Although Hitchcock left Great Britain for the United States in 1939, his first two films -- Rebecca (1940) and Suspicion (1941) -- nonetheless remained set firmly in English culture. His depictions helped craft perceptions of English life for decades to come.
While Alfred Hitchcock is famous for the humor that he injected into his thrillers, there are striking differences in the humor between his British and American periods.
In Day Two of our Director Spotlight series on the Master of Suspense, we revisit the four strongest films of Alfred Hitchcock’s British period.
Alfred Hitchcock helped to create the modern horror genre, the modern thriller, and the modern black comedy. He changed film, even as he was inventing new ways to approach it. Stay tuned through October as we present our collection of essays on the Master of Suspense.
Psycho stands out not only for being one of Alfred Hitchcock's greatest films, it is also one of his most influential. It has been a template and source material for an almost endless succession of later horror films, making it appropriate to identify it as the mother of all horror films.
In today's installment of our retrospective survey of Alfred Hitchcock's singular career, we revisit his first major statements. Thrillingly, all of Hitchcock's trademark themes and signature moves are visible in these early masterpieces -- an uncanny talent, Hitch arrived, it would seem, fully formed.
In Psycho, Alfred Hitchcock subverts the narrative expectations laid out in the early parts, producing something very different from the suspense film that we anticipate.
Hitchcock's motif of treacherous toying with filmgoers is intriguing to spot in his early silent-to-talkie thrillers, Blackmail and Murder!
A contemporary viewing of Alfred Hitchcock's 1964 film, Marnie, makes it clear: we must understand the inner workings of the male gaze and subsequently annihilate it.
For viewers into the techniques of mise-en-scène, Kino Lorber's 4k digital restoration of Hitchcock's first Technicolor film, Under Capricorn, is one dazzlement after another.
The culture has shattered AlfredHitchcock's legacy into separate identities. We must view him as the brilliant, horrifying, innovative, monstrous composite he authentically was.
"... [Psycho] broke every taboo you could possibly think of, it reinvented the language of film and revolutionised what you could do with a story on a very precise level. It also fundamentally and profoundly changed the ritual of movie going," says 78/52 director, Alexandre O. Philippe.
British elegance and American money combined make Alfred Hitchcock's Rebecca a visual delight.
David Bordwell effectively argues that the change in the era of bold, different, sometimes difficult films from the '40s made a permanent mark of cinematic storytelling that resonates to this day.
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