Movies are a wonderful chance to acceptably escape from the insanity of the world, even if only for an hour or two at the time for some entertainment. With the 2011 Academy Awards just over with, and finals around the corner, movie downloads are at an all time high. Now, while most contemplate whether or not to cave in and watch the latest totally manly rom-com or watch Inception again to see if it finally makes any sense, I myself am a huge fan of horror films. Lately within the horror genre, there’s been a real resurgence of gory blood and gut slasher flicks, take Saw 1 through 67 for example. While watching someone getting sliced in half with a rusty spoon by a psychopath is nice and all, my favorites still remain the scare-your-pants-off thrillers. Although my current repertoire of scary movies isn’t quite as up to snuff as I would have liked, mainly due to the fact that I’m convinced it would induce nightmares involving my numerical methods class and a lot of chainsaws, there are still some favorites of mine that I try to re-watch every now and then. Enter Alfred Hitchcock, the true king of suspense. A British filmmaker, who has since passed away in 1980 is still strongly known within mainstream culture for his classic horror films that will literally scare you senseless. Best part? Hitchcock was an engineer.
Born on August 13th, 1899 in Leytonstone, London as the youngest of three children; Hitchcock was named after his father’s brother. He was raised Catholic and was sent to the Jesuit Classic school St. Ignatius; College in Stamford Hill, London. In later interviews Hitchcock often described his childhood as being very lonely and sheltered, which was often compounded by his obesity. He was frequently subject to very harsh and unusual parenting. He was once sent to a police station with a note from his father asking the officer to lock him away for ten minutes as punishment for bad behavior. His mother frequently made him address her while standing at the foot of her bed, especially if he behaved badly, and would make him stand there for hours. This idea of harsh treatment or wrongful accusations would later appear frequently in his films. The treatment he faced from his mother would later surface within the character Norman Bates in his movie Psycho in 1960.
After his father passed away when Hitchcock was only 14, he left St. Ignatius to study at the London County Council School of Engineering and Navigation in Poplar, London. After graduating, he became a draftsman and advertising designer with a cable company in London. It was here that he developed his interest in photography and film production. He started working as a title-card designer for the London branch of what would eventually become Paramount Pictures. In 1920, he made the transition to a full time position as a director of Islington Studios with its American owner, Famous Players-Laskey. The transition to full time director took a total of five years.
Hitchcock had a slow start in mainstream film. In the early 1920’s, the first few films he produced grabbed little mainstream attention and most were eventually dropped. In 1926, he finally broke his bad streak with the Lodger: A Story of the London Fog. The thriller was a major commercial success in the UK, and he also won over many critics with what was best described as his first “Hitchcockian” film where he incorporated themes that he would be later known for such as the “wrong man”.
In 1929, he began working on his tenth film Blackmail. During the production of the film, the production studio decided to convert it to sound. As an early ‘talkie’ film, it is frequently cited as a landmark film by most critics. It is also considered to be the first British sound feature film. With the climax of the film taking place on the dome of the British Museum, this film began the tradition of using famous landmarks as the backdrop for suspense scenes in Hitchcock films. He also continued to be one of the first directors to utilize sound to enhance his films, both through sound effects as well as instructing his actors to emphasize certain words in their script to enhance the feeling of a scene. He later moved to the States in 1940 and began working in Hollywood.
Although he managed to direct and create a wide range of films outside of the horror genre during his time in Hollywood, it was still his frightening films that he was the most famous for. His films were known for their signature plot twists and use of what was referred to as a ‘MacGuffin’, or the use of a type of decoy meant to serve thematic elements of the film. Hitchcock best explained, “There are two men sitting in a train going to Scotland and one man says to the other, ‘Excuse me, sir, but what is that strange parcel you have on the luggage rack above you?’ ‘Oh’, says the other, ‘that’s a MacGuffin.’ ‘Well,’ says the first man, ‘what’s a MacGuffin?’ The other answers, ‘It’s an apparatus for trapping lions in the Scottish Highlands.’ ‘But,’ says the first man, ‘there are no lions in the Scottish Highlands.’ ‘Well,’ says the other, ‘then that’s no MacGuffin.’
Hitchcock continued making movies up until he passed away in his sleep in 1980. The last script he was working on never reached the screen, although it was released in a book published after his death. Over 30 years since his death, his legacy of films and technological contributions to the film industry still live on today. It was through his constant drive to improve the technological approach to filmmaking that he truly left his engineering mark on the industry. His films will remain classics for years to come. My personal suggestion to help get over the pre-final jitters? His classic from 1963 The Birds, a film depicting the gory overtaking of Bodega Bay California by thousands of birds. It’ll scare the pants right off of you, and it also makes the walk to school in the springtime all that much more amusing with the geese flying overhead – classic.
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