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Alfred Hitchcock |
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Director
/ Producer / Screenwriter |
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1899 - 1980 |
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Born August 13,
Leytonstone, London, England |
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Key Production
Countries: USA, UK |
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Key Genres:
Thriller, Psychological Thriller, Spy Film, Romantic Mystery, Mystery,
Drama, Comedy, Comedy Thriller, Political Thriller, Detective Film,
Crime Thriller, Crime Drama, Chase Movie |
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Key Collaborators:
Robert Burks (Cinematographer), Alma Reville (Screenwriter), George
Tomasini (Editor), Bernard Herrmann (Composer), Charles Bennett
(Screenwriter), Leo G. Carroll (Leading Character Player), Michael
Balcon (Producer), Hal Pereira (Production Designer), James Stewart
(Leading Player), Cary Grant (Leading Player) |
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Highly
Recommended: The
39 Steps (1935)*, Rebecca (1940)*, Shadow of a Doubt (1943)*#, Notorious (1946)*#, Strangers on a Train (1951)*#, Rear Window (1954)*, Vertigo (1958)*,
North by Northwest (1959)*, Psycho (1960)*, The Birds (1963)*, Marnie (1964)* |
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Recommended:
The
Lodger (1926), Rich and Strange (1932), The Man Who Knew Too Much
(1934), Sabotage (1936), The Lady Vanishes (1938)*, Foreign Correspondent
(1940), Mr. & Mrs. Smith (1941), Suspicion (1941)#, Saboteur (1942), Lifeboat (1944), Spellbound
(1945)#, Rope (1948), I Confess (1953), Dial M for Murder (1954), To
Catch a Thief (1955), The Man Who Knew Too Much (1956), The Wrong Man
(1956)*#, Frenzy (1972), Family Plot (1976) |
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Worth a Look: Blackmail
(1929), Secret Agent (1936), Young and Innocent (1937), Under Capricorn
(1949), Stage Fright (1950) |
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Approach with Caution: Murder!
(1930), Number Seventeen (1932), The Paradine Case (1948), The Trouble
with Harry (1955), Torn Curtain (1966), Topaz (1969) |
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* Listed in TSPDT's
1,000 Greatest Films
section; #
Listed in TSPDT's
250 Quintessential Noir Films
section. |
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Links:
[
Amazon ]
[
IMDB ] [
TCMDB ] [
All-Movie
Guide ] [
Senses
of Cinema: Great Directors ] [
Film Reference
] [
Hitchcock
Online ] [
Alfred Hitchcock: The Master
of Suspense ] [
Mystery Net
Pages ] [
'The MacGuffin'
Web Page ] [
The
Films of Alfred Hitchcock ] [
Senses
of Cinema's Hitchcock Articles ] [
Bright
Lights Film Journal Feature ] [
Peter
Bogdanovich Interviews Hiitchcock (1963)
] [
BBC
Audio Interviews (1966) ] [
Alfred
Hitchcock at Reel Classics ] [
Bright Lights Film Journal Article (2007)
] [
Film-Philosophy (pdf)
] [
Offscreen Article (2008)
] [
Rare One-Hour Interview with Hitchcock
] [
Pop Matters Article (2010) ]
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Books:
[
Hitchcock-Truffaut
] [
The
Art of Alfred Hitchcock: Fifty Years of His Motion Pictures
] [
Hitchcock on Hitchcock
] [
Alfred
Hitchcock: A Life in Darkness and Light
] [
It's
Only a Movie: Alfred Hitchcock
] [
The
Alfred Hitchcock Story
] [
The Dark Side of Genius : The Life of Alfred Hitchcock
] [
The Death of Classical Cinema: Hitchcock, Lang, Minnelli
] |
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"Alfred Hitchcock is the supreme
technician of the American cinema. Even his many enemies cannot
begrudge him that distinction. Like
Ford,
Hitchcock cuts in his mind, and not in the cutting room with
five different setups for every scene. His is the only
contemporary style that unites the divergent classical
traditions of
Murnau (camera
movement) and
Eisenstein
(montage)." -
Andrew
Sarris (The American Cinema, 1968) |
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"Though he seemingly cared little if
backdrop scenery was obviously artificial, he was a superb
technician, expert at orchestrating the irruption of menacing,
life-changing chaos into a complacent, deceptively safe and
ordered world." -
Geoff
Andrew (The Director's Vision, 1999) |
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"Although
he chose to limit his thematic range to the genre of suspenseful
melodrama and has disappointed some high-minded critics with his
lack of seriousness or interest in important social issues.
Hitchcock is without question among the few most gifted
directors who ever worked in the film medium. A supreme
technician and stylist with an unmistakable personal imprint and
a great visual artists, he is impossible to dismiss as just the
"Master of Suspense", as he has been frequently described." -
(The
MacMillan International Film Encyclopedia, 1994) |
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"Any
American director who says he hasn't been influenced by him is
out of his mind." -
John
Frankenheimer |
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"The master of suspense, Hitchcock is a genius at filming the
unexpected, from whole scripts to characters and little,
insignificant plot elements." -
William R. Meyer (The Film Buff's Catalog, 1978) |
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"I don't understand why we have to
experiment with film. I think everything should be done on
paper. A musician has to do it, a composer. He puts a lot of
dots down and beautiful music comes out. And I think that
students should be taught to visualize. That's the one thing
missing in all this. The one thing that the student has got to
do is to learn that there is a rectangle up there - a white
rectangle in a theatre - and it has to be filled." -
Alfred
Hitchcock (Directing the Film, 1976) |
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"Dialogue
should simply be a sound among other sounds, just something that
comes out of the mouths of people whose eyes tell the story in
visual terms." -
Alfred Hitchcock |
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"I
enjoy playing the audience like a piano." -
Alfred Hitchcock
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