic a person's gaze, thereby turning viewers into voyeurs
Voyeurism is the sexual interest in or practice of watching other people engaged in intimate behaviors, such as undressing, sexual activity, or other actions of a private nature.
The term comes from the French ''voir'' which means "to see". ...
, and framing shots to maximise anxiety and fear. The film critic Robin Wood wrote that the meaning of a Hitchcock film "is there in the method, in the progression from shot to shot. A Hitchcock film is an organism, with the whole implied in every detail and every detail related to the whole." Hitchcock made multiple films with some of the biggest stars in Hollywood, including four with Cary Grant
Cary Grant (born Archibald Alec Leach; January 18, 1904November 29, 1986) was an English-American actor. He was known for his Mid-Atlantic accent, debonair demeanor, light-hearted approach to acting, and sense of comic timing. He was one o ...
in the 1940s and 1950s, three with Ingrid Bergman in the second half of the 1940s, four with James Stewart over a decade commencing in 1948, and three consecutive with Grace Kelly
Grace Patricia Kelly (November 12, 1929 – September 14, 1982) was an American actress who, after starring in several significant films in the early to mid-1950s, became Princess of Monaco by marrying Prince Rainier III in April 1956.
Kelly ...
in the mid-1950s. Hitchcock became an American citizen in 1955.
In 2012, Hitchcock's psychological thriller ''Vertigo'', starring Stewart, displaced Orson Welles
George Orson Welles (May 6, 1915 – October 10, 1985) was an American actor, director, producer, and screenwriter, known for his innovative work in film, radio and theatre. He is considered to be among the greatest and most influential f ...
' '' Citizen Kane'' (1941) as the British Film Institute
The British Film Institute (BFI) is a film and television charitable organisation which promotes and preserves film-making and television in the United Kingdom. The BFI uses funds provided by the National Lottery (United Kingdom), National Lot ...
's greatest film ever made based on its world-wide poll of hundreds of film critics.[ , nine of his films had been selected for preservation in the United States ]National Film Registry
The National Film Registry (NFR) is the United States National Film Preservation Board's (NFPB) collection of films selected for preservation, each selected for its historical, cultural and aesthetic contributions since the NFPB’s inception ...
, including his personal favourite, '' Shadow of a Doubt'' (1943). He received the BAFTA Fellowship
The BAFTA Fellowship, or the Academy Fellowship, is a lifetime achievement award presented by the British Academy of Film and Television Arts (BAFTA) in recognition of "outstanding achievement in the art forms of the moving image". The award is t ...
in 1971, the AFI Life Achievement Award
The AFI Life Achievement Award was established by the board of directors of the American Film Institute on February 26, 1973, to honor a single individual for his or her lifetime contribution to enriching American culture through motion picture ...
in 1979, and was knighted in December that year, four months before his death on 29 April 1980.[
]
Biography
Early life: 1899–1919
Early childhood and education
Alfred Joseph Hitchcock was born on 13 August 1899 in the flat above his parents' leased greengrocer's shop at 517 High Road, Leytonstone
Leytonstone () is an area in east London, England, north-east of Charing Cross. Part of the London Borough of Waltham Forest, a local authority district of Greater London. It adjoins Wanstead to the north-east, Forest Gate to the south-east, ...
, on the outskirts of East London (then part of Essex
Essex () is a county in the East of England. One of the home counties, it borders Suffolk and Cambridgeshire to the north, the North Sea to the east, Hertfordshire to the west, Kent across the estuary of the River Thames to the south, and Grea ...
), the youngest of three children of Emma Jane (; 1863–1942) and William Edgar Hitchcock (1862–1914), with a brother, William Daniel (1890–1943), and a sister, Ellen Kathleen ("Nellie") (1892–1979). His parents were both Roman Catholic
Roman or Romans most often refers to:
*Rome, the capital city of Italy
* Ancient Rome, Roman civilization from 8th century BC to 5th century AD
* Roman people, the people of ancient Rome
*'' Epistle to the Romans'', shortened to ''Romans'', a let ...
s, with partial roots in Ireland; His father was a greengrocer, as his grandfather had been.
There was a large extended family, including uncle John Hitchcock with his five-bedroom Victorian house on Campion Road, Putney
Putney () is a district of southwest London, England, in the London Borough of Wandsworth, southwest of Charing Cross. The area is identified in the London Plan as one of 35 major centres in Greater London.
History
Putney is an ancient paris ...
, complete with maid, cook, chauffeur and gardener. Every summer, his uncle rented a seaside house for the family in Cliftonville
Cliftonville is a coastal area of the town of Margate, situated to the east of the main town, in the Thanet district of Kent, South East England, United Kingdom. It also contains the area known as Palm Bay.
The original Palm Bay estate was ...
, Kent. Hitchcock said that he first became class-conscious there, noticing the differences between tourists and locals.
Describing himself as a well-behaved boy—his father called him his "little lamb without a spot"—Hitchcock said he could not remember ever having had a playmate. One of his favourite stories for interviewers was about his father sending him to the local police station with a note when he was five; the policeman looked at the note and locked him in a cell for a few minutes, saying, "This is what we do to naughty boys." The experience left him, he said, with a lifelong fear of policemen; in 1973 he told Tom Snyder
Thomas James Snyder (May 12, 1936 – July 29, 2007) was an American television personality, news anchor, and radio personality best known for his late night talk shows '' Tomorrow'', on the NBC television network in the 1970s and 1980s, and ' ...
that he was "scared stiff of anything ... to do with the law" and wouldn't even drive a car in case he got a parking ticket.
When he was six, the family moved to Limehouse
Limehouse is a district in the London Borough of Tower Hamlets in East London. It is east of Charing Cross, on the northern bank of the River Thames. Its proximity to the river has given it a strong maritime character, which it retains through ...
and leased two stores at 130 and 175 Salmon Lane, which they ran as a fish-and-chips
Fish and chips is a popular hot dish consisting of fried fish in crispy batter, served with chips. The dish originated in England, where these two components had been introduced from separate immigrant cultures; it is not known who created t ...
shop and fishmongers' respectively; they lived above the former. Hitchcock attended his first school, the Howrah House Convent in Poplar, which he entered in 1907, at age 7. According to biographer Patrick McGilligan, he stayed at Howrah House for at most two years. He also attended a convent school, the Wode Street School "for the daughters of gentlemen and little boys", run by the Faithful Companions of Jesus
The Faithful Companions of Jesus Sisters (FCJ Sisters, French: ''Fidèles compagnes de Jésus'') is a Christian religious institute of the Roman Catholic Church directly subject to the Pope. It was founded in Amiens in France in 1820 by Marie ...
. He then attended a primary school near his home and was for a short time a boarder at Salesian College in Battersea.
The family moved again when he was 11, this time to Stepney
Stepney is a district in the East End of London in the London Borough of Tower Hamlets. The district is no longer officially defined, and is usually used to refer to a relatively small area. However, for much of its history the place name appli ...
, and on 5 October 1910 Hitchcock was sent to St Ignatius College in Stamford Hill
Stamford Hill is an area in Inner London, England, about 5.5 miles north-east of Charing Cross. The neighbourhood is a sub-district of Hackney, the major component of the London Borough of Hackney, and is known for its Hasidic community, the ...
, Tottenham (incorporated into the new London Borough of Haringey
The London Borough of Haringey (pronounced , same as Harringay) is a London borough in North London, classified by some definitions as part of Inner London, and by others as part of Outer London. It was created in 1965 by the amalgamation of ...
), a Jesuit grammar school with a reputation for discipline. As corporal punishment the priests used a flat, hard, springy tool/weapon made of gutta-percha
Gutta-percha is a tree of the genus ''Palaquium'' in the family Sapotaceae. The name also refers to the rigid, naturally biologically inert, resilient, electrically nonconductive, thermoplastic latex derived from the tree, particularly from ...
and known as a "ferula", which struck the whole palm; punishment was always at the end of the day, so the boys had to sit through classes anticipating the punishment if they had been written up for it. He later said that this is where he developed his sense of fear. The school register lists his year of birth as 1900 rather than 1899; biographer Donald Spoto
Donald Spoto (born June 28, 1941) is an American biographer and theologian. He is known for his best-selling biographies of people in the worlds of film and theater, and more recently for his books on theology and spirituality.
Spoto has writte ...
says he was deliberately enrolled as a 10-year-old because he was a year behind with his schooling.
While biographer Gene Adair reports that Hitchcock was "an average, or slightly above-average, pupil", Hitchcock said that he was "usually among the four or five at the top of the class"; at the end of his first year, his work in Latin, English, French and religious education was noted. He told Peter Bogdanovich
Peter Bogdanovich (July 30, 1939 – January 6, 2022) was an American director, writer, actor, producer, critic, and film historian.
One of the " New Hollywood" directors, Bogdanovich started as a film journalist until he was hired to work on ...
: "The Jesuits taught me organisation, control and, to some degree, analysis."
His favourite subject was geography
Geography (from Greek: , ''geographia''. Combination of Greek words ‘Geo’ (The Earth) and ‘Graphien’ (to describe), literally "earth description") is a field of science devoted to the study of the lands, features, inhabitants, an ...
, and he became interested in maps, and railway, tram and bus timetables; according to John Russell Taylor
John Russell Taylor (born 19 June 1935) is an English critic and author. He is the author of critical studies of British theatre; of critical biographies of such figures in film as Alfred Hitchcock, Alec Guinness, Orson Welles, Vivien Leigh, ...
, he could recite all the stops on the Orient Express
The ''Orient Express'' was a long-distance passenger train service created in 1883 by the Belgian company ''Compagnie Internationale des Wagons-Lits'' (CIWL) that operated until 2009. The train traveled the length of continental Europe and int ...
. He also had a particular interest in London trams
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. An overwhelming majority of his films include rail or tram scenes, in particular ''The Lady Vanishes (1938 film)">The Lady Vanishes
''The Lady Vanishes'' is a 1938 British mystery thriller film directed by Alfred Hitchcock, starring Margaret Lockwood and Michael Redgrave. Written by Sidney Gilliat and Frank Launder, based on the 1936 novel ''The Wheel Spins'' by Ethel L ...
'', ''
Strangers on a Train'' and ''Number Seventeen''. A clapperboard shows the number of the scene and the number of takes, and Hitchcock would often take the two numbers on the clapperboard and whisper the London tram route names. For example, if the clapperboard showed Scene 23; Take 3; Hitchcock would whisper "Woodford, Hampstead" – Woodford being the terminus of the route 23 tram, and Hampstead the end of route 3.
Henley's
Hitchcock told his parents that he wanted to be an engineer, and on 25 July 1913,
he left St Ignatius and enrolled in night classes at the London County Council School of Engineering and Navigation in Poplar. In a
book-length interview in 1962, he told
François Truffaut that he had studied "mechanics, electricity, acoustics, and navigation". Then on 12 December 1914 his father, who had been suffering from
emphysema and kidney disease, died at the age of 52. To support himself and his mother—his older siblings had left home by then—Hitchcock took a job, for 15
shillings
The shilling is a historical coin, and the name of a unit of modern currencies formerly used in the United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand, other British Commonwealth countries and Ireland, where they were generally equivalent to 12 pence or ...
a week (£ in ), as a technical clerk at the
Henley Telegraph and Cable Company in Blomfield Street near
London Wall
The London Wall was a defensive wall first built by the Romans around the strategically important port town of Londinium in AD 200, and is now the name of a modern street in the City of London. It has origins as an initial mound wall and ...
. He continued night classes, this time in art history, painting, economics, and political science. His older brother ran the family shops, while he and his mother continued to live in Salmon Lane.
Hitchcock was too young to enlist when the
First World War
World War I (28 July 1914 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. Belligerents included much of Europe, the Russian Empire, the United States, and the Ottoman Empire, with fightin ...
started in July 1914, and when he reached the required age of 18 in 1917, he received a C3 classification ("free from serious organic disease, able to stand service conditions in garrisons at home ... only suitable for sedentary work"). He joined a cadet regiment of the
Royal Engineers and took part in theoretical briefings, weekend drills, and exercises. John Russell Taylor wrote that, in one session of practical exercises in
Hyde Park, Hitchcock was required to wear
puttees
A puttee (also spelled ''puttie'', adapted from the Hindi '' paṭṭī'', meaning "bandage") is a covering for the lower part of the leg from the ankle to the knee, alternatively known as: legwraps, leg bindings, winingas, or Wickelbänder. The ...
. He could never master wrapping them around his legs, and they repeatedly fell down around his ankles.
After the war, Hitchcock took an interest in creative writing. In June 1919, he became a founding editor and business manager of Henley's in-house publication, ''The Henley Telegraph'' (sixpence a copy), to which he submitted several short stories. Henley's promoted him to the advertising department, where he wrote copy and drew graphics for electric cable advertisements. He enjoyed the job and would stay late at the office to examine the proofs; he told Truffaut that this was his "first step toward cinema". He enjoyed watching films, especially American cinema, and from the age of 16 read the trade papers; he watched
Charlie Chaplin,
D. W. Griffith and
Buster Keaton, and particularly liked
Fritz Lang
Friedrich Christian Anton Lang (; December 5, 1890 – August 2, 1976), known as Fritz Lang, was an Austrian film director, screenwriter, and producer who worked in Germany and later the United States.Obituary ''Variety'', August 4, 1976, p. 6 ...
's ''
Der müde Tod'' (1921).
Inter-war career: 1919–1939
Famous Players-Lasky
While still at Henley's, he read in a trade paper that
Famous Players-Lasky
Famous Players-Lasky Corporation was an American motion picture and distribution company formed on June 28, 1916, from the merger of Adolph Zukor's Famous Players Film Company—originally formed by Zukor as Famous Players in Famous Plays—and ...
, the production arm of
Paramount Pictures, was opening a studio in London. They were planning to film ''
The Sorrows of Satan'' by
Marie Corelli
Mary Mackay (1 May 185521 April 1924), also called Minnie Mackey, and known by her pseudonym Marie Corelli (, also , ), was an English novelist.
From the appearance of her first novel ''A Romance of Two Worlds'' in 1886, she became the bestsel ...
, so he produced some drawings for the
title cards and sent his work to the studio. They hired him, and in 1919 he began working for
Islington Studios
Islington Studios, often known as Gainsborough Studios, were a British film studio located on the south bank of the Regent's Canal, in Poole Street, Hoxton in the former Metropolitan Borough of Shoreditch, London between 1919 and 1949. The studio ...
in Poole Street,
Hoxton
Hoxton is an area in the London Borough of Hackney, England. As a part of Shoreditch, it is often considered to be part of the East End – the historic core of wider East London. It was historically in the county of Middlesex until 1889. It li ...
, as a title-card designer.
Donald Spoto wrote that most of the staff were Americans with strict job specifications, but the English workers were encouraged to try their hand at anything, which meant that Hitchcock gained experience as a co-writer, art director and production manager on at least 18 silent films. ''The Times'' wrote in February 1922 about the studio's "special art title department under the supervision of Mr. A. J. Hitchcock".
His work included ''
Number 13'' (1922), also known as ''Mrs. Peabody;'' it was cancelled because of financial problems—the few finished scenes are
lost—and ''
Always Tell Your Wife'' (1923), which he and
Seymour Hicks
Sir Edward Seymour Hicks (30 January 1871 – 6 April 1949), better known as Seymour Hicks, was a British actor, music hall performer, playwright, actor-manager and producer. He became known, early in his career, for writing, starring in and p ...
finished together when Hicks was about to give up on it. Hicks wrote later about being helped by "a fat youth who was in charge of the property room ...
ne other than Alfred Hitchcock".
Gainsborough Pictures and work in Germany
When Paramount pulled out of London in 1922, Hitchcock was hired as an assistant director by a new firm run in the same location by
Michael Balcon
Sir Michael Elias Balcon (19 May 1896 – 17 October 1977) was an English film producer known for his leadership of Ealing Studios in West London from 1938 to 1955. Under his direction, the studio became one of the most important British fil ...
, later known as
Gainsborough Pictures
Gainsborough Pictures was a British film studio based on the south bank of the Regent's Canal, in Poole Street, Hoxton in the former Metropolitan Borough of Shoreditch, north London. Gainsborough Studios was active between 1924 and 1951. The com ...
. Hitchcock worked on ''
Woman to Woman'' (1923) with the director
Graham Cutts
John Henry Graham Cutts (1884 – 7 February 1958), known as Graham Cutts, was a British film director, one of the leading British directors in the 1920s. His fellow director A. V. Bramble believed that Gainsborough Pictures had been built ...
, designing the set, writing the script and producing. He said: "It was the first film that I had really got my hands onto." The editor and "script girl" on ''Woman to Woman'' was
Alma Reville
Alma Lucy Reville, Lady Hitchcock (14 August 1899 – 6 July 1982), was an English director, editor, and screenwriter. She was the wife of the film director Alfred Hitchcock. She collaborated on scripts for her husband's films, including '' Sha ...
, his future wife. He also worked as an assistant to Cutts on ''
The White Shadow'' (1924), ''
The Passionate Adventure'' (1924), ''
The Blackguard
''The Blackguard'' (german: Die Prinzessin und der Geiger) (1925) is a British-German drama film directed by Graham Cutts and starring Jane Novak, Walter Rilla, and Frank Stanmore.
Plot
Against the backdrop of the Russian Revolution, a violini ...
'' (1925), and ''
The Prude's Fall
''The Prude's Fall'' is a 1925 British silent drama film directed by Graham Cutts and starring Jane Novak, Julanne Johnston and Warwick Ward.
The film was shot at Islington Studios, produced by a company that would soon develop into Gainsbo ...
'' (1925). ''The Blackguard'' was produced at the
Babelsberg Studios
Babelsberg Film Studio (german: Filmstudio Babelsberg), located in Potsdam-Babelsberg outside Berlin, Germany, is the second oldest large-scale film studio in the world only preceded by the Danish Nordisk Film (est. 1906), producing films since ...
in Potsdam, where Hitchcock watched part of the making of
F. W. Murnau's ''
The Last Laugh'' (1924). He was impressed with Murnau's work and later used many of his techniques for the set design in his own productions.
In the summer of 1925, Balcon asked Hitchcock to direct ''
The Pleasure Garden'' (1925), starring
Virginia Valli, a co-production of Gainsborough and the German firm
Emelka at the
Geiselgasteig studio near Munich. Reville, by then Hitchcock's fiancée, was assistant director-editor. Although the film was a commercial flop, Balcon liked Hitchcock's work; a ''Daily Express'' headline called him the "Young man with a master mind". Production of ''The Pleasure Garden'' encountered obstacles which Hitchcock would later learn from: on arrival to
Brenner Pass, he failed to declare his
film stock to customs and it was confiscated; one actress could not enter the water for a scene because she was on her
period
Period may refer to:
Common uses
* Era, a length or span of time
* Full stop (or period), a punctuation mark
Arts, entertainment, and media
* Period (music), a concept in musical composition
* Periodic sentence (or rhetorical period), a concept ...
; budget overruns meant that he had to borrow money from the actors. Hitchcock also needed a translator to give instructions to the cast and crew.
In Germany, Hitchcock observed the nuances of
German cinema and filmmaking which had a big influence on him. When he was not working, he would visit Berlin's art galleries, concerts and museums. He would also meet with actors, writers, and producers to build connections. Balcon asked him to direct a second film in Munich, ''
The Mountain Eagle'' (1926), based on an original story titled ''Fear o' God''. The film is lost, and Hitchcock called it "a very bad movie". A year later, Hitchcock wrote and directed ''
The Ring''; although the screenplay was credited solely to his name,
Elliot Stannard assisted him with the writing. ''The Ring'' garnered positive reviews; the ''Bioscope'' magazine critic called it "the most magnificent British film ever made".
When he returned to England, Hitchcock was one of the early members of the London Film Society, newly formed in 1925. Through the Society, he became fascinated by the work by Soviet filmmakers:
Dziga Vertov
Dziga Vertov (russian: Дзига Вертов, born David Abelevich Kaufman, russian: Дави́д А́белевич Ка́уфман, and also known as Denis Kaufman; – 12 February 1954) was a Soviet pioneer documentary film and newsre ...
,
Lev Kuleshov
Lev Vladimirovich Kuleshov (russian: Лев Владимирович Кулешов; – 29 March 1970) was a Russian and Soviet filmmaker and film theorist, one of the founders of the world's first film school, the Moscow Film School. He ...
,
Sergei Eisenstein
Sergei Mikhailovich Eisenstein (russian: Сергей Михайлович Эйзенштейн, p=sʲɪrˈɡʲej mʲɪˈxajləvʲɪtɕ ɪjzʲɪnˈʂtʲejn, 2=Sergey Mikhaylovich Eyzenshteyn; 11 February 1948) was a Soviet film director, scree ...
, and
Vsevolod Pudovkin
Vsevolod Illarionovich Pudovkin ( rus, Всеволод Илларионович Пудовкин, p=ˈfsʲevələt ɪlərʲɪˈonəvʲɪtɕ pʊˈdofkʲɪn; 16 February 1893 – 30 June 1953) was a Russian and Soviet film director, screenwrite ...
. He would also socialise with fellow English filmmakers
Ivor Montagu
Ivor Goldsmid Samuel Montagu (23 April 1904, in Kensington, London – 5 November 1984, in Watford) was an English filmmaker, screenwriter, producer, film critic, writer, table tennis player, and Communist activist in the 1930s. He helped to de ...
and
Adrian Brunel
Adrian Brunel (4 September 1892 – 18 February 1958) was an English film director and screenwriter. Brunel's directorial career started in the silent era, and reached its peak in the latter half of the 1920s. His surviving work from the 1920s, ...
, and
Walter C. Mycroft.
Hitchcock established himself as a name director with his first thriller, ''
The Lodger: A Story of the London Fog'' (1927).
The film concerns the hunt for a
Jack the Ripper
Jack the Ripper was an unidentified serial killer active in and around the impoverished Whitechapel district of London, England, in the autumn of 1888. In both criminal case files and the contemporaneous journalistic accounts, the killer w ...
-style serial killer who, wearing a black cloak and carrying a black bag, is murdering young blonde women in London, and only on Tuesdays. A landlady suspects that her lodger is the killer, but he turns out to be innocent. To convey the impression footsteps were being heard from an upper floor, Hitchcock had a glass floor made so that the viewer could see the lodger pacing up and down in his room above the landlady. Hitchcock had wanted the leading man to be guilty, or for the film at least to end ambiguously, but the star was
Ivor Novello, a
matinée idol, and the "
star system" meant that Novello could not be the villain. Hitchcock told Truffaut: "You have to clearly spell it out in big letters: 'He is innocent.'" (He had the same problem years later with
Cary Grant
Cary Grant (born Archibald Alec Leach; January 18, 1904November 29, 1986) was an English-American actor. He was known for his Mid-Atlantic accent, debonair demeanor, light-hearted approach to acting, and sense of comic timing. He was one o ...
in ''
Suspicion
Suspicion is a feeling of mistrust.
Suspicion(s), The Suspicion, or Suspicious may also refer to:
Film and television Film
* ''Suspicion'' (1918 film), an American silent film directed by John M. Stahl
* ''Suspicion'' (1941 film), an American ...
'' (1941).) Released in January 1927, ''The Lodger'' was a commercial and critical success in the UK. Upon its release the trade journal ''Bioscope'' wrote: "It is possible that this film is the finest British production ever made".
Hitchcock told Truffaut that the film was the first of his to be influenced by
German Expressionism
German Expressionism () consisted of several related creative movements in Germany before the First World War that reached a peak in Berlin during the 1920s. These developments were part of a larger Expressionist movement in north and central ...
: "In truth, you might almost say that ''The Lodger'' was my first picture." He made his first
cameo appearance
A cameo role, also called a cameo appearance and often shortened to just cameo (), is a brief appearance of a well-known person in a work of the performing arts. These roles are generally small, many of them non-speaking ones, and are commonly ei ...
in the film, sitting in a newsroom.
Marriage
On 2 December 1926, Hitchcock married the English screenwriter
Alma Reville
Alma Lucy Reville, Lady Hitchcock (14 August 1899 – 6 July 1982), was an English director, editor, and screenwriter. She was the wife of the film director Alfred Hitchcock. She collaborated on scripts for her husband's films, including '' Sha ...
at the
Brompton Oratory
Brompton Oratory is a large neo-classical Roman Catholic church in the Knightsbridge area of the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea, London. Its full name is the Church of the Immaculate Heart of Mary, or as named in its Grade II* archite ...
in
South Kensington
South Kensington, nicknamed Little Paris, is a district just west of Central London in the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea. Historically it settled on part of the scattered Middlesex village of Brompton. Its name was supplanted with ...
. The couple honeymooned in Paris,
Lake Como and St. Moritz, before returning to London to live in a leased flat on the top two floors of 153
Cromwell Road
Cromwell Road is a major London road in the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea, designated as part of the A4. It was created in the 19th century and is said to be named after Richard Cromwell, son of Oliver Cromwell, who once owned a hous ...
, Kensington. Reville, who was born just hours after Hitchcock, converted from Protestantism to Catholicism, apparently at the insistence of Hitchcock's mother; she was baptised on 31 May 1927 and confirmed at
Westminster Cathedral
Westminster Cathedral is the mother church of the Catholic Church in England and Wales. It is the largest Catholic church in the UK and the seat of the Archbishop of Westminster.
The site on which the cathedral stands in the City o ...
by Cardinal
Francis Bourne
Francis Alphonsus Bourne (1861–1935) was an English prelate of the Catholic Church. He served as the fourth Archbishop of Westminster from 1903 until his death, and was elevated to the cardinalate in 1911.
Biography
Early life
Francis Bo ...
on 5 June.
In 1928, when they learned that Reville was pregnant, the Hitchcocks purchased "Winter's Grace", a
Tudor farmhouse set in 11 acres on Stroud Lane,
Shamley Green
Wonersh is a village and civil parish in the Waverley district of Surrey, England and Surrey Hills Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty. Wonersh contains three Conservation Areas and spans an area three to six miles SSE of Guildford. In th ...
, Surrey, for £2,500. Their daughter and only child,
Patricia Alma Hitchcock, was born on 7 July that year. Patricia died on 9 August 2021 at 93.
Reville became her husband's closest collaborator;
Charles Champlin
Charles Davenport Champlin (March 23, 1926 – November 16, 2014) was an American film critic and writer.
Life and career
Champlin was born in Hammondsport, New York. He attended high school in Camden, New York, working as a columnist for the ...
wrote in 1982: "The Hitchcock touch had four hands, and two were Alma's." When Hitchcock accepted the
AFI Life Achievement Award
The AFI Life Achievement Award was established by the board of directors of the American Film Institute on February 26, 1973, to honor a single individual for his or her lifetime contribution to enriching American culture through motion picture ...
in 1979, he said that he wanted to mention "four people who have given me the most affection, appreciation and encouragement, and constant collaboration. The first of the four is a film editor, the second is a scriptwriter, the third is the mother of my daughter, Pat, and the fourth is as fine a cook as ever performed miracles in a domestic kitchen. And their names are Alma Reville." Reville wrote or co-wrote on many of Hitchcock's films, including ''
Shadow of a Doubt'',
''Suspicion'' and
''The 39 Steps''.
Early sound films
Hitchcock began work on his tenth film, ''
Blackmail'' (1929), when its production company,
British International Pictures
Associated British Picture Corporation (ABPC), originally British International Pictures (BIP), was a British film production, distribution and exhibition company active from 1927 until 1970 when it was absorbed into EMI. ABPC also owned appr ...
(BIP), converted its
Elstree studios
Elstree Studios is a generic term which can refer to several current and demolished British film studios and television studios based in or around the town of Borehamwood and village of Elstree in Hertfordshire, England. Production studios ha ...
to
sound
In physics, sound is a vibration that propagates as an acoustic wave, through a transmission medium such as a gas, liquid or solid.
In human physiology and psychology, sound is the ''reception'' of such waves and their ''perception'' b ...
. The film was the first British "
talkie
A sound film is a motion picture with synchronized sound, or sound technologically coupled to image, as opposed to a silent film. The first known public exhibition of projected sound films took place in Paris in 1900, but decades passed before ...
"; this followed the rapid development of sound films in the United States, from the use of brief sound segments in ''
The Jazz Singer
''The Jazz Singer'' is a 1927 American musical drama film directed by Alan Crosland. It is the first feature-length motion picture with both synchronized recorded music score as well as lip-synchronous singing and speech (in several isolate ...
'' (1927) to the first full sound feature ''
Lights of New York'' (1928).
[; also see ; ] ''Blackmail'' began the Hitchcock tradition of using famous landmarks as a backdrop for suspense sequences, with the climax taking place on the dome of the
British Museum
The British Museum is a public museum dedicated to human history, art and culture located in the Bloomsbury area of London. Its permanent collection of eight million works is among the largest and most comprehensive in existence. It docum ...
.
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
The London Underground (also known simply as the Underground or by its nickname the Tube) is a rapid transit system serving Greater London and some parts of the adjacent counties of Buckinghamshire, Essex and Hertfordshire in England.
The ...
. In the
PBS
The Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) is an American public broadcaster and non-commercial, free-to-air television network based in Arlington, Virginia. PBS is a publicly funded nonprofit organization and the most prominent provider of educat ...
series ''The Men Who Made The Movies'', 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. During this period, Hitchcock directed segments for a BIP
revue
A revue is a type of multi-act popular theatrical entertainment that combines music, dance, and sketches. The revue has its roots in 19th century popular entertainment and melodrama but grew into a substantial cultural presence of its own dur ...
, ''
Elstree Calling
''Elstree Calling'' is a 1930 British comedy musical film directed by Adrian Brunel and Alfred Hitchcock at Elstree Studios.
Synopsis
The film, referred to as "A Cine-Radio Revue" in its original publicity, is a lavish musical film revue and ...
'' (1930), and directed a short film, ''
An Elastic Affair
''An Elastic Affair'' (1930) is a 10-minute short comedy film directed by Alfred Hitchcock which features the two winners—Cyril Butcher (1909–1988) as "the Boy" and Aileen Despard (1908–1981) as "the Girl"—of a film acting scholarship ...
'' (1930), featuring two ''Film Weekly'' scholarship winners. ''An Elastic Affair'' is one of the lost films.
In 1933, Hitchcock signed a multi-film contract with
Gaumont-British, once again working for Michael Balcon. His first film for the company, ''
The Man Who Knew Too Much'' (1934), was a success; his second, ''
The 39 Steps'' (1935), was acclaimed in the UK and gained him recognition in the United States. It also established the quintessential English "Hitchcock blonde" (
Madeleine Carroll
Edith Madeleine Carroll (26 February 1906 – 2 October 1987) was an English actress, popular both in Britain and America in the 1930s and 1940s. At the peak of her success in 1938, she was the world's highest-paid actress.
Carroll is rememb ...
) as the template for his succession of ice-cold, elegant leading ladies. Screenwriter
Robert Towne
Robert Towne (born Robert Bertram Schwartz;'' Easy Riders, Raging Bulls'' by Peter Biskind page 30, 1999 Bloomsbury edition November 23, 1934) is an American screenwriter, producer, director and actor. He started with writing films for Roger ...
remarked, "It's not much of an exaggeration to say that all contemporary escapist entertainment begins with ''The 39 Steps''". This film was one of the first to introduce the "
MacGuffin
In fiction, a MacGuffin (sometimes McGuffin) is an object, device, or event that is necessary to the plot and the motivation of the characters, but insignificant, unimportant, or irrelevant in itself. The term was originated by Angus MacPhail for ...
" plot device, a term coined by the English screenwriter
Angus MacPhail
Angus Roy MacPhail (8 April 1903 – 22 April 1962) was an English screenwriter, active from the late 1920s. He is best remembered for his work with Alfred Hitchcock.
Early life and education
Son of merchant clerk Angus MacPhail and Fann ...
. The MacGuffin is an item or goal the protagonist is pursuing, one that otherwise has no narrative value; in ''The 39 Steps'', the MacGuffin is a stolen set of design plans.
Hitchcock released two spy thrillers in 1936. ''
Sabotage
Sabotage is a deliberate action aimed at weakening a polity, effort, or organization through subversion, obstruction, disruption, or destruction. One who engages in sabotage is a ''saboteur''. Saboteurs typically try to conceal their identitie ...
'' was loosely based on
Joseph Conrad's novel, ''
The Secret Agent'' (1907), about a woman who discovers that her husband is a terrorist, and ''
Secret Agent
Espionage, spying, or intelligence gathering is the act of obtaining secret or confidential information (intelligence) from non-disclosed sources or divulging of the same without the permission of the holder of the information for a tangib ...
'', based on two stories in ''
Ashenden: Or the British Agent'' (1928) by
W. Somerset Maugham
William Somerset Maugham ( ; 25 January 1874 – 16 December 1965) was an English writer, known for his plays, novels and short stories. Born in Paris, where he spent his first ten years, Maugham was schooled in England and went to a German un ...
.
At this time, Hitchcock also became notorious for pranks against the cast and crew. These jokes ranged from simple and innocent to crazy and maniacal. For instance, he hosted a dinner party where he dyed all the food blue because he claimed there weren't enough blue foods. He also had a horse delivered to the dressing room of his friend, actor
Gerald du Maurier
Sir Gerald Hubert Edward Busson du Maurier (26 March 1873 – 11 April 1934) was an English actor and manager. He was the son of author George du Maurier and his wife, Emma Wightwick, and the brother of Sylvia Llewelyn Davies. In 1903, he ...
.
Hitchcock followed up with ''
Young and Innocent
''Young and Innocent'', released in the US as ''The Girl Was Young'', is a 1937 British crime thriller film directed by Alfred Hitchcock and starring Nova Pilbeam and Derrick De Marney. Based on the 1936 novel '' A Shilling for Candles'' by Jos ...
'' in 1937, a crime thriller based on the 1936 novel ''
A Shilling for Candles'' by
Josephine Tey
Josephine Tey was a pseudonym used by Elizabeth MacKintosh (25 July 1896 – 13 February 1952), a Scottish author. Her novel '' The Daughter of Time'' was a detective work investigating the role of Richard III of England in the death of the Pr ...
. Starring
Nova Pilbeam
Nova Margery Pilbeam (15 November 1919 – 17 July 2015) was an English film and stage actress. She played leading roles in two Alfred Hitchcock films of the 1930s, and made her last film in 1948.
Early life
Pilbeam was born in Wimbledon, Sur ...
and
Derrick De Marney
Derrick Raoul Edouard Alfred De Marney (21 September 1906 – 18 February 1978) was an English stage and film actor and producer, of French and Irish ancestry.
Actor
The son of Violet Eileen Concanen and Arthur De Marney, and the grandson of ...
, the film was relatively enjoyable for the cast and crew to make. To meet distribution purposes in America, the film's runtime was cut and this included removal of one of Hitchcock's favourite scenes: a children's tea party which becomes menacing to the protagonists.
Hitchcock's next major success was ''
The Lady Vanishes
''The Lady Vanishes'' is a 1938 British mystery thriller film directed by Alfred Hitchcock, starring Margaret Lockwood and Michael Redgrave. Written by Sidney Gilliat and Frank Launder, based on the 1936 novel ''The Wheel Spins'' by Ethel L ...
'' (1938), "one of the greatest train movies from the genre's golden era", according to
Philip French, in which Miss Froy (
May Whitty
May is the fifth month of the year in the Julian and Gregorian calendars and is the third of seven months to have a length of 31 days.
May is a month of spring in the Northern Hemisphere, and autumn in the Southern Hemisphere. Therefore, May ...
), a British spy posing as a governess, disappears on a train journey through the fictional European country of Bandrika. The film saw Hitchcock receive the
1938 New York Film Critics Circle Award for Best Director. Benjamin Crisler of the ''
New York Times
''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...
'' wrote in June 1938: "Three unique and valuable institutions the British have that we in America have not:
Magna Carta, the
Tower Bridge
Tower Bridge is a Grade I listed combined bascule and suspension bridge in London, built between 1886 and 1894, designed by Horace Jones and engineered by John Wolfe Barry with the help of Henry Marc Brunel. It crosses the River Thames clos ...
and Alfred Hitchcock, the greatest director of screen melodramas in the world." The film was based on the novel ''
The Wheel Spins
''The Wheel Spins'' (a.k.a. ''The Lady Vanishes'') is a 1936 mystery novel by British writer Ethel Lina White.
Plot
Iris Carr, a young English society woman, is staying at a small hotel in ‘a remote corner of Europe’. Her friends leave o ...
'' (1936) written by
Ethel Lina White
Ethel Lina White (2 April 1876 – 13 August 1944) was a British crime writer from Abergavenny, Monmouthshire, Wales. She was best known for her novel '' The Wheel Spins'' (1936), on which the Alfred Hitchcock 1938 film '' The Lady Vanishes' ...
.
By 1938 Hitchcock was aware that he had reached his peak in Britain. He had received numerous offers from producers in the United States, but he turned them all down because he disliked the contractual obligations or thought the projects were repellent. However, producer
David O. Selznick offered him a concrete proposal to make a film based on the sinking of , which was eventually shelved, but Selznick persuaded Hitchcock to come to
Hollywood. In July 1938, Hitchcock flew to New York, and found that he was already a celebrity; he was featured in magazines and gave interviews to radio stations. In Hollywood, Hitchcock met Selznick for the first time. Selznick offered him a four-film contract, approximately $40,000 for each picture ().
Early Hollywood years: 1939–1945
Selznick contract
Selznick signed Hitchcock to a seven-year contract beginning in April 1939, and the Hitchcocks moved to Hollywood. The Hitchcocks lived in a spacious flat on
Wilshire Boulevard
Wilshire Boulevard is a prominent boulevard in the Los Angeles area of Southern California, extending from Ocean Avenue in the city of Santa Monica east to Grand Avenue in the Financial District of downtown Los Angeles. One of the principal ...
, and slowly acclimatised themselves to the Los Angeles area. He and his wife Alma kept a low profile, and were not interested in attending parties or being celebrities. Hitchcock discovered his taste for fine food in West Hollywood, but still carried on his way of life from England. He was impressed with Hollywood's filmmaking culture, expansive budgets and efficiency, compared to the limits that he had often faced in Britain. In June that year, ''
Life
Life is a quality that distinguishes matter that has biological processes, such as Cell signaling, signaling and self-sustaining processes, from that which does not, and is defined by the capacity for Cell growth, growth, reaction to Stimu ...
'' magazine called him the "greatest master of melodrama in screen history".
Although Hitchcock and Selznick respected each other, their working arrangements were sometimes difficult. Selznick suffered from constant financial problems, and Hitchcock was often unhappy about Selznick's creative control and interference over his films. Selznick was also displeased with Hitchcock's method of shooting just what was in the script, and nothing more, which meant that the film could not be cut and remade differently at a later time. As well as complaining about Hitchcock's "goddamn jigsaw cutting", their personalities were mismatched: Hitchcock was reserved whereas Selznick was flamboyant. Eventually, Selznick generously lent Hitchcock to the larger film studios. Selznick made only a few films each year, as did fellow independent producer
Samuel Goldwyn
Samuel Goldwyn (born Szmuel Gelbfisz; yi, שמואל געלבפֿיש; August 27, 1882 (claimed) January 31, 1974), also known as Samuel Goldfish, was a Polish-born American film producer. He was best known for being the founding contributor an ...
, 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. In a later interview, Hitchcock said: "
elznickwas 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'."
Hitchcock approached American cinema cautiously; his first American film was set in England in which the "Americanness" of the characters was incidental: ''
Rebecca'' (1940) was set in a Hollywood version of England's Cornwall and based on a novel by English novelist
Daphne du Maurier
Dame Daphne du Maurier, Lady Browning, (; 13 May 1907 – 19 April 1989) was an English novelist, biographer and playwright. Her parents were actor-manager Sir Gerald du Maurier and his wife, actress Muriel Beaumont. Her grandfather was Geo ...
. Selznick insisted on a faithful adaptation of the book, and disagreed with Hitchcock with the use of humour. The film, starring
Laurence Olivier and
Joan Fontaine
Joan de Beauvoir de Havilland (October 22, 1917 – December 15, 2013), known professionally as Joan Fontaine, was a British-American actress who is best known for her starring roles in Hollywood films during the "Golden Age". Fontaine appeared ...
, concerns an unnamed naïve young woman who marries a widowed aristocrat. She lives in his large
English country house, and struggles with the lingering reputation of his elegant and worldly first wife Rebecca, who died under mysterious circumstances. The film won
Best Picture
This is a list of categories of awards commonly awarded through organizations that bestow film awards, including those presented by various film, festivals, and people's awards.
Best Actor/Best Actress
*See Best Actor#Film awards, Best Actress#F ...
at the
13th Academy Awards
The 13th Academy Awards were held on February 27, 1941, to honor films released in 1940. This was the first year that sealed envelopes were used to keep the names of the winners secret. The accounting firm of Price Waterhouse was hired to coun ...
; the statuette was given to producer Selznick. Hitchcock received his first nomination for
Best Director, his first of five such nominations.
Hitchcock's second American film was the thriller ''
Foreign Correspondent'' (1940), set in Europe, based on
Vincent Sheean
James Vincent Sheean (December 5, 1899, Pana, Illinois – March 16, 1975, Arolo, Frz. of Leggiuno, Italy) was an American journalist and novelist.
Career
Sheean's most famous work was ''Personal History'' (New York: Doubleday, 1935).
It wo ...
's book ''Personal History'' (1935) and produced by
Walter Wanger
Walter Wanger (born Walter Feuchtwanger; July 11, 1894 – November 18, 1968) was an American film producer active from the 1910s, his career concluding with the turbulent production of '' Cleopatra,'' his last film, in 1963. He began at Para ...
. It was nominated for Best Picture that year. Hitchcock felt uneasy living and working in Hollywood while Britain was at
war
War is an intense armed conflict between states, governments, societies, or paramilitary groups such as mercenaries, insurgents, and militias. It is generally characterized by extreme violence, destruction, and mortality, using regular o ...
; his concern resulted in a film that overtly supported the British war effort. Filmed in 1939, it was inspired by the rapidly changing events in Europe, as covered by an American newspaper reporter played by
Joel McCrea
Joel Albert McCrea (November 5, 1905 – October 20, 1990) was an American actor whose career spanned a wide variety of genres over almost five decades, including comedy, drama, romance, thrillers, adventures, and Westerns, for which he bec ...
. By mixing footage of European scenes with scenes filmed on a Hollywood
backlot
A backlot is an area behind or adjoining a movie studio containing permanent exterior buildings for outdoor scenes in filmmaking or television productions, or space for temporary set construction.
Uses
Some movie studios build a wide variety of ...
, the film avoided direct references to
Nazism
Nazism ( ; german: Nazismus), the common name in English for National Socialism (german: Nationalsozialismus, ), is the far-right totalitarian political ideology and practices associated with Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party (NSDAP) i ...
,
Nazi Germany
Nazi Germany (lit. "National Socialist State"), ' (lit. "Nazi State") for short; also ' (lit. "National Socialist Germany") (officially known as the German Reich from 1933 until 1943, and the Greater German Reich from 1943 to 1945) was ...
, and Germans, to comply with the
Motion Picture Production Code
The Motion Picture Production Code was a set of industry guidelines for the self-censorship of content that was applied to most motion pictures released by major studios in the United States from 1934 to 1968. It is also popularly known as the ...
at the time.
Early war years
In September 1940 the Hitchcocks bought the Cornwall Ranch near
Scotts Valley, California, in the
Santa Cruz Mountains. Their primary residence was an English-style home in
Bel Air, purchased in 1942.
Hitchcock's films were diverse during this period, ranging from the romantic comedy ''
Mr. & Mrs. Smith'' (1941) to the bleak
film noir ''
Shadow of a Doubt'' (1943).
''
Suspicion
Suspicion is a feeling of mistrust.
Suspicion(s), The Suspicion, or Suspicious may also refer to:
Film and television Film
* ''Suspicion'' (1918 film), an American silent film directed by John M. Stahl
* ''Suspicion'' (1941 film), an American ...
'' (1941) marked Hitchcock's first film as a producer and director. It is set in England; Hitchcock used the north coast of
Santa Cruz for the English coastline sequence. The film is the first of four in which
Cary Grant
Cary Grant (born Archibald Alec Leach; January 18, 1904November 29, 1986) was an English-American actor. He was known for his Mid-Atlantic accent, debonair demeanor, light-hearted approach to acting, and sense of comic timing. He was one o ...
was cast by Hitchcock, and it is one of the rare occasions that Grant plays a sinister character. Grant plays Johnnie Aysgarth, an English
conman
A confidence trick is an attempt to defraud a person or group after first gaining their trust. Confidence tricks exploit victims using their credulity, naïveté, compassion, vanity, confidence, irresponsibility, and greed. Researchers have d ...
whose actions raise suspicion and anxiety in his shy young English wife, Lina McLaidlaw (
Joan Fontaine
Joan de Beauvoir de Havilland (October 22, 1917 – December 15, 2013), known professionally as Joan Fontaine, was a British-American actress who is best known for her starring roles in Hollywood films during the "Golden Age". Fontaine appeared ...
). In one scene, Hitchcock placed a light inside a glass of milk, perhaps poisoned, that Grant is bringing to his wife; the light ensures that the audience's attention is on the glass. Grant's character is actually a killer, as per written in the book, ''
Before the Fact'' by
Francis Iles, but the studio felt that Grant's image would be tarnished by that. Hitchcock therefore settled for an ambiguous finale, although he would have preferred to end with the wife's murder. Fontaine won
Best Actress
Best Actress is the name of an award which is presented by various film, television and theatre organisations, festivals, and people's awards to leading actresses in a film, television series, television film or play. The first Best Actress aw ...
for her performance.
''
Saboteur
Sabotage is a deliberate action aimed at weakening a polity, effort, or organization through subversion, obstruction, disruption, or destruction. One who engages in sabotage is a ''saboteur''. Saboteurs typically try to conceal their identiti ...
'' (1942) is the first of two films that Hitchcock made for
Universal Studios
Universal Pictures (legally Universal City Studios LLC, also known as Universal Studios, or simply Universal; common metonym: Uni, and formerly named Universal Film Manufacturing Company and Universal-International Pictures Inc.) is an Americ ...
during the decade. Hitchcock was forced by Universal to use Universal contract player
Robert Cummings
Charles Clarence Robert Orville Cummings (June 9, 1910 – December 2, 1990) was an American film and television actor who appeared in roles in comedy films such as '' The Devil and Miss Jones'' (1941) and ''Princess O'Rourke'' (1943), and in ...
and
Priscilla Lane
Priscilla Lane (born Priscilla Mullican, June 12, 1915 – April 4, 1995) was an American actress, and the youngest sibling in the Lane Sisters of singers and actresses. She is best remembered for her roles in the films ''The Roaring Twenties'' ...
, a freelancer who signed a one-picture deal with the studio, both known for their work in comedies and light dramas. The story depicts a confrontation between a suspected saboteur (Cummings) and a real saboteur (
Norman Lloyd) atop the
Statue of Liberty. Hitchcock took a three-day tour of New York City to scout for ''Saboteur''s filming locations. He also directed ''Have You Heard?'' (1942), a photographic dramatisation for ''
Life
Life is a quality that distinguishes matter that has biological processes, such as Cell signaling, signaling and self-sustaining processes, from that which does not, and is defined by the capacity for Cell growth, growth, reaction to Stimu ...
'' magazine of the
dangers of rumours during wartime. In 1943, he wrote a mystery story for ''
Look'' magazine, "The Murder of
Monty Woolley", a sequence of captioned photographs inviting the reader to find clues to the murderer's identity; Hitchcock cast the performers as themselves, such as Woolley, Doris Merrick, and make-up man Guy Pearce.
Back in England, Hitchcock's mother Emma was severely ill; she died on 26 September 1942 at age 79. Hitchcock never spoke publicly about his mother, but his assistant said that he admired her. Four months later, on 4 January 1943, his brother William died of an overdose at age 52. Hitchcock was not very close to William, but his death made Hitchcock conscious about his own eating and drinking habits. He was overweight and suffering from back aches. His New Year's resolution in 1943 was to take his diet seriously with the help of a physician. In January that year, ''
Shadow of a Doubt'' was released, which Hitchcock had fond memories of making. In the film, Charlotte "Charlie" Newton (
Teresa Wright) suspects her beloved uncle Charlie Oakley (
Joseph Cotten
Joseph Cheshire Cotten Jr. (May 15, 1905 – February 6, 1994) was an American film, stage, radio and television actor. Cotten achieved prominence on Broadway, starring in the original stage productions of '' The Philadelphia Story'' and '' Sab ...
) of being a serial killer. Hitchcock filmed extensively on location, this time in the Northern California city of
Santa Rosa.
At
20th Century Fox
20th Century Studios, Inc. (previously known as 20th Century Fox) is an American film production company headquartered at the Fox Studio Lot in the Century City area of Los Angeles. As of 2019, it serves as a film production arm of Walt Dis ...
, Hitchcock approached
John Steinbeck with an idea for a film, which recorded the experiences of the survivors of a German
U-boat
U-boats were naval submarines operated by Germany, particularly in the First and Second World Wars. Although at times they were efficient fleet weapons against enemy naval warships, they were most effectively used in an economic warfare ro ...
attack. Steinbeck began work on the script for what would become ''
Lifeboat
Lifeboat may refer to:
Rescue vessels
* Lifeboat (shipboard), a small craft aboard a ship to allow for emergency escape
* Lifeboat (rescue), a boat designed for sea rescues
* Airborne lifeboat, an air-dropped boat used to save downed airmen
...
'' (1944). However, Steinbeck was unhappy with the film and asked that his name be removed from the credits, to no avail. The idea was rewritten as a short story by
Harry Sylvester and published in ''
Collier's'' in 1943. The action sequences were shot in a small boat in the studio water tank. The locale posed problems for Hitchcock's traditional cameo appearance; it 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". He told Truffaut in 1962:
Hitchcock's typical dinner before his weight loss had been a roast chicken, boiled ham, potatoes, bread, vegetables, relishes, salad, dessert, a bottle of wine and some brandy. To lose weight, his diet consisted of black coffee for breakfast and lunch, and steak and salad for dinner, but it was hard to maintain; Donald Spoto wrote that his weight fluctuated considerably over the next 40 years. At the end of 1943, despite the weight loss, the Occidental Insurance Company of Los Angeles refused his application for life insurance.
Wartime non-fiction films
Hitchcock returned to the UK for an extended visit in late 1943 and early 1944. While there he made two short
propaganda film
A propaganda film is a film that involves some form of propaganda. Propaganda films spread and promote certain ideas that are usually religious, political, or cultural in nature. A propaganda film is made with the intent that the viewer will ad ...
s, ''
Bon Voyage'' (1944) and ''
Aventure Malgache
''Aventure Malgache'' (1944) is a short British propaganda film in French directed by Alfred Hitchcock for the British Ministry of Information. The title means '' Malagasy Adventure'' in English.
There are conflicting reports as to the true i ...
'' (1944), for the
Ministry of Information. In June and July 1945, Hitchcock served as "treatment advisor" on a
Holocaust
The Holocaust, also known as the Shoah, was the genocide of European Jews during World War II. Between 1941 and 1945, Nazi Germany and its collaborators systematically murdered some six million Jews across German-occupied Europe; ...
documentary that used
Allied Forces footage of the liberation of
Nazi concentration camps
From 1933 to 1945, Nazi Germany operated more than a thousand concentration camps, (officially) or (more commonly). The Nazi concentration camps are distinguished from other types of Nazi camps such as forced-labor camps, as well as con ...
. The film was assembled in London and produced by
Sidney Bernstein of the Ministry of Information, who brought Hitchcock (a friend of his) on board. It was originally intended to be broadcast to the Germans, but the British government deemed it too traumatic to be shown to a shocked post-war population. Instead, it was transferred in 1952 from the
British War Office
The War Office was a department of the British Government responsible for the administration of the British Army between 1857 and 1964, when its functions were transferred to the new Ministry of Defence (MoD). This article contains text from th ...
film vaults to London's
Imperial War Museum and remained unreleased until 1985, when an edited version was broadcast as an episode of
PBS
The Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) is an American public broadcaster and non-commercial, free-to-air television network based in Arlington, Virginia. PBS is a publicly funded nonprofit organization and the most prominent provider of educat ...
''
Frontline'', under the title the Imperial War Museum had given it: ''Memory of the Camps''. The full-length version of the film, ''
German Concentration Camps Factual Survey
''German Concentration Camps Factual Survey'' is the official British documentary film on the Nazi concentration camps, based on footage shot by the Allied forces in 1945.
The film was produced by Sidney Bernstein, then with the British Minist ...
'', was restored in 2014 by scholars at the Imperial War Museum.
Post-war Hollywood years: 1945–1953
Later Selznick films
Hitchcock worked for David Selznick again when he directed ''
Spellbound'' (1945), which explores
psychoanalysis
PsychoanalysisFrom Greek: + . is a set of theories and therapeutic techniques"What is psychoanalysis? Of course, one is supposed to answer that it is many things — a theory, a research method, a therapy, a body of knowledge. In what might b ...
and features a
dream sequence
A dream sequence is a technique used in storytelling, particularly in television and film, to set apart a brief interlude from the main story. The interlude may consist of a flashback, a flashforward, a fantasy, a vision, a dream, or some other ...
designed by
Salvador Dalí
Salvador Domingo Felipe Jacinto Dalí i Domènech, Marquess of Dalí of Púbol (; ; ; 11 May 190423 January 1989) was a Spanish surrealist artist renowned for his technical skill, precise draftsmanship, and the striking and bizarre images in ...
. The dream sequence as it appears in the film is ten minutes shorter than was originally envisioned; Selznick edited it to make it "play" more effectively.
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. 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
Miklós Rózsa (; April 18, 1907 – July 27, 1995) was a Hungarian-American composer trained in Germany (1925–1931) and active in France (1931–1935), the United Kingdom (1935–1940), and the United States (1940–1995), with extensi ...
makes use of the
theremin
The theremin (; originally known as the ætherphone/etherphone, thereminophone or termenvox/thereminvox) is an electronic musical instrument controlled without physical contact by the performer (who is known as a thereminist). It is named afte ...
, and some of it was later adapted by the composer into Rozsa's Piano Concerto Op. 31 (1967) for piano and orchestra.
The spy film ''
Notorious'' followed next in 1946. Hitchcock told François Truffaut that Selznick sold him, Ingrid Bergman, Cary Grant, and
Ben Hecht's screenplay, to
RKO Radio Pictures
RKO Radio Pictures Inc., commonly known as RKO Pictures or simply RKO, was an American film production and distribution company, one of the "Big Five" film studios of Hollywood's Golden Age. The business was formed after the Keith-Albee-Orph ...
as a "package" for $500,000 (equivalent to $ million in ) because of cost overruns on Selznick's ''
Duel in the Sun'' (1946). ''Notorious'' stars Bergman and Grant, both Hitchcock collaborators, and features a plot about Nazis,
uranium
Uranium is a chemical element with the symbol U and atomic number 92. It is a silvery-grey metal in the actinide series of the periodic table. A uranium atom has 92 protons and 92 electrons, of which 6 are valence electrons. Uranium is weak ...
and South America. His prescient use of uranium as a plot device led to him being briefly placed under surveillance by the
Federal Bureau of Investigation
The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) is the domestic intelligence and security service of the United States and its principal federal law enforcement agency. Operating under the jurisdiction of the United States Department of Justice, ...
. According to Patrick McGilligan, in or around March 1945, Hitchcock and Hecht consulted
Robert Millikan of the
California Institute of Technology
The California Institute of Technology (branded as Caltech or CIT)The university itself only spells its short form as "Caltech"; the institution considers other spellings such a"Cal Tech" and "CalTech" incorrect. The institute is also occasional ...
about the development of a uranium bomb. Selznick complained that the notion was "science fiction", only to be confronted by the news of the detonation of two atomic bombs on
Hiroshima and Nagasaki in Japan in August 1945.
Transatlantic Pictures
Hitchcock formed an independent production company,
Transatlantic Pictures
Transatlantic Pictures was founded by Alfred Hitchcock and longtime associate Sidney Bernstein at the end of World War II in preparation for the end of Hitchcock's contract with David O. Selznick in 1947. In 1945, Hitchcock and Bernstein were invo ...
, with his friend
Sidney Bernstein. He made two films with Transatlantic, one of which was his first colour film. With ''
Rope
A rope is a group of yarns, plies, fibres, or strands that are twisted or braided together into a larger and stronger form. Ropes have tensile strength and so can be used for dragging and lifting. Rope is thicker and stronger than similar ...
'' (1948), Hitchcock experimented with marshalling suspense in a confined environment, as he had done earlier with ''Lifeboat''. The film appears as a very limited number of continuous shots, but it was actually shot in 10 ranging from 4- to 10 minutes each; a 10-minute length of film was the most 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. The film features
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
Nathan Freudenthal Leopold Jr. (November 19, 1904 – August 29, 1971) and Richard Albert Loeb (; June 11, 1905 – January 28, 1936), usually referred to collectively as Leopold and Loeb, were two wealthy students at the University of Chicago ...
case of the 1920s. Critical response at the time was mixed.
''
Under Capricorn'' (1949), set in 19th-century Australia, also uses the short-lived technique of long takes, but to a more limited extent. He again used
Technicolor
Technicolor is a series of Color motion picture film, color motion picture processes, the first version dating back to 1916, and followed by improved versions over several decades.
Definitive Technicolor movies using three black and white films ...
in this production, then returned to
black-and-white
Black-and-white (B&W or B/W) images combine black and white in a continuous spectrum, producing a range of shades of grey.
Media
The history of various visual media began with black and white, and as technology improved, altered to color. ...
for several years. Transatlantic Pictures became inactive after the last two films. Hitchcock filmed ''
Stage Fright
Stage fright or performance anxiety is the anxiety, fear, or persistent phobia which may be aroused in an individual by the requirement to perform in front of an audience, real or imagined, whether actually or potentially (for example, when perf ...
'' (1950) at
Elstree Studios
Elstree Studios is a generic term which can refer to several current and demolished British film studios and television studios based in or around the town of Borehamwood and village of Elstree in Hertfordshire, England. Production studios ha ...
in England, where he had worked during his British International Pictures contract many years before. He paired one of
Warner Bros.
Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc. (commonly known as Warner Bros. or abbreviated as WB) is an American film and entertainment studio headquartered at the Warner Bros. Studios complex in Burbank, California, and a subsidiary of Warner Bros. D ...
' most popular stars,
Jane Wyman
Jane Wyman ( ; born Sarah Jane Mayfield; January 5, 1917 – September 10, 2007)["Actress, P ...](_blank)
, with the expatriate German actor
Marlene Dietrich
Marie Magdalene "Marlene" DietrichBorn as Maria Magdalena, not Marie Magdalene, according to Dietrich's biography by her daughter, Maria Riva ; however Dietrich's biography by Charlotte Chandler cites "Marie Magdalene" as her birth name . (, ; ...
and used several prominent British actors, including
Michael Wilding
Michael Charles Gauntlet Wilding (23 July 1912 – 8 July 1979) was an English stage, television, and film actor. He is best known for a series of films he made with Anna Neagle; he also made two films with Alfred Hitchcock, '' Under Capric ...
,
Richard Todd
Richard Andrew Palethorpe-Todd (11 June 19193 December 2009) was an Irish-British actor known for his leading man roles of the 1950s. He received a Golden Globe Award for Most Promising Newcomer – Male, and an Academy Award for Best Actor n ...
and
Alastair Sim
Alastair George Bell Sim, CBE (9 October 1900 – 19 August 1976) was a Scottish character actor who began his theatrical career at the age of thirty and quickly became established as a popular West End performer, remaining so until his ...
. This was Hitchcock's first proper production for Warner Bros., which had distributed ''Rope'' and ''Under Capricorn'', because Transatlantic Pictures was experiencing financial difficulties.
His thriller ''
Strangers on a Train'' (1951) was based on the
novel of the same name by
Patricia Highsmith
Patricia Highsmith (January 19, 1921 – February 4, 1995) was an American novelist and short story writer widely known for her psychological thrillers, including her series of five novels featuring the character Tom Ripley.
She wrote 22 novel ...
. Hitchcock combined many elements from his preceding films. He approached
Dashiell Hammett
Samuel Dashiell Hammett (; May 27, 1894 – January 10, 1961) was an American writer of hard-boiled detective novels and short stories. He was also a screenwriter and political activist. Among the enduring characters he created are Sam Spade ('' ...
to write the dialogue, but
Raymond Chandler took over, then left over disagreements with the director. 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
Farley Earle Granger Jr. (July 1, 1925 – March 27, 2011) was an American actor, best known for his two collaborations with director Alfred Hitchcock: ''Rope'' in 1948 and '' Strangers on a Train'' in 1951.
Granger was first noticed in a small ...
's role was as the innocent victim of the scheme, while
Robert Walker, previously known for "boy-next-door" roles, played the villain. ''
I Confess'' (1953) was set in
Quebec
Quebec ( ; )According to the Canadian government, ''Québec'' (with the acute accent) is the official name in Canadian French and ''Quebec'' (without the accent) is the province's official name in Canadian English is one of the thirtee ...
with
Montgomery Clift
Edward Montgomery Clift (; October 17, 1920 – July 23, 1966) was an American actor. A four-time Academy Award nominee, he was known for his portrayal of "moody, sensitive young men", according to ''The New York Times''.
He is best remembered ...
as a Catholic priest.
Peak years: 1954–1964
''Dial M for Murder'' and ''Rear Window''
''I Confess'' was followed by three colour films starring
Grace Kelly
Grace Patricia Kelly (November 12, 1929 – September 14, 1982) was an American actress who, after starring in several significant films in the early to mid-1950s, became Princess of Monaco by marrying Prince Rainier III in April 1956.
Kelly ...
: ''
Dial M for Murder
''Dial M for Murder'' is a 1954 American crime thriller film directed by Alfred Hitchcock, starring Ray Milland, Grace Kelly, Robert Cummings, Anthony Dawson, and John Williams. Both the screenplay and the successful stage play on which it was b ...
'' (1954), ''
Rear Window
''Rear Window'' is a 1954 American mystery thriller film directed by Alfred Hitchcock and written by John Michael Hayes based on Cornell Woolrich's 1942 short story "It Had to Be Murder". Originally released by Paramount Pictures, the film st ...
'' (1954), and ''
To Catch a Thief'' (1955). In ''Dial M for Murder'',
Ray Milland plays the villain 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 murder. Her lover, Mark Halliday (
Robert Cummings
Charles Clarence Robert Orville Cummings (June 9, 1910 – December 2, 1990) was an American film and television actor who appeared in roles in comedy films such as '' The Devil and Miss Jones'' (1941) and ''Princess O'Rourke'' (1943), and in ...
), and Police Inspector Hubbard (
John Williams) save her from execution.
Hitchcock experimented with
3D cinematography for ''Dial M for Murder''.
Hitchcock moved to
Paramount Pictures and filmed ''
Rear Window
''Rear Window'' is a 1954 American mystery thriller film directed by Alfred Hitchcock and written by John Michael Hayes based on Cornell Woolrich's 1942 short story "It Had to Be Murder". Originally released by Paramount Pictures, the film st ...
'' (1954), starring James Stewart and Grace Kelly, as well as
Thelma Ritter
Thelma Ritter (February 14, 1902 – February 5, 1969) was an American actress, best known for her comedic roles as working-class characters and her strong New York accent. She won the 1958 Tony Award for Best Actress in a Musical, and received ...
and
Raymond Burr
Raymond William Stacy Burr (May 21, 1917September 12, 1993) was a Canadian actor known for his lengthy Hollywood film career and his title roles in television dramas ''Perry Mason'' and '' Ironside''.
Burr's early acting career included roles ...
. Stewart's character is a photographer named Jeff (based on
Robert Capa
Robert Capa (born Endre Ernő Friedmann; October 22, 1913 – May 25, 1954) was a Hungarian-American war photographer and photojournalist as well as the companion and professional partner of photographer Gerda Taro. He is considered by some t ...
) who must temporarily use a wheelchair. Out of boredom, he begins observing his neighbours across the courtyard, then becomes convinced that one of them (Raymond Burr) has murdered his wife. Jeff eventually manages to convince his policeman buddy (
Wendell Corey
Wendell Reid Corey (March 20, 1914 – November 8, 1968) was an American actor and politician. He was President of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences and was a board member of the Screen Actors Guild.
Biography Early years
Corey was ...
) and his girlfriend (Kelly). As with ''Lifeboat'' and ''Rope'', the principal characters are depicted in confined or cramped quarters, in this case Stewart's studio apartment. Hitchcock uses close-ups of Stewart's face to show his character's reactions, "from the comic voyeurism directed at his neighbours to his helpless terror watching Kelly and Burr in the villain's apartment".
''Alfred Hitchcock Presents''
From 1955 to 1965, Hitchcock was the host of the television series ''
Alfred Hitchcock Presents''.
With his droll delivery, gallows humour and iconic image, the series made Hitchcock a celebrity. The title-sequence of the show pictured a minimalist caricature of his profile (he drew it himself; it is composed of only nine strokes), which his real silhouette then filled. The series theme tune was ''Funeral March of a Marionette'' by the French composer
Charles Gounod
Charles-François Gounod (; ; 17 June 181818 October 1893), usually known as Charles Gounod, was a French composer. He wrote twelve operas, of which the most popular has always been ''Faust (opera), Faust'' (1859); his ''Roméo et Juliette'' (18 ...
(1818–1893).
His introductions always included some sort of wry humour, such as the description of a recent multi-person execution hampered by having only one
electric chair
An electric chair is a device used to execute an individual by electrocution. When used, the condemned person is strapped to a specially built wooden chair and electrocuted through electrodes fastened on the head and leg. This execution method, ...
, while two are shown with a sign "Two chairs—no waiting!" He directed 18 episodes of the series, which aired from 1955 to 1965. It became ''
The Alfred Hitchcock Hour'' in 1962, and NBC broadcast the final episode on 10 May 1965. 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's success in television spawned a set of short-story collections in his name; these included ''
Alfred Hitchcock's Anthology'', ''Stories They Wouldn't Let Me Do on TV,'' and ''Tales My Mother Never Told Me''. In 1956, HSD Publications also licensed the director's name to create ''
Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine'', a monthly
digest specialising in crime and detective fiction. Hitchcock's television series' were very profitable, and his foreign-language versions of books were bringing revenues of up to $100,000 a year ().
From ''To Catch a Thief'' to ''Vertigo''
In 1955, Hitchcock became a United States citizen. In the same year, his third Grace Kelly film, ''
To Catch a Thief'', was released; it is set in the
French Riviera, and stars Kelly and Cary Grant. Grant 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."
It was Hitchcock's last film with Kelly; she married
Prince Rainier
Rainier III (Rainier Louis Henri Maxence Bertrand Grimaldi; 31 May 1923 – 6 April 2005) was Prince of Monaco from 1949 to his death in 2005. Rainier ruled the Principality of Monaco for almost 56 years, making him one of the longest-ruling m ...
of Monaco in 1956, and ended her film career afterward. Hitchcock then 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
Academy Award for Best Original Song and became a big hit. 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.
''
The Wrong Man
''The Wrong Man'' is a 1956 American docudrama film noir directed by Alfred Hitchcock and starring Henry Fonda and Vera Miles. The film was drawn from the true story of an innocent man charged with a crime, as described in the book ''The True St ...
'' (1956), Hitchcock's final film for Warner Bros., is a low-key black-and-white production based on a real-life case of
mistaken identity
Mistaken identity is a defense in criminal law which claims the actual innocence of the criminal defendant, and attempts to undermine evidence of guilt by asserting that any eyewitness to the crime incorrectly thought that they saw the defenda ...
reported in ''Life'' magazine in 1953. This was the only film of Hitchcock to star
Henry Fonda
Henry Jaynes Fonda (May 16, 1905 – August 12, 1982) was an American actor. He had a career that spanned five decades on Broadway and in Hollywood. He cultivated an everyman screen image in several films considered to be classics.
Born and ra ...
, playing a
Stork Club musician mistaken for a liquor store thief, who is arrested and tried for robbery while his wife (
Vera Miles
Vera June Miles ( née Ralston, born August 23, 1929) is an American retired actress who worked closely with Alfred Hitchcock, most notably as Lila Crane in the classic 1960 film '' Psycho'', reprising the role in the 1983 sequel '' Psycho II ...
) 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.
While directing episodes for ''Alfred Hitchcock Presents'' during the summer of 1957, Hitchcock was admitted to hospital for
hernia
A hernia is the abnormal exit of tissue or an organ, such as the bowel, through the wall of the cavity in which it normally resides. Various types of hernias can occur, most commonly involving the abdomen, and specifically the groin. Groin herni ...
and
gallstone
A gallstone is a stone formed within the gallbladder from precipitated bile components. The term cholelithiasis may refer to the presence of gallstones or to any disease caused by gallstones, and choledocholithiasis refers to the presence of mi ...
s, and had to have his
gallbladder
In vertebrates, the gallbladder, also known as the cholecyst, is a small hollow organ where bile is stored and concentrated before it is released into the small intestine. In humans, the pear-shaped gallbladder lies beneath the liver, although ...
removed. Following a successful surgery, he immediately returned to work to prepare for his next project. ''
Vertigo
Vertigo is a condition where a person has the sensation of movement or of surrounding objects moving when they are not. Often it feels like a spinning or swaying movement. This may be associated with nausea, vomiting, sweating, or difficulties w ...
'' (1958) again starred James Stewart, with
Kim Novak
Marilyn Pauline "Kim" Novak (born February 13, 1933) is an American retired film and television actress and painter.
Novak began her career in 1954 after signing with Columbia Pictures and quickly became one of Hollywood's top box office stars, ...
and
Barbara Bel Geddes. He had wanted
Vera Miles
Vera June Miles ( née Ralston, born August 23, 1929) is an American retired actress who worked closely with Alfred Hitchcock, most notably as Lila Crane in the classic 1960 film '' Psycho'', reprising the role in the 1983 sequel '' Psycho II ...
to play the lead, but she was pregnant. He told
Oriana Fallaci: "I was offering her a big part, the chance to become a beautiful sophisticated blonde, a real actress. We'd have spent a heap of dollars on it, and she has the bad taste to get pregnant. I hate pregnant women, because then they have children."
In ''Vertigo'', Stewart plays Scottie, a former police investigator suffering from
acrophobia
Acrophobia is an extreme or irrational fear or phobia of heights, especially when one is not particularly high up. It belongs to a category of specific phobias, called space and motion discomfort, that share both similar causes and options fo ...
, who becomes obsessed with a woman he has been hired to shadow (Novak). Scottie's obsession leads to tragedy, and this time Hitchcock did not opt for a happy ending. Some critics, including Donald Spoto and
Roger Ebert, agree that ''Vertigo'' is the director's most personal and revealing film, dealing with the ''
Pygmalion''-like obsessions of a man who moulds a woman into the person he desires. ''Vertigo'' explores more frankly and at greater length his interest in the relation between sex and death, than any other work in his filmography.
''Vertigo'' contains a camera technique developed by Irmin Roberts, commonly referred to as a
dolly zoom, which has been copied by many filmmakers. The film premiered at the
San Sebastián International Film Festival
The San Sebastián International Film Festival ( SSIFF; es, Festival Internacional de San Sebastián, eu, Donostia Zinemaldia) is an annual FIAPF A category film festival held in the Spanish city of Donostia-San Sebastián in September, in ...
, and Hitchcock won the Silver Seashell prize. ''Vertigo'' is considered a classic, but it attracted mixed reviews and poor box-office receipts at the time; the critic from ''
Variety
Variety may refer to:
Arts and entertainment Entertainment formats
* Variety (radio)
* Variety show, in theater and television
Films
* ''Variety'' (1925 film), a German silent film directed by Ewald Andre Dupont
* ''Variety'' (1935 film), ...
'' magazine opined that the film was "too slow and too long".
Bosley Crowther
Francis Bosley Crowther Jr. (July 13, 1905 – March 7, 1981) was an American journalist, writer, and film critic for ''The New York Times'' for 27 years. His work helped shape the careers of many actors, directors and screenwriters, though his ...
of the ''New York Times'' thought it was "devilishly far-fetched", but praised the cast performances and Hitchcock's direction. The picture was also the last collaboration between Stewart and Hitchcock.
In the 2002 ''
Sight & Sound
''Sight and Sound'' (also spelled ''Sight & Sound'') is a British monthly film magazine published by the British Film Institute (BFI). It conducts the well-known, once-a-decade ''Sight and Sound'' Poll of the Greatest Films of All Time, ongoing ...
'' polls, it ranked just behind ''
Citizen Kane'' (1941); ten years later, in the same magazine, critics chose it as the best film ever made.
''North by Northwest'' and ''Psycho''
After ''Vertigo'', the rest of 1958 was a difficult year for Hitchcock. During
pre-production
Pre-production is the process of planning some of the elements involved in a film, television show, play, or other performance, as distinct from production and post-production. Pre-production ends when the planning ends and the content start ...
of ''
North by Northwest
''North by Northwest'' is a 1959 American spy thriller film, produced and directed by Alfred Hitchcock and starring Cary Grant, Eva Marie Saint and James Mason. The screenplay was by Ernest Lehman, who wanted to write "the Hitchcock picture ...
'' (1959), which was a "slow" and "agonising" process, his wife Alma was diagnosed with cancer. While she was in hospital, Hitchcock kept himself occupied with his television work and would visit her every day. Alma underwent surgery and made a full recovery, but it caused Hitchcock to imagine, for the first time, life without her.
Hitchcock followed up with three more successful films, which are also recognised as among his best: ''North by Northwest'', ''
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. He is pursued across the United States by enemy agents, including Eve Kendall (
Eva Marie Saint
Eva Marie Saint (born July 4, 1924) is an American actress of film, theatre and television. In a career spanning over 70 years, she has won an Academy Award and a Primetime Emmy Award, alongside nominations for a Golden Globe Award and two Brit ...
). At first, Thornhill believes Kendall is helping him, but then realises that she is an enemy agent; he later learns that she is working undercover for the
CIA. During its opening two-week run at
Radio City Music Hall, the film grossed $404,056 (equivalent to $ million in ), setting a non-holiday gross record for that theatre. ''
Time
Time is the continued sequence of existence and events that occurs in an apparently irreversible succession from the past, through the present, into the future. It is a component quantity of various measurements used to sequence events, ...
'' magazine called the film "smoothly troweled and thoroughly entertaining".
''
Psycho'' (1960) is arguably Hitchcock's best-known film.
Based on
Robert Bloch's 1959 novel ''
Psycho'', which was inspired by the case of
Ed Gein
Edward Theodore Gein (; August 27, 1906 – July 26, 1984), also known as the Butcher of Plainfield or the Plainfield Ghoul, was an American murderer and body snatcher. Gein's crimes, committed around his hometown of Plainfield, Wisconsin, ga ...
, the film was produced on a tight budget of $800,000 (equivalent to $ million in ) and shot in black-and-white on a spare set using crew members from ''
Alfred Hitchcock Presents''. The unprecedented violence of the shower scene, the early death of the heroine, and the innocent lives extinguished by a disturbed murderer became the hallmarks of a new horror-film genre. The film proved popular with audiences, with lines stretching outside theatres as viewers waited 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.
''Psycho'' was the most profitable of Hitchcock's career, and he personally earned in excess of $15 million (equivalent to $ million in ). He subsequently swapped his rights to ''Psycho'' and his TV anthology for 150,000 shares of
MCA, making him the third largest shareholder and his own boss at Universal, in theory at least, although that did not stop studio interference.
Following the first film, ''Psycho'' became an American horror
franchise
Franchise may refer to:
Business and law
* Franchising, a business method that involves licensing of trademarks and methods of doing business to franchisees
* Franchise, a privilege to operate a type of business such as a cable television p ...
: ''
Psycho II'', ''
Psycho III
''Psycho III'' is a 1986 American slasher film, and the third film in the ''Psycho'' franchise. It stars Anthony Perkins, who also directs the film, reprising the role of Norman Bates. It co-stars Diana Scarwid, Jeff Fahey, and Roberta Maxwell. ...
'', ''
Bates Motel'', ''
Psycho IV: The Beginning'', and a colour
1998 remake of the original.
Truffaut interview
On 13 August 1962, Hitchcock's 63rd birthday, the French director
François Truffaut began a 50-hour interview of Hitchcock, filmed over eight days at Universal Studios, during which Hitchcock agreed to answer 500 questions. It took four years to transcribe the tapes and organise the images; it was published as a book in 1967, which Truffaut nicknamed the "Hitchbook". The audio tapes were used as the basis of a documentary in 2015. Truffaut sought the interview because it was clear to him that Hitchcock was not simply the mass-market entertainer the American media made him out to be. It was obvious from his films, Truffaut wrote, that Hitchcock had "given more thought to the potential of his art than any of his colleagues". He compared the interview to "Oedipus' consultation of the oracle".
''The Birds''
The film scholar Peter William Evans wrote that ''
The Birds'' (1963) and ''
Marnie
''Marnie'' is an English crime novel, written by Winston Graham and first published in 1961. It has been adapted as a film, a stage play and an opera.
Plot
''Marnie'' is about a young woman who makes a living by embezzling her employers' funds, ...
'' (1964) are regarded as "undisputed masterpieces". Hitchcock had intended to film ''Marnie'' first, and in March 1962 it was announced that Grace Kelly, Princess Grace of Monaco since 1956, would come out of retirement to star in it. When Kelly asked Hitchcock to postpone ''Marnie'' until 1963 or 1964, he recruited
Evan Hunter, author of ''The Blackboard Jungle'' (1954), to develop a screenplay based on a
Daphne du Maurier
Dame Daphne du Maurier, Lady Browning, (; 13 May 1907 – 19 April 1989) was an English novelist, biographer and playwright. Her parents were actor-manager Sir Gerald du Maurier and his wife, actress Muriel Beaumont. Her grandfather was Geo ...
short story, "
The Birds" (1952), which Hitchcock had republished in his ''My Favorites in Suspense'' (1959). He hired
Tippi Hedren
Nathalie Kay "Tippi" Hedren (born January 19, 1930) is an American actress, animal rights activist, and former fashion model.
A successful fashion model who appeared on the front covers of ''Life'' and '' Glamour'' magazines, among others, Hed ...
to play the lead role. It was her first role; she had been a model in New York when Hitchcock saw her, in October 1961, in an NBC television advert for
Sego, a diet drink: "I signed her because she is a classic beauty. Movies don't have them any more. Grace Kelly was the last." He insisted, without explanation, that her first name be written in single quotation marks: 'Tippi'.
In ''The Birds'', Melanie Daniels, a young socialite, meets lawyer Mitch Brenner (
Rod Taylor) in a bird shop;
Jessica Tandy
Jessie Alice Tandy (7 June 1909 – 11 September 1994) was a British-American actress. Tandy appeared in over 100 stage productions and had more than 60 roles in film and TV, receiving an Academy Award, four Tony Awards, a BAFTA, a Golden Globe ...
plays his possessive mother. Hedren visits him in
Bodega Bay (where ''The Birds'' was filmed)
[ carrying a pair of ]lovebird
Lovebird is the common name for the genus ''Agapornis'', a small group of parrots in the Old World parrot family Psittaculidae. Of the nine species in the genus, all are native to the African continent, with the grey-headed lovebird being native ...
s as a gift. Suddenly waves of birds start gathering, watching, and attacking. The question: "What do the birds want?" is left unanswered. Hitchcock made the film with equipment from the Revue Studio, which made ''Alfred Hitchcock Presents''. He said it was his most technically challenging film, using a combination of trained and mechanical birds against a backdrop of wild ones. Every shot was sketched in advance.[
An HBO/]BBC #REDIRECT BBC #REDIRECT BBC
Here i going to introduce about the best teacher of my life b BALAJI sir. He is the precious gift that I got befor 2yrs . How has helped and thought all the concept and made my success in the 10th board exam. ...
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television film, ''