Fear of Falling
Introduction to the book 'Alfred Hitchcock. The Complete Films', by Paul Duncan
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As David Thomson noted, 'Hitchcock's most profound subject and achievement is the juxtaposition of sanity and insanity, of bourgeois ordinariness and criminal outrage.' Many insane monsters have been featured strongly in Hitchcock's movies, including Uncle Charlie in Shadow of a Doubt, Bruno Anthony in Strangers on a Train, Norman Bates in Psycho and Bob Rusk in Frenzy. If Hitchcock's insane monsters owe a debt to Peter Lorre's child sex murderer in Fritz Lang's M, then his usual villains - the criminal mastermind who is also a respected member of the community - are also reminiscent of Lang's Dr Mabuse films.
Hitchcock loved to play with the conventions of the thriller format. Instead of having dark, solitary settings for his stories of suspense and murder, he preferred light, humorous, crowded places where murder could hide in plain sight. The villain would have a wife and children. "I think that murder should be done on a lovely summer's day by a babbling brook," Hitc hcock said. "The liveliest fellow at a party might well be a psychopathic killer." Critic Andrew Sarris explains further, 'Hitchcock requires a situation of normality, however dull it may seem on the surface, to emphasise the evil abnormality that lurks beneath the surface. Hitchcock understands, as his detractors do not, the crucial function of counterpoint in the cinema.'
Hitchcock also understood how to compose clean and dynamic images for the two-dimensional screen, as well as design sophisticated and precise patterns of visual motifs. To Hitc hcock, "The cinema is a succession of images put together like a sentence. Together they tell a story ." He very much believed in the discipline of the pure cinema that developed at the end of the silent era and preferred to tell stories through images and sounds rather than with dialogue. In Sarris' words, 'Like [John] Ford, Hitchcock cuts in his mind, and not in the cutting room with five different set-ups for every scene. His is the only style that unites the divergent classical traditions of [F.W.] Murnau (camera movement) and [Sergei] Eisenstein (montage)... Unfortunately, Hitchcock seldom receives the visual analysis he deserves.'
There are many sequences in Hitchcock's work where he uses the movement of the camera combined with editing to put the viewer in the position of his characters. By seeing what the characters see, the viewer empathises with them. You see a character on the screen looking at something, you see what they see (you in their position), then you see the character react to that something. In The Lodger, the Bunting family look up at their ceiling to see the light fittings shake, then we are looking up at the ceiling, at the light fittings shaking, the ceiling made of glass and watching the lodger walking up and down.
Page 1 2 3 4 5 6
Page 1 2 3 4 5 6
As David Thomson noted, 'Hitchcock's most profound subject and achievement is the juxtaposition of sanity and insanity, of bourgeois ordinariness and criminal outrage.' Many insane monsters have been featured strongly in Hitchcock's movies, including Uncle Charlie in Shadow of a Doubt, Bruno Anthony in Strangers on a Train, Norman Bates in Psycho and Bob Rusk in Frenzy. If Hitchcock's insane monsters owe a debt to Peter Lorre's child sex murderer in Fritz Lang's M, then his usual villains - the criminal mastermind who is also a respected member of the community - are also reminiscent of Lang's Dr Mabuse films.
Hitchcock loved to play with the conventions of the thriller format. Instead of having dark, solitary settings for his stories of suspense and murder, he preferred light, humorous, crowded places where murder could hide in plain sight. The villain would have a wife and children. "I think that murder should be done on a lovely summer's day by a babbling brook," Hitc hcock said. "The liveliest fellow at a party might well be a psychopathic killer." Critic Andrew Sarris explains further, 'Hitchcock requires a situation of normality, however dull it may seem on the surface, to emphasise the evil abnormality that lurks beneath the surface. Hitchcock understands, as his detractors do not, the crucial function of counterpoint in the cinema.'
Hitchcock also understood how to compose clean and dynamic images for the two-dimensional screen, as well as design sophisticated and precise patterns of visual motifs. To Hitc hcock, "The cinema is a succession of images put together like a sentence. Together they tell a story ." He very much believed in the discipline of the pure cinema that developed at the end of the silent era and preferred to tell stories through images and sounds rather than with dialogue. In Sarris' words, 'Like [John] Ford, Hitchcock cuts in his mind, and not in the cutting room with five different set-ups for every scene. His is the only style that unites the divergent classical traditions of [F.W.] Murnau (camera movement) and [Sergei] Eisenstein (montage)... Unfortunately, Hitchcock seldom receives the visual analysis he deserves.'
There are many sequences in Hitchcock's work where he uses the movement of the camera combined with editing to put the viewer in the position of his characters. By seeing what the characters see, the viewer empathises with them. You see a character on the screen looking at something, you see what they see (you in their position), then you see the character react to that something. In The Lodger, the Bunting family look up at their ceiling to see the light fittings shake, then we are looking up at the ceiling, at the light fittings shaking, the ceiling made of glass and watching the lodger walking up and down.
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